by Tonya Craft
The media wanted my story, and I thought my story might help people. After all, what is it that so many people tuned in for? Why is it that so many perfect strangers from all walks of life supported me? I had to ask myself that question. There has to be some bigger purpose, right? Why else would God let me go through it?
I think I’m still searching to find the true meaning and purpose even as I write this book. But I know the gist of it: I went through this so that I can help people. I went through this so I can not only help individuals who face charges similar to mine, but also so I can help stop kids from being put into these situations in the first place—where they wind up being abused by those who are supposedly trying to protect them.
A big group of friends led by Diana showed up to meet David and me at the airport when we got back from New York City. They all held signs as we came out of the gate area. It felt amazing to have my extended family there. It truly did. Jennifer, Tammy, Courtney, all these people who’d shown up in court for me or championed my story on the local news and who in some cases were torn to shreds in that courtroom—they never walked away. We all grew closer through the horror of the ordeal.
I’m not sure if I could ever thank any of them enough for what they did. It felt good just to hug them, and to feel so much love as we returned home to Tennessee.
Everyone was relieved and celebrating that I wasn’t going to prison. There were congratulations and lots of tears. I accepted their hugs with gratitude. But my mom and dad and David all knew that I wasn’t happy. Was I happy to be free? Yes. But I wasn’t truly free. I wouldn’t be free for a long time.
Once the whirlwind was over, I came back to a quiet house with no kids. David went back to work. I found myself all alone with no one but Buddy and Candy Cane to keep me company. All I thought about, all day, every day, were my children.
The Circuit Court in Tennessee made a decision back in June of 2008 saying that Tyler and Ashley would remain in Joal’s custody until the “conclusion of the investigation” in the criminal case in Georgia. We had reached the ultimate conclusion of that so-called investigation: A court of law and a jury of my peers concluded that I didn’t do it.
“Let’s go get your kids!” my attorneys all said. They actually filed a petition for custody to be returned to me the same morning that I was on The Today Show. I knew in my heart that it wouldn’t fly—at least not immediately. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. I’d have to fight. It might even turn into another war, for all I knew.
I had to go to court to force Joal to let me have a couple of extra hours with Tyler each week, and eventually the court made a decision to allow me to see Ashley, but only under strict supervision in the offices of the court-ordered therapist.
I tried going to Tyler’s baseball games, trying to dip a toe into some kind of normalcy again, and instead found that Joal and Sarah and their families were just horrible to me. They would stare at me and give me nasty looks. They rushed the children away as soon as the games were over. I wound up in the public bathroom at the park, sobbing. They made me feel like a monster all over again.
When will the suffering end? I prayed. When?
From the moment I walked out of the courthouse, almost everyone around me started asking when I was going to sue the pants off all the people who had done this to me. I told them I didn’t know. I couldn’t focus on that. I needed to stay focused on my kids. I was fuming mad, of course. The immeasurable losses I’d suffered because of these misbegotten allegations crushed me. Those people needed to pay.
Thankfully, I had attorneys who could focus on it for me.
On May 26, Scott and Cary King filed a $25 million federal lawsuit on my behalf, going after every person and every entity that had harmed me through “fraud, corruption, perjury, fabricated evidence, and/or other wrongful conduct undertaken in bad faith.”
The people I wanted to sue the most—including Len Gregor, Chris Arnt, and Judge Brian House—I couldn’t. We aren’t allowed to sue those people. They work in the bubble of protection of the judicial system, which is only penetrable by higher entities, such as the FBI. I would bring my case to them soon enough.
Those whom we named in the lawsuit were Sandra Lamb, Sherri and DeWayne Wilson, Kelly McDonald, Joal and Sarah Henke, Detective Tim Deal, Catoosa County, Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers (who was Tim Deal’s boss), Suzie Thorne, Stacy Long, Laurie Evans, the Children’s Advocacy Center of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, and the Greenhouse Children’s Advocacy Center.
I barely talked about the details with Scott and Cary before they filed, but I knew that these people and these organizations needed to be punished. They deserved to pay for what they had done to me and my family, not to mention those kids. We would go after them for both compensatory and punitive damages, for coaching these kids and for moving ahead with criminal charges that were not corroborated and actually were contradicted.65
The suit itself was fifty-two pages long. It detailed everything, including that the plaintiffs manipulated Ashley into the role of a sex-abuse victim. Key parts of it said that the “extreme and outrageous conduct of defendants was designed to subvert the parental and familial relationships between the plaintiff and her family.”
I didn’t care about the money. I wanted to be able to pay my parents back. I wanted to make up for the career that they took from me. But the rest of it? It was about accountability. Sadly it seems the only way an individual can hold people accountable through the court system is with dollars. We thought $25 million was an appropriate response—to hold them accountable, not to destroy or tear apart. I didn’t want to do that. There had been enough suffering already. I just wanted these people to know that their actions were wrong and that these organizations needed to change the way they do things. But I always knew that no amount of money could ever make up for the destruction that had taken place.
My first visit with Ashley happened in a closed room, under controlled circumstances, with her court-appointed therapist present the entire time. I wasn’t supposed to initiate conversation with Ashley. I wasn’t supposed to touch her. That therapist had to be the one to initiate all contact and conversation between us. How could that not make me feel like I was being treated like a guilty person?
Ashley played with the games and did some coloring while her therapist talked and tried to get Ashley to say how it felt to see her mother. It was awkward. It was awful. It was exactly the opposite of what Ashley needed after all of the trauma she’d been put through, and I sat there with tears streaming down my face.
At one point, Ashley got up and brought me some tissues. She was cordial, but never affectionate in any way.
Seeing my baby girl again—even though it was the only thing I wanted in the whole world—almost made it worse. The same way it did with Tyler that first time he came to my birthday party at the restaurant. The distance. The lack of eye contact. The coldness from your own child is enough to break any mother’s heart.
The fact that a jury found me not guilty didn’t clear my record. If a potential employer were to do the most basic background search on me to this day, the first thing that would show up are page after page of felony charges for child molestation. Aggravated child molestation. One day, I pulled a background check on myself just to see what it looks like, and all twenty-two counts are at the very top of the report. At the very end of that long list of repulsive charges, there’s one line in small print that says “acquitted.”
The way it works now, that’s the way my background report will read for the rest of my life. Right then and there, I decided I would work to change the laws. I wasn’t qualified to do that yet. I could advocate for change as a citizen, and I’d certainly found some success getting my word out through the media. But I wanted to do more than that.
A seed was planted. A seed that would eventually lead me down a new path in my life.
Chapter 67
Five months passed. Five more months of occasional supervised visits
with Ashley, with the therapist taking notes the whole time, and mandatory psychological evaluations and legal hoops that required tens of thousands of more dollars in fees to attorneys—still with only limited visitation with my son. Finally, I was allowed a handful of supervised visits with Ashley at our home. But I didn’t have Ashley back in any way. I didn’t have either of my kids back home the way they should be.
Then one day, I decided to take things into my own hands. To do what I do best. I brought a book into our visit with the therapist and simply started reading, aloud. Wouldn’t you know it, Ashley came and sat down right next to me so she could see the pictures. She laughed when it was funny. When I asked her questions about the book, she answered.
When she left, her therapist seemed shocked. “Wow, she was just sort of—normal,” she said.
Ya think? I’m her mom. I know what she needs better than you!
All I said out loud was, “Well …”
About a week before Thanksgiving, I walked into a courthouse in Tennessee for the most important custody hearing we’d had so far. We’d prepared for weeks, my team was assembled, we’d made our opening arguments, and we were right in the middle of it all when I finally reached a new breaking point. It became clear to me that Joal was going to put our children in front of that judge and make them say out loud which parent they wanted to be with the most. I couldn’t let them suffer that horror. They’d suffered the preposterousness of a court’s idea of their “best interests” for too long. I was sick and tired of this justice system that wasn’t doing any of us any good. So I told my attorneys that I wanted to talk to Joal, one-on-one, face-to-face, with nobody else in the room.
And that is what we did.
We went to an office just across the street from the courthouse. Joal sat down across from me. We shut the door. There was a lot of press there. There was still tons of interest in my case, and the custody fight was a whole new ratings boon for the local affiliates. The camera crews would’ve followed us right into that room if they could have, but it felt good to keep them and everyone else out.
For two years I’d woken in the middle of the night from those awful dreams in which I stood in front of my accusers and confronted them.
Joal was the first person I was able to confront in real life.
When he sat down, the first thing I said to him was, “I want you to look at me, and I want you to tell me that you think I did this.”
Joal paused and then let out a big sigh.
“I know you didn’t,” he said.
My only reaction was tears.
Joal started fumbling around a bit. I think he remembered that there was a $25 million lawsuit pending with his name on it. He also might have been smart enough to guess that I’d have a tape recorder running in my purse—because I did.
He hemmed and hawed a bit. He said he knew I was innocent “now,” but he would not explain why he had become a part of this. He eluded questions and talked in circles.
Whatever. It didn’t matter. I bawled.
“Well,” I said, wiping away my tears. “I forgive you.”
Joal seemed really, really shocked by that. To tell you the truth, I was, too!
I can’t fully explain how that forgiveness came to me. I had been carrying around so much anger and hatred toward that man. I knew it wasn’t right. He’s the father of my children, and I needed to forgive him—for me, but most importantly for them.
Joal knows what he’s done. He has to live with the consequences of that for the rest of his life. I don’t need to carry that burden. It’s not my burden to carry.
I swear God was in that room with us that day. There was just a feeling of wonder and forgiveness that is too thick and enormous to describe. It’s like right in that moment, right after I forgave him, I was able to put all of my focus on the children. God reached down and plucked any anger I had toward Joal right out of my heart. I forgave completely, with no strings attached. And it felt good. I felt free from chains that had bound me for far too long.
Joal and I agreed to a plan in which we both would not only parent our children but also do it together, as mother and father. (Not maritally, of course, but as “parents.”) We agreed to work out a schedule that works for both of us.
Before we left the room, I told Joal, “The worst day of my life is when my daughter got up and was forced to testify against me. But the second worst day was when the father of my children got up and testified against me. It’s one thing to be divorced and for you to hate me as a person. But you getting up and testifying against me hurt me more than anything ever could, except for seeing Ashley testify.”
He nodded. I think he got it. I think he knew.
“Still,” I said, “I forgive you.”
When Joal and I walked out of that courthouse side by side, people’s mouths dropped. When we stood in front of those cameras as two parents who’d come to an agreement, I felt like peace was radiating off my skin. It felt good to be on the news for something positive. If I could make peace for the sake of my children, I’m pretty sure anyone could make peace for the sake of their children! I wish I could explain how it happened. All I can say is that the immediate and lasting peace that comes from forgiveness is a gift. I wish I could share that feeling with anyone who holds on to bitterness or hatred.
I thought those twenty-two not-guilty verdicts would mean freedom. They didn’t. The day I began to truly forgive was the day I felt my freedom for the first time.
Just before Thanksgiving, David and I met Joal and Sarah and the kids at a park. Joal and I talked to the kids together that day about how “the schedule’s going to change, and we’re both going to spend time with both of you kids now, and we’re going to occasionally do some things together, and we want you to know that we both love you.”
I gave Joal a hug. I gave Sarah a hug, too. Joal and Sarah both hugged David. And then the whole lot of us hugged Tyler and Ashley. It felt like a miracle. It truly did.
Just like that, just as the Christmas season was starting, I had my kids back.
I remember taking Ashley up to her room for the first time. She stood there and read the words I’d written on her mirror all the way back on my 295th day without her.
“I can wash it off if you want, if it bothers you or anything,” I said.
“No,” she said. “You can leave it.”
Those words have remained on her mirror to this day.
Ashley seemed cold to me in those first few weeks. She seemed distant. When it was time for her to go to bed, she would go up into her bedroom and lock the door. The sound of that lock made me cry every darned time. I didn’t blame her. She didn’t put those thoughts into her head herself. I knew she was confused by it all. But I also refused to push her.
Tyler was still a little distant, too, even after all of the visitation we’d spent together. He still refused to call me “Mommy.” I refused to push him, either. Both of those kids had been pushed enough.
Ashley would sit next to me sometimes, but rigidly. She wouldn’t tell me she loved me. I would say it to her, all the time. I always had. It was nothing new. Her lack of response was the only new part. And it hurt. Every single time, it stung. I didn’t blame her. But it hurt.
When it comes to my forgiving Joal, the hardest thing to this day is dealing with everybody else. I get grief. Really bad grief about forgiving him. What I want people to understand is that I didn’t do it for him. I did it for me and my heart, which affects my kids. And I did it for Tyler and Ashley.
The Today Show was so intrigued by the fact that he and I came to a custody agreement, they called us up and asked if Joal and I would fly up to New York to talk about it. So there we were, two formerly bitter exes, sitting on a couch on national TV talking about forgiveness, and talking about doing what’s right for our children. Once again: surreal.
I shared something with Joal on TV that day. I’d decided to drop the lawsuit against him and Sarah. I’d made up my mind to remove their names
from the whole contentious thing. My attorneys were really angry at me for that, but I told them: “How can I forgive him and tell my children I’ve forgiven him when I’m suing his pants off? It doesn’t make sense!”
I dropped the lawsuit against Joal and Sarah “with prejudice,” which means I would be unable to refile that lawsuit at any time in the future. I did that because I wanted them to know I meant it. Mostly, I wanted Tyler and Ashley to know, someday when they’re old enough to understand, that when I said I forgave their father, it was real.
It was also just a matter of being practical. How could I possibly try to develop a working parental relationship with my ex at the same time I treated him as an adversary in court? Dropping the lawsuit against them made getting on with our lives seem a whole lot easier. In fact, it made everything feel easier.
The relief I felt, the weight that it took off my own shoulders and put squarely back on his, where it belonged, allowed me to have more honesty and good feelings with my kids. It was that forgiveness that allowed me to get my kids back!
For a number of weeks after that Today Show appearance, I kept asking myself, If forgiveness is that powerful, where else do I need to apply it?
