'COMPOSER' HAS NO CREDITS MUSIC CAREER MAY BE MAKE-BELIEVE

Author: Julie Knipe Brown , Daily News Staff Writer

To many who knew him, Thomas Cusick appeared to live the charmed life of a successful composer who sold songs to some of the country's most popular stars.

He lived in a seven-bedroom Bucks County mansion and threw lavish parties, where he served lobster, shrimp and champagne.

He led his friends and family to believe that between penning songs for Disney movies and off-Broadway plays, he raised and nurtured 28 children - most of them abused and troubled boys no one else wanted.

Even Cusick's 86-year-old mother believed he was a famous composer and Good Samaritan who took orphaned children off the street.

But Cusick, authorities now say, was no Daddy Warbucks. Apparently he was no Irving Berlin, either.

Cusick's life as a famous songwriter now seems to be as make-believe as a Walt Disney movie.

In reality, police say, he's a pedophile who fondled his foundlings and at times barely earned enough money to pay his rent.

In fact, when it came time to post bail, he turned to his mother, who put up the $30,000 to keep him out of jail.

Cusick, 47, has been charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of children, seven counts of indecent assault and five counts of corruption of minors.

His lawyer, Kevin Zlock, did not return phone calls seeking comment. After his client's arraignment, the lawyer described Cusick as "unemployed," and said he didn't know whether he had ever worked as a songwriter.

"It turns out that no one has ever heard of him," Bucks County District Attorney Alan Rubenstein said. "He said he wrote songs for all these famous people, but no one can verify his claims."

But Cusick's mother, Sylvia Cusick, a retired cook who lives in Staten Island, N.Y., defended her son, saying he is a gifted composer who, over two decades, was a decent, loving father to nearly 30 adopted and foster children.

Adoption agencies often begged him to take in children the agencies were struggling to find homes for.

"All these boys, they came from horrible homes and he took them in," Sylvia Cusick said. "One boy saw his mother throw his sister out a window. He was suicidal and my son took him and even got him into counseling."

She described her son as a musical prodigy who taught himself to read and play music and filled his home with music, often gathering his children around the piano after dinner to sing songs.

But according to his arrest affidavit, the happy times around the piano were illusory. One of his adopted sons, now 17, told investigators that Cusick had been molesting him for years, beginning when he was 9 and living with his father in Staten Island.

The boy, identified by police only as R.C., told cops that Cusick would call him into his bedroom two to four times a week to talk about his "bad behavior." He then took off the boy's clothes and sexually abused him, the affidavit says.

The affidavit details similar complaints from four other boys, including a 15-year-old foster son who told police that just last month, a month after coming to live with Cusick, Cusick began abusing him after he went to his foster father with questions about "growing up."

The boys reported that the abuse subsided as they got older.

Authorities in Staten Island are also investigating. The Richmond County (N.Y.) district attorney's office confirmed they've received "several calls" in connection with the case since Cusick's arrest was publicized in a local newspaper.

Police in Middletown, Bucks County, removed 11 of Cusick's 13 adopted and foster children from his mansion last month and placed them in foster care.

Cusick's mother claims that the abuse charges were initiated by one of her son's boys who had been repeatedly in trouble with the law. Her son, she said, tried to help the boy, but finally washed his hands of him.

It was then that the boy went to authorities with his story about the abuse, she says.

The four other children who reported being abused, said the mom, were pressured to tell lies by another child in the home who had been a discipline problem.

As proof that her son was a good father, she says the other two of his 13 children have remained with Cusick and his common-law wife, Donna Robertson.

Robertson, says the mom, has lived with her son for 10 years and has acted as a mother to the children.

Sylvia Cusick said the family moved out of their $500,000 rented mansion recently because her son could no longer afford the rent because of his legal problems.

The family moved into a basement apartment in Falls Township, and after his arrest, Cusick called his mother to ask her to post the bail, she said.

She said she turned over a portion of her life savings without question.

"He always made money writing music," his mother said. "He did plays and he wrote music for many famous people." But, as it turns out, a lot of people he claimed to have worked for or written music for have never heard of Tom Cusick.

Cusick had been profiled in many newspapers, including a June interview in the Bucks County Courier Times in which he told a reporter he had written a song called "Don't You Go," for popular Latin singer Ricky Martin.

He also claimed he had written music for a Disney production called "G.I. Joey," and for TV shows "Little House on the Prairie" and "Kojak." He also claimed to have been honored by national organizations for being an outstanding adoptive father.

Last week, however, it couldn't be verified that he had ever written a single piece of music. A Ricky Martin spokeswoman said she had never heard of Cusick, and his name isn't in records maintained by the nation's largest songwriting organizations.

It was not clear yesterday how Cusick made his living or how he funded his opulent lifestyle.

Cusick's mother said she didn't know how he made his money, other than writing and composing songs and plays. He had four foster children when cops arrested him. Caring for each earned him a small stipend from child welfare authorities. He also may have been eligible to receive financial subsidies through the adoption agency he used, Downey Side, a New York organization that specializes in hard-to-place children.

Cusick adopted his first child when he was 18, taking in a young boy from an abusive home who lived around the corner.

As he became successful as a composer, the adoption agencies began calling him when they had a hard-to-place child, she said.

He took in mostly boys, she said, because he once had a problem with a girl. "She was a regular Lolita, she just wouldn't leave the boys alone. He realized he just couldn't mix them like that," she said.

Cusick moved from Staten Island to Bucks County last year, authorities said. He told them he worked from home, writing music and a book about his experiences adopting children.

Cops said they're raising questions about how Cusick was able to adopt so many children.

Both the Staten Island district attorney's office and the New York State Office of Children and Family Services are investigating whether any of alleged abuse happened while the family lived in New York.

The adoption agency he used is also under scrutiny. The agency did not return several phone calls seeking comment.