House of Secrets (7 page)

“When?” Teresa asked. A couple of days before Valentine’s Day, he said. The ceremony was held at the house of Ed Sexton’s sister, Nellie. Ed Sexton, with his ordained minister card, had officiated the ceremony himself. “Why didn’t you tell anybody?” Teresa asked. “Why didn’t you wait until Valentine’s Day?”

“That’s the way they wanted it,” Joey said. “They just said it was best if we did it that way.”

“Who’s they?”

“Mr. Sexton.”

“Why, Joey?” she asked. “What would you have thought of me if I didn’t? She was pregnant.”

“That doesn’t make a difference,” Teresa said. “I mean, she’s already had two without a husband.”

“Those kids call me dad,” he said. He said he’d moved in with Pixie and the Sexton family. It wasn’t the only bad news. Joey said a few days after the ceremony Pixie had miscarried. Teresa had her doubts about the pregnancy, but they didn’t concern Pixie’s ability to carry full term. She asked Joey if Pixie had seen a doctor. “No,” he said.

Had she gone to the hospital? He shook his head. “There’s things women have to take care of after a miscarriage,” Teresa said. “Joey, she wasn’t pregnant, believe me.” He looked at her innocently. My God, Teresa decided, maybe this Pixie was more clever than she thought.

A few weeks later, Teresa Boron received a call from her exsister-in-law. She worked in birth records at the Massilon Health Department. Joey had come into the office with Pixie and filed a certificate of paternity, she told Teresa. He was claiming to be the father of Dawn. That was impossible, Teresa thought. Dawn was born five months before he even dated Pixie. Her sister-in-law explained the office procedure. The paternity papers would go the capital, then the original birth certificate, with no known father, would be destroyed. It would be replaced with one listing Joel M. Good as the father. There would be no record the original had even been amended.

“I tried to talk him out of it,” the former relative told Teresa. “I told him, do you realize what you’re doing?” But Joey insisted, with Pixie standing there at his side. He planned on amending the younger daughter Shasta’s certificate in another jurisdiction as well. It wasn’t until years later that someone would put all the dates together.

Ed Sexton may have had good reason to marry off his daughter before Valentine’s Day. And Pixie Sexton may have had very good reason to find a father for her children, at least for the official paperwork.

The Sextons had been busy the morning of February 12, 1992 The wedding had taken place only hours after the Jackson Police and the Department of Human Services had accompanied Machelle Sexton to get her clothes.

The G, Is I s

J _

he Dike Anne Greene first heard about the girl named Machelle during her oldest daughter’s wedding reception on Valentine’s Day, at a restaurant called Created For You. The executive director of the Pregnancy Support Center of Stark County walked over and said, “We just placed a girl in shepherding today, but decided not to call you.” The director grinned. “We figured that even you would be too busy today.”

Anne Greene headed the non-profit organization’s shepherding program and had been on the center’s board for three years. The center gave women free pregnancy tests and counseling. The shepherding program placed troubled clients in stable homes. Anne Green found nurturing families for young women kicked out by parents or boyfriends. Some were hardly more than girls. The center was Christian and pro-life, and Anne made no apologies. Four full-time staffers and 100 volunteers didn’t fire-bomb abortion clinics or shoot abortionists. They were too busy counseling clients, finding host families, and sharing the Gospel way of life. Nor was Anne a dowdy, humorless Bible thumper with a beehive. With her wavy Irish red hair cascading to her shoulders and sparkling green eyes, the 41-year-old mother of four looked hardly thirty. Her humor was blunt, often sarcastic. Her laugh was loud and infectious.

She’d found faith through her father, a retired Baptist minister.

Support for her volunteer work came from her husband, a sales manager for a Canton container manufacturer. “A ministry of evangelism, love, non-judgemental attitude, acceptance, desire to nurture and help,” she would say of her mission.

“A

desire to show the face of Christ to those who have never seen him, and the cleansing and the peace of God. And yeah, Jesus hung out with the riffraœ That’s absolutely scriptural, too.” A week later, Anne met Machelle Sexton for the first time at a greenhouse in Hartville. The center had found Machelle work there after she told counselors she liked working with plants. Machelle also had been placed in a shepherding home in Stark County. But she was running into trouble with the shepherding program’s house rules. She’d violated a couple of curfews and not kept the host family informed of her whereabouts. Anne decided to talk to her in the backseat of the director’s Cadillac as they gave her a ride back to her shepherding home. “She was very small at the time, underweight,” Greene would later say. “But when I think of Shelly, I think of her eyes. She had really catching blue eyes, but eyes that also were afraid. She wouldn’t look at you when she talked.

Yet, there still seemed to be an eagerness to be wanted. She was kind of walking a grey line of I don’t trust you, but I want you.”

” Anne was the program’s dorm mother. It wasn’t the first time she’d been called in to explain the rules. She leaned close to Machelle and arranged the hair behind her neck. “You know the rules are for a reason,” she said, rubbing her shoulder. “People who care about you need to know where you are It’s all about accountability. Not punishment. It’s something we ali need in our life.” Machelle turned, nodding. Those eyes, Anne thought. There’s something more here than a young single girl expecting a child. Eleven days later, Anne received surprising news. The clinic’s pregnancy test showed that Machelle Sexton was not pregnant. She had no explanation as to why she thought she was expecting. When a counselor asked her who the father was, she fell into a dark silence. Machelle’s shepherding family also was reporting strange behavior. She slept in a cozy, carpeted bedroom in the host family’s basement, but there she was besieged with nightmares.

A couple of nights they found her sleeping under the bed. Another night they found her huddled in a dark closet, her eyes filled with fear. Technically, Anne knew Machelle Sexton was no longer eligible for the shepherding program. But obviously the girl was in crisis. The directors decided to provide services until Machelle could get her problems sorted out. Anne decided to do a little digging. She’d never been reluctant to evoke her official-sounding title to get police, prosecutors, and social workers on the phone. She called up Ruth Killion, Machelle s guidance counselor at Jackson High School. “What can you tell me about this girl?” she asked. Killion gave a long narrative about all the Sexton teenagers. Two other girls had tried to hide their pregnancies in school, she said. She told Anne about the hitting incident that had prompted Machelle to come to her in the first place. The father ruled the family like the gestapo, Killion said.

“The parents pick them up and drop them off every day. “They don’t take a bus?” Anne asked. “The parents drop them off every morning.

They pick them up every afternoon at the front door of the school.”

Killion told her about the quarters they were given to turn each other in.

“What happens if they don’t call?” Anne asked. “They say they get whupped,” Killion said. Not whipped. Whupped. Anne wrote it down.

It was the first of hundreds of notes she would make on Machelle Sexton. She made entries in her journal or grabbed anything handy, sometimes writing on napkins, paper towels, or brown shopping bags. On February 29, Anne was called to Machelle’s shepherding home again.

Machelle was still breaking curfews. The family was getting frustrated. Now a new problem had come up. A neighbor was complaining that her daughter disappeared with Machelle for several hours one night. “I think I need to spend some time alone with her,” Anne told Anne found Machelle sitting on the edge of the bed. Her blond hair was unkempt, her shoulders hunched. And those eyes. They looked as if they held a thousand secrets. Anne sat next to her, putting her arms around her, drawing her cheek to her breast. She decided, now was not the time to talk about the rules. “Machelle, you need to tell me what has happened to you,” Anne said. She felt her body tremble. “We know you’re not pregnant,” she continued. “But Machelle, why do you think you are?”

Machelle began to cry softly. Anne thought, this girl doesn’t even know me. I’m just a stranger. I’ll never get through. When the girl finally spoke, her body was shaking, her voice hardly audible. “My dad raped me,” she said. They talked over the next 10 days. Anne gave Machelle her home phone number. She’d never done that with a client before. The rape should be reported to authorities, Anne finally said, suggesting it would help Machelle put the trauma behind her. “No, I try,” Machelle said.“But I can’t forget.” One day, she also asked Anne, “I don’t understand why I bled.” That’s what happened with virgins, Anne said. “It was all my fault,” Machelle said. “If I’d just been stronger.” Machelle began dropping hints of other abusive behavior in the household. Her father beat the children. He beat her mother.

There were other secrets. Her younger sisters were in danger. Anne suggested again she talk to police, for the protection of her brothers and sisters. “No,” Machelle said. “There are secrets that should never be told to anyone. ” Her father had spies and sources everywhere, Machelle said. He had friends in the police department.

In fact, Ed Sexton was a booster member of the state lodge for the Fraternal Order of Police. The Sextons had FOP cards for their wallets and bumper stickers for the cars. If she told, her father would find out, track her down and kill her, Machelle said. He’d been promising that for years. He’d lift an index finger like a cocked gun and say, “A good snitch is a dead snitch.” Machelle said, “I’m afraid.” Anne made the first overture to the police herself. Her new son*n-law was a Stark County sheriff’s deputy. He had contacts in the Jackson Township Police Department. A phone call led to the desk of Jackson detective sergeant named Glenn Goe. “This girl is opening up to me,” she told the detective. “She says this is the first time she’s told anyone.

She was raped by her father, And beaten. But I think there’s even more going on in that house. “Can you get her to come in?” Goe asked. It took another 10 days of talking, 10 days filled with other problems.

Machelle’s shepherding family was getting phone calls, someone calling, not saying anything, just breathing. The host family, already frustrated with Machelle’s curfew problems, wanted Machelle Sexton removed. Anne checked the teenager into a Canton safe house for battered women, its location secret, its security insured by a host of resident Machelle finally agreed to talk to the police, but only if she did not have to go the police station. “Dad always said if I went there they would lock me up there and take his side,” she said.

Detective Glenn Goe suggested the compromise. They could meet at the D. A.R. E. office in Shortridge Villa. The office was small and unofficial looking, used by police for a drug prevention program for teens. “That might work,” Anne Greene said. Considering Machelle Sexton’s apprehension, Goe in some ways was the perfect choice for the interview. At 31, he had boyish good looks, a fondness for sweaters and a frequent, easy-going smile. He’d been with the department for 11

years, making sergeant after only four years on the road. Goe already was somewhat familiar with the Sextons. He’d made a run to the house on Caroline years ago to secure property after a suspicious fire. Goe had been a detective for a year, handling typical suburban crimes. Now and then a criminal assault would come through. But mostly, Jackson detectives dealt with property crimes, B&Es, petty theft, vandalism.

Goe had only handled a handful of sexual assaults. “We’d actually be a very quiet community if it were not for an interstate going through the township, an industrial park, and a good sized mall,” Goe would later say. “As a detective here, the upside is you get to handle everything.

The drawback is you’re not sharp on any one thing because you’re not specializing like big city departments do.” On March 19, a couple hours after sunset, Goe met Anne Greene and Machelle Sexton at the D.A.R.E.

office. Machelle Sexton sat down at a small desk, Anne Greene at her side. Goe had a pen and legal pad. He wanted to hear what the teenager had to say before he committed anything to tape. They began slowly. But within minutes, even Anne Greene appeared lost. Machelle Sexton was generating so many names and nicknames within the Sexton family, it was impossible to keep track of all the principals in the teenager’s story. Goe asked Machelle to break the family down, name by name. Ages would be helpful, too, he said. Her father Ed Sexton was 49, Machelle said. Some people called him Eddie, others Eddie Lee.

The children all called him Dad. Her mother was named Estella May, or Estella Sr. She was 44. They called her Mom. Most people called her May. They moved on to the siblings. She was one of twelve children, Patrick, 24, Eddie Jr., 23, Stella, 22, William, 21, Sherri, 19, Charles, 16, James, 15, Matthe 14, Christopher, 13, Lana, 12, and Kimberly, 7. Machelle said she was in the middle, the sixth oldest, 18

months older than Charles and 14 months younger than Sherri. There were more family members. Stella had two daughters, Dawn and Shasta.

Stella had just gotten married. Her husband Joel Good was living in the house. Sherri also had a baby, an 8-month-old son named Christopher. Goe counted 17 people. “All these people live in the house?” he asked. No, she said, just 15. Machelle explained the layout. Her parents had a master bedroom on the first floor, off limits to all but one of the kids. Young Kimberly slept with her parents. There were three more bedrooms upstairs. Machelle used to share the largest bedroom with Pixie, Sherri, and Lana, but Pixie moved to a smaller room with her two babies, and eventually Joel. When Sherri had her baby, she relocated to the den, sleeping on the couch.