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Now that her husband, imprisoned for abusing his daughter, is free, she fears there's no legal way to keep him at bay.
By CURTIS KRUEGER
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 19, 2000
Phyllis Cole never wants to relive the night when her 5-year-old daughter crawled into bed and said something a little girl should never have to explain. Using baby-talk terms for her private parts, and her father's, she talked about a bad thing Daddy had done.
Daddy was Edward Lawrence Cole, who eventually pleaded no contest to attempted sexual battery. He went to prison for about six years.
So in 1998, when Phyllis Cole learned her ex-husband was getting out, she decided not to take any chances. She checked the terms of his probation order, which she said was supposed to prevent him from ever seeing her, her daughter or her son again.
It didn't.
Prosecutors went to court, and a judge agreed to modify the terms of his 15-year probation. But Edward Cole, acting without a lawyer, appealed the decision and got it overturned.
Phyllis Cole went back to court for a restraining order and was turned down.
"The system raped my daughter for not giving us what we were promised to begin with," Phyllis Cole said last week.
For her and many other victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence, the past never really passes.
Nearly a decade has slipped away since Edward Cole did what he did. The girl is now a 13-year-old middle schooler. Her brother has turned 17.
But history keeps resurfacing.
Recently, Cole swears, she saw her ex-husband drive down the out-of-the-way street where she lives, right in front of her house.
He vigorously denies it. Far from harassing her, he says, "I just want to be left alone."
But she says she is convinced of what she saw. She wants protection and doesn't understand why she can't get it.
"This was a . . . kid, his own daughter. You can't get any sicker than that."
These days she keeps two green parrots in the vestibule of her house. They shriek and caw at any visitor. If a certain someone ever comes by, she hopes they will screech like demons.
Instead of a court order, she has parrots. She calls them "watchbirds."
"He's not coming anywhere close to my daughter again. Absolutely not. He's not coming close enough to say "boo' to her."
The notice came about five years before she expected it. It looked like a water bill or something equally innocuous, but Cole sat down and read it. The state was telling her that her ex-husband was getting out of prison soon. It was the summer of 1998.
"I honest to God thought it was a mistake," she said.
Edward Cole had been sentenced to 15 years in prison, plus 15 years' probation. He spent about seven months in the Pinellas County Jail and nearly six years in the state prison system.
When she called prosecutors and asked for a copy of his sentencing order, she got another surprise. She said she didn't know he had been allowed to plead no contest to attempted sexual battery.
She thought the charge was sexual battery. That was the charge on his original arrest affidavit, which said that Edward Cole "did on two occasions" penetrate his daughter, or attempt to penetrate her.
A "physical examination . . . (of the victim) was performed and such (corroborates) the victim's statements that her father assaulted her," the affidavit said.
The fact that Edward Cole served less than half his sentence was not unusual during much of the 1990s, when Florida prisons were so crowded that the state regularly let inmates out early. Cole says she was told by an assistant state attorney in 1992 that once her ex-husband got out of prison, the terms of his probation order would prevent him from contacting her or their children.
Assistant State Attorney Joe Bulone has worked on the Cole matter but was not the original prosecutor in the case and did not know why Cole's probation order did not contain such a provision. He said he recently reviewed the transcript of the sentencing hearing and found no mention of a no-contact provision.
When Cole learned the facts of her ex-husband's sentence, prosecutors went back to court to modify the probation order, and Circuit Judge Frank Quesada agreed to it.
At a September 1998 hearing, Edward Cole wanted to know if he was losing his right to contact his son as well as the other family members. Quesada said yes, adding "you just have to learn to live with it, right?"
"Not a problem," Edward Cole said at the time.
But apparently it was a problem. Cole appealed and won. The 2nd District Court of Appeal said, among other things, that there was nothing in the record to support the prosecutor's argument that the court originally had intended for Edward Cole not to have contact with his family.
Phyllis Cole decided she would seek a restraining order. But two judges reviewed her requests and determined they did not meet the legal requirements. Under Florida law, judges can issue temporary restraining orders when "immediate and present danger of domestic violence exists." Her petition to the court complained of abusive behavior from when they were married -- before his arrest in 1992 -- and contended he had stalked her when he first got out of prison, more than a year ago.
Quesada, one of the judges, wrote that Cole's allegations were not sufficient for an injunction, but that she "should go to family court and cut off rights of visitation if father is unfit to have contact."
He said in an interview that is one way the courts could provide some relief. "Believe me, I share her frustration. I can empathize totally with her."
Edward Cole, who is not related to the former mayor of St. Petersburg, rolled his eyes when a newspaper reporter showed up at his door last week. He invited the visitor to sit at the kitchen table in the house where he lives with his current wife and her two adult daughters.
He explained that a city police officer stopped by recently too, based on his ex-wife's complaint that he had driven by her house. This is harassment, he said.
"That's not very fair. I've done my time."
He said could understand the attention if he had been doing something wrong, but he hasn't. Since his release in 1998, "I haven't even had a speeding ticket."
The officer who visited him determined that the stalking allegation was "unsustained," said police spokeswoman Lilla Davis-Mays.
Cole admits seeing his son twice at a Publix. But it was shortly after he got out of prison, and it was just an accident. He said he didn't know his family lived nearby. Nonetheless, he said he contacted his probation officer right away after he first saw his son. Since then, he said he avoids that part of town.
But he added, "Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see my boy. I'd love to go fishing with him. I'd love to have him help me in my business."
He said he has resigned himself to not being able to see his daughter, at least until she turns 18.
Without elaborating, he said he thinks his ex-wife "is trying to railroad me again."
She loves the band 'N Sync and collecting porcelain dolls. One day last week, she was wearing a denim jumper and metallic blue nail polish, sitting at a dining room table in front of her mother's collection of tiny teapots.
Would she like to see her father again?
"I wish that he was back in jail," said the girl, whose name is being withheld to protect her identity.
At 13, she does not remember the crime committed against her when she was 4, but she knows what happened. Now, she said, it's scary to know that her father has been released and there is no judge's order to keep him away.
Another day last week, her brother sat at a picnic table beneath a large oak. He was 9 when it happened. Unlike his sister, he remembers. They were at their father's house, at nighttime. He said he was sleeping on the couch that night, while his father and sister were in the other room. He heard the sounds.
The place where he sat and spoke last week is a juvenile justice facility where he has been for six months. Kids who commit crimes are sent there, in hopes of rehabilitation.
His charge is domestic battery. He and his mother said police have come dozens of times to their house, as he fought with his mother and sister.
Now, he said he is working hard, getting counseling, "trying to do what it takes to get my life straight."
But anger boils inside him, and he thinks that night nearly a decade ago was a flame that started it. He has heard of the cycle of violence, the idea that those who have been abused as children become violent themselves once they grow up.
"It's true," he said. "I can't put it any simpler. It's true."