Later that afternoon, when Sarah arrived to pick up Karly, Delynn told her the same thing: Sarah needed to get Karly to a doctor to evaluate her. “She’s tired all the time and, look, see how her hair is coming out in patches?” Delynn said, pointing to the bald spots.
But Sarah, defensive, acted as if Delynn was making a mountain out of a molehill. She told Delynn she had spoken with her mother about the hair loss. According to Sarah, her own sister had suffered extensive hair loss when she was the same age as Karly. Sarah said the sort of hair loss that Karly was experiencing “was normal in our family.”
Such a statement made absolutely no sense. Any genetic propensity toward hair thinning or balding was not passed along to Karly from her Aunt Kim or her Grandma Carol or Grandpa Gene. There was no genetic legacy passed along to Karly via the Brill family at all. Sarah was adopted.
Unfortunately, Delynn was unaware of the embedded deceit.
Leaning over the table at the bakery where Delynn and I sat long after our meals had grown cold, Delynn took a sip of Pepsi, pushed her brunette hair back off her high forehead, and exhaled a deep sigh. Her regret over Karly’s death was palpable.
I waited. Silence no longer makes me uncomfortable. Grief will not be bossed, coerced, or cajoled. It comes and goes as it pleases, and if you try to hurry it along, it will refuse to leave.
A few minutes passed where the only noise was the clanging of dishes and the chatter of people trying to decide what to order, whether to have that slice of apple pie. After a few minutes, Delynn jumped back into her story.
“It was almost like God was talking to me. Karly said, ‘Delynn, my daddy hits me. My daddy bites me.’”
Delynn said now she was sure Karly had to be talking about Sarah’s new boyfriend. “I knew she couldn’t mean David. I had never seen him act in any way wrong.” But when she first called authorities, Delynn had to tell them exactly, verbatim, what Karly said. “I was just sick,” she said. “I knew it meant I would get David into trouble, and I knew Karly loved her daddy.”
Delynn said she never believed David was the one harming Karly.
“I did not trust what Karly was saying when she said, ‘My daddy bites me, hits me,’” Delynn said. “I just had this gut feeling she could not tell who it was for some reason and maybe she was saying ‘Daddy’ in order to tell somebody, but not to tell on the somebody she was very scared of.”
Or could it be that Karly’s abuser coerced her into hiding the truth?
Chapter Seventeen
Dr. Shanilka deSoyza agreed to meet me at a coffee shop near the campus of Oregon State University. The doctor, a native of Sri Lanka, was Karly’s doctor from birth.
An afternoon rush crowded the shop. I chose a seat near the storefront window, put down my bag, and placed my order. I was halfway through my latte when a small-boned woman in dark slacks, a periwinkle-blue sweater and black flats approached me and introduced herself.
Dr. deSoyza’s hair is black, cropped short, stylish but functional, perfect for a mother on the run. She has two children. Her oldest child, a girl, is a high-functioning autistic. She told me that and much more as students, fueled by caffeine, hovered over newspapers, laptops, and textbooks.
The doctor maintained a professional demeanor but she also had a vulnerable quality to her. It rose to the surface the minute she began to talk about her own children.
She was in her fourth year of medical school in Cincinnati, Ohio, when her first child was born.
“I had no idea she wouldn’t be a typical child,” deSoyza said. Her daughter would not sleep or take a bottle. Residency turned into a nightmare; overwhelmed, deSoyza left medical school. She and her husband relocated thousands of miles away to Hermiston, Oregon, a town where they had friends.
Five years passed before deSoyza felt comfortable enough to leave the pastoral life of Hermiston to return to the tyranny of residency. The couple returned to Ohio, but planned to raise their family in Oregon as soon as deSoyza finished her program.
They needed to relocate to an area where their daughter could get the best medical and educational care possible. So the couple settled in Corvallis in 2001 and deSoyza went to work for Samaritan Health Services.
Dr. deSoyza was Sarah and David’s general physician. When David mentioned that they needed to find a pediatrician for the baby they were expecting, Dr. deSoyza told David that she was capable of treating children. Dr. deSoyza had seen her share of children in her practice. For a time, she treated the children at Corvallis’ Children’s Farm Home, a residential treatment facility for children with behavioral problems.
The family doctor was very familiar with Karly, and her parents. “Karly was a little girl with a big personality,” Dr. deSoyza said. “A little bit mischievous.”
She knew David and Sarah were divorced. Dr. deSoyza considered David a very good father. Sarah, however, often seemed overwhelmed. “She was flaky,” deSoyza said. “But I’ve dealt with moms a lot flakier than Sarah.”
After the couple split, it was usually David who brought Karly in for medical care. Karly saw the doctor in June 2004 because David wanted to discuss some digestive issues Karly had been experiencing. Dr. deSoyza didn’t see Karly again until November 17, 2004. This time it was at the request of an official with Department of Human Services Child Welfare, who wanted Dr. deSoyza to evaluate the child for signs of possible child abuse.
Before making that first call to the state’s abuse hotline, Delynn had attempted to collect more information from Karly.
“Does your momma work at night?” she asked Karly.
Karly nodded yes.
“Who takes care of you when your momma is gone?”
“Shawn does,” Karly said.
“Do you like it when Shawn takes care of you?” Delynn asked.
“No, Shawn spanks me,” Karly whimpered.
That was exactly the answer Delynn expected. Suspicious of Sarah and her lifestyle, Delynn needed to get as many details as she could. She repeated what Karly had said back to the child in hopes that Karly would elaborate.
“Shawn spanks you?”
“No,” Karly said, shaking her head. She was clearly agitated now, panicky even. “My daddy spanks me,” she said, and began to cry. “I’m tired, Delynn.”
Troubled that she had upset the fragile child, Delynn said, “You eat a little now and then you can lay down on the couch, okay?”
Karly nodded.
When David called after lunch, Delynn told him Karly had been listless all morning long, preferring sleep rather than playing with the other children. She did not eat her lunch.
“You need to get her in to a see a doctor,” Delynn said.
“Okay,” David said. “I’ll do that.”
“You know as a daycare provider I’m required by law to report the changes I’m seeing in Karly,” Delynn warned.
“You do what you need to do,” David said. He was at his wits end trying to figure out what was wrong with Karly. David had asked Delynn if she had ever seen hair loss like Karly’s before. She had not. David welcomed the idea of the complaints about Karly coming from someone besides himself. Any time he questioned her, Sarah would accuse him of being jealous and controlling. David didn’t know if Karly had some undetermined illness or if she was miserable about her mother’s new living arrangement. He knew, however, that Sarah lived in a constant state of flux, changing jobs, changing boyfriends, and changing living arrangements every few months.
On Tuesday, November 16, 2004, Matt Stark was working at the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS), the state agency responsible for protecting children from neglect and abuse, when he first received a referral for assessment alleging possible physical abuse regarding Karla Isabelle Ruth Sheehan.
That next day, in the early afternoon, Stark called Delynn, who carefully outlined her concerns: Karly’s erratic sleeping pattern, her hair loss and an occasional odd bruising. Delynn told Stark she’d insisted the parents get Karly in to see a
doctor immediately. David had called to say Karly had an appointment that very evening with Dr. deSoyza at Samaritan Health Services in Corvallis. Oh, yeah, and there was one more thing Stark should know: Sarah, Karly’s mama, was upset and she was a force to be reckoned with.
“David told her I’d called the state and that it was her fault,” Delynn said. “Sarah accused me of getting David mad at her. In the meantime, I’m looking at their daughter asleep on my couch, thinking, why is Karly sleeping for six hours here? Why is she behaving this way?”
Stark collected background information from Delynn. After discussing the case with one of his coworkers, he called Detective Karin Stauder of the Corvallis Police Department.
Stauder handled most of the child abuse cases for the police department and served on the Linn/Benton Counties Child Abuse Response Team (CART).The two discussed the case in detail. Then Stark called Dr. Carol Chervenak, the medical director for the child victim assessment center, known as the ABC (All Because Of Children) House, in nearby Albany.
“I asked Dr. Chervenak for some guidance,” Stark said. “And I reported the disturbed sleeping patterns and hair loss specifically.”
Dr. Chervenak should have evaluated Karly. That was standard operating procedure for any suspected case of child abuse—but Stark made an exception, allowing David and Sarah Sheehan to take Karly to see her doctor instead.
Stark’s decision proved to be a critical blunder, an error in judgment in a long line of such miscalculations. The moment former District Attorney Scott Heiser referred to as a “failure.”
Another key piece of information overlooked was that Sarah’s live-in situation had recently changed. There was a new man in her life, and in Karly’s. Instead, Shawn Field was about the last person investigators suspected. He was a hometown boy. His daddy was a longtime employee of HP. He came from good stock. Shawn had yard signs and bumper stickers on his car urging people to vote conservatively—to protect family values.
Dr. deSoyza agreed to see Karly at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 17, 2004. Shortly before Sarah arrived to pick up Karly from Rugrats, Delynn attempted to pry information from the child. “I asked how she got the ‘owies’ on her head. I hadn’t noticed them the day before, but they were little scabby areas. She told me, ‘My dad did it. He bites me.’”
Delynn was more confused than ever. She drafted a letter for the doctor, insisted Sarah read and initialed it.
Nov. 17, 2004
To whom it may concern:
Today Karly slept over 5 hours at daycare. On Friday, Nov. 12, she slept 4 hours (2 naps). Tuesday Nov. 16, she slept 4 hours (2 naps) as well. Karly is requesting to take naps. She complains of being tired. She fell asleep 2 times before lunch 2 different days the week of Nov. 8 while she was sitting up watching “Barney.”
These 2 days are NOT the same days I have allowed her to nap in the morning. Karly has been eating very well (not as much today) and requests “more” food often. Karly is listless and will not wake up from noise (other children) and seems uninterested in childcare routine and activities.
She fell asleep (after asking to go take a nap) on the couch at 9:20 a.m. and I could not wake her up until lunchtime. She ate sparingly and requested to go back to sleep. I laid her down again at 1:00 and she fell back to sleep at approx. 1:15 p.m. She will not wake up readily to prompting and at 3:30 I tried to wake her. She would not wake up. Her hair loss is noticeable and I am concerned about her health. Delynn Zoller.
Delynn was the first person to file a report of possible child abuse. Had she failed to do so, Delynn could have been at crosshairs with the law herself.
David and Sarah had no idea a caseworker would join them at the doctor’s office. They were talking with Mona Schneider, Dr. deSoyza’s nurse, when Matt Stark showed up. A bookish-looking fellow with straight brown hair, Stark looks like the sort of person who might pluck a guitar and write songs rather than a man who spends his afternoons jotting graphic notes about child abuse.
After introducing himself, Stark asked David and Sarah what changes they had observed in Karly. As her parents talked, Stark scribbled some details about the toddler’s appearance that he would later translate for investigators:
“Karly had short, patchy hair and it appeared that she had lost some hair in areas concentrated to the left and right sides from the center of her head. I also noticed a yellowish spot at the top of Karly’s head. It appeared at first glance to be bruising, an aging bruise or fading bruise.”
Stark asked about Karly’s recent sleeping patterns and, of course, the hair loss. To his credit, Stark also asked Sarah whether or not Karly was ever left alone with her new boyfriend.
Was Karly ever left alone with Shawn? That one question had been burning the edges of David’s sanity for weeks now. David’s heart quickened as he searched Sarah’s eyes for any hint of deception. Surely, Sarah wouldn’t lie to a state investigator when the welfare of her own daughter was at risk. Sarah stared directly into David’s eyes as she answered Stark’s question.
“I was looking right at her as she told Matt Stark that Shawn was never alone with Karly,” David said. “Like an idiot I believed her. I didn’t think Shawn was ever left alone with Karly, so how could he possibly be harming her?”
David would later learn of other lies Sarah told him about Shawn. “I can’t believe all the lies she told to protect him from the start. She told me they met at a playground, but in fact it was at a bar.”
Stark was pleased with how cooperative David and Sarah were, but as soon as Stark told Sarah and David that he wanted to speak to Karly without them present, the little girl got visibly upset. Worried about Karly’s reaction, Stark asked Nurse Schneider to stick around and assist him with the interview. She did.
Karly never made eye contact with Stark, nor did she answer to any of his direct questions, even the simplest ones. The stuffed animals and the action figures the nurse had retrieved from a toy bin distracted her. Karly nodded her response to most of the questions. Whenever Stark attempted to ask more detailed questions, specifically, “Tell me about your father,” Karly immediately began crying for her daddy.
Stark ended the interview.
Dr. deSoyza greeted Karly warmly and noticed right away that the toddler wasn’t her typical self. During routine visits, well-baby checks and such, Karly was always talkative, vivacious, and full of mischief. Generally, she liked to pull out all the drawers and explore the exam room, but not on this night.
“Karly seemed a little clingy, a little subdued,” Dr. deSoyza noted. The doctor spotted a small bruise on Karly’s right cheek and hair loss at the crown of her head, toward the back. The spot wasn’t tender to the touch but it did have some discoloration.
After speaking with David and Sarah, Dr. deSoyza ordered blood work to test for lead poisoning. She also ordered an iron and thyroid panel. All the tests came back within normal range. Karly’s tiredness, bruising and hair loss were not the result of an underlying medical condition. At this visit and the ones that would follow, Dr. deSoyza was stumped by Karly’s ongoing symptoms. It was difficult for the family doctor to contemplate child abuse, given her long-standing relationship with David and Sarah. She regarded them as caring parents. It was her reluctance to entertain child abuse that would help throw the investigation off-course.
But that night, before leaving the doctor’s office, Matt Stark told David and Sarah that the state would continue its investigation, in cooperation with the Corvallis Police Department.
It was an ominous statement, and embedded within it was a warning for David.
Chapter Eighteen
The next day, Stark attended a meeting with other members of the Child Abuse Response Team (CART). He briefed the team, which included Detective Stauder, about the previous night’s visit with Karly and her parents. The team urged him to conduct another follow-up visit.
That afternoon Matt Stark paid a visit to Rugrats Daycare. Delynn had remembered one other thing she thought
Stark might need to know: Karly’s recent haircut. She told him all about the French braid incident.
The braid incident was something even Dr. deSoyza later described to me as disturbing. Sarah gave the doctor the same story she’d given Delynn: that Karly woke up with her hair so badly matted she’d had to cut it short.
“It was a pretty weird story,” deSoyza said. “Why would you cut hair in that fashion? Instead of trying to untangle it, you cut it off? I thought it was a strange way of dealing with a problem like that. You don’t cut off somebody’s hair because it’s too tangled to deal with. It was all too weird.”
It seemed odd at the time, but it was just one more puzzling thing in a long list of puzzling things.
Matt Stark hoped that if he visited with Karly in the safe environment of her daycare provider, the toddler would be less suspicious of him.
The children were sitting around a table, having a snack when Stark joined them, making small talk. Again, Karly avoided eye contact and remained quiet.
Stark asked her about her haircut.
She didn’t respond.
He asked her who took care of her hair.
“My daddy,” she said.
He asked if her daddy washed her hair.
“Yes,” she said.
He asked what else she could tell him about her hair.
Karly didn’t respond.
He asked what she liked about her daddy.
Karly began to cry and ask for her father, in much the same manner as she had night before at Dr. deSoyza’s office.
“As soon as I mentioned him, Karly was immediately distraught and wanting her dad,” Stark said. This was more than quiet sobbing and tears. It was to the point that I had to respect her emotional state and end the interview.”
KARLY SHEEHAN: True Crime behind Karly's Law Page 9
