In 2016, as the stress of wedding planning bore down on Joseph Sinclair, he got into an argument with his parents and told them something that sent his family into a tailspin: As a child, he said, he was sexually abused by a neighbor they had hired to babysit him.
The revelation wreaked havoc on the family, which sought years of therapy to heal. But now they say they are being forced to relive the trauma.
Maureen Sartain, the babysitter Sinclair has accused of abusing him, has filed a lawsuit against Sinclair’s mother, saying in court documents that Marie Sinclair intentionally caused her emotional distress by telling others about the alleged abuse. The case is scheduled to go to trial next month in New York.
“It keeps me up at night,” Marie Sinclair said of the thought of her son being called to testify in the trial. “Because of this ridiculous lawsuit, he’s being forced to confront some painful memories. It is so unfair.”
Sartain declined a request for an interview through her attorney, Scott Mishkin, who referred NBC News to her deposition from last year. In it, Sartain denied abusing Joseph Sinclair. She is not suing for defamation and some legal experts have expressed surprise that the case is scheduled to go to trial.
“What she’s trying to do is get around the truth test by reframing the case,” said Richard Epstein, a professor at New York University School of Law. “It’s an effort to repackage a defamation case as an emotional distress case to avoid the truth test.”
Unlike in a suit for emotional distress, the plaintiff in a defamation case has to prove that the statement in question was false.
Sartain’s attorney did not return a request for comment about the nature of the suit.
The Sinclair family avoided Sartain for years after they learned of the alleged abuse, Marie Sinclair said.
“Me and my husband, Jimmy, wanted to kill her,” she said of the babysitter, who lived on the same Smithtown street as the couple until they moved last year. But a therapist told them it wouldn’t be good for Joseph Sinclair’s therapy if they confronted her. “He needed to heal. He needed to get over the guilt and the shame of it, and confronting her would only harm him,” Marie Sinclair said the therapist told them.
She followed that advice for three years. Then, on Nov. 2, 2020, she changed course.
“I see you are friends with Maureen Grennan Sartain on Facebook,” she wrote in direct messages sent to at least a dozen people on the social network, according to the lawsuit, a transcript of her deposition and screenshots of messages Sinclair provided to NBC News. “I want you to know she is a pedophile and raped my child when he was 8 years old. She has never been prosecuted for this crime. If anything I can warn you, your family and your children.”
