A lie sent her to prison for 6 years. Her daughter never stopped fighting, and now she’s free.

NORFOLK — From the witness stand, the young boy told the jury his story.

It was the very one he’d shared with his mom and the police months earlier.

The detective who interviewed him, the prosecutors, a judge in the lower court — they all heard him say the same thing:

After the 10-year-old went to bed one night in June 2013, he said, his great aunt came into his room and sexually abused him.

There was no physical evidence presented, no DNA, no other eyewitnesses. The case came down to the word of a child against that of his great aunt, Esther Thorne.

In court that day, the prosecutor asked the boy if he knew the difference between the truth and a lie.

He said he did.

“Everything you said was the truth; is that right?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

Except it wasn’t.

Even before the trial, the child had already told at least two adult relatives the allegation wasn’t true, that his Great Aunt Esther hadn’t touched him at all. But a fractured family dynamic meant there was no way the truth could have been discovered back then by those with the authority to do something about it, a panel of judges would find years later.

Esther’s daughter, Shawnda Thorne, hadn’t caught word the child was privately taking back his story. The police and lawyers didn’t know either, and the jury never heard about it.

Instead, what they heard at trial was this: “She touched my private part.”

Esther Thorne, then 54, maintained her innocence from the start. She turned down a plea deal, testified in her own defense and took a risk, placing her fate in the hands of 12 strangers in a jury box.

When they returned with a verdict, Shawnda’s knees buckled.

Guilty.

Seventeen years in prison.

At a formal sentencing hearing months later, Esther pleaded with the judge: "I swear on my mother … that I have not touched that baby. I have not touched that 10-year-old child. And it’s hurting me so bad ... that I might not even be able to walk out of here because I’m accused of something I didn’t do.

“And the child know I didn’t do it.”

For the next six years, Shawnda fought for her mom, filing her own appeals and chasing after every lawyer she could find, imploring them to take the case. Then, in 2018, she found one who listened.

Six years ago, a 10-year-old’s lie sent Esther Thorne to prison.

Today, his truth has set her free.

___

The day Esther’s great-nephew told people she’d abused him, Shawnda’s cell rang early, around 3 a.m.

Her mom sobbed into the phone.

“Wait, wait, wait — calm down,” Shawnda said. “What’s wrong, Mom? What’s wrong?”

There had been an accusation. Police were about to haul her to jail. Could Shawnda hurry over?

Shawnda ran to her car — no time to put on shoes — and floored it.

Esther had been living with Shawnda at her home in Chesapeake’s Holly Cove, but the two recently had an argument, so Esther went to stay with her sister in Norfolk. After a few weeks there, Esther had moved next door, to crash with her niece in the same Ocean View apartment complex.

When Shawnda arrived, tears drenched her mom’s face.

“I know you didn’t do this,” Shawnda told her. “Don’t worry. I’m going to get you out of there.”

At the apartments that morning, Shawnda peppered her relatives with questions, trying to piece together what happened. In the coming days and months, a clearer picture of the allegation emerged.

On June 15, 2013, Esther was babysitting two great-nephews and a great-niece, who were between about 6 and 10. She said she prepared breakfast that morning after they finished some chores, then they all went to the beach. At the end of the day, Esther made them take baths to wash off the sand.

When the children’s mother arrived home later, the 10-year-old told her Esther entered his room after he went to bed and touched him inappropriately before performing oral sex on him.

The child’s mother would later testify that when she got home, her son wore only boxers and seemed to have an erection.

Esther said she learned much later that the child, referred to in court documents by the initials C.W.H., didn’t like being told what to do and also sometimes wet the bed. He wore Depends to sleep, but didn’t that night, she said.

The allegation shocked and hurt Shawnda. Her mom had watched after children all her life. She babysat Shawnda’s friends' children and the neighbors' kids out in Holly Cove. She was a doting grandmother who had her own pet names for Shawnda’s son and daughter, she said.

Shawnda said she believes in justice, especially in cases involving children. But she knew right away her mom was innocent, she said.

She had faith a judge and jury would see it, too.

When they didn’t, Shawnda struggled to make it out of the house. She couldn’t eat. She lost weight and hair from the stress.

Shawnda considered her mom to be her backbone. The two could argue and bicker, but loved each other. Seeing her mom shipped off to prison felt like losing her.

“I love her to death. That’s why I fought for her, no matter what we went through,” said Shawnda, now 38. “I refused to see her sit in jail and die on us for something she never did.”

She gathered court documents, pored over the trial transcript, researched what she could about the law.

An entire year passed. Then in a phone call with a cousin, Shawnda found out: The child had admitted to others the abuse never happened.

___

The news infuriated Shawnda.

If relatives knew right after the allegation was made that it was a lie, why hadn’t anyone come forward?

“I’d been fighting for a year. I was fighting to get her home,” Shawnda said.

Hours after Esther’s arrest, an aunt overheard C.W.H. telling his siblings that nothing happened.

That aunt declined to be interviewed for this story, but told a judge earlier this year that she informed C.W.H.'s mother, who believed her son’s allegation.

The aunt said she also told the boy’s therapist, but the counselor dismissed it.

She didn’t tell prosecutors when she took her nephew to meet with them, but she offered to be a witness, she said, although she wasn’t called.

The family wasn’t close, and they argue. She testified before the judge: “... At the end of the day, everybody’s living their life, sir. You can think that we’re supposed to do this and we’re supposed to do that, but it don’t mean that our family is going to do it.”

C.W.H. also told his grandmother — Esther’s sister — that he’d lied. But she felt torn between relatives and didn’t tell anyone at the time. Through a family member, she also declined to be interviewed for this story, which is based on other interviews, trial transcripts, court documents, and audio and video recordings.

“... I didn’t know what to do with the conversation that he told me because it hurt me so bad I didn’t know what to do. That’s being straight out,” the grandmother testified this year. “I didn’t know what to do because I’m the mother, his grandma, and it’s my sister. Oh my God.”

At the time of Esther’s trial, she was hospitalized and didn’t testify.

___

Guilt weighed heavy on C.W.H.'s conscience for years.

He was 10 when he told the lie, and he didn’t understand then what it could trigger.

“I was just hoping that my mom would kick her out,” the now-18-year-old said in an interview with The Virginian-Pilot. “I wasn’t expecting it to go as far as it did.”

The Pilot is not naming him because he was a child when he made the allegation and remained a minor throughout the entirety of Esther’s case.

C.W.H. said he had bladder and kidney problems and urinated on himself that night. He told the lie because he feared getting in trouble, he said. Esther also made the kids clean up, and he didn’t like doing that.

After the lie snowballed into a criminal case with police officers and lawyers and judges, C.W.H. said he then feared that if he changed his story, he’d get in trouble for lying. In December 2015, he went to the Norfolk Public Defenders' Office with an aunt. They met Shawnda there. It had been nearly two years since the trial, and he was now 13.

They met with Armon Pollack, one of the lawyers who had represented Esther. He’d never had someone come to him willing to put a recantation in writing.

Pollack remembered the case well. It was his first jury trial, and he didn’t believe Esther did the things she was accused of doing, he said. The jury’s sentence was long one that — at Esther’s age — could have meant she’d spend the rest of her life in prison.

Pollack recorded his conversation with C.W.H. He stepped outside while the teen sat alone in his office and typed his statement on the computer. In six sentences, he explained it all.

“A couple years ago I told everyone that my great aunt Ester [sic] Thorne molested me,” C.W.H. wrote. “But I was telling a lie, because I was scared of getting in trouble that night by mom.”

After he finished, when Shawnda saw him, he was crying, she said.

“I said, ‘What’s wrong? … It was eating your conscience up, wasn’t it?’” Shawnda said.

The teen nodded, she recalled.

Pollack’s office can handle appeals that challenge whether the law was properly applied in cases. But other appeals and petitions, such as those for actual innocence, are out of the bounds of what the public defenders' office can do, Pollack said. He told the family someone else would have to help them with that, he said.

Shawnda thought that would be it — that her mom would soon be free — but it wasn’t. She sent petitions to the court herself, but they were rejected because they weren’t done right. She contacted the Innocence Project, but they turned her down because the case didn’t involve DNA evidence.

She shopped it to lawyers, but all were too expensive. She was a single mom of two and couldn’t afford it.

Then she remembered Nathan Chapman, an attorney who helped her in a civil case long ago.

___

Shawnda lugged her stack of court documents to Chapman’s office in Portsmouth.

She handed over transcripts, petitions, the teen’s typed recantation — signed and dated.

Chapman has been a lawyer in Hampton Roads for 19 years, working as a criminal defense attorney and representing people in personal injury and domestic cases. He’d never filed an actual innocence case with the court before, let alone argued one.

But Shawnda persisted. And she got through to him.

“As an attorney, you want to see justice done,” Chapman said. "This is a truly innocent person that needs to come home.

“This is a person’s life, and their future and their freedom.”

In 2019, Chapman filed a petition asking the state Court of Appeals to vacate — or throw out — Esther’s convictions. But before a panel of judges could do that, they wanted more information. They sent the case back to Norfolk, to the same judge who heard Esther’s trial years earlier.

They asked Judge Everett Martin to hear testimony from several relatives and make certain findings, including whether the recantation was sincere and whether anyone pressured the teen to change his story.

In early March, Esther returned to the courtroom. It was the first time she and C.W.H. had seen each other since the trial.

Now 17, he spoke from the witness stand once more.

Even after the judge explained perjury — that the teen could, in theory, be charged with a crime for lying in court — he testified.

He told the judge his testimony during the trial wasn’t true. He described typing his recantation at the public defender’s office and read it aloud for the judge to hear.

It had been eating him up for years, he told the judge, and then he finally told the truth.

“Your Honor, I know back then … I knew the difference between a lie and the truth, but I didn’t know what the consequences were going to be. But now that I’m older, I know the difference and the consequences.”

Chapman asked if he wanted to say anything more. The teen looked at his great-aunt.

“To my great-aunt Esther, I apologize for lying and saying you touched me, and I know you didn’t, and I’m sorry for wasting all these years of your life.”

The courtroom fell quiet.

“I accept your apology,” Esther replied.

___

Esther’s charges made her a target in prison, she said.

Not long after she arrived at Fluvanna Correctional Center, a group of women slammed her head against a shower wall, she said. “I never had a peace of mind the whole time, out of six years, that I was away. I caught hell with these inmates.”

Despite all of it, Esther said she never harbored ill will toward her great-nephew. She’s forgiven him.

“I had a long time thinking while I was away,” she said. “It wasn’t his fault.”

He was a child afraid of getting in trouble.

Esther’s case — one based on a false accusation — isn’t the norm.

In 2018, researchers at the University of Nevada tried to analyze how often false allegations happen in child sexual abuse cases.

They found that sampling methods used over the past five decades to research the topic were too varied, the methodology too flawed, to put an actual figure on it.

They did reach two broad conclusions, though: Most of the time, the allegations are true. But false ones “do occur at some non-negligible rate,” according to their research, published in the Journal of Child of Sexual Abuse.

And false accusations have contributed to wrongful convictions.

The National Registry of Exonerations — a project from the University of California, Irvine, and the law schools at the University of Michigan and Michigan State — studied this in 2013 and 2014.

Of the 1,065 exonerations in their registry at the time, 313 involved recantations made by witnesses or alleged victims after the person had been convicted.

Child sex abuse cases accounted for 70 of those. The project’s researchers found cases like Esther’s often fit a pattern: A child’s testimony is the sole evidence leading to a conviction, and that child recants years later, “usually due to a guilty conscience.”

So why do children lie in the first place?

Of the exonerations analyzed, researchers found several reasons: A parent or relative may pressure a child to lie about the other parent during a divorce or custody dispute. Or a kid may make up an allegation out of anger or because they don’t like the person, the researchers wrote in a preliminary report.

Recantations themselves can be tricky, and courts view them with skepticism.

Sometimes an allegation is true, and it’s the recantation that is false. The victim may feel guilty and not want their perpetrator to go to jail. They may fear their abuser or feel pressured by others to change their story. They may want the case to just be over.

But that’s not what happened here, not in Esther’s case.

The judge, Martin, found the child’s recantation to be credible.

And he found there was no evidence to suggest anyone influenced his decision to recant.

In the findings he sent to the Court of Appeals, Martin wrote that a key question was whether Esther’s lawyers should have suspected a recantation at the time of her trial and tried to interview her relatives for that reason.

“In hindsight the answer is ‘yes,’ but there was no evidence the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, which was in contact with (the child) and some members of his family, knew of, suspected, or investigated a possible recantation,” wrote Martin, who declined to be interviewed for this story.

___

Actual innocence cases involving DNA evidence go to the state Supreme Court.

Those, like Esther’s, that have new non-biological evidence end up in the Virginia Court of Appeals.

The burden of proof is heavy: Defense attorneys must prove all the required elements by “clear and convincing evidence” — meaning the evidence is highly likely to be true — and that no rational judge or jury would have found the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. (Because of new legislation, that legal standard was lowered in July to “preponderance of the evidence,” which means there is more than a 50% chance the evidence is true.)

It’s exceptionally rare for the court to vacate someone’s convictions.

Since July 2004, the state Court of Appeals has received 392 actual innocence petitions, according to Cindi McCoy, the court’s clerk.

In those 16 years, only eight, including Esther’s, have been granted. (Thirteen others remain pending.)

One day in April, it was finally time for a three-judge panel to hear Esther’s case. While hearings typically happen in person, hers was held by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chapman and the state Attorney General’s Office, which opposed Esther’s petition, each had 15 minutes to make their case.

Based on Martin’s findings, Assistant Attorney General Alphonso Simon didn’t challenge the teen’s recantation. But Esther and her lawyer had to prove certain legal elements. The child told relatives he lied before the trial, he said.

“The commonwealth just questions … if Ms. Thorne has established by clear and convincing evidence that the information was ... unavailable to her and could not have been discovered with exercise of due diligence,” Simon said.

(Through a department spokesman, Simon declined to be interviewed for this story. The Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, which originally prosecuted the case, also declined to comment, saying it would be inappropriate because Esther’s record has since been expunged.)

Chapman told the judges the family was a divided one. They didn’t get together and discuss what was happening. For that reason, he argued, Esther couldn’t have known the child admitted to lying. The whole case was based on the boy’s testimony, he said.

“There is no gray area in this at all. It did not happen. This recantation by this one witness pulls the rug out from under the entire prosecution,” Chapman said. "We often brag about our justice system and that it’s the best one in the world. And there’s always a little caveat, footnote, to that, that it does have its flaws and occasionally things can go wrong. They did here, and thankfully the legislature has given this court the authority to review that.

“We’re asking that this court would grant Ms. Esther Thorne’s petition for a writ of actual innocence because she is, in fact, not guilty of the crimes for which she was convicted.”

Weeks later, on June 1, the judges had a decision.

The court clerk called Chapman, who called Shawnda. She broke the news to her mom: “Guess what? … They granted your writ of innocence, baby!”

In prison, Esther feared the other women might retaliate against her if they knew she was getting out.

So she told no one, and she waited.

___

One morning in early July, Esther was getting ready for a shower when someone called for her over the intercom.

When prison staffers found her, they asked: How would she like to go home that day?

Shawnda was already on her way.

“I broke down and started crying,” Esther said. “That’s all I could do.”

There were so many things she missed while she was away: birthdays, holidays, her granddaughter’s graduation.

But Esther was there in August to hold her great-grandson, born exactly one month after she was freed.

Since coming home, Esther has been living with Shawnda.

She cared for herself and managed her own finances before prison, but now, at 60, she’s starting over. Shawnda has been helping her reclaim all the benefits she lost when she got convicted.

Esther said she’s trying to regroup. For six years, prison guards controlled her life, telling her where she could go, what she could eat, when to sleep. Now, she’s adjusting to managing her own time, her own space.

“She has to get rehabilitated to the real world,” said Shawnda.

In prison, Esther didn’t plan for the future because there wasn’t hope for one. Now, there is.

The path forward isn’t always simple, but she’s not alone. Her daughter is always beside her.

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The day Esther came home, Shawnda streamed a video live on Facebook from her phone.

Inside the car, she angled the camera toward her mom.

“Hey, everybody!” Esther waved.

Shawnda read her mom well-wishes from friends as they trickled in over social media.

It had been a long time, Shawnda said into the camera. And it was finally over.

“I didn’t give up,” she said.

Margaret Matray, 757-222-5216, margaret.matray@pilotonline.com