Jury Awards Rebekka Trahan Over $4.6 Million for Prolonged Abuse by Her Biological Parents
An Alachua County Florida jury found ‘Spiderman’ Scott Mulholland sexually abused his biological daughter for 16 years, from when she was age 8 to 24, when she left the family home and disclosed the lifetime of abuse. The jury also found that his wife, Tina Mulholland, was negligent in failing to protect her daughter from the abuse. The decision comes after Rebekka Trahan brought a lawsuit against her father and mother, charging that her father abused her sexually, physically and emotionally; that her father encouraged and enabled her oldest brother, Scott Mulholland, Jr., to do the same; and that her mother allowed the abuse to take place. The jury reached its decision after deliberating for just over two hours on Monday evening.
“The jury has today endorsed Rebekka Trahan’s truth about the abuse she suffered for so many years, the truth her family wanted kept secret,” said Michael Dolce, Of Counsel at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, who represents Ms. Trahan. “Spiderman Mulholland is a leader in his community and has made headlines in local newspapers for his rags-to-riches story. But the evidence showed that, behind closed doors, he was a monster to his daughter and taught his son to be one, too. While nothing can undo these heinous crimes, our client is grateful this trial has exposed her parents for who they are. Rebekka hopes to encourage other survivors to break their silence as she has.”
“The jury's verdict affirmed Rebekka's truth and will be the beginning of her journey to finding peace and healing,” added Takisha Richardson, a member of Cohen Milstein’s Sexual Abuse, Sex Trafficking and Domestic Violence team.
Trahan is the daughter of Spiderman Scott Mulholland and Tina Mulholland and the sister of Scott F. Mulholland. As detailed in the Circuit Court complaint, Trahan alleged that, for more than 15 years, she was the victim of ritualistic and repetitive abuse inside her family home.
Spiderman Mulholland is a former United States Marine, where he spent time training other Marines in counter-terrorism tactics. After his time in the military, he joined and was active in a Pentecostal church in Pensacola. He began a window cleaning business there, using his military training to scale building walls, earning him the ‘Spiderman’ moniker to which he would later legally change his name. That business would eventually grow into a construction and consulting business, US Building Consultants Inc., which he now runs with his son.
Rebekka Trahan’s parents home-schooled her and restricted her social activities to the local Pentecostal church community in which they were both highly regarded and influential. Her parents also prevented Trahan from locking her bedroom door to protect herself from the nighttime invasions into her room.
Ahead of the lawsuit, several sworn depositions were taken with various parties, including both Spiderman Mulholland and his son, Scott—who has admitted to having sexual contact with his sister beginning when she was 12 and continuing for 10 years.
Throughout the approximately seventeen years that Rebekka Trahan was sexually, physically and emotionally abused, she and her brother lived under the same roof as both parents. In her case, Trahan argued that her mother, Tina Mulholland, knew of the abuse.
Ms. Trahan contended she suffered severe mental and physical consequences from the decades-long abuse, including but not limited to psychiatric trauma, flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia.
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