Cathy Rainbolt was abused almost from birth to her death, including physical abuse from James “Tom” Hodgkinson, the congressional shooter killed by police. Cathy lived in the Hodgkinson house near Belleville, IL, as a foster child. (Handout)
Congressional shooter James Hodgkinson was abusive alcoholic, foster daughter told judge before her overdose death
Chicago Tribune
Beth Hundsdorfer and George Pawlaczyk / Belleville News-Democrat
6/19/2017
Excerpts:
Teenager Cathy Rainbolt told a judge her foster father hit her in the face when she failed to mow the lawn correctly. She got hit in the face when she argued. She got hit and dragged by the hair when she tried to get away.
Her foster father was James “Tom” Hodgkinson, who is now infamous after shooting U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, two police officers and a staffer on a Virginia ballfield Wednesday. Rainbolt told the judge that Hodgkinson drank every day.
“I didn’t mark a time when (Hodgkinson) started hitting me,” Rainbolt told St. Clair County Circuit Judge James Radcliffe during a hearing Nov. 21, 2006. “It’s been hard to live with (an alcoholic) and how (he) treated me,” Rainbolt said.
The transcript of the hearing was unsealed, along with the rest of Rainbolt’s juvenile file, after a request by the Belleville News-Democrat was granted by Circuit Judge Jan Fiss on Friday afternoon. Rainbolt died in 2015 of a drug overdose after a life “mixed with human suffering and laughter,” her obit read.
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Rachele Putnam, Rainbolt’s biological mother, lost custody of her and her two sisters in 1995 when Cathy was 6. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services placed Cathy in Don Bosco Children’s Home in Belleville after determining her mother’s boyfriend sexually abused her 9- and 8-year-old sisters.
DCFS also found that Cathy’s biological father, Michael Putnam, sexually abused the girls, as well as their paternal grandfather. Cathy was placed in a foster home, attended counseling and made monthly visits to her father in prison.
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As an adult, Cathy Rainbolt developed a drug problem, according to her obituary. She had a son. In 2011, she once again fell prey to a sexual attack at the hands of her biological father, who was sentenced to five years on criminal sexual abuse charges. On July 26, 2015, Cathy Rainbolt died of a heroin overdose. She was 26. (bold emphasis added in above two paragraphs)
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