"Mommy Did Terrible Things to Me..."

Tonya Craft has not seen her daughter for two years because part of the case against her is the accusation that she molested her own child. According to my sources (and I emphasize that no one from the defense side has given me one whit of information), when the child first was interviewed by the police and by therapists, she said the following (and I paraphrase):

"Mommy did terrible things to me. I don't remember what she did, but my daddy tells me that she did them."

At that point, the "therapist" began to work with the child, and sure enough, the "repressed memories" were unlocked and she remembered the sexual abuse. Furthermore, the prosecution team is working with children whose "repressed memories" now are giving forth a treasure trove of information as to what Ms. Craft supposedly did to them.

Let us understand a few things here. First, the "repressed memories" syndrome is one of the worst-abused tricks in modern jurisprudence and many a person has been falsely convicted when prosecutors used this weapon to convince jurors that there really had been sexual abuse.

Does the name Martha Coakley sound familiar? She is the Attorney General of Massachusetts and she recently lost a special election for the U.S. Senate to Scott Brown, partly because she relied heavily upon "repressed memories" in her pursuit of the Amirault family in the fraudulent Fells Acre Day Care Center abuse case. (Why do the witch trials seem to center in Massachusetts? The more things change, the more they remain the same.)

Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal wrote a series of articles about the wave of child molestation cases in this country, including Fells Acre. (Yeah, things come about 20 years later to the Chattanooga area, but now the wolf is at the door.) Her recent piece about Coakley demonstrates beyond a doubt that dishonesty and unbelievability does not just reside in the DA's office of Catoosa County, but also extends to the "sophisticated" and secular realms of the Bay State. Here is one excerpt from that article, which helped to sink Coakley's candidacy:

The accusations against the Amiraults might well rank as the most astounding ever to be credited in an American courtroom, but for the fact that roughly the same charges were brought by eager prosecutors chasing a similar headline—making cases all across the country in the 1980s. Those which the Amiraults' prosecutors brought had nevertheless, unforgettable features: so much testimony, so madly preposterous, and so solemnly put forth by the state. The testimony had been extracted from children, cajoled and led by tireless interrogators.

Gerald (Amirault), it was alleged, had plunged a wide-blade butcher knife into the rectum of a 4-year-old boy, which he then had trouble removing. When a teacher in the school saw him in action with the knife, she asked him what he was doing, and then told him not to do it again, a child said. On this testimony, Gerald was convicted of a rape which had, miraculously, left no mark or other injury. Violet had tied a boy to a tree in front of the school one bright afternoon, in full view of everyone, and had assaulted him anally with a stick, and then with "a magic wand." She would be convicted of these charges. Cheryl had cut the leg off a squirrel.

Other than such testimony, the prosecutors had no shred of physical or other proof that could remotely pass as evidence of abuse. But they did have the power of their challenge to jurors: Convict the Amiraults to make sure the battle against child abuse went forward. Convict, so as not to reject the children who had bravely come forward with charges.

Gerald was sent to prison for 30 to 40 years, his mother and sister sentenced to eight to 20 years. The prosecutors celebrated what they called, at the time "a model, multidisciplinary prosecution." Gerald's wife, Patricia, and their three children—the family unfailingly devoted to him—went on with their lives. They spoke to him nightly and cherished such hope as they could find, that he would be restored to them.

Yes, yes, THIS is the kind of legacy that Judge Brian House and prosectors Len Gregor and Christopher Arnt want to leave in Catoosa County. Even the voters of Massachusetts could not stomach having a prosecutor like Coakley in the Senate, and it was an election to fill the seat of the Democrat's Democrat, Ted Kennedy.

Second, the whole use of "repressed memories" is so controversial and so abused that a number of states have restricted the practice for legal purposes because prosecutors and juries got so out of control that it was obvious that the convictions were fraudulent. Furthermore, there is a wealth of literature that debunks or seriously questions the use of this controversial practice.

While it is obvious that House, Gregor and Arnt are teaming together to try to force a guilty verdict, nonetheless they are playing with dynamite. They are using tactics that border on fraudulent and House's ruling that there will be no use of time, space, place, and dates in the presenting of the "victims" testimony is an attempt to tell jurors that they must grasp something that would be considered even too fanciful for a Harry Potter novel.

Oh, there is one more thing to point out. The father of Tonya's daughter, Ms. Craft's ex-husband, was wanting custody of the child, so the things the little girl told investigators -- "Daddy says Mommy did terrible things to me" -- really must be taken with utmost skepticism. To put the criminal courts into this mix really is unconscionable, especially given that the "therapist" who helped "recover" the girl's memories of sexual abuse has been declared as unfit to testify in Tennessee, according to a ruling by Judge Marie Williams.

Perhaps we should dwell on that one for a while. The prosecution is pursing a false case built upon fraudulent theories and pushed by people who have very personal motives. Yes, crimes have been committed in Catoosa County, but not by Tonya Craft. I think we know where the real criminal behavior resides.