The Sedgwick County EMCU PRETENDERS Want Citizens To Think That They Care About Children. So Opposite!
The mother of these children didn't stand a chance even if she believed her daughters. So many protective parents in Sedgwick County have tried to protect their children from pedophiles and the Sedgwick County DA has worked for the pedophiles instead of protecting the children.
Sedgwick County is corrupt!
Investigators detail rescue of girls from sexual abuse
Four Sedgwick County girls ages 5, 6, 7 and 8 are safe from severe sexual abuse today because a teacher and several cops moved decisively in March to rescue them from their abusive father.
Police from the Wichita-Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Child Unit have revealed details of the case and the frantic rescue of a 5-year-old.
Rescuers worked for 22 straight hours to get her away from her father.
They talked in part because the legal case closed with the father’s guilty plea this month.
But they also discussed the case to remind the public how extensive sexual abuse is in Sedgwick County, and how people must never hesitate to report even a suspicion of child abuse. EMCU has investigated 245 sex crime cases against children in the first six months of this year, 530 last year, and 445 the year before. Five cases last year involved incest.
As they talked, investigators gave a rare look inside the usually secret work they do in unmasking child abusers. Many of the rescues they’ve done and the cases they’ve made started with tips from the public.
The father, a 32-year-old self-employed Wichitan, will spend 25 years in prison before he is eligible for parole, said Lt. Jeff Weible, EMCU commander. The father pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated sodomy, and one count of lewd and lascivious behavior with a child younger than 16.
“He got more prison time for this than if he’d been convicted of a homicide,” Weible said.
The mother, 27, who had heard about the sexual abuse from her daughters and did nothing, received probation for a charge of aggravated endangerment, and agreed to sever her parental rights.
The Eagle does not reveal names of sexual abuse victims without their permission, and is not naming the father or mother charged in this case because that would identify the victims.
Minutes after the first call came to EMCU, Weible said, it was assigned to Virgil Miller, a detective who had worked child abuse cases for about a year with EMCU.
Within 22 hours after the case began, Miller and investigators had the father in jail even though the father was in Texas when the first call came.
Along the way, police used technology to track the father’s movements virtually minute by minute in Texas, where the father was on a working vacation. Weible would not discuss how they did this because he did not want to reveal to future criminals how they do some of their work.
They needed to move fast and with stealth, Miller said, because they soon discovered that the father had his 5-year old daughter with him.
They set out immediately to rescue her.
Hour by hour
Miller said the case unfolded like this:
At about 2:30 p.m. on an afternoon in March, a teacher at an elementary school in Sedgwick County was giving a short safety lecture to her students about touching — what is appropriate, what is not. A girl in the class, 7 years old, told her immediately that her father touched her inappropriately.
“Victims that age usually have no idea there’s anything wrong with that,” Miller would later say. “They think that’s just what Daddy does.”
The teacher immediately told a school social worker, who called the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies responding to the call told their supervisory sergeant, Amy Osburn, who until a few months before was an investigator with EMCU. Osburn told deputies to take the girl and her sisters, ages 6 and 8, from school to EMCU in downtown Wichita. The girls reached EMCU about 4 p.m.
Miller questioned the mother and the maternal grandmother.
They admitted the 8-year-old had told the mother about the abuse the previous fall. “She said she’d asked the father about it; he told her it was a misunderstanding, that she was talking about a time when they accidentally touched while they wrestled,” Miller said. “Instead of doing the right thing, they decided to believe him. ”
“They were told what was going on and didn’t do a damned thing about it,” Miller said. “Look, if your kids tell you they are being abused, BELIEVE your kids.”
By this time it was late afternoon and Miller learned from the mother that there was a fourth child, age 5, in Texas with the father.
Planning a rescue
“Her safety became our primary concern,” Miller said.
Investigators suspected, (rightly, as it turned out), that the mother would call the father in Texas and warn him the girls had talked.
EMCU called law enforcement in the Dallas area, and began to plan an arrest.
“We decided to do a rare thing,” Miller said. “We contacted the (Sedgwick County) district attorney’s office, and drove out to a judge’s home about 10:30 p.m. and obtained an arrest warrant for this guy.”
Asking a judge in the middle of the night to sign a search warrant is not unusual, Miller said; asking for a signature on an arrest warrant seldom happens.
“Our game plan was to get the warrant, then ask local Texas law enforcement to go to the motel in the Dallas area and get this guy, and put the girl in protective custody.”
Awful things
At EMCU, Miller and Melissa Gardner, an investigator with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, questioned the girls, with Gardner taking the lead. They had taken the girls into an interview room with a kid-sized table, with chairs too big for the girls’ feet to reach the floor, and with toys in a box _ dolls and stuffed toys investigators hand to victims before asking them to point to parts of the body to explain what has happened to them.
Interviewing fragile children, while trying to put together a solid case that will win a prosecution in court, is a tricky business, Weible said.
Gardner gently and deftly questioned the girls, Miller said. “There is this series of questions we go through, to build a rapport,” Miller said. “It’s hard, because we’re total strangers working toward asking these children about the awful things that happened to them, even though these kids were too young to truly understand how awful it was.”
Gardner guided them from simple questions about what they did in school to eventually asking them what had happened.
“Melissa’s real good at getting what she needs for the SRS side to help the kids, but she’s also real good at knowing what we need for the investigation,” Miller said. “For most of that interview, I sat there like the bump on the log.”
The interview went smoothly, with little or no emotion from the children, Miller said.
He said that’s because even severely sexually abused children like these girls are too young to understand how they’ve been violated, though some of the abuse had been so physically painful that it prompted one girl to cry loud enough to be heard by the other sisters at night.
“The girls were matter of fact,” Miller said.
The 6-year-old revealed that she’d been touched, too, and she and the 7-year-old described to Miller numerous types of sex acts.
The abuse had lasted for months.
The 8-year-old sister, (a stepdaughter to the abusing father), told Miller she was not touched. She would change her story, after the father admitted abusing her. “She was trying to protect him,” Miller said. Protecting family abusers is a common practice among many incest victims, Miller said, in part because family or household members are often the only financial and family support.
Driving north
Sometime after dark the investigators learned, from technology they used to track the father, that he was driving north on I-35, after getting a call from the mother.
Investigators scrapped the plan to have the Texans arrest him. Instead, EMCU tracked him all the way to the Kansas state line; he was traveling at times up to 95 miles per hour, Miller said.
“He was driving as fast as he could go. I think his intention was to get the girl back home, and then either try to clear his name, or get out of town,” Miller said. “Probably he would drop her off and then get out of Dodge; he did not want to be arrested.”
By the time the father crossed the Oklahoma-Kansas state line, Miller said, the Kansas Highway Patrol already had troopers in place, watching for the car. A trooper cruised into the northbound lanes toward Wichita as soon as the father crossed the state line, and settled in, about a quarter mile behind the car, radioing ahead to Sedgwick County.
Deputies and Wichita police officers staked out the turnpike toll booths in Wichita, and waited. When they saw the father’s car leave the toll booth at the Derby-Haysville exit, a sheriff’s deputy pulled the father over. He did not resist arrest.
The girl was now safe.
Confession
Miller questioned the father at EMCU.
Interviews with sex abuse suspects are nothing like the fictional versions seen on television where detectives insult and yell at suspects, Miller said; EMCU detectives try never to be confrontational. They train themselves to keep a straight face while they talk to them with a friendly demeanor.
Within an hour, the father admitted abusing the 6 ,7 and 8-year-olds. “I started out by just saying, ‘Look, your daughters have said some things,’æ” Miller said. “He was very easy to talk to, and seemed remorseful.
“But he failed to mention to me that he’d also abused the 5-year-old, because he knew I didn’t know about that.
“Eventually he said what he did was wrong; he got a little teary-eyed; he told me he knew he was sick. Well, big DUH. You mess with your own kids? You ARE sick.”
The next day, Miller questioned the 5-year-old, who told him she’d been abused in Texas; and he re-interviewed the 8-year-old and told her the father had admitted to harming her, too. She then admitted to being abused.
Investigators searched the father’s home, and business, and found evidence.
Miller said the case illustrates, once again, how people need to be more willing to call 911 and report suspicions to police. When people don’t report suspicions, children continue to get hurt.
“Call the police even if you just have a suspicion,” Miller said. “Let us sort out whether there’s anything going wrong.”
Epilogue
The four sisters are in foster care now. Based on what he’s seen of them, Miller thinks they will be okay, that they will recover emotionally from the violations they suffered at the hands of their father.
“It’s a lot of garbage they have to deal with, but they will be okay. With or without counseling, they will be okay, sooner rather than later,” he said.
Child sex abuse cases are so revolting that most police detectives refuse to ever work sex abuse cases full time.
His wife never wants to hear about his day at work, Miller said.
“But I enjoy it.
“I like to talk to children in the morning, because I know they will then sleep safe that night.
“And I like to talk to perps in the afternoon, because I know they’ll sleep that night in jail.”
Reach Roy Wenzl at 316-268-6219 or rwenzl@wichitaeagle.com.
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