How Could You? Hall of Shame-Ashley Johnson (Peterson) case UPDATED

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 Andersen, Indiana, “Ashley doesn’t remember the first time the strangers carried her away. But her mother does.

At 18, Kim Guiden was virtually on her own with two young children, 2-year-old Ashley and 2-week-old Dashon. They slept together on a mattress on the living room floor in a small duplex in the industrial city of Anderson.

When temperatures in March 1993 dropped low overnight, Kim cranked an electric hot plate to the highest setting to keep warm.

She rigged a blanket to separate the living room from the rest of the unheated duplex. Those areas were so cold that Kim could see her breath.

She called a relative to ask to borrow a kerosene heater.

When a child services caseworker knocked at her door, Kim guessed that relative had reported her to authorities. And, frankly, it ticked her off.

There’s nothing more frustrating, Kim would remember decades later, than people turning you in when you’re asking for help.

She yanked open the door.

Family case manager Dianna Cole inspected the duplex, documenting what she saw. It had no heat, no water, no refrigerator and little food. No clothes for the kids, no diapers. Feces sat in the toilet, debris in the sink. The hot plate glowed beside the mattress, providing a wisp of warmth.

Kim said Ashley’s father, 22-year-old Alison Johnson, paid the rent and electric bill, but she didn’t have enough money for gas.

Cole suggested a parent aide program.

Kim bristled.

This was the fourth child neglect report made about her since Ashley was born less than three years earlier.

Kim insisted on her independence. She had dropped out of school. She was unemployed and received food assistance for the children. Yet she refused to apply for further funding for food, clothing or shelter. Kim didn’t want anything to do with Supplemental Security Income. That program, she said, was for crazy people.

I don’t want or need your help, Kim said. I’m sick of seeing your face.

There’s an easy way and a hard way, Cole told Kim. One way or another, the government was going to help Kim and her children.

As they argued, 2-year-old Ashley ventured over to the kitchen doorway where the blanket hung. She was on her way to go toward the bathroom. Kim screamed to keep Ashley from leaving the room. The little girl retreated to the edge of the mattress. She held herself, crying.

Cole left. Later, she returned with Anderson police.

Kim didn’t know what to do.

“My first reaction was just to take my kids and go and just run,” Kim recalled years later. “But there would’ve been nowhere to go.”

Officials removed Ashley and Dashon.

“Mommy!” Ashley sobbed as she was pulled away. “Mommy! Mommy!”

Cole had ensured their safety. Or so she thought.

Deciding whether to remove a child from a home can be one of the most difficult choices a child welfare official makes.

The child welfare system has changed since Ashley’s removal in 1993, but it continues to operate on the same principles. Parental rights are weighed against child safety. Keeping families together is a priority, provided the children are safe. And minimizing trauma to children is of utmost importance.

It is a system governed by checks and balances. Kim and Alison tried to get the children back. Kim briefly regained custody before the kids were removed again. The young parents attended most of their court-ordered visits. But they were overwhelmed.

During one visit, Kim couldn’t read a baby food jar to determine whether she had fed Dashon peas or green beans. One evaluator said Kim couldn’t name a day of the week, didn’t know the name of the president and couldn’t do simple math, such as subtracting three from a number.

Kim had been drinking more than a six pack a day since she was 13. She guzzled beer throughout her second pregnancy to the point of passing out.The second time Ashley was removed from Kim’s home in 1993, she was placed with Sandy and Earl “Butch” Kimmerling. Her brother went to a different foster home.

Ashley’s life with her foster parents was a whirl of toys and trips, art and dance lessons, singing and worshipping God.

Butch, 46, worked for the Indiana Department of Transportation. Sandy, 51, drove a school bus. They attended church Wednesdays and Sundays and surrounded themselves with evidence of their faith.

In 1995, Anderson police arrested Kim for attacking Alison with a hammer. It wasn’t her first arrest.

Kim was caught in an endless cycle. When things got difficult, she said, she drank. When she drank, she grew angry and violent. “I would get mad at everybody,” Kim recalled. “When I get to drinking and stuff, I get to taking it out on people.”

Alison told IndyStar their ages were to blame. “We were just young parents, that’s all,” he recalled years later. “We tried everything we could do.”

Authorities decided to terminate Kim’s parental rights to Ashley, Dashon and two other sons. Alison and another man lost their parental rights, too.

Their door knocker greeted visitors with “Welcome in the name of Christ.” Their ranch-style brick home in Anderson, with its sprawling front yard, was decorated with pictures of Jesus. Butch kept a small studio there, where he wrote and recorded Christian music.

Their blended family included four children and five grandchildren, none of whom lived with them. And Butch and Sandy had cared for 48 children since becoming foster parents in 1991.

When 3-year-old Ashley arrived, the Kimmerlings settled her into her own bedroom. She and Sandy decorated it together — splashes of white, pink and purple, with Barbie wallpaper and Barbie pillowcases, blankets and sheets on her bunk bed.

Butch and Sandy bought Ashley gobs of toys. They enrolled her in tap and acrobatics classes. They took her to Disney World.

Ashley spent most of her time with Butch. He helped Ashley with her homework. They shared a love of music and often sang gospel songs together.

Like many young kids, Ashley could be stubborn and demanding. But overall, child welfare workers reported, the little girl was “darling, cheerful and has a great personality.” She “wins the heart of everyone around her.”

She lived with Butch and Sandy for years.

Ashley loved it there, but the Kimmerlings did not want to adopt.

Child welfare officials connected Ashley to a therapist who said the little girl couldn’t “relax and ‘be a kid’ because she doesn’t know where home will be.”

The uncertainty was one of many issues that would weigh on her.

“Here’s the thing about children that are in foster care,” Ashley explained years later. “We might not remember who our parents are or remember what they look like, but we still dream about them coming to get us. And that’s just the whole trauma aspect of it for us kids. We’re always waiting and thinking, making up scenarios.”

Ashley, who is black, never forgot that she looked and acted different from her all-white foster family.

She said the Kimmerlings forced her to change into their vision of a little girl. They were particular about how Ashley wore her hair and clothes. Ashley said she was a tomboy, but they made her wear “girlie” clothes, such as tank tops.

One day, Sandy wanted to paint Ashley’s nails gold. Ashley didn’t like nail polish. “I just bawled my eyes out,” Ashley recalled.

The Kimmerlings also spent a lot of time correcting Ashley’s speech and behavior.

A mistake in table manners? Go stand in the corner.

Using “ain’t” instead of “aren’t”? Go stand in the corner.

Biting the side of her mouth? Go stand in the corner.

When the Kimmerlings took her to visit their children and grandchildren, Ashley remembers being blamed for things the grandchildren did. She remembers having to clean up after the other kids.

When Ashley got in trouble, Sandy warned the little girl she would end up just like her mother. Ashley had begun to forget her mother’s face. She believed Kim was a bad person. She thought that meant she would be bad, too.

Ashley felt she didn’t belong. At least not with the Kimmerlings.

“You know,” she explained years later. “Just extra.”

One day, while Sandy was gone, Ashley cuddled against Butch in an oversized brown recliner in front of the TV. The little girl draped her arm over her foster father’s big, round belly.

They had sat this way many times before. Maybe it was a Wednesday. Maybe it was a day Sandy was at church. Ashley doesn’t remember.

“My subconscious, I’m scared that, you know, it won’t let me remember,” Ashley said years later. “Because if I remember, it’s no telling what I would try to go do to him.”

But she does remember that on this day, Butch captured her hand and pushed it lower. Past his belly and onto his crotch.

It was something he would do again and again. It happened most often in Ashley’s bedroom, when Butch woke her up for school, when Sandy was already at her job driving a school bus.

When Ashley touched her foster father’s penis it would get wet and the wet stuff would get on her bed. He touched her, too.

At first, Ashley said she didn’t realize that what was happening was abuse. She was a kid. She didn’t know it was wrong. Butch never threatened her, never warned her not to tell anyone. Instead, he plied her with snacks and ice cream.

In 1997, child welfare officials looked for a permanent home for Ashley and her three brothers, who lived with a different foster family. After a year, officials found a man willing to adopt.

An Indianapolis man named Craig Peterson pursued adoption of Ashley and her brothers after seeing them in the “My Forever Family” picture book of foster children available for adoption and in a June 7, 1998, Indianapolis Star article. He applied as a single parent, though he was in a long-term relationship with a man named Richard Weaver.

Butch and Sandy joined child welfare officials at an Aug. 25, 1998, meeting where a committee would decide whether the two men should be allowed to adopt the four siblings.

During the meeting, Janice Heiss, a family case manager, noted that Craig and Richard seemed committed to being partners in the adoption. They had been together for more than three years. They were active in church. They had some child-rearing experience. They were “open about the gay issue and will be with the kids.”

Butch was incensed by Craig and Richard’s lifestyle. He said Ashley wouldn’t like it. He urged the committee to reject Craig’s petition.

Butch issued a warning: “Ashley will not be satisfied with this family.”

He said Ashley didn’t want to live with her brothers and preferred to be an only child.

“She will get even,” he warned.

Sandy said she was concerned about the gay parents. Ashley would not have a woman around.

Lonny Hunter, the children’s family case manager since 1993, couldn’t attend the meeting. So he asked another worker to convey his opinion. Hunter believed the children had enough problems without being teased or harassed for having gay parents. And Ashley had told him her one wish was to have a “brown mother.”

“How can I promise her a brown mommy and go in and say, ‘Here’s white daddy?’” Hunter told IndyStar years later. “You know? It just wasn’t what Ashley herself was requesting. And I was respectful of that.”

Ashley remembers saying that, but she also remembers Hunter saying it to her.

“It was part of how I felt but also what I had been told,” she said years later.

No one else wanted Ashley and her brothers. Nine other families had backed out after reading about the siblings’ diagnoses. All four children had some level of fetal alcohol syndrome, which can severely affect a child’s physical and intellectual development.

LaShone, 3, struggled with behavior problems.

Miguel, 4, battled rage and anger.

Dashon, 5, had a high palate and severe speech problems.

Ashley, 8, had partial fetal alcohol syndrome. She was doing well. She got good grades. She loved art and acrobatics. But she was stubborn. A bit of a loner. She argued with Butch but not with Sandy.

When the discussion was over, the Kimmerlings stepped out of the room. The people left took a vote.

Hunter’s “no” vote was read into the record. Another person voted “no,” saying her personal beliefs would not allow her to vote for a gay family. One person abstained. Everyone else said yes.

It was official: Craig and Richard were going to be parents. Ashley and her brothers were going to have their forever home.

Heiss and a children’s advocate walked outside to tell the Kimmerlings. The foster parents appeared devastated.

Review your Bibles, the Kimmerlings said.

Sandy began to cry. She told them she had been sexually abused as a child.

If anything happens to Ashley, Sandy warned, you will pay.

The Kimmerlings weren’t going away without a fight.”

Ashley’s foster home seemed perfect. It held a dark secret.

[Indy Star 4/25/19 by Marisa Kwiatkowski]
“Butch and Sandy Kimmerling wasted no time.

Soon after child welfare officials voted to allow a gay man to adopt the foster child who had been living in the Kimmerlings’ home for five years, Butch and Sandy contacted their pastor.

On Aug. 26, 1998, the day after the adoption of Ashley and her three brothers was OK’d, Pastor Brad Brizendine wrote a biting letter that was peppered with boldface and italicized phrases. It lambasted child welfare officials for having “little or no signs of heartfelt concern for the moral well-being of the children.” Area churches and media received the letter.

What Brizendine didn’t know was the man the pastor was supporting was secretly using 8-year-old Ashley for his own sexual gratification.

No one in the child welfare system knew what Butch was doing to Ashley. Were signs missed? It is hard to tell, but one thing is certain: When it came to Ashley’s well-being, America’s political and cultural divide only added to the trauma that would change her forever.

Brizendine, pastor of the Center of Faith Church in Anderson, called for area churches to “support the effort to intercept this moral injustice.”

“Is this a suitable and acceptable environment for our children, who for the most part have been abused, neglected and even molested,” Brizendine wrote. “Are we really concerned about their future and wholesome development? Or have our most needy children become a ‘pawn’ on the gameboard of politics and bureaucracy.”

He signed the letter “upholding righteousness.”

Battle lines were quickly drawn. Craig Peterson wanted to adopt Ashley and her three brothers. Brizendine, the Kimmerlings and others were bent on stopping him.

A media storm began.

In interviews with state and local media, Butch and Sandy argued it would be destructive for Ashley to be raised by two gay men — Craig and his partner Richard Weaver. They did not refer to her by name.

The Kimmerlings’ decision to publicize their unhappiness was extraordinary. Typically, proceedings involving the foster care system are kept confidential. The public scrutiny put officials on edge.

Family case manager Janice Heiss faxed a copy of Brizendine’s letter to an attorney, warning they may have a “community upset.”

“No details as to exactly who they are, or why they’re not happy,” Heiss wrote.

Battle lines were quickly drawn. Craig Peterson wanted to adopt Ashley and her three brothers. Brizendine, the Kimmerlings and others were bent on stopping him.

A media storm began.

In interviews with state and local media, Butch and Sandy argued it would be destructive for Ashley to be raised by two gay men — Craig and his partner Richard Weaver. They did not refer to her by name.

The Kimmerlings’ decision to publicize their unhappiness was extraordinary. Typically, proceedings involving the foster care system are kept confidential. The public scrutiny put officials on edge.

Family case manager Janice Heiss faxed a copy of Brizendine’s letter to an attorney, warning they may have a “community upset.”

“No details as to exactly who they are, or why they’re not happy,” Heiss wrote.

Craig was scheduled to have his first meeting with Ashley’s three brothers, who lived in another foster home. Officials canceled it.

The situation, Craig said, “just smacked me in the face.”

He could understand if people were questioning his credentials, his criminal history or his finances — all of which were “squeaky clean.” No, they were making a big deal out of his sexual orientation. He felt they were making terrible assumptions without knowing him or knowing how he would care for Ashley and her brothers.

The Indianapolis man was nearing 40, and although his job as an associate vice president in corporate sales had been personally and financially rewarding, he felt something was missing. He wanted a family.

“I’m making more money than I could ever possibly spend on myself,” Craig remembered thinking. “And it became a matter of: Do I go buy a German sports car, or do I adopt children?”

Cars lose their worth pretty quickly, Craig reasoned, but the value of children and family continues to grow. In his adoption questionnaire, Craig wrote that he wanted to “share my values with others not as fortunate as me.”

In Craig’s mind, having children was a logical next step. And he was nothing if not logical.

Craig believed in balance, wellness and routine. The tall, lean man woke up every morning around 6 a.m., went to bed at 10 p.m. and ran three or four days a week on the treadmill in his home gym.

Initially, Craig thought he would adopt one child, maybe two. But an adoption specialist urged him to adjust his expectations.

“If you don’t want to wait forever,” the woman warned, “you need to consider the children no one else will take.”

Craig had seen a study that indicated that the most difficult children to place were siblings and black boys with special needs. His request to adopt Ashley and her three brothers was approved, but now the adoptions were at risk.

“We feel like we gave birth to four children on Tuesday and now they are on life support,” Craig wrote in an email Aug. 27, 1998, to Heiss. “Richard and I have spent eight months ‘claiming’ these children since we first saw them in the picture book last January.”

Craig asked whether the involvement of their own pastor or others in Indianapolis would help. “These people are all normal, heterosexual individuals who would not be an immediate threat to anyone in Anderson,” he said.

Craig asked for a meeting. The next day, at the child welfare office in Anderson, he felt confident the adoptions would go through. After all, Ashley and her brothers needed a home. And he and his partner were the only people offering to provide it.

“In my opinion, I was doing the Christian thing and opening my heart and my door to these children and providing an environment of unconditional love,” Craig recalled.

But the committee’s previous approval wasn’t as firm as he thought.

Craig and Richard brought family and friends to the meeting. State and local officials were there. The Kimmerlings, who declined to be interviewed for this series, did not attend. It’s unclear whether they were invited.

The conversation focused on whether Craig should adopt Ashley.

Craig told child welfare officials he was concerned Ashley was suffering mental abuse in the Kimmerlings’ home. He said the Kimmerlings might have frightened her concerning his sexuality. He asked whether she was receiving counseling.

He wondered why critics only seemed concerned about Ashley, not her brothers.

“Here they were so concerned about the 8-year-old girl coming to the home of the gay man and no one raised any concerns about the three boys — who were 3, 4 and 5 at the time — coming to my home,” Craig recalled, still perturbed by the conversation more than two decades later. “I almost want to say, ‘Timeout. I think we’re not discussing the right issue here. That if we’re concerned about something inappropriate happening, should we be more concerned about these three little boys than the girl?’ That was never even brought up.”

Craig threw out every proposal he could think of to counteract the concerns. He presented a proposed daily schedule for the kids. He volunteered to let officials visit his home on a regular basis. He pitched bringing female role models into his home to spend time with Ashley. He offered to find her the best therapist.

Still, Craig could see he was fighting a losing battle. He was hurt and disappointed to lose Ashley, but at the same time, he had never met her. He didn’t want the loss of one child to become the loss of all four.

Holly Hunt, a children’s advocate who worked with Ashley, could read the room, too. She pivoted the conversation from Ashley to the little girl’s three brothers.

“We’ve all kind of talked about Ashley,” she said, “but what about the three boys?”

Bruce Stansberry, director of the Madison County Division of Family and Children, said that no decision had been made regarding the children’s placement — even though the committee had approved the adoption days earlier. Stansberry indicated that “all sides were being considered.”

The adoptions had not yet been approved in court.

The meeting closed without resolving the adoption issue. Officials decided to visit Ashley, schedule her an appointment with a counselor and revisit the conversation a week later.

As the adoption officials sought more input, the Kimmerlings changed tactics — to not only block Craig’s adoption but keep Ashley with them.

Butch and Sandy told reporters they intended to file a petition to adopt Ashley themselves.

They said they hesitated to do so before — despite the many times they were asked — because they felt they were too old.

Initially, the Kimmerlings said they wanted to adopt Ashley to prevent Craig from doing so. Later, Butch said they would have filed the petition no matter what.

“She wants to stay with us,” Butch told the Madison County Line. “We are Mom and Dad to her. If they were to remove her now and put her in anybody’s home, it would be devastating. She would be giving up her home, her friends, her family. She even tells our 13-year-old grandson that she is his aunt. We know in our spirits that she belongs with us.”

Child welfare officials expressed concern with the sudden turnaround in the Kimmerlings’ thought process. There also was brief concern when the Kimmerlings did not allow officials to speak with Ashley alone, but officials eventually gained access to her.

Officials felt as if they were in a legal bind. They feared the Kimmerlings might sue if they allowed Craig to adopt Ashley. Craig and Richard might sue if they were prohibited from adopting the boys.

To avoid either outcome, they were willing to compromise.

“I think these kids should be placed together, but am willing to concede if Sandy and Butch want to adopt,” Carolyn Doss, a supervisor with the Marion County Division of Family and Children, wrote in an Aug. 31, 1998, email to Heiss. “There is an argument for that since she has been with them for so long. Her bond with them is certainly stronger than her bond with her brothers.”

Looking back, Ashley felt as if no one cared what she wanted. If the 8-year-old had a choice, she would have returned to her biological parents. Since that wasn’t an option, Ashley preferred the Kimmerlings’ home because it was what she knew. Craig’s home was an unknown.

“I was spoiled pretty much rotten,” Ashley recalled. “If it wasn’t for the fact that I was being molested the whole time, it probably would have been the ideal home for someone.”

After completing the normal adoption procedure, then reopening it, Stansberry said the new hearings were an attempt to ensure they were doing what was best for Ashley.

“The issue is not whether we let gays adopt,” he told The Herald Bulletin. “We try to find an adoptive home for a specific set of children. We want to make sure the child’s best interests are followed.”

Child welfare officials met again Aug. 31, 1998.

Butch, who continued to sexually abuse Ashley, was portrayed as a sympathetic character. He had resisted becoming attached to Ashley, one counselor pointed out, because he had allowed himself to love another foster child only to see that child leave the home.

Officials said moving forward with Craig’s approved adoption would be difficult without support from the Kimmerlings. And the campaign against gay adoption only complicated matters.

“What the foster parents & church have instilled into her since the decision to move would make a successful placement now very difficult for her,” according to meeting notes.

The consensus: Ashley belonged with the Kimmerlings. The committee hoped the siblings would stay in touch but doubted it would happen.

Stansberry made his decision: Craig would adopt Ashley’s three brothers. The Kimmerlings would adopt Ashley.

Ashley would stay with her abuser.

It is difficult to know what was going through Butch’s head during that period. But even as Butch was molesting Ashley, he put himself in the spotlight of a campaign against adoption by same-sex couples.

Two states, Florida and New Hampshire, already had banned gay adoption. The Kimmerlings and Brizendine hoped to add Indiana to the list.

In one letter to the editor, Butch and Sandy argued “boys need fathers so they can develop their own sexual identity; they need mothers so they can learn how to interact with the opposite sex. Girls need mothers so they can learn what it is to be a woman; they need fathers so they know how to interact with the opposite sex.

“We don’t believe that this can be done with two daddies or two mommies,” they wrote. “It is the right of all children to have a chance to grow and develop the way God intended them to.”

By early September 1998, Brizendine said more than 25 churches pledged to support the Kimmerlings’ cause. The pastor anticipated gathering 10,000 signatures on a petition to ban gay adoption.

“It’s not God’s way,” Sandy told one reporter. “God created Adam and Eve. Not Adam and Steve.”

State legislators Woody Burton, R-Greenwood, and Jack Lutz, R-Anderson, supported a ban, as did the mayor of Anderson. In a letter printed on city letterhead, Mayor J. Mark Lawler said he opposed “any adoption outside of a traditional family setting.” Gay adoption, he argued, undermined the family unit.

They faced vocal opposition from those who supported same-sex adoption, and both sides wielded religion during the debates.

About 200 people attended a rally where they sang and prayed for legislators to adopt laws allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt. The event was planned by a coalition of 14 Indiana churches.

Child welfare officials felt the Kimmerlings’ grandstanding might be harmful to Ashley.

“Now I’m mad,” Doss, a supervisor involved in Ashley’s child welfare case, dashed off in an email the morning after the Kimmerlings appeared in a local television interview. Doss said she wanted to find out what action they could take against the Kimmerlings for their inexcusable breach of confidentiality.

“The first time was bad enough,” Doss wrote, “but they now are getting what they want and Ashley is still being paraded around to satify (sic) their preduices (sic).”

The agency later adopted an action plan: Advise the Kimmerlings that their violation of confidentiality may have had a detrimental impact on Ashley and tell them not to do it again.

Stansberry, the director, said that he understood the decision did not satisfy employees’ concerns.

“A related issue for these foster parents as well as others is the perception of us ostracizing foster parents who complain or upset us,” Stansberry wrote in an email. “Please think about this issue and how we can deal with it.”

Sometimes the Kimmerlings’ interviews included Ashley.

When she overheard Sandy complain to a Madison County Line reporter about wrinkles, Ashley exclaimed: “You’re not old, Mom. You’re beautiful.”

The little girl also shared her faith.

Ashley told the Madison County Line: “Perhaps God lets bad things happen so that He can show how great He really is.”

The Kimmerlings’ adoption of Ashley was finalized Dec. 23, 1998. Ashley Michelle Johnson became Ashley Marie Kimmerling.

Ashley, betrayed by the only father she had ever known, was far from being the happy little girl portrayed by her triumphant new parents.

Over the next few months, Ashley’s grades plummeted from A’s to F’s. She misbehaved constantly, ignoring directions, banging doors, kicking and throwing things. Once, when the Kimmerlings left their van running in the garage, she shifted it into drive and sat there as it hit the wall separating the garage and family room.

Brizendine said he and his wife, Joan, tried to get to the bottom of Ashley’s behaviors. Ashley doesn’t remember the conversation.

Ashley,” the pastor coaxed, “is there anything we can do to help you? What’s going on?”

“No,” the little girl replied. “Nothing, nothing.”

Brizendine looked at Ashley for a moment.

“If anything was wrong,” he began, “you were being hurt or something was happening to you that you just didn’t know how to handle and you feel trapped or somebody at school’s hurting you … would you tell Pastor Brad and Joan?”

Ashley’s trauma was all too real. It wasn’t just a dream of violence and neglect. It wasn’t just a feeling of being extra. She was 8. She felt alone. And she was being sexually abused and betrayed by her father.

Ashley sat silently, plump tears rolling down her cheeks.

She never answered yes or no.”

Becoming a pawn in the culture war, Ashley hides her abuse from the world
[Indy Star 4/25/19 by Marisa Kwiatkowski]

“Ashley had a secret she wanted to share — a secret she had been keeping for more than a year. She could not imagine that her adoptive mother, Sandy Kimmerling, didn’t know the secret, too. But Ashley was scared to say the words. Daddy is hurting me.

Ashley said she hadn’t understood that what Earl “Butch” Kimmerling was doing was sexual abuse until she brought it up to kids in the neighborhood. Then she told a friend at school. That friend threatened to tell someone if Ashley didn’t.

Ashley wanted the abuse to stop. But Butch, her adoptive father, was always around. He’s a big man whose looks live up to his nickname. When Ashley tried to speak to Sandy, he gave her a scary look.

The 9-year-old waited until spring 1999, when Sandy’s sister was staying with them. Ashley remembers Sandy’s sister as older, a put-together “real girlie girl” who drove from city to city in a little Winnebago.

Most important, Ashley believed Sandy’s sister didn’t like Butch. With Sandy’s sister there, Ashley thought Sandy wouldn’t be able to ignore her plea for help.

The evening of May 11, 1999, while Butch was at work, Sandy and her sister were chatting in the living room. Ashley started to cry.

What’s wrong? Sandy asked.

The words poured out. Ashley described how “Daddy” touches her vagina and makes her touch his penis. She told her mother the touching had been going on for a long time. She described what he made her do to him. She used her hands to demonstrate the size of his penis and explained what it looked like — with a level of detail that Sandy recognized as an accurate description of her husband’s erect uncircumcised penis. Ashley told her mother about the wet stuff that would come out and get on her bed.

She took Sandy into her bedroom and pointed out milky stains on her faded rose-colored sheets.

This tiny 9-year-old girl, who was afraid no one would listen, had made herself completely vulnerable by speaking out. Ashley had no idea what would happen next.

Sandy stripped the sheets off Ashley’s bed and tossed them into the washer. But she didn’t start the machine.

Later that night, after Ashley had gone to bed and Butch arrived home from work, Sandy confronted her husband. He denied molesting Ashley.

Sandy warned him not to go near the 9-year-old again.

Butch was unusually quiet the rest of the night. And when Sandy headed to bed, he joined her. That, too, was unusual. Butch typically stayed up later.

Too upset to sleep, Sandy lay awake next to him.

Less than a year earlier, she and her husband had made Ashley the center of a statewide campaign opposing gay adoption. They had managed to overturn the child welfare agency’s decision to let a gay man adopt Ashley. Through all of that — the press conferences, the interviews, the meetings with lawmakers — Butch was molesting Ashley.

In the middle of the night, Sandy got up, pulled Ashley’s stained bedsheets out of the washer and stuffed them into a plastic bag. She decided they might be important to determining what happened.

Typically, Butch cared for Ashley in the morning while Sandy went to work. Not this morning. Sandy woke up Ashley, brought her along on her school bus route and dropped her off at school. Then Sandy called her pastor, Brad Brizendine.

Brizendine, who also drove a school bus part time, was on his route when he received Sandy’s call. He said he nearly fell off the seat when she explained what was going on.

During the statewide campaign, Brizendine had stood by Butch’s side to oppose adoption by same-sex couples — and specifically to thwart Craig Peterson’s effort to adopt Ashley. In doing so, Brizendine believed he was protecting the little girl. Instead, the pastor said, it turned out Ashley was in worse care.

“Not too many things that would make a guy like myself want to hit somebody,” Brizendine told IndyStar years later. “But when you find out something like that’s going on … .” His voice trailed off.

After his conversation with Sandy, Brizendine called the Anderson Police Department. He told Detective Dale Koons that a member of his congregation, whom he didn’t name, had contacted him with suspicions that her husband was molesting their 9-year-old daughter.

How should I handle the situation? he asked.

Koons asked Brizendine to encourage the mother to call him directly.

The pastor agreed to do so. He dialed Sandy’s number.

“You have no choice,” he told her. “You’re going to have to deal with this. You’ll have to, or I will.”

Sandy called the police.

Two days later, Craig Peterson’s phone rang. Even though his effort to adopt Ashley had failed, he was continuing with the process of adopting Ashley’s brothers.

The call was from Janice Heiss, the family case manager facilitating Craig’s adoption.

I can’t say a whole lot, Heiss said. Just make sure you read the paper tomorrow.

Read the paper tomorrow? Craig asked. Is something going on?

No, no, she answered. It’s nothing with you or the three boys.

Ashley’s brothers had moved in with Craig eight months earlier, but their adoptions were not yet final. Craig renamed the boys: Dashon became Andrew, Miguel became Michael and LaShone became Brandon. Craig’s partner Richard Weaver had moved out.

That morning, Craig was up early, worrying and waiting for the newspaper delivery. He grabbed The Indianapolis Star as soon as it hit his driveway.

There, on the front page, a horrifying headline: “Man who won adoption fight charged with molesting girl.” The article said Butch had been arrested and charged with felony counts of child molesting. It said Butch admitted sexually abusing the 9-year-old girl “many times since April or May 1998, and the last time on the morning of May 10, 1999.”

Craig sat silently at his kitchen table and read the article. Then he read it again. And again.

Craig grabbed a piece of paper and quickly sketched a timeline with the dates listed in the article.

It was clear, Craig realized, that Butch had been molesting Ashley when child welfare officials were deciding who should adopt her and her brothers. Butch had been molesting Ashley even as he launched a statewide campaign against gay adoption.

The longer Craig sat there, the worse he felt. Shock yielded to anger and guilt. Why hadn’t he fought harder to adopt Ashley? And what in God’s name had she suffered?

“I felt selfish that I wanted those three boys so much that I gave in too easily on Ashley,” Craig recalled. “And because of that, she endured nine more months of abuse. And I felt so just like, like — like I’d failed her.”

Michael, one of Ashley’s brothers, walked downstairs and found Craig at the table.

“Father,” the 5-year-old asked, “why are you crying?”

Craig gathered Michael and his brothers, ages 4 and 6, together and tried to explain what had happened in age-appropriate terms.

“Something bad has happened to Ashley,” he told them.

Although the boys didn’t have a close relationship with their sister, they knew who she was. They knew the unused second-floor bedroom — still furnished with its custom-made comforter, new pillows and desk — had been meant for her.

“We need to keep praying about Ashley,” Craig told the boys. “She’s been hurt.”

Michael, who acted as the brothers’ informal spokesman because he was the most verbal, peppered Craig with questions.

“Well, who hurt her?”

“We aren’t sure yet,” Craig said, “but she’s been hurt.”

“Well, how was she hurt?”

“She’s been hurt,” Craig reiterated. “And we need to think about her.”

“Do we get to see her?”

“Hopefully soon.”

For the second time, Ashley’s life became political fodder.

People used Butch’s criminal case to knock down the argument that children were better off in heterosexual families.

One man said, “Kimmerling contended that the Bible said homosexuality was an abomination. In reality, what Kimmerling allegedly did is the abomination.”

In a letter to the editor, one woman said: “I found it ironic that not only was he condemning a professed homosexual for wanting to raise a family while he was molesting the very child in question, but that his own wife had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child. My question is how can she stay with a child molester?”

Another woman said she believed the situation “could be a message from God.”

“That’s because all this got turned into religion, misinterpretations from the Bible and hatred of homosexuals instead of what was really best for the child,” the woman wrote in a letter to the editor. “You can go to church every Sunday and know the Bible inside and out, but this does not make you a Christian. In my opinion, a true Christian is one who can love everyone and not single them out because of differences.”

She blamed Anderson Mayor J. Mark Lawler, Brizendine and others for putting Ashley in danger.

Years later, Brizendine remembers being inundated with questions and criticism like that. What in the world’s wrong with you? Didn’t you have more sense than that?

“People that are in a position like a pastor or a priest, you’d think — or you’d like to think — they have more perceptivity,” Brizendine said, “you know, they’re a little more on the ball, perceptive or discerning. But we don’t look into crystal balls.”

The pastor said it was the ugliest situation he’d experienced in four decades of ministry.

“It was just a mess,” Brizendine said. “Egg on all of our faces.”

He felt awful.

“The very people we trusted were the wrong people,” Brizendine said. “And the one we were trying to care for in all of our efforts was the one who got hurt the most. Just kind of a twisted deal.”

Lawler recently told IndyStar the situation was “a punch in the gut.”

“We were trying to do our best by an innocent girl who just wanted a family,” he said. “She may as well have been better off with the individuals who were originally going to adopt her.”

Lawmakers’ bills banning gay adoption had died during the legislative session. But people who supported the concept scrambled to shift focus away from Butch’s criminal case toward their broader argument that it was in a child’s best interest to grow up with a mother and father.

“We can pick and choose all the abuse cases we want, but I’m looking at the overall aspect of raising children,” state Rep. Woody Burton, R-Greenwood, told The Indianapolis Star the day the criminal charges became public. “I still believe the best environment is with a mother and father. If someone is doing something wrong, they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, no matter what their sexuality is.”

State Rep. Jack Lutz, R-Anderson, also remained committed to passing legislation that would ban adoption by same-sex couples.

“I feel so sorry for that little girl,” he told The Herald Bulletin. “But this is something we can’t legislate not to happen. We’ve got to think of the child involved and give all we as a public can give to provide a normal family environment. We owe it to the children.”

As the debate raged on, Ashley’s world shattered.

Butch, her father for more than five years, moved out of their home. He turned himself in to police.

Ashley said she felt she had betrayed her family by coming forward. And she was embarrassed.

Her father’s name and picture were plastered on the front page of local newspapers and on TV. The media coverage said he had molested his adoptive daughter.

Kids in Ashley’s third-grade class at Meadowbrook Elementary School had questions. So when one of the newspaper articles gave Ashley the pseudonym “Mary,” she used that as a shield.

“That’s not me,” the 9-year-old told classmates who brought up the abuse. “That’s my twin sister.”

Ashley said she thinks that’s when her personality fractured. She spent so much time pretending the abuse had happened to someone else that, in her mind, she started to believe it was true.

In January 2000, on the eve of his trial, Butch admitted what he had done. He pleaded guilty to four felony counts of child molesting.

Members of the media crowded the courtroom. Butch’s wife and family sat in the front row.

Craig, whose adoption of Ashley’s brothers had been finalized, also attended the hearing. If his sons asked, Craig wanted to be able to tell them he had been there.

He sobbed and wailed when Madison Circuit Court Judge Fredrick Spencer read the charges aloud.

Craig hadn’t realized how detailed the descriptions would be. Each charge included a graphic description of the sexual act Butch had forced on Ashley.

After the hearing, Craig told an Indianapolis Star reporter that he believed the Kimmerlings fought his effort to adopt Ashley to “cover up their dirty little secret.” He said his sons still loved their sister, that she remained part of their family.

He contacted the Indiana Civil Liberties Union to find out whether he could get custody of Ashley or at least court-ordered visitation. Neither was possible under state law.

The organization filed a lawsuit against child welfare officials, arguing that they had violated Craig’s constitutional rights and stopped his adoption of Ashley solely because of his sexual orientation. The lawsuit sought monetary damages, but Craig continued to hope he would reunite his family.

“I am hoping that Sandy will do what is right and let (her daughter) be with her brothers where she belongs,” he told a Herald Bulletin reporter. “That would make our family complete. We pray for her.”

Leading up to his sentencing hearing, Butch made a vow: I’ll never be alone with children again.

Did he think he might abuse another child?

“I can’t say,” he told an Indianapolis Star reporter. “Just like I couldn’t have said I could have done it to begin with. I pray not. I hope not.”

During the four-hour sentencing hearing, Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings argued those statements showed that Butch feared he might reoffend.

Cummings also called out Butch for insinuating during his police interview that Ashley, then 7 or 8 years old, had somehow seduced him. The prosecutor said Butch claimed he became aroused and couldn’t control himself when Ashley sat in his lap and started masturbating herself.

“Unbelievable,” Cummings said.

The prosecutor said he didn’t believe Butch ever saw Ashley as his daughter. At least twice during his police interview, Butch referred to Ashley as “that little girl,” rather than by name.

“That is dehumanizing them as somebody who is not a part of this family,” Cummings said. “Not close to him. I guess to justify the victimization.”

And the way Butch hurt her?

“It is an outrageous betrayal of trust,” Cummings told the judge. “Not only to Ashley Kimmerling, which I think is unconscionable, but to the citizens of this community, his family, his church, his extended church family. Pretending to be something that he is not, at the same time engaging in outrageous behaviors. What a betrayal of trust.”

or all of Cummings’ strong words and Ashley’s haunting videotaped police interview — “He is mean to me,” she said softly — much of Butch’s sentencing hearing focused on his virtues, not his crimes.

Defense attorney John Erickson III said Butch served in the Vietnam War and was a role model for his siblings and a loving father and grandfather and a dedicated Indiana Department of Transportation employee.

“It is further honorable to take in and care for children in need,” Erickson said, referring to Butch’s time as a foster parent.

Judge Spencer also listened to testimony from Sandy, a pastor and three of Butch’s stepdaughters and received 27 letters extolling Butch’s good character. Brizendine was not among them.

One of those letters, written on lined notebook paper, was from Ashley.

“I forgive him because I love him and because it’s right,” the 9-year-old wrote. “It is in the bible. If it is in the bible, I am going to follow the bible because it is what my dad would want me to do. It would make him be proud of me and have a great big smile.”

Every time Ashley looked at Butch’s belongings, she said, she started to cry.

“I really need him home,” she wrote in her letter. “Because I will be very hurt very badly. I know I won’t do good in school without him home.”

Sandy said Butch, her seventh husband, was the best thing that ever happened to her.

“I have a wonderful husband,” Sandy said during the sentencing hearing. “And just, I know that anybody that knows my husband knows that he is a good man and this is just a terrible mistake that he has made in his life.”

Butch apologized in court.

“I indeed was walking as a Christian and was telling people how to live as a Christian, and I know I was doing wrong,” he told the judge. “God has reminded me of that.”

Judge Spencer sentenced Butch to 40 years in prison.

Despite the abuse, Ashley said she had always been closer to Butch than Sandy.

He helped with homework. He sang with her. He was the disciplinarian.

Ashley and Sandy struggled emotionally and financially without him.

Ashley said Sandy was “accusing me of ruining her life” and other family members shamed Ashley.

Ashley’s adoptive sister, Lisa Stanley, wrote a letter to the court in which she supported Butch and questioned the severity of the abuse.

“I do realize, as well as he does, that he has made a mistake,” Stanley wrote. “Also, sometimes people have a tendency to change things around. Such as twisting words or phrases and making things sound or seem different then (sic) what they really are. I also know my adoptive sister, she doesn’t know how to pick and choose her words yet, so nobody can twist them around. A child just goes for the easiest words they know, not thinking about how somebody is going to turn what they say into something worse then (sic) what it is.”

Years later, Ashley said such comments only contributed to the emotional turmoil she felt.

She acted out.

“I felt like I didn’t fit in,” Ashley said, “so I was just always doing stuff.”

By the summer of 2000, less than six months after Butch’s sentencing, Sandy decided she could no longer raise Ashley. She gave her daughter, then 10, to a woman who lived on the west side of Indianapolis. That placement failed within months. Sandy sent Ashley to live with another family. That failed, too.

Around that time, Sandy and Ashley moved in with a relative.

Sandy also held a garage sale. Without asking, she sold many of Ashley’s favorite toys. The little girl’s extensive Barbie collection? Gone. Her dollhouse? Gone. The miniature people, furniture and cars? Gone.

Living with Sandy and an aunt in Indianapolis, Ashley continued to get in trouble. One day she stole a crisp $100 bill from a drawer in the house and stuffed it in her pocket. She had never seen that much money.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, candy?’” Ashley explained. “I could buy lots of candy.”

When the adults realized it was missing, they yelled at Ashley.

Ashley said she didn’t understand why she got in trouble. It’s not like she could have gone somewhere to spend the money. She just wanted to hold it for a while.

“I guess,” Ashley said, “that was the last straw.”

The day after Thanksgiving in 2000, Craig was cleaning the house. The boys, whom he had legally adopted, were watching TV. The phone rang.

“This is Sandy.”

Craig said he only knew one person with that name.

“How are you?” he asked.

Sandy didn’t bother with niceties. Instead, the older woman offered Craig the one thing he wanted — the one thing she had fought so hard to prevent.

“Do you still want Ashley?””

Ashley reveals her abuse and loses everyone she loves
[Indy Star 4/25/19 by Marisa Kwiatkowski]

“Sandy Kimmerling refused to set foot on Craig Peterson’s property, according to Craig, so he met her in the parking lot of a McDonald’s off Interstate 69.

Ashley stepped out of Sandy’s red-and-white van. The 10-year-old didn’t say a word, didn’t glance back at Sandy, her adoptive mother. And she refused to meet the hazel eyes of the man waiting in front of her.

For years, Sandy had characterized Craig as weird. Kind of girlie. Maybe even a pervert. Now she was making Ashley go live with him.

Head down, Ashley shuffled past Craig and silently climbed into his red Jeep Cherokee Sport. Craig quickly loaded his Jeep with Ashley’s few possessions, which were stuffed in a couple of boxes and plastic bags.

Sandy had sold all of Ashley’s favorite Barbie toys — the movie theater, the grocery store, the house, the RV — and the dollhouse with little people and furniture. Sandy refused to let Ashley keep her childhood photo albums. That hurt.

It was a few days after Thanksgiving in 2000.

Craig realized Ashley was very withdrawn and there was no need to be having a celebration. It would just make things more awkward.

Part of Ashley was numb, disassociated from the confusion, hurt and anxiety of being given away to a stranger. “It was neither here nor there,” Ashley recalled, “because it wasn’t the first place that I was dropped off.”

Ashley had been taken from her biological mother, paraded around for political purposes, molested by her adoptive father, and tossed from home to home. But this was a new kind of betrayal.

It wasn’t just that Sandy no longer wanted Ashley. She was now willing to turn her over to a man she had all but characterized as the devil.

In that moment, another emotion flickered to life in Ashley: anger.

Craig did everything he could think of to ease Ashley’s transition into his home.

He hired an attorney to track down Sandy and persuade her to sign a document relinquishing her parental rights. He initiated adoption proceedings. He enrolled Ashley in Eastbrook Elementary School as Ashley Peterson — her third last name in as many years — to give her a sense of belonging and protect her from the notoriety of the last name she shared with her abuser, Earl “Butch” Kimmerling. And Craig visited the school nearly every day to brainstorm with her teacher about how to help Ashley succeed.

He didn’t want to say or do the wrong thing. He wanted Ashley to feel valued. He wanted her placement with him to work.

From Craig’s perspective, Ashley was settling in. She earned the most improved student award at the end of fifth grade and was selected to sing the national anthem during a school assembly. At home, she enjoyed playing with blocks and playing grocery store, school and restaurant with her brothers in the basement.

“I would open the door, and I would just look in,” Craig recalled. “And it was just like you would have thought these children had been together their whole lives.”

The situation seemed to be going so well that Craig adopted two more children. Alex and Travis moved in at the end of 2001.

But with six kids now in the household, things weren’t going as well as Craig thought. Not for Ashley.

Ashley could not turn off the feeling that had gripped her most of her life. She felt like an “extra.”

She believed Craig didn’t really want her. He wanted her brothers. Now she was living in his home, and he expected her to love and be the big sister to these boys she barely knew.

“I kind of just got dumped here, and then you expect me just to fit in like I’m some type of piece of clothing or something,” she remembered thinking.

Ashley had lived through at least half a dozen of what experts call “adverse childhood experiences,” which include abuse, neglect and family challenges.

Such experiences create dangerous levels of stress that can disrupt children’s brain development and impair their ability to cope with negative emotions. As the number of traumatic experiences increases, so does the risk of attempted suicide, depressive disorders, high-risk sexual behaviors and negative health outcomes.

Ashley’s earliest years were spent with her biological mother, who had struggled with alcohol use, domestic violence and mental illness. Ashley was removed from that home amid allegations of child neglect. Then she was sexually abused by her foster father.

Those experiences shaped how Ashley interacted with others. She said she didn’t feel the need to get attached to people. At her core, she wanted to be left alone.

She could be engaging and delightful when she wanted to interact with people, Craig said. But she also was anxious and hypervigilant, worried something bad might happen.

Ashley’s classmates didn’t know about her past. But they soon found out Ashley had a short fuse. She couldn’t let things go.

There were fights, suspensions. In middle school, Craig said it was one rough day after another.

“I felt like I was on speed dial with the school,” he recalled.

In March 2002, during the spring semester of sixth grade at Guion Creek Middle School, Ashley slugged a girl on the school bus. Ashley, then 11, said she overheard the girl say something rude. The bus driver pulled over. He tried to break up the fight. Ashley hit him, too.

In November 2002, while serving an out-of-school suspension for another fight, Ashley stole $100 from a relative and spent the money at Kmart. When her family confronted her, Ashley became hysterical. She threatened to leave and “cut myself with a knife — a much sharper knife.”

In January 2003, Ashley was caught shoplifting lip gloss and earrings from a Meijer.

In April 2003, she punched and kicked Craig at home. In court later, she said, “My dad got mad at me for slamming the door. He wanted me to say sorry and I didn’t, so he hit me and I hit him back.”

Craig called Ashley “extremely manipulative.” He said her attitude and mood changed drastically from day to day.

In January 2004, a 16-year-old taunted Ashley about the seat she had chosen in the cafeteria. Ashley warned the teen, who was 30 weeks pregnant, to back off. Instead, the teen stuck her finger in Ashley’s face. Ashley shoved the teen. They exchanged blows until teachers broke it up.

“I just really had like a bull’s-eye on my forehead,” Ashley recalled years later. “Because it just seemed like I could not do anything right.”

The prosecutor’s office declined to file charges against her for the school bus fight. Prosecutors agreed to probation for some other cases. Ashley spent time in juvenile detention. But the challenges continued.

Sex also contributed to Ashley’s emotional turmoil. Even after Butch’s abuse ended, she was a target.

In May 2002, when Ashley was in sixth grade, a 14-year-old boy led her into a wooded area behind the middle school, exposed his penis and demanded oral sex. He pulled up Ashley’s blouse and fondled her breasts. He pulled up her skirt and touched her crotch. The boy threatened to “beat her until she bleeds” if she told anyone. She didn’t tell — even after a student reported seeing something and the assistant principal and Craig asked what had happened. The next day she took a knife to school and made sure everyone knew she had it.

In March 2004, Craig found 13-year-old Ashley in his bedroom with an 18- or 19-year-old man hiding under a blanket. She admitted they had had sex. Craig reported it to authorities and prohibited Ashley from being home alone again.

Four months later, while Ashley and her family were at a concert in the park, a man pulled her into a port-a-potty and raped her. Four of the guy’s friends stood guard outside.

Ashley saw some girls she knew from school and told them what happened. They called police, and she was taken to the hospital. When Craig and the boys caught up with her, the first words out of Ashley’s mouth were: “It wasn’t my fault this time.”

She was examined at the Pediatric Center of Hope. Results indicated “she had been traumatized sexually.”

No one ever was charged.

School officials tried to protect Ashley during those tumultuous years. They kept her out of the hallways during passing periods. In middle school, they allowed her to eat lunch with her math teacher so she didn’t have to interact with students in the cafeteria. More than once, they allowed her to finish school at home.

Their efforts would work for a time, but nothing lasted.

Craig said the transition to middle school was difficult for Ashley because she had to navigate a larger school, clashes with classmates and multiple teachers.

There was a direct correlation, he said, between a teacher’s ability to make Ashley feel safe and how well she performed in the classroom. She was a better student for teachers who made her feel valued and showed empathy for her past trauma.

Subtle things can be triggers for children with trauma backgrounds, such as a teacher asking students to draw their family trees or bring in baby pictures. Ashley and her brothers don’t have baby pictures.

Some teachers tried to shame Ashley when she misbehaved, saying she should have known better. It’s a technique that can work well on people who haven’t experienced trauma. But for Ashley, that shame eroded her trust.

And other school officials simply weren’t prepared to interact with a girl dealing with the aftermath of trauma.

In January 2003, Elwood Bredehoeft, a teacher working lunch duty, sent four girls out of the cafeteria for disciplinary reasons. He didn’t immediately follow.

Ashley, who was in seventh grade, was heading to the math teacher’s classroom to eat lunch when she noticed classmates standing outside the cafeteria. She stopped to chat.

“They were in trouble, but I didn’t know that they were,” Ashley said at the time.

Bredehoeft, then 52, came into the hallway. One by one, he asked each student’s name and jotted it in his notebook.

Ashley refused to give her name. They argued. Ashley said she tried to explain that she hadn’t been with her classmates when they got in trouble, but he told her he didn’t have time to listen.

“You are going to the office,” Bredehoeft said.

Ashley moved toward the cafeteria.

Bredehoeft blocked one door with his body and gripped the handle of the other door to prevent Ashley from opening it. She tried to pry his hand off.

There was a brief tussle, during which Ashley fell backward, recovered her balance and charged Bredehoeft, punching his chest. He grabbed Ashley’s shoulders, trying to restrain her.

Police arrested Ashley for intimidation of a school official, battery on a school official and disorderly conduct.

In a statement to the court, Bredehoeft spoke dismissively, saying Ashley needed to get her behavior under control.

“It was not a hateful, vengeful attack, but rather the result of an apparent temper tantrum by a small child,” he wrote. “Luckily, she was too small to do any physical damage.”

Recently, he told IndyStar he had known Ashley had emotional challenges. Bredehoeft said he hoped all of his students, including Ashley, would grow up to be fine adults.

“I certainly wish her well,” he said.

Some saw the situation as an example of what can happen when people don’t understand trauma.

In a letter to the court, Dr. Sharon Gilliland pointed out Ashley’s history and recommended male teachers, in particular, be careful not to touch the 12-year-old unless absolutely necessary, such as “going to her aid when she is in immediate and significant danger.”

“Her reactions to the touches of males are unpredictable and this is consistent with her psychosocial history of abuse,” Gilliland wrote.

For ninth grade, Craig hoped a smaller school might help Ashley feel safe. He enrolled her in Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School, a newly opened charter school on the city’s northeast side.

The school staff was informed about her past and agreed to be sensitive to Ashley’s mood and how they speak to her.

Ninth grade was a success. But in fall 2005, the beginning of 10th grade, everything fell apart. Ashley received her ISTEP scores. She passed the English portion of the test but just missed passing the math portion. School officials had emphasized the importance of the test.

When Craig picked up Ashley at school, he said she looked as though someone had died.

The 15-year-old was devastated. She felt ashamed. Unworthy. Not smart enough. Not good enough.

Everyone’s right, she thought.

Ashley saw a host of mental health professionals over the years. She was in and out of St. Vincent Stress Centers. She also spent 3 1/2 months in residential placement.

By the time Ashley moved into Craig’s home, she already had been diagnosed with partial fetal alcohol syndrome. People with fetal alcohol syndrome often have a difficult time in school and have trouble getting along with others, according to the CDC.

Ashley also had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after the abuse she suffered in the Kimmerlings’ home. Youths with PTSD often struggle with aggression, low self-worth, self-harm and acting out sexually.

She was later diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which can affect mood, self-image and behavior and result in impulsive actions and relationship problems.

Craig said mental health professionals also misdiagnosed Ashley with a variety of other disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and reactive attachment disorder. Other diagnoses, such as major depressive disorder and conduct disorder, were actually symptoms of her trauma, he said.

Too often, Craig said, mental health professionals didn’t understand trauma. He said they treated individual symptoms rather than Ashley as a person.

“We were dealing with the same behaviors for six, seven years,” he said. “We kept trying to call it something else. But it was the same trauma-related condition from day one.”

Each new diagnosis came with new medication or a change to one of the existing ones. But the outcome was always the same. Or sometimes, Craig said, the outcome was worse.

Residential placement didn’t help, either.

“Oftentimes people think, ‘Oh, we’re going to spend all this money and put an adolescent into a highly artificial setting and then apply a somewhat cookie-cutter approach and hope that they’re going to be all better three or four months later without the daily support of their family,’” he said. “And it didn’t work.”

Ashley said she would tell mental health professionals whatever she thought they wanted to hear. Whatever it took to get out.

She knew what her problem was: people asking too many questions. She refused to change. Why should she? No one else would change. No one would listen to her.

“I’ve learned how to use coping skills and how to express myself,” she said during one therapy session, “but it’s gotten me nowhere.”

And when she left the artificial settings Craig described, Ashley went back to the same environment she had left.

Ashley felt Craig didn’t have enough time for her. There were too many kids with complex needs in the household.

The most successful initiative was one in middle school in which the juvenile court, school and mental health professionals worked together: the Dawn Project.

At home, Ashley and Craig received family therapy. At school, teachers and school staff learned Ashley’s history and how best to work with her. And a mentor followed Ashley all day.

Ashley thrived. Her team considered her “a model child.” She met her probation conditions. She followed her father’s rules. Her grades improved. She served as a junior counselor at a church camp. She attended a fine arts camp. She wrote and illustrated a book.

But it was an expensive program.

In December 2003, after five months in the Dawn Project, the team decided Ashley no longer needed an educational mentor. Her prior criminal cases were closed, and she was released from probation.

Officials, in effect, declared success and moved on.

Ashley was in trouble again a month later.

Looking back, Ashley said a lot of the things that officials had tried could have been really good, but the timing was wrong.

“I was not ready,” Ashley said. “I showed signs of not being ready. … A person should’ve been able to see this is not going to or whatever. Because I’m supposed to be the disabled one. How do I see that? And then, you know — but then when I came around and I was ready, then what? Nothing.”

In 10th grade, Ashley wanted freedom. She loved Craig, and she knew he loved her. She turned to him for support. But she was sick of her father telling her what to do. She didn’t want him cleaning up her messes. Every time he insisted on doing something for her, it felt as if he was saying she couldn’t be trusted to do it herself, as if there was something wrong with her.

The teen started roaming. She skipped school or disappeared after it. She ignored Craig’s rules. She blew her curfew. She snuck out the window of her bedroom.

There was a tangle of mental health hospitalizations, fights, arrests and sexual encounters with older men.

Sexual contact, which had once been a repeated source of trauma, became the only way Ashley felt wanted. She told a police officer she couldn’t refuse anyone who asked for sex. She said she couldn’t help it.

At some point, Ashley started having sex for money. She can’t remember the first time she got paid for it. But in a journal entry, she called prostitution a “self-confidence boost” and “addicting high that thrills me in a dark way.”

“It shames me more than I show no shame in disclosing my hustle almost proudly,” she said, “like I was basically bred to be used up.”

In 2008, Craig tried to figure out what to do. Ashley was nearing her 18th birthday. He could have washed his hands of her, say he tried, let her direct her own path as a legal adult.

“But that was not in my DNA just to walk away,” Craig said.

Instead, he decided to pursue adult guardianship of Ashley. It would give him legal authority to weigh in on decisions about Ashley’s education and health care. Craig hired an attorney.

Ashley took the guardianship as another sign that she was unworthy.

On April 18, 2008, 90 minutes before a scheduled guardianship hearing, Ashley hitched a ride to Atlanta. Six weeks later, she called Craig seeking help. She was barely clothed, with no money and no identification, when she stepped off the Greyhound bus in Indianapolis.

In 2010, Craig said he couldn’t do it anymore. He wanted to go to sleep at night knowing Ashley was safe. He moved her into a condo about a mile from his house.

Over the next three years, Ashley and Craig continued to fight over his need to protect her and her desire for independence.

She was no longer in school. The state of Indiana, which had taken her from her mother and put her in an abuser’s home, had all but given up on her.

That’s when Craig emailed me.”

Scarred and abandoned once again, Ashley’s rage takes control

[Indy Star 4/25/19 by Marisa Kwiatkowski]

“I met Ashley for the first time in March 2015 at a Noodles & Company in Indianapolis.

Ashley wore trendy clothing and immaculate makeup. When she stood up, I was struck by how petite she was. I’m 5 feet, 1 inch tall, and I tower over her. She told me later that she is 4 feet, 6 inches tall.

During that first meeting, Ashley was friendly and articulate but distant.

Her adoptive father Craig Peterson had arranged the meeting. He initially reached out to me about an article I’d written, then shared bits of Ashley’s story. Before we met, he warned me that Ashley was “extremely fragile” and living “in her own private hell.” Ashley had been diagnosed with what she described as a cocktail of psychological disorders, some of which were a result of childhood trauma she suffered while in the foster care system.

Ashley had been taken from her birth mother at 2 years old, sexually abused at 7, used as a political pawn at 8 and abandoned by her adoptive mother at 10. She struggled to fit into a home with five other children. She felt like an outsider as she went through more than a decade of fights, hospitalizations, rape and other sexual encounters with older men.

When I met Ashley, she was 24 and Craig remained her legal guardian.

Over a series of interviews spanning two years, Ashley and I explored some of the most challenging experiences of her life.

Craig said his daughter had improved since he put her in a condo he owned a mile from his house. Ashley would later describe the condo as a haven.

“I needed that transition to be able to start seeing myself,” Ashley told me. “Because before that, I just saw a blur. I didn’t see the future. I didn’t see the past. I didn’t see the present. I didn’t care. I didn’t think I needed to. I didn’t think I was important enough.”

Ashley said she began to believe in herself.

Craig secured a $56,000 settlement from the Indiana Department of Child Services, which enabled him to help pay for the condo and dialectical behavior therapy for Ashley. DBT is a form of therapy that teaches participants how to better interact with others by regulating their emotions and managing emotional trauma rather than attempting to escape it.

Craig said the therapy seemed to help. Now, when Ashley got emotionally stuck, he said, it would last part of a day or overnight rather than two weeks. It was the kind of progress he said he had hoped for back when his daughter was in middle school. Instead, she was often misdiagnosed or placed in programs that worked for a while but were never sustained long enough to succeed.

Throughout interviews, Craig acted as Ashley’s gatekeeper and informal spokesman. He sometimes jumped in when I asked Ashley a question or prompted her to remember certain things. He was trying to be helpful, but I left some interviews feeling as though I understood more of his perspective than hers.

While they sometimes disagreed during interviews, I didn’t realize that tension was building between Ashley and Craig.

Ashley sometimes compared herself to her younger brother Andrew. He is a Special Olympian. He gives speeches arranged by Craig, who maintains a blog called “Adopting Faith: A Father’s Unconditional Love.” Articles have been written about how Andrew is more than his diagnosis of fetal alcohol syndrome. Ashley is proud of him, as well as of her own brief appearance in a documentary film made about Andrew’s journey.

In one interview, Ashley said Andrew was the light and she was the darkness. With Ashley’s permission, Craig shared Ashley’s journal entries with me. In them, she described grappling with feeling worthless.

“All through my life, I felt like a black sheep, unwanted and forgotten,” she wrote.

Ashley also described what it felt like to pretend to fit in with those around her.

“I hide and mask my emotions so well, and have for as long as I can remember, to escape and abandon my true pain and rage inside,” she wrote. “Fake, happy feelings and smiles only last for a few weeks, but for that time I feel normal — yet forced.”

During that time period, Ashley admitted, she was lying to herself. Contrived happiness is a trick she plays to let herself believe that she is fine. But it doesn’t last.

“I just sometimes have to escape from my hell deep inside me,” she wrote, “but the hell inside still seeps out like smoke under a door. I fire vinim (sic) and hate for no reason to whoever is around. I have even been called evil. I feel evil inside like a shadow that wants to take form.”

Ashley also said she felt like a burden. The time Craig spent trying to help her was time he wasn’t spending on her brothers, who had complex needs of their own.

Mostly, Ashley dreamed of peace. And freedom.

Despite hours of interviews and more than 1,000 pages of records I had collected, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I still didn’t know Ashley. Not really. She seemed to be holding back.

In 2016, my focus shifted to an investigation into USA Gymnastics, and Ashley and I lost touch.

Through Craig, I learned that Ashley had moved to Atlanta and was doing well. She had a job. An apartment.

I asked for her phone number in July 2017.

“Let’s hold off on Ashley until we are both clear on the direction of any conversations — which likely will retraumatize her,” he said.

A couple of weeks later, he provided her number. Ashley agreed to let me visit to interview her and shadow her at work.

Ashley and I coordinated last-minute details on Aug. 23, 2017, the day before my trip. “I’m a little nervous, but now I’m excited,” she said in one text.

The plane rumbled to a stop just after 11 a.m. Aug. 24, 2017, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Unbuckling my seat belt, I leaned down to grab my iPhone from the black nylon computer bag under the seat in front of me. As I powered it on, my mind raced to what lay beyond the jetway.

In less than two hours, I would see Ashley again.

It would be my first time interviewing her without Craig there.

As I waited for the 14 rows in front of me to clear out, I typed in my cellphone passcode and pulled up my work email. Scrolling quickly, I stopped at an email that Craig had sent while the plane was in the air.

Its subject line: “Something May Be Up with Ashley.”

“Good morning,” the email from Craig began. “After coming out of the doctor with Michael, I had two message[s] from a correctional facility in Georgia. Not sure what is going on, but Ashley may be in trouble. We texted last night around 9:15pm, so not sure what could have happened. She was very anxious about your arrival – with her sense of shame high. I hope she didn’t fall apart. She didn’t respond to my text this morning.”

I fired off a quick reply: “We just landed. I am supposed to meet her in a bit. I’ll let you know.”

IndyStar photojournalist Mykal McEldowney and I picked up our rental car on Aug. 24, 2017. As Mykal drove to the planned meeting spot, a Ruby Tuesday in Lithia Springs, I tried to find out — in Craig’s words — what was up with Ashley.

An error message popped up when I ran Ashley’s name through Cobb County’s inmate locator using my phone.

We were scheduled to meet at 1 p.m.

The clock ticked. 1:01 p.m. 1:04 p.m. 1:10 p.m. 1:15 p.m. Still no Ashley. I sent her a quick text: “Hey, just checking in. Are you on your way?”

No answer.

I grabbed my laptop to search jail records. This time when I ran Ashley’s name I got a result.

She had been arrested at 12:42 a.m. and booked at 1:58 a.m. in the “intake pit” in Cobb County on a Douglas County warrant.

I spent the next two hours on the phone with various law enforcement agencies.

A Douglas County official agreed to let me interview Ashley the next day.

Mykal and I waited in the magistrate’s courtroom, an impromptu meeting spot approved by jail personnel. There were three well-used chairs. The white walls were bare, except for a TV for teleconferencing and an 8 1/2-by-11 sheet of paper listing bond amounts.

With a buzz and a click, the second of two secure doors swung open.

Ashley poked her head into the room.

“Hi,” she offered sheepishly.

The 27-year-old shuffled in, wearing a khaki-colored jumpsuit with half-inch metal button snaps down the front and “Douglas County Prisoner” emblazoned on the back. The jumpsuit gaped open near Ashley’s waist, where one of the snaps was missing.

She also wore neon orange socks and black sandals. Tufts of her hair stuck out on the sides. Self-consciously, she tried to smooth it down. She noticed Mykal’s camera.

“Oh my God, you’re going to tape me looking like this?” she asked. “It’s OK. It’s not y’all’s fault.”

Ashley said she wasn’t upset about being arrested. She knew the warrant had been out there. She was just embarrassed that the arrest happened when it did. She was glad Craig had emailed me about receiving messages from the jail.

“I just knew he would get a hold of you because that’s all I was thinking, like so now they done flew all the way out here. Now my goofy butt’s in jail,” she said. “This is the part of the story I really wasn’t fixing to tell you, but this is my life. So I do make poor choices all the time even though I know what the outcome is going to be. That’s just what I do.”

I asked Ashley why she moved to Atlanta. Almost immediately, she started to cry.

She told me the condo Craig secured for her had begun to feel like a prison.

Ashley was in her 20s, yet her father had been her legal guardian and controlled all of her finances. When she earned a paycheck, it went directly into an account he managed. She had to ask permission to do almost anything.

It’s demeaning, she had told a psychologist, to have to ask Craig for money for “sexual hygiene items.”

Ashley said Craig would sometimes hold up the guardianship or suggest she may have to leave the condo when she didn’t do things the way he wanted her to. She came to believe Craig placed her in the condo so he wouldn’t have to worry and so she would help out with her brothers.

Eventually, everything around her — including the furniture — became a reminder of Craig’s control. She asked him for money from the $56,000 DCS settlement to buy furniture of her own. He told her no. He tried to model how to handle money. He wanted her to save it. Even after he agreed to let her buy furniture, her frustration remained.

“I had people always saying, ‘Listen, you wouldn’t have what you have if it wasn’t for your white dad with all his money,’” Ashley remembered. “And I looked around, and I was like, ‘Yeah, you know, you’re right. I didn’t have any of this before I went and got my settlement. I didn’t have, I didn’t have anything. This is all because of him.’ So a part of me always resented that. Like, well, I must not be nothing if you got to come in and do everything for me.”

Ashley eventually told her father she wanted the guardianship removed and found a pro bono attorney willing to help.

At first, Craig resisted her request. He considered guardianship a safety net with which he could protect her. He later weighed that concern against Ashley’s perception that he was an overbearing and overinvolved parent.

“Although there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to undo this, there’s another part of me realizing that I do need to walk away so then there might be some hard lessons to be learned,” Craig said.

On April 19, 2016, while my colleagues and I were immersed in the gymnastics investigation, Ashley and Craig filed a joint petition to terminate the guardianship. It was granted a month later.

At 26 years old, for the first time in her life, Ashley could control her own destiny.

Ending the guardianship changed the dynamics of her relationship with her father.

“Now he can’t throw up that guardianship paper every time I do something or don’t do it the way he think I should do it or whatever,” Ashley said.

That summer, Ashley’s former adoptive father Earl “Butch” Kimmerling — the man who sexually abused her as a child — was released from prison. He had served less than half of his 40-year sentence.

Butch’s wife, Sandy, who had rejected Ashley, accepted him back into her life.

For a lot of reasons, Ashley wanted to leave Indiana. One of them, she said, was she didn’t trust herself to live nearby when Butch got out.

“Let me just get as far away as I can just in case I do snap, crackle, pop,” she said.

She wanted to move to Atlanta. It was the only place Ashley had ever been on her own. And she thought lots of black people were doing well there.

Then, in August 2016, Ashley and Craig had another argument about money. She wanted to change her Social Security deposits to go into her account rather than his.

I’m grown, and I’m asking for something that’s mine, she argued. Why should you care?

That’s it, she said Craig replied in frustration. You’re just going to have to go.

Ashley knew he didn’t mean it. He had said those words before. But she was sick of her father holding the condo over her head. And Ashley, who had once been abused by her white foster father, wondered what role race played in his behavior.

In the moment, Ashley said she thought, of course white people would never give a black person something and really let it be theirs. “Of course they’re going to keep their hand on it some kind of way,” she said, “just to put you in your place, just to let you know basically, ‘Yeah, I did that for you. Don’t you forget. You owe me. Every time I call, you’d better pick up the phone. Every time I need you about your brothers, you’d better be there.’”

She told Craig, “You know what, I’ll be gone by Friday.”

Ashley put most of her things in storage, packed the rest in her car and headed south.

Ashley checked into a hotel in the Buckhead district of Atlanta. For the first time, she realized hotels cost $150 a night.

She felt free. Then she fell apart.

“I just went into the hotel room, had the rest of my little stuff in the car and I just broke down in tears because I just felt alone — a feeling that I didn’t even think I was capable of feeling,” Ashley recalled, sobbing. “I felt alone. I felt like, ‘OK, my backbone is gone.’ You know? And I did it to myself.”

She said her first night in Atlanta was a wake-up call.

“Sometimes you just get so mad and you don’t even realize what you’re doing until after you did it,” Ashley said.

She talked to Craig on the phone.

“Well, maybe you just need to pray,” he told her. “Maybe you just need to do something to get yourself more grounded.”

Ashley filled out job applications online and snagged a job pretty quickly. The job meant she could secure an apartment, which meant stability. That stability is what I expected to witness when I came to Atlanta in 2017 and found her in jail. But more than a year before my trip, it had already begun to unravel.

For years, Ashley had been driving without a license. She had four prior convictions in Indiana for doing so when she was issued a ticket in Georgia and received probation.

“It paved the way for me to make more poor choices off of that,” she said, “because it just pissed me off so bad I just wasn’t even thinking anymore. Like hold up, I was trying to go home. What are you talking about, probation?”

Ashley attributes her repeated mistakes to fetal alcohol syndrome, which can affect reasoning and judgment. She also said she can cycle through 20 emotions a day and never knows how she will feel, which she said made adhering to the terms of court-ordered probation difficult.

In the months before my trip, Ashley failed to meet the terms of probation or show up for court hearings. She gave police a false name. And she was wanted on an outstanding warrant.

The night before my flight, Ashley went to smoke a blunt with a man staying in the Econo Lodge at Six Flags in Austell, Georgia. They argued. Police were called. She was arrested on that warrant. The man was also arrested.

“I was sitting there, like, ‘Jesus, why today?’” Ashley said.

During our interview at the jail, Ashley said incarceration forced her to confront what she was doing to herself.

“We have to look within and understand that sometimes in becoming a victim, you can also become the problem,” she said.

Ashley reflected on her complicated relationship with her father. She said Craig was right about her problems with money, making good choices and showing self-worth. But she vacillated between appreciation for all her father had done for her and resentment for his propensity for control, which in some ways prevented her from learning life skills.

“Every time I turn around, there’s safety nets,” Ashley said. “I just can’t fall correctly. And so I think part of me wanted to try it on my own, just to see. Because at the time, like I said, I had ideas that weren’t quite right. You know, I thought, ‘Well, if he’s just out the way, then maybe I’ll be able to do things on my own.’ That’s not what happened.”

After Mykal and I returned to Indiana, Craig kept me in the loop on Ashley’s situation. In a series of texts, he told me Ashley lost her job while she was incarcerated. She became homeless. Low on cash. Overwhelmed.

She stayed with a friend.

On Sept. 27, 2017, Ashley left me a voicemail, and we later spoke. She said she was ready to talk again. I booked another trip for the middle of October.

In conversations before the trip, Craig told me Ashley was back on the street, but seemed OK. He booked a hotel room for Ashley for the night Mykal and I would be there. We would pick her up.

The day before our trip, Craig reached out and said Ashley wasn’t responding to his texts. I hoped she would show up at the hotel where we had agreed to meet.

I called Ashley when Mykal and I landed in Atlanta. A rapid busy signal buzzed in my ear. I sent her a text. No answer.

Mykal and I hoped her cellphone was just out of minutes.

Mykal was optimistic. I was less so. I ran Ashley’s name through inmate locators for nearby jails. Her name didn’t show up on any of them. Mykal guided our rental car, a black Nissan Altima, to the Residence Inn in Buckhead. We looped through the parking lot. No Ashley. I walked inside. Still no Ashley.

Craig and I exchanged a string of texts. He canceled the hotel reservation.

“Why did you cancel it?” I asked. “Check-in isn’t until 3 p.m.”

“I can always rebook something,” he replied, “but I don’t want to lose my certificate that I graciously used for her. The hotel has a message for her to call me.”

He had little faith she would show up. And he wasn’t panicking about where she was spending the night.

“My gut says she’s MIA,” Craig said via text. “I’ve lived with these ‘surprises’ for 15 years. In (sic) sorry you’re now involved. She can figure out a way to call.”

My search for Ashley began in earnest.

We checked her social media accounts and every former address we had for her. I called court and police officials. I ran her name through inmate locators.

I didn’t tell Craig this, but the only other places I could think to call were the coroners’ offices. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If that was what had happened to her, it could wait one more day.

“Any news,” Craig asked that night.

“None,” I replied. “I’ve done almost everything I can think of.”

I left Atlanta without finding Ashley.

Ashley contacted me months later to apologize for disappearing. She said she was preparing to begin speaking publicly about trauma, and she wanted to know if I still wanted to share her story. I said I did. We stayed in touch.

The next time I saw Ashley was in July 2018. Mykal and I met her at a motel off Fulton Industrial Boulevard in Atlanta.

She lived in room 35. The air conditioner unit was purring when we walked in, a nice reprieve from the Georgia heat. The TV volume was low, with cartoons on the screen. Paint peeled off the walls in some areas, and there was a stain on the small round wooden table and on the carpeting. The bottom of the table was dirty, and a phone sat underneath it on the floor. The knob on a closet door hung askew.

Ashley kept her clothes neatly folded in a black suitcase against the wall — a silent reminder not to get too comfortable. She’d sold her car to remove the temptation to drive without a license. She paid her rent every day, so she could leave whenever she wanted.

Ashley had been living here for a few months. It wasn’t much, but it would have to suffice until the apartment she wanted opened up.

The room cost $65 a day, or roughly $2,000 a month. There was no weekly rate.

Ashley worked part time, but she said her three days a week wasn’t enough. She said a friend covered the rest.

“He helps me out, but I have to do what I have to do,” Ashley said.

It’s different, she said, because she likes him.

“I’ve done it before where, you know, you’re just looking at the guy and I would never touch you on a rainy day,” she said. “But since I need the money, ‘OK.’ And all the time you’re like, ‘Oh, ew, gross. Don’t touch me, stop.’”

Back then, Ashley said she needed the money to pay her phone bill, storage and housing. But those acts of survival took something from her.

“When I said that when an adult touches a child and it takes their soul and their innocence, let me tell you what it do when you do it to yourself,” Ashley said. “When you sell yourself out every day. Every day. Every day. Every day.

“It do a lot more than being molested, I’ll tell you that much. Because when you, when you do something to yourself, the level of shame and guilt is times 10.”

Ashley said she doesn’t have to do that anymore. But others do. She also told me she’d struggled with her health but is now taking care of herself. She has since moved out of that motel and is back in Indiana.

That Atlanta trip was the first time I felt like I was meeting the real Ashley.

Sharing such intensely personal details took courage.

In Atlanta, I saw the Ashley who was a caring friend. The loving sister. I sat with her in church, where tears streaked her cheeks as she prayed. I listened to her frustration with a society that makes it difficult for people to come back from mistakes.

She created a mission statement: “No Shame, Know Shame.”

After Mykal and I left Atlanta, Ashley attempted to take another step toward healing. She confronted her past. She and Craig had already revisited significant locations in Anderson. She’d reconnected with her biological mother Kim Guiden and stood by her side in the hospital.

Now she craved closure for what Butch and Sandy Kimmerling did to her so many years ago. Ashley hasn’t spoken to Butch since his 1999 arrest for abusing her. She hasn’t spoken to Sandy since shortly after the older woman gave Ashley away.

Sandy messaged Ashley once in 2013 asking to meet, but Ashley wasn’t ready then. She sent Sandy a Facebook message last fall.

“If possible, I would like to get together and talk and gain closure to the past?” Ashley wrote. “I’ve been healing. I’m becoming an advocate against sexual abuse. I have a few questions. I would appreciate the chance to ask them. I’ve been on a 3 year healing journey after trauma based therapy and need to have closure to have forgiveness. Also that I would like my childhood photos. Thank you for taking the time to read. Looking forward to hearing back.”

Sandy never replied.

I asked Butch and Sandy to speak with me for this series. Both declined to be interviewed.

“Honey, everything we have to say is behind us,” Sandy told me when I visited the couple’s home.

Sandy said she didn’t want to hear what the series was about.

“We’re done,” she said. “It’s all over.”

But it isn’t over. Not for Ashley.

Her story did not end simply because it no longer fit the narratives others wanted to tell.

Ashley was more than the girl described in child welfare records, police reports and court files. She was more than the darkness she described in her own journal entries.

Ashley said she wanted to tell her story to help others.

She said societal systems are often ill-equipped to deal with the complexity of issues that manifest from trauma. And people too often talk as if there are simple solutions. Pick yourself up. Get over it. Let it go.

Ashley said she’s heard those refrains all too often. Because the emotional damage caused by trauma is invisible, people often assign blame rather than offering support.

“I believe people empathize with people with visible disabilities more than they do someone like me who looks normally balanced,” Ashley wrote to me. “People do not understand the difference of a physical, intellectual or emotional disability. They are all extremely different and should be treated as such. … All disabilities deserve respect and understanding.”

Earlier, Ashley told me trauma is difficult to talk about and that most depictions of it are not raw enough to reflect reality. “It’s never really as honest as it should be,” she said. “I wanted to bring the 100 percent truth to the situation so that people understand if you do want to adopt a child with trauma or if you are a person with trauma … once it’s done, it’s done.”

No longer did Ashley think she could be “fixed.”

Trauma, she said, lasts forever. Others hurt her. She hurt herself. She hurt others.

But she could learn and make herself better.

“It’s just something that you have to learn to deal with,” Ashley said, “just like if you got a leg chopped off, you have to learn how to still move around regardless of it. You can’t sit there, ‘Ugh, my leg’s gone. Forget life.’ You just can’t do that, you know what I mean? And that’s just what I want people to understand and remember because when you give up on yourself, who else can help you?”

Ashley’s story is important, not because it is extraordinary, although aspects of it are; but because countless others across the country must navigate their own trauma, long after society assumes justice has been done.

Trauma affects our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our criminal justice system, workplaces and virtually every other aspect of life.

“A lot of people that go through what I go through, we walk around with a chip on our shoulder. We do think, you know, people owe us this, owe us that, because nobody was there for us then,” Ashley said, adding that trauma affects everyone. “Because if you don’t look at it any other way, people who are out here committing crimes to other people, they were a victim one time.”

Now 29, Ashley still struggles with anger and trust. She and Craig still argue from time to time, but she says he is always there for her. She realizes she and Craig have both done the best they could do.

She told me she’s in the middle of her healing journey. She’s more independent.

She wants to be an advocate. She’s already spoken at one conference. She wants to do more. She dreams of opening a home care business called No Shame to Cleaning, a play off her personal mission statement. Eventually, she imagines the company employing former sex workers.

Ashley, who spent so long running from her past, is now talking about a future focused on others.

“So is that your happy ending?” I asked. “Building that business, speaking to other people?”

“I would not say a happy ending,” she replied. “I would say it’s an ending.”

“Is there a happy ending?”

“No,” she said. “No. I — no. No. What is that? No. Everybody just has an ending. Like what?”

“They don’t have happy endings?” I asked. “There’s no white horse riding off into the sunset?”

“I don’t think there’s no bad ending,” Ashley answered. “I don’t think there’s a good ending. I just think everyone’s destined to have their whatever it’s going to be. So we all just work toward that, and that’s what it is.””

Ashley finds the freedom to fall — and to discover her destiny

[Indy Star 4/25/19 by Marisa Kwiatkowski]

REFORM Puzzle Pieces

Update: “An Indiana man who crusaded against gay adoptions and later was convicted of molesting his adoptive daughter told state parole officials on Tuesday that he molested four other children.

Earl “Butch” Kimmerling, 71, made the admission during a hearing before the Indiana Parole Board, which later revoked his parole and sent him back to prison Tuesday. He appeared before the board in Indianapolis via video uplink from the Pendleton Correctional Facility.

“How many victims over your lifetime have you had?” Board Chair Gwendolyn M. Horth asked.

“Oh,” Kimmerling said, pausing between words, “five.”

Continue reading this story with our news gathering partners at The Indianapolis Star.”

https://fox59.com/2019/06/11/former-foster-dad-who-fought-gay-adoption-admits-to-molesting-four-more-children/

[Fox 59 6/11/19 by Indy Star]