Who Is Holly Kittle? Part II

My earlier post on Holly Kittle apparently has struck a nerve with some people in the LMJC, with one of Kittle's supporters writing:

Mr. Slanderson,
You continue to be both judge and jury for those invovled (sic) in these cases. You talk about the Bible as if you may know it but you tend to judge others more than any other person I have had the displeasure of listening rant their nonsense. You have found your 15 minutes of fame and are now running with it acting as your (sic) are the swift justice to save North Georgia and all "innocent" child molesters (because your logic seems to believe their [sic] is no such thing as child molestation, maybe you are a child molester and thats (sic) why you have this strong view on the topic, yet I feel you have crossed a line with your latest blog. I hope God judges you as harshly as you judge others.

The point that Kittle's supporters are making if this: if someone is accused of being a child molester, then the person is automatically guilty and anyone who disagrees is doing so because that person also is a child molester. This is what passes for "law and justice" in Kittleworld.

(Important: I have concentrated on three child molestation cases in the LMJC, Tonya Craft, James Combs, and Brad Wade, even though there have been others. The reason is twofold: first, I cannot deal with every case, and, second, I believe that some of the other cases are legitimate. The ones I have emphasized have featured either contradictory or utterly implausible testimony, prosecution-suborned perjury, "expert" prosecution witnesses who should not be permitted inside a courtroom, and misconduct by prosecutors and judges. Unfortunately, Kittle's supporters have translated that into my being a child molester.)

The question is this: Why am I featuring Kittle and why am I speaking out so harshly against her? My sense is that Kittle and her friends believe I am treating her unjustly, but in this situation, justice seems to be in the eye of the beholder. I believe strongly that Kittle's behavior during her cross-examination in during the Tonya Craft trial reflected both ignorance of how her job should be carried out and arrogance that she seemed to believe that no one ever should question her.

Furthermore, by publicly approving the comments in Chris Arnt's Facebook forum when he attacked Tonya Craft and her defense, Kittle not only acted unprofessionally but also was guilty of misconduct for someone in her line of work. That she was nasty, arrogant, and haughty during her testimony only confirms to me that Kittle, like so many others in the LMJC, believes that the law only applies to those who are not part of the "injustice" system. In a real court of law, she would not be permitted to testify at all, at least as an "expert."

Why do I believe her to be incompetent? First, as I will point out in this post, her interview with Sandra Lamb's daughter on, quite appropriately, April Fool's Day, 2009, violated all standards of forensic interviewing and NEVER should have been entered into evidence as "proof" that Tonya Craft had molested anyone.

Second, Kittle admitted during her testimony that she did not keep current on literature, and then later told Arnt (on re-direct) that she had been reading up-to-date materials. However, when asked by Dr. Demosthenes Lorandos the titles of what she supposedly had been reading, Kittle had no recollection. This is not someone who actually is trying to find the truth; this is someone who believes her job is to try to fix a case for the prosecution, and people like that have no problem with fudging the truth or even outright lying (since they know they won't be charged with perjury).

For the sake of length, I will not include the transcript of Kittle's interview with Lamb's daughter, but it is available here, and the interview and the comments that I wrote afterward (with help from an experienced analyst not connected with the Craft case) put the whole thing into perspective.

What the child told Kittle was absolutely preposterous, yet Kittle was all ears. However, I did not point out in that article that Kittle violated an important protocol in the forensic interviewing of young children: she left the room during the interview, not once, but twice.

In the Chattanoogan's account of Kittle's testimony, we have this gem:

The young child, six years old at the time of the alleged incident, told the interviewer that Ms. Craft had inserted all of her fingers in her ‘privates’ and one finger in her rear. The defense would later question the physical possibilities of this happening. The witness told the defense counsel that she had never considered that possibility. (Emphasis mine)

So, here is an "expert" who never considers the possibility that a "hand rape" such as what was described was even physically possible, and if it actually happened, why there was not severe damage to the child's private parts. Instead, Kittle acted like a stenographer while claiming to be a well-trained "forensic interviewer."

Likewise, I suppose that when Kittle interviewed the two boys who are claiming that Mr. Combs molested them in a classroom, it never occurred to her that since the room was full of children, perhaps others might have witnessed such a scene. Why didn't a bunch of children come forward? While I don't have access to the transcript of that interview, nonetheless I have no doubt that Kittle was both incompetent and dishonest, seeing her job as helping Buzz Franklin's office railroad Mr. Combs into prison.

After the trial, Kittle gave an interview to WDEF-TV that demonstrated her own arrogance:

Holly Kittle says, "I do not go into an interview searching for anything. In fact, I go into an interview hoping that this has not happened."

Holly Kittle is a forensic interviewer for the Children's Advocacy Center and interviewed one of Tonya Craft's accusers about a year after the allegations came out.

She says she's trained to the Children's Advocacy of Georgia standards. Kittle says she asks the kids open ended questions, not leading or suggestive ones like Craft's defense suggested.

Kittle says, "I felt like I was personally attacked, but my interview and my job was minimally attacked."

Kittle says she keeps and open mind and even looks into an alternative hypothesis.

Kittle says, "I know how to do my job, and I know that I was trained to do my job, and I do my job to the best of my ability."

So, even to QUESTION what clearly was a sub-standard "forensic interview" was to personally attack Kittle. Yet, in doing research for an article on the Craft case, Kittle's interview stood out (as did the rest of the CAC interviews, including those by Stacy Long and Suzi Thorne) as how NOT to interview children.

Believe it or not, I am not motivated by a personal animosity toward Holly Kittle, although I will say openly I have nothing but contempt for her and her CAC and LMJC colleagues. Instead, I am attacking the quality of her work and the fact that she is part of a machine that seeks to destroy people who clearly are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused.

Kittle, because of her job, has the power to help destroy innocent lives. However, I get the sense that she really enjoys the influence and "prestige" that being a "forensic interviewer" brings. Because the consequences of destroying innocent lives are so great, I believe that someone must speak out when people like Kittle are acting in an unprofessional and haughty manner and promoting false testimony instead of the truth. That is what I am doing, and I don't care if some people in North Georgia don't like it.

Who Is Holly Kittle? Part I

One of the worst episodes of prosecution witness testimony in the Tonya Craft trial came when Holly "Thumbs Up" Kittle took the stand. Kittle proceeded to proudly note that she could not recall any relevant literature to her profession (she claimed to read stuff, but could not remember any titles or information, which is more proof that she needed to take Joal Henke's "recovered memories" course).

Furthermore, Kittle rolled her eyes, shrugged her shoulders, and laughed out loud at the questions from attorney Demosthenese Lorandos, demonstrating once more that the "professionals" at the local Children's Advocacy Center act like spoiled children when testifying in front of jurors. In fact, it got so bad that Dr. Lorandos finally asked Kittle if the trial was "funny." If one wanted to see the combination of dishonesty, incompetence, and arrogance, then Holly Kittle was the Main Attraction.

As readers remember, Kittle, who was an anthropology major at my alma mater, the University of Tennessee, worked with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's "mobile crime lab" before its operations were suspended. If the GBI lab "team" was as dishonest as what has been exposed in North Carolina, then I suspect that Kittle received a good education in learning how to cook results for prosecutors.

You see, Holly Kittle is a good soldier for prosecutors, and whatever the prosecutors want from Kittle, they get it. Furthermore, Kittle is one of those people who believes that the Prosecution Always Is Right, and that anything one can do to push the prosecution's case -- no matter how dishonest or flimsy it might be -- is to be doing the Lord's work.

In my conversation with Ione Sells, she told me that Kittle and the others "interviewers" at the CAC in Fort Oglethorpe were superior to Dr. William Bernet and Dr. Nancy Aldridge because the CAC people always testify for the prosecution. When I asked about Dr. Aldridge testify for the prosecution many more times than she had for the defense, Sells spat out, "Oh, she hasn't testified for the prosecution since 2007."

That is interesting, and while I have not spoken to Dr. Aldridge about Sells' comments, my sense is that prosecutors don't want Dr. Aldridge on the stand because she actually tells the truth, and no self-respecting Georgia prosecutor these days wants anything to do with truth. If Dr. Aldridge and Dr. Bernet won't lie on the stand or act like the CAC clowns, then prosecutors don't want them. Don't kid yourself, people; it has come to that.

So, Kittle actually believes herself to be morally and professionally superior to people who literally have "written the book" on child forensic interviewing. (Her good Facebook friends Chris A. Arnt and Len Gregor both called Dr. Aldridge and Dr. Bernet "whores," and Sells told me she agreed with that assessment. Thus, I would surmise that Kittle agrees with it, too.)

As I see it, Holly Kittle is to forensic interviewing what Michael West is to forensic dentistry and Steven Hayne is to forensic pathology. As Radley Balko has so eloquently put it, these men will tell prosecutors whatever they want to hear, no matter how dishonest or implausible their accounts, and Kittle, likewise, will tell prosecutors whatever they want to hear.

As for Kittle, there is more. (I'll cover a number of instances of her incompetence and downright dishonesty in my next post on her.) She runs a photography business and posts a number of pictures she has taken on the Internet. In looking through her photos (which, frankly, are not high-quality compared to the photographer who has taken photographs of my grandchildren), two things struck me.

First, she has a number of pictures taken at an adoption party. As one who has adopted three children, I can tell you the joy of the "got'cha day" and the realization that our family in a very small way has made a difference in the lives of children who faced a grim future otherwise.

However, as I looked at those pictures, I remembered that Kittle is the main CAC "expert" (Lord, what a misuse of THAT term) witness in the upcoming trial of James Combs. Mr. Combs and his wife adopted a girl from Russia and a girl from Romania (and they have two birth children), which means that they also had their "got'cha" days. Furthermore, Mr. Combs, who served in the U.S. Armed Forces for 24 years, in order to be able to adopt any children, had to go through a number of examinations by law enforcement agencies from local police to the FBI to Interpol. (I have been through the same procedures and am quite familiar with them.)

Kittle, who has no children of her own, is trying to destroy Mr. Combs and his family by wanting to convince a jury that Mr. Combs is a child molester. It's funny that there never were any issues like that in Mr. Combs' life -- none -- and then one day, working as a substitute teacher at Boynton School in Catoosa County, he sends two boys to the principal's office and suddenly, they claim he molested them. This does not pass any smell test, but since the stench at the CAC and the LMJC already is overwhelming, people like Kittle and Sells are incapable of smelling anything but their own stink, which they then attribute to others.

Second, as I looked farther down the list, I saw that Kittle had taken a picture of a naked newborn being weighed on a scale right after birth. Given what I know about how the LMJC lackeys work, had a picture like this been in possession of either Mr. Combs or Tonya Craft, Kittle and others like Tim Deal would have claimed that these people were possessing child pornography.

I kid you not. That is how these individuals work when they are trying to frame innocent people.

So, Kittle feels free to take pictures of children, but if someone she and her other prosecution prostitutes were targeting someone for false charges had the same pictures in their possession, Kittle, Deal and others were make the "child pornography" accusations and present the photos as "proof" that they were dealing with a child molester.

Don't forget that Kittle works closely with people who have suborned perjury, committed perjury, forged documents, lied to jurors, hidden exculpatory evidence, and have proven themselves to be utterly dishonest and incompetent in dealing with the issue of child molestation. And this is the CAC prosecution "expert" who will be on the stand in the James Combs trial, trying to convince jurors that this family man and a person who has served his country honorably should go to prison for what clearly are trumped-up charges.

Kittle advertises on the Christians in Business website. She also likes to have Bible versus on her own photography site. I would suggest that perhaps she include the Ninth Commandment next time.

(In my next post on Kittle, I will explain just how dishonest and incompetent Kittle was when she interviewed Sandra Lamb's daughter in the Tonya Craft case.)