Both the father and stepmother of the third child alleged to have been molested by a former Chickamauga, Ga., schoolteacher testified this morning that they remembered incidents involving the girl only days before the trial began.
The state called the stepmother to the witness stand first today in the Catoosa County Superior Court trial of Tonya Craft, a former Chickamauga Elementary School teacher charged with 22 counts of child molestation, aggravated sexual battery and aggravated child molestation.
The charges involve three children.
When the witness was questioned, she said she noticed the girl was red in her private areas on several occasions and that the child woke up having nightmares one night.
But during cross-examination, defense attorney Scott King asked the witness why she didn’t include that information in any previous statements.
“I had not remembered it at that time,” she said.
She testified that she remembered a couple of days before the trial started and wrote a note about it to the Catoosa County district attorney’s office.
Before the father was called to the stand, Assistant District Attorney Chris Arnt asked Judge Brian House if the prosecution could include Ms. Craft’s previous sexual history.
Mr. King argued the incidents should be excluded because the sexual encounters were with adults and not children.
For complete details, see tomorrow’s Chattanooga Times Free Press.