Family Abuse Spanned Generations

A feature article by Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register on Tracey:

Family abuse spans generations
By JENNIFER JACOBS
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

January 25, 2007

This piece was first published in September 2006


It ticked off Frank Street to be questioned by a reporter about the girls he sexually molested.

He shifted his weight to the handle of his walker, struggled to rise from his seat, and tried to make eye contact with the prison guards outside the visitors' room at the Nebraska state prison where he was serving time for spanking a 7-year-old boy with a belt.

He wanted to get away from these questions. But something made him listen - and answer.

Were there more than just the five girls?

"Hell, no, there ain't no more," he snapped, his breathing labored.

Street is 64, with diabetes, high blood pressure and emphysema from smoking for 28 years as an over-the-road trucker. A tube snakes from his nose to an oxygen tank he cannot breathe without.

He admits he molested five of his stepdaughters during the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes at their family home in Denison, Ia., but most often in the sleeper bunk inside his semitrailer while he was making deliveries across the country.

His wife, Diane Street of Hastings, Neb., said he confessed to her a few months after his stepgranddaughter, Tracey Dyess, set the deadly fire. Diane promptly kicked him out of the house.

But he firmly denies molesting Tracey and Amy Dyess, even though court documents in Clay County, Neb., state Tracey told authorities he offered the 4-year-old twins candy and toys for keeping secret that he fondled their genitals and made them touch his penis. "That never happened," he said, staring irritably into the distance. "I passed a lie detector test." That's true, but the test was flawed, said Dee Wilkerson, the Clay Center police chief.

One of the teenage girls Frank Street acknowledges molesting was his stepdaughter Dixie, who ended up marrying a boy from the next town who abused her, too. After years of being punched, tied up and dragged around by her hair, Dixie Shanahan Duty shot her husband, Scott, and left his corpse in their bed in Defiance, Ia., for more than a year. Dixie told authorities that when she was a girl, no one would listen when she told them her stepfather, Frank Street, was molesting her. Another admitted victim is Tracey's mom, Debbie Dyess Grothe Street. He touched her once, they both said in separate interviews.

Because the abuse of the five stepdaughters took place so long ago, Frank Street doesn't worry about being charged. Under current Iowa law, the statute of limitations for prosecuting sexual abuse of a child is 10 years after the child turns 18, or three years after a DNA match.

Frank Street said he is aware of the pain he has wrought.

"Yes, I wish I hadn't done it," he said during the interview at the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services Diagnostic and Evaluation Center in Lincoln. "I wished it had never started. I have no idea why it started."

Allegations of Frank Street molesting Tracey and Amy first surfaced when the twins were 4. After 17-year-old Tracey burned her house in 2005 - she said in court that the fire was to put an end to sex with stepfather Brian Street, who is Frank Street's son - she again leveled accusations at Frank. Ten months after the fire, Frank Street was charged with two felony counts for sexually assaulting the twins in 1991.

Three of his stepdaughters submitted written testimony to Clay County, Neb., district court stating Frank Street assaulted them as children. The Des Moines Register does not name sex abuse victims, unless they give permission, as Debbie Dyess Grothe Street did, or unless they forfeit their privacy through criminal testimony, as Dixie Shanahan Duty did.

One stepdaughter said the molestation began at age 4, another at 9 or 10. Frank Street denies that. "The youngest was 10 or 12," he said. "The others were all teenagers."

Then the stiffness in his shoulders softened. "It makes a person feel very insignificant, to think he takes advantage of young girls," he said. "As young as they're trying to say it happened, that's the part that makes me sickest."

In May 2006, prosecutors offered Frank Street a deal: They'd drop the charges that he sexually assaulted the twins if he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor child abuse charge for beating a 7-year-old boy in fall 2005. Nebraska social services workers had removed four young boys in Frank and Diane Street's care in December 2005 and sent them to foster homes.

Diane Street is furious with Frank for the abuse he admits, but she thinks he's telling the truth about the twins. Tracey's mother, Debbie, doesn't need proof. "What 4-year-old could make that up?" she said.

Frank served eight months at the Lincoln, Neb., state prison before being released on Sept. 14. He will not be listed on any sex offender registries. "I have no desires whatsoever for younger girls. I'm getting to the point where I ain't going to have no more problems," he said. "I can look at a female now and see she has a nice figure and I don't think, 'What is she going to look like naked?' "