Volume 31 • Number 23 • May 2, 2013
What’s Inside Centennial Center Park wins Live Work Play award
303-773-8313 • Published every Thursday
Shining a light on child abuse
Page 4
Sungate Kids protects victims – while ensuring justice
Page 13
Broadway Babes & Beaus brighten future for abused children
Page 16
Cherry Creek Schools celebrates Superintendent Chesley
Don’t Miss:
suspended after gun • Students found at Campus Middle School
• Gessler blasts Democratic
Page 9
elections bill
•
www.villagerpublishing.com
Page 9 Kent beats Colorado Academy in lacrosse rival match-up Page 12
Index
Page 5..............................................Opinion Page 8.........................................Classifieds Pages 13-18....................................Fleurish Page 22-27........................................Legals Pages 28-30.........................................digs
TheVillagerNewspaper @VillagerDenver
By Peter Jones At first glance – and even second glance – Larissa Clark is the picture of self-confidence. Poised and articulate, the 20-year-old is well suited to her emerging career as a model and an assistant to a Houston-based entertainment promoter. To look at Clark today, one would not have guessed the horrific and all too real backstory that helped shape the confident woman she has become. As a child age 7 to 14, Clark was routinely abused by her stepfather, in virtually every way – sexually, physically and emotionally. “It will always be a part of me,” the former Centennial resident said. “If it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I worked through everything. I went to therapy for a while. I’m living life, following my dreams.” Clark’s harrowing story is all too common. Nearly 70 percent of reported sexual-assault victims in the United States are children age 17 and younger. Some of the widely varying research has suggested that as many as 35 percent of U.S. children will be sexually assaulted by the time they turn 18. The problem is no less pronounced in rural and suburban areas. In 2000, Clark was one of at
Larissa Clark stands in the courtyard outside Sungate Kids. At 14, the former Centennial resident was interviewed by the agency about her experiences as a sexual-abuse victim. Today, Clark is an aspiring model. Photo by Peter Jones least 650 children to pass through the doors of Sungate Kids, a Greenwood Village-based childvictim advocacy agency that serves the 18th Judicial District of Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties. In a world where children can be re-victimized by the legal system that was designed to pros-
ecute their perpetrators, Sungate Kids works to facilitate justice without compromising the healing process endured by their victims. “It’s child friendly. It’s nonthreatening. It’s not traumatic,” said Diane Goldberg, executive director of the nonprofit organization. “The whole idea behind
Sungate Kids is how can we make the system more responsive to victims.”
More than ‘just the facts’
Imagine Dragnet’s tough-asnails Sgt. Joe Friday interrogating a traumatized first-grader and you Continued on page 2
‘He built this city on rock & roll’ Barry Fey 1939-2013
By Peter Jones oncert promoter Barry Fey is being remembered as the man who almost singlehandedly built the Denver concert industry – often with an iron hand, but always with a genuine love for the music. Fey, a longtime Arapahoe County resident, died April 28 at age 73. The cause of death could not be confirmed at press time, but Fey had been having health problems and had recently undergone hip-replacement surgery. Arapahoe County Coroner Michael Dobersen completed an autopsy this week, but the results had not yet been made public at press time at the request of the family Jock Bartley, founding lead guitarist of Boulder-based Firefall, called Fey a giant of the music business. “There was no other rock promoter like Barry Fey,” he told The Villager. “He single-handedly put
c
Colorado on the man and a great national and infriend. He was ternational muthe first U.S. prosic map. … He moter to believe was the smartin Black Sabbath est and toughest and gave us our music industry first American businessman tour. The music you’d ever want world has lost a to encounter, great man. My usually always heart goes out to wearing his sighis family.” nature cut-off A music fan shorts and baggy in Rio de Janeiro T-shirt, no matter wrote, “My teenhow prestigious age years would the venue was.” Concert promoter Barry not have been Within just Fey, a long-time Arapahoe as incredible as a few hours of County resident, turned they were if not Fey’s death in his Denver into a must-stop city for the amazing Arapahoe Lakes for concert tours. He died concerts I was home, the retired April 28 in his Arapahoe able to go to durpromoter’s Face- Lakes home. ing those years, File photo book page was thanks to you!” being inundated Denver singby comments from friends, music er Lannie Garrett wrote this of the fans and entertainment-industry hard-knuckled promoter: professionals from across the “Yes, we know he could be country. hell on wheels and often not so Musician Ozzy Osbourne post- nice, but he was always good to ed this: me. Barry, your huge personality “Barry Fey was a gentle- was and is legendary,” she wrote.
Fey was born in New Jersey in 1939. His family moved to Chicago when he was 11. After a stint in the Marine Corps and brief flirtation with law school, Fey fell into the concert business, eventually winding up in Colorado, where he produced his first show for a University of Denver fraternity party. For three decades, Feyline and later Fey Concerts booked everyone from Paul McCartney to Elvis Presley in Denver and later in other cities across the United States. He was credited for taking Denver from a musical cow town to a must-stop destination for major concert tours. On the home front, Fey once helped save the troubled Denver Symphony Orchestra by offering to run the reinvented Colorado Symphony’s shows. During his 30-year self-described “monopoly,” Fey saw his share of highs and lows – from his bankruptcy and the financially disastrous 1982 Jamaican World Music Festival to the North American debut of a then-unknown Continued on page 3