As a teen, I couldn’t understand why my parents were so wary of me going out and doing things on my own. “Don’t you trust me?” I’d whine incredulously. I expected them to fess up that they didn’t, but instead they laid a real truth on me: “It isn’t you we don’t trust. It is everyone else” was the reply. Now that I am a parent, I completely get it. The world is full of people with questionable intentions hiding in plain sight.
For 14-year-old Tanya Kach, her trust in an adult who was a relative stranger (which for the record was not her fault) led to a decade-long capture full of sexual and mental abuse. People recently revisited the 1996 case, which began when Tanya was in eighth grade and having familial problems.
According to the magazine, her father, Jerry Kach, obtained full custody of her in 1995 and moved her in with his girlfriend JoAnn at roughly the same time. Starting a new school brought on a lot of turmoil for Tanya. In a previous interview for the docuseries People Magazine Investigates, Jerry Kach said she was profusely bullied and resented him and JoAnn for moving her there. As a result, she would run away and return in 24 hours. She also ended up befriending a security guard at her school named Thomas “Tom” Hose as a respite from the bullies, and he ended up using her vulnerable state to groom her.
“We started to get to know each other more. He would take me out of class just to talk to me,” Tanya told People Magazine Investigates.
When the 38-year-old school employee caught her skipping class, he took the opportunity to test and cross boundaries.
“That’s when he leaned in, and that was the first time he kissed me,” she explained. “He told me I should leave and be with him forever.”
On February 10, 1996, her parents discovered she was missing. By February 14, she was officially considered a missing person. Hose had actually taken her to the home of a friend, hairstylist Judy Sokol, who agreed to dye Tanya’s hair and allowed her to stay for several weeks with frequent visits from Hose. He reportedly got Tanya drunk and raped her for the first time during these encounters. Hose eventually convinced her to live with him, his elderly parents, and his 22-year-old son, according to The New York Times.
“I had to sneak up to his bedroom. We were in his room, very quiet. His parents were there, they didn’t know I was in the house,” Tanya told People Magazine Investigates. “He took full control once he knew I was in his grasp.”
Full control was her living captive in his bedroom for four years. He snuck her downstairs to shower at night, routinely threated to kill her if she escaped, and made her keep a detailed calendar of his multiple daily sexual assaults.
In 2000, after thoroughly brainwashing her, he introduced her to his parents as his girlfriend under the alias Nikki Diane Allen. By 2005, he even allowed her to get a job at a local convenience store. It was there, witnessing the loving relationship between the married owners of the store, that in 2006 she confessed to them who she really was. Police escorted her off Hose’s premises hours later.
Hose was sentenced to 15 years in prison on multiple charges including “three counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, one count of statutory sexual assault, two counts of aggravated indecent assault, one count of interference with custody of a child, one charge of endangering the welfare of a child, one count of corruption of a minor and one count of indecent assault,” according to People. Sokol who assisted him, served 23 months for her role in Tanya’s abduction. Hose was not charged with kidnapping because Tanya went “willingly.”
Since getting her freedom in 2006, Tanya has married and authored a book about her experience. She also speaks at schools and with organizations about her harrowing experience as a way to educate and warn other young folks.
“It was incredibly difficult to find myself again and become the person that I am today,” she shared. “I will always be psychologically damaged. But it doesn’t mean I’m not strong.”
You can watch her story unfold in the Season 7 episode of People Magazine Investigates on HBO Max.
