ELDEST ADOPTEE: ALLEGATIONS BASELESS BOBBY CUSICK SAID AN ESTRANGED BROTHER HAD INVENTED THE CHARGES.
HE SPOKE OF A GOOD LIFE.
Author: Matthew P. Blanchard, INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
Thomas Cusick's eldest adopted son spoke out in defense of his father yesterday, just hours after Cusick took his own life in a New Jersey motel.
Standing outside Cusick's Falls Township apartment building, Bobby Cusick, 26, contended that the charges against his father had been invented by his estranged brother, who was serving a prison term at the time. Bobby Cusick, the first of Cusick's children to agree to be interviewed, said he would have testified in his father's defense.
Sometimes in tears, Cusick insisted that the allegations of sexual abuse that drove his father to suicide were completely false. He spoke of a normal childhood with a man who had rescued him from a life of squalor and malnutrition with his birth mother.
He said he never dreamed his father might take his own life.
"My dad was the best kind of father a kid could ever hope for," Cusick said. "He never put himself ahead of anyone. His kids meant the world to him. He would do anything for his kids."
Cusick said he had been living in an abandoned building with his birth mother when Thomas Cusick adopted him at age 6.
"Upon arriving at my father's house, I probably weighed 40 pounds," he said. "Now I'm a healthy, 230-pound man. I am the man I am today because of my father."
Before he was charged with child sexual abuse, Thomas Cusick had adopted or was in the process of adopting 28 children, most from the New York area. He raised them with the help of Donna Robertson, his common-law wife of about 16 years.
"We were a very tight family," Bobby Cusick said. "The things about [Robertson] being a live-in maid are false. The kids in this house call her 'Mom,' and she's a mother to us all."
Yesterday, four friends of the family stood guard outside Cusick's apartment, in a leafy suburban apartment complex in Falls Township, Bucks County. They said they had driven from Staten Island that morning after learning of Cusick's death the night before.
About 2:50 p.m., Robertson and four family members came out of the apartment building. Two of Cusick's sons briefly embraced before the group drove off in a white Chevrolet Blazer.
Bobby Cusick said the family members last saw their father at a gathering on Saturday and Sunday and tried not to let the pending court proceedings affect their fun.
"He was extremely happy that his sons were with him," he said. "He was extremely happy that he was able to spend the time he had with us.
"He was in an excellent mood. We were all looking forward to the day our name was cleared."
Bobby Cusick said several of his siblings were ready to testify on behalf of their father.
"I would have told the court that everything that has been stated has been lies," he said. "The only thing my father was guilty of was loving his children too much."