Foster dad to dozens accused of sex abuse, Award-winning playwright disappears from Pennsylvania community he settled in after
- Thomas Cusick in a 1980 Advance profile on him and his foster children
Foster dad to dozens accused of sex abuse,
Award-winning playwright disappears from Pennsylvania community he settled in after 1998 departure from Staten Island
Author: HEIDI SINGER; ADVANCE STAFF WRITER
A trusted foster father and award-winning playwright is a wanted man today - and may have returned to Staten Island - after being charged with sexually abusing some of the 24 young boys in his care over the past three decades, authorities said.
Staten Island native Thomas Cusick, 47, of Langhorne, Pa., is charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of children, seven counts of indecent assault and five counts of corruption of minors.
A warrant for Cusick's arrest was issued yesterday by Alan M. Rubenstein, district attorney of Bucks County, which includes the community of posh colonial homes and tree-lined streets where Cusick settled after leaving Staten Island in January 1998.
As a career foster and adoptive father, Cusick took 28 children into his custody, according to Rubenstein, including four girls.
He worked exclusively with the Springfield, Mass.-based Downey Side, a respected foster care agency contracted by the city that specializes in finding adoptive homes for difficult-to-place New York City children age 8 or older.
"Interestingly, he adopted them at about age 8 or 9," said Rubenstein.
A 17-year-old adopted child in Cusick's care reported sexual abuse to local authorities last month, according to the criminal complaint. Cusick allegedly began abusing the youth, who was then 9, when he was first placed in Cusick's home on Staten Island, the papers state. The abuse continued two to four times a week, waning as the boy got older, according to the documents.
Four other boys aged 8 to 16 who were interviewed by Bucks County officials gave similar accounts of sexual abuse. All of the children are in new foster homes, according to Rubenstein.
If convicted, Cusick faces up to 35 years in prison for the felony offenses. If he doesn't turn himself in by today, he could be slapped with another two years for evading the law, officials said.
"It's believed he's in New York," said prosecutor Michelle Henry. "Someone tipped the police that he was in New York."
If Cusick committed any crimes on Staten Island, the Richmond County district attorney's office will prosecute him locally, said spokeswoman Marlene Markoe-Boyd. According to the Bucks County complaint, at least one sexual abuse case took place on Staten Island.
"We're going to take a look at the complaint and see what our next course of action will be," Ms. Markoe-Boyd said.
Cusick could be hiding on Staten Island, since he has ties to the community, Rubenstein said. A native Islander who graduated from St. Peter's Boys High School, Cusick attended the former Staten Island Community College and worked at various jobs, including roofer, cab driver, musician and composer.
In the early 1980s he was married briefly to a West Brighton woman. Advance files show him living at addresses on Lexington Avenue in Port Richmond and Travis Avenue in Travis during the 1970s and '80s; Annadale in 1993; and on Grymes Hill in 1997.
In 1980, Cusick was the subject of an Advance profile which recalled how he adopted four children from a troubled family when he was only 18. The kids ranged in age from 2 to 9.
"I've probably done some things that would make Freud turn over in his grave," Cusick, then 28, told the Advance. "But I'm happy and they're happy. So I guess it's all right."
Cusick made headlines again in 1983 for suing Neil Diamond, charging the singer-songwriter with ripping off the melody and rhythms of one of his compositions to create the 1981 hit "We're Gonna Make It."
During the 1990s, he was active in Staten Island's theater community, writing and performing in "The Snow Crystal" and "G.I. Joey." The grandfather of three was also honored in 1997 with two Telly awards for video production on "The Snow Crystal" and a training film for Staten Island University Hospital. The yearly awards for video excellence are based in Chicago.
Cusick is not known to Staten Island law enforcement authorities and has no felony convictions in New York.
But the family appeared to have moved quickly to Pennsylvania in January of last year.
"I heard from one of the children that a neighbor [on Staten Island] may have raised some questions," said Ms. Henry, who wouldn't elaborate on the neighbor's concerns.
Settling in the wealthy suburban community of Langhorne - 65 miles from New York City and the home of the popular Sesame Place children's theme park - Cusick was polite but kept to himself, according to a neighbor, preferring not to socialize on an otherwise friendly street.
"He was not at all social. You never really saw him," she said, adding that neighbors understood him to be a composer who worked from home.
Cusick's live-in companion, Donna M. Robertson, nominated him last year for a Father of the Year award from the Maryland-based National Fatherhood Initiative, a not-for-profit group devoted to restoring the commitment to fatherhood. The nomination arrived too late for officials to consider it.
On Friday, moving trucks appeared at the Cusick home in Langhorne and by Sunday he and Ms. Robertson were gone, said the neighbor.
"They were decent kids," she said. "Polite and well-mannered. They said they were all adopted and this was their dad. They called Donna 'Mom.' We all really truly feel sorry for these kids."