When I got married, I thought I knew how my life would unfold.  Love.  Marriage.  Children.  Country home.  Gardening.  Sewing clothes.  Cooking lots of great food.  Church and at home bible studies.  Seeing kids through school then off to college.  Graduations.  Weddings.  Grandbabies.  And, finally full circle back to living with the love of my life, John, enjoying our golden years together for the remainder of our lives.

Sometimes life doesn’t work out as planned.  Mine sure didn’t!  If you’ve been reading this blog, you already  know the last part of my life has certainly been different — far, far from what my dream life was like! Even though I didn’t know at the time I was married to a practicing pedophile, there were problems in our marriage that were huge red flags.  If only I had known!  Please take a moment and start here to catch my story from the beginning.  I think it’s important for you to see how this all unfolded.         Our marriage was rocky, and that’s putting it mildly.  To the outside observer, we were happy.  In John’s eyes, we had a wonderful class act marriage.  Why wouldn’t he think that?  I was the obedient wife who took care of everything for him.  He always had a meal on the table.  His clothes were always freshly washed and his shirts were crisply ironed.  The house was neat and clean — even though we had a house filled with children of all ages and stages plus many of their friends.  It wasn’t unusual for me to scrub the kitchen floor on my hands and knees two and three times a week!  The kids were always ready for church with their bibles in their hands and polished shoes.  Plus, there was always a huge Sunday meal that I cooked and it was a rare Sunday when we didn’t invite guests home with us for Sunday lunch.  Yes, indeed.  John had every reason to believe we had a great marriage!

I was determined to make this marriage work, but each year became a bit more difficult.  I often journaled that I didn’t know if I loved John any more.  Then, I felt ashamed and would tear out the pages in my journal and ask God to forgive me.

In 1999 something happened, though, that began the public unraveling of our marriage.

As you know, John preached and he sold insurance. He sold mostly long-term care insurance to the elderly, and due to his own fault, two of the companies he used to sell for decided to drop him as an agent.  He sold out-of-state without a license.  This is a big “no-no” and they took his license away and held back his pay, making life pretty miserable.  John never believed in saving money.  His words were, “Stop worrying.  Where’s your faith?  God will take care of us.”

We fought many, many times about this one issue, but he always won the battle.  For every coupon that I clipped, for every dollar that I tried to save, he spent three.  One day he came home from work after having bought two cars, and dropping one off to have a brand new paint and repair job to the tune of $3,500.  He spent a grand total of over $25,000 dollars in one day — right after his insurance license was revoked!  He bought himself a brand new car, and he got one of our sons a used car, and he had his personal car dropped off to be repainted for another son.

I’ll never forget him speeding up the driveway smoking a big cigar playing the hot-shot role for the kids!  He was the talk of the town for months!  In the eyes of the kids’ friends he was the ultimate best dad in the entire world!  He was the dad that all kids envied!

It was a different story for me, though.  He was irresponsible, a show off, selfish, and most definitely not planning for us financially!  We argued.  He won the battle.  I got stuck with figuring out how to make the car payments — all three of them.

Until………….one day an overnight express truck came barreling up our driveway.  I was in the garage emptying some garbage at the time.  I walked over to sign for the envelope and immediately froze when I saw the return address.  Mr. Frank DeBone.  John had always mentioned Mr. DeBone’s name in reference to insurance crooks.  I opened the envelope and much to my surprise there was a check for $5,000 payable to John W. Hinton.

I let out a scream that could be heard through all of Shanksville.  John came flying to the garage and asked what the problem was.  I started yelling, “Are you crazy?  What is this?  Why do you have a check from DeBone? I’m going to rip this up right in front of you!”

At that, John took a leap down the steps, grabbed the envelope and told me to shut up and listen.  “I’m trying to help us.  I know we have a lot of bills to pay, and I got a call from DeBone a few weeks ago with a business proposal.  He and Dennis Cerilli began a new business selling bonds to the elderly and I’m going to help them.  There’s some good, fast money in this and I can give you relief with the bills.”

Again, I began yelling, “I’m shredding this check!  You’re not going to work with these crooks!”  It was useless.  John grabbed the check and very calmly said, “Come in the house.  I’ll fix you a cup of coffee and explain.”

“Dennis is a great guy.  And, DeBone is a born again Christian.  This is a wonderful Christian business and since they knew I was a Christian they invited me to be part of their new company.  I’m going to supply them with leads and help them get into the homes of my past clients and I’ll get a nice commission for doing that. Our money problems have been solved.”

I didn’t buy it then, and I didn’t agree with him working for these guys.  But, John Hinton did things his way — always.  Once again, I backed down.  But, the one thing I wouldn’t do is touch that money.  I didn’t care how bad things got, I would only used the money John got from preaching and from his renewal income.

Never have I been so glad in all of my life for making the decision not to touch that money!  After a five-year criminal investigation, going into debt $200,000 with attorney’s fees, having all of our money seized by the FBI, having John’s name smeared in every newspaper for three states around, and having the agony of never knowing when he was going to be arrested — the indictment finally came.

Then, came the trial in Federal Court in Pittsburgh.  I’m not going into details here, but for all of those years I spent countless nights researching these men and this case and I knew that John was indeed guilty.  He refused to plead guilty saying he was the one who the others were counting on to plead “not guilty.”  And, if he stuck to that, none of them would go to prison.

I worked for over a year with the District Attorney giving him information and finally John had a choice:  plead guilty or spend the next seven years of your life in prison.  Reluctantly and very angrily he did plead guilty.  All of the other men went to prison for no less than five years.  John spent one hour in lock-up, and got probation and $1.2 million in restitution for fraudulently selling bonds to elderly people causing them to lose their life’s earnings.

And, that was the beginning of the end of our marriage.  There are thousands of details I’m leaving out about this period in our lives, but I lost all respect for John.  I knew then that this was not the man I thought I had married.  He was a liar and a cheat.  And, he didn’t have a conscience.  He made me go to the clients we knew and apologize for what he had done.  He wouldn’t do it.  Why?  Because he really and truly didn’t believe he was guilty.  He didn’t know how to take responsibility for his actions.

John was on house arrest for 30 days, and  he was permanently stripped of all insurance licenses.  We were head, neck, heels in debt, we had lost many friends over this, and John didn’t have a clue what to do for work.

Until………he decided to be a “manny.”  I had never heard of the word manny before, but it is the male version of a “nanny.”  Little did I know, but this was the beginning of the next stage of his active pedophilia.  This is where others would notice his very odd behavior around children.  This is where he became very open with his actions.

This is when our marriage began to officially fall apart.  John was still living in a dream world — dreaming he could come up with some get rich quick scheme to make all of the debt go away as he played “manny” to little children.  I no longer believed him.  I no longer respected him.  I no longer looked at this man I had married and felt love.  Little-by-little the years of abuse and neglect had taken their toll.  We were now penniless, names smeared, debt that would take the remainder of our lives to work off……and John’s answer was to be a “manny.”

Something was very, very wrong.  Little did I know what was to come in the months ahead!  Thankfully, I didn’t yet know.  I was about to enter a period of deep, dark depression.  Life was falling apart before my very eyes, and I didn’t understand why.  My children were suffering tremendously.  Ironically, the only one who was delusional to this all was John.  Onward he proceeded…..determined to get a manny job!

Please pay attention!  Pedophiles attempt to find ways of avoiding responsibility.  They live in an unreal fantasy world.  They don’t see things as responsible human beings!  From the book, “Conversations With a Pedophile“, this has been explained so well.  Alan, the pedophile being interviewed explains it this way, “Fantasy is a fertile feeding ground for escalating (upping the ante in order to achieve sexual satisfaction).  Fantasies can be divided into two distinct types.  One type is sexual or sexually sadistic in nature, while the other, the oldest type, is totally devoid of any sexual content. I used both of these mental escapes at different times in my life.”

John Hinton used both fantasy escapes, too.  He was now living in a complete fantasy world.  He showed no remorse for his actions in this legal case.  In his eyes, he had done no wrong.  Nor had any of his co-workers done any wrong.  In his eyes, everyone loved and respected him.  In his eyes, he could magically wipe out all of the debt that had been incurred.  In his eyes…………life was great.

This was the single biggest tip-off that he had pedophilic traits. I just didn’t get it!  He always lived in a fantasy world.  He rarely took responsibility for his actions.  And, he was self-centered and could not see that his actions carried great consequences.  The pedophile in him was beginning to emerge!

I know this chapter in my life might seem a bit “off base” about seeing red flags of pedophilia, but it’s not.  The lies.  The fantasies.  The idea of never getting caught.  The living of a double life.  All of these things were waving red flags that I just didn’t see!

Thank you so much for listening.  Thank you for your willingness to continue to be educated so that you can better understand what we’re up against.  Pedophiles are convincing.  They are great liars.  They can twist the truth to make it benefit them.  BUT, you are getting smarter!  You are learning how to base your gut instincts on truth.  And, that is just what the pedophile fears — that you will find him out!

Thank you for doing your part in helping keep our children safe!  Thank you for opening your eyes to the truth!  Thank you for being strong for the children.  Thank you for caring!

Next time we will talk about the “manny” jobs!  I assure you this will sound like it’s fiction, but every bit of it is real!  John was getting more and more bold in his actions…….but everyone around him was still so blind to his deeds.

If you are in need of someone to come speak to your parent group, your teacher group, your group at church, or just a group of concerned citizens, you can contact me at clarahintonspeaker@gmail.com .

Love,

Clara

PS  I’d be most interested to hear from anyone else who has heard of a manny.  By the way, John holds a 5-year college degree.  He could have substitute taught in our school systems and done any number of different jobs.  But, the one he chose was one where he would be alone with very young children!