The lost boys

Twice Steve Rotell had been accused of sexually abusing his sons, and twice he had been cleared. Then came Investigation No. 3, a hasty court hearing - and a tragedy.

By MIKE WILSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 17, 2000

[Illustration by Octavio Perez ]

Second of two parts

These are things Kristina Gaime's parents say about Steve Rotell:

He is a recluse.

People are afraid to tell what they know about him because he may have mob connections.

Instead of simply loving his son Adam he was in love with him.

He may be gay.

He is a mad genius who lied about what he did to his sons, Adam and Mathew, and made the lies stand up before psychologists, physicians, child protection workers and police.

'This man is so far ahead of everybody it's unbelievable," says Gary McDuffie, who spent more than $100,000 helping his daughter Kristina fight Rotell in court.

'He's like a Ted Bundy. People liked Ted Bundy and yet he was a very evil person."

Rotell's ex-wife said he was sexually abusing their children, but where is the evidence? Three times he was investigated and three times he was cleared. Psychologists said he was kind but firm and had a loving relationship with his sons. His friends say he was a master disciplinarian, needing only a single word -- 'Adam?" -- to let his son know he was in time out.

One friend, Patsi Mooney, calls him 'the best Mom I've ever seen."

Mat was murdered a year ago last week. Police say it was not Rotell, but his ex-wife, who killed him.

The Lost boys Part one The parents of Adam and Mathew Rotell spent years fighting over them in court, and Mathew ended up dead. Why couldn't the system save him?

After Mat's death, Rotell allowed reporters into his Tampa apartment to watch a videotape of the children. It shows them fishing, feeding Chee-tos to the sea gulls, playing happily in the tub, stuffing a turkey, holding chickens at a farm, singing Happy Birthday to their daddy.

Mat says, 'I keep wishing for it but it's not coming true. I wish for my Dad to stay."

If Steve Rotell is evil, nobody ever came close to proving it. So why did the courts take his children away?

Kris Gaime was working as a hospice nurse when she met Jerry Gaime, the Texas native who would become her second husband. His grandfather was dying and Kris Gaime was taking care of him.

Married March 8, 1996, Jerry and Kris bought a farm in Brandon, where they raised cows and ducks and horses. Jerry had two sons from a previous marriage. The families didn't blend well.

'His children didn't like us being married and they wanted us separated," Gaime testified, 'and they were just being very belligerent and very nasty when they would come over."

Whether because of sexual abuse or conflicted family relationships, Mat clearly was troubled. Early in 1998, he started talking about suicide. His mother said he wanted to throw himself in front of a car. He was 51/2.

In October 1998, Kris moved off the farm and rented a town home in Land O'Lakes. Jerry returned to Texas to work. Neither knew when he would return.

[Times files ] To the police Kristina Gaime is a killer, but to her parents she is a daughter, a nurse, a mother, a Christian. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like her,” says her mom, Kathie McDuffie.

At 34, Kristina Gaime was alone. She immersed herself in activities at Idlewild Baptist Church and spent time with Christian friends. She impressed her beliefs on the boys, according to Mat's first-grade teacher, Lori Ryan: 'She raised them to love the lord."

In mid-October, Rotell took the children to Disney World for the weekend. He dropped them at school Monday morning. When Gaime picked up Mat that afternoon, she said, he was complaining about an itchy bottom.

After school the next day, she took Mat to see Dr. Gerard Hough, who was shocked to see his anus open widely.

That was the start of Investigation No 3.

Gaime's lawyer quickly filed a motion to suspend Rotell's visitation. The three-page document was carefully crafted to distance Gaime from the allegation of abuse; clearly Gaime remembered a judge saying two years earlier that she must not interfere in her children's relationship with Rotell: 'I think she's got a difficult line to walk."

The motion said Gaime took Mat to the doctor not because she thought his father had hurt him, but because he might have worms. This from a woman who had twice seen her former husband investigated for child abuse, who had twice asked the court to curtail his time with the boys and who had lectured him in writing about the way he touched them. Now her worst fear about Mat's itchy bottom was that he had worms.

Gaime's motion said she 'was fearful that the Former Husband would take the minor children and possibly harm them."

Judge Vivian Maye signed an order cutting off Rotell's contact 'until further Order of Court." She set a hearing for the next afternoon.

The purpose of the hearing was to determine if it was safe for the children to keep seeing their father.

The judge swore in Hough, who has been a pediatrician for 20 years. When he saw the dilation of Mat's anus, Hough testified, 'You could have brushed me over with a feather." Bowel troubles were quickly ruled out as a cause of the dilation. His office arranged for a sexual abuse examination at Tampa General Hospital.

Only after Hough called the sheriff's office did Gaime say anything about the possibility of sexual abuse. She told him the boys had spent the weekend with their father and Mat had been itchy ever since.

[Times files] Steve Rotell, at Sea World with Mat in 1998, “did so many things to make Adam and Mat feel special and appreciated,” his friend Pam Van Vliet says. Adam, 9, now lives with his father and is doing well in school, friends say.

Oddly, the doctor at TGH did not see any dilation. Hough couldn't understand it. He asked Gaime to come back with Mat the next day so he could examine him again.

Now it was Wednesday; Rotell hadn't seen Mat since he left him at school Monday morning.

Again, Hough found dilation. This time he took a picture.

'Apparently," he said, 'whatever causes this child to dilate fades."

Gaime's lawyer asked Hough if he thought Mat had been abused. 'I don't think you can say it is not child abuse until proven otherwise, so I think that is our working diagnosis right now and in no way is anybody saying this is definitive," he said.

Maye said, 'You're going to err on the side of caution?"

'Absolutely," Hough said.

On cross-examination Rotell's lawyer asked Hough, 'Now, you haven't diagnosed that this child has been abused, what you said is you feel it needs to be ruled out?"

'I have not diagnosed it but the rectal dilation has asked for its diagnosis to be ruled out."

'Okay. Okay. So you're not here offering an opinion that this child has been sexually abused?"

'No, sir," Hough said. He later added, 'But I do know that this has to be evaluated and the child should be protected and I would strongly want to have a child protection team advise what we're going to do. Let me go back to one more thing -- "

'You can stop right there," the judge said.

'Well, no -- "

'No. You can stop, really. You can stop. You can stop. I'm not going to continue with the hearing at this point."

Maye had made up her mind. She was going to keep Steve Rotell away from his sons until a psychologist could complete a sexual abuse evaluation of them.

There was, after all, compelling evidence that something had happened to Mat. Twice in two days his pediatrician had seen a startling dilation of his anus, something the doctor testified he hadn't seen in two decades of practice. He had taken pictures. The judge could see for herself that he wasn't exaggerating.

And what, exactly, was the evidence that Rotell had done something to Mat?

Here is what the judge had to go on: Kristina Gaime said Mat's bottom started itching after he got home from a weekend with his father.

That was it. All the judge had to rely on was Gaime's word.

But could she trust it? Yes, the boys had spent the weekend with their father. But he had dropped them off at school on Monday morning. Gaime didn't take Mat to see Dr. Hough until Tuesday afternoon.

Had something happened to Mat during the day or so that his mother was responsible for him? He had spent Monday night at her house. Couldn't she have done something to him? Couldn't someone else have?

Why didn't the emergency room doctor see the dilation Hough had seen only an hour or two earlier? And why did the dilation reappear Wednesday morning?

Nobody asked those questions at the hearing. Maye assumed that if Mat had been abused, Rotell had to be the abuser.

In an interview, Maye said ethical rules prevent her from talking about the case. But she did say she has never known women to abuse children sexually.

And so, knowing little about the history of the case, and having heard no evidence that Rotell had done anything to Mat, Maye took both of the children away from their father.

Things had always gone this way in Case No. 92-11724. There had always been plenty of evidence that something was bothering the Rotell boys -- Adam lashed out angrily, Mat talked of suicide, both played disturbing sexual games. Sometimes Mat's bottom was dilated and the boys may or may not have been given a hickey.

For all these reasons, the courts moved to protect the boys from the person under suspicion -- their father, who was a suspect because their mother said he should be.

Rotell was investigated the first time because somebody called HRS. The authorities found zero evidence against him. He was investigated the second time because Gaime didn't like the way Mat's bottom looked and a doctor referred her to an abuse investigator. Again, the experts found no evidence that the boys had been abused.

Time after time, the boys were given opportunities to tell people -- doctors, nurses, psychologists, child advocates -- that their father had abused them, but they never did. One expert after another concluded that Rotell was a 'solid guy," a caring parent who had a close, loving relationship with his sons.

The McDuffies say maybe Rotell drugged the boys so they wouldn't remember what he had done to them.

On and on it went, for Mathew's entire short life.

James Kramer, Rotell's lawyer, pleaded with Maye to change her mind about keeping Rotell away from his boys. He said he had a psychologist waiting outside the courtroom who had worked with the family. According to Kramer, the psychologist was prepared to testify that 'this mother is so hysteric and so wrapped up in this that she may have caused this damage to the child just to build a case against the husband."

If that allegation turned out to be true, Maye said, 'I will personally put her in jail. I will walk her into the jail if I have to."

Gaime was put in jail, but not by Maye. She was put there by homicide detectives.

It took months for the psychologists to do the abuse evaluations Maye ordered. Thanksgiving and Christmas went by without Rotell seeing or speaking to the boys. Gaime told them he was out of town working, but Mat didn't believe it. He asked one of the court-appointed psychologists, 'Is Daddy dead?"

On Feb. 10, 1999, Rotell's lawyer filed a motion asking Maye to let him see the children again. Psychologist Deborah O. Day of Winter Park had finished her evaluation.

'(She) found that both children have a positive relationship with their Father, and there were no findings made that the Former Husband had ever sexually or in any way abused the parties' children as alleged by the Former Wife," the motion said.

Maye decided not to rule until Day could come to court to testify, but it was apparent that Rotell was going to be vindicated. Investigation No. 3 was over and Rotell had been cleared again. Now he could make his case for getting custody of the boys.

Gaime dreaded the possibility.

'For her to lose the children would end her life. That's it," says her friend Elba Guzik.

In early April, the McDuffies took Gaime and the boys on a Caribbean cruise. When they got back, Gaime put Mat and Adam in her GMC minivan and drove them home.

The next morning, Gaime's alarm company called Kathie McDuffie and said Gaime's alarm was going off. She went to Gaime's town home and found Adam playing with a bowl of ice cubes, water and tinfoil pouches of juice. Gaime was lying on the couch, incoherent, with injuries to her head, ankle and buttocks.

McDuffie could not find Mathew.

'He's asleep in the van," Adam told her. 'I told Mommy that his legs are blue, but she can't get off the couch and she can't check on him."

Kathie McDuffie found him inside the van, under some blankets.

Investigators found pages and pages of letters in Gaime's handwriting. 'There's no hope left," she said in a letter to her mother. 'I can't give Mathew back to that man. He is never, never going to stop what he's doing. He's so sick, Mom."

Her letter to Rotell said, 'You are truly Satan's right hand man. I hope you rot in hell."

To the police she wrote, 'I know you'll be called+ you'll want all of these letters. I couldn't leave a videotape for fear my house was bugged by my ex-husband. I didn't want anyone to find us in time."

Gaime's injuries have never been explained. The police say she set out to kill herself and her sons. They say she gave morphine to the boys, put them in the van, ran a hose from the exhaust pipe to the window and started the engine. She and Adam survived but Mat did not.

After his death, Steve Rotell went to the morgue. He held his dead son and read him his favorite book, about Tweety and Sylvester. He had to get permission from the judge to do it because he was still under a court order to stay away from his children.

Chronology

Key events in the story of Steve Rotell, Kristina Rotell (now Gaime), and their children, Adam and Mathew:

1988

• Sept. 24: Rotell and Gaime are married.

1991

• March 16: Adam Louis Rotell is born.

1992

• Aug. 31: Mathew Allen Rotell is born.
• Oct. 12: Gaime files for divorce.

1994

• May 16: Someone from Health and Rehabilitative Services tells Gaime that Steve Rotell is under investigation for child abuse. Investigation No. 1 begins.
• Aug. 17: The Hillsborough sheriff's office closes the investigation against Rotell, calling it 'unfounded."
• Oct. 10: A pediatrician suggests Gaime see child abuse investigators after she notices dilation and redness on Mat's bottom. Investigation No. 2 of Rotell begins.
• Nov. 10: The sheriff's office again declares the case 'unfounded."

1995

• December: After a year of motions and hearings, Judge James Moody refuses to cut off Rotell's visitation, saying there is no evidence he is an abuser.

1996

• March 8: Gaime marries Jerry Gaime. They move to a farm in Brandon.

1998

• Oct. 1: Her marriage in trouble, Kristina Gaime leaves the farm and moves into a town home in Land O'Lakes.
• Oct. 19: After a weekend with the boys at Disney World, Rotell drops them at school Monday morning. When Gaime picks up Mat, she says, he is complaining of an itchy bottom.
• Oct. 20: At 5 p.m., a day and a half after Rotell last saw the boys, Gaime takes Mat to see a pediatrician, who is shocked to see his bottom dilated more than an inch. Investigation No. 3 begins.
• Oct. 23: Without hearing testimony from Rotell or his witnesses, Judge Vivian Maye cuts off his access to both boys and orders sexual abuse evaluations of them.

1999

• Feb. 10: Rotell's lawyer files papers saying the evaluations are complete and they find no evidence that Rotell abused the boys. He asks the court to allow Rotell to see his children again.
• Early April: Gaime, her parents and the boys go on a Caribbean cruise.
• April 12: Gaime's mother answers an alarm call at Gaime's town home. She finds Mathew dead in Gaime's van. The police will conclude that Gaime killed Mathew and tried to kill Adam and herself.

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