Brian Marchini, 48, of Hatfield.
A victim who endured prolonged childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father is speaking out, after a jury found him guilty on all counts following an investigation by the Lansdale Borough Police Department.
“I feel kindness. It's possible for people to have love and empathy for a stranger, and I'm forever grateful that they saw the pain I went through,” said the victim, whose name is being withheld by this news organization. “The attorneys, the judge, the jury, and everyone just stood up for me in a way I never would've thought possible before [this].”
Brian Marchini, 48, was found guilty on Wednesday of multiple counts of rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault of a child, indecent assault, false imprisonment, and related offenses, following a two-day trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown.
Marchini remains free on $250,000 cash bail while awaiting sentencing, despite a motion being filed by Assistant District Attorney Caroline Goldstein to revoke Marchini’s bail after the jury rendered their verdict. Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Wendy Rothstein denied the motion and instead placed Marchini on house arrest with electronic monitoring, while he undergoes a pre-sentencing investigation, psychosexual evaluation, and sexually violent predator assessment.
Marchini is also prohibited from leaving the state or having contact with the victim while awaiting his sentencing hearing, which commonly occurs within 90 days of a verdict or plea agreement.
Lansdale Police received information on Nov. 2, 2020, relating to a victim who had repeatedly been sexually assaulted by her father as a child. The victim — who was an adult at the time the report had been filed — stated that she was sexually abused by Marchini over a five-year period when she was between the ages of 5 and 9 years old, police said.
Police said that the assaults took place at several different locations across the area, all while the victim was in the care of Marchini. The abuse stopped after the victim turned 9 years old, according to the criminal complaint.
On Thursday, the victim provided a statement to North Penn Now. The statement reads, in full:
“Almost two years after Bill Cosby went free, I was sitting in the Montgomery County Courthouse. Certain rooms in the courthouse still have memories of that landmark case, one of many cases that helped me make my decision to testify against my father.
This is a letter to anyone else thinking about making their own decision, as in Pennsylvania, you can come forward until you’re 50. My dad was found guilty on all counts on March 15. This is my story. Some parts might sound uncomfortable, but I hope that if there are any other survivors, they might see tactics and patterns that they recognize.
I gave my testimony just after lunch on March 14. When I was five years old, my parents divorced. Shortly afterwards, my dad began molesting me. I don’t know if he was lonely or wanted revenge or just ill, but I remember details like the lighting in the room, the gray color of his shirt, and a feeling of anger and despair.
When it wasn’t enough to molest me anymore, he escalated to rape until I was eight or nine. Sometimes he offered me deals or bribes to cooperate, such as going to well-known fast-food chains, and other times he offered those promises as retroactive apologies. Of course, I knew these deals weren’t real. There wasn’t an option to say I wanted to go back to the living room and watch TV with my brother.
If I saw it coming, I’d try to run. Usually, he’d catch me. I remember making it to the doorknob once and having my hand on the discolored brass yellow handle. If I was a little faster, I could’ve gotten away. He wouldn’t dare show his dark side to my brother. I wasn’t fast enough, and I ended up back on that blue waterbed making a deal.
Sometimes he swore it would never happen again. Promises started to blend together and seem meaningless. I remember months going by between some of the promises and when they broke, so did my ability to trust people. The very last time it happened, he promised it would never happen again. I didn’t believe him, so he said, “You can tell your mom, grandmom or the police, and you’ll never see me again.” Was it a suggestion, a threat, or a promise? Either way, the decision felt like mine.
I was a child, and I wasn’t going to send my dad away forever. I had to keep this promise to protect him. I couldn’t even let him know that I remembered, because it would only hurt him. I would never speak about this again, and I would die without anyone else knowing. For years, I labeled these as the forbidden memories in my mind. My plan was to never, ever think about it and eventually, I would forget. It would take time, but I would eventually forget about all of them. I just needed time to forget.
At night, they kept trying to claw their way to their surface, and I had to build strategies to distract myself. I’d think about daisies and just focus on the thought of a yellow daisy for hours until I fell asleep. However, my subconscious was a lot tougher to control. For twenty years, I dreamed of being chased and never being fast enough. It wasn’t always his face, sometimes it was a tornado or a faceless monster, but every time I tried to run in my dreams, I could feel myself getting slower until he caught me. It took me another ten years to master control over my dreams and wake myself up when I felt the dread of being chased.
There were times when I wanted to come forward, especially during the #MeToo movement. I lashed out on somebody over social media for putting unfair pressure on victims to come forward. A lot of those people didn’t understand the complexity of the situation. Telling my story wasn’t going to be a wholesome, cathartic experience. It would be painful, and they might tell me the same thing they told Christine Ford when she told her story. Did I want the whole world — even my own family — to tell me I was a faker? Would that really make things better?
In 2019, somebody at a party said something in passing “[a woman] doesn’t like your dad because she thinks something happened between them when she was a kid.” It’s amazing how one sentence can change the entire course of your life. I kept calm and hid my reaction.
For the next six months, I thought about what to do. Nobody believed the other person, but my memories had a way to prove she wasn’t alone. Everybody in the world told her that her memories were fake, that she suffered from something called False Memory Syndrome, which I believe is disorder invented in the 90s for defense lawyers to protect pedophiles when higher numbers of women started developing enough social power to tell their stories. Seriously, look it up. This second survivor lived her life suffering, and I could provide her with some relief… but to do so, I would have to sacrifice my own father.
In November 2020, I went to the police. By the end of the month, I got a recorded confession from my dad while I was in the police station. I’ve talked to a lot of other victims who are thinking about confronting their abuser, and I always say that it might not be what you expect. My dad said, “It’s not your fault,” but then he went on to blame my mom for four recorded minutes. People who are willing to abuse children are not often the type of people who will give you the closure you need.
Court isn’t the path for everyone. It’s difficult. However, it is the most effective way to protect people. Therefore, I want to give an honest account of my experience with the legal system — warts and all. I hope that this helps people make informed decisions.
Coming forward as a survivor is possibly the most stressful, life altering and painful process anyone can choose to go through, besides the event that brought them there.
I did not know my case was going to make the news. Imagine someone you haven’t talked to since elementary school texting you to say they heard about you on the news. My name was never mentioned, but they put the pieces together. Imagine getting a call from your mom, who you haven’t spoken to in four years, telling you, “Somebody shared a post with [another person] who shared it with me.” Imagine seeing an argument on the article where somebody says, “I asked in first post, what possible evidence could exist after 15 years?” I wanted to scream, “You only know what’s in this article. There was a confession, but we aren’t just going to reveal the evidence right now.”
The media was nothing compared to other forms of backlash I faced. After my brother testified against me, the prosecutor said, “I’m so sorry. I did not understand what you were going through with your family.”
I loved my family on his side so much. They were all very reasonable, very nice people. However, they did not support me. Some of them offered to stay neutral to see what happens, but only one of them outright took my side. No matter how well you think you know your family, you cannot predict how they will react to this situation. If you are thinking about coming forward, I highly recommend coming to terms with losing some people in your life, even people who are otherwise very open minded.
On the other hand, the other survivor is free. The truth matters. Abusers can hurt your body, your relationships, but the worst is when they take your mind away. They can trick you into believing you are crazy, that your own mind is unsafe. They can create “forbidden” areas, make you distrust promises and people in general, make you think love and affection is transactional and make you think your purpose is to be there for others, but never yourself.
You matter.
I’ll repeat it.
You matter.
Some laws work against survivors. Survivors of abuse often experience mental illness caused by the trauma of abuse. However, the legal system allows for the defense to question the validity of a witness’s testimony due to the mental illness that the event caused. Counterintuitive, right? Essentially, a defense lawyer can say that your memories can’t be trusted because you’re traumatized. While I was testifying, I had to answer questions about my mental illness. They weren’t allowed to call me crazy, but they were allowed to call in an expert on Borderline Personality Disorder to question my memory, my relationships, and whether or not I was prone to lashing out at people. The defense asked, “Can you tell me about what symptoms you experience with Borderline Personality Disorder?” I’m not sure what they were expecting me to say, but they asked me a lot of questions about whether or not I had difficulty making friends. If you go to court, they might call you crazy.
You are not crazy. The person who abused you is the one that’s ill.
The good news is, in 2023 most people know how messed up that is, and it didn’t work for them. In fact, an attachment disorder like Borderline is heavily linked to childhood abuse. It absolutely feels bad to be called crazy, but it may not be the end of the world. I hope that someday we live in a world where it isn’t legal to use mental illness against people in court, but I wouldn’t let that sway your decision.
Apparently, it’s also legal for them to bar your spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend from the courtroom. They subpoenaed my partner so he couldn’t be there for my testimony and then took him off when I was done in an attempt to try and deprive me of support or freak me out.
I do believe our laws need to be visited. However, none of those things stopped my father from being convicted. He had my brother testify against me, but it didn’t convince anyone. He had an expert witness question my mental health, but it only established the link between trauma and mental health. He kept my partner out of the courtroom, but he was still upstairs waiting for me.
They want you to believe that you are weak, because they are scared of how strong you are.
I don’t care if you were 5 years old or 17. Boy or a girl, you can still be abused. I’ve spoken to so many male survivors who have been told their abuse is less relevant, can’t be tried in court, or is somehow impossible. It doesn’t have to be penetration to be abuse.
Recovery looks different for everyone. It isn’t always court. I believe recovery is putting yourself back in the driver’s seat, whatever that means for you. Power is about making your own decisions. I’ve heard a lot of people say, “You have to forgive them because they’re your parents.” How you handle your recovery is your own dang decision, not anybody else’s. Once you are the one in the driver’s seat, you are stronger than them. For some people that means court, and for some people that means setting up boundaries. I’ve even heard of people choosing forgiveness. At the end of the day, my advice is to do what will give you your power back.”
A single count of rape of a child — a first-degree felony — carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in state prison and a mandatory minimum of 10 years’ imprisonment. With multiple guilty verdicts to multiple counts, Marchini could conceivably spend the rest of his life in prison once Judge Rothstein has rendered her sentence.
See also:
Central Bucks Facilities Employee Pleads Guilty to Possession of Child Pornography
Man Pleads Guilty to Charges from August 2021 Drug Arrest in Lansdale Borough
Lansdale Man Sentenced to Jail, Probation in Connection with August 2021 Stabbing Incident
Hatfield Man Who Used Snapchat to Trade Child Pornography Sentenced to Probation
Local Man Accused of Indecent Assault of Young Girl While Babysitting Sentenced to Probation
