06/01/2021
You wanted him, Indian River County, now you got him.
A boy with the personality of a rag doll fell into a tough job today and became Indian River County Sheriff in a ceremony where his wife wore jeans and the swells couldn’t be bothered to wear masks. (I guess the fact 46 people are sick with Covid in the county’s ER tonight didn’t make anyone suddenly smart!)
Eric Flowers was picked for the job by the local political establishment two years ago and rammed down the throats of uninformed voters with close to $500,000 in campaign expenditures, a record in these parts, and his occasional use of office resources.
From the start, Flowers’ main qualifications, it seems, were that he graduated from Vero Beach High School and he knew the right people – far from good enough for sheriff.
Yet, to mark Flowers’ first week in office, we’ve got a few stories in the hopper showing that Flowers, as a public information officer and a major over the past few years, contributed to corrupt the office by actively conspiring to hide some of the numerous IRCSO’s shortcomings under his predecessor, Deryl Loar.
Today’s installment: Christopher Hatton.
When the 46-year-old Christopher Hatton was arrested on Sept. 3 for molesting two children, the documents that Flowers’ public information office released listed Hatton's job as “maintenance.”
Of course, the mainstream media didn’t double-check what Flowers office was feeding them and ran the story of a garden variety maintenance man nabbed for s*xually abusing kids.
Now, the rest of the story:
Not only was Hatton employed by sheriff’s department as a civilian jail maintenance man when he was arrested, but he also had been cleared to start as a road deputy – som**hing that should have the public wonder who’s being hired to walk around with a gun.
Hatton is still being held on $100,000-bond today at the same jail where he once worked. He faces two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation.
I’m withholding the details of the abuse and the identity of the two victims, both girls in the mid-teens. One of the victims endured the inappropriate touching for nearly three years, according to records.
And in a statement to a friend reported in the arrest papers, Hatton said he himself was the victim of s*xual abuse as a child.
“I have things in my head that I shouldn’t have in there,” Hatton said, according to the arrest documents.
Hatton claimed seeing one victim n**e “by accident” one night sent him into a tailspin of s*xual feelings that culminated with the molestation.
Incidentally, the arrest records failed to mention Hatton was working for the sheriff’s office -- this in the middle of Flowers’ campaign for sheriff.
And what the agency failed to tell the public is that on August 24, a little more than a week before his arrest, Hatton had been cleared to start a new job as road deputy trainee.
According to a copy of his employee, Hatton had just undergone a second psychological evaluation that deemed him fit for road patrol.
He underwent a first psych test in 2019 when he was hired for his jail maintenance job.
Neither test, administered by Vero Beach, Florida clinical psychologist Garry Edwards, flagged Hatton as a potential s*x offender.
Edwards didn’t return several calls for comment about the evaluations.
The sheriff’s office released copies of the evaluations that were blackened and unreadable.
One of Edwards’ colleagues who did not evaluate Hatton, however, said that s*xual deviances would not necessarily pop up in a law enforcement psychological interview.
“Individuals with one or several s*xual deviances are very crafty at hiding them,” said Dr. George Zaky in Port St. Lucie, Florida. “I do law enforcement evaluations, and it’s mostly about sending someone on the street with a gun. There are well-defined criteria that we touch on about someone’s personality, but not whether the subject is molesting children. I guess it’s assumed it’s not going on with a candidate sheriff’s deputy.”
Flowers did not respond to an email for comment about his failure to inform the media of Hatton’s employment status, and refused to explain why the psychological evaluations didn’t reveal what Hatton was secretly up to.
“I’m here in a political capacity and I’m not going to comment,” a sheepish as usual Flowers said when we caught up with him on his winning campaign trail in late October.
Meanwhile, Hatton’s IRCSO employee file shows he was well-liked by his supervisors.
His performance evaluations noted his hard work at the jail and respectful nature even to the inmates.
Hatton was hired by the sheriff’s office in June 2019, after 25 years as maintenance tech at the Shiloh Youth Ranch, a faith-based school for troubled teens in Sebastian, Florida.
School president Mark Hinkle said Hatton had never shown any clue he might seek s*xual gratification from children.
Hatton had become an employee of the school after himself being a student there and two semesters at Liberty University, the ultra-conservative Christian university started by former Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell.
“There was not even a hint of that sort of behavior,” said Hinkle. “I’m floored by his arrest. He came to us as a student at 11-year-old. I know he was abused before he came to us, but he behaved like a true gentleman both as a student and an employee.”
Hatton’s wife of 20 years filed for divorce.
“It doesn’t even matter anymore,” he allegedly told his wife, according to arrest records, “Whatever is done is done. I can’t get out of anything. There’s no way to do anything. I’m going to be going to jail for a very long time … I screwed up. I’m sorry.”