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

by Tonya Craft

  “You did not say your mom did what?”

  “Put medicine on me.”

  “You did not say your mom put medicine on you. Okay. Do you remember saying that your dad put medicine on my privates?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t remember that?” Doc asked.

  “He didn’t,” Ashley answered. “I can tell you I promise you that he didn’t.”

  He asked her about whether she had ever told me about taking showers with Sarah, and whether she told me her dad was in the bathroom with them, and that Sarah would shave in the shower with her.

  “I never said that, no,” Ashley answered.

  After listening to Ashley say “no” to a whole bunch of other things, including some details about the now-infamous limo birthday party and what I had said to Brianna Lamb and Lydia Wilson at that party, Doc decided to go to the videotape of Ashley’s interview with Suzie Thorne at the Greenhouse.

  “Do I have to watch it? I don’t want to watch,” Ashley complained.

  “Well, I’ve got to ask you about it. You can listen, but I’ve got to ask you about it.”

  “I already know what I said,” Ashley pleaded.

  “Okay. But I’ve got to ask you about what you remember.”

  “I know I remember,” Ashley said. “I know what I said.”

  “Okay. Did you say your mom put medicine on you to Suzie Thorne?”

  “No. I said that my grandma did.”

  After some more back and forth, Doc started the interview. He kept starting and stopping the DVD as he went through it, asking questions that forced Ashley to address how she could have known that I was “lying,” unless her dad told her. She said she didn’t know. Then Doc played the portion of the DVD interview in which Ashley said that I had put medicine on her.

  “Oops,” Doc said.

  “I guess she did do it,” Ashley admitted. “I just don’t have the best memory because, like I said, it was a long time ago because I remembered better because it was a shorter time. So I guess she did.”

  “You remember better back then, or you remember better now?” Doc asked.

  “It was closer to when it happened,” she said of the interview tape. “So I would have remembered it better.”

  “Back then?” Doc said.

  “Yeah,” Ashley admitted.

  Well, hallelujah to that, I thought. My daughter’s smart enough to recognize that her memory would have been better closer to an actual event than it would be two years afterward. Why couldn’t the prosecutors or anybody else realize that simple human factoid?

  Ashley went on to reconfirm that notion when Doc asked her about her belly aches and the need for the medicine: “I still don’t remember, but if that’s what it says then I guess that’s right. But just like I said, I had a better memory back then than I do now.”

  “I understand,” Doc said. “Thank you for explaining that to me.”

  Doc went back to the white board and added the date of that interview, June 3, 2008.

  He played the portion of the tape in which Ashley talked about showering with Sarah, and while she tried to deny that she’d ever told me about it, she said that those showers happened “six or seven” times. “And then it stopped.”

  It had gone on longer than that. Sarah and Joal admitted as much in their depositions.59 The Tennessee courts had to tell Sarah to stop after her February 2009 deposition—ten months after it first came up. It sickened me that Ashley was trying to protect the people that I felt had done wrong by her, and there was nothing I could do but sit there and listen.

  When Doc asked Ashley about the shaving, she said she “didn’t remember,” but then added that it was like a “fake shaver when you pop off the razor. You use it … It’s just fake.”

  Ashley also said, after viewing more of the tape, that she didn’t know what the boyfriend-girlfriend game was. She said she had no recollection of that game at all.

  At one point, Ashley asked if the tape was almost done. “How many more minutes?” she said.

  Doc looked at the DVD player and figured there were eight minutes left.

  “Then it’s over?” Ashley asked.

  “Yes,” Doc said. He offered her some water. She refused. It was such a bizarre, conflicted feeling to sit there feeling proud of how strong and brave she was being and to know that she could barely look at me.

  When they got to the portion of the tape where Suzie Thorne left the room and Ashley was seen sucking her thumb, she explained that she “always” did that. In fact, she said, she had done it for seven years. “They said if I stopped I would get an iPod Touch,” she said. So she’d stopped. She had an iPod Touch now, apparently, courtesy of Joal and Sarah.

  “An iPod Touch from stopping sucking your thumb? That is so cool,” Doc said.

  “I have to get braces,” she added.

  Doc started up a regular old conversation with Ashley right there in that courtroom. He talked about how he got braces when he was young, but not that young.

  “I know a guy who just turned eight and he already has braces,” Ashley said.

  The fact that he could get Ashley to chitchat after sitting in a chair for that many hours was downright miraculous to me.

  Ashley made a comment as we sat there about how long Suzie Thorne had left her alone. Doc tried to get some information about who she was talking to during that break, but Ashley just repeated that Thorne had left to talk with “someone she works with.”

  They finally went through to the end of the tape, and the judge ordered a bathroom break—during which Len Gregor stood up and said he wanted to note, for the record, “With each of these children we keep getting from counsel to the children, ‘Well, we’re going to be done in just a minute, I just have a few more questions for you on this.’ He’s leading these children to believe they’re done and then we go in another area for another two hours. I mean, I think that there are little psychological games being played with these kids … I’m getting tired of it.”

  Scott spoke up in response: “Is that an objection?”

  “Let’s not get into this. I know it’s late,” Judge House said. “We’re trying to get this witness done for everybody’s sake. Okay?” Judge House offered to tell Ashley when she got back that we’d actually have about another hour of questioning, and he did so. “That’s part of our procedure,” he told her.

  “No more than an hour,” Ashley stated flatly.

  Doc responded to her, “Yeah.”

  “She’s telling you,” Judge House said to Doc.

  “If it’s more than an hour,” Ashley said, “I’m going to say, like, no way.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Doc said. “I promise, miss.”

  The last part of Doc’s cross-examination started with questions about the interview she’d done with Ann Hazzard. Doc simply confirmed that Ashley hadn’t left anything out of that interview, and she said she didn’t think she had. He then asked some very specific questions regarding some of the allegations Brianna Lamb had made against Ashley during her own interviews.

  “I’m just asking you about stuff that I’ve got to ask you. Did you—don’t get mad at me. Did you stick your finger in your privates and put it in Brianna Lamb’s face and tell her to smell it?”

  “No,” Ashley said. She looked completely shocked.

  “Okay. Did you tell Brianna Lamb that she had to touch your privates or you would hurt her mom?”

  “No. Where did you get that from?”

  “Brianna,” Doc told her.

  He got it directly from Brianna’s interviews, Ashley. I wish I could talk to you. I wish I could explain all of this to you!

  “Didn’t anybody ask you about what Brianna said?” Doc asked her.

  Chris Arnt stood up and objected, but Judge House didn’t respond and Doc went on asking questions, making sure they were specifically about what Brianna and Chloe had said on the record.

  “Did anybody ask you about what Brianna said?”


  “No.”

  “Okay. Did anyone ask you about what Chloe said?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m going to ask you and I’ll be done,” Doc said.

  “Because I don’t know what they said,” Ashley complained.

  “I’m going to ask you. So did you put your hand down Brianna’s pants?”

  “No.”

  “Well, did you tell Brianna she has to put her hand down your pants?”

  “No.”

  My stomach was in absolute knots. I never got a chance to ask Ashley if she actually participated in the so-called “boyfriend-girlfriend” game. What if she didn’t? What if that story was false, too? What if Ashley wasn’t involved with any touching with any of these girls outside of that incident in which Chloe might have touched her? That one time. That one time that she doesn’t even remember, which I’d tried to handle correctly so it wouldn’t be traumatizing. I wanted to stand up and tell everyone to stop. Let my baby go. Just take me to prison. I don’t want to put her through any more of this!

  “Did you take Brianna’s hand and stick it in your pants?”

  “No.”

  “Did your mommy make Brianna stay in your bedroom with no TV at your house?”

  “No.”

  “Was there a TV in your bedroom at Mommy’s house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah. Did your mommy have kids over and then never let them have anything to drink or eat?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Okay. That’s a no?”

  “Yeah, that’s a no.”

  “We’re getting through this pretty quick. So do you remember did you have—do you remember having a Halloween party at your house?”

  “No.”

  He asked if she was ever in a bath with Brianna Lamb and Skyler Walker. Ever. And Ashley said, “No.”

  He asked if she hid under the blanket during her birthday party and touched all the little girls’ privates.

  “No.”

  He asked if she’d been in the bath with Brianna and “your mommy touching Brianna’s privates and your privates in the bathtub?”

  “No.”

  He asked about touching Chloe’s privates (“No”), and again about Brianna touching her privates (“No”), and Ashley called him out for asking some of the same questions twice.

  Doc apologized.

  “Are we almost done?” Ashley said.

  Doc assured her he was trying not to take the whole hour. He got a few more questions in, and Ashley pretty much refuted everything Brianna and Chloe had described during their interviews, and in the therapy notes we’d seen from Laurie Evans.

  A few questions later, Doc wrapped it up.

  “So we’re done?” Ashley said.

  “No, not until the judge says,” Doc told her.

  “Anything further?” Judge House asked Chris Arnt.

  “No,” Arnt said.

  “Okay,” the judge finally said. “Now you’re done.”

  Ashley stood up.

  “That was so not an hour,” she said.

  Len Gregor, Chris Arnt, and Ashley’s assigned handler then whisked my strong, beautiful daughter out of the room. She didn’t look back at me. I had no idea when I might see her again. If ever.

  Doc made his way back to our table and the first thing he said to me was, “Wow. She’s you!”

  Under any other circumstances, I might have laughed at his sentiment. There’s a line from Steel Magnolias that I have always liked. It says, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” There wasn’t anything favorite of mine about that moment, for sure.

  The jury filtered out. The judge was gone.

  David came in and tried to comfort me and I jerked away from him. I didn’t want to be touched. Finally, I dropped my head to the table and just let it all out. In that dull brown courtroom drained of all its judging eyes, I cried without worrying how loud I was sobbing—and prayed once again for it all to just end.

  Chapter 51

  My trial was estimated to last two weeks. The way things were going, suddenly everybody started saying it was going to take four weeks to get through all the testimony. I could hardly imagine keeping my composure that long. I could hardly imagine keeping up the routines of the all-night work, the full days in court, and hardly any sleep in between. Even after those couple of days away from the courtroom, the exhaustion I felt heading into day six was only matched by the adrenaline that rushed right through me when the prosecution stood up and called, “Sherri Wilson.”

  Lord, here we go, I thought.

  Sherri came in and plopped herself into the chair on the witness stand and sort of slumped down a bit. She talked with a real somber tone in her voice that seemed completely false to me. She then went ahead and discussed the whole pool party incident with Skyler Walker and specified that Skyler had written the words “sex” and “kissing” in sidewalk chalk by the pool. She went on and on about how she’d questioned both Brianna and Skyler after that and made the shocking “discovery” that Skyler and Ashley had supposedly been touching each other in this game called “boyfriend-girlfriend.” All in all, the prosecution wrapped up quickly, as they had with each of their witnesses so far.

  It was Scott King’s first chance to shine when it came to cross-examining Sherri, and he got up, stood strong, and called into question just about every word that came out of that woman’s mouth. She appeared to me to be defensive from the get-go. She didn’t answer the question of who called Detective Keith first to discuss the alleged pool incident, either her or her husband, DeWayne. She said she had no memory of any incident at Ashley’s birthday party in 2008—despite the fact that she’d stopped being friends with me and stopped coming into my classroom. She said the only reason she was upset with me that March was because she had apparently “just learned” that her daughter wasn’t going to progress into first grade. When simple school records would show that we’d had meetings and discussions long before that. Basically, almost nothing she said matched the way I remembered it or the records and timelines we had gathered to back up the facts. None of it.

  Sherri got up there and talked about how Brianna had come back to her house at some point after that chalk incident because she wanted to “talk to her” about something. Sherri said she “sat right down” on the driveway for that intimate talk with Brianna, and while they sat there talking is when Brianna revealed that “stuff happened” with Miss Tonya. It was so shocking, she said, that she immediately “sat down” because she could feel her legs going.

  Wait a second, Sherri. You said you were already seated on the ground. How are your legs giving out on you if you’re already seated? It’s those kind of little, telling details that you hope a jury picks up on, and which in many cases my attorneys were quick enough to notice and highlight in the heat of the moment. In that particular case, I caught it. I wrote a note about it. But Scott didn’t get a chance to mention it to her during cross.

  What Sherri told that jury was that Brianna told her all about what I’d allegedly done to her: that I’d touched her in the bathtub and in the kitchen and that one time I had “touched” some other little girls when we were all under the covers together during a sleepover. Sherri testified that she then went inside the house and relayed all of that news to Brianna’s mom, Sandra Lamb. Sherri testified that she was the one who told Sandra about it for the first time. Well, that doesn’t match Sandra’s story at all, I thought. Unless Sandra’s story is going to be different now, too.

  I found it strange that Sherri never shed a tear. This was emotional stuff we were dealing with. It’s hard not to cry when you talk about it, even if you’re talking about other people’s kids. She looked like she was going to cry, or maybe trying to cry, but no tears ever fell. I could almost see her trying to spin everything to match the stories they’d been spinning from the very beginning—especially as Sherri put her fingers together and described the up-and-down motion Brianna made with her hand to show what I’d s
upposedly done to her. Under cross-examination, Sherri specified that Brianna said I had done that up-and-down hand-motion thing to her in the kitchen. Only in the kitchen. According to Sherri, Brianna made that motion to her during that very first conversation they had while they sat together on her driveway—even though it clearly didn’t come up at all until much later in the official interviews with Brianna, and even though nobody mentioned that aspect of what I’d supposedly done to Brianna during the early months of the investigation whatsoever. To anybody. It doesn’t even line up with Brianna’s testimony from just the other day!

  In the end, I wasn’t sure that Sherri Wilson’s testimony would really mean that much to a jury. She wasn’t a parent of one of the accusers. Her kids weren’t directly involved in any of this. A part of me wondered why the prosecution would even call her to the stand. The only thing she offered was an initial glimpse at the “origin story” of how their knowledge of all of this alleged “touching” had come about.

  Trying to step outside of my own bubble and see it more objectively, I just kept thinking, Is Sherri Wilson the most credible witness the prosecution could present when talking about the origins of a molestation charge? Isn’t that the job of detectives to find out? Shouldn’t they be trumpeting their investigation into these charges, instead of putting up a mom who’s tangentially involved? And where’s Stephen Keith? The detective who started this whole investigation? The friend of the Wilsons whom Sherri admitted she and DeWayne called? Why haven’t they called him to the stand?

  I could tell you where Detective Tim Deal was: He was seated right over at the prosecution’s table. The only thing between him and me was Doc and a little space between the tables. There’s a statute in the Georgia legal system that allows a “lead investigator” to stay in the courtroom and observe the whole trial as part of the prosecution team (once a motion is filed, and if a judge agrees to it), even though he was going to be called as a witness. Prosecutors seem to love it. They appeared to use this to their advantage all the time, taking lots of notes and then using the lead investigator—who had had the great privilege of listening to everybody else’s testimony—to get up there and close the case for them. In a sweeper position, he can clean up any messes, fill in any blanks, and leave the jury with an impression of exactly what the prosecutors want to prove.