Free House of Secrets by Lowell Cauffiel Page B

agreed. No, the ride was a big deal, Machelle said. Other than attending school, she was not allowed out of the house on Caroline Street. For as long as she could remember, a ride with her dad to the gas station or local convenience store was a big deal. It was a big deal to get out of the house. It was a big deal to ride in the family’s 6-year-old brown and yellow Chevy van. It was a really big deal if Dad would buy her a candy bar.
    Dad drove the family van to the Wales Square, a quarter mile from her house. He didn’t park in front of the market there, she said. He drove to an isolated lot behind the store. It was evening, a dark winter night. “I told him, I thought we were going to talk about my future, she said. “And what did he say?” Goe asked. “He told me to shut up.” Machelle said then her father slapped her, then forced her into the back of the van. She was wearing a jean skirt and a blouse.
    He ripped off her panties. He pinned her arms so hard, she said, his handprints showed up as bruises the following day. She was reluctant to talk about the details. It took Goe several tries. “Did he penetrate you?” he asked. “Yes,” she said.
     
    “Did he threaten you?” She reported her father saying, “Say anything to anybody and I’ll kill you. It would be very easy. Girls disappear every day.”
     
    “Did you believe you were in danger?” Goe asked. “He knows people who would do it for him,” she said. And, she added, her older brother Eddie Jr. hung out with some tough people as well. Goe wanted to know more about the family. With a family that size, he asked, just where did the household income come from) “He’s on some kind of disability,”
    Machelle said. He supposedly had a back injury, she explained, but she’d always been suspicious of it. Dad had a part-time house painting business with her uncle, Otis Sexton. They painted in the summer. She believed her father also received help from charities for multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy. “He gets in his wheelchair whenever those people come to the house,” she said. “Then after they leave he gets up and he’s fine.” When the interview was over, Ann Greene said she’d also placed a couple of calls to the Department of Human Services. “I’ve got a call in to Wayne Welsh,” she said. Anne kept asking her husband Gerry, “Did Glenn Goe call?” It became a daily question, as was her husband’s answer, “No.” Two weeks passed. Welsh apparently hadn’t returned her calls It seemed as if nothing was getting accomplished. She thought, Lord, what more do they need? Why don’t they march right over there and arrest Ed Sexton? Children were in danger. Anne not only continued visiting Machelle, she began bringing her home for visits. Machelle appeared as excited as the kids at the holiday dinner in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. She touched dishware and accessories in the kitchen. She tried out furniture. She gazed at portraits of the Greene family on the mantel, then met the children and Gerry. She appeared more awestruckby the way they all joked and hugged and talked than the material possessions. “I realized this was the first time this girl had seen a normal family with genuine love,” Anne later would recall. She was tempted to have Machelle move in with them. But when she began discussing it with other family members, her son-in-law, the sheriff’s deputy, told her it wasn’t prudent to get so close. Anne spoke to a longtime Jackson officer, a name her son-in-law gave her. “Look, you don’t want to get involved with the Sextons,” the cop said.“That family has been nothing but trouble out here for years.” Anne thought, is that what Christ would do? Not get involved? In this Christian family, that’s not what we do. She wanted to invite Machelle to move in with them, but she couldn’t do that if it would put her own children at risk. Machelle Sexton began to disclose even more. She said the real reason