Tracy Caruso, the wife of suspended Palm Beach County Clerk Michael Caruso, stepped down from public boards Monday to stand beside her husband as he faces felony child sex abuse charges. Tracy Caruso, a certified rape crisis counselor according to Palm Beach County records, called the accusations against her husband “false.” "I know my husband. I love Mike, I believe him, and I believe in his innocence.
I stand firmly beside him as he faces these serious allegations and works to clear his name,” she said in a statement to WPTV. Tracy Caruso resigned from her positions on the board of the Health Care District of Palm Beach County and as vice chair of the Palm Beach State College Board of Trustees on August 24—Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed her to both roles in 2022 and 2025, respectively. She ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Delray Beach in 2021.
She said her decision to step down was to prevent the circumstances surrounding her husband from distracting from the boards’ work and was not an “acknowledgment of wrongdoing.” Tracy Caruso is a stepmother of seven and was also appointed by then-County Mayor David Kerner to the Palm Beach County Housing Finance Authority, according to a 2025 résumé included in county records. Michael Caruso, 67, was arrested August 18 on five felony child sex abuse charges, including kidnapping, child molestation, lewd exhibition, luring or enticing a child and child abuse causing mental injury, an arrest affidavit shows. "There is far more to this story than what has appeared in the headlines, including important context surrounding how these allegations came about.
In short time, those facts will come to light." Newsweek reached out to representatives for both Carusos via email. As Newsweek previously reported, Michael Caruso, a former Republican state legislator, previously backed the death penalty for adults convicted of sexually battering children under 12. He made his first court appearance in Orlando on Thursday and entered a not guilty plea.
A Delray Beach Police Department report obtained by Newsweek through a public records request shows that Caruso was the subject of a child abuse investigation in 2012. In late 2012, records show an anonymous caller told the Florida Department of Children and Families that Michael Caruso molested a child for more than a year and stated that he had previously sexually abused another child. The suspect was in “complete disbelief” and “distraught” over the allegations, investigators wrote in the report.
Police ultimately cleared the case as “unfounded,” noting that the alleged victim did not report being sexually abused and citing a lack of corroborating witnesses. DeSantis, who named Caruso to serve as court clerk and comptroller in August 2025, immediately suspended him from office upon learning of the allegations. The governor said he was unaware of any allegations prior to Caruso’s appointment.
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