Michelle Sykes knew something was wrong the moment her daughter called.
It was 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 24, 2019, and the then-13 year old was spending the night with her best friend, the daughter of Keith Douglas Wilkins Jr. The girl called her mother and said she didn’t feel well, and she urgently wanted to come home.
“It happens sometimes,” Sykes said. “Kids get homesick and want to come home. But this time it felt different.”
The worried mom got out of bed and wasn’t even dressed before her parents, who lived next door, was knocking. The girl had called them as well.
“Momma said we have to go get her, that there was something wrong.”
When they arrived at the Wilkins home, Gaddy said, Daniels’ wife and daughter, and Sykes’ daughter came to the back door, Sykes said.
“She was just wearing her night clothes, and it was cold,” Sykes said. “I knew something bad was wrong.” Daniels’ wife came out as well, and was usual friendly, outgoing self.
A few miles down the road, Sykes said, her daughter broke down and explained that Wilkins had sexually molested her.
“My first thought was I had to protect my daughter,” she said.
That started a complicated, confusing and often frustrating six-year trip through the legal system that ended Thursday with Wilkins being sentenced.
He entered an Alford plea, which means the defendant does not admit guilt but recognizes he could be convicted based on the evidence of a case. Wilkins, 39, received a 13- to 25-month suspended sentence, with two years of supervised probation. He must submit to drug testing as part of the plea. Wilkins was also required to register as a sex offender for ten years.
On that February night in 2019, however, Sykes wanted care first and justice second for her daughter.
Sykes lived across the county line in Brunswick, and when she called 911, the telecommunicator told her she needed to speak to Columbus 911. She stopped at home so her daughter could change into some warmer clothes, then drove back across the line, where a deputy and detective met the mother and daughter in Delco.
She then drove to New Hanover Regional Medical Center to the emergency room, where her daughter underwent an exam for sexual assault.
“They took her clothes,” she said, her voice halting, “and did what they had to do. It was pretty rough.” The clothing and evidence were sealed and handed over to NHRMC Police, who turned the evidence over to the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office.
Wilkins was arrested July 9, 2019, on charges of statutory sex offense with a child under 15 and indecent liberties with a minor. He was released on $15,000 bond the same day and ordered not to have contact with the victim and her family.
Sykes’ daughter began intensive therapy in the weeks and months after the assault.
“She was changed, but she wasn’t going to quit,” Sykes said. They met with the assistant district attorney and investigators, hoping the case would soon go to court, but the delays continued.
Less than a year after the arrest, she said, she tried repeatedly to contact the detective and got no response. When she called the sheriff’s office, she found out the detective was no longer employed at the CCSO.
“We had to start all over again,” she said. The new detective told Sykes that he was shocked at how his predecessor had missed or failed to do a number of basic things to help investigate the case.
“They didn’t do any kind of swabs on him (Wilkins), and they didn’t take his clothes the night it happened,” she said. “He had time to clean up and take a shower before they interviewed him.”
Then the evidence – her daughter’s clothes and medical records – were “lost.”
“For three years they were just gone,” she said. “They told me they didn’t know what had happened to them. Everything that she went through, the evidence was lost.”
Defense Attorney Harold “Butch” Pope asked the courts to produce the evidence, and the clothing and other items were finally found.
“If she’d gone through all that for nothing, I don’t know what I’d have done,” Sykes said.
Along the way, Sykes said, her daughter had to tell and re-tell her story to new ADAs as prosecutors came and went from the District Attorney’s office.
“She had to live it again, over and over,” Sykes said.
“One just cursed every other word,” she said. “Another one kept encouraging (her daughter) to give up and move on with her life, that it had been almost five years at that point, and she needed to move on.
“They had my baby crying. She may be a grown woman, but she is my child, and she was crying at the way she was being treated, and having to tell what happened time and again.”
At one point, after she had turned 18, Sykes was not allowed to be with her daughter while she was discussing the case with an ADA.
“They told me I could wait outside,” she said. “They allowed her dad in there, but not me.”
The last prosecutor to handle the case, Heather Brittain, was more caring than some of the others, Sykes said.
Sykes said she and her daughter have endured years of people questioning if the allegations were true. Since Wilkins’ plea was filed and became public Thursday, Sykes said, she has received threats via social media from people who stood by Wilkins.
She said her faith and her determination to protect her daughter carried her through some dark times leading up the trial.
“You have to believe your child if she says something like this,” Sykes said. “If no one else is going to believe in your child, you have to if you know they’re telling the truth.”
Sykes and her daughter’s father were going through a divorce at the time of the assault, and the defense tried to paint her daughter as a “troubled child” because her parents had ended their marriage.
“I don’t believe in divorce,” she said, “but it happens. If every divorce created troubled children, there would be a lot more cases like this out there. That had nothing to do with what happened to my daughter. Nothing.”
Sykes said and her daughter wanted to share their experiences to help encourage other children who might be abused to come forward. Her daughter especially did not want Wilkins to go unpunished.
“Listen to your child,” Sykes said. “Know your child. And you have to be willing to fight for your child.”
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