No longer enslaved by their secrets
For decades, they kept silent. But finally, three women bring justice to the man who molested them as children.
By COLLEEN JENKINS
Published December 3, 2006
TAMPA - Her father molested her at age 10.
Now, 22 years later, Christy Canavan paced outside a courtroom, back and forth so many times she mused she might wear a hole in the floor. She worried about being judged. About seeing him.
Two women sat on cold stone benches nearby, related by blood but practically strangers. They had been sisters in secrecy. Now they shared a resolve to punish the man who hurt them.
CONCORD, CALIF., APRIL 1970
Lisa Kawai thought Uncle Tom was the coolest.
Barely older than some of his nieces and nephews at 23, he seemed more like a cousin. He played sports with them, bought them trampolines.
She was 5 when he came from Ohio to California for Easter. He bunked in her double bed. She was excited to have company.
One night, he came to bed drunk and naked. He slipped off her nightgown, pulled down her underwear and touched her. He made her touch him, too.
She wanted him to stop. "It's okay," he cooed.
It felt like forever before he dozed off. Kawai pulled up her underwear and lay terrified in the darkness. When morning came, she said nothing. She worried no one would believe her.
BOSTON, 1982
Kathy Imlay spent her teenage years and early adulthood believing she was crazy.
Her first sexual experience, late in her teenage years, traumatized her. Anorexia shriveled her body. A stranger raped her in college. Abusive relationships followed. She had a recurring nightmare of a monster under her bed, trying to get her.
Then, at 24, a flashback: She was 5 again, napping in an upstairs bedroom in her grandmother's house in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1963. She woke up and couldn't breathe. Uncle Tom, 16, had his fingers inside her. He whispered in her ear, "Shhh, you're okay, Kathy. It's okay."
Imlay the 24-year-old knew the touching had not been okay. The fear she always felt as an older child around Uncle Tom suddenly made sense.
She entered therapy the next day but did not tell her family. She, too, worried no one would believe her.
RIVERVIEW, 1984
By age 10, Christy Moyer knew this about her father: He worked as a boiler turbine operator, attended Mass every weekend and drank heavily most nights.
She awoke one of those nights with him standing over her. He had pulled down her underwear. He stuck his fingers inside her. Then he went into another room to watch TV.
Christy Moyer sat up, shaking. She didn't lie down until she heard his bedroom door shut. She worried he might come back.
The next morning, she woke up angry. But she didn't tell her mother. She didn't want her parents to divorce.
Her bed never felt safe again.
* * *
It took decades for the truth about Thomas Michael Moyer to come out.
At age 27, Kawai told her mother. Imlay was 33 when she told her mother, two years later. Disbelief, then horror set in for both mothers. They were Moyer's older sisters.
It was 1993. The two cousins, who barely knew each other, began talking incessantly on the phone. They had lived parallel lives on opposite coasts: Shamed into silence, starving their bodies and hating womanhood, wondering if it would be better to die than live with the black cancer they felt inside. Raped as teens, divorced as adults.
"We needed each other so much, it felt like we were in the trenches," Kawai said. "There's certainly a trauma bond that you share with someone, like Vietnam or something."
The women hatched a plan to confront Moyer. He had taken their childhoods. They wanted adulthood to be on their terms.
They flew on red-eyes to Tampa, arriving Dec. 4, 1993. Kawai's parents and Imlay's mother came, too. Kawai's parents told Moyer they were in town for business and invited him and his wife, Patty, to their hotel for a drink.
Moyer looked uncomfortable when he arrived and saw his nieces. They read letters describing the damage and despair he had wrought, and Moyer's eyes twitched from a longtime disorder. It made him seem nervous.
"I will not carry your secrets any longer," Kawai read. "I will no longer live in silence about your crimes."
Moyer denied rape. He used the word "molest" a lot, the women recall. He blamed his drinking and youth and lack of a girlfriend.
The statute of limitations for prosecuting such crimes in California and Ohio had long run out. Kawai, having said her piece, let the matter lie.
But Imlay's rage poured. She called Moyer relentlessly, threatening to expose him to his church and his children. She asked why he had hurt her.
"You were so young," Imlay said he replied. "I didn't think it mattered."
* * *
Tom Moyer's family collapsed in 1999. More secrets came out.
A devout Catholic, Patty Moyer had tried for 27 years to sustain her marriage despite the emotional, verbal and sexual abuse her husband inflicted on her. She thought she was shielding her children from the ugliness.
But after the revelations of her two nieces' abuse, she knew she would leave him.
"Did you do this to our children?" Patty Moyer repeatedly asked him. He swore he had not.
Then she learned he was having an affair. A marriage counselor told her to ask her children if they had been molested. Patty Moyer asked her oldest first.
"Yes," answered Christy Canavan, now married.
The two women sobbed into their phone receivers.
News of the divorce and molestation rocked their family. Mike Moyer, the only son, didn't believe his sister; he had never seen any evidence of sexual abuse. Canavan's two younger sisters wondered if they had been victimized as well.
* * *
By 2004, Tom Moyer had remarried. His new wife had a young granddaughter.
Canavan, now living in Ohio, had learned about her cousins and worried for the little girl.
"I just can't let this happen again," she told herself.
Mike Moyer supported his sister now. But knowing the truth wasn't enough for him. He wanted to do something about it. He called Imlay and Kawai.
In a span of three days, all three women filed police reports in the states where they had been sexually abused. They contacted another cousin who said Moyer had raped her at a young age; she didn't want to get involved.
On May 24, 2004, with a police officer listening in, Canavan phoned her father in Riverview. She wanted answers - and a confession.
Moyer said he was "stupid drunk" when he abused her, a transcript showed. Therapy, he said, taught him that his actions sprang from low self-esteem.
"It has nothing to do with sex," he said. "It has to do with hurting. Hurt people hurt people.
"And I am very sorry. I wish it would never have happened."
On Oct. 13, 2004, after months of building a case, authorities arrested Moyer. The Hillsborough state attorney charged him with sexual battery on a child under 12, a capital offense with no statute of limitations.
* * *
In October, Canavan and her cousins came together at the Hillsborough County courthouse for a painful family reunion.
Moyer was on trial for the abuse allegations involving his daughter. But under Florida's Williams Rule, Imlay and Kawai testified to show his behavior was not isolated.
Moyer's attorney, John Grant III, knew the cousins' testimony could sink his case. He fought, and failed, to keep it out. He told jurors his client touched Canavan inappropriately but never raped her.
Each woman had doubts they would prevail. They hoped jurors could see them as confused and scared little girls, not strong, informed women. They agreed to be publicly identified and shared their stories with the St. Petersburg Times in the hope of inspiring other victims.
They had waited more than two, three and four decades, respectively, for justice. It took 21 minutes to get a guilty verdict. Circuit Judge Chet Tharpe sentenced Moyer, 59, to life in prison.
Moyer did not speak to the women. He has appealed.
* * *
Seeing Moyer shackled brought satisfaction. The healing continues.
"I think a part of it always stays with you," said Canavan, a 33-year-old mother of six in Troy, Ohio, far removed from the withdrawn, perfectionist teen she had been out of spite for her father.
Some of the Moyer family members view the women as troublemakers. They don't like that Imlay, a 48-year-old wardrobe stylist and curator in Montclair, N.J., and Kawai, a 42-year-old massage therapist outside of Los Angeles, say there likely are other victims in the family. Some family members say it's time to put the whole thing behind them.
Undeterred, Imlay is forming the Grace Healing Project, an organization dedicated to empowering sex abuse survivors.
Some move on, she said. She moves forward.
Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 813 226-3337 or cjenkins@sptimes.com.