A child abuse survivor whose father shot his accused abuser to death in plain view of a television news camera in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the 1980s says he suggests parents whose children are molested “not to take the law into your own hands and put yourself in a position to be prosecuted”.
Instead, “I would advise [them] … to be there for their child,” Joseph Boyce “Jody” Plauché remarked in a new interview that was recently published by People.
Plauché’s comments revisited the slaying of his karate coach Jeff Doucet at the hands of his father, Gary Plauché, which was once one of the US’s most sensational criminal cases.
Jody was 10 when Doucet became his karate coach and began molesting the boy, as Plauché recounted in a 2019 memoir. In February 1984, Doucet drove an 11-year-old Jody to a relative’s home in Port Arthur, Texas, and then they took a bus to the Los Angeles area to visit Disneyland.
Doucet and Jody were there for about a week, and authorities found them in a motel room after the man let the boy make a collect call to his mother. The boy was quickly brought home, and tests confirmed he had been sexually assaulted. Two deputies from the sheriff’s office in Baton Rouge flew to California to bring Doucet back on charges of kidnapping and child sexual abuse, and Gary Plauché learned from someone at the Louisiana news station WBRZ when the karate coach was arriving at the local airport.
Gary Plauché went to the airport in sunglasses and a baseball cap and lay in wait. As officers walked past him with a handcuffed Doucet, Gary Plauché aimed a handgun at the 25-year-old’s right ear, fired point-blank and killed him as a news camera filmed.
Video recorded one of the deputies who helped arrest Jody’s father – and recognized him – as he shouted: “Gary, why? Why, Gary? Why?”
Gary Plauché – who instantly became a vigilante hero to many Americans at the time – eventually pleaded no contest to a manslaughter charge, spent five years on probation and avoided serving any time in prison. He died in 2014 at age 69.
Jody, who would go on to title his memoir Why, Gary, Why?, later told the Associated Press how people constantly approached him to exalt his father long after the case fell out of the news headlines. Well into his adulthood, he would post cooking videos online – and rather than weigh in on his dishes, viewers would write comments commending his father.
“They won’t comment: ‘That gumbo looks great,’” Jody said to the AP. “They’ll just be like: ‘Your dad’s a hero.’”
But in his recent conversation with People, the 53-year-old Jody Plauché said his father “got lucky” that he didn’t face a harsher sentence which would have taken him away from his son at a crucial time in his recovery from his sexual abuse. He said he even gave his father the silent treatment for a couple of months after Doucet’s killing.
“I didn’t want Jeff dead – I didn’t want daddy to hurt Jeff,” Jody Plauché said to People of his state of mind at the time. “I just wanted Jeff to stop doing what he was doing, which he never would’ve, but that was just the hope back then, the prayers I would say at night.”
Jody Plauché said he forgave his father after seeing Gary and his mother “getting along really [well]” in the aftermath of the deadly shooting. He had done that upon accepting that authorities would not come take Gary away at a time when his boy needed him, as Jody told People.
During one of the rare conversations they had about Doucet’s slaying, Jody recalled, “I told him … ‘I’m not mad at you no more. I understand why you did it.’”
Jody said he remembered Gary responding with something to the effect of: “I love you.”
As Jody tells it, he later earned a general studies degree at Louisiana State University with minors in speech, communication and psychology. He worked in Pennsylvania as a sexual assault counselor for seven years, returned to Baton Rouge in 2005 after his father suffered a stroke, and took a job at his brother’s transportation company.
Jody Plauché has said that the purpose of Why, Gary, Why? is to give hope and knowledge to survivors and their parents, respectively.
“I wanted outsiders to get a general understanding about sexual violence and sexual abuse,” said Jody Plauché, now a vocal advocate for child molestation survivors.
• In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
