More than six months after a heated trial and accusations of perjury and false allegations, Tonya Craft said Tuesday that she filed a motion to dismiss her $25 million federal lawsuit against her accusers.
But in her next sentence, the former teacher, acquitted of child molestation charges in May, quickly explained that didn’t mean all lawsuits in the case were going away.
In the $25 million lawsuit, “we included every single person that we even thought could possibly be involved,” Craft said after her radio talk show on WGOW-FM. “So we have to step back … because we cannot risk losing the entire lawsuit.”
Craft originally filed the lawsuit in June, a month after she was found not guilty in Catoosa County Superior Court on 22 counts of child molestation, aggravated child molestation and aggravated sexual battery.
The lawsuit alleged that Craft’s accusers lied in court and conspired to bring false allegations against her by manipulating the three girls involved.
Now Craft says the suit was filed quickly because of the court’s time frame, and she and her attorneys want to step back and decide who should be included in a new lawsuit.
But the new suit is “definitely going to keep the state actors involved” in her case, she said. Those entities include the Catoosa County government and the Catoosa sheriff’s office, she said.
Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers could not be reached for comment.
While the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit assistant district attorneys who tried Craft’s case could not be named in the original lawsuit because of laws that protect prosecutors, Craft said she hopes to find a “loophole” by hiring an expert to help.
“I really hope there is a way we can find to include the state prosecutors, as well,” she said.
By Tuesday afternoon, Craft’s original suit had been dismissed in U.S. District Court in Northern Georgia. But only the charges against Craft’s ex-husband Joal Henke and his wife, Sarah, were dismissed with prejudice, meaning a future suit couldn’t involve the couple.
Craft announced her decision to dismiss the Henkes from her case when she appeared Monday on the “Today” show with her former husband.
The decision to dismiss the Henkes came on the heels of a custody battle in which Craft agreed with them to co-parent her 11-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. That agreement came four days into a heated custody battle behind closed doors.
But Craft said the agreement was not related to her decision to drop the accusations against the Henkes, who originally brought charges against Craft involving her daughter.
“After Joal and I decided to co-parent our children, I really felt like maintaining a very contentious lawsuit against their father and Sarah would have been talking out of both sides of my mouth,” Craft said Tuesday on air.
Joal Henke agreed that the lawsuit wasn’t mentioned when settling the custody battle, and said he was “excited and happy to be moving forward.”