Forgiveness is a Bitter Pill

Some good friends of ours have been going through a living nightmare for the last several months. They have four daughters, and one day two of them told their Mother that her father (their grandfather) had been molesting them. This article was published today. I don't think it begins to bring closure to this family...

Prominent man sentenced for molesting grandkids
By ERIC HARTLEY, Staff Writer

A prominent south county man who has worked with county executives and served on numerous farm and environmental preservation boards was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison for molesting two of his granddaughters.

A parade of Sonny Tucker's friends and ministers walked to a lectern in the courtroom and asked the judge for mercy, pointing to all the good he's done.

Then Tucker, a 78-year-old Harwood resident who pleaded guilty in February to sexual child abuse, rose to speak. He turned to face his daughter and son-in-law.

"I'm sorry for what I did. I don't know why I did it," he told them, speaking calmly. His voice rose in anger at times as he said he never meant to hurt the girls, who wrote letters to the judge but weren't in the courtroom.

"I wasn't sneaking anything on anybody," he said. "I lost something in my body. I'm an old man who doesn't understand."

Later, facing the judge, Tucker said, "Because of my shameful actions, I have lost just about everything a man works for -- his self-esteem, his honor, his respect, his family."

The prosecutor said Tucker molested two of the girls for several years. They were 10 and 8 when they reported the abuse to their mother in October.

"He told them not to worry because he couldn't get them pregnant," their mother said in court. The parents aren't being identified to protect the girls' identities.

Tucker fondled them under their clothes and French-kissed one of them. The abuse -- which he called "lovings" -- often occurred at his home, including when the girls would visit for sleepovers.

"I thought they were safe with their Pop-Pop. I was so wrong," the girls' mother told Circuit Court Judge Joseph P. Manck. "My father, this pedophile, needs to be in prison."

Judge Manck, a grandfather himself, said he found the case especially egregious because grandparents are supposed to be "havens of trust" for their grandchildren.

"Your actions set in motion an incredible tragedy," the judge told Tucker. "You have in effect destroyed the family and taken away the childhood of these two little girls."

Judge Manck sentenced Tucker to 12 years in prison, but suspended eight of them. He also ordered Tucker to register as a child sex offender and serve five years of probation after his release.

The girls' father said the experience has been "hell."

For some time before he knew what was going on, he said, he was puzzled by one of his daughters' reactions to couples kissing on television or in the movies. She would make a face and say "Yuck!"

Now, realizing why the sight made her sick, he and his wife no longer kiss in front of their children.

"Charles Tucker took my little girls' innocence," their father said.

Tucker worked for Bell Atlantic, later Verizon, for more than 40 years. He owns 40 acres and has served on the boards of Save Our Streams, the Chesapeake Environmental Protection Association, the South County Coalition and the county executive's Farm Preservation Advisory Board.

Steuart L. Pittman, a retired attorney who's known Tucker for decades and has served on boards with him, told Judge Manck he still had faith in his friend.

"I do not believe all I've heard here today, based on the fact that I do believe in Sonny Tucker," Mr. Pittman said. "I know him to be a good person."