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

by Tonya Craft

  “My home is your home,” Diana said. “Stay as long as you want to.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. “I’m sure it’ll just be for one night. But thank you.”

  Chapter 12

  On our first Christmas as newlyweds, David helped me buy the kids more presents than I’d ever seen under a single Christmas tree. I’d always taught my kids the true meaning of Christmas and the value of giving more than receiving. Just the Christmas before, I had noticed a homeless man sitting off by himself at the gas station. I brought my kids home and we fixed up a hot dinner plate for that man, and we drove right back to the gas station and gave it to him. Tyler had asked, “But, Mommy, aren’t you scared of him?” And I’d explained that I wasn’t.

  “We’re all here to help each other out on this earth,” I had told him.

  I’d always done things like that with the kids all year long, not just at Christmastime. Still, as a single mother who didn’t make very much money and who had to skimp on gifts the three years prior, watching my kids’ faces light up when they laid eyes on all those presents under our tree on Christmas of 2007 filled my heart.

  I had David to thank for so much of the new happiness in my life. It’s almost like he was the reward God gave to the kids and me after my divorce from Joal—for making it through the challenge of starting over.

  My relationship with Joal is one of the most difficult things to talk about in my life, in part because I was still married to my first husband when Joal and I initially got together. I’m not proud to admit this, but I’ve actually been married three times. The first marriage was simply a matter of marrying too young. I married my high school sweetheart. My parents knew it was a mistake. On my wedding day, right before he walked me down the aisle, my daddy made a last-ditch attempt to get me to call it off: He offered me a large sum of money not to go through with it.

  I was so young and bullheaded that his offer just made me more determined than ever to prove him wrong. The simple truth of the matter is that I was in love, and my first husband loved me with all his heart. I know that. But over the course of those first few years out of high school, I grew up. I changed. He didn’t. I never had harsh feelings toward him. I loved him and he loved me, but the relationship was not a healthy one.

  I had taken my love of sports and turned it into a love of fitness in my early twenties. Fitness competitions were all the rage at that time, and I found myself entering and placing pretty well in my fair share of them. Being a part of that glamorous fitness world was a complete escape from the Tennessee country life—and the Tennessee country boy I married. So when a charismatic man named Joal Henke came around, he charmed me. He told me he was part owner of the gym that was now my sponsor for the competitions, and we wound up spending a great deal of time together.

  Looking back on it, I don’t know if what Joal and I shared was ever truly love. It was passion. It was fascination. It was fun. Why I thought that was enough to make a marriage work, I don’t know. It turned out that he didn’t own the gym. For some reason I let that lie go, the same way I let go of rumors that Joal was a ladies’ man—I simply chose not to listen.

  Three months after we got married, just as soon as we started trying, I got pregnant with Tyler. It seemed meant to be. Joal was thrilled. When I got pregnant with Ashley two years later, though, Joal was not as enthusiastic. Things went south between us pretty quickly.

  Somehow, my leaving Joal seemed to be the greatest insult he’d ever endured. He seemed to turn every bit of hatred he had in the world on me. I would face his wrath through a long, drawn-out, bitter divorce proceeding for nearly two years of my life—the two years right after Ashley was born in 2002.

  The bitterness wouldn’t end when the divorce was finalized, either. Joal finally signed off on my divorce agreement after being faced with some information my private investigator turned up, but then once it was over, I felt as if Joal kept taking digs at me. I’d heard that he was talking about me behind my back. It seemed to me that he tried to manipulate my children into thinking I was a bad person. But there came a point when I decided I would face his words and actions with as much dignity and grace as I could.

  One day at the park, I witnessed a divorced couple yelling and screaming in front of their crying children, and I made a vow right then and there: “I will never, ever have my little kids’ tummies hurt just because their dad and I are in the same room.”

  It wasn’t easy. But I often told people, “I don’t care what Joal does. I’m only responsible for my actions and reactions.”

  I managed to pull it off so well that the first time my friend Dee Potter met Joal, she thought the two of us were still married! I’m not saying I’m perfect. Clearly, I’m far from it. My relationship with my new husband, David, wasn’t “perfect,” either. We had all the normal ups and downs anybody else has. But compared to the awful marriage I’d been in before and the gut-wrenching divorce I’d been through, my life with David sure felt pretty close to perfect. I had just about everything I had ever wanted or even dreamed of wanting. And I was thankful for it.

  Best of all, I had love.

  Wouldn’t you know it? The first big crack in my otherwise peaceful little snow globe of a life came the very next month—on January 18, 2008, to be exact. It was the day of Ashley’s sixth birthday party.

  With David’s help, I went all out compared to Ashley’s previous birthdays. She and her friends all gathered at my house, where my friend Shanica Lewis volunteered to get the girls glammed up. Shanica had done my hair and Ashley’s hair for my wedding. She and I had become really close by then, and so had our children.

  We hired a big stretch limo to pick Ashley and her girlfriends up once they were all made up, and we rode together to get ice cream in downtown Chattanooga. Then we came back for pizza and presents, and all the girls changed into pj’s for a big sleepover.

  Both Lauren Wilson and her older sister, Lydia, were at that party. Lydia is closer to Tyler’s age, but it didn’t feel right not to invite her. And since Lydia was close friends with Brianna Lamb, and Ashley and Brianna still played together after school sometimes, we invited Brianna to come along, too.

  The party itself was a hit. All the kids had fun. The parents had fun. The few who stayed got a chance to hang out and talk in between cake and ice cream and presents. I’ve got picture after picture of all the girls playing and jumping around and smiling, including the older girls, Brianna and Lydia. The plan was for all the kids to spend the night, to make it a big slumber party. But as I walked up the steps near the bonus room where the kids were playing at one point, I heard Ashley crying. Brianna and Lydia were there with her.6

  “This is a baby’s birthday party,” one of the girls said.

  “We just wanted to come ride in the limo, and we weren’t planning on spending the night anyway,” said the other.

  That’s when I stepped in. I dealt with this sort of stuff in kindergarten every day, and I handled it the same way I would in school. I squatted down to their eye level and I said, “That was a very unkind thing to say. How would you feel if someone said that same thing to you at your birthday party?”

  Both the girls had a bit of an attitude about it: “Well, I wouldn’t care,” and, “If someone wants to go home, they can just go home if they want to.”

  “Well, I know you say that,” I said to them, “but we need to say things that are kind, and we need to consider how it feels to Ashley.”

  The girls didn’t take too kindly to my correcting them. They asked if they could call their moms to get picked up early, so they could go stay at Lydia’s house instead. I let them use the phone. I also told Ashley, “I know your feelings were hurt, but we’re fine now. Let’s let it go and go play.” Ashley listened and went back to having fun. In fact, all the girls went back to playing, including Lydia and Brianna—right after they made their phone call.

  I had a feeling that wasn’t the last I was going to hear about it. I went downstairs, and S
hanica was still there, and David was there, and I said to them both, “All right. I did it. I just ticked off the two most influential people in Chickamauga.” What I meant was that I knew as soon as those girls went home and told their moms that I’d got onto them, their moms were going to get mad. Not at them, but at me. That’s just how they were.

  A little while later, Sherri Wilson came and picked Lydia and Brianna up, and we all said “bye” and that was that. There was no apparent drama. There were no tears or anything. Lauren Wilson (the younger of the Wilson sisters) even stayed for the sleepover.

  After that night, Sandra Lamb never spoke to me again. Brianna stopped coming down to my classroom after school. When I saw Brianna in the hall, she wouldn’t speak to me. In fact, there were times when that little girl would glare at me. I figured it would eventually blow over, but then Sherri Wilson called me and said she wanted to know why I’d “yelled” at her children. She wanted to know why I’d apparently told them that they weren’t welcome back at my house ever again.

  I said, “Sherri, does that sound like anything I would ever say?”

  I tried to tell her what had really happened, but Sherri was mad. She didn’t believe me. I said, “Sherri, I’m not going to argue with you. You heard the kids’ version. I’m telling you from an adult’s perspective what happened.”

  Sherri was still my homeroom mom at that point, and she quit coming into my classroom. So suddenly I was left without help in the mornings at school. All because I asked her daughter and Brianna Lamb not to be unkind to Ashley.

  David was shocked at how right I was in my assessment of the situation. I tried not to let it bother me. In some ways, maybe it was better this way. As I’d gotten to know them better, I wasn’t really comfortable with either of those moms.

  But I’ll be honest: When someone stops speaking to you, no matter who it is, it bothers you. I wished I could explain it to them and smooth everything over, but I knew from experience that there wasn’t any talking to either Sandra or Sherri when they were angry.

  What I didn’t realize was just how angry they were gonna get.

  Chapter 13

  I only packed one change of clothes.

  This would all get “worked out” on Monday morning. To me, the only possible interpretation of that statement was that I’d be back home with my babies by Monday night, and this whole unimaginable nightmare would be over.

  That’s what I kept telling myself as Tammy drove me to church to meet up with Diana. I couldn’t drive. I was too scared I’d get pulled over and arrested for some reason. My emotions were still all over the place.

  Walking into City Church, I wondered what people thought of my constant stream of tears. I took comfort in the fact that no one besides Diana and Tammy knew the awful thing those detectives had said I was accused of. I wasn’t looking for sympathy or assistance or anything any person in that congregation could have offered that day. I wasn’t even looking for comfort in the words of our pastor. The only reason I was there was to find strength in God. In my heart, no matter how many times I tried to convince myself it would all be okay, some part of me understood that I could not withstand this burden that had been placed on me all by myself. I prayed to God for strength.

  I guess I didn’t realize how deeply God had already been working in my life by providing my friend Diana. I would realize soon enough, though. That spunky church lady was so caring and mothering to me that people would sometimes ask if we were mother and daughter when we were out getting our nails done or something, even though she’s only eight years older than me. She didn’t like that very much, but we would laugh about it every time. I don’t think it has anything to do with how she looks. She doesn’t look old! There’s something about the grace she exudes that just makes her seem motherly.

  Diana took me back to her house, where I stepped into the lovely home she kept. I said hello to her husband, Michael, and their teenage son, Josh. I put on a good face as she showed me to the guest room in the back of that house, tucked deep into a neighborhood around lots of corners and away from any main roads. I hoped no one could find me for a while. Other than Tammy and my parents, I didn’t tell another soul where I’d gone. Not even my attorney. It just felt like the right thing to do.

  I wasn’t going to risk another ring of the doorbell.

  After spending time at church, I showed up at Diana’s full of grand notions and a renewed confidence in a legal system that promised “justice for all.” We sat and prayed together, and I even ate a little dinner.

  Then my attorney called to inform me that the interviews of my children would be postponed until Tuesday, due to “a change of staff members at the CAC.”

  “The what?”

  “The Child Advocacy Center,” he told me.

  “So I have to wait a whole other day because of some staff change?”

  “Unfortunately, that’s just the way it is,” he said.

  “That safety plan I signed through Monday gets extended, just like that?”

  “It does, Tonya. You just need to cooperate. Be patient, okay?”

  It wasn’t okay. I hung up the phone and relayed the whole conversation to Diana, who listened like an angel and then gave me the space I needed. When I’m really upset sometimes, I don’t want anyone hugging me or touching me. I just want to be left alone. I went to the guest room and closed the door.

  I went to bed that night panicking again. After all that hope, knowing at the very least there was a plan to get some answers and put this behind me, now I had no idea what Monday would bring and could hardly imagine waiting through another twenty-four hours. Worse, I had no idea what my kids were being told about the situation. I knew they’d be asking all kinds of questions. I kept thinking back to Ashley’s message. I had a bad feeling that Joal was already messed up in this somehow. It was more than a feeling. I knew it. It was clear that he had been told about the allegations, at the very least, and, if my gut was right, that he was actually a part of all of this. I was terrified about what he might say or do to make things worse.

  I hadn’t done anything. I kept telling myself that my innocence would surely shelter me from any lies anyone might make up. Those detectives couldn’t have any evidence against me when there wasn’t any evidence to be found. I naïvely thought that would protect me.

  Chapter 14

  Mid-February was the time of year when we started having meetings with parents to discuss whether their children might need to be retained or placed in Pre-First—a wonderful, child-centered program that Chickamauga offered for kindergarteners who weren’t quite mature enough either emotionally or academically to handle the transition to first grade the following year. It wasn’t a done deal at the first parent-teacher meeting. It was more of a heads-up so that parents weren’t surprised by the news at the end of the school year and so that maybe we could find new ways to help the children work toward some goals.

  One of the families I had to call in that February of 2008 was the Wilsons. Lauren was only four years old at the start of the kindergarten year. The assessments made by me and other professionals showed she would benefit from Pre-First rather than going on to first grade, so we called in Sherri and DeWayne to talk about it.

  It was the first time I had conversed with Sherri since her phone call after the birthday party incident, and instead of taking the news thoughtfully, like most parents do, she and DeWayne got angry. At me.

  “You’re just doing this because we’re not friends anymore,” Sherri said.

  She accused me of trying to “socially devastate” her child.

  Lauren had been working with a specialist at school. There was all kinds of documentation. I didn’t arbitrarily pick Lauren out for this, and a final decision hadn’t even been made, but their take on it was “There is no way you are getting away with this. No daughter of ours is going to Pre-First!”

  Sherri Wilson said “Pre-First” like it was a cuss word.

  Over the course of the next cou
ple months, the Wilsons kept repeating that sentiment—not only in meetings with me and the specialist and the school counselor but also to the new principal of Chickamauga Elementary. The old principal—the one I had gotten along with so well, the one who had told me “don’t do it” when she heard I was looking to buy a house in Chickamauga—had moved on just like she said she would. She’d told me she felt “pushed out,” and I was starting to think that maybe she was.

  The new principal was a Chickamauga native and was friendly with the Wilsons. She made it clear to me that I should just let Lauren go to first grade. “No,” I said. “She’s not ready. You’ve seen her documentation. You know this isn’t me trying to hold Lauren back. She needs some time to mature.”

  The principal nodded but wouldn’t budge. “It’s not worth it. Just make it easier on everyone,” is what I heard her say.

  “If this family was living in the trailer park, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion,” I commented. “If Tyler or Ashley were being put into Pre-First and I came in here and pitched a big enough fit, would you just pass them, too?”

  I wasn’t one to talk back very often. I take things in stride. But when something is worth standing up and fighting for, I have a tendency to speak my mind, and I had to do what the assessments indicated was right for that child.

  It seemed to me that the principal was furious at me for my assessment, and clearly so were the Wilsons. I bucked the system—and they were the system. The Wilsons were used to getting whatever they wanted. People simply didn’t stand up to them.