Fear of Our Father Read online

  FEAR OF

  OUR

  FATHER

  A True Story of Abuse, Murder, and Family Ties

  LISA BONNICE AND

  STACEY M. KANANEN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  FEAR OF OUR FATHER

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the authors

  Copyright © 2013 by Stacey M. Kananen and Lisa Bonnice.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61971-1

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley premium edition / June 2013

  Cover design by Jason Gill.

  Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.

  Most Berkley Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales, promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs.

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  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  INTRODUCTION by Lisa Bonnice

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1: If Only

  CHAPTER 2: A Safe Haven

  CHAPTER 3: The Earliest Years

  CHAPTER 4: Monson, Maine

  CHAPTER 5: The Minnesota Years

  CHAPTER 6: Susan Goes First

  CHAPTER 7: Daniel

  CHAPTER 8: A Witness for the Prosecution

  CHAPTER 9: A Dull Roar

  CHAPTER 10: Rickie Pleads Guilty

  CHAPTER 11: Thrown Under the Bus

  CHAPTER 12: Hussey Gets His Wish

  CHAPTER 13: Descent into Hell

  CHAPTER 14: A Nightmare Come True

  CHAPTER 15: The Sunshine State

  CHAPTER 16: Arizona

  CHAPTER 17: The Wedding Present

  CHAPTER 18: Freedom from Terror

  CHAPTER 19: Out on Bond

  CHAPTER 20: Life Under House Arrest

  CHAPTER 21: The Year It All Fell Apart

  CHAPTER 22: A Family Divided

  CHAPTER 23: The Rug Gets Pulled…

  CHAPTER 24: Rickie’s “Confession”

  CHAPTER 25: “We Had a Part in Mother’s Leaving …”

  CHAPTER 26: Led Away in Cuffs

  CHAPTER 27: Pretrial Prep

  CHAPTER 28: The Last Delay

  CHAPTER 29: State of Florida v. Kananen

  CHAPTER 30: Father and Son

  CHAPTER 31: My Brother, My Protector

  CHAPTER 32: The Worst of It

  CHAPTER 33: Homicide Hussey

  CHAPTER 34: “SHE IS MAD NOW!”

  CHAPTER 35: The Truth Is the Truth Is the Truth

  CHAPTER 36: The Verdict

  EPILOGUE: Reach the Beach

  A NOTE from Stacy Lannert

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PHOTOGRAPHS

  We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.

  VIKTOR E. FRANKL, QUOTING SENTIMENTS

  EXPRESSED BY FORMER AUSCHWITZ PRISONERS,

  MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING

  INTRODUCTION

  by Lisa Bonnice

  I met Stacey Kananen less than two months after the police found her mother’s body buried in her Orlando, Florida, backyard. I had just escaped the “real world” to live the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle, after working for five years in an NBC-affiliated newsroom as their MSNBC affiliate producer. I lived at and worked for Gulf Coast Resort, a nudist resort near Tampa. Stacey was the girlfriend of Susan Cowan, my boss’s daughter. Susan was going to be assisting her mother in managing the resort, and Stacey was to be in charge of the restaurant.

  Gulf Coast Resort was a small, close-knit community of about one hundred houses and eighty RV sites—the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else’s business, like a naked Mayberry—and we had all heard about what had happened in Orlando. Stacey was being crucified in the media, even though she was not arrested. Everyone at the resort was dying to be the possessor of the world’s best gossip, but the gravity of the tragedy prevented most people from asking Stacey too many personal questions.

  Understandably, Stacey didn’t share any details about the crimes or the rumors that began surfacing about the horrible abuse that had been heaped upon her by her father. We were strangers to her, and it really was none of anyone’s business. She confided in a few friends as she got to know everyone, with bits and pieces, but no one at the resort learned the full story until her murder trial, years later. Even then, only a small portion of Stacey’s life story was told—just enough to ensure a verdict of “Not Guilty.”

  All hell broke loose in May 2007, when police officers swarmed the resort after her brother pleaded guilty to two murders and accused her of helping him. For the next few days, reporters parked their live trucks outside the gates of the resort and were denied entrance, so news helicopters flew overhead because it was the only way for them to get pictures for the evening news. Stories of the lesbian accused of murdering her parents and fleeing to a nudist resort, in their viewing area, were just too titillating for the press to ignore.

  As I got to know her, I was witness to Stacey’s amazing ability to survive anything that was thrown her way. She endured endless depositions and hearings, gossiping gawkers, and the hurtful doubts about her innocence by even friends and family. Her own brother was accused of a crime so heinous that it would snap the mind of an ordinary person.

  Between the time I met Stacey in February 2004 and her trial in March 2010, I watched, as objectively as possible, as this incredible woman waded through the story you’re about to read. I attended her bond hearings and trial, and have no doubt that the verdict was fair and accurate.

  Stacey had no interest whatsoever in writing a book until six months after the trial, once some major therapy and healing work was begun. I had cajoled her on numerous occasions, as the story was unfolding, twisting and turning, “If you ever want to write a book about this amazing story, please let me be your coauthor!” I didn’t realize, at the time, just how bad it was, growing up in her family. She kept that information to herself. I was mostly fascinated by the intriguing story line I was witnessing. Once the trial commenced, and I realized how profoundly the Kananen family was abused, I dropped the subject out of respect for what she went through. But then, in August 2010, she approached me and said she had decided to write a book and wanted me to help her. As we worked on the book, through the untold hours of interviews and research, I was humbled by the trust Stacey showed in me, shari
ng with me painful and personal stories, which in the telling allowed me a deeper insight into her inner psyche.

  I have a very large respect for Stacey Kananen and her passionate vision of becoming an advocate for abused children. I wish Stacey nothing but success in achieving her dream of helping to find nonjudgmental, humane solutions for families, including the abusive members, to find a way to live in peace and nonviolence.

  PROLOGUE

  I lived with my father for twenty-two years—from the day I was born until the day he disappeared on September 11, 1988. He was later found buried under the cement floor of his own garage in Orlando, Florida. He had been killed by a single bullet to the head. He was such a hateful son of a bitch that no one reported him missing. His body wasn’t found until fifteen years later, on December 22, 2003, three months after my mother mysteriously disappeared, also on September 11, when a search for her began. His body was discovered hours before they found my mom’s body buried in my backyard. Her death was a horrible tragedy. His, not so much.

  Out of those two decades with my father, the hardest were the five months that we lived in Viola, Arkansas, when I was eleven. During these months, he was especially out of control. He had always been extremely violent and cruel—beating any and all of us, oftentimes just on a whim—but now his violence was tinged with madness. The violence itself hadn’t necessarily escalated, but his enjoyment of our suffering had. I’d seen him kick my mother in the head until she was unconscious. I’d seen him play Russian roulette with a loaded pistol against my brother’s ear. I was afraid, every single day, that he was literally going to kill someone in our family. He told us he could and would, and we believed him.

  He had already moved the five of us—himself, my mother, my brother, my sister, and me—from state to state a few times, always giving us only a couple hours to pack for each move. I got off the school bus one January afternoon in Minnesota to find we were moving to Arkansas. Until then, I had lived up north in Monson, Maine, and Clarissa, Minnesota, so I was used to hearing the accents of New England Yankees or Minnesota Swedes. My grades started slipping once we moved to Arkansas because I couldn’t understand my sixth-grade teacher’s Southern drawl.

  I was always motivated to do well in school because high marks meant fewer beatings. With my face buried in my textbooks, hidden away in a cramped bedroom I shared with my sister, Cheryl, who is older than me by two years, I was less likely to be singled out than whoever might be in the living room while he sullenly drank his vodka in front of the TV. I learned at a young age to become invisible.

  But once I started sixth grade in Arkansas, I attracted unwelcome attention to myself, completely by accident. My new teacher asked us to turn to a page in our English books, and I had no idea what she said, her vocabulary was so full of “yawls” and “chirrens.” Once she noticed that I wasn’t flipping pages, she flew at me like an angry bee, assuming that I was misbehaving.

  I wasn’t used to being in trouble in school, so I panicked and reacted the way I did at home when I sensed danger: I froze, went to my inner numb place, and started counting syllables on my fingers, waiting for it to be over. I had taught myself to count out how many syllables were in the words I was hearing in order to distract myself from painful physical experiences. Before I knew it, I was in the principal’s office. There, I found out why my teacher was so angry.

  Terrified, I explained what happened, but he was convinced that I was just being a smart-aleck Yankee brat. When he picked up the phone to call my parents, I burst into tears and begged, “Please don’t call my parents. I’m sorry. I’ll do what the teacher says.”

  What I was afraid to say was, “Please don’t call my parents because if my father hears that I got in trouble in school, he’ll beat me. He’s been molesting us kids for as long as I can remember. My life is a violent hell, and since we’ve moved to Arkansas, his abuse has ramped itself up to surreal levels. And if you tell him I misbehaved, it may literally be the last time you ever see me.”

  Miraculously, the principal agreed to put down the phone. I was assigned a guardian angel in the form of a “study buddy” who helped me through the rest of sixth grade. The surface wound had received a bandage, but the underlying cancer had not been diagnosed or treated.

  In hindsight, I can see that the incident in the principal’s office was one of many possible turning points in my life. It created one of those “if only …” moments that I sometimes wonder about: How would my life have ended up if only that principal had recognized my panic-filled cry for help? If only I had felt safe enough to tell him why he couldn’t call my house, could the abuse have been stopped? If so, who could I have become, if I had a normal life?

  “If only …” is a big subject. If only the laws were different back then, then my mother might not have eventually been murdered. If only that principal—or anyone else, for that matter—recognized the signs of abuse and had intervened in some way, then my brother might not be in jail right now for killing both of our parents. If only I’d felt that someone, anyone, could rescue us, then I might have spoken up. If I had, I might not have been raped for the first time by my father—shortly after this incident—with the cold barrel of a loaded gun in my mouth.

  CHAPTER 1

  If Only …

  March 12, 2010, should have been the happiest day of my life. It was the day that I was declared “Not Guilty” by a jury of my peers. Three years earlier I was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of my mother—a crime committed by my brother, Rickie, who told police that I helped him kill our parents. After three years under house arrest, with a GPS tracking device strapped to my ankle, I was finally set free. I honestly believed, while hoping and praying for this very moment, that to be exonerated would be the greatest moment of my life and my troubles would be behind me.

  I was wrong. Now that the trial was over—and the distractions of building a legal defense were out of the way—I could see, with a fresh pair of eyes, the devastation that growing up as Richard Alfred Kananen Sr.’s daughter had left behind. It was like looking at a bombed-out war zone. Nothing was left and I had to rebuild my life from scratch. My parents were dead. Rickie was in jail and my sister, Cheryl, was convinced of my guilt. I still had Susan, my life partner of over twenty years, but even that relationship was strained to the point of almost breaking from the stress of the trial. My future looked pretty bleak, on what should have been the “happiest” day of my life.

  For the first time ever, I decided to go to therapy. Until then, I kept the bizarre story of life with my father bottled up inside of me because I saw no need to talk about it. I only told, on the witness stand, the absolute bare minimum of my life story—just enough to make sure that I was exonerated—and then only at the insistent urging of my defense attorney. It was done. The abuse was over. I survived it, and I preferred to move forward, never looking back.

  I could tolerate the frequent headaches, caused by being slammed up against so many walls; the ulcers, from eating myself up inside; the painful and difficult menstrual cycles, from the damage done to my internal organs by years of sexual abuse. I could tolerate being unable to sleep deeply, as long as nothing evil happened anymore during the night. All of that I could live with, because it was mild in comparison to how I got to be that way. As long as my life was no longer in danger, life was a piece of cake and I was fine.

  Therapy was difficult, at first. It was bad enough that I was forced to share intimate life experiences in a trial that aired on national television, stories that I had never even shared with Susan, because I never wanted her to feel my pain. Now I had to tell it all to a stranger who wasn’t about to let me get away with my lifesaving avoidance techniques and coping mechanisms. I found it more difficult to talk about these incidents than to actually experience them. When they were happening, they were suddenly and violently forced on me—so they couldn’t be avoided—but to think about them later and tell someone, I had control over whether they got to be relive
d.

  It was easier to live through the pain and brutality and try to forget about it than it was to analyze ways that I had somehow allowed it to happen. Never mind that the first time I was molested, I was four and I couldn’t fight my father off. Never mind that he was a madman who did, literally, whatever he wanted. Never mind that even my mother, a full-grown adult, was too frightened to defy him when he came toward her own children.

  Never mind all that: I still felt it was my fault that I had been abused. If only I had done something to stop him. If only I had told someone along the way. If only I had run away when I was old enough. I could drive myself crazy, second-guessing, and that’s why I finally decided to go to therapy, so I could stop torturing myself with the question I’d never find an answer for: “If only …”

  The problem with “if only” is that abusers have their own “if onlys”: “If only you would do what you’re told, I wouldn’t have to hit you.” We who are abused are told that we’re getting what we deserve. We learn that no one would help us because no one would believe us. And if we did dare to ask for help and it backfired, we had better be prepared to face the consequences of death, or worse. In my father’s house, there really was a “fate worse than death.” There were times I wished he would just kill me and get it over with.

  People who haven’t experienced abuse have trouble understanding. They ask questions like, “Well, why didn’t you just leave? I would never have put up with that!” Worse yet, some accuse my mother by saying, “If I was your mother, I would have done everything I could to protect my kids! What sort of horrible mother lets her children be raped and beaten?” Those who have not experienced the trauma of abuse simply don’t understand that people like my mom know that the consequences for defending the children could be worse than what the kids are already experiencing. What happens if he kills her, for example, and who will keep her children from even worse abuse? At least she can take a beating for them once in a while, or tend to their wounds after he’s done with them. Abusers have the power to convince their victims that there is nowhere to go, no one who cares, and no one who would ever help. And what happens if she does leave? There’s the knowledge that he will absolutely track her down and punish her in ways more heinous than she can imagine. Of that, there is no doubt, at all.