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

by Tonya Craft

  I had a lot of doors left to knock on, in some pretty far-flung places, and I decided to get started right away. I flew on my own to Nebraska to try to track down some of the people who were directly involved in the Bakersfield case. Like a lot of people involved in false-allegation cases, they’d run as far and fast as they could after suffering the devastation. It turned out that some of them ran as far as they could from ever talking about it again, too. I didn’t have much luck on that trip. Encountering the sadness and devastation of it, and how far away from their old lives these people had been pushed, was enough of a lesson to keep me focused on proving my innocence—and doing anything I could to help my kids heal once this trial was over.

  My new missions would all get put on hold for a while, though, because for all of the traveling I was about to do, some of the most disturbing information I would uncover during my entire investigation was about to get dropped in my lap.

  Chapter 36

  I’d long expected this was going to be one of the hardest things I’d ever have to face in my life—even while I’d been praying for this day to finally come. So when Scott called me to say a package had arrived containing the first part of the discovery from the ADA’s office, I felt like I was going to pass out.

  That package contained the DVDs and transcripts of the interviews that Detective Deal and three others had conducted with Brianna, Chloe, and Ashley—the very interviews that had led to the charges against me.

  No one said much to me as I walked into Cary and Scott’s offices. We all sat down in a conference room. They passed out copies of the transcripts as Scott queued up the first DVD.

  For a year and a half, we had been trying to prepare a defense based on hypotheticals because we didn’t know what those girls had said. For a year and a half, my life had crumbled into turmoil and despair because of the very words that we were about to hear.

  “Are you ready?” Scott said.

  “I guess,” I responded.

  Scott hit play and I turned to the first page of the transcript of the first interview with Brianna Lamb. The interview was conducted on May 27, 2008, at the Child Advocacy Center (CAC), by a woman named Stacy Long.38 We’d done some homework on her. We knew that she had a master’s degree in social work and a BS in psychology, and had conducted more than 1,000 interviews with children in her career.

  Seeing Brianna appear on that screen, wearing flowery, preppy-looking pants and pink sandals, I think the first thing that struck me was her demeanor. I expected she’d be upset or something. But she wasn’t. She seemed kind of nonchalant. Right when the video first started, she was staring up toward the camera, which appeared to be placed way up by the ceiling in the corner of that interview room, pointed down at an angle toward a kid-sized table with some sheets of paper and a cup full of crayons. Brianna sat on the far side of that little table, so she was facing the camera, and Long sat on the other, so you couldn’t really see her face very well.

  Right near the beginning, Brianna asked if anyone was going to see the video, and the interviewer basically told her no.

  “Nobody can just get that tape and see, okay? It’s kept pretty private, okay? So you don’t have to worry about that part,” she said. “Brianna, the only thing that I need you to do is tell me the truth, no matter what that truth is. Okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” Brianna answered.

  “What does it really mean to tell the truth, though?” Stacy asked.

  Brianna responded, “It means to tell you what she really did to you.”

  I underlined Brianna’s answer in the transcript.

  I would wind up underlining a whole lot before we were through.

  Long asked Brianna if there was anything she wanted to ask her or anything she wanted to say. Brianna’s answer was, “Um … color.” And she grabbed a crayon and started coloring.

  “That’s the only thing you want to say?” Long asked. Brianna nodded.

  “Do you like school?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Brianna answered.

  This banter went on for a while. We watched and read along the transcript, and Brianna didn’t talk about me at all. We were all thinking, She must be fixing to say something.

  Finally, Long asked her, “Okay, Miss Brianna, so how come you are here to talk to me today?”

  “Um,” Brianna said, taking a pause. It seemed as if she were trying to remember something. “A girl was mean to me.”

  “When was she mean to you?”

  “When I was at her house … in Chickamauga.”

  The interviewer clarified that she was talking about me, Miss Tonya. I immediately thought it was strange that Brianna would refer to me as “a girl.” And being “mean” to someone is a far cry from abusing someone. Plus, remember, I didn’t live in Chickamauga until the very, very end of Brianna’s kindergarten year. I was still commuting from my town house in Tennessee until May of 2006.

  The facts didn’t seem to matter, though, because Long asked Brianna if I was married, and Brianna said I wasn’t. David and I had only been separated a few weeks when that interview was conducted, and I had told virtually no one. It seemed clear to me that she’d heard that from an adult, and I could guess who likely provided her with that information.

  Long went on asking Brianna how many times I was mean to her, and Brianna repeated that it was “once.” Then she added that it was “at school” as well. Then Long asked, “Where at school did it happen?”

  “In the hall,” Brianna said.

  “Okay, at Tonya’s house, where would it happen?”

  “Close to the kitchen,” Brianna responded.

  “Did anyone else see it happen at school or at Tonya’s house?”

  Brianna shook her head.

  “Okay. What was she doing that was mean?”

  “She always took me out in the hall at school and told me not to do anything when I didn’t do nothing … And at her house she, when we were out one day, she got me Taco Bell and—”

  Brianna stopped talking, mid-sentence.

  “She did what now?” Long asked.

  “Got me Taco Bell … to be really nice. And, um, she … she, um … she uh … we were in the kitchen one day, and she started kissing me on my head and my neck and my shoulder.”

  “Okay,” Long said.

  “And she’ll never give me any food and I was hungry.”

  “Okay,” Long said. “So one day in the kitchen …”

  “Uh-huh,” Brianna said.

  “Okay. Would … did she say anything when that happened?”

  “She said it was okay for her to do it.”

  “Did she say anything else other than it was okay for her to do it?”

  “Uh-uh,” Brianna said, shaking her head.

  “Did anything else happen? Was she mean to you in other ways?”

  “Um … uh-uh,” Brianna said, again shaking her head.

  So, up until this point she’d said I’d kissed her on the head and shoulders—which I’d never done—but that was all. When asked if I’d done anything else, she said very clearly, “No.” But Long kept pressing.

  “Did she do anything else that you didn’t like?”

  Right here, Brianna switched gears and started talking about Ashley wanting to play the boyfriend-girlfriend game. She said that she didn’t want to play it, and that Ashley threatened to tell on her if she wouldn’t do it. (Ashley is two years younger than Brianna.)

  When asked how you play “boyfriend and girlfriend,” Brianna answered, “You would, like, kiss on the cheek like that.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Um, she um, um … [pause] stuck her hand down my pants and she told me to do it back to her,” Brianna said—again, rather nonchalantly—as she continued coloring with a yellow crayon.

  Long went on to ask her about what happened when Ashley’s hand was supposedly down her pants. Brianna insisted that Ashley’s hand was “on top” of her “panties,” and that there was no touching of skin, ever. Yet Lo
ng kept asking the question, over and over in different ways—about whether Ashley touched her privates directly and whether she touched Ashley’s privates directly when she touched her back. Brianna answered repeatedly, “Uh-uh.”

  Long then asked, “Where did Ashley learn that?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” Brianna said. “She must have learned it from her mom.”

  “Why do you think that?” Long asked her.

  “I don’t know,” Brianna answered.

  “Okay, did Tonya ever do anything like that to you?”

  “Uh-uh,” Brianna said. As in, “No.” She said it without hesitation, clear as day.

  Long continued to ask her about how I was mean to her, and Brianna said I never fed her when she was at my house. She said I fed Ashley but refused to feed her a thing. It made no sense at all to me, because there was always food at my house and it was always available to anyone that was at my home.

  “How did all this stuff come up, Brianna?” Long asked.

  “I don’t know,” Brianna said.

  “You don’t know. You don’t know … Did somebody ask you about it or did you tell somebody about it, or what? You don’t know how somebody found out for the very first time about all of this?”

  “Uh-uh,” Brianna said.

  The longer the interview went on, the more it seemed to me like Stacy Long was digging for specific answers.

  “Did you tell your mom anything different than what you told me …?” she asked.

  “Uh-uh,” Brianna said.

  “Was there anything about Miss Tonya … did she give you touches?”

  Brianna shook her head.

  “No? Did you tell your mom that she had?”

  “Uh-uh,” Brianna said.

  “No?” Long responded, seemingly begging for another answer with her voice.

  After a long pause, Brianna said, “Well, she did pat me right here”—indicating a spot right below her belly button. When pressed about what she called that spot, Brianna called it her “private.”

  Stacy asked if the touch had been on top of her clothes or under her clothes; Brianna said it was “on top.” Then Long asked her, “Did Miss Tonya ever say things to you that scared you or that you worried about?”

  “Uh-uh,” Brianna said.

  “No?” Long asked, again with what seemed to be a leading tone that made it sound like Brianna had given her an incorrect answer—to which Brianna started talking about me playing loud rap music in my car. I don’t listen to rap, ever!

  Long then circled back to whether Brianna knew about anything that happened between me and other girls, to which Brianna replied, slowly, “Chloe … Skyler …” Then Long asked about when it happened, and Brianna said it happened in kindergarten. (Neither of them specified what the “it” was they were talking about.)

  Brianna brought up the night of Ashley’s birthday party and talked about leaving the party and how she was scared that I might be mean to her again if she ever came back to my house. No matter what Brianna talked about, Long kept coming back and asking the same questions about whether I’d ever said something that scared her or ever said something about her “mommy loving her.” Brianna answered negatively to every question.

  Brianna repeatedly answered “uh-uh” to questions about me, such as, “Did she ever want you to touch her in any way?” and “Did she ever show you any of her private parts?”

  “Uh-uh,” “uh-uh,” “uh-uh,” over and over.

  When asked whether she was telling Long everything that happened, Brianna answered affirmatively.

  “You’re not leaving anything out because it’s hard to talk about or …?”

  “No,” Brianna said.

  Still, Stacy Long would not relent. At this point, Brianna hadn’t said anything whatsoever about being touched under her clothing by either me or by Ashley, yet Long suddenly pulled out a picture of a naked child and asked Brianna to point to where I supposedly touched her.

  She again pointed to the area just below her belly button.

  “And that was on top of your clothes when she did that?” Long said.

  “Yes,” Brianna responded.

  “Is there anything at all that you want to ask me?”

  “Um …”

  “Nothing at all?” Long interrupted.

  “Uh-uh,” Brianna said.

  Just when I thought the interview might be over, she started right back up again. She asked Brianna if she thought a lot about what had happened to her and if it bothered her. Brianna said it bothered her in her dreams at night.

  Long then pressed again about whether there was anything else Brianna wanted to tell her. “It all happened exactly like you said?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Brianna said.

  Even then, it wasn’t over. Long started talking about me again and asking about my marriage, to which this little girl responded: “Tonya got married to one guy and he divorced her and then she got married to … got married to another guy at our house and he got … and then he … she was mean to him and her other husband so they left her.”

  Long asked, “Did you see anything happen between Ashley and Chloe or Skyler?”

  I was relieved when Brianna shook her head.

  “Okay. How do you know that things happened?” Stacy asked.

  “My momma told me,” she said.

  Instead of asking a follow-up question to find out exactly what her momma had told her, Stacy Long circled back to some earlier questions and pressed Brianna again about how many times things had happened between her and Ashley. (“Twice,” she said. “No more.”) Then she asked a question about whether Brianna had seen any books or magazines that had people without clothes on, to which Brianna said, “No.”

  Finally, she wrapped things up and took Brianna outside—to where, as we would later discover, her mother was waiting for her.39

  “This is bullshit!” Cary yelled. He was fuming mad. Scott stayed silent and just shook his head. I said nothing. I was too flabbergasted to speak.

  The video started up again, and Brianna and Stacy Long both came back into the room. It was unclear how much time they’d spent outside talking to Sandra Lamb since the video stopped and started, but the interview was clearly on the same day,40 and the transcript was dated on the same day. It appeared to have just been a short break, but as far as the transcripts went, this was called “Interview #2.”

  “So you wanted to come back and talk to me again?” Long said.

  “Uh-huh,” Brianna answered.

  “Okay—”

  “Miss Tonya made me touch her back,” Brianna said quickly, placing her hand on her upper chest area, up by her left shoulder.

  “Like on top of her clothes or under her clothes or what?” Long asked.

  “On top,” Brianna answered.

  Long asked her about what I had said to her (“She told me to touch her”) and whether I had asked her to keep her hand still or to move it around (“Keep it still”), and when Brianna had trouble identifying the body part she said I’d asked her to touch, Long showed her an anatomical depiction of a nude woman and asked her to point to the spot on that figure. Brianna still pointed to an upper-chest area, more toward the shoulder or collar bone than anywhere I might think of as sexual.

  “Did she want [you] to touch her anywhere else?” Long asked.

  Brianna responded in the negative.

  Long then asked if she had “forgot” about that during the first interview or whether she was “a little bit scared” to talk about it—to which Brianna replied that she “forgot” and that she was “a little bit scared.” So Long told her it was okay to be scared and then repeated the question about what I had said to her at the time.

  “She told me I had to or I [pause]—or I had to go home,” Brianna answered.

  So I’d threatened her with sending her home? Wouldn’t she want to go home if something bad was happening to her?

  Long repeated the question about whether it was on top of my
clothes or under my clothes, to which Brianna replied, once again, “On top.” Then she made Brianna repeat when it had happened, and Brianna said once again that it was when she was in “kindergarten.”

  Eventually, Long asked her, “Anything else you can think of?”

  “I get to go to the spa today,” Brianna said.

  “Where are you going to the spa today?” Long asked.

  “You can ask my momma,” Brianna responded.

  “Nothing else you can think of?” Long added again, and then they both got up and left the room, returning a few moments later to mark the spot where she had touched me on that nude female figure. Apparently they had forgotten to mark the spot.

  “And you said it was on top of her shirt?” Long asked for a third time.

  Brianna nodded.

  Long then pointed to that naked figure’s breast—clearly below the spot they had marked—and asked Brianna to name what body part that was. Brianna answered, “Breast.”

  Long then left the room again, reentered, and asked Brianna, “When you stayed over at Miss Tonya’s house with Ashley … did you ever, like, take a bath over there?”

  Based on everything I’d read and researched about this subject so far, I thought interviewers were not supposed to make suggestions to kids when abuse allegations had been made. Is Sandra in that hallway? Is she getting her questions from her?

  “Uh-huh,” Brianna said.

  Brianna then went on to describe how I would scrub her with a washcloth on her stomach, “real hard.” She pointed to her own stomach. She pointed to the stomach on the nude figure when Long asked her to point to it. But she called it her “private,” and then Long referred to it as touching her “private” as well.

  Brianna said that she took those baths with Ashley and that I was “gentle” with the way I scrubbed my daughter. I hoped and prayed that Ashley would remember during her own interviews that no such baths ever took place. There were no baths.

  “When she would wash you, did she wash, like, in between your legs, too, on your private?” Stacy asked.

  “Uh-uh,” Brianna answered, emphatically shaking her head.