Accused: My Fight for Truth, Justice & the Strength to Forgive

by Tonya Craft

  Brianna stopped talking to me after that. She used to come down to my classroom after school every day and play with Ashley like she was her little sister. She stopped doing that, too. I couldn’t understand why her reaction was so strong. Worse? My scolding had rubbed Brianna’s and Lydia’s moms the wrong way. I’d managed to tick them off more than once in the past few months, both in school and out, to the point where those women had gone around town after Ashley’s birthday party telling people, “Tonya messed with the wrong families!” and “Tonya’s gonna pay!”3 It was awful. I was honestly worried they might try to get me fired. I knew they had the pull to do it, too. The Wilsons seemed to be the wealthiest, most influential family in the whole county.

  Is that what this is about? Do those two want to get me fired? Did their trash talk somehow get back to the police?

  It was amazing how quickly my mind raced through that whole scenario. It was a horrible flash of fear that these women who didn’t like me might have said something terrible happened to their children just to hurt me. Just to wreck my reputation. But I dismissed it just as quickly as it came.

  No one would do something that awful.

  Then Detective Deal said the name of my third accuser: “Skyler Walker.”

  I was speechless. Skyler Walker was the daughter of one of my very best friends. There had never been a lick of animosity between us or our children.

  “We’ve interviewed these kids, and they said that you touched them, so we need you to come down to the police station …”

  They’ve interviewed these kids? I felt like my mind was lagging a few steps behind. I thought they didn’t know who I was? My legs felt weak. What does this have to do with my daughter? Didn’t he say they had a question about “my daughter” and “touching”?

  I usually handle crises really well in the middle of ’em. Only afterward do I break down and let all the emotions rush in. But these men had me all confused and sick to my stomach before I fully understood what they were trying to tell me. I felt like I couldn’t keep up with their words.

  They said I needed to come down to the Catoosa County Police Station “immediately” so they could interview me “and then do a polygraph.”

  “A polygraph?” I said.

  The heat on that porch was stifling. Those three sets of eyes were still peering at me through the window. These two men kept telling me what they “needed” me to do, with this calm demeanor that suddenly felt intimidating and strange, as if they were sweet-talking me into buying a used car or something. I had watched enough Law & Order to know that I’d better cooperate—and also to know that I’d better be careful. I didn’t want to make matters worse. I wanted to cooperate. I wanted to get to the bottom of this and clear my name as quickly as I could. I couldn’t believe I was being accused of something so terrible. Me. A mom. A teacher who loves working with kids. But I also wanted to be careful not to say anything that could be twisted or misconstrued. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Somebody must’ve mistaken me for somebody else, or misunderstood what somebody said, or something.

  “Do I need some sort of legal counsel?” I asked.

  The two men stopped and looked at each other. “That won’t be necessary,” they said. According to the detectives, it would be “easier” and “better” to just come down to the station, to “clear this all up and get it over with.”

  I was the only adult there. I had kids to take care of. “I’ll need to call my parents to see if they can come watch the children,” I said. “They live up in East Ridge, so it might take a while.” I insisted that I had nothing to hide, that this whole thing was crazy, that as soon as I could, I would come down to the station. “I’ll even take the polygraph if that’s what you need, as long I can bring an attorney—”

  Saying that word was like throwing a match into a pit full of fireworks.

  Suddenly both men started shouting at me, yelling about my “obvious guilt” and “lack of cooperation.”

  “Now we know you did something wrong!” Deal said.

  My heart started pounding so hard it physically hurt in my chest.

  “If you won’t cooperate,” Deal barked, “we’ll be back here with an arrest warrant!”

  “I’m not saying I won’t cooperate—”

  “We even talked to your soon-to-be ex-husband, and he said you’re a child molester.”

  “What?!”

  David would never say such a thing. They talked to David? I don’t care how mad he’d been when he left; he would never, ever say that.

  I felt my eyes well up. I closed them and tried to think. “That can’t be,” I whispered to myself. “It can’t—”

  “Are you saying you didn’t do this?”

  Deal’s words snapped me to attention.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I said. I looked him right in the eyes. I held back my tears as best as I could. “Look, I will cooperate with everything. I will do just as you’ve asked me to. I’ll come down to the station. I’ll be happy to talk to you. I just think it’s a good idea to have an attorney present—”

  “If you won’t cooperate, we’re going to arrest you!”

  At that point I’d had enough of their yelling. Their anger was making me angry. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t done anything at all! It suddenly occurred to me that they couldn’t arrest an innocent person, so I put my panic aside and got real calm and direct. For a moment I got back to being me.

  “Y’all do what you need to do,” I said. “I’m going to go call my parents now.”

  Deal squinted his eyes and looked at me, hard. He pulled out a business card and handed it to me. “Make sure you call me when you’re on your way,” he said. “Remember my name. Detective Tim Deal. As in, Let’s Make a Deal.”

  I took the card and said, “I think I’ll remember it better like Deal or No Deal.”

  That’s when the two of them stepped off my porch, got into their car, and drove away.

  As I watched them disappear from view, I could hear my own pulse in my ears. I stood there clutching that business card in my right hand and rubbing my thumb back and forth over the surface of it. I felt dizzy. My mind tried to process what had just happened. I looked down and saw my son’s dirty sneakers on the porch. An hour ago that porch had been filled with laughter. A few minutes ago we’d been getting ready for our first day of summer. I’d been getting dressed for our day at the pool. Now I was—

  Wait. What just happened?

  I started shaking. I leaned one hand against the door frame to hold myself up.

  Do they really believe I did something to those girls? Who else did they talk to? Who else has been talking about this? How many people know about this? Did something happen to those three girls? Did someone molest them, and for some reason they—

  Then it hit me. All at once.

  Oh my God. They think I’m a monster.

  Chapter 2

  Back in 2005, when I first came to work in Chickamauga, Georgia, I coulda sworn I’d stepped foot into a real-life version of Mayberry R.F.D.

  You hear about places with only one stoplight, where life’s a little bit slower and everybody knows everybody. How many of us ever really get the chance to live and work in one? Driving my old GMC Yukon up to that one red light in the center of downtown, with its old brick buildings and little Western-style storefronts that look as if they were plucked off an old movie set, I felt like I’d finally hit the jackpot. I was so excited about getting a job teaching kindergarten at Chickamauga Elementary that I spent hundreds of dollars of my own money to set up my classroom that summer. I bought a nice comfy rug for the children to gather on. I made up a sign that said “Welcome Home to Kindergarten.” I bought a whole new set of stamps with letters on them, plus books on tape and cans of shaving cream so the kids could practice writing letters on their desks with their fingers in the messy sort of way that kindergarten-age kids absolutely love. I’d accumulated lots of fun classroom supplies in all my previou
s years of teaching, too, and I brought them all in to make my classroom feel like a true home away from home for my students.

  People might not think teaching kindergarten is the toughest job in the world, but it sure is a far cry from babysitting, I can tell you that. It took exhausting amounts of work every night and weekend. And I loved every second of it. In fact, I loved it so much I decided to pursue my master’s degree in teaching even before I started my new job. It would stretch my night and weekend time like crazy over the next couple of years, but to be quite frank, as a single mom, I needed the salary bump that master’s degree would get me. And seeing those smiling faces every day, knowing I was making a difference, knowing I was getting a chance to improve myself and my ability to teach those kids while getting to start my life over in such a beautiful school, in such a beautiful town, made all of the sacrifice worth it.

  I was still living in Tennessee for that ’05–’06 school year. After finally emerging from a horrible divorce over the previous couple of years from my ex-husband, Joal—the father of my two children—I’d lived in my parents’ house for a few months. Then I was lucky enough to find a town house on the street just behind my parents’ that I could rent for a while with the luxury of knowing my kids could safely run over to Grandma and Pop-Pop’s anytime they wanted, or anytime I needed. That was another wonderful thing about Chickamauga: It may have been in a whole different state, but it wasn’t even twenty miles south of the very house where I grew up in East Ridge, a quiet suburb of Chattanooga on the Tennessee-Georgia line.

  One of the first people I met in Chickamauga was Sandra Lamb. From the very first moment on the first day of school, Sandra was there. She was always there. You couldn’t miss her! The tall, flashy brunette in blinged-out designer jeans. Throw in her son and daughter and a well-to-do husband named Greg and they were the picture-perfect All-American family. Her cute-as-a-button blond daughter, Brianna, was in my class. Brianna was an aspiring actress, and Sandra shared all sorts of excitement over the developments in that little girl’s acting career. The way they talked, it seemed Brianna was headed for Hollywood stardom.

  Sandra stepped right up as one of the classroom moms before I even asked for volunteers. She seemed to already know just about every other parent who walked through the door and was always flitting around the hallway saying hi to everyone before and after school.

  She was quite the character, but having Sandra take a shine to me as her daughter’s teacher provided a big leg up in the community for me: She introduced me to just about everyone she knew with a big smile and the most glowing words. “Tonya is the greatest friend and teacher in the world!” she’d say, which always left me red-faced, but I couldn’t have asked for a nicer introduction in a small town.

  My son, Tyler, was lucky enough to attend Chickamauga Elementary when I started teaching that year even though we were living up over the border in Tennessee. It was one of the wonderful perks of the job. Some wealthy people from other towns would fill out applications and pay to have their kids attend Chickamauga—even though it was a public school. That’s how good a reputation it has. But as a teacher there, my kids were allowed to attend the school. Tyler was placed in a classroom right across the hall from mine. Ashley’s two years younger than Tyler, so I enrolled her in a nearby preschool and looked forward to the day when all three of us would be in the same building five days a week.

  Outside of the classroom, fall means football season, and those Friday night games under the lights would be the first place I’d do much socializing. Tyler started hanging out with a little boy named Evan during the games. Evan happened to be one of my students, and his friendship with my son led me to grow close to Evan’s mother, Kim Walker. She and I just hit it off, which was funny to me, because most of my friends tend to be older than I am. Kim was young. She’d had Evan when she was around eighteen years old, so she must have been all of twenty-three when we met. I was in my midthirties. Yet there was just something about me and Kim that clicked. Maybe it was an athletic thing. She played softball. I played softball. Kim had a daughter named Skyler who was Ashley’s age, and let’s face it: Friendships in adulthood revolve a whole lot around each other’s kids. Having sons and daughters who get along means the grownups can sit and talk while the kids play. Tyler and Evan and Ashley and Skyler got along beautifully, and that was a blessing like no other.

  One of Sandra Lamb’s friends, Kelly McDonald, had a son in my class, too. And as luck would have it, Kelly’s younger daughter, Chloe, was a preschooler just like Ashley. Kelly was a hoot. She reminded me of Sherri Shepherd on The View, all charismatic and spunky, only she’s white and had short, spiky, frosted-blond hair. Anyway, right near the beginning of the year, Kelly offered to pick up Ashley at preschool and drive her to my classroom at the end of the day. She had to drive right by there anyway, but I insisted on paying her to do it. Turned out, she needed the money. So it worked out great for everyone. Tyler would come over to my classroom at the end of the day, and Kelly would drop Ashley off when she picked up her son, who became friendly with Tyler. Sandra was always hanging around with Brianna after school, and Brianna just loved to play big sister to Ashley. All in all, the social life and kid arrangements seemed to be working out just perfectly.

  The way I saw it, we were all supporting each other through those hectic, crazy days when your kids are just starting out in school and it’s all you can do to keep your head on straight before collapsing into bed at the end of the day.

  What’s that phrase? “It takes a village to raise a child”? Well, Chickamauga sure felt like a big part of the “village” of my life to me. Working in that town felt a little bit like I’d stepped back in time. I liked that feeling.

  Chapter 3

  As I watched that unmarked car round the corner and disappear, I tried to pull myself together. My heart was pounding and my head still spinning when I finally opened the front door to find the kids standing there all chomping at the bit.

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  “Who were those strangers?”

  “When are we going to the pool?!”

  I couldn’t handle it.

  “Kids, please! Y’all go up to the bonus room. I have to take care of some adult business, okay?”

  They started in with the whining and complaining and I just yelled, “Go!”

  I hardly recognized my own voice. It sounded like it came from outside my body. It must have scared them, because all three of them turned and ran up to the playroom over the garage without another word.

  My mind was still spinning. Did Sandra and Kelly make this up? Who would do such a thing? Who would use their own child to make an accusation like that? No one could be that evil. I don’t care how much they hate me!

  I took a breath and tried to gather my thoughts. How on earth is a person supposed to know what to do in a situation like this? All I could think was I’d better call my parents. They have always been there for me. No matter what. They would be there for me through this—whatever this was.

  I picked up my cell phone ready to dial my parents, but in the confusion and panic of the moment, I couldn’t stop thinking about the third girl those detectives had mentioned: Skyler Walker. Why would Skyler accuse me of something like this? Where would she get such an idea?

  I was short of breath. I wanted to lie down. But I couldn’t. Before I knew it, I had dialed Kim Walker’s number. While her phone rang I kept pacing around, and the anger and confusion and fear came bubbling up like lava. When she finally picked up, I exploded at her: “What the hell is going on?”

  Without me having to explain one word, Kim knew what I was calling about.

  “I’m so sorry, Tonya,” she said. She started crying. “I wanted to tell you, but the police said not to say a word.” The tears came pouring down my face, too. Has one of my very best friends turned on me? Does she hate me for some reason, the way Sandra Lamb and Kelly McDonald and Sherri Wilson do now? It can’t be. It just can’t.
/>   I asked her, “Did those detectives interview Skyler?”

  “They did interview Skyler,” Kim said, “but Skyler said that nothing inappropriate had happened. The police said her name wouldn’t even come up in this. I don’t understand why they would’ve said something.”

  “If Skyler said I did nothing wrong, then why did the police say she was one of my accusers? Did you tell them I did something to her?”

  “No! Of course not, Tonya!”

  “They accused me of molesting her, Kim. Don’t lie to me. Tell me what’s going on!”

  “I don’t know! It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  I was so confused and angry I just blew up. “How could you not tell me this was going on behind my back?” I shouted. “With friends like you, who needs enemies?”

  I hung up on her. Seething. Heartbroken by my friend’s actions. It felt like my whole world was crashing down.

  I heard the kids playing upstairs and I panicked again.

  My God. What if they’re on their way back here to arrest me right now?

  I didn’t want to risk the kids overhearing any more of this, and certainly didn’t want to risk having my children see me put in handcuffs and shoved into the back of a police car. So I carried my phone outside to the front lawn and dialed my parents. I needed help. Now.

  I was bawling again when my mom picked up.

  “Mom, I need you and Dad to come over to the house. Right now.” She wanted to know what was wrong, but I couldn’t speak over my sobs. She couldn’t understand what I was saying. “Just come. I need you. Now!”

  I hung up breathing like I’d just run a marathon. I thought of Hunter, upstairs with my kids. His mother, Tammy, needed to know. She was at work. I hated the thought of bothering her there, but I had to tell her what was going on. Plus, she was closer to my house than my parents. Maybe she can get here faster, I thought. I needed somebody, anybody, just some adult to be there with me.