How Could You? Hall of Shame-Russian Adoptee Denis Flynn case and Lawsuit UPDATED Now Bittersweet Justice

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From Los Gatos, California, Russian adoptee Denis Flynn,23, “claims he was sexually abused for over a decade by parents who adopted him from an orphanage in Russia.

Denis Flynn is speaking out against Ralph and Carolyn Flynn of Los Gatos because he wants others who feel as though they were victims of sexual abuse to feel comfortable about speaking out.

‘I want people to know that what they did to me was wrong,’ Denis Flynn told Mercury News on Wednesday.

‘I would like any other victims listening to this to know that they did nothing wrong. They have a voice. Hopefully I can inspire some inner courage to speak out,’ Denis added.

Ralph Flynn, 71, and Carolyn Flynn, 44, are charged with unlawful sexual intercourse and incest.

But on top of those charges, Denis is suing his adoptive parents for undisclosed damages.

‘Everything they own constructively belongs to the young man,’ said Denis’ lawyer Richard Alexander to Mercury News.

Denis recalled his years of alleged abuse on Wednesday and said that his new life became amazing until he was allegedly made to perform sexual acts on his new father.

‘I had my own bed, my own TV, fantastic food. Things,’ he said.

‘I was given a few months to enjoy this new life.’ Suddenly, his life took a drastic turn.

He said that the sexual acts grew in frequency over time and that he would be allowed to have time off from school, play video games, and not do his chores if he went through with the acts.

They occurred ‘from three times a month to almost every day, to every morning, every afternoon, every evening,’ he said.

He said that he knew what was going on was wrong but said that he did not want to go back to the orphanage.

Denis claims that at 15-year-old he was then made to lose his virginity to his own mother.

‘That was my first time. That was a mind trip as well. I lost my virginity to my mom,’ he said.

Ralph and Carolyn Flynn also have a biological son who was allegedly unaware of the abuse which took place.

After being arrested, Ralph Flynn wrote an apology letter saying that he regretted his actions and that he was ‘blinded by affection.’

Denis said that the abuse stopped when he turned 19 and that’s around the time he decided to report it by telling a psychologist. At the time he did not want to seek prosecution.

He later confided in a friend and decided to press charges against them in August. Denis now works as a massage therapist.

‘I did exactly what I learned to do just bury it and go on with my life,’ he told ABC.

Carolyn Flynn paid her $525,000 bail. Ralph Flynn is being held at Santa Clara County’s Elmwood Jail on $2.5 million bail.”
Adopted son claims he was ‘forced to perform sex acts on his dad and lost his virginity to his mom in decade of abuse’ after being brought to America from a Russian orphanage

[Daily Mail 3/10/16 by Alexandra Klausner]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“Denis Flynn sat in the front room of his home, its wall of windows looking out over the garage holding a Rolls-Royce and beyond it, the tree-rimmed Lexington Reservoir at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

It was one of the last days he would spend in the house.

He was 9 when he moved into the Los Gatos home, after Ralph and Carolyn Flynn adopted him and brought him to Silicon Valley. For an orphan from the frigid and forested Russian north, the five-bedroom house with a pool was a real-life “Narnia,” he said, a miracle world with his own room, a soft bed, “Star Wars” on replay, and a new family.

The horror, he said, started within a few months: molestation by his adoptive father that at times became a daily occurrence, and later came to include his mother, too.

“Ralph called it a special occasion only,” Denis said of his mother’s alleged participation. “His birthday, her birthday, my birthday, Christmas present. It’s messed up.”

Denis is 23 now. He has chosen to share his story. After so many years of what he described as coerced silence, telling it gives him strength, he said, something he will need to face an uncertain future and start his life over yet again.

The legal battle he’s now in is only beginning. Prosecutors, after hearing his account, filed 44 felony counts against his parents. Ralph Flynn is in jail. His wife is out on a $525,000 bond, with a restraining order to keep away from her son. Denis has also filed a lawsuit against his parents, who are both sales executives.

The Flynns are scheduled to enter pleas Wednesday in a San Jose courtroom. For now, their reaction to Denis coming forward is unknown. Ralph turned down an interview request; Carolyn did the same through an attorney, who cited a court-imposed gag order in the criminal case. Many of their friends and family members contacted for this story aren’t talking either, not returning calls or saying they don’t want to get publicly involved.

The story has roiled many lives. It hit Russian media, drawing attention to Denis’ long-lost Russian sister and feeding suspicion of U.S. adoptions. The revelation that Denis had first told authorities he was molested four years ago, meanwhile, has raised questions about the lack of police response.

And while Denis said he is relieved he is finally telling his story, the decision has left him in limbo. According to Denis and his attorneys, Carolyn Flynn is readying their home for sale. Denis was hoping to persuade would-be buyers to stay away. In this country, it’s the only home he’s known.

“They conditioned me to be 100 percent dependent on them,” he said during a lengthy interview. “They didn’t teach me life skills. This is all I knew. This house, this reality.”

But under pressure from his adoptive mom to get out, he decided to cut ties to the house this weekend. He packed up and headed to a friend’s house in Manteca (San Joaquin County) to live — at least for now — what he calls a nomad life.

An early loss

Denis remembers his birth mother. He remembers her face, and the room they lived in with his older sister, Galina, in Koryazhma — a small room, about a quarter of the size of this, he said, gesturing at a corner of his front room. The family shared a kitchen with others.

“It was good. It was comfortable,” he said. “My mother did her best. She got me coloring books and markers. I wanted a toy laser gun, but we couldn’t afford that.”

Denis has a picture of her: young, with short brown hair, staring off into the distance. He looks just like her; he has her eyes.

But she got cancer, Denis said.

According to a Russian superstition, he said, a person who breaks an empty beer bottle against a wall is granted a wish if the neck remains intact.

“I broke over 300 bottles, hoping my mother would get better,” Denis said.

He was 7 when she died. The siblings were sent to an orphanage where Denis slept on a thin mattress in a room with 30 other children and showered once a week. Eventually, his sister was sent to an institution for older children. He never saw her again.

American tour

When Denis was 8, an American adoption agency brought several children from his orphanage to the Bay Area, where they lived with host families and performed folk dances. At the time, the San Jose Mercury News described the visit as a “10-day show and tell” of kids trying to move “from abandonment to love.”

Denis got lucky. He was hosted by the Flynns and their son, who was a year younger than Denis. For the first time, he rode in a car.

“I got to experience pizza and the beach,” he said. “I watched a lot of ‘Star Wars’ and Disney movies.”

When it was time to go back to Russia, Ralph, then the owner of a popular coffee roastery in Cupertino, pulled him aside. His host family would seek to adopt him. About 18 months later, Denis was back in Los Gatos for good.

He settled into a seemingly flourishing family, in a house now valued at nearly $2 million. Ralph Flynn built a career in the controversial field of multilevel marketing, in which people are signed up to sell products out of their home while recruiting other sellers whose profits they share. In online posts, he preached positivity and the importance of “re-establishing that Childlike Dreamer and Believer in all of us.”

Carolyn Flynn managed sales accounts for high-tech companies including Dow Jones.

For Denis, it was like a dream, another chance at life.

“I tried to fit in as fast as I could,” he said. “I made it my mission to be normal.”

‘I was in shock’

The house didn’t look normal anymore. The front room was empty except for a large piano. Furniture was stacked in the adjacent hallway leading to the master bedroom. In a dining room chair he pulled into the living room, Denis leaned slightly forward and told his story.

He had been in California a handful of months. By then, he knew enough English to understand what his father said to him when he was called to his parents’ bedroom.

“Do you love me?” he recalled Ralph asking. Denis answered that of course he did — his adoptive father had quickly become his hero.

“We’re going to do something,” he quoted his father as saying. “When people love one another, this is what we do.”

And then it started, Denis said.

“He touched me first and then asked me to touch him,” Denis said. “I was in shock. I knew what sex was. I knew what we were doing. I just didn’t know why we were doing it.”

Ralph told him not to tell anyone, not his mother, his brother, the police, not anyone, Denis said. “They will never understand our love and what we do,” he told the boy.

It went on for 10 years, Denis said, often in the downstairs guest bedroom, sometimes in the master bathroom, where Denis liked to curl up on the carpeted floor to get warm next to a floor heater. When he tried to resist, to say no, Ralph would become cruel, he said.

He wanted to tell, he said, but “I didn’t know how. I literally had no words to begin to say this was happening.”

When Denis was about 15, he said, his mother started participating.

“It was a year in the making,” he said. Ralph “groomed me into that with stories of having sex with older women, and eventually changing the woman into Carolyn.”

Seeking peace

The room fell silent as Denis took a deep breath. He tried to continue, but instead folded over, his head in his hands, tears beginning to fall.

Denis doesn’t have nightmares. He smiles more than not. His notes to friends and acquaintances are filled with hearts and happy faces. He still speaks with a slight Russian accent that punctuates his t’s.

His friends say he is kind, loving, strong. He hugs strangers.

“There’s just no hate in him,” said high school friend Marta Weisler.

He is what would best be described as spiritual, practicing meditation, reading the poetry of Sufi mystic Rumi, and eating a bland, cleansing diet. He is a massage therapist, offering others the power of healthy touch, he said.

His Facebook page is filled with inspirational quotes and words of encouragement to his 500 online friends. Many of those friends call him Wolf, a nickname acquired because he likes to howl at the moon, he said with a laugh.

But at times, the rage and pain claw to the surface.

“I do have episodes where I’ll just break down. I get angry out of nowhere. Rage comes up,” he said. “Before I would push those feelings down.”

Now he faces them, even embraces them, banging on his drums, or maybe screaming.

But on this day, as he cried, he clutched rosary beads in silent prayer, something his Russian Orthodox birth mother taught him to do.

After a few minutes, he began talking again.

He was 15 the first time Carolyn abused him, he said.

Ralph “found a way to invite her, and it began,” Denis said. “He was the watcher.”

The abuse ended when he was 19, Denis said. One day, he said, he refused Ralph’s demands — and his father hit him.

Denis erupted in a rage and fled the home, staying with friends for several days. When he returned, he said, it never happened again.

Coming forward

Later, he told a friend what had happened. He also called the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. So did a therapist he’d confided in, who was obligated to tell authorities. But Denis never heard back.

Then, in May 2015, he wrote a letter to close friends, including a former teacher and principal at Los Gatos High School, describing what had happened to him.

His friend Julia Nagel remembers when she got the note.

“I was disgusted, obviously, and just really angry,” she said. “I always had a weird feeling about his dad. His mom was kinda quiet when I was over.”

Last August, the principal and teacher he contacted determined they were required to report the contents of the letter to the local authorities, Denis said. This time the Sheriff’s Office investigated, he said, taping a phone call he made to Carolyn and Ralph.

On the call, he said, his parents urged him not to talk to authorities. Ralph said he didn’t want to go to jail. They said it was a family matter. And if he talked to police, they wouldn’t be able to go on a planned cruise, Denis said. His parents were arrested three days later, on Nov. 12.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the criminal case are under a gag order and declined to comment. The Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t talk about the current case, but offered a brief comment on the first report filed by Denis four years ago.

“We are always looking for ways to improve our investigations,” said Sgt. James Jensen in a written statement. “We looked into how the 2012 case was handled, and we have addressed that internally. We are pleased that our detectives ultimately led the investigation that resulted in the arrests of these two suspects.”

A response in Russia

When Denis went public while announcing his lawsuit at a news conference last month, Russian media seized on the story, with one headline declaring, “American Perverts Rape Russian Child.”

The attention brought some surprises. Reporters hoping to negotiate a televised reunion found members of Denis’ birth family, including his sister, with whom he’d lost touch. Denis no longer speaks Russian, so his civil attorney, Nina Shapirshteyn, translated a brief phone call to Galina. He learned she has a husband, also named Denis, and a son.

The two have been reconnecting on Facebook, using an online translator.

“Just to be able to see her again and hold her,” he said. “That would be fantastic.”

The story also fueled anger from many readers in Russia.

“They were sad. They were outraged,” said Maxim Goncharov, who speaks for the Consulate General of Russia in San Francisco.

In Russia, there is a sense that poor treatment of children, and even abuse, is chronic in America, a sentiment tied to the 2012 law that banned U.S. adoptions.

While that prohibition is widely believed to be political retaliation for U.S. policies targeting human rights abuses in Russia, its supporters say the adoption ban is necessary because Americans don’t let Russians check up on the welfare of children sent here.

‘You can’t tell’

It’s unclear whether anyone along the way could have helped Denis. Some who are close to him have wondered: How could no one know? Teachers? Friends? Weren’t there signs?

Typically no, said Dr. James Crawford-Jakubiak, a child abuse pediatrician at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.

“You can’t tell,” he said. “There’s nothing a neighbor’s going to know. There’s nothing anyone is going to see. My patients are hidden in plain sight. They look like every other child.”

The pediatrician said that, in general, it’s very unusual for both parents to be accused of joining in sexual abuse — and extremely rare for adoptive parents to be abusers. About 80 percent of child maltreatment cases involve parent perpetrators, with adoptive parents making up less than 1 percent, according to federal figures.

And rarely do children tell. They are scared, intimidated and conflicted, Crawford-Jakubiak said.

“The people that do this to kids are often people that the child isn’t just close to, but they love,” he said. “They look to parents for love and support and safety. … They don’t want to be abused, but they do want to be with their parents.”

A new message

Denis doesn’t want to be with his adoptive parents anymore, to be around them or see them. He wants them to go to jail, to “face what they’ve done, to admit it.”

“I am removing myself from their journey,” he said.

As he spoke, evidence of his life with Ralph and Carolyn surrounded him: paintings, shelves of books, dinner plates, kitchen stools, the pool table and pinball game downstairs. But he was alone.

It had been a house full of so much hope, and then so much horror. Now, it was time to leave.

“I don’t feel like an orphan,” he said. “In fact, I feel more whole, finally. (Telling) this story has liberated me, and I can be myself.”

As he spoke, he could hear the sounds of workers hired by his parents hammering and sawing to rebuild a side-yard fence. He pulled up his right sleeve to display a black tattoo he had inked in November, about the time the Flynns were arrested.

The tattoo, covering his entire forearm, spells out a single word: “Faith.”

Faith? After everything he’s been through?

Denis smiled.

“Faith in life, faith in love, faith in goodness,” he said. “It’s a reminder to me to not lose faith no matter how hard or challenging life gets.””

After adoption, alleged abuse, ex-orphan facing uncertain futures [San Francisco Chronicle 4/10/16 by Jill Tucker and Kurtis Alexander]

A GoFundMe.com has been set up to help Denis Flynn pay for housing and living expenses. For more information, go to www.gofundme.com/yutrutx3.

Update 2:“A Los Gatos couple accused of sexually molesting a 9-year-old Russian orphan they adopted will be sentenced to lengthy prison terms under a plea deal announced Wednesday.

Ralph Flynn, 73, will be sentenced to 24 years under the plea deal negotiated by Santa Clara County deputy district attorney Oanh Tran. He was charged with sexually molesting the boy for 10 years, starting when he was 9, and pleaded no contest to three counts of forcible lewd acts.

Ralph Flynn faced more than 200 years in prison if he had been convicted.

His much younger wife, Carolyn Flynn, 44, was accused of joining in the sexual abuse starting when the boy was 15. She faced at least 33 years in prison for 11 counts of rape, but under the plea deal will be sentenced to 12 years, her attorney Wes Schroeder said.

“It’s tragic we’re even having to deal with something like this,” Schroeder said.

Ralph Flynn has been in custody since he was arrested in November 2015.

Carolyn Flynn will be remanded after the Nov. 2 sentencing hearing.

The abuse came to light after the victim, identified by the prosecutor as Denis Doe, confided in his former middle-school principal, who reported it to police.

At first, the victim was reluctant to help out because he had no financial means of his own and couldn’t leave home, Tran said. But he eventually became very cooperative, she said.

“He’s a real survivor,” Tran said. “Now he has a girlfriend and a job and a place to live. He’s really picked himself up.”

The plea deal spares him from having to testify, Tran noted.

“It was a great resolution,” Tran said. “We essentially have a life sentence for Ralph Flynn and a long prison sentence for his wife.””

Los Gatos Couple Who Molested Russian Orphan They Adopted To Get Prison Time

[Mercury News 08/02/17 by Tracy Kaplan]

Update 3:“When he was 9 and first came to the United States after being adopted by a wealthy Los Gatos couple, Denis Flynn was eager to leave the pain and grief of his childhood in Russia behind.

Later, as he endured a decade of sexual abuse at the hands of those adoptive parents, Flynn said it was the memories of his childhood and his deceased mother that helped him persevere.

“They were my anchor to surviving the hell I was living in,” Flynn said Friday, a few days after he learned that a Santa Clara County judge had awarded him $28 million in damages from the parents who abused him. “I would escape into memories of my Russian life.”

Now a 27-year-old massage therapist living in San Jose, Flynn said Judge Brian Walsh’s ruling in the civil lawsuit against his adoptive parents is more confirmation that he did the right thing when he came forward to report the abuse as a 19-year-old.

“It’s not impossible to reclaim your life and your power that was wrongly robbed from you,” said Flynn. “It’s better than anything money can buy, to reclaim that power.”

Ralph Flynn, who began sexually abusing Denis within months of adopting him, was sentenced to 24 years in prison as part of a 2017 plea agreement. He had been charged with dozens of child molestation counts.

Carolyn Flynn, Ralph’s 46-year-old wife, who Walsh said turned a blind eye to the abuse for years before she, too, began sexually assaulting Denis when he was a teenager, was charged with rape. She received a 12-year sentence.

After a two day civil trial in May, Walsh wrote in his decision that the couple “colluded to manipulate and abuse Denis as a young child and a young man.” Walsh found that they both had committed six charges related to human trafficking, child sexual abuse and inflicting emotional distress. He ordered Ralph Flynn to pay Denis $17 million and Carolyn Flynn to pay him $11 million.

“Denis didn’t really get his day in court until now,” said his attorney, Nina Shapirshteyn. “One of the things this decision does is finally announce that the only monsters here are Ralph and Carolyn Flynn.”

The couple lived in a 3,400 square-foot home overlooking the Lexington Reservoir and owned a Rolls Royce. For Denis Flynn, who grew up in a small city in northern Russia and suffered abuse at the orphanage where he was sent after his mother died from cancer, Walsh wrote that the Flynns’ home must have seemed like a paradise.

Instead he suffered regular sexual abuse that he felt powerless to stop.

“He encountered another form of the same hell from which he thought he had been rescued,” Walsh wrote. “Imprisoned by fear, deceit and coercion, Denis believed he had no options and was forced to endure the repeated abuse for a period of ten years.”

Attorneys for Carolyn Flynn, in asking that Walsh not impose the damages, said she had been left “financially destitute” after paying for her criminal defense, an argument Walsh rejected. Ralph Flynn did not mount a defense in the civil case.

Flynn said he hopes to use the money he was awarded to visit his mother’s grave in Russia and see his sister. He has reconnected with her and some cousins through social media, and is learning once again how to speak Russian.

As he encourages other survivors of sexual abuse to come forward, Flynn says doing so has allowed him to live the best life he can.

“Fight through the doubt and push through that fear,” he said. “Even with the trauma, even with the memories, even with the pain — I’m able to overcome this.””

Judge awards $28 million to San Jose man sexually abused by adoptive parents

[Mercury News 8/9/19 by Nico Savidge]