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Letter to the editor

A girl's beautiful new life came with a terrible price

In an interview, Bryan's daughter recounts an abusive relationship.

By CRISTINA SILVA and LANE DeGREGORY, Times Staff Writers
Published September 28, 2007

He promised her everything she had ever wanted and more: family, wealth, fun.

John Bryan's first adopted daughter thought her dreams had come true when she moved into the family's upper-middle-class home during her junior year of high school some two decades ago.

But the big house, expensive trips and two cute little brothers all came with a price - one that eventually drove her to try to end her life.

In an exclusive interview with the St. Petersburg Times Thursday, Bryan's oldest daughter spoke publicly for the first time about their complicated, abusive relationship.

"Everybody has challenges that they have to deal with," said the woman, whom the Times is not identifying because of the nature of her allegations. "This was mine."

* * *

Her parents were divorced, her father lived out of state. She and her younger sister and mother shared a modest home in a quiet St. Petersburg neighborhood.

But she wanted more.

So when a family friend suggested she move in with a young couple as their live-in babysitter in 1986, she agreed.

John and Marion Bryan had two sons, both younger than 10.

The family quickly embraced her. Marion and John even told her she could snuggle with them in their bed when she was ill, according to a police report released Thursday detailing allegations against Bryan.

But soon after the girl moved in, she said, it became clear that Bryan wasn't just looking for a daughter.

One night the teenager woke up to Bryan groping her in bed. Shocked, she said nothing and tried to act like it never had happened. She was 17.

Days later, she and her best friend were sunbathing outside by the pool when he walked over to the girls. He appeared visibly aroused.

"He said, 'Hi!' like it was no big deal," the friend, Lisa Crockett, told a reporter. "He didn't try to put a towel over it or anything."

Bryan took his new daughter to Washington, D.C., soon after. When she walked into the hotel room, butterflies swarmed in her stomach. There was only one bed in the room.

As she tried to sleep that night, he held her down and fondled her, she told investigators. Only after she threatened to scream "rape" did he stop.

She told her best friend what was happening. Crockett told her to move out, to move in with her family. But when Bryan's daughter decided to stay, their friendship deteriorated.

"I was really, really disappointed with her, and didn't understand why she didn't want to get out of there," Crockett said.

The few adults that the daughter did tell about Bryan's advances didn't believe her. "It was different back then. We didn't have child abuse hot lines," she said.

By then she was 18 and the Bryans had adopted her as their daughter. She had taken his last name.

In public, he doted on her. In private, the harassment became too much and she finally gave in to his advances. During the course of their sexual affair, she received a brand-new Mustang GT. When he purchased a boutique for his wife, Bryan named his daughter as a partner in the business.

She told Marion Bryan nothing, worried about how her brothers would take it if they found out.

"I didn't want to hurt anyone," she said.

She tried to move out but couldn't find an affordable apartment. She worried if she didn't continue the affair, Bryan would throw her out.

At 19, she swallowed some pills and tried to end her life. She survived, but the cry for help worked.

Bryan stopped touching her. He and Marion divorced in 1992. Their daughter found an apartment and moved out.

In 1994, Bryan got remarried. He promised his daughter he had changed, and she would come to believe he had.

* * *

She built a life for herself, became a wife, a mother.

When Father's Day rolled around this summer, she even called Bryan to wish him well.

"I told him I was proud of him," she recalled. "After everything that had happened, it seemed as if he had changed, as if he had wanted to change, and he did."

A month later, when her younger adopted sister was visiting in July, the teenager told her that Bryan had touched her as well. The young girl said the abuse had taken place two years earlier.

On Sept. 5, someone made a call to the Florida's Child Abuse Hotline saying that Bryan had abused his daughters. Police began investigating, but Bryan killed himself two days later, before they could gather enough evidence to arrest him.

On Thursday, his oldest daughter, now 38, pondered how different things could have been if she had said something sooner.

After more than 20 years of keeping her father's secrets to herself, she was finally ready to face her past. For the first time in her life, she was going to see a therapist Thursday afternoon.

When she is ready, she said, she wants to help others deal with their own experiences of sexual abuse.

"When this is all over, I don't want to consider myself a victim," she said in a telephone interview before her counseling appointment. "I hope that I can see myself as a victor."

Cristina Silva can be reached at csilva@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8846.

[Last modified September 28, 2007, 01:36:16]