Alleged victim details abuses

Editor’s Note: The following article contains allegations of child molestation and abuse that some readers may find offensive.

Now in her 40s, married and living in Florida, Jackie Zudis said learning that the man who claimed to be her father, George Joseph England, 65, was going to be freed from prison compelled her to tell her story to the FBI in a videotaped interview shown to the public.

In the 45-minute interview, which took place in Florida last week and was released to the media Thursday, Zudis recounted her life with England. He bought her in Vietnam when she was 5, and took her to his Costa Mesa home. Zudis alleged in her FBI interview that the man who tried to present her as his daughter sexually abused, raped and impregnated her over a 13-year period.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami is planning to file unspecified charges against England, but the statute of limitations for any possible crimes contained in the allegations made by Zudis in the FBI video have long passed and will not result in charges, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

However, England was expected to be charged for other unspecified crimes by federal prosecutors, a decision that prevented him from being released from prison today, Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas said.

England is finishing up three years in prison for molesting three of Zudis’ childhood friends in the 1970s.

Orange County prosecutors said Zudis’ story was released to warn the public to the dangers England could pose to children and to show that a woman who claimed that she had been abused was able to thrive in her adult life.

In the video, Zudis is seen choking up with emotion, other times in seeming disbelief. Zudis walked the FBI through a harrowing life story. England was in Vietnam as a civilian contractor when he bought her in 1972, she said.

The abuse began almost immediately, Zudis claimed. In her FBI interview, she described acts of oral sex and intercourse with England.

Zudis told authorities she got pregnant between six and eight times and had an abortion each time.

She had England’s baby, a boy, at 13 years old and put him up for adoption. England told people she had gotten pregnant at a party, she said.

At age 16, Zudis threatened to kill herself unless the abuse stopped, she said, adding that England left her alone after that. At age 21, she left his home and did not return..

“I think there’s just a plain evilness” in him, she said. “I’m still paying for everything he’s done.”

England was convicted of molesting three of Zudis’ friends in 1977. Before the sentencing, he took Zudis, and they fled to Santa Barbara in the middle of the night. They moved to Florida under an assumed identity.

Authorities caught up with him in 2005. He was sentenced in 2006 and served three years, partly because the crimes happened in the 1970s and he was sentenced under the laws of that time, the state parole board found in approving his release.

Zudis said she came forward in hopes that her stepfather would never be freed.

“Beware: He’s not changed, nor will he change,” she said.