He’s Never Left Victim’s Mind

An old nightmare is revisiting David DeWyke. The fear and humiliation that had tormented his childhood has resurfaced, just as those bitter memories were beginning to fade.

Two months ago, DeWyke, 26, found himself lying awake at night again, listening to strange noises inside the house and backyard.

He was certain that the man who years ago had abused his trust was outside the bedroom window, ready to break in and haul him away. DeWyke would tell his wife, J.J., that he feared Sidney Landau, a twice-convicted child molester now free, was prowling outside, peeping through the window.

During the day, DeWyke would scan the crowds for Landau, the man who molested him when he was 10, and look over his shoulder whenever he heard approaching footsteps. More disturbingly, the thoughts of suicide, dormant for years, had returned, he said.

“It was like I was reliving the nightmare all over again,” DeWyke said in an interview. “I was very, very scared.”

DeWyke said it began in January when, in a cruel twist of fate, he learned that the house he and his wife had purchased a week earlier was only a mile and a half from where Landau, 57, was living. Landau had been released from state prison last November and had moved in with friends, unnoticed at first, in a quiet Placentia neighborhood after serving eight years for his second conviction, molesting an 8-year-old boy.

DeWyke and his wife, busy unpacking in their new home, were unaware of the news reports in early January of the protests from Placentia residents, who learned from police officials that a convicted child molester was living in their midst.

The Placentia Police Department, the first in Southern California to use Megan’s Law aggressively, began notifying residents and school administrators of Landau’s presence in the neighborhood. DeWyke’s stepmother saw news reports of the controversy and called DeWyke. (DeWyke agreed to tell his story to Times staff writer H.G. Reza, who is DeWyke’s wife’s uncle. A second Times reporter was present during the interview.)

“We knew he was getting out in November, but we never thought he would be in our city,” DeWyke said. “I’m scared. I can’t explain it. My fear would be that he has revenge for me, for throwing him in jail and causing grief in his life.”

Because of neighborhood protests, Landau, with the help of state parole officials, moved to an apartment complex that happens to be even closer to DeWyke’s house.

Lynda Ward, a deputy regional administrator of parole for the state Department of Corrections, said Tuesday that state officials were unaware of the presence of one of Landau’s victims in his new Placentia neighborhood.

Under state law, Landau’s victims are entitled to ask that he not live within 35 miles of their homes, Ward said. She said parole officials received no such request.

DeWyke said he knew of that provision of the law but did not seek to restrain Landau’s living arrangements because he feared retaliation.

Landau’s second Placentia home, on East Yorba Linda Boulevard, is a few minutes’ drive from DeWyke’s home, about a mile away. On Saturday, police distributed fliers in the area notifying residents that Landau lived nearby. Afterward, the apartment managers served Landau with a 30-day notice to leave.

But his attorney, T. Matthew Phillips, said Landau “absolutely” would not leave.

“He has to live somewhere,” Phillips said. “Might as well be here.”

Phillips noted that Landau would violate his parole if he deliberately contacted a victim.

It was DeWyke’s testimony that led to Landau’s first conviction in 1982 on three counts of sexually molesting him. DeWyke was 12 during the trial, and he was so humiliated by the testimony he was required to give that several times he asked the judge to order his parents outside the courtroom while he testified.

“I was too embarrassed,” DeWyke said. “To this day, I still haven’t told everything.”

Although Landau was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in prison for molesting DeWyke, he was released after serving two years. DeWyke said he felt betrayed by the criminal justice system.

“We thought he was going to jail for a long time. When he got released, my mom and dad were separated. My little brother and sister and I felt like there was nobody there to protect us, and Landau was coming back for revenge because I helped send him to prison,” DeWyke said.

In 1987, Landau was arrested by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and charged with performing a lewd act on a boy under 14, according to police and court records. That charge was dismissed. However, he was convicted in 1988 of molesting an 8-year-old Anaheim boy and served eight years in prison.

Landau’s crimes traumatized him for years, DeWyke said. But now he wants to send a message to the man who robbed him of his youth, he said. He still feels hurt and pain, but that has not stopped him from going on with his life and succeeding, he added. DeWyke and his wife own a cellular phone and pager business.

Recently, DeWyke said he has gained strength and comfort from the angry objections raised by Placentia residents to Landau’s presence.

The anger that Placentia residents have directed at Landau is a sign that people outside of his family also care for him and other child molestation victims, DeWyke said.

“It makes me feel so good inside that a whole community is mad at this guy for what he did to me and others,” he said. “It makes me feel so good that people are on my side. It’s not just my family supporting me now.”

It was the community’s reaction that encouraged DeWyke to tell his story for the first time. Talking about his experience has been cathartic, he said. In addition, he hopes that by telling his story, other victims will understand that they are not alone, and that what happened to them was not their fault.

Like many child molestation victims, DeWyke blamed himself for many years.

“I felt guilty, because it didn’t happen to anybody else,” he said. “Of all the kids in the neighborhood, it was me who was picked for the molestation. I thought it was my fault, and when my parents found out, I thought I was going to be the one who would get in trouble.”

A bachelor, Landau was a neighbor who liked to hang out with children, DeWyke said. Landau introduced himself to DeWyke’s parents, who after awhile began allowing their son to join the other children from their Anaheim neighborhood in visiting Landau’s swimming pool.

Landau began molesting him about 10 months later, DeWyke said, and the molestations continued for about 18 months.

“He would give me stuff, like [Ocean Pacific] shorts and a radio for my bike that went on the handlebars,” he said. “He volunteered to baby-sit me and take me to the movies. My parents trusted him.

“He would take his dog, Christy, and take Frisbees and footballs and hang out with the kids at the school field, where we played. He also would bring a remote control car and let the kids play with it. That’s how I met him,” DeWyke added.

His father began getting suspicious after watching an episode about a child molester on the television drama “Quincy.”

“Dad said that Landau fit the profile of a child molester. He said this to my mom, but that’s all,” DeWyke said.

That changed when Landau came to DeWyke’s home one night while his mother was shopping and his father was working in the garage.

“Landau put his hands down the back of my pants and Dad saw him do it,” DeWyke said. “He yelled, ‘What the hell are you doing!’ and sent him away. My dad was very upset.”

When DeWyke’s mother returned home, both parents discussed what had happened and questioned DeWyke for about three hours. Despite his fear that he was going to get in trouble, DeWyke finally told his parents about the molestations, and they called the police.

The following day, he was questioned by Anaheim detectives for two hours, he said. Police later arrested Landau.

After Landau’s arrest, DeWyke’s parents did not allow him outside to play with his friends for about eight months. He said that his entire family, including his younger brother and sister, were living in fear.

“I lived across the street from the school, and I was required to go straight to school in the morning and straight home in the afternoon. I didn’t want anybody to come over to the house, because I was afraid they would know what happened to me,” he said.

“To this day, my friends have never asked me anything. But I know they know what happened to me.”

The molestation destroyed DeWyke’s self-esteem. Not even therapy could rebuild it. Thoughts of suicide were constantly in his mind during and after his teenage years, he said.

“I was so down on myself before I married J.J. [about two years ago]. She’s always been there for me. But before, I thought of killing myself. I would go to Laguna Beach and sit by the cliffs for hours, thinking I could do it [jump into the water], and cry and cry.”

DeWyke said he has not seen Landau since 1982, when he testified at his trial. But if he ever sees him again, “I want to ask him if, when I was a little kid, if the noises I heard in my backyard were him, spying on me.”

DeWyke said he does not believe that Landau has been rehabilitated.

“Personally, I feel he’s going to do it again. He went to prison for what he did to me. Then, he got out and did it again. I don’t think he can stop doing it,” he said.

Despite owning a successful business at age 26, which has enabled him and his wife to live comfortably, DeWyke said he still feels like a failure. He wonders what he could have achieved had it not been for Landau.

“To this day, I still feel stupid. If this hadn’t happened to me, I sometimes wonder where I’d be today. This experience put me down. But sometimes I think about what happened and it pushes me to work harder, because J.J. and I deserve a good life.”