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Saving Tonya Craft: An Integration of Science and Law
By Demosthenes Lorandos
Why would three little girls from three different families all say Miss
Tonya sexually abused them if nothing happened? How could three little
girls from entirely different backgrounds lie about something as serious
as digital penetration? When the children’s stories were corroborated
by physical evidence and a year of careful therapy, who could doubt that
these terrible things actually happened? This was the prosecution’s
mantra. The prosecution leaked these “facts” to the press at every
opportunity. This was the prosecution’s justification for a 22-count
indictment. These heinous acts, the prosecution team cried, demanded a
sentence of 480 years.
Arrested in 2008, Tonya Craft was set to be tried in Catoosa County, Ga.
If one were to put a pin in a map of Georgia in the Catoosa County
courthouse square, and draw a circle with a 50-mile radius, one would
discover more fundamentalist Christian churches per capita encompassed
by that circle than anywhere else
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