Man Accused of Child Abuse Allegedly Threatened Friend
By Douglas Belkin and Mac Daniel, Globe Staff
Originally published by The Boston Globe, July 27, 2001
SALEM — When she was 13, Patrick McMullen's daughter reportedly confided to her father's business partner that her father was sexually molesting her. But the partner never went to police.
Instead, David Sargent, who has moved from Massachusetts to Florida, said he confronted McMullen over the phone. And McMullen allegedly threatened to kill him.
"In the course of the conversation, one of the first things he said to me is that people disappear after interfering with other people's family's lives," Sargent said in a telephone interview yesterday.
"He was threatening my life, without a doubt. But after the whole thing went down, I told him at the time, I'm in the right no matter what."
Later, McMullen's daughter told police that her father became enraged that Sargent knew of the abuse and hit her so viciously she still suffers headaches from the beating almost four years later. The girl said that while McMullen beat her he told her: "I love you, but I have to punish you," according to a court affidavit.
McMullen was arraigned in Salem Superior Court yesterday on 15 charges of raping his two daughters and abusing his sons. He was arrested in May after six years of alleged abuse when his wife went to police and asked for a restraining order.
The 6-foot-1, 205-pound McMullen appeared in court shackled and silent with his ponytail cut off. His family, whom he had kept locked inside a converted nightclub surrounded by an 8-foot fence, did not attend. The children, now ages 8 through 17, have no school records, birth certificates, or medical records.
McMullen pleaded innocent and was held on $115,000 cash bail. He was also ordered to pay $8,500 in child support to an 8-year-old son he fathered in Maine, should he make bail.
Sargent is expected to testify at McMullen's trial, according to a law enforcement source.
Yesterday, Sargent, who has known McMullen since they were 13, said the suspect's daughter "told me that she had been sexually abused by him."
"She didn't go into detail," Sargent said. "I tried to convince her to talk to her grandparents, who are teachers, but she refused and insisted that I promise I wouldn't call police on her."
Sargent didn't call authorities, he said, because "she wouldn't talk, and everybody would have thought I was a disgruntled friend who was trying to turn him in."
Sargent was flown to Salisbury, where McMullen lived from 1995 until last month, and questioned by police.
Meanwhile, McMullen's wife and six children are doing well under the circumstances, according to Ann J. Champagne, a rape investigator for the Salisbury Police Department. Asked if the two daughters, now 17 and 13, would testify against their father, Champagne replied, "People can become very strong when they are in a safe place."
McMullen's daughter told police that her father molested her since she was about 4. Since 1995 the abuse occurred four times a week, she said.
When McMullen found out that his daughter had told Sargent about the abuse he "hit her over and over on her head," beat her with a stick, and spanked her with a belt, according to an affidavit filed in Newbury District Court.
The daughter said she never again challenged her father's sexual demands, according to the affidavit.
After McMullen was charged in Massachusetts, police in Maine began reviewing a case involving the 1992 death of McMullen's 8-week-old son, Elijah. McMullen has told conflicting stories about how the child died, saying at various times a cat sat on him and suffocated him or that McMullen or his wife accidentally crushed him while they were sleeping.
Yesterday, a Maine State Police spokesman said detectives had reviewed the death "in light of the horror story we heard out of Massachusetts" but have decided not to reopen the case now.
In the early 1990s, McMullen and his family moved in with his inlaws in Merrimac after he lost his home in Maine for failure to pay his mortgage. Merrimac authorities said the family lived in four homes in four years. Each time they were evicted for failure to pay rent.
In 1995, the state Department of Social Services began investigating the family when authorities reported they were living in squalor and the children were not attending school. Soon after the investigation began, McMullen moved to Salisbury and DSS concluded its investigation, deciding the family was doing all right, a spokeswoman said last month.
The spokeswoman, Carol Yelverton, said yesterday that she could not talk about the case because of a gag order issued by an Essex County juvenile judge.
Sargent said he fears for the safety of Christine McMullen and her children if Patrick McMullen should ever be released from jail.
"I told the police he could be a very serious threat to that family if he got out on parole," he said.
