October 23, 2013

Page 8

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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 10.23/10.30.2013

wrote an opinion casting doubt on those allegations. Now, it is Mulligan presiding over the Clark children’s lawsuits — suits they filed, they say, partly because of frustration over those earlier court battles. “Here we are, back in front of Judge Mulligan, the one person who could have ended this all years ago,” Michael Clark says. “Nothing involving my father has gone well for us.” WHEN VALETTE Majors first met Kevin

Clark, at the University of Pittsburgh in 1982, the picture looked brighter. Val was a singer and Kevin a pianist, Valette Clark recalls, and they performed together around the city. (Through his attorneys, Kevin Clark declined comment for this story.) They began dating in 1984, and in 1985 moved to St. Louis together, so Kevin could attend medical school. They were married later that year, eventually returning to Pittsburgh so Kevin Clark could serve an internship. He currently works in the area as an ophthalmologist in private practice. By August 1987, the Clarks had their first child, Michael; two girls and a boy would follow in the next seven years. But their Moon Township home “was not a peaceful house,” Michael Clark’s lawsuit contends. Among other allegedly abusive behaviors, three of the lawsuits allege that Kevin Clark held his children in midair from a second-floor banister in the home.

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lawsuits of their own. (Michael Clark agreed to speak on the record for this story, but his siblings — two sisters and a brother — declined. City Paper does not identify the names of victims in cases of alleged sexual assault.) Together, the suits claim that the alleged abuse has caused a range of lasting injuries including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as some chronic physical pain. Some of the allegations were part of a 2005 criminal case. Several criminal charges based on those allegations were dismissed in a preliminary hearing that year; Kevin Clark later pleaded “no contest” to lesser offenses. His lawyers deny the claims made in the current lawsuits. “I feel very badly for the suffering that all of the people involved in this case have gone through,” says Ed Flynn, one of Kevin Clark’s attorneys. “But it is reprehensible to accuse Kevin Clark of these things that I know he could not do. And it is unfair to lay the blame for all of this solely at his feet.” Michael Clark also finds fault with Kathleen Mulligan, a widely respected Allegheny County judge. It was Mulligan, who presides in the county’s family court, who handled the Clarks’ divorce. And it was Mulligan who left in place Kevin Clark’s unsupervised visits with his children — even as he was facing criminal charges related to the allegations of abuse. It is Mulligan who

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BLEAK HOUSE, CONTINUED FROM PG. 06

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