Men molested as children are linked
_ G O D _
A connection born in pain
Two men who were molested as children become linked in spite of their differences
BY FRANK GREEN
Paul Martin Andrews and Dewey Keith Venable
suffered as children from crimes that brought them
together as adults
Venable was molested by his mother's fiancé. Andrews
was abducted and assaulted by Richard Alvin Ausley,
perhaps Virginia's most notorious pederast.
Andrews, with the help of his family, held his life together.
Venable did not. He wound up at the Sussex I State
Prison, where he was placed in Ausley's cell. On the
night of Jan. 13, 2004, Ausley was strangled and
beaten to death, and Venable is facing a potential
death sentence in the slaying.
Andrews, 46, an advocate for sexual-assault victims,
began corresponding with Venable, 25, after the slaying.
Venable has not written about the crime. "I prefer that
he not for his own sake," Andrews said.
"Who knows what happened in that cell," Andrews
said. But, he offered, "if it's what I expect [happened],
Ausley just lit the match to a powder keg and suffered
the consequences."
"This kid needs all the help he can get. He's never gotten a fair shake in his life,"
said Andrews, who hopes Venable's past will be taken into account in whatever
reckoning the young convict may be due.
The letters to Andrews and accounts by Venable's mother paint a portrait of a dark
childhood. Court records show Venable was the victim of sexual assault when a child,
but the accuracy of much of what Venable and his mother say cannot be verified
Because he is being held in segregation, Venable cannot be interviewed.
When Ausley was killed, Venable was serving an 18-year, nine-month sentence for nine
felony convictions in Virginia Beach, including carjacking, abduction, robbery and
illegal use of a firearm. All of the convictions were in 2001.
He and his mother maintain he is innocent of Ausley's slaying.
He is now being evaluated to determine if he is competent to stand trial. His lawyers
say it is unlikely he will be tried until next year. One of his lawyers, John
Boatwright, said, "his upbringing, such as it was, was horrific."
Andrews said Venable, who goes by the name, "Frankie," has written about being
sexually abused when he was 4.
However, "he doesn't really talk so much about the abuse at the hand of his mother's
boyfriend. What he talks about is how she didn't support him after that happened and
. . . and it was a downhill struggle from there."
"If he did this, I don't think he's responsible. I don't think that he was actually
even aware of what he was doing. You've got 23 years of rage built up inside of him,"
Andrews said.
Venable's mother, Jacqueline Venable of Gloucester County, agrees that "Frankie
suffered a lot."
She said that "all Frankie ever wanted in life was a father. I couldn't ever give him
one because every [man in her life] was a screw-up."
"I couldn't help him no more. I couldn't listen to him. He thought Mom could do
anything and Mom couldn't do no more," she said, crying quietly one morning last week
in Urbanna.
"When it happened he was 4 and he remembers it," she said. "He felt like I didn't
love him because of what happened to him."
Venable said her son was born in Atlanta. "We moved around a lot," she said,
primarily living in Virginia, Ohio and Georgia.
When Venable was 2 or 3 he nearly died when he was shocked by an electric hair dryer
he put in a toilet, his mother said. Another time, she said, she came home on a lunch
break from work and discovered him nearly drowned in a pool.
Both times his father, to whom she was not married, was supposed to be supervising
him, she said. Venable's father could not be reached for comment.
Venable, 46, said there have been a half dozen or so men in her life.
Venable, her 4-year-old son, daughter and her fiancé at the time were living in
Norfolk. She remembers walking Frankie's older sister to the school bus stop one day.
When she returned to the house she saw her fiancé in bed sexually assaulting her son.
Court records identify the man as Dennis L. Sewell, then of Ocean View.
"I couldn't believe it. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. . . . I flipped
out," she said, adding, "the guy had been drinking the night before but that's still
no excuse for him to betray us like that."
"I beat him up and threw him out," she said of Sewell. But, she conceded, she not
only failed to report the incident to police, she later took Sewell back.
Sewell "kept on swearing up and down he wouldn't do it again. Frankie and [his
sister] both begged me, begged me, 'Come on, Mom, give him another chance.'"
"I didn't know what to do," she said. When she was growing up, she said things like
that were kept secret.
She did not, however, keep it a secret forever, she said.
It was years later when she told an acquaintance about the sexual abuse. The
acquaintance told authorities, she said.
Sewell was initially charged in July 1987 with two counts of aggravated sexual
battery and one count each of sodomy and indecent liberties against Venable. He was
also charged with aggravated sexual battery against another minor.
The crimes were alleged to have taken place between Jan. 1, 1984, when Venable was
not quite 4, and May 1, 1987.
On May 31, 1988, Sewell, then 44, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual
battery. He was given two 10-year, suspended sentences and was ordered to be of good
behavior for 10 years, with the first five years on supervised probation.
Frankie at times was in foster homes or taken in by family members who tried to
poison her son against her, Venable says.
After her son entered prison in 2001, she said she learned she was manic-depressive.
Had she been healthy, she said she probably wouldn't have taken Sewell back. But, she
said, "I can't answer for why that sick man did that."
Frankie, she said, "felt ashamed. He felt like if he hadn't been there, the man
wouldn't have done it and that I would have been happy and all Frankie ever wanted
was for me to be happy."
Venable said Sewell was nice to her son. "The guy wasn't mean to him. The guy was
very loving so it was actually the most devastating thing that I'd ever seen because
it was a betrayal -- not only to me but to the children that loved him."
She said her son received counseling for years. "They said he was severely
emotionally disturbed at that point," Venable said. "He is ashamed of it and has
always been ashamed of it."
When he was 13, Frankie suffered brain damage after huffing freon, his mother said.
A lung collapsed, his heart stopped and he went into a coma, she said. He was taken
to a hospital and nearly died. Some of the skin on his face was damaged and replaced
with skin grafts taken from his leg.
"It was really, really horrible." She said he was teased by other children because of
the scars.
She said kids in the neighborhood talked him into huffing the freon. But, she said,
he also did it to numb the emotional pain he suffered. "He wanted to kill himself, he
just wanted to take the pain away. I haven't abused him, but he suffered a lot of
abuse."
Another man with whom she had children physically and verbally abused Frankie, she
said. "It was a constant battle and I was trying to be Mom and Dad and sole supporter
and I never really had any help from my family."
"I never got any support from fathers or any men. They would just want to live off of
me and suck us dry, all of us. When they were taking from me, they were taking from
my children," she said.
She said that "if I got to be the villain I will, but people don't know how hard I
struggled. I used to clean toilets to make sure my kids ate because I never could
depend on any man."
In addition to his older sister, Venable had a half sister and two half brothers, she
said. "I really love my children very, very much."
At one point in her son's criminal career, his mother said officials determined he
was "borderline retarded." The low IQ, brain damage, depression and other mental
illness mean he should be in a hospital, not a prison, she argues.
Dr. Frank Ochberg, a psychiatrist and expert on post-traumatic stress disorder, said
it is quite possible a child as young as 4 could remember being sexually abused.
The long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse are unpredictable, he said. "You see
boys and girls who have been abused and they become depressed, they take out their
rage on themselves rather than on others.
"It's very, very difficult to incorporate this kind of trauma and come out better for
it," he said. But, he said, while some victims become sadder, they are also wiser and
stronger in some ways.
"A very, very important factor is how honest you are with your parents and how
supportive your parents are. Even when the parent is enraged with the perpetrator,
the child may misinterpret that anger as being angry with him," said Ochberg.
Andrews was 13 when Ausley abducted him, chained him in a buried box in Suffolk and
beat and sexually abused him for a week. Andrews was discovered by passing hunters,
and Ausley was convicted and sent to prison.
When Ausley was about to be paroled, Andrews lobbied to help pass a law providing for
the civil commitment of violent sexual predators.
Andrews says that in Venable's letters from prison, he "has talked many times about
the conditions there, how afraid he is. He is quite fearful about being raped, about
the people that are there.
"He just feels that that's such an evil, evil, place and that he's just surrounded by
these evil feelings."
Andrews says Venable does not claim the abuse he suffered clears him of
responsibility for his actions.
"He just mourns not having had a normal life."
"He's very upset."
"He's extremely depressed.
"He's very frightened.
"I can't help but feel for him. I know the tortures that go through his mind. There
but for the grace of God go I. Fortunately I had the kind of support from family and
friends that kept me from going over the edge when was I was playing too close to
it."
"That could very well have been my life," said Andrews.
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgr...@timesdispatch.com
Times-Dispatch staff writer Bill Geroux contributed to this report.
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I intend to last long enough to put out of business all COck-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
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"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
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