Rape Charges Mount Against Salisbury Dad
by Jessica Benson, Staff Writer
Originally published by The Eagle-Tribune, August 15, 2002
SALISBURY — Patrick McMullen has been charged with raping yet another of his six children.
The 38-year-old—accused of keeping his family isolated and hidden for six years—is already scheduled to go on trial next month for allegedly raping two of his daughters. Yesterday, a grand jury indicted him on charges of raping a third child.
McMullen will be arraigned Monday in Salem Superior Court on seven counts of rape of a child under 16, and four counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.
The alleged assaults occurred between 1995 and 2001, when the children were 6 to 13 years old. McMullen is being held in the Middleton jail in lieu of $105,000 bail. Before his arrest in May 2001, he had lived with his wife and six children in a commercial building on Lafayette Road.
Police earlier this month were in the building, which is up for sale, videotaping the rooms where the alleged rapes of three of McMullen's children occurred. The videotape will be used as evidence in the trial, scheduled to begin Sept. 25.
The testimony is expected to be graphic. One of the victims is to testify that once, when she was 13, she told an adult about what her father was doing to her. Instead of receiving help, the teenager was punched, struck in the head and a spanked with a stick by her father, according to court documents. She was then forced to perform a sex act.
The girl also told investigators she was sexually assaulted four times a week over the course of six years, starting in 1995, and witnessed her sister being forced to perform sex with their father.
The children and their mother were beaten by McMullen, police have said. Court documents describe how McMullen would tell his daughter, as he was spanking her with a belt, that he loved her, but had to punish her. The latest charges include details of oral sex, inappropriate touching and various forms of penetration.
While this alleged physical and sexual abuse was going on, McMullen's wife and children were kept isolated. The children were born at home and never visited a doctor. All were home-schooled, though the local school district was unaware of their existence.
The failure to file an official home-schooling plan touched off a Department of Social Services investigation into the family in 1995, while they were living in Merrimac. The case was dropped when the family promised to file the plans. Home-schooling plans were never filed; the family moved to Salisbury and remained hidden from conventional society. Police learned of the family's existence when McMullen's wife, drawing on support found at an Exeter church, sought a restraining order against him.
She and the children are now living in an undisclosed location. They have a restraining order barring McMullen from contacting them, though he was charged with violating the order last year. According to prosecutors, McMullen had a third party send religious materials to his wife.
A seventh child was born to McMullen and his wife; the boy died in infancy when the family was living in Maine. Another child of McMullen, by another woman, still lives in Maine. McMullen owes the mother of that child more than $8,000 in support.
