By Donna M. Perry,Staff Writer

Editor’s note: The names of family members have been changed to protect the identity of the victim.

FARMINGTON – Sue remembers the day she had to ask her 6-year-old daughter if a family member had touched her private parts.

That conversation changed their lives forever.

In November, a family member called and asked if she could come over to speak to Sue and her husband, Jim.

When the woman arrived, she showed the couple a picture of their daughter from a relative’s computer. The woman also said the relative, Gerald “Gary” Fletcher, 48, of New Vineyard, had disappeared.

The picture showed Sue and Jim’s little girl posed in a provocative way.

The couple was stunned. They couldn’t believe it. The man was a trusted family member.

At first, Sue said she thought it was a fake picture. It wasn’t their daughter.

“She looked older. She looked scared,” Sue said. “I was very shocked. It was numbing. It was like someone socked me in the gut, just sucked the life right out of me.”

“I just felt like he had everybody fooled,” Jim said. “It makes me sick. When we always had family gatherings, he came. Then to find out someone’s been doing that with your kid and having a meal with you. He had everybody fooled. He was nice to everybody. He was well off. When we went out to eat, he would pay. He bought everyone nice gifts. It was all a big lie. You just felt so used.”

Sue called the police. An investigation began into Fletcher’s actions.

Then came the hardest part.

The couple had to get their daughter to talk about what happened.

They took her out for pizza and tried to make it a relaxing evening in an attempt to get the child to talk about what happened.

“I can’t,” Sue remembers her daughter saying.

Sue said she would later prepare a bubble bath for her daughter in another attempt to talk.

“I explained she wasn’t in trouble,” Sue said.

Her daughter would eventually tell her “Gary” touched her, sexually. He slept with her on the couch. He touched her chest area and more, Sue learned.

A female officer would later interview the child while Sue watched and listened.

“She didn’t want to talk,” Sue said. “It was very hard. It is something that will live with me for the rest of my life. I feel like I failed her in some way.”

An arrest warrant was issued for Fletcher. The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department seized two computers from Fletcher’s home. He would later turn himself in and admit what he had done.

He pleaded guilty April 1 to sexually exploiting a minor, unlawful sexual contact and visual sexual aggression. He was sentenced in Franklin County Superior Court to 15 years in prison, with all but six years suspended, and 15 years of probation. Without a trial, the victim did not testify, and her family wants to talk about the events, which Sue believes could serve as a warning for other potential victims and their families.

Looking back on the circumstances that led to Fletcher’s conviction, Sue said she and her husband let their daughter be alone with Fletcher because he was a trusted family member.

Fletcher and her daughter were very close, she said.

Now, she said, she finds herself wondering over and over about what kind of mother she is.

“I feel like I failed her,” she said. “My daughter needed me, and I wasn’t there and I failed her.”

In hindsight, the signs were there, Jim said, but they didn’t recognize them.

Right before his daughter turned 5, she changed, he said. She would later fail school. She didn’t like men. She didn’t like to hear that she was beautiful. She would cry when someone wanted to take her picture or compliment her, Sue said.

Their daughter is now educated beyond her years, Sue said. She’s really confused about it. She’s changed. She’s in counseling. She doesn’t laugh as much, Sue said.

When Sue asked Fletcher why he did this to her daughter, he told her, “Sin got the best of me,” Sue said.

What people don’t realize, Sue said, is how many people it affects.

“It changes everybody’s outlook,” Jim said.

It divides a family, Sue said.

“It ruins their life,” she said. “It scars the children.”

But it just doesn’t affect the victim, she said. It affects everyone in the family.

“It affects … your day-to-day life,” Sue said.

“Gary took our most valuable possession. He took our trust. He stole it,” Jim said. “He took our daughter’s innocence. He took her joy. She’s a little girl. She shouldn’t have to deal with it. She should be only a child. “

Now the couple has a hard time trusting anybody with their children, Sue said.

“You think you know somebody but you don’t,” Jim said. “You think you can trust your family.”