Part 3: Ashley reveals her abuse and loses everyone she loves

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.

Read the paper tomorrow

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.”

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Craig Peterson, alongside his sons, Michael (right), 6, and Andrew, 7, attend a rally for children's issues at the Indiana State Capitol in 2001. (INDYSTAR FILE IMAGE)

‘A punch in the gut’

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.”

"We know from studies and statistics that abused children are more likely to be abusive parents than non-abused children. That's a fact. And that's why it's so important to have good reporting so that we can try and break that cycle by intervening as quickly and as fully as possible to address the issues, then I think we stand a better chance of breaking the cycle." – Jack Brinkman, who was the judge for Ashley Peterson's Children In Need of Services (CHINS) case in the 1990s

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.

A prayer for Ashley

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.”

‘An outrageous betrayal of trust’

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.

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Butch Kimmerling buries his head in his hands while talking about the molestation of his adopted daughter, Ashley. Attorney John Erickson III sits nearby. (INDYSTAR FILE IMAGE)

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.”

‘He is mean to me’

For 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.

‘I felt like I didn't fit in’ 

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?”

Call USA TODAY reporter Marisa Kwiatkowski at (317) 444-6135. Follow her on Twitter: @IndyMarisaK.

[This article was originally published by IndyStar.]