BUCKS FOSTER FATHER GIVES HIMSELF UP IN ALLEGED ABUSE CASE

BUCKS FOSTER FATHER GIVES HIMSELF UP IN ALLEGED ABUSE CASE \

AUTHORITIES IN NEW YORK ARE ALSO INVESTIGATING ALLEGATIONS AGAINST HIM OF CHILD MOLESTATION.

Author: Lacy McCrary and Richard V. Sabatini, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

New York authorities said they would review the case of a Bucks County man who turned himself in to police yesterday after five boys in his care accused him of sexual abuse.

Thomas Cusick, 47, who was an adoptive and foster father to 28 children, was charged with multiple counts of corruption of a minor, indecent assault and child endangerment. He was released on 10 percent of $300,000 bail.

Authorities said the children reported that they were forced to perform sex acts with Cusick in his Middletown Township home and at a house in Staten Island, N.Y. Cusick lived in Staten Island until January of last year, when he moved to an affluent neighborhood near Core Creek Park with 13 boys. The boys, whose names were not released because of their ages, gave similar accounts of repeated sexual abuse, Bucks County District Attorney Alan M. Rubenstein said.

Officials with the Staten Island District Attorney's Office and the New York State Office of Children and Family Services said yesterday that they were looking into the abuse reports after Bucks County authorities told them one of the children reported that the abuse had been going on for at least eight years.

Cusick's attorney, David Zlock, said Cusick would answer the charges in court. He said that as far as he knew, Cusick had provided a ``very good home environment'' for his children.

Terrance McGrath, a spokesman for the family services agency, said authorities also would question officials at Downey Side, a Springfield, Mass., national adoption agency specializing in hard-to-place children ages 7 to 17. New York City officials have said that Cusick, a single parent, got all of the children through that agency, which has offices in New York and Bordentown, N.J.

Cusick, whom police described as a successful songwriter, began adopting children - mostly young boys - when he was 18, and attracted national attention for his willingness to adopt so many children, authorities said. He appeared twice on CNN.

In an interview yesterday, Gloria Hochman, a spokeswoman for the National Adoption Center in Philadelphia, questioned the number of children Cusick had in his care. ``It's highly unusual for someone to get 13 [children] over a 10-year period - particularly a single person,'' she said.

In court yesterday, Cusick, who was accompanied by his girlfriend, Donna Robertson, looked sullen as he was arraigned before District Justice John J. Kelly Jr. He told Kelly he was unemployed and living in a basement apartment in Falls Township, where he recently moved. On Sept. 28, police raided his rented four-bedroom house on Cottonwood Drive and removed the children, who are now in foster care.

A preliminary hearing was set for Nov. 4.

The case against Cusick began when a 17-year-old boy told authorities that Cusick had sexually assaulted him when he was placed in Cusick's Staten Island home nine years ago. He said the abuse happened two to four times a week in the beginning, then tapered off to once a month as he got older, said Middletown Police Detective Andrew J. Amoroso. The boy said the last incident occurred in April, Amoroso said.

Bucks County authorities charged Cusick with sexual abuse of children in his Middletown Township home and alerted New York authorities upon learning that similar abuse may have happened there.

A spokeswoman for Staten Island District Attorney William Murphy said yesterday that Murphy was reviewing the case.

James Tourtelotte, president of the Downey Side adoption agency, declined to comment in a telephone interview yesterday.

``No matter what I say it will either damage public confidence in the state offices or our agency or I will involve myself in a criminal matter with someone presumed to be innocent,'' he said.