Vickie Daigle charges foster brother with abuse

A former Bangor gymnastics coach is suing her childhood foster brother over allegations that he sexually abused her for several years.

The complaint filed this week in Penobscot County Superior Court does not specify a dollar figure as compensation for alleged damages. But in other court documents, Mary Ellen Hawes Ramirez, also known as Vickie Daigle, contends that she is entitled to at least $500,000.

Ramirez, 44, now of Montreal, once operated the Vickie Daigle School of Gymnastics and Dance. In 1987, she won a slander suit against a competitor who made comments about her in an attempt to foil a network-television appearance by one of Ramirez’s students. Five years earlier, she was acquitted of a charge that she had assaulted a student in trying to discipline the girl.

In the recent action, she claims that Karl Daigle of Bangor, the son of her foster mother, sexually abused her on numerous occasions from about 1956 to about 1961, according to the six-count complaint, “to the extent that she would attempt to hide in closets and under beds when she heard the defendant approach.”

Daigle, contacted at his home Wednesday evening, would not comment in detail about the allegations, but rejected them wholesale. “It’s just a lie,” he said.

Ramirez repressed her memories of the events, she claims, but began having flashbacks and suicidal thoughts in February 1989 when she began to “realize or discover” that they had occurred. She began therapy in December 1989.

Ramirez contends she suffered emotional and mental distress, pain and suffering, and impaired earning ability, health and “opportunity at normal life and growth,” and accumulated medical bills because of the alleged abuse.

She claims that Daigle was negligent, that he intentionally or recklessly inflicted the abuse, and that his conduct was deliberate.

In an affidavit accompanying a motion to attach Daigle’s property for a half-million dollars, she claims the combination of private and group therapy that has been recommended for her would cost $180 a week and would last for several years. Her medical problems allegedly include chest and abdominal pain, headaches, intestinal and gynecological problems, for which treatment has cost $3,000. A judge has yet to act on the motion for attachment.

Her husband, Rodolfo Ramirez, also is receiving therapy, according to the lawsuit, which also bears his name as a plaintiff. He contends that he has lost his wife’s companionship over the allegations.

Mary Ellen Ramirez also maintains that she sought $120,000 from Daigle out of court last year to pay for her therapy, and that he agreed to pay it in installments on condition that she not file a lawsuit.

She contends he never made the initial payment in June 1990.