Under the Friday-night lights of a suburban high school football game, Chandler's Perry Pumas beat the Marcos DeNiza Padres 23-17, despite getting outscored 10-0 in the second half.
Paul Quinn, a 6-foot-1, 185-pound Perry junior, dressed for the game but didn't get in that night. Regardless, his girlfriend and Susan Brock, a devoutly Mormon mother of three and wife of Maricopa County Supervisor Fulton Brock, watched him from the stands.
Susan Brock had been forbidden to see Paul by leaders of her Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, her husband, and the boy's parents, Craig and Laura Quinn, more than a year before the October 8, 2010, victory. But this didn't stop the two from secret meetings or stop Brock from showering the boy with gifts.
One of the many presents Brock bought for him was an iPod Touch, which she had with her that night and entrusted to Paul's girlfriend to give to the boy after the game.
Quinn, now 18, and his girlfriend had trust issues, which led to so many arguments that the girl's parents told their daughter she was no longer allowed to see Quinn. Suspicious of her forbidden love interest, Quinn's girlfriend cracked the password on the iPod and did some snooping before giving it to him.
What she discovered confirmed what several people — including the boy's parents, his own LDS church, and Supervisor Brock — suspected for more than a year: 48-year-old Susan Brock and 17-year-old Paul Quinn were having a sexual relationship.
In text messages discovered on Paul's iPod Touch, Brock — using the alias "Timmy Turner" — and the boy had a graphic conversation about sex she'd had with her county supervisor husband while the two were on a trip to New York about a month earlier. At one point, Quinn asked Susan whether Fulton Brock's penis was bigger than his.
"You are small — half his size on a good day," Susan Brock (as "Timmy Turner") joked, according to cell-phone records obtained by police. "Maybe it will grow with gravity."
The boy then jokingly asked whether his penis was the size of a 6-year-old's, to which Brock replied, "Pretty much, but it's all right. You're handsome and kind of nice to look at."
Paul Quinn later would tell police that he'd been sexually abused by Brock on at least 30 occasions.
As if the story of a devoutly Mormon wife of a powerful county official molesting a teenage boy wasn't fantastic enough, it was revealed that the Brocks' adult daughter, Rachel, had a sexual relationship with the same boy, starting when Quinn was 13. Rachel Brock, at the time, was 18.
But sexual abuse is only part of this story.
This is also a story about the great lengths to which Fulton Brock went to keep law enforcement from building a case against his wife.
It's a story about how the county supervisor abused his powerful position within the community to obtain favors from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to ensure that certain conversations he'd had with his jailed wife as she prepared for a potential trial were not recorded by detention officers.
It's a story about a boy who, psychologists say, learned from his abuser how to manipulate people and took full advantage of his unfortunate situation.
It's a story about how the sexual abuse of a boy could have been stopped a year earlier if his church, his school, his abuser's county supervisor husband, and his own parents had alerted police when suspicion first arose that Susan Brock was abusing him.
Susan Brock pleaded guilty in January to three counts of attempted sexual conduct with a minor, a far cry from the 15 felony counts on which she initially was indicted. She was sentenced to 13 years in prison for abusing the boy over a span of three years.
Rachel Brock originally was charged with seven counts of sexual conduct with a minor and one count of furnishing obscene materials to a minor. She pleaded guilty in June to two counts of child abuse with sexual motivation. She faces up to a year in county jail and 10 years of probation at her sentencing, scheduled for October 20.
Meanwhile, news that Quinn had been abused by Susan Brock hit Perry High School within hours of her October 26, 2010, arrest.
The person who revealed the situation was Quinn's best friend and football teammate, Jared Neff, who also benefited from Susan Brock's desire to keep the sexual relationship she was having with Quinn quiet.
"Everyone found out pretty much the day [the arrest] happened," another classmate and football teammate of Quinn's (who wished to not be identified because Quinn's liaison with Brock has become a "sketchy situation" at the school) tells New Times. "We knew that it was a kid at our school, and then one of his friends told people it was him.
"Everyone on the football team joked around about it and would say stuff like, 'Hear you like older women.' [Paul] always denied it."
"I went up to him and asked him about it, and he said no, it wasn't him, but everybody knew. You could just tell. After it happened, he walked around all depressed — like he was the saddest kid on Earth. Then, one day, he just disappeared."
Following Susan Brock's arrest, Quinn continued to attend Perry High School for more than a month. According to court documents obtained by New Times, he then was sent to a school out of state, where he is undergoing therapy to help put what happened behind him.
Marci Hamilton is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Yeshiva University in New York City. She has written extensively about sexual abuse in religious institutions, including the book Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children. She served as constitutional and federal law counsel in many prominent sex-abuse cases involving clergy in state and federal courts, and has testified before state legislatures regarding elimination of statutes of limitations for childhood sex abuse.
After familiarizing herself with the case at the request of New Times, Hamilton concludes, "Every adult in this story failed the child because they didn't go to police."
Rather, they went to their church.
None of the principals in this story agreed to speak on the record with New Times. Multiple attempts to obtain comment from Fulton Brock, Susan Brock, the Quinn family, and LDS officials were ignored or declined. What is described here is derived from police reports, court documents, transcripts of phone conversations between Fulton and Susan Brock, accounts of those close to the case, and expert opinion.
The Brock and Quinn families met in 2003 through their respective LDS churches. Susan Brock and Laura Quinn were considered best friends. In 2004, Rachel Brock even went to her sophomore prom with Paul Quinn's older brother — who is her age and was thought by her mother to be a potential romantic match for her.
Paul's brother, himself a devout Mormon who completed a two-year mission with the church, ended the relationship with Rachel, saying the two "didn't have the same values."
Paul's older brother, it appears, caught the eye of Rachel's mother, Susan, too.
Paul's brother later told police how weird he thought it was that Susan Brock continually asked him about his love life under the guise of wanting to set him up with her daughter, and the Quinns later told police they suspected early on that Susan had a "fascination" with their older son. She had offered to buy him an iPhone on several occasions before he went on his mission. She had made similar offers when she took him to dinner upon his return. He declined every time.
Luring Paul, however, was easier, the Quinns say, and they believe Brock started "grooming" him when he was as young as 11 by buying him things they wouldn't — including an iPhone when he was in sixth grade.
In fact, over the course of the relationship, Brock bought Quinn whatever his heart desired, including several iPods and iPhones, a special edition Xbox 360 and numerous games, underwear, jeans, T-shirts, a sniper rifle, two assault rifles, an M-1 carbine, a bolt-action rifle, a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, a pistol, and paintball supplies.
Following at least 20 of the sexual encounters Brock had with the boy, she paid him $100. She often would bring whatever he and Neff wanted for lunch at school. Even after Quinn's parents told the school — more than a year before Brock's arrest — not to allow the middle-aged woman near their son.
"Every day, [Paul] and Jared had food from different places," Quinn's anonymous football teammate tells New Times. "Taco Bell, Jack in the Box — and we always wondered where they got it."
Despite instructions to Quinn's school from his parents to not allow Brock near their son, she frequently visited the boy there. Police were never called when she showed up at the school, as Quinn's parents had instructed.
Perry Principal Dan Serrano would not discuss the Brock case with New Times, citing the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as the reason. However, he says, "I strongly deny that I or anyone at Perry High School had any knowledge of any criminal activity."
Susan and Rachel apparently weren't the only Brock women enamored of Paul Quinn. Neff described a time when Quinn brought the Brock's youngest daughter, Beth Anne — the only member of the Brock family who's the same age as Quinn — to his house when the three were in sixth or seventh grade.
Despite Beth Anne's apparent friendship with Quinn, it was her older sister who was the first Brock with whom he had a sexual relationship.
During a July 2007 family trip to California, Rachel Brock and Quinn were under a blanket together on the beach. Quinn felt Rachel's breasts as she gave him a "hand job," Quinn told Chandler police.
About a month later, Rachel performed oral sex on Quinn as the two sat in Rachel's car as it was parked in front of the home of her county supervisor father.
That fall, Rachel went to college at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, but the relationship with Quinn didn't end — when Rachel returned home, she and Quinn had similar sexual trysts.
Quinn's girlfriend, meanwhile, always found it weird that a "college girl" would be interested in a high school freshman, adding to her suspicions about her wayward boyfriend (in addition to the text messages between Quinn and Susan Brock, Quinn's girlfriend found naked pictures of other female classmates on his phone).
Neff knew of Quinn's sexual relationship with Rachel Brock. Quinn showed him pictures he had saved on his phone of Rachel naked that she had sent him, along with videos of her masturbating. Neff says Quinn told him that the two had actual intercourse at least twice, the last time in July 2010, just a few months before Susan Brock's arrest and nearly three years after Quinn was first abused by both Susan and Rachel Brock.
Neff, who briefly dated Beth Anne Brock, told police he always suspected Susan was interested in Quinn sexually but didn't know of any abuse until it came out in the media.
About a year and a half before Susan Brock was arrested, Neff says he was playing cards with Paul, Susan, and Rachel, when Susan suggested that the four play strip poker because she had recently lost a lot of weight. There is nothing in investigation records to suggest that the game actually occurred.
At the time of the strip-poker suggestion, Quinn already had been sexually active with both Susan and Rachel for about two years.
Susan Brock began her sexual encounters with Quinn in October 2007, about a month after Rachel went away to college.
Quinn and Susan Brock were alone in her Lexus SUV as it was parked in a partially developed neighborhood near the Chandler airport that month. Susan crawled over the seat, disrobed the boy, and grabbed his penis — the first of about 30 hand jobs Brock would give Quinn over the course of about three years.
On most of those occasions, Susan Brock would massage the boy's penis with vibrating sex toys. In one instance, as the two again were parked by the airport, Brock removed her Mormon temple garments so Quinn could ejaculate on her breasts.
"I don't know, it was always just the same thing," Quinn later told police. "Rarely would we do it at her house, and whenever we did, it would be [while] on the computer or her iPhone looking at pornography."
As Quinn raked in expensive gifts and cash from Brock, the most valuable service Brock provided the boy was the means to continue his relationship with his girlfriend after her parents forbade their relationship.
One of the many purchases Susan Brock made for him was a $4,000 diamond ring from Kay Jewelers that, prosecutor Jason Holmberg says, became a gift for Quinn to give to his girlfriend.
In addition to the ring, Brock would arrange ways for Quinn to have sex with the girl after the girl's parents had forbidden the two from seeing each other.
Brock arranged for the two to have sex on several occasions, made suggestions about which sexual positions they should try, and even provided them with a "sex kit" that included condoms, sexual lubricants, and sex toys.
In one instance, Brock drove the two to a mall parking lot so they could have sex in her car. Brock went inside to shop while Quinn and his girlfriend had sex, with the understanding that they would text-message Brock when they were done and ready to leave.
Looking back, Quinn's girlfriend tells police, she thought there were times Brock listened as she and Quinn had sex. There were occasions, she says, when Brock arranged for her and Quinn to have sex at Brock's mother's house, where Fulton Brock's wife would "linger."
In one case, Quinn literally had to push Brock out the door so he could have sex with his girlfriend.
Quinn's girlfriend said she should have known her boyfriend and the county supervisor's wife were having a sexual relationship. She said she recalls times when Quinn was in the backseat of Brock's car as she was driving and would put his feet on the headrest so Brock could rub them. She told police Brock would sometimes talk to Quinn in a "seductive-sounding voice."
In retrospect, the girl says, Quinn was confused and probably "felt stuck" in the relationship with Brock.
In an e-mail Quinn wrote to his girlfriend's mother following the discovery that he was having a sexual relationship with Susan Brock, he writes, "[It's] obvious you have uncovered my darkest secret that I have been trying to forget about for a very long time, but I really need you right now. I can't share this with anyone besides you all . . . This is very unfair. I wasn't able to see [your daughter] unless I played by [Susan Brock's] rules, and I was afraid [your daughter] would dump me if I didn't see [her]. I am begging you."
However, by the time Quinn had written the e-mail, he had "mastered the art of manipulation, deceit, and denial, which were taught to him by Susan Brock," according to Brock's pre-sentencing report.
Before he ever was sexually abused by Susan and Rachel Brock, and about the time adolescence started to kick in, Paul Quinn was having what his parents would later describe as "mental meltdowns."
At the time, they figured the "meltdowns" were the result of the troubled relationship between Quinn and his girlfriend.
Over the course of about five years — beginning before the sexual liaisons started — the Quinns took Paul to several counselors. The Quinns never brought to the attention of Paul's psychologists the possibility that he was getting sexually abused by Susan Brock, despite their bringing those very concerns to leaders in their church more than a year before Brock's arrest.
A psychologist who worked with Quinn in the months before Brock's arrest told Chandler Detective Chris Perez that Quinn had "learned to manipulate."
In police reports and transcripts of conversations with his jailed wife, County Supervisor Brock repeatedly refers to Quinn as "that little Dorian Gray," a reference to the young, hedonistic pleasure-seeker with loose morals whose beauty infatuates an older man in the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Toward the end of their affair, Susan Brock described herself as Quinn's "personal slave," and the Quinns acknowledged that they had "no doubt their son began manipulating Ms. Brock."
After it was revealed that Quinn and Brock had been sexually involved, Brock threatened to kill herself on several occasions. She promised her young victim that she would change her will and give Quinn $300,000 after her death so he could "go to college and become the best lawyer ever."
Days later, during a call recorded by the Chandler Police Department, Brock told Quinn she'd "taken too many pills and was starting to scare herself."
Quinn then asked whether she yet had changed her will to ensure that he would get the money.
When Fulton Brock launched his 2008 campaign for county supervisor, he enlisted the Quinn family to help.
According to elections records, three members of the Quinn family were paid $8,730 by "Friends of Fulton Brock" during the 2008 campaign for doing services such as putting up campaign signs and collecting signatures.
Paul, records show, was paid $1,660 for setting up, repairing, and removing campaign signs. Laura Quinn was paid $3,422 for collecting signatures. These types of paid campaign jobs often are reserved for the closest friends and family of a candidate.
To be sure, the Quinns and the Brocks were very close — their kids went to school together, they were involved in similar social activities, and they often shared dinners and holidays.
By 2009, though, the two families were at odds over the amount of time Susan was spending with Paul. The Quinns disapproved of all the expensive items Susan had bought for their son and felt she was undermining their authority as parents by showering him with the gifts.
In August 2009, nearly two years after she'd become sexually active with Paul, Susan Brock and Laura Quinn got into an argument after Paul was forbidden from seeing his girlfriend. Brock, also a friend of Paul's girlfriend's mother, told Laura Quinn that she could not be friends with both her and her son — and that her loyalty was to Paul.
By this point, the Quinns' concerns over Brock's fascination with their son had been developing for quite a while. Laura told Brock to stay away from Paul, but Brock refused — she said Laura would have to "put her in jail" before she would stay away from Paul.
The Quinns told Brock to stop giving cell phones to Paul, another request the county supervisor's wife refused. The Quinns would find a cell phone Paul had received from Susan, and they would return it to the Brocks — often only to find it back in Paul's possession soon thereafter.
In October 2009, Paul's father, Craig, talked to a friend who was a former Chandler police officer. Craig explained the situation between his son and Susan Brock, and the ex-cop suggested that Brock might be sexually abusing Paul.
Rather than take such a concern to police, the Quinns turned to their church.
The Quinns called a meeting with their LDS stake president, Mitch Jones, and the Brocks to discuss their suspicions about Susan's interference in their son's life, and the possibility that she was sexually abusing Paul.
Craig Quinn specifically asked Susan — with her county supervisor husband in the room — whether she was having a sexual relationship with Paul. She denied it, but everyone in the room that day knew this was what the parents feared. Yet nobody there bothered to investigate further, much less call police.
The abuse continued for another year before police caught wind of the suspicion that a teenage boy and a 48-year-old woman were having sex.
According to clergy sex-abuse expert Marci Hamilton, not alerting authorities about suspected abuse is status quo for the Mormon Church.
"This, unfortunately, is very typical behavior in the Latter-day Saints church," she says. "They will take calls about abuse either to a stake president or to a bishop, and it doesn't get reported."
Under LDS protocol, Hamilton says, it's up to the stake president to decide whether to further investigate suspicions of sexual abuse. She says church leaders often choose not to look into such suspicions, to avoid humiliating the church with a sex scandal.
"They don't want to believe it," Hamilton says. "So instead of taking the position of maximum safety and going to the police, they persuade themselves that [the suspicion] doesn't have that much merit.
"Then you get exactly what you got in this case — another year of abuse of a kid who shouldn't have been abused in the first place."
When Quinn's girlfriend first learned of the affair between her boyfriend and Susan Brock — a year after the meeting with LDS Stake President Jones, when suspicions of abuse were first brought up — she told her mother. But her mother, who then also suspected that Paul Quinn was getting abused, didn't bother calling police.
On October 9, the day after Quinn's girlfriend cracked the code on his iPod Touch, her mother called Fulton Brock to tell him she knew his wife was abusing Quinn. Rather than call police, Fulton Brock took his wife to meet with the family's LDS bishop, Matthew Meyers, to confess the abuse.
Brock admitted having a sexual relationship with the boy to Meyers, who then called Bishop Troy Hansen, the "ecclesiastic leader" of the Quinn family, to alert him of the affair.
Neither bishop called police — or even told the boy's parents about the affair.
In addition to calling Hansen about the abuse, Meyers called Salt Lake City law firm Kirton & McConkie, which represents the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Meyers also advised Hansen to "call legal" after learning of the abuse because "um, you know, 'cause it, these things are . . . you know, anything with abuse," he later muttered to Detective Perez.
Still, nobody bothered to call police — not even LDS lawyers.
The church issued a statement about the abuse, claiming that it and bishops Meyers and Hansen "were instrumental in getting the [Susan Brock] matter reported to law-enforcement authorities," despite the fact that no LDS official who knew of the affair ever told police.
Meanwhile, on October 12, Craig Quinn — who'd secretly installed key-stroke register software on his computer — discovered the e-mail Paul had written to his girlfriend's mother, in which he references his "darkest secret." Not knowing exactly what Paul's "secret" was, he confronted his son, who broke down and admitted that he was engaging in sexual relations with Susan Brock.
Craig Quinn didn't call police then — he alerted his bishop.
As Craig later told police, after meeting with church leaders to discuss the abuse, he was "under the impression" that police would be called. But they weren't, and Quinn said he got "tired of waiting" and, on October 22, called them himself. This was nearly two weeks after learning of the abuse and more than a year after he first had questioned Susan Brock about whether it was going on.
Following an investigation into the church's responsibility to report the abuse to authorities, Detective Perez wrote in his report, "It is recommended that Troy Hansen and Matthew Meyers be charged with ARS 13-3620, [failure of] duty to report."
The case was handed over to the Pinal County Attorney's Office, which assumed control of the Brock case because of Fulton Brock's relationship with the Maricopa County Attorney's Office and county Superior Court (supervisors control the budgets for these agencies).
The bishops, however, were not charged with crimes, despite knowing abuse was occurring and failing to tell police.
Pinal County Attorney's Office spokesman Kostas Kalaitzidis wouldn't say specifically why the bishops weren't charged. All he would tell New Times is that the County Attorney's Office looks at whether a case is prosecutable in determining whether to go forward. Though Detective Perez may have concluded that the bishops broke the law, prosecutors, apparently, didn't think they could prove it.
The LDS church continues to deny wrongdoing in the Brock case. Though it ignored requests for comment for this article, it has issued several more statements on the matter, including the following:
"Any allegation that church leaders knew of abuse but did nothing is inaccurate and offensive. The church is extremely proactive in its efforts to protect children from abuse of any kind and works diligently to support and assist victims of abuse. When abuse does occur, we work to see that it is reported to the authorities."
Calling the statement absurd, child-abuse expert Hamilton said she gained access to secret LDS temple papers that "show [the church] actually has a policy about concealing abuse."
In the LDS' Handbook of Instructions, excerpts of which were provided to New Times by Hamilton, church leaders, even in cases of child sex abuse, are told:
"To avoid implicating the church in legal matters to which it is not a party, leaders should avoid testifying in civil or criminal cases reviewing the conduct of members over whom they preside. A leader should confer with the church's Office of Legal Services of the area presidency:
• If he is subpoenaed or requested to testify in a case involving a member over whom he presides.
• Before testifying in any case involving abuse.
• Before communicating with attorneys of civil authorities in connection with legal proceedings.
• Before offering verbal or written testimony on behalf of a member in a sentencing hearing, or probationary status hearing."
The handbook goes on to advise: "Church leaders should not try to persuade alleged victims or other witnesses to testify or not to testify in criminal or civil court proceedings."
Hamilton says, "They don't want anyone outside of the religion to know what's going on; they don't want their religion besmirched. And they're willing to sacrifice the children for their own image."
When news broke of his wife's relationship with a teenage boy, County Supervisor Fulton Brock issued a statement the following day, October 27, 2010, in which he described his wife's arrest as "shocking." In another statement, he claimed to be "flabbergasted" by the news.
But Fulton Brock long had been aware of the relationship between his wife and the boy before issuing the statements, and he had worked to minimize the consequences for Susan.
Susan Brock was arrested October 26 after she was stopped on Loop 101 just west of their home. Detective Perez immediately served a search warrant at the house.
From the moment police got to the Brocks' residence, about 11 a.m., the county supervisor was uncooperative, Perez tells New Times. Brock denied having knowledge of his wife's affair with the boy:
"You know, Mr. Perez, I'm so reluctant to say anything that would implicate my wife. We did have a meeting with the Quinns several months ago, and Mr. Quinn did give me an iPhone that was either my daughter's or my wife's. That's all I know. I'm pretty much in the dark on this stuff."
Perez notes in his report that the supervisor's claim that he was ignorant of the relationship was inconsistent with the facts.
Fulton Brock then continued to lie to police, all while making sure they were aware that he was a powerful politician in good favor with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
"Why are there five of you here?" Brock asked Perez before asking whether he needed to "call the sheriff's department" — presumably to have the search stopped, prosecutor Jason Holmberg alleged during Susan Brock's sentencing hearing. Fulton Brock also asked the officers which judge had signed off on the search warrant.
After reviewing the warrant, Brock asked Perez, "What is it that you gentlemen intend to do?"
Perez told Supervisor Brock that he was looking for cell phones, credit cards, computers, and sex toys (one of them pink), among other items.
"This is crazy — a pink-colored phallic sex toy? I have never seen . . . my wife has never . . . could someone have planted that in my wife's car, or my wife's person?" the county supervisor asked Perez.
Detectives later found "a number of vibrating devices" in the Brocks' bedroom, one of which Fulton Brock told police he used for his bad back.
As for the credit card and cell phone, the county supervisor initially told Detective Perez he had no idea where they could be. However, when Perez pressed him about it later, Brock retrieved both the card and the phone from a locked metal box in his desk and turned them over to police.
Fulton Brock's desire to minimize the consequences for his wife didn't start on the day of her arrest.
In early September 2010, more than a month before Susan Brock's arrest — and several weeks before he was told about his wife's affair with Quinn by the boy's girlfriend's mother — the county supervisor asked former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley if he could help find a lawyer specializing in cases of sexual abuse of minors. He told Romley it was "for a friend."
As first reported by the Arizona Republic, Romley later hand-delivered the names of three defense attorneys to Brock's county office.
The day Susan Brock was arrested, more than a month after Romley delivered the list of attorneys to Fulton Brock's office, she told police it was their "lucky day" after she was pulled over on the 101.
Susan, it appears, was on her way to meet with an attorney about the sexual-abuse charges she apparently was anticipating. Police were "lucky" because an incriminating note was on the front seat of her car when she was stopped. The note was titled "History" and apparently was intended for an attorney.
At the top of the page was a "series of questions, presumably for a person Susan Brock was going to meet with," Detective Perez notes in his report.
The third line of the note stated: "How much might we cover in an hr?"
Under that line were the following notes:
"Mr. Larry Kazan said we could do hr. billing. Your rate is . . .?
"Intake treatment SLC goal. Avoiding prison goal. Putting life [in] order, keeping family together.
"Mother, daughter, girlfriend, extorted.
"Mentally insane defense?
"Any sexual felony difference intercourse or fellatio minor?"
The note, Perez concluded after subpoenaing a handwriting sample from the county supervisor, probably was written by Fulton Brock. The attorney for whom the note apparently was intended was one of the three on the list Romley had provided the supervisor.
Even after Brock was booked into a county jail, her husband used his position to make things as comfortable as possible for his wife — and to arrange special meetings with her that would not be recorded by detention officers.
Arpaio's willingness to help the Brocks apparently was unwavering.
Fulton Brock told Susan in a phone call: "Well, [then-sheriff's chief financial officer] Loretta [Barkwell] came to me yesterday, and she goes, 'Look, the sheriff wants to get all this craziness behind us, and we wanna bend over backwards, we wanna do whatever we can,' So I thought, Hmmm, maybe the time is right for me to call Loretta and say, Loretta, I got a problem."
At one point, Susan Brock complained that she wished the county supervisor had given her a "blessing" before he had left the jail during a recent visit.
"You know what? I should have had you give me one yesterday. I regretted that so much after you left," she said.
Fulton Brock responded, "I'll get permission again [for the blessing], and . . . the sheriff will make it happen."
During recorded conversations, Fulton and Susan censored what they talked about and repeatedly advised each other to save certain discussions for meetings that would not be recorded by detention officers. The following is a conversation between the Brocks after discussing a document Susan had signed while Fulton wasn't present:
Susan: "Oh . . . well . . . I will, I will explain everything. I'll tell you why . . . I just needed to, um . . ."
Fulton: "Yeah, just tell me tomorrow . . . I don't wanna . . ."
Susan: "That's what I'm saying."Fulton: "I don't want to say anything because these, you know, these . . ."
Susan: "I know! It's just . . ."
Fulton: "These vultures are listening to everything, and they're . . ."
Susan: "I know, I know. And . . . soon enough, they won't be interested anymore in what I have."
In another recorded conversation, Fulton Brock tells his wife how he had delivered a letter to her friend Christian Weems. It's unclear what was in the letter, but Weems later was charged with trying to destroy evidence against Susan after police learned Weems had been given the password to a secret e-mail account Susan used to communicate with Paul Quinn. Weems pleaded guilty last month to one misdemeanor charge of computer tampering. She's scheduled to be sentenced October 7.
Since the news of his family's sex scandal broke, Supervisor Brock basically has been a recluse, which has made his job as a public official awkward.
His first somewhat public appearance, where he was forced to face reporters' questions, was in May — nearly eight months after it was made public that his wife and daughter had engaged in sexual relationships with a teenage boy.
Following a speech with Sheriff Arpaio (to recovering drug addicts at one of Arpaio's jails), Brock faced a gaggle of reporters who had one thing on their minds: his family's sex scandal, about which he still refused to answer questions.
"I can only comment on government-related things today. I'm not gonna respond to anything relative to my family or personal matters," Brock told reporters.
Since Brock hasn't addressed these "family or personal matters," the question of whether he is capable of continuing on as a public official has been raised — mainly because he refuses to discuss when he first learned of the relationship and whether he should be held responsible criminally.
It's clear that he knew the boy's family suspected a sexual relationship between his wife and their son, that he never called police, and that he never did anything to stop the abuse.
It's also clear that Fulton Brock did what he could, as an elected official with powerful friends, to help her evade justice.
Aside from his "special" meetings with his jailed wife, compliments of political ally Arpaio, Brock also talked of appealing to Governor Jan Brewer, possibly asking her to pardon his sex-offender wife.
During one of the many conversations the county supervisor had with Susan while she was in jail, he mentions that he "ran into the governor today."
"Jan?" Susan Brock asked.
"Yeah. I had lunch today in Durant's as a guest of a vendor of the county," he said.
Susan asked, "Yeah, what did Jan say?"
Brock responds, "Governor Brewer was with three other ladies. She was with her chief of staff. They were all having a good time, and I shook her hand, and I said, 'I just wanted to say hello and thank you.' She called me twice, and I said [her calls] meant a lot to me. I just shook her hand, smiled, and started to walk away. She said, 'We need to have lunch.'"
Susan Brock then said, "Well, you need to have lunch with her. Wow, that's great!"
"She has the power to pardon," the county supervisor told his wife, before Susan added, "I'm gonna need it."
The Pinal County Attorney's Office tells New Times there are no charges pending against Supervisor Brock.
When asked whether there was a possibility that Fulton Brock would be arrested for lying to police about his prior knowledge of the affair between his wife and Paul Quinn, Detective Perez tells New Times: "Don't hold your breath."
This despite Arizona law's decreeing that "any person who reasonably believes that a minor is or has been the victim of physical injury, abuse, child abuse, a reportable offense or neglect [is required to report the abuse to authorities]."
Says clergy sex-abuse expert Marci Hamilton: "[Susan Brock's] a sociopath and a pedophile, and what really needs to be known is just how much her husband knew. That [was] a really corrupt and corrosive atmosphere in the [Brock] house, and if he knew about this boy and he didn't report it, that means [he] certainly is an enabler."
