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

by Tonya Craft

  There was just one problem. Right before we went into that hearing, Judge Van Pelt recused himself from my case. He gave no reason why he was stepping aside after all that time. My attorneys would try everything they could to find out the reason. What if a conflict of interest has been tainting his decisions from the beginning? We could have grounds to have all of his decisions thrown out! Suddenly, the man who had been present from the beginning wasn’t going to be there to hear another word.

  Would a new judge be up to speed? Would he have read all of the documents before we went in front of him? Or was he, too, going to be operating from the summary of summaries and the seemingly ongoing telephone game provided through the DA’s office and perhaps now amplified by Judge Van Pelt himself?

  The telephone-game angle of all of this made me extremely nervous, because I still doubted whether Judge Van Pelt had been paying attention to half of what we’d said in his courtroom. We got no answers as to why he recused himself, of course. The legal system seemed to protect its own. We were just expected to go in front of whoever this new judge was and to accept that the scales of justice would be fine and fair and balanced and blind.

  The new judge was a man named Brian House—a man I recognized for all the wrong reasons. Brian House had served as an attorney for my first husband during our divorce proceedings. In my eyes it was about as big a conflict of interest as I could ever imagine. My attorneys immediately objected and asked for a recusal. A divorce attorney has access to all sorts of privileged information. He could be biased against me. I felt there was every reason to expect Brian House to recuse himself. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He refused, and I had no choice but to walk into that courtroom on November 23 and face what felt like another completely absurd travesty of small-town justice.49

  There I was, looking at that man whose face I remembered well. He was a bit younger than Judge Van Pelt. He had dark hair that was short and what I would describe as sort of a quirky look about him. He reminded me a lot of late-night television’s Conan O’Brien, only he spoke more slowly and in a deep voice with a distinct Georgia drawl. He definitely struck me as a good ol’ boy from the start.

  I tried to put the apparent conflicts aside as we started that hearing, only to notice that Judge Brian House seemed all aloof and distracted in the courtroom. It also felt to me like my case had just landed in his lap, and he didn’t want to rock the boat on anything in this first hearing he was involved in. So here we’d done all of this preparation, spent tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours hoping to gain something from this all-important day, and Judge House seemed to take it upon himself to hardly make any decisions at all.

  The decisions he did make were decisions that hurt us. First of all, he denied our ability to enter the polygraphs into evidence. After all the worry and trouble we’d gone to, and the pain I’d been through enduring those exams, Judge House simply ruled them inadmissible. That decision meant they would be inadmissible at the trial as well.

  He denied our demurrer and therefore wouldn’t consider removing any of the individual counts of the indictment, saying, in so many words, “You’ll have your day in court to fight those charges.” He did so without hearing all of our arguments, basically cutting Scott off in the middle of his presentation.

  He did go ahead and set a deadline for the exchange of the rest of the discovery documents, which was helpful. That deadline would be December 15. (Of course, that deadline would come and go and we’d still be missing a whole bunch of important documents we’d asked for. We’d have to come back to court again later to fight for those.) Then he denied our change-of-venue request.

  Finally, when it came time to address the bond—and whether or not to allow me to see my daughter—he allowed us to put a number of witnesses on the stand. Powerful witnesses.50

  My children’s guardian ad litem from Tennessee got up there and testified that I should be allowed to see my daughter.

  Frances Woodard, the mother of my lifelong friend Courtney, who had put her house up against my bond, gave some stunning testimony about Ashley’s demeanor. The prosecutors (including the lanky second ADA, Len Gregor, who was back in action for this hearing) tried to tell the court that Ashley did not want to see me, that she was “terrified” of me, that she would not speak of me, and that she got upset at the very mention of my name—information that seemed to me to be based entirely on the word of my ex-husband, Joal, and the reports of her former court-ordered therapist, Laurie Evans. But Frances was the woman the court had chosen to serve as my mother’s “supervisor” during Ashley’s visits with her grandparents. So she got up there and testified to firsthand knowledge of Ashley’s demeanor and told that court that in her opinion my daughter was not terrified of me at all. In fact, she said Ashley talked about me frequently. When they took her out for Japanese food, she would order white rice, “just like my mommy.” In fact, she testified that my daughter missed me and expressly wanted to see me!

  Then we put up our most important witness of the day: Ann Hazzard, the PhD psychologist who’d spent time doing a new forensic interview with Ashley. As part of her evaluation, she’d interviewed people who worked with Ashley every day at school. She also took time to read the transcripts of Ashley’s original interview with Suzie Thorne at the Greenhouse. Dr. Hazzard got up on that stand and testified that she found nothing to support any evidence of inappropriate touching between me and Ashley whatsoever—either in the original Suzie Thorne interview or in her own extensive evaluations. She said her professional conclusion was that nothing inappropriate had happened between me and my daughter. She stated with “full confidence” that I should be allowed to see my daughter immediately and that seeing each other would be “in Ashley’s best interest.”

  Then she stated on the record that she did find evidence of inappropriate behavior happening at Ashley’s father’s house, concerning the showers with Joal’s wife, Sarah. She testified that those incidents were “very inappropriate.”

  I briefly allowed myself to get my hopes up. As far as witnesses go, Ann Hazzard was a slam dunk from our side’s point of view.

  Judge House listened to all of those findings and all of that testimony—and then promptly decided not to take any action at all. He decided to leave my bond exactly as it was. He decided to leave Ashley in Joal’s custody. He then made a comment (which I’m paraphrasing here) saying, in effect, “Well … since your client hasn’t seen her daughter in all this time, I don’t see how a couple more months will make any difference.”

  I was incensed. I wanted to jump over the table and strangle him with my own two hands. My attorneys protested his decision immediately, and Judge House agreed to “revisit it” if for some reason my trial didn’t “go” in March as scheduled.

  In one fell swoop, Judge House ensured that I wouldn’t see my daughter for at least another one hundred days.

  Chapter 40

  It wasn’t long after that hearing, not long after another difficult Thanksgiving, that the stress and terror of the entire ordeal overwhelmed me one random night around dinnertime. The doorbell rang—and the sound of it sent me into a panic. I hid myself in a closet. David didn’t know what to do. He’d never seen me so terrified. I was sure it was detectives come to lock me away for good this time. I sat there shivering, balled up on the floor like some kind of broken shell of a human being.

  It turned out it was just some creditor, trying to serve me some paperwork about some unpaid bills. David sent him away—but he had to get my father to help get me off the floor and back to my senses.

  I insisted David disconnect the doorbell that night. I never wanted to hear the sound of a doorbell again. Ever.

  Another Christmas came and went without my children.

  The closest thing I had to a saving grace was that Ashley gave me a Christmas present that year. My mom and Frances took Ashley on a shopping trip up to Gatlinburg one day.51 Ashley picked out a zebra-striped purse that she told them I’d just love
. Then she “insisted” on finding me a pair of shoes to match.

  She signed the packages, “To Mommy, Love Ashley.” She also attached a one-dollar bill to the outside of each wrapper.52

  “Make sure she gets those dollars,” Ashley told my mom. “It’s very important.”

  My mother had never mentioned anything about my financial troubles. Neither had Frances. Neither had anyone else during Ashley’s visits with my parents. But it seemed clear to me that somebody was talking about it, and she’d heard it—and she’d cared.

  David gave me a special present that year, too: a gigantic version of the Truth Cross. This one was made out of stainless steel that was two inches thick. It stood almost two feet high. He’d been working on it in his shop since mid-November, he told me. It was beautiful. It was stunning, really. A solid, tangible object that symbolized everything, all at once: my faith, my fight, the weight of the burden of truth that had somehow fallen entirely on my shoulders. Everything.

  By the end of that second year, the analogy of ten elephants that I’d once used to describe the weight on my shoulders felt small by comparison. Especially after we got more discovery from the prosecution—and when I found the strength to sit down and read the medical records from the nurse’s exam that all three of those little girls were put through. The report for Chloe showed no signs of abuse, but the report for Brianna was “extremely suspicious,” and the report for Ashley was “suspicious” for sexual abuse as well, which was absolutely devastating for me to read.53

  The report suggested that my daughter was visibly upset and crying through the whole exam. Joal and Sarah both brought her to that exam, and Sarah actually went in the room with her when she was examined. According to the report, Sarah and a nurse had to restrain her on the table. She was examined with her knees all the way up next to her ears in what’s called a “frog-leg position,” with nurse Sharon Anderson taking photographs of her privates. Joal signed a paper allowing that to take place. In my mind I was sure—even then—that he knew that I had done nothing to her. How could he allow this to happen?

  I felt like they had molested my daughter.

  As the new year dawned, I put my hand on that giant Truth Cross and bowed my head and prayed with all my heart. I prayed for the truth, as I always did. I prayed for Tyler, as I always did. But in that moment, I prayed for Ashley more than ever before: “Please, God, please keep Ashley strong. Please let her know how much I love her. Please let her be okay, God. Please protect my baby girl. Please.”

  I woke up in early January more determined to fulfill my research missions than ever before. I told David that I needed to fly up to Minnesota to try to find Laurie Evans’s first husband. I’d found Laurie Evans’s second husband living more than five hours from our home, and he was surprisingly open with me about Laurie’s history, so I figured I might be able to get some information from husband number one as well.

  Paying for my travel was becoming a real issue, though. David was just about tapped out. I had no income. My parents had blown almost their entire life savings and inheritance by that time. If it weren’t for the generosity of my friends, I’m not sure what I would have done. Diana and Tammy and Courtney and Jennifer—every one of them helped chip in for my travel funds.

  Trying to save money, I thought it would be cheaper and more efficient to get all my northern travels done in one trip—to fly from Chattanooga to Minnesota, and then on to Newark, New Jersey, to research that mysterious number I’d come across in Joal’s phone records.

  I found myself in the middle of a gigantic snowstorm in Minnesota, driving the cheapest, and therefore smallest, rental car I could find. At one point the snow blew so wildly across the highway, it was like a clean, white sheet had blown off somebody’s clothesline and stuck itself to my windshield. I’d never squeezed a steering wheel so tight in my life. The storm got so bad that I finally had to give up. I called the number I had from the car, and Laurie’s first husband’s mother picked up the phone. My conversation with her was extremely short.

  There was definitely no love lost between Evans and her ex-mother-in-law. But the discussion didn’t give me much in the way of new information that might help my case, and at that point I felt I had no choice but to let it go.

  I called David, bawling and terrified as I drove back toward the airport in that tiny car in those horrible conditions. All I wanted was David’s permission to stop and get a hotel for the night and to change my tickets for the rest of the trip. But he wouldn’t give in to me. All he did was talk about the money and how much we’d already spent.

  “You know what, David? Fine,” I yelled as I hung up the phone. “But if I die, it’s on you!”

  The fact was, I didn’t have a credit card of my own anymore. I couldn’t make the decision to stay at a hotel or to buy a plane ticket on my own if I wanted to. At some point—I’m not even sure when—the bank had foreclosed on my house in Chickamauga. I’d made payments for as long as I could. I just couldn’t keep up. I was too consumed with fighting for my kids. Nothing was selling in that crashed housing market anyway, and at some point, I just let it go. So on top of everything else, my credit was ruined. It felt like everything was ruined. Absolutely everything.

  I yelled at God harder and louder than I yelled at my husband on that awful, stormy afternoon. “What did I do? Tell me! Why is this happening? Why?” It was the same old set of questions. I just never seemed to get a direct answer. The only answer I ever got back was that I needed to stay focused on my kids. Keep fighting for them. Do whatever it takes to get back to them.

  Some might have seen those travels as wasted time and wasted money. Not me. If I thought there was even a 1-percent chance that some pursuit might help me prove my innocence, there was no way I was going to pass it up. My questions about Laurie Evans—including how and why she was given so much power at the CAC—kept nagging at me. I couldn’t understand it. Plus, I had nothing to lose. In my mind there was no way any of those pursuits could make my situation worse.

  That was exactly the mentality I had as the snow cleared and I finally flew over to Newark.

  More than a few people (including my husband) told me not to make that trip. Newark is a “scary city,” they said. Their concerns fell on deaf ears. I feared nothing more than losing my children forever. Flying to some strange city, staying at the types of hotels that would accept cash with no credit card upon check-in—what I was going through was nothing compared to the agony I felt had been placed on my son and daughter.

  On the first day, I failed to find the woman at the other end of that phone number. I questioned why I’d come. After sleeping in a cheap, rather seedy hotel, I woke up on the second day and was surprised to find a treadmill in the hotel’s run-down gym. I went for a run and a prayer—and it paid off. I hit the streets of Newark once more, and I found her. I recognized her voice the moment we said “hello.” I made sure my trusty little tape recorder was running as this woman ushered me back to her office, in a small space with a desk and a few chairs. That hidden tape recorder was my insurance policy. Always.

  It turned out she was a chiropractor who ran her business from her home.

  “Oh! You called me!” she said. “How could I forget that accent?”

  I guess I hadn’t done a very good job of disguising my voice when I tried to find out who she was originally. I tearfully asked if there was any information she had that might help me. It turned into a lengthy conversation resulting in tears from us both. I couldn’t push too hard or she might have stopped talking to me. It was very strange. The whole thing was just strange. Although the content of the discussion didn’t further my case in any way, the dialogue was congenial, and upon leaving, she hugged me and tearfully said that she wished me the best.

  I thanked God for allowing me to experience that kindness in the midst of everything else—even on those days when my long-distance travels and dogged pursuits left me wanting.

  Chapter 41

  With a c
ouple of days left to kill in the lovely environs of Newark, it suddenly struck me that I had failed to fulfill a mission I’d vowed to complete a few months earlier: to get some national media attention focused on my case. I called David from my hotel room and asked him, “Hey, how close is Newark to New York City?”

  David laughed at me. He said, “Well, try looking out your window. You see those big buildings over there? That’s New York!”

  It felt like fate to me.

  I didn’t own a proper winter coat, so I bought one off a clearance rack and took a train into the big city. I trudged all over town in the freezing cold wearing dress slacks and a turtleneck sweater. I felt I needed to show up dressed in a professional manner so that people would take me seriously.

  One of my primary targets was Anderson Cooper. I went to CNN and they wouldn’t let me in, so I left a package for him. Then I found his home address, and I left a package for him there, too. I repeated the same mission all over town, with basically no luck at all. By the time I had dinner and found my way to the correct subway station again to catch a train back to Newark, it was 12:45 A.M. What woman rides the subway in New York City alone at 12:45 A.M.? A M.O.M.—that was who!

  The next morning I trudged over to Good Morning America with a little handmade sign: “M.O.M.—Mother on a Mission!” I stood in line in the blistering cold and steady snow with others who I was told had gotten tickets months and even years in advance. When I reached the security guard, he must have seen the desperation in my eyes. He shook my hand as if taking my ticket and let me into the studio.