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

by Tonya Craft

  Where am I going to go if I can’t stay at Diana’s? I couldn’t afford a hotel or a rental. I didn’t want to rent anything in my name anyway, for fear the police or some reporter would come find me. Other friends had offered to let me stay with them, but just about all of them had kids, and I didn’t want to burden anyone else. My friends had said I wouldn’t be a burden, but I sure felt like a burden. I didn’t want to put that on anyone else. I felt bad enough putting all of this on Diana and her family.

  The more I thought about it, the more the bond felt like a jail sentence to me. If I couldn’t be in the presence of anyone under eighteen, did that mean I couldn’t go into a gas station to pay for my gas or to a park or to the grocery store—anywhere where there might be children or teenagers—without fear of being arrested and thrown in jail?

  I kept asking myself over and over again, How can I be punished like this when I haven’t done anything wrong?

  “What if this drags out through the summer? If I can’t be around minors, I can’t go back to my job. What will happen to my job?”

  “We’ll petition the court and get this modified before that ever happens. We’ll get back in front of Van Pelt before the month’s out,” he said.

  Van Pelt was apparently the name of the judge on my case.

  I went back to the question of this “Four Points” place down in Lafayette, where the bond said I could see my kids. My attorney explained that Four Points was a state-run facility that allowed parents in difficult cases to see their children. He said the rules are really strict. So strict that even murderers and convicted abusers of all sorts were allowed to see their children under the supervision of that facility.

  “So, you’re telling me that this bond basically lumps me in with a bunch of murderers and abusers, even though I haven’t been convicted of anything?”

  It seemed that he was a little taken aback by my tone.

  “I think we’ll be able to get that changed, too,” he said. “It shouldn’t take long. I don’t think you should even make an appointment at Four Points. That’s not where you or your kids belong. I think we should just go back to court and try to get some sort of normal, supervised visitation set up.”

  By that point, I didn’t feel like talking anymore. I didn’t want to argue about anything. I didn’t want to get mad. I was exhausted. I was frustrated. I felt humiliated and defeated. So we left. My parents took me back to Diana’s, where my friend consoled me and tried to get me to eat some dinner. Lucky for me, her minor son, Josh, was out of the house for a couple of days, staying at a friend’s, so I’d have at least twenty-four hours or so to figure out what in the heck I was going to do for a new living arrangement.

  Diana kept trying to get me to consume a little something as we turned on the five o’clock news that night. For some reason I thought the media wouldn’t make much of a spectacle of this since they hadn’t captured my “perp walk.”

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  My mug shot filled up the whole screen. I wasn’t just a story. I was the top story: “A Chickamauga kindergarten teacher accused of molesting three children.” They didn’t name the children, of course. They only named me. Tonya Craft. They showed the picture the police had taken of me at the jail just a couple of hours beforehand. They showed it over and over, with my hair disheveled and that awful, sad, fallen look on my face. I couldn’t believe how awful I looked. It didn’t even look like me.

  The news went on. They showed a different picture of me that I did recognize—it was one of my wedding pictures! Sandra Lamb had arranged for all of my wedding photography. The finished photos were actually delivered to her house. She was the only other person besides me who had copies of them. She had looked at my wedding pictures before I did.

  “Sandra Lamb must have given them that picture,” I said to Diana. Then the news showed another picture of me, this one in my classroom. It only showed me from the shoulders up, but I recognized that I was wearing candy cane pajamas in the photo—the exact pajamas I had bought for our class pajama day, just before Christmas, the year that Brianna Lamb was in my class. “Sandra must have given ’em that one, too.”

  After that, they cut to some video footage they took right in front of my house, which I hadn’t seen in nearly two weeks. The camera zoomed in as the reporter kept talking about the charges against me, and there on the front porch I saw my son’s dirty sneakers—the very same sneakers Tyler had taken off just before Tim Deal and Stephen Keith rang my doorbell.

  For some reason the sight of those sneakers broke me down again. I fell apart. I ran back into the bedroom, closed the door, and collapsed in a heap.

  Before that day, I suppose I was like most people in the world who look at a mug shot on the news and just assume the person must be guilty of something if they were arrested. Innocent people don’t get arrested. At least I think that’s what I would assume. I never even really thought about it. Seeing a mug shot of some child molester just made me cringe.

  Now I was that mug shot.

  How can they do this? How can they say my name and show my picture and show my house? Where I live? Where my children live? When I’m innocent!

  I knew as I lay there that I could never go back to that house. Ever. It would never be the same. It would never feel safe. I was so sad and furious all at once, I felt as if I would crumble into pieces on the floor. I wished with everything I had that it would all go away. And in my mind, I yelled at God: Why is this happening? How can you let this happen?

  I stayed in that room and didn’t move. For hours.

  My phone kept ringing. I turned it off. I didn’t listen to any of the messages. I was afraid of what I might hear. I couldn’t take any more attacks on my character.

  I eventually got up after everyone else was asleep. I got on Diana’s computer and watched the same news video, and all the different news broadcasts from all the local stations from Chattanooga to Atlanta, over and over again until the sky was brightening and the birds were singing outside. Every time I saw my house and that porch and those sneakers, it broke my heart all over again.

  At some point, though, I stopped watching in pure sadness—and I started taking notes. I opened up my laptop and started looking back through some of my old pictures. If they were going to use photos against me, I needed to find every photo I had that showed who I really was. I had made photo books for all of the parents at the end of each year in Chickamauga. I thought it was a nice keepsake. There were lots of photos taken in my classroom. I decided to dig those out to verify the timing of that pajama-day photo.

  Verifying the timing of that photo pretty much solidified my belief that Sandra Lamb was involved in this whole thing. The news broadcast even featured an anonymous quote from one of the parents of the children who had accused “Miss Tonya” of molesting them: “My daughter’s a strong girl and will get through this.” It sounded to me like something that Sandra would say. I thought that information might be useful to my attorneys. I paid close attention to what the reporters said the charges were, too, and how the reporters described me. I was sickened by the words of the superintendent of my school system and those of a neighbor who spoke about me, someone I barely knew.

  How can they say these terrible things about me? How can they tell the whole world that I’m a child molester?

  I wrote down all sorts of thoughts about what I needed to do. I added a few notes to the timeline I had been working on with Diana’s help. I printed out some blank calendar pages and started filling in some dates. I also marked down how many days it had been since I’d seen my kids: 13.

  As the sun came up over the horizon, I finally resolved to try to get some sleep. Stepping back into Diana’s spare bedroom, I thought back to that moment, not a month earlier, when I sat at home on a Saturday night, missing David and feeling awful about everything in my life—that night when I laughed at the thoughts I was having, and I said out loud to my empty home, “Well, it can’t get any worse than this!�
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  Life certainly could get worse. A lot worse. There was nothing I could do now to remove the image of my mug shot from the minds of thousands, maybe millions of people, and especially right there in the town where I worked and lived—where I’d grown up. Now that the allegations were out there, there was no way to make them go away. The toothpaste was already out of the tube. Heck, it was squished all over the counter. You ever try to put toothpaste back into a tube? You can’t do it. The damage would only get bigger when the newspapers hit the next day and when the talk-radio shows in the area got a hold of this story. I knew that. I knew what I would think myself if I saw the mug shot of an accused child molester on the front page next to my morning cup of coffee: I’d think, That person ought to fry! Wouldn’t we all think that? It’s human nature. So none of what came before that moment really mattered anymore, did it?

  I had prayed to God for guidance ever since this started. I had prayed to God for guidance right there at Diana’s kitchen table just that morning, when I thought I was on my way to take a polygraph that would put an end to this entire investigation.

  Well, I have to say: God delivered.

  As I pulled the shades in that guest bedroom and laid my head on the pillow in the quiet moments before the rest of the world would wake up and continue living, God let me know what counted most. I closed my eyes with a sense of purpose and clarity the likes of which I’d never felt in my life.

  From that day forward, there would only be one thing that mattered: finding a way to get back to my babies. That was what I had to stay focused on—fulfilling the promise that every mother makes to her children, the promise that I had made to Ashley so devotedly on the night before our world fell apart. The promise I’d made to both of my children to always be there.

  I have to find a way to get back to my kids.

  I knew in my heart there was only one way that was ever going to happen. No matter what it took, no matter what sacrifices I had to make or what obstacles I had to climb over or what distances I was required to travel, I needed to prove—to the whole world, if necessary—that I hadn’t done what those arrest warrants said I did. I needed to prove my innocence, wholly and completely, without any doubts whatsoever.

  In order to get back to my children, I needed to clear my name.

  Part II

  The Marathon

  Chapter 18

  The next morning, nearly the moment I turned my phone back on, my mother called. “Turn on the radio,” she said. “You need to hear what they’re saying about you.”

  “Mom, no. I can’t take any more. I really can’t.”

  “Trust me, Tonya, you need to turn this on. Right now!”

  I turned on the local talk station that everyone listens to and heard a female caller saying, “My kids had Tonya as a teacher and I’m telling you, there is no way that woman could hurt a child. Somebody is making this up!”

  “Diana, come listen to this,” I said. I turned up the volume. I sat on her kitchen table with my feet on the seat of a chair, and we listened as caller after caller phoned in with words of support for me. People complained about the court in Ringgold, mouthed off about their experiences with the police in Catoosa County, and said they simply didn’t believe the charges against me.

  After that, I finally listened to the messages on my phone, and much to my surprise, they weren’t full of hatred. They were full of love and support. I had messages from friends and the parents of some of my students and more—all saying they knew these allegations couldn’t be true and offering to help in any way they could.

  I cried tears of thankfulness.

  A little while later, Tammy came by to help me figure out what to do about my living situation. She’d already spoken with Diana about it that morning, and thankfully these supporters I had around me were able to think and act and come up with plans in those times when I was too overwhelmed to even think anymore.

  “Don’t your parents have an RV?” Tammy asked me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Couldn’t you just park that somewhere and live in that for a while? Just ’til this gets sorted out?”

  “I suppose so, but where?”

  My parents kept an old motor home parked in their driveway. They barely ever used it anymore. I was sure they would let me stay in it. There was just one problem: They’d already tried to see the kids, with Joal fighting them every step of the way, so I couldn’t stay in the RV in their driveway and put that potential visitation at further risk. They didn’t have a spot in an RV park or anything, and I didn’t want to risk being seen by too many people anyway. Then Diana thought of a place where I could stay—and it turned out I wouldn’t have to move very far from where I already was.

  My parents drove their vintage, tan-and-brown 1980s Residency over and parked it in Diana’s driveway. Diana’s husband, Michael, ran an electric line and even a cable television line out the back of their house so I could keep it up and running and even watch some TV if I wanted to. I swear, their kindness, patience, and thoughtfulness knew no bounds.

  I’ll never forget what it felt like to sleep in there that first night, though. This wasn’t a vacation. This wasn’t some outing I chose to take. I was in that motor home because it was the only place I was allowed to sleep. The old blue carpet and pastel interior designs were a step up from what I’d face if I went to prison, I realized. But in many ways, I was already there. It felt like the walls were closing in as I lay on that bed, knowing that Josh would be home that night and that I’d have to wait for him to leave the house the next morning before I could safely go inside and take a shower. The timing of my day-to-day routines no longer belonged to me. The decision over something as basic as where I laid my head was no longer mine. Even with as much support as I had, and as grateful as I was to have found a solution to the urgent question of where I could sleep without being in “direct or indirect contact” with anyone under eighteen, I don’t think I had ever felt quite as alone as I did that night in June. I longed to hold my kids. And while I couldn’t understand where the feeling was coming from, in my loneliness, I longed to be held by my husband.

  I opened my eyes and sat straight up in bed. I’d been dreaming. I dreamed that I stood before my ex-husband, Joal, the father of my children, and said to his face, as firmly I could, “I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you honestly believe I molested those girls. Look at me and tell me that you believe I molested our daughter.”

  Then I woke up. On previous nights I had dreamed about confronting Kelly McDonald in the same way, and another time Sandra Lamb, and another time Sherri Wilson. I’d never had recurring dreams of any kind until after my arrest. In my heart of hearts, I wished I really could confront whoever was behind it all.

  Why? I wondered. Why would allegations like this even come up? Why would they start? Who would get such an idea in their head to say something so horrible about somebody and to use children to make it happen? Is there a chance that they really believe something happened?

  It’s the not knowing that can drive a person mad. Not knowing what those girls said, or who said what, or when, or where, or to whom. I would pull myself back and try to stop thinking about it, but then another question would pop up and my mind would consider it.

  I needed answers. I needed to understand. So I got up and Googled “false accusation of child molestation” on my trusty black laptop. That single search returned more than a million pages of news reports, consultants, help groups, documentaries, attorneys, private investigators, and more. A million. I was completely overwhelmed. I started clicking through page after page, just scanning the headlines and the subjects and the pictures.

  I dug in with everything I had.

  Of all the research I had ever done as a teacher or a student, I knew this would be the most important I would ever have to do. I knew how to study. I knew how to do this. I had waited long enough—maybe too long—to apply my own skill set to my own awful situation. I didn’t even know exact
ly what I was looking for as I sat there in front of that computer that night. I just knew that I needed to go to school on this subject.

  Chapter 19

  “This is going to be a straightforward hearing. Nothing big. Nothing to worry about,” my attorney told me.

  I stepped foot into the Catoosa County Courthouse in Ringgold, Georgia, for the very first time on June 25, 2008. I suppose it looks like a lot of other courthouses in a lot of other small towns: a big brick building that’s been standing there for almost a century, almost right smack dab in the center of downtown, with a lawn out in front, some neatly placed sidewalks, and a metal detector that greets you just a few steps inside what can only be described as a drab, outdated entryway. The inside of that courthouse, with its scuffed, industrial-looking tiled floors and dull paint, seemed oddly devoid of sunlight. There were some windows, of course, but it just seemed like no light got into that building at all. The fluorescent fixtures buzzed in the hallway on the second floor, where I sat on a bench outside of a little courtroom to talk things over before we went in.

  I was nervous as all get-out. My father had picked me up and driven me over and waited right there with me. I had Clancy come down just to observe, since whatever happened here could directly affect the custody case in Tennessee. He wouldn’t be allowed to act as my attorney since this was a different state and my local attorney hadn’t agreed to co-counsel. But I felt good knowing Clancy was there.

  The goal of this bond modification was to get the court to specifically allow me to see my kids under “normal” circumstances instead of going to Four Points. We would use that decision to go back to the Tennessee courts and compel Joal to cooperate and give me some time with them. I needed to see my children.