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

by Tonya Craft

“Anything else you want to say?” Long pressed once more.

  Brianna shook her head yet again.

  “Nothing?”

  Brianna said something softly. The transcript read “(INDISCERNIBLE).” Upon a second listen, it was clear to all of us exactly what Brianna had said. Her words weren’t “indiscernible” at all.

  Brianna Lamb said, “I don’t remember anything.”

  That was it. That was the end of the first two interviews.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

  I prayed for every other person who’d ever been charged with a crime in this county.

  Ignoring what we believed to be clearly coached answers and the apparent coaching that went on in the hallway in the middle of that interview, Brianna still hadn’t made any kind of a direct accusation against me that would have warranted criminal charges. She called into question what might have been going on between her and my daughter, Ashley—my daughter who is more than two years younger than Brianna. She said some things that may have raised some eyebrows about a grown woman kissing her forehead and shoulder, patting her on the tummy, and whatever that bit was about “making” her put her hand on my upper chest area and keeping it “still” or I’d threaten to send her home. Those things hadn’t actually happened, but even if they had, they did not rise to a charge of sexual assault and certainly didn’t warrant a charge of “aggravated” sexual assault. I’d read the laws now. They seemed very clear.

  “Wasn’t this the interview that my first arrest was primarily based on?” I asked.

  “Yes, it was,” Scott said.

  “How can that be, Scott? How is that even possible?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Cary was firmer: “I want to take that DVD and shove it up the ADA’s ass!” Our anger, combined with my rapport with Scott and Cary, had all three of us swearing during all of this. My attorneys said that they had never come across an interview like that in their entire careers. But Scott didn’t want us jumping to any conclusions about it being coached or biased quite yet.

  “Maybe it’s the corroboration with Chloe and Ashley that added up to the charges, so let’s keep going,” he said. “Let’s look at Chloe’s.”

  He popped Chloe’s interview into the DVD player and we turned to the first page of the transcripts. Chloe’s first interview took place on May 29, 2008—one day before those detectives showed up at my house—and her interview was performed by none other than Detective Tim Deal.

  From what we’d found out, Deal had completed a forty-hour course in child-abuse cases at one point during his training. Deal’s BS degree was in organizational management. He’d had on-the-job training and shadowing, and he worked with EMS. That was it, as far as we could discover.41

  Oh, and he had what we considered to be a conflict of interest going into this that we didn’t know about until Deal pointed it out himself at the very start of the interview: “So … what is your name? I know it is Chloe,” he said. “I probably remember about the time when you were born … I guess I’ve known your mom and dad for a long time. I used to go to church with them … I taught your daddy at Vacation Bible School.”

  How can a man who personally knows her mom and dad be conducting this interview? There are others trained to interview these kids, aren’t there?

  He told her three times in a row that she was not in trouble and that she wouldn’t get anybody else in trouble by talking to him and telling him the truth. He also told her that he was a policeman—an authority figure if there ever was one in the eyes of most children.

  “I talked to your mom just a little bit downstairs and I understand that there is a problem … And you’re not in any trouble and you’re not here to get your friend in any trouble … I just need to know the truth. Uh. Do you remember anything about that?” Deal asked her.

  At that point, Chloe stopped, stared at the camera, and paused for a few seconds. Her voice was quiet, but the transcript said her next statement was: “Yeah, uh, I just remember a place and, uh, uh, (INAUDIBLE) where they touched me.” The word “INAUDIBLE” was written in that transcript. We didn’t rewind to listen or anything because it was so early in the interview. At that point we just wanted to press forward and hear what she’d accused me of.

  “Well, we can talk about that,” Deal went on. “You said the wrong place. Who are you talking about?”

  She didn’t say the “wrong” place, I thought.

  “Ashley Henke,” Chloe replied.

  She had used the pronoun “they,” but then the only name she gave was Ashley’s.

  “I spent the night with her one time,” she added.

  Chloe was very clear that she had only stayed over one time and hadn’t mentioned anything “happening” at this point, but Deal started pressing her about what happened, how it happened, and what was said. Finally, Chloe responded, “They didn’t tell us. They just done it. They just touched me in the wrong places. It was their mom and Ashley.”

  He asked questions about whether it happened in the dark or the daytime, giving her options to choose from as if it were a multiple-choice test. Then Chloe uttered a complete falsehood42 that Detective Deal failed to follow up on: “Brianna is really our cousin,” she said, seemingly out of the blue.

  She then described a sleepover that happened with Brianna, Skyler, Ashley, and herself—after a Halloween party at my house. I thought, But I never had a Halloween party at my house. There was a High School Musical party at our house one time, and I’m sure Chloe came to that party, but there were lots of kids there. David could corroborate that. So could either of my kids.

  Deal then asked about “touching” and whether it was inside or outside of Chloe’s pajamas. Chloe responded, “Outside.” She didn’t say who was supposedly touching her. Then Deal changed from talking about “outside or inside the pajamas” to “outside or inside your underwear.” Chloe didn’t say anything about underwear! I thought.

  Still, Chloe replied, “Outside.”

  He also asked her if maybe “they” (meaning Ashley and myself) had made Chloe touch “them.” Chloe replied three times in a row that she had not done that.

  Deal then asked her six different times whether Ashley or I had told her “not to tell,” and each time she answered, “No.” Finally, on the seventh time Deal asked, “Did anybody tell you not to tell or anything?” Chloe finally gave him the reply he seemed to want.

  “They told me not to tell anyone,” she said, echoing his exact words.

  Deal then went on to talk more about Chloe’s family, after which Chloe talked for what seemed like a long time about some family vacation time, filled with exact details. She remembers all of those details without any of the vagaries she seemed to exhibit when it came to discussing when or where this “touching” in the “wrong place” might have occurred.

  Deal then told Chloe where “wrong places” might be: “Well, it’s a good rule for boys and girls to know that any part that’s covered up by a bathing suit is not a good place for people to touch you … That might be okay if maybe Mommy and Daddy or your grandma or grandpa are taking care of you,” he added, eventually reiterating that, “any place that is covered up by a bathing suit nobody should touch unless they are taking care of you.”

  They went off-topic again, with Chloe not saying anything about “touching” and instead recalling all sorts of details about getting her tonsils out. She recalled the exact date of December 10. She recalled the taste of the medicine, and her feelings, and specific items that were involved. She did all of that without repeated questioning or multiple-choice options. It was remarkable to me just how good her memory actually was.

  The interview wrapped up a few minutes later with a series of questions by Deal, one of which was: “And everything that we’ve talked in here today is the absolute truth?”

  At the end of his series of questions, Chloe said, “Yeah,” but it was unclear to me which of those final questions she was answering.r />
  That was it.

  Once again, there was no direct talk of a sexual assault and no indication whatsoever of “aggravated” sexual assault.

  Except for the interview with Skyler Walker, in which she didn’t accuse me of anything whatsoever, these were the only videotaped interviews that took place before Detectives Tim Deal and Stephen Keith rang my doorbell. Those were the interviews that took place before my kids saw me for the very last time, and before the man from DFACS showed up and asked me to sign a document saying my kids wouldn’t be returned to me until the interviews were “completed.”

  The first interview with Ashley didn’t happen until June 3. A second interview with Chloe didn’t occur until June 11—one day after a judge issued a warrant for my arrest.

  “How could my arrest warrant be based on these interviews? There is nothing there,” I said.

  Neither Cary nor Scott had a good answer for me.

  When I’d driven in that morning, I wasn’t sure if I’d have the strength to watch Ashley’s video. I thought about letting Scott and Cary watch it while I went into another room. But after seeing Chloe’s and Brianna’s videos, I told Scott to go ahead and pop it in the DVD player. I needed to see it for myself.

  Watching my baby girl sit in that chair in an interview room a whole year and a half earlier brought waves of emotion and a hurt in the pit of my stomach like nothing I’d ever experienced before that moment. Hearing her voice, seeing her blond hair, imagining and feeling for myself the discomfort she must have felt to have been put in that situation was unlike anything I’d ever felt as a parent. Yet her father brought her there to be grilled!

  Ashley’s interview took place at a different facility, a place called the Greenhouse, and her interview was conducted by a woman named Suzie Thorne. We’d done our homework on her, too. Thorne had been a detective for eight years. She had undergone some “advanced interview training” (a total of forty hours) and had been responsible for interviewing more than 1,000 children. She was still in the middle of working on a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and forensic psychology. She had only completed two years of that four-year degree program.43

  How could the system allow anyone without so much as a bachelor’s degree in child psychology interview more than 1,000 children?

  Ashley seemed agitated from the start. To me, she clearly didn’t want to be there, at all. She didn’t seem like herself. My easy-breezy girl was visibly uncomfortable, and all I could think when I looked at her was, What are they doing to my child?

  Thorne began by telling her, “The Greenhouse is a safe place for kids. And nobody here at the Greenhouse is going to be mean to you or do anything bad. Okay?”

  That opening statement implies that something “mean” and “bad” has happened to her elsewhere, doesn’t it?

  Ashley didn’t seem concerned with any of that, though. She was more concerned about the camera. “Why are you videotaping it?” she asked.

  “That’s just what we do here … Don’t worry about that … That’s nothing to worry about,” Thorne told her.

  My baby girl wasn’t having it. She kept asking her about the camera and what would happen with the videotape. I know my daughter, and she clearly wants a straight answer. She didn’t get one.

  Thorne pressed forward by saying they were there that day to discuss something that happened with Ashley’s “mom” and “lying.” Ashley’s response to that spoke volumes: “That’s what my dad told me,” she said. “He asked me a lot of questions …”

  When Thorne asked where my daughter was living, Ashley said, “I’m staying with my dad, but I used to live with my mom. But she got in trouble with the police.”

  When Ashley mentioned that her mother had lied about something to the police, Thorne asked her if she knew what I had lied about. Ashley responded that she didn’t know. “But my dad told me she lied about something,” she said.

  Thorne didn’t follow up on that and instead asked Ashley who else lived in her house.

  Wow. Is she really going to ignore the obvious influence of her father here?

  She then asked if her “mom” ever had anyone sleep over.

  “With her?” Ashley asked.

  “Yeah,” Thorne responded.

  “Us … me and Tyler,” Ashley said.

  “Okay, uh, how come you are staying with your dad now? Why did you say?”

  “Because my mom got in trouble from the police,” Ashley repeated.

  Then Thorne repeated, “What did she get in trouble for?” and Ashley wasn’t having it.

  “YOU ASKED ME THAT AND I SAID I DON’T KNOW!” Ashley said, rather forcefully.

  “Wow, she really is your daughter,” Scott interrupted.

  Thorne then tried a different line of questioning. She described places that were okay to touch on a child’s body and then asked Ashley if there were any places where people shouldn’t touch you.

  “Not really,” she answered. When Thorne pressed her on it, looking for an answer, Ashley finally answered, “The bottom.”

  “Okay, well, what’s the other one called?” Thorne asked.

  Ashley answered her question: “Vagina.”

  Thorne then said it’s “not okay” for anyone to touch the vagina or the bottom and said, “Uh, has anyone ever touched you there?”

  “My mom,” Ashley said.

  “Okay. Can you tell me more about that?”

  “Well, she has put medicine on me sometimes and sometimes she washes me,” Ashley said.

  Thorne then asked Ashley to tell her what that was “all about.” Clearly this Suzie doesn’t believe that was all I’d done. So now she’s putting my six-year-old child in the position of defending a normal parent/child interaction.

  “She just puts medicine on me,” Ashley answered.

  Thorne pressed on for details about where and why.

  “My bottom because sometimes my belly hurts and I have, like, a problem with my stomach and I have to go to the bathroom a lot,” Ashley answered.

  “When she does that, where are your clothes?” she asked.

  “I just do this,” Ashley motioned. “I just pull them down for a minute so she can put the medicine on and then I pull them back up.”

  Thorne pressed her about why her vagina would need medicine, and Ashley kept answering perfectly straightforward and honestly. The medicine for that was applied just the same way, she said. So Thorne pressed on, asking her what the reasons might be for the stomachaches—asking if they were caused by something that was bothering her or making her sad. Ashley said “no” to all of those things and instead offered up that her dad thought she was “allergic to something.”

  After what seemed to me like she was trying and trying to get Ashley to say something more damaging about me, Thorne switched gears again and instead asked Ashley what kind of games she likes to play.

  “Sisters … doggy, mom and kid, and tag, gymnastics, dancing,” Ashley answered.

  “You said you played, uh, mom and kid and mom and dad and tag and all that stuff,” Thorne repeated back to her—only it wasn’t a straight repetition. She added the “mom and dad” game, which is something that Ashley didn’t say. I caught that right away.

  So did Ashley.

  As Thorne followed up about the games, she mentioned that Ashley said she played a “mom and dad” game again, and my daughter said, “I didn’t mean to say dad. I meant to say kid.”

  Thorne kept asking about it anyway. Ashley grew more and more upset at the repeated questioning, and it seemed that when Thorne wasn’t getting anywhere, she would switch things up. Out of the blue she asked my daughter if she took baths at my house—a line of questioning that wound up with Ashley talking about showering at Joal’s house with Sarah and a little razor that they would use. When that line of questioning didn’t go as Thorne had apparently hoped, she asked whether Ashley had talked to her father that weekend—and what they had talked about. No further discussion of showers and bathing at h
er father’s house with Sarah. Just me. That was the focus. The agenda.

  “Did you talk to your dad this weekend about your mom?” Thorne asked.

  “Well, actually, he talked to me about my mom,” Ashley responded. (Italics mine. The transcripts didn’t add emotional accents or emphasis, even when they were clearly present.) “He asked me a few questions … kind of like you asked me.”

  “Well, I don’t remember what I asked. Can you help me?” Thorne said.

  “You don’t?” Ashley said, incredulously. Even at six, she was way beyond that sort of adult manipulation.

  After some more questioning from Thorne, Ashley finally said that her father had asked her whether I’d ever touched her. And she said she had told him exactly what she had told Thorne a few minutes earlier: that the only time I had ever touched her on her bottom or her vagina was when I put medicine on her.

  Suzie then asked Ashley about what had happened on “Friday.”

  Ashley said, “That’s when my mom got arrested.” She whispered the word “arrested.” It was difficult to hear, but she said it. This interview happened on June 3, 2008. So in the course of those four days that she’d been with Joal, just after the weekend when she called me and whispered into my voice mail that she wouldn’t be seeing me for a very long time, someone wrongly convinced my daughter that I had been arrested. Gee, I wonder who that was? And I had not been arrested at that point!

  Finally, Thorne started asking about the boyfriend-girlfriend game. She kept repeating her questions, relentlessly, until Ashley was visibly upset and on the verge of tears.

  “How come you’re getting upset about that game?” Thorne asked.

  “Because I just don’t like it,” Ashley said. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Ashley repeated, but Suzie Thorne did not stop.

  She’s grilling her! I started crying. My baby girl is sitting through an interrogation.

  Thorne finally switched gears, to find out if I had yelled at Ashley and the other children about anything on that Friday. Ashley answered truthfully: “She screamed at us and told us to go to our room.”