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

by Tonya Craft

  “Scared of ‘yellow’?” David said at one point. “I don’t understand.”

  David wasn’t in the room for any of that testimony! We weren’t the ones who brought up Brianna’s psychological aversions to yellow in the courtroom. Sandra brought that up after all the girls were long finished with their testimony. Gregor’s behavior in that moment—especially directed at David, of all people—seemed way out of line.

  Of course Judge House didn’t stop it.

  “Would you agree with me that it’s just wrong? That it’s not a good way to get to the truth?” Gregor asked my husband.

  David pointed out that it wasn’t his job to question a child, and he didn’t understand why Gregor was asking him the question, but said that he would never do anything to purposefully hurt a child, no.

  “Okay,” Gregor said, taking a breath and seeming to calm himself down. “Okay.”

  Gregor then took on a mellow tone. He started talking about how his “daddy” always took him out fishing. He said he wanted to talk to David about fishing, which led to questions about his friendship with Greg Lamb and how long they’d been friends. He didn’t pull out anything disparaging, he just established that David had known, or at least known of, Greg Lamb for about twenty years—because they competed against each other in fishing tournaments and eventually started hanging out sometimes.

  Then he switched gears again.

  He made a point of telling David that it was “silly” to think that he was around me 24/7 during our relationship, to which David responded, “We all know that.” He then asked about Brianna, and whether David considered Brianna a “worldly-beyond-her-years girl who pole dances.”

  “I would say she’s very advanced for her age,” David said. When pressed, he agreed to the term “worldly.”

  Gregor then tried to define the word “worldly” as meaning “someone who gets around a lot.”

  “She doesn’t ‘get around,’” David said “She’s ten!” Gregor sort of laughed about someone describing her that way in the courtroom. “It wasn’t me,” David said.

  Gregor apologized for having to ask certain questions (of course with no reprimand from Judge Brian House). He seemed to keep trying to tone it down. But then he’d ask David something outrageous and completely unfounded: “Didn’t you tell a variety of people that the defendant is an alcoholic?”

  “I never said Tonya was an alcoholic,” David answered.

  “Is one of the things that she drinks a vodka mixed with red-raspberry something or other?”

  “She’s drank that before,” David answered.

  Gregor pressed on about my drinking. He asked David whether he’d rented a steam cleaner to try to clean up the Lambs’ carpet after I threw up on my wedding night. David told the truth about all of it.

  Out of the blue, he asked David whether he’d caught me doing a “striptease nude dance” in front of my friend Tammy one time and whether he had told people about that.

  “No,” David said.

  David had a look on his face like, What in the world is this guy talking about? And I wondered when, if ever, they were going to bring up something relevant to the actual allegations. Gregor went on for more than an hour about my alleged lesbian tendencies and my drinking too much on a couple of occasions. The scary thing to me was just how many of the assertions Gregor made about me during his questioning of David were completely untrue and how many times David was forced to say “no” to those assertions.

  The ADA didn’t even seem to hide the fact that most, if not all, of his information about those things came from Sandra Lamb and Joal Henke. He referenced their names more than once when asking whether David had “said” certain things.

  The ADA then went off on a long speech about how David knew “the real Tonya Craft” better than anyone. He knew the “real” me, not some made-up “television Tonya Craft.” He said David knew what I was capable of, and that was why he left me in April 2008. He said that was why, when Greg Lamb first called David and informed him that “Tonya Craft had molested their daughter,” David had said, “It all makes sense now.”

  “I never said any of that,” David said.

  “That’s as true as anything else you’ve told us,” Gregor said. He sat down and ended his questioning.

  Did he just insult my husband and call him a liar? Is he allowed to do that?

  Scott jumped up real quick for his redirect, and asked David to clear up a laundry list of Len Gregor’s insinuations. David did what I knew he’d done from the beginning: He told the truth about everything. As uncomfortable and awful as it was for him to get up there and have to refute the filth they were spewing about me, David sat there without flinching and stood up for me when it counted most.

  I thought about the fact that Sandra Lamb’s husband had filed for a divorce from her in the middle of all of this. This whole ordeal wasn’t just awful for me. These false allegations, the changing stories, the media, the stress—all of it was destroying marriages. I felt very blessed that it hadn’t destroyed mine.

  Chapter 60

  Doc stood up and so boldly spoke the next five words that it sent a shiver down my spine.

  “The defense calls Tonya Craft.”

  The electric feeling in that courtroom was something to behold. Oddly enough, there was an ambulance going by outside, and the siren wailed right through that courtroom as I stood. Not twenty seconds had passed since David stepped off that witness stand. Here I was about to fight for my life, to fight for my kids, and I actually felt sorry for David having to go out there and sit on that bench again.

  I did everything I could to keep my knees from giving out as I made what suddenly seemed like a very long walk to the witness stand.

  I’d chosen a simple black-and-white dress jacket to wear over a black blouse, and black pants. I don’t think that I made that choice consciously, but the idea of “black and white” was certainly fitting.

  I wore my pendant necklace with the etchings of Ashley and Tyler around my neck, close to my heart and prominently displayed against the black background of my shirt.

  Doc said, “Tonya. Raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “Yes,” I said. My voice was shaky. I could barely breathe. He asked me to state my name, and my throat sort of choked up between my first name and my last name—but I managed to get the words out.

  I tried to settle in. I took a deep breath. It’s impossible to explain what it feels like to have everything on the line like that and for it all to come down to that final moment. I guess the overwhelming thought—more of a feeling, really, that sinks into your bones and drives a nail into the pit of your stomach—is, This is it. This is my last chance. The bell had rung and the clock was now ticking on the biggest test I’d ever take in my life. I had to get this right.

  Doc asked his first question before I even had time to exhale.

  “What are you doin’ up on that witness stand?” he asked me.

  “I’m here because I have been falsely accused,” I said, slowly and clearly.

  I was about to go on with that thought, but he cut me off, rather forcefully.

  “Don’t you know that you have a right to sit there and make them prove every element of their case?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  I looked right into the eyes of Chris Arnt.

  “Don’t you know that they’re supposed to not have to hear from you?”

  I took another slow, deep breath as Doc asked that question.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I looked at that jury.

  “Don’t you know that you have a right to remain silent?” Doc asked.

  I looked Doc right in the eyes.

  “Yes,” I said, as Len Gregor stood up and objected. I could hardly believe he was interrupting already, before I’d even had a chance to take a few breaths. I felt he was doing that on purpose.

  “Your Honor,” he said as I reached for
my water. “This is a direct examination, and I object to leading questions—”

  “Don’t lead the witness,” Judge House said.

  “Do you know that you have a right to remain silent?” Doc asked, rephrasing the question.

  “I know that I do have that right,” I said, taking one more breath as I tried to slow my heart rate down from the panic it was clearly in.

  Doc looked at the prosecutors and asked me if I had any idea what I “might have in store [ …] from this happy group of wolves.”

  I looked right at Gregor and said, quietly, “I can only imagine.”

  “Have you been listening to what this charming procession of questions has been to your friends?”

  “Yes, I have,” I said.

  Doc asked if I knew there were things I may not say—and the ADA objected again. It turned into a whole big deal, with Judge House accusing Doc of playing “to the media,” and my testimony was interrupted so we could all go into chambers to discuss the matter.

  This was not how I wanted to start my time on the stand.

  Ten minutes later, we were back in front of the jury.

  “So, here you are,” Doc said. “Seven hundred and six days. What does that mean?”

  “Seven hundred and six days,” I said, slowly, “since I have had contact with my daughter.”

  He asked me to speak up, so I repeated: “Since I have had contact with my daughter.”

  I was still having a hard time talking. I could feel my heart racing. I could hardly believe how out of shape I’d become and how out of control of my body I felt as I sat in that chair. I grabbed the arms of it just to make sure I didn’t fall out.

  “Seven hundred and six days,” Doc said. I could tell he was trying to give me some time to calm down. He left big spaces between his questions. He asked about where I grew up, and where I went to school, and whether I played any sports, and I told the court about my running and playing softball.

  He asked about my growing up—and just as an aside asked whether I was an abuse victim. “No, I am not,” I said.

  I told the story of my “normal” upbringing, with my father’s job at a corrugated box company and my mother’s mostly stay-at-home-mom role.

  “Is that big guy right there your daddy?” he said, pointing to my dad in his front-row seat.

  “It is,” I said. I choked up pretty bad. I could see my dad was choked up, too.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s out in the hall,” I said, “because we weren’t sure if she’d have to be a witness.”

  Doc started his questions in earnest right then and there. He asked what this whole “fitness” thing was about, which the prosecutors had clearly asked many of my friends. And I told the story. My parents and brother had always struggled with their weight, and I’d seen how hard it was. So when I was in ninth grade, I took up track and field and running, because I’d made up my mind that I wanted to live a healthy lifestyle.

  “It was more of a prevention thing,” I said.

  I spoke about going to college and getting my BS in multidisciplinary education, which is elementary education. I spoke about my first marriage when I was around twenty-one. “We were just kind of young and dumb and in love and thought, ‘high school sweethearts, let’s get married,’” I told the court. We were together for approximately four years, but we just “grew apart.”

  I gave my history with Joal, explaining how we’d met through my work doing fitness competitions.

  “Were you a narcissist?” Doc asked me.

  “No,” I answered.

  “Are you a narcissist now?” he asked.

  “No. I do take care of myself and try to be healthy,” I said.

  The pace of Doc’s talking finally got me calmed down a little bit, and I was thankful neither of the prosecutors jumped up and objected about anything for a few minutes. I knew this was going to be a long haul. I needed to find a pace. I needed to get my body in tune with what we were doing. It would just take some time to catch my stride.

  Responding to Doc’s questions, I talked openly about starting my relationship with Joal before I was divorced from my first husband. I told the truth about it. I took a sip of water. I spoke about living with Joal before we were married.

  “Uh-oh,” Doc said. “Does that make you a child molester?”

  “No,” I replied.

  We continued going through my history and started to get into some of Joal’s family history—and Len Gregor stood up again and objected to that line of questioning, calling it hearsay and inquiring about the relevance. Doc came back pretty strong. He hadn’t even asked the questions yet, but Judge House sustained the objection.

  Is this how my entire testimony’s going to go?

  So instead of getting into Joal’s family history, we talked about the pornographic materials that Joal brought home one day.

  “This was right whenever we got married,” I said. I had never had any kind of pornography in my home before that. “It bothered me,” I said.

  “The way I’ve been portrayed, I hate to even say the word ‘Christian,’” I explained, “because of all the things I’ve done that are not perfect.” But I talked about how I was bothered internally and wanted to change and become a Christian at that time. “I got pregnant with Tyler three months into our marriage,” I explained. “When I got pregnant, I knew that I was not going to have anything like that [pornography] in my house.”

  Doc and I had talked about a lot of this the night before. We were very worried that a jury could possibly believe my ex-husband’s allegations against me and that it might taint their view of everything I was as a human being. They could convict on their emotions based on the fact that he’d described me as far less than a moral person. So like it or not—and I swear, I did not like it one bit—I needed to tell them about who Joal was and to let them make up their own minds who to believe.

  I told them how Joal kept making comments about “making sure I lost the weight” after Tyler was born and the whole condescending, controlling way that I felt Joal treated me. “It wasn’t the way I saw my dad treat my mom,” I said.

  Doc asked me whether I’d ever blacked out and woke up in my friend Jennifer’s bed, as Joal had claimed on the witness stand. “No,” I said. I explained that there was a night when we’d had some drinks, and we wound up sleeping at her mom’s house that night. It was nothing like Joal insinuated. I was still in my twenties. It was a sleepover, nothing more.

  “Does that make you a child molester?” Doc asked.

  “No,” I said.

  He kept coming around to those questions that related directly to the prosecution’s case against me every so often, and the whole time, all I did was try to be as open and honest as I could possibly be. I am not a perfect person. I wanted the jury to know that. I never pretended to be some sort of a perfect person. I’ve made mistakes.

  As we went on, I went through the whole history of the divorce. I explained to them that whenever Joal came to pick the children up for visitation, he would say, “Look at your children. You’re never going to see them again.” That was how contentious our divorce was. From my viewpoint, the only reason he signed custody over to me was because I had hired a private investigator who found proof of an affair Joal had right in the middle of our split.

  I basically gave a whole sordid history of my relationship with Joal and how I’d dropped all of my fights about money with him “because it was not worth arguing about.” The only thing I was willing to fight for is my kids, and I let that jury know that I would fight for them relentlessly.

  At that point, Doc brought out the timeline I’d put together, which David had printed for us on his professional printer at work. He put it up on a stand so the jury and everyone else could see it. We started talking about how busy I was when I worked in Chickamauga—going for my master’s degree and juggling the kids’ sports program.

  “Well, so how did you work out that you’re going to schoo
l four nights a week, you’re teaching a room full of kindergarteners all day,” Doc said, “how did you work in sexually abusing children into that hectic schedule?”

  The question caught me off guard and quite frankly ticked me off, but I turned and looked right at the jury as I spoke: “I did not and have not sexually abused any child.”

  I started to panic again. It was so upsetting to have to say those words out loud. I was exhausted already. I was still trying to take deep breaths to calm myself down. In my mind, I asked a question of my own. Dear God, help me. Please tell me why I have to proclaim my innocence when I’m innocent? Why am I here?

  It was right at that moment when Doc asked me a question about how I managed to squeeze in studying for exams on top of everything else I was doing back then.

  “I read when I’m on the treadmill,” I said. “So I would get up and run on the treadmill before the kids got up. And—”

  “How many miles can you run on the treadmill at one time?” Doc asked.

  “Well, right now none, because I haven’t been able,” I said.

  “At that time how many miles were you running?” he asked.

  “I would do about six miles a day,” I told him.

  The thought of being on that treadmill helped calm me down. It helped me get centered. I couldn’t have been more thankful for that.

  Doc jumped on that detail about my running and ran with it. He noted for the jury that I was running at 5:00 A.M., five days a week, then teaching five days a week, then going to school four nights a week, on top of the kids’ sports and activities, all through that 2005–06 school year, with the master’s degree schedule going through the end of 2006; Tyler’s baseball continuing into July for All-Stars, with multiple day practices and weekend tournaments and more; and Ashley coming along with me everywhere I went—just hammering home how full my days were.