Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of the physical and sexual abuse of children.

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PREVIOUSLY:

• Soldier Testifies to a Decade of Abuse at the Hands of Former Corrections Officer, Accused Child Molester Cory Fisher

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When Angela Fisher received the devastating news that her three sons had been sexually molested, the last thing on her mind was ending up in a public courtroom as a witness for the prosecution.

“I just wanted a divorce,” Fisher testified Friday during the trial of ex-husband Cory Jordan Fisher Sr., a former correctional officer charged with sexually assaulting the three boys and three male inmates at Humboldt County Correctional Facility.

Fisher.

Angela Fisher filed for divorce and a restraining order about a week after her sons told her about the sexual abuse. It was several more weeks before she went to the Eureka Police Department and asked to speak with a detective.

“I didn’t want to put my sons through the shame and humiliation of a trial,” Angela testified under questioning by Deputy District Attorney Stacey Eads. And under later cross-examination by the defense attorney, Deputy Conflict Counsel David Lee, she said she postponed reporting the crimes “because my kids were ashamed and they didn’t want anything to do with it. They didn’t want this to go to trial.”

Her oldest son, now a 23-year-old Army soldier, testified Thursday about the years of abuse he suffered at Cory Fisher’s hands. He said he endured forced masturbation, forced oral copulation and attempted sodomy. Once, he said, he was forced to sodomize Fisher.

Angela Fisher, who at age 44 is 12 years older than her former husband, said their relationship was once “very loving.”

“He was a provider,” she said. “He wanted to be a dad to my children. I loved him.”

Although Angela Fisher knew nothing about the alleged molestation, she became aware “immediately after the marriage” that her husband had an explosive temper and was pretty much “angry all the time.”

Over the years there were multiple incidents, ranging from Cory Fisher throwing phones and computers to abusing his wife when she was pregnant with her third son.

“What did he do?” Lee asked.

“He broke my nose. He hit me in the face.”

“What did you do?”

“I cried.”

The physical abuse in the family was never reported until June 25, 2017, when an inebriated Cory Fisher and the second-oldest son, John Doe Two, got into a fight at the family’s home on Central Avenue in Eureka. Doe Two ended up with a shattered eye socket, a broken nose and cracked ribs.

Angela Fisher said Cory Fisher pushed her son down and was lying on top of him, choking him.

“He was screaming ‘I demand respect!’ over and over again like a chant,” Angela recalled. She said she grabbed a plastic AR-15 BB gun and smashed Fisher over the head with it until the gun broke. The police came, determined both Fisher and Doe Two were at fault, and Fisher grabbed some possessions and left the house.

In an earlier fight with Doe One, Fisher punched the teen in the eye, leaving the eye swollen shut. Angela Fisher said her husband would always beg forgiveness and swear he would never do it again. He wouldn’t allow Doe One to go to school after the fight, Angela said, because he would have to explain his black eye.

As Doe One testified Thursday, Fisher would always “some how, some way” manage to talk himself out of trouble.

Angela and Cory Fisher were separated between the June 25, 2017 fight and July 3, 2017, when he came home for a few days. Then on July 7, when Cory Fisher was at work in the jail, Doe One called from Afghanistan. He was deployed there in a combat zone.

Over speakerphone, her oldest son told her Fisher “had been molesting him his whole life.”

Then her second-oldest son, with tears in his eyes, said “Mom, it happened to me too.”

“And that was when I was not going to work on that marriage anymore.”

At the time her youngest son was visiting his grandfather in Oregon. Angela Fisher called the boy and asked whether anything had ever happened to him that wasn’t OK. The boy said there had been one incident. He later told an interviewer that Fisher had touched his penis, but when he asked him to stop he did.

Angela Fisher said she ultimately decided to contact law enforcement when a friend convinced her Cory Fisher was young enough to remarry and molest someone else’s children.

Testimony was expected to continue Monday morning before Judge Timothy Canning.