McKeesport, Pa. – As an eighth- grader in 1995, Tanya Nicole Kach skipped class one day and was caught by a school security guard.
In a stairwell, the troubled teenager and the guard who was more than twice her age began kissing, according to the story she told authorities. Soon, she said, they hatched a plan for her to run away from home and live with him.
For the next decade, the guard kept the girl in his parents’ house, carrying on a sexual relationship with her for years after her parents reported her missing, according to court documents.
Kach, now 24, told police her story this week, prompting them to charge Thomas Hose, 48, with statutory sexual assault and three counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. He was suspended without pay from the middle school where he had continued to work.
Kach’s parents reported her as a runaway Feb. 10, 1996 – the day she moved in with Hose and his son at a house owned by Hose’s parents. Court documents said the parents did not know she was there because she remained in Hose’s room until about 2000, then was allowed to leave only when his parents were not home.
Hose and Kach began a sexual relationship soon after she ran away, and it continued into her adulthood, according to the charges against Hose. She told police that Hose had her record their encounters on a calendar “so he could brag to co-workers and friends,” the complaint said.
On Tuesday, Kach walked into a neighborhood deli and told the owner her true identity. The deli owner called his son – a retired police officer who recognized Kach’s name – and a missing children hotline.
Kach soon was reunited with her father. She also gave several media interviews, explaining that she had many problems at home at the time she met Hose.
“We’re investigating this further, but I have to tell you there is still a lot we need to figure out,” said Charles Moffatt, superintendent of the Allegheny County Police Department.
For the first four years of captivity, Kach told the police, she was never permitted to leave the two-bedroom house, and Hose threatened to kill her if she told anyone about her captivity.
Locked in his bedroom, she often was forced to use a metal can for a toilet, she said, and even though he shared the house with his parents and his 22-year-old son, he forbade anyone to let her out, Kach told the deli owner, Joe Sparico. In later years, Kach said, she was allowed to leave during the day, but she never spoke to anyone about her situation because she believed Hose’s threats.
“I was so scared that nobody would believe me,” Kach told WTAE-TV on Wednesday from the home of her father, Jerry Kach, in Elizabeth, a Pittsburgh suburb.
Sparico said, “From the way she was shaking when she told me, I think she really believed he would do it.”
On Tuesday, after growing close to Sparico and his family over eight months, she revealed her secret.
“If you go to a website for missing children, you will see a picture of me there,” he said she told him.
Sparico’s wife, Janet, said Kach had told her in recent days that when she was in the eighth grade, her parents were going through a divorce and that she was convinced neither parent wanted her, leading her to run away.
At the time, Kach said, she had a crush on Hose, and when she confided her plans to leave home, he offered to take her in, Janet Sparico said.
“After that, I guess he never let her go,” she said.
It was unclear why Kach did not seek help sooner, Moffatt said, “but in my view, that part doesn’t much matter, because you can’t be 14 and make an adult decision that you want to be involved with an adult in this way.”
Hose’s attorney, James Ecker, said his client was innocent.
Hose was released on $200 bail.
“I think if the police believed she was being held against her will or that she was physically abused, they would have charged him with kidnapping or abuse,” Ecker said. “But they didn’t.”
Janet Sparico said of Kach, “She was always well put together, like a little Barbie doll, and I never saw any signs of physical abuse.”
She added, “But I have spoken with her quite a bit, and I think that she was really brainwashed by this guy.”
The New York Times and The Daily News of New York contributed to this report.
