A Northern California winery owner has been accused of sexual assault by his younger sister.
Mark Hanson, 63, who runs the high-end Bricoleur Vineyards in Sonoma County, is accused of rape and incest over a six-year period in the 1970s by Hilary McKean, his younger sister, when they were both still children, says the accused. he strenuously denies this and says they are an attempt to extort him.
McKean, 60, who is now a trauma counselor and lives in Montana, has detailed the alleged abuse in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco County Superior Court detailing Examples of aggression, asphyxiation and forced masturbation.
She claims her brother also displayed “bizarre behavior,” including “touching her feet with his hands and penis and sucking her toes against her will.”
The lawsuit was originally filed in March, but Hanson’s name remained sealed until last month, when a judge ruled that he could freely be named as a defendant.
Mark Hanson, 63, has been accused of sexual assault by his younger sister Hilary McKean, 60.
McKean, 60, alleges the assaults occurred over six years during his childhood in the 1970s.
Hanson owns Bricoleur Vineyards with his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter, Sarah Hanson Citron.
Her sister, McKean, alleges that the abuse began in 1971, when she was just eight years old. The family had moved to a new house where her and her brother’s bedrooms were separate from those of her parents and her younger sister.
Although the ‘public relationship’ with his brother seemed normal with the pair playing together, riding bikes and building forts with other neighborhood children, it was inside the family home that McKean alleges the trauma occurred.
McKean claims Hanson would come into her room at night and abuse her over a period of six years, until she was 14 and he was 17.
Bricoleur Vineyards is a small family-owned winery in Sonoma County, Northern California.
Bricoleur is located on 39 acres with olive groves, rose gardens, ponds, bocce courts, peach and nectarine trees, and even a pumpkin patch.
McKean and Hanson are half-siblings and share a biological mother.
In the lawsuit, McKean alleges that she repressed her memories of the assaults, but that they left her with lingering psychological and physical scars that left her with severe anxiety, depression, nightmares and “damage and bruising to tissues, muscles and organs.”
The lawsuit includes detailed allegations, alleging that Hanson raped her, performed oral sex on her, forced her to masturbate and strangled her sister.
She says what started as alleged physical abuse turned into “domination, control and violence mixed with sexuality,” according to the lawsuit.
McKean says he repressed all memories of the assaults that resurfaced in 2022.
She is bringing the lawsuit under California laws that allow victims of sexual assault to take legal action within five years of realizing harm was inflicted on them.
Hanson is a prominent member of the business community and well known in the area.
McKean alleges that his brother acted “with malice, oppression and fraud.” “His conduct was despicable and was carried out with deliberate, knowing and conscientious disregard for the rights and safety of his sister,” the lawsuit states.
‘He intentionally concealed his malicious and oppressive behavior and threatened his sister. She was afraid he would kill her. “Her conduct was so vile, vile and despicable that she would be despised and despised by reasonable people,” the lawsuit reads.
McKean told the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘I think there’s a lot of pressure to preserve your family’s reputation and not talk about these things.
“I really don’t think keeping these secrets is healthy for anyone. It’s not healthy for me and it’s not healthy within our society. “We have to be able to talk about what happened to us.”
She alleges: “Every night I was terrified, wishing he wouldn’t come into my room.”
McKean claims the abuse only stopped when Hanson was a senior in high school and began dating a girl before eventually leaving the family home to study at Santa Clara University.
“I changed a lot once I was released,” he told the Chronicle.
During the intervening years, McKean worked in PR, married, had two children, and then divorced.
She was “superficially friendly” with her brother, but claims that the memories suddenly returned in spring 2022.
Prominent California winery owner is accused of raping and abusing his younger sister over a six-year period when they were children and teenagers.
“It was like a door opened and they poured out of the closet where they had been locked,” he says.
‘All the things I never allowed myself to feel from early childhood… All those feelings came back and just multiplied over the years that I never allowed myself to feel those things. It took me a while to figure that out. I’m still on a healing journey.’
California law allows victims of sexual assault five years to take legal action and the clock only begins to start “once the survivor understands what happened and understands and feels harmed by the behavior.”
McKean is seeking unspecified civil damages, citing symptoms including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, flashbacks, anxiety and loss of self-esteem.
In coming forward, she states that her goal is to seek justice for her younger self and hopes that doing so can help others deal with repressed trauma.
“Any way I speak my truth, even get a little girl or a woman hiding repressed memories to come forward and talk, then together we will change the system, because I think there is tremendous pressure on women not to talk about these things,” he said. saying.
‘I feel like we should be able to say what happened to us. Which should be allowed. And for some reason I don’t feel that way.
His brother, Hanson, has denied the allegations, saying they are “made-up memories.”
“Hilary has fabricated and invented details with the sole intention of portraying me in the most damaging light in an attempt to extort a significant amount of money from me,” he said in a statement.
‘While my daughter focuses on beating cancer, I am also busy running our joint family business in her absence. This speaks directly to my sister’s lack of character, compassion, and motivation for money.
‘It is hard to believe that a person who led a professional career as long and successful as my sister Hilary, who spoke frequently about female empowerment, would have kept events of the magnitude of these allegations suppressed for five decades.
“Conveniently, these invented ‘memories’ have ‘popped up’ to take advantage of the state’s statute of limitations,” Hanson said, describing her sister as someone who sought out “unconventional” therapies for ongoing mental health issues, mocking her self-portrait. as a spiritual healer and clairvoyant.
Her sister, McKean, alleges how the abuse began in 1971, when she was just eight years old. The family had moved to a new house where her and her brother’s bedrooms were separate from those of her parents and her younger sister.
On her own website, McKean describes herself as “an experienced intuitive coach, master of life force energy healing, and aura level reader.”
‘I understand the pain of being trapped in lies. “I know how hard it is to step forward and be seen, when you’ve been programmed to make everything look perfect, to fit in, to be like everyone else,” she writes in her online bio.
Referring to his sister’s website, Hanon said: “Maybe she made up her false accusations in that aura, but that’s all they are: fabricated claims with no real basis.”
‘The accusations are false and painful for me and my family. I’m sure they won’t survive the courtroom. I will not allow your falsehoods to tarnish my good name and the reputation of our family.