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Her sense of belonging turns to betrayal

As a teenager, Carolyn Thomson wanted to be a part of a family. John Bryan helped give her that, but he also took something away.

By CRISTINA SILVA, Times Staff Writer
Published November 4, 2007

Carolyn picks up her daughter and son after school near their home in Aurora, Colo. She was pregnant with her son when she graduated summa cum laude from Northern Colorado in 2001.
	[Martha Rial | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Martha Rial | Times] Carolyn reads a card she made as a child, pleading for her birth mother's love. Carolyn often wondered if her mother loved her. Previous stories Sept. 9: In the final hours Sept. 9: Abuse by Bryan long rumored Sept. 28: Bryan inquiry trod fine line Sept. 28: With secrets out, end came quickly Sept. 28: A girl's beautiful new life came with a terrible price Photo gallery Carolyn Thomson's story

Carolyn Thomson sat around the fire pit with the people she had grown to love.

They had gathered for Thanksgiving weekend at the lake house in Inverness. They laughed, played games, shared secrets.

"If you could have anything in the world," one of them asked, "what would it be?"

Carolyn paused.

"I want a mom and dad," she said. "A real family."

John and Marion Bryan looked into the eyes of the 17-year-old girl who lived in their home and cared for their two sons.

Would you like to be our daughter?

Carolyn long ago had given up on the fantasy of a loving family.

Now, by the comfort of the fire, she wanted to believe her childhood dream could come true.

She hugged her new family and tried not to think about the man who wanted to be her father. Twice in recent weeks, John had fondled her. Once, his fingers probed below her hip as she pretended to sleep.

If I'm his daughter, she thought, maybe it will stop.

* * *

Before she could even write her own name, Carolyn had begun to doubt whether her birth mother really loved her.

On the weekends, Mom told Carolyn not to bother her. When there was no food in the house, Carolyn and her younger sister would fish fortune cookies out of the trash bin behind the Asian market down the street.

The one picture she remembers from her childhood home in St. Petersburg was a portrait of her older brother, who died of brain cancer when she was 3. He had been the perfect child, her mother often lamented. Soon after the death, Carolyn's father ran off with the family babysitter.

When Carolyn was about 8, she gave her mother a letter. On a page of creamy construction paper, in large, crooked black letters, she wrote, "I hope you love me."

During summer visits with her father in Georgia, Carolyn and her sister were ordered to settle their disputes in the back yard by smacking each other, she said. He once told Carolyn that he and her mother considered aborting her.

Carolyn was sent to live with him after she turned 13. He gave her one box of cereal a week, no milk, she remembered, and told her to ration it. He left her home alone for hours.

A year after she moved in with her father, a man forced his way into the apartment and tried to rape her. She broke free and ran down the street naked, calling for help. When police arrived, they sized up her father's unfurnished quarters and told Carolyn she should return to St. Petersburg to live with her mother.

She entered adolescence with no awareness of mothers who kissed boo-boos or fathers who chased the bogeyman out of closets.

Her expectations were so low that when the man who would later ask to be her father entered her bed at night, she didn't think to scream.

Who would hear her?

* * *

Fed up with the bare refrigerator and the constant fighting, Carolyn ran away from her mother's house.

She was 17 and homeless.

A distant relative set up a meeting between Carolyn and a Snell Isle couple looking for a live-in nanny. It was the job opportunity of a lifetime, she remembered.

John and Marion Bryan answered the door and led her to their waterfront porch, next to their private swimming pool, surrounded by the perfectly manicured lawn alongside their private dock.

The Bryans were both 35. She was a real estate agent, a former teacher who wore oversized dresses that made her slender frame appear even thinner. He was a home builder, a college dropout who used his newfound wealth to help make friends.

The nanny job paid $600 a month, plus room and board. The Bryans agreed to teach her how to drive and to provide her with a vehicle. She would have her own room and share a bathroom with their sons, 3-year-old Wesley and 7-year-old Christopher.

Feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while, she accepted the position.

On the weekdays, she played with the boys, vacuumed the carpet, ironed the laundry, helped cook dinner and tucked the boys into bed at night.

On weekends, she and the Bryans visited the family lake house in Inverness, had picnics on John's boat, sunbathed by the water.

Soon, Wesley and Christopher began calling Carolyn, "sis."

She didn't correct them.

* * *

At first, Carolyn just thought John was a little odd.

Even when they had company, he walked around in tightie-whities, his belly bulging over the elastic band.

He told her about his sex life. When he asked about hers, she changed the subject.

He patted his knee and told her to sit on it. He gave her hugs and invited her to snuggle with Marion and him as they watched the evening news.

Still, he was no more affectionate than many in his circle of friends, who freely hugged each other.

Carolyn didn't want to act like an outsider. Who was she to tell him anything about his unusual behavior when others laughed it off? To friends, he was "King John." On his birthday one year, they rented him a crown and a red velvet cape. A friend brought out a throne.

His authority was unchallenged, not because he ever raised his voice or his hand but because he was John, the guy who threw legendary Christmas parties, hosted dozens of buddies at his lake house and counted state leaders among his friends.

Carolyn couldn't help but feel special when he began to dote on her. He was the first adult ever to do so. He told her she was athletic and competitive, just like him. He asked her about her day and really listened.

She was thin, blond, blue-eyed, pink-lipped, popular, a soprano in the choir at Northeast High School. Yet she thought of herself as an ugly outcast. It was unfathomable that John could like her as anything more than a friend.

She had been living in their home less than four months when she found herself alone with John, waiting for Marion to come home from a Neil Diamond concert. John was propped up against some pillows on the king-size bed, and Carolyn stretched out on Marion's side of the bed, her feet on the floor. Her eyes began to close.

A moment later, in her half-slumber, she felt fingers pressing over her underwear. He was standing next to her.

"Oh my God, is this what I think it is?" she remembers thinking.

She pretended to stretch in her sleep. She turned on her side, her back facing him. She clamped her legs shut tight.

Again, she felt his touch.

She pulled her legs closer to her body and let out a small groan, as if she were about to wake up.

He stopped.

In the morning, they greeted each other as if nothing had happened.

* * *

He did it again a few weeks later when Carolyn, wearing pajamas, was retrieving some schoolwork from her car in the garage.

John pushed her against the vehicle and rubbed his hands across her chest and between her legs before she could wriggle away.

He started propositioning her. He told her he would buy her a bathing suit and car tires if she gave him what he wanted. She always said no.

She told her best friend, Lisa Crockett. You should move out, Lisa said.

Carolyn didn't explain that she felt trapped and had nowhere else to go.

When Carolyn stayed with the family, Lisa grew distant.

Only weeks later, John and Marion were asking if they could adopt her.

As she sat by the fire pit that night in Inverness, she was torn by competing notions: the reality of a distant mother and father and the life she had fled, and the hope that she finally had found a loving home with the Bryans.

Long after she settled into the rhythms of adult life, Carolyn would be haunted by her choice to become their daughter.

* * *

She was Carolyn Bryan.

In public, Marion introduced her as their adopted daughter. John always said, "This is my daughter, Carolyn."

They stopped paying her. Cleaning the house and taking care of her little brothers was a shared family responsibility, John said.

That's the way it was with John. Every high came with a low.

He continued to pursue her. After she turned 18, he grew even more persistent.

John took Carolyn with him on a business trip to Washington, D.C. Marion would join them the next day. There was one king-size bed in the hotel room. Carolyn knew she would not be able to sleep that night.

Sure enough, he held her down on the bed and tried to seduce her, stopping only when she threatened to scream rape. The next day, they went to fancy parties and posed for pictures with Vice President George Bush.

At home, John grew bolder.

She would listen for his footsteps as he approached her bedroom door at night. Sometimes, he would stand by her bed and touch himself as she pretended to sleep.

Throughout it all, the legal process inched forward.

Before the court hearing, Carolyn brought the adoption papers to her birth mother for approval.

"The Bryans want to adopt me," she said, hoping that her mother would ask her to come home.

But her mother signed the document without a word.

Her birth father was another story. He arrived at the adoption hearing, yelling that Carolyn was his daughter. She hadn't seen him since the night she was nearly raped in his apartment as a young girl.

With John by her side, she stood up to her birth father for the first time, berating him for suddenly showing interest after years of neglect.

Amid the turmoil, Carolyn's grades plummeted. She brought them up just enough to earn her Northeast High diploma in the spring of 1987.

She wanted to go to community college, but John dissuaded her. Look at me, he said, I didn't need an education.

John and Marion opened a clothing store and made Carolyn a co-owner. They told her she would earn 20 percent of the store's profits, but persuaded her to put the money back into the business.

She tried to move out that summer but couldn't find an affordable place.

Frustrated, she sat one evening on the Bryans' dock, wondering how to escape.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps. Marion stood next to her.

"What's wrong?" Marion said.

As if out of nowhere, according to Carolyn, Marion asked:

"Did John touch you?"

Carolyn broke down, unable to speak. She thought her tears said it all, so she waited. She hoped this was the moment she had been praying for, when Marion would rush in and fix everything, act like her mother and protect her.

Instead, Carolyn recalled, Marion silently turned and walked back toward the house.

* * *

She pushed away his roving hands for more than a year.

Finally, she said, he wore out her defenses.

She let him enter her as she lay flat in the darkness of her bedroom, the rest of the family sleeping in their beds.

"I couldn't fight him anymore," Carolyn said. "I had gone around and bragged to everyone how happy I was to have this family who loved me for me. I wanted to keep believing in that."

Every time he touched her, she wanted to yell rape. But she didn't. She was afraid he would throw her out, or if the boys found out, the family would blame her for breaking up their happy home.

She had seen what divorce had done to her parents. Her brothers didn't deserve that.

So she kept quiet.

But things only got worse.

Her boyfriend dumped her, claiming he was fed up with John, who followed them when they went on dates.

She grew depressed, stopped brushing her hair, gave away her radio.

Shortly after her 19th birthday, Carolyn collected pills from several bottles around the house. She drove to the dress shop, where she counted the pills. 316. She popped them in her mouth, one by one, and guzzled some Coca-Cola. She had read somewhere the soda would help the drugs dissolve quickly into her bloodstream.

She vomited blood. She fell in and out of consciousness.

But her escape had failed.

When she stumbled out of her coma days later, she told John and Marion what she had done.

They were angry, Carolyn recalled. How would the boys deal with their big sister killing herself?

They didn't ask why she had swallowed the pills.

* * *

For years, she tried to distance herself from John.

At 21, she saved up enough money to move out. A year later, she became a flight attendant and moved to Atlanta. She began dodging his phone calls.

John and Marion divorced the next year in 1992. Carolyn hoped she could finally cut him out of her life.

But John got involved with a nice woman whom Carolyn grew to love. Carolyn got engaged to a kind pilot who enjoyed talking about aviation with John.

She loved him even as she despised him. For better or worse, he was family. He taught her to be responsible, to invest her earnings, to work hard. He helped her get an internship with Sen. Connie Mack in Washington, D.C., when she was 20, which led to an internship at the White House. When she was selected for the Festival of the States Sungoddess Court in 1990, he took photos of her during the parade in St. Petersburg.

He made her laugh when he blew his nose loudly at the dinner table. He touched her heart when he cried as they watched the movie Stepmom.

John and Carolyn continued to be father and daughter. Parent and child.

She called him on Father's Day. He called her on Christmas. He gave away Carolyn at her wedding. She attended John's wedding to his second wife, Alicia, in 1994. Concerned, Carolyn wondered about his plans for more children.

No more kids, John told her.

It wasn't until Carolyn gave birth to her first-born, a girl, that she decided to tell her husband of John's abuse. A quiet, nonconfrontational man, he comforted her, and then they never talked about it again.

The families continued to vacation together once a year. Alicia and John visited Carolyn and her husband in their new home in Colorado.

It could have gone on like that forever, with everyone pretending everything was just fine.

But Carolyn soon would learn she wasn't John's only victim.

* * *

"Absolutely not," Carolyn steamed.

It was 10 years later and John had changed his mind about more kids.

He and his wife announced plans to adopt a 10-year-old girl.

John booked a flight to Colorado and spent two days convincing Carolyn that he would never touch a young girl again. Carolyn was unique, he said. He had loved her and hadn't been able to control himself.

Carolyn relented.

Two years later, when John and Alicia adopted a second girl, Carolyn's anger deepened.

But by then, John had become an advocate for foster children in Pinellas County. He was a St. Petersburg City Council member. He told her foster children were usually neglected in the system. How could a child be better off living like that than with him, he asked her?

Again, she bought it.

Carolyn quickly warmed to her new sisters, two sweet girls who could relate to her lonely childhood.

In July 2007, Carolyn invited the oldest to come spend a week with her as she traveled across the country with her children.

On the last day of the trip, she took her 15-year-old sister to the airport. They stood in the check-in line, waiting to collect her boarding pass, when the teenager said she had to tell her a secret.

Carolyn thought it had to do with a boy.

"Dad touched me," the girl said.

Carolyn nearly fainted.

Guilt rained down on her. She had flashbacks of John promising her he would never touch anyone again.

How could I be so stupid, she thought.

In that moment, Carolyn allowed herself to hate him.

She told her sister that dad had touched her, too. She didn't elaborate.

She walked the teenager to the terminal.

The next day, Carolyn called Alicia Bryan and revealed what John had done to her. No matter what he says, he is not innocent, Carolyn told her.

After she hung up, Carolyn vowed never to talk to him again.

The summer passed and Carolyn fumed, awaiting the outcome. Alicia was going to divorce John, then she wasn't. Alicia was going to kick John out, then she didn't.

By late August, Carolyn knew she should call the cops and tell them about John. Still, she worried how his family would deal with the fallout. Would Carolyn and her sister have to testify against him? Would he lie if questioned in a courtroom?

On Sept. 5, someone placed an anonymous call to the police claiming John Bryan had molested his daughters. Carolyn says she doesn't know who made the call.

But that afternoon, police began their investigation.

Two days later, John killed himself.

* * *

Nearly 300 people filled the chapel for the private memorial service.

Mayor Rick Baker gave Carolyn his seat at the front of the room. She listened as John's friends lined up to praise the public deeds of her tormentor.

John came up with the idea of dog parks and lights at the Pier, the mayor said. He was always fun to be around, said one City Council member. Another colleague sang a Christian hymn in his honor.

Carolyn sat and cried and wondered why no one dared to state the obvious: John had killed himself in the garage of his Citrus County vacation home the day the media found out he was being investigated for molesting two of his daughters. To Carolyn, he was a sexual predator.

When she returned home to the suburban life she had built with her husband and children, Carolyn did something she had never done in her 38 years. She called a therapist.

Her therapist asked Carolyn her to list her goals.

Carolyn wanted to forgive her birth parents, her adoptive parents, and everyone else who had ever hurt her.

She wanted to be a strong role model so her daughters would have the self-esteem that had eluded her as a young girl.

She wanted to know she deserved to be loved.

* * *

Nearly two months later, on a chilly October day, Carolyn sat in a small Italian restaurant in Aurora, Colo., and had lunch with the executive director of a nonprofit child advocacy center. She allowed her story to spill out.

"He never apologized to me and he never apologized to my sister," Carolyn said. "He is not even here anymore and I feel he is still victimizing me."

For a long time, Diana Goldberg listened, occasionally responding with a nod or a head-shake.

Then she offered Carolyn the words she had waited her whole life to hear.

It's not your fault.

That night, Carolyn tucked in her three children one by one, and sang each a lullaby. She climbed down her staircase, decorated with casts of her children's hands and feet, and filled her toddler's bottle with fresh milk.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Cristina Silva can be reached at csilva@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8846.

About this story

Reporter Cristina Silva spent several days in Aurora, Colo., interviewing Carolyn Thomson. The scenes from Carolyn's life with the Bryans were recreated through interviews with Thomson, family photos, and from statements John and Alicia Bryan, Marion Mitchell and other family members and friends made to the police during the criminal investigation. Court records were also used to confirm the dates of all marriages, deaths, divorces and adoptions mentioned in the story. In an interview, Lisa Crockett verified that she talked with Thomson about John Bryan's abuse.

Marion Mitchell and Alicia Bryan declined to be interviewed for this story. During the investigation, Mitchell told police she knew nothing of the molestation, but suspected her daughter and husband were having an affair. John Bryan told police his sexual relationship with Thomson was consensual.

[Last modified November 4, 2007, 02:05:01]