Judge awards $28 million to San Jose man sexually abused by adoptive parents

When he was 9 and first came to the United States after being adopted by a wealthy Los Gatos couple, Denis Flynn was eager to leave the pain and grief of his childhood in Russia behind.

Later, as he endured a decade of sexual abuse at the hands of those adoptive parents, Flynn said it was the memories of his childhood and his deceased mother that helped him persevere.

“They were my anchor to surviving the hell I was living in,” Flynn said Friday, a few days after he learned that a Santa Clara County judge had awarded him $28 million in damages from the parents who abused him. “I would escape into memories of my Russian life.”

Now a 27-year-old massage therapist living in San Jose, Flynn said Judge Brian Walsh’s ruling in the civil lawsuit against his adoptive parents is more confirmation that he did the right thing when he came forward to report the abuse as a 19-year-old.

“It’s not impossible to reclaim your life and your power that was wrongly robbed from you,” said Flynn. “It’s better than anything money can buy, to reclaim that power.”

Ralph Flynn, who began sexually abusing Denis within months of adopting him, was sentenced to 24 years in prison as part of a 2017 plea agreement. He had been charged with dozens of child molestation counts.

Carolyn Flynn, Ralph’s 46-year-old wife, who Walsh said turned a blind eye to the abuse for years before she, too, began sexually assaulting Denis when he was a teenager, was charged with rape. She received a 12-year sentence.

After a two day civil trial in May, Walsh wrote in his decision that the couple “colluded to manipulate and abuse Denis as a young child and a young man.” Walsh found that they both had committed six charges related to human trafficking, child sexual abuse and inflicting emotional distress. He ordered Ralph Flynn to pay Denis $17 million and Carolyn Flynn to pay him $11 million.

“Denis didn’t really get his day in court until now,” said his attorney, Nina Shapirshteyn. “One of the things this decision does is finally announce that the only monsters here are Ralph and Carolyn Flynn.”

The couple lived in a 3,400 square-foot home overlooking the Lexington Reservoir and owned a Rolls Royce. For Denis Flynn, who grew up in a small city in northern Russia and suffered abuse at the orphanage where he was sent after his mother died from cancer, Walsh wrote that the Flynns’ home must have seemed like a paradise.

Instead he suffered regular sexual abuse that he felt powerless to stop.

“He encountered another form of the same hell from which he thought he had been rescued,” Walsh wrote. “Imprisoned by fear, deceit and coercion, Denis believed he had no options and was forced to endure the repeated abuse for a period of ten years.”

Attorneys for Carolyn Flynn, in asking that Walsh not impose the damages, said she had been left “financially destitute” after paying for her criminal defense, an argument Walsh rejected. Ralph Flynn did not mount a defense in the civil case.

Flynn said he hopes to use the money he was awarded to visit his mother’s grave in Russia and see his sister. He has reconnected with her and some cousins through social media, and is learning once again how to speak Russian.

As he encourages other survivors of sexual abuse to come forward, Flynn says doing so has allowed him to live the best life he can.

“Fight through the doubt and push through that fear,” he said. “Even with the trauma, even with the memories, even with the pain — I’m able to overcome this.”