Guidance counselor images1/8/2023 Nor did he ever visit Clark's office, where he could have taken photographs showing that anything happening inside would have been visible to passers-by in a heavily trafficked hallway through a window in the door. Yet Clark's public defender, John Robertson, chose not to present any character witnesses. The boy later told social workers that Clark had "touch his genitals over and underneath his clothing" in "two distinct incidents." There were no witnesses and no physical evidence, so the trial came down to the boy's word against Clark's. said he had been "seeing and hearing things," which he thought could be symptoms of "schizophrenia" but his parents had attributed to "spirits." He also mentioned that he was a habitual liar. In a June 2009 email to his parents that became a point of contention in Clark's appeals, he likewise did not say who had molested him, although he said it was not a priest at church, as his parents had suspected. "revealed during a group session that he had been sexually abused" but did not identify an attacker. The boy, identified as "C.B." in court documents, "became angry and withdrawn after his fifth-grade year" and "began drinking and using drugs in seventh grade." As a teenager, he "engaged in self-harming behavior and attempted suicide." When he was 16, his parents "sent him to a school for troubled youth."ĭuring his stay at the school, C.B. During the 2003–04 school year, Clark's accuser, then a fifth-grader who "had been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder and was having some motivation problems," met with Clark once a week for about 20 minutes. It also suggests that the emotions triggered by such charges can make it difficult for a defendant to get a fair trial even with competent representation.Ī 2011 appeals court summary of the case against Clark suggests how shaky it was. The case vividly illustrates the perils of relying on the diligence of overtaxed public defenders, especially in rebutting sexual abuse allegations supported by nothing more than an alleged victim's claims. ![]() Donald Lyle Clark's 2010 conviction was overturned in 2016 after he persuaded a judge that his lawyer, who died in 2013, had blatantly failed to do his job properly and that new evidence cast doubt on his accuser's truthfulness. An Iowa jury yesterday awarded $12 million to a former elementary school guidance counselor who served six years of a 25-year prison sentence after a student accused him of molestation.
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