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

by Tonya Craft

  It was surreal for me. I had prayed so hard for that and wanted it so badly. It was the first truly good thing that had happened to me since all of it started. I’d been carrying the weight of ten elephants on my shoulders, and in that moment, one of them got lifted off.

  We kissed each other so much that my lips were raw for days afterward. Not lustful kissing—just sweet kissing. Just love. It was one of the most incredible nights I’ve ever had.

  The next morning, David revealed something that blew me away.

  “That Wednesday, before you called, I got up that morning and got out of the shower and I prayed for an hour,” he said. “I said, ‘God, I can’t do this anymore. If we’re supposed to get back together, please have Tonya call me today. And it can’t be a text or an email or anything else. If she doesn’t call me by the end of the day, then we’re done. I’ll sign the divorce papers.’”

  Our reconciliation was more of a “God thing” than I’d even imagined.

  David and I were back together from that moment forward.

  My mom didn’t take the news real well. Nobody I knew took it well when I first told them. No one could understand how I could take him back after he’d abandoned me.

  It didn’t matter if anyone else understood. I understood.

  The thing was, David felt he had been manipulated. Sitting in on the deposition of Sandra Lamb hit him hard. He sat there and listened to her contradict him, he told me. After his conversations with Sandra, David was under the impression that I had sold my engagement ring. Yet there I was, wearing that ring in the deposition. Seeing that ring on my finger was like shining a light on the truth of the situation. He felt like a fool. He reassessed everything he’d been thinking since way back in springtime.

  They say the difficult times either kill you or make you stronger—they either rip your marriage apart or make it sturdier. It would take a while to know which outcome we were really going to face, but I felt strongly that God wouldn’t have brought us back together if it wasn’t for the best.

  Our reconciliation was the first bright light in an absolutely pitch-black situation. I prayed that there would be more, and soon.

  I moved into David’s house on Thanksgiving weekend.

  I couldn’t go to Thanksgiving dinner anywhere because there would be kids around. So instead, I threw myself into unpacking all of my boxes. I unpacked my children’s belongings and placed them in the rooms that would be their rooms—while I faced the cold fact that I had now gone six months without seeing either one of them. I cried when I thought about the fact that my kids had gone six months without seeing me, and the fact that they hadn’t seen their grandparents, either.

  The kids’ dogs, Buddy and Candy Cane, joined me. They’d stayed at my parents’ house for a while, and they’d occasionally shared that lonely motor home with me, but there were times when I couldn’t take being around them. They simply reminded me too much of Tyler and Ashley. Once I moved in with David, I finally allowed myself to open up a little bit and to let those dogs show me some of the love that dogs so willingly give to their owners. Letting them jump up on the bed and cuddle up next to me helped to fill a tiny bit of the giant chasm that was left by my children’s absence.

  The fact is, I held those dogs more often than I held my husband in those early days of our reunion. It’s difficult to talk about, but I had a hard time allowing myself to have any kind of intimacy with David throughout the rest of this ordeal.

  As glad as I was to have him back in my life, I still felt betrayed by David. I prayed about it all the time. I just wasn’t sure how to completely forgive him.

  We’d subpoenaed David’s phone records as part of my divorce filing, and David just gave them to me after I moved in with him. Lo and behold, my instincts were right: There were dozens upon dozens of calls both to and from Sandra Lamb’s cell phone—many lasting well over an hour. I went through and highlighted the numbers and cross-referenced them with my timelines, and it seemed clear as day to me that David had been giving her information—whether maliciously or not—that was used against me.

  That hurt.

  It was more than that, though. The intimacy problem wasn’t as much about David as it was about me. I had been accused of being a monster. I was treated like a monster whenever I came face-to-face with the system that was supposed to be working on my behalf under a presumption of innocence. That constant berating gets to a person, no matter how innocent they may be. I felt dirty. I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. Being intimate with my husband just felt wrong.

  I felt I had no right to experience anything good for myself. Period.

  Chapter 27

  We finally compelled the court-ordered therapist, Laurie Evans, to come to a deposition on December 3. The courts in Tennessee barred me from attending and from being privy to any information gathered during that deposition.

  I felt like a blindfolded boxer with my hands tied behind my back, standing in the ring with an opponent who could openly pummel me with no restrictions whatsoever. All I could do was sit and wait and worry.

  Once Evans’s deposition was finished, two things happened that made me worry even more. First, I was informed that my parents would not be allowed to act as sole supervisors during any possible visits that I might be granted with my children. My mom and dad would no longer be allowed to visit with my children on their own, either. The court determined, based on whatever Evans had said, that my parents would need to be “supervised.” And their supervisors would have to be approved by the court and meet with Joal’s approval.

  Just to clarify this scenario, which is absolutely as ridiculous as it sounds: Let’s say Tyler were to come spend time at my home. It had already been determined that my father or mother must be present to “supervise” Tyler’s visit. Now, because of something that “came to light” during Evans’s deposition, somebody else would also have to be there to “supervise” my parents.

  Joal could never stand my mother.26 And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that he may have made some sort of accusation about her to this therapist.27 Joal and Laurie Evans were talking all the time during that period. On their cell phones. Sometimes after office hours. (Subpoenaing phone records turned out to be incredibly illuminating.)

  The second thing that came out of Evans’s question-and-answer session was even more distressing. Back in November, we’d managed to get the court to appoint Tyler and Ashley a guardian ad litem (GAL)—an attorney who would theoretically work in the interest of the children and not in the interest of either parent. The morning after Evans’s deposition, the GAL filed a motion in Tennessee calling for Evans’s immediate removal as my children’s therapist.

  I kept asking myself, over and over, What did Laurie Evans do to my kids that warrants “immediate removal”?

  David and I walked up to the entrance of the Catoosa County Courthouse on December 11 with all sorts of fear and apprehension. This was David’s first attendance at any proceeding, and he had no idea what to expect. All sorts of friends, family, and supporters greeted us as we walked up, and I think David was surprised to see so many people standing up for me. After all, he’d kept his head in the sand for a long time. I had an email chain now to keep my supporters informed and to ask for their prayers before any big court date. And as far as I could tell, this one might turn out to be the biggest and most important appearance before a judge yet.

  The metal detector and the tile floors and the stairway to the second floor were all familiar to me now. I knew my way to the courtroom where I’d previously made the mistake of sitting on a bench while Judge Van Pelt, my attorney, and the ADA decided my fate without me. Only now, I had well-wishers and advocates who greeted me at nearly every step and who filtered into the courtroom to sit on my side.

  There were a few people seated on the other side, too. They were chatting and laughing, and some of them shot mocking smiles my way. I thought, Is that the way people normally behave toward an accused child molest
er? One of those people was a mousy-looking woman with long curly hair whom I’d never seen before. She was seated right next to Joal. They were real chummy with each other. I wondered, Could that be Laurie Evans?

  As we all took our seats, it started to feel less like a hearing and more like a preview of what my trial might look like.

  “All rise,” the clerk said. Judge Ralph Van Pelt Jr., who had already ruled against me in every way imaginable, swept in and got things under way.28 Van Pelt had short gray hair and silver-rimmed oval glasses on his round face. He stood about five foot ten, and he seemed fidgety and distracted behind the bench from the moment he sat down. He seemed to be playing with his phone or something while our “opening arguments” began.

  As Scott King spoke to the court on the subject of my children, proclaiming why we believed that I should be allowed to see them both in a relaxed, natural setting, ADA Chris Arnt stood up and countered, “Normally what we do on bond conditions in these kind of cases is that you’re under the sex offender conditions that you would be if you were convicted.”

  My blood just about boiled. Even convicted sex offenders have the right to see their children at the Four Points facility, and yet they’d stopped me from doing that! Cary King placed a hand on my forearm. I controlled my outer sentiment, but my mind kept screaming, Whatever happened to being innocent until proven guilty?

  The prosecution called their first witness: Laurie Evans. Sure enough, it was that mousy little woman seated right next to my ex-husband. She handed Joal her purse and a manila file folder as she stood up to take the stand.

  I looked at this woman, and I looked at that judge—a man who had never even laid eyes on my children—and I kept wondering how on earth they had the ability to know what was best for Tyler and Ashley. I wanted to scream: What is Tyler’s favorite color? What is Ashley’s favorite bedtime story? When did Tyler take his first steps? When did Ashley first say the word “mommy”?

  Chris Arnt got up there and asked Evans a bunch of questions, and I swear Judge Van Pelt looked like he couldn’t care less. He didn’t seem to make eye contact with anyone from that bench. He kept fidgeting. Is he even listening?

  The only thing that seemed to grab his attention were the two heartbreaking conclusions Evans came to on that witness stand. First, she said that my children did not want to see me. That cannot be true. God, please, that cannot be the truth.

  Then she flat out recommended that I not be allowed to see my daughter or my son under any circumstance whatsoever—even in a professionally supervised environment like Four Points.

  I swallowed hard. I will not let them see me cry. I will not give them that satisfaction. I trusted my attorneys to get up there and obliterate this woman, because I knew I couldn’t stand up and do it myself.

  Under cross-examination, Evans admitted that all the information she had on Ashley and Tyler had come from what Joal, my ex-husband, had provided. When questioned as to whether she was ethically bound to speak to anyone else regarding my son or daughter, she said that she felt it was “not critical”—so she didn’t speak with teachers, nurses, school counselors, babysitters, or anyone with firsthand knowledge of my children. Based on her testimony, it was clear that other than the time that she spent one-on-one with those kids, in a building right next door to this courthouse, everything she knew and everything she stated was fueled by a history that my ex-husband provided.

  I wondered, Don’t these people deal with divorced couples all the time? Don’t they have any fail-safes in place for the fact that an ex-husband or ex-wife might have an agenda and might not be telling the truth?

  While she was still on the stand, my attorney asked Evans if she was aware that the GAL in Tennessee had filed a motion to have her removed as Tyler and Ashley’s therapist.

  “No,” she said. She seemed shocked, as if this was the first she’d ever heard about it. She testified that she had never seen the motion, so my attorney provided her with a copy.

  Joal took the witness stand next. I stared right at him, yet he never looked me in the eye. Immediately ADA Chris Arnt brought up the order that Joal agreed to in Tennessee in November, allowing me to see Tyler and Ashley under my parents’ supervision. The order he failed to follow.

  As Joal answered, Judge Van Pelt said, “I see which way this is headed. It’s one of those ‘my lawyers made me do it’ things.”

  As quickly as he began, the ADA concluded by asking Joal if he’d agreed to let me see Tyler and Ashley.

  “Not voluntarily,” Joal replied. I shook inside with disgust. The prosecutor wrapped his questions up in about two minutes flat.

  When Scott got up for cross-examination, Joal tried to place blame for everything on the GAL. When asked why he would sign something he apparently didn’t agree to, he said, “I felt that the guardian ad litem would do their job and say something.”

  Joal Henke and Laurie Evans were the only two witnesses the prosecution had.

  The judge ordered a break for lunch.

  “The defense calls Tonya Craft,” Cary said after we all came back in.

  “That’s a dangerous call,” the judge muttered.

  My attorneys and I had already been through the whole don’t-put-your-client-on-the-witness-stand argument. Most attorneys are morbidly afraid to place their clients on the stand. The chance that they could get raked over the coals by the prosecution is just too big a risk to take. But I demanded to get up there and tell that judge that I wanted to see my kids. My attorneys had seen enough from me to be pretty sure that I wouldn’t crack under pressure—mainly because I wasn’t trying to hide anything. There was nothing to crack. I was telling the truth. And believe me, behind the scenes, they tried to crack me themselves. They wanted to know anything and everything unseemly and untoward that I’d ever done in my life so there could be no surprises from the other side. And I’d told them, too. There wasn’t much to tell. My life has been pretty tame compared to some people’s. I have been far from perfect, but there was nothing that gave any of my attorneys concern.

  Later, people would ask me if I was scared getting up there that first time. I wasn’t just scared. I was petrified! I was scared that they were going to somehow twist my words or that I’d say the wrong thing, even though I knew that I had the truth on my side and that I was getting up there for the sake of my children.

  I told the judge that it had now been precisely 194 days since I had seen my kids. It felt good to be able to speak it out loud. Cary asked me about the fact that Four Points had not complied with the previous bond allowing me to see my children. We delved into the normal, loving relationship I had with my kids before these allegations arose and barely scratched the surface of how awful it had been for me to be without them.

  At that point, Cary wanted to push the envelope a bit. He wanted to show the court that something in this whole business just didn’t add up. So he delved into the mysterious whispered message my daughter had left me on May 30—supposedly before Joal knew there were any allegations against me. Cary asked me about the specifics of that message, in which she told me that she “loved” me and wouldn’t be seeing me “for a very long time.” It seemed that Chris Arnt and even Joal were taken aback. They had no idea it was coming.29

  We then presented independent home studies we had done to show that neither my parents’ house nor our house was an “unsafe environment.” We entered the findings of those studies into evidence so the judge could see them with his own eyes. Cary brought up Joal’s testimony that no safety evaluation was done at his home, and he asked me about my opinion of the safety of Joal’s home for the kids. That led to a lengthy discussion of the showers that the courts had not resolved throughout this entire ordeal.

  Finally, Cary asked me to tell the court exactly what I was asking for, and I spoke as clearly and unequivocally as I could: I wanted to be allowed to see my kids. All I wanted was for the court to go along with what Tennessee had already decided—“To let my parents be the supervi
sors and let it be in a natural environment,” I said. I added that I would be willing to “have complete supervision the entire time just to spend some time with both kids.” I didn’t want it to happen at Four Points, I said. I felt it created a very unnatural environment for the kids with unfamiliar persons as supervisors, which I did not feel “was in the best interest of Tyler and Ashley.”

  I used that phrase, “in the best interest of,” because that was truly what I was fighting for. I was also starting to catch on to the fact that the court seemed to use that phrase often. I realized in the middle of this that I needed to speak the court’s language and to use that language to my advantage rather than to sit quietly and get pummeled by it at every turn. I watched. I listened. I learned as we went along. Those prosecutors had kept me in the dark for months, and like a person stricken with blindness, it seemed that all of my other senses had become more acute.

  Finally, I told the judge, “I’ve done everything the court has said and I just want to see the kids … in whatever capacity I can see them.”

  “No further questions,” Cary said.

  Chris Arnt stood up, and the first words he ever spoke to me were: “This phone message you claim your daughter sent, I suppose you didn’t save it?”

  “Actually, I did save it,” I replied.

  “You did?” he asked with a surprised tone.

  “Yes. It’s in the car. We can’t bring our phones in.”

  “Your Honor,” Cary said, jumping to his feet, “I would be more than happy to go out and get her phone out of the car.”