RINGGOLD, Ga. -- A woman who had been removed by a judge as therapist for one of the alleged victims in a child molestation case testified Wednesday that she later tried to intervene in a custody battle between the girl's parents.
She also acknowledged that she was undergoing therapy herself for post traumatic stress disorder at the time she was counseling three girls who are alleged molestation victims.
Lauri Evans, a former Fort Oglethorpe Children's Advocacy Center social worker, spent Wednesday on the stand as a defense witness in the case of Tonya Craft.
Ms. Craft, a former Chickamauga Elementary School teacher, is charged with 22 counts of child molestation, aggravated sexual battery and aggravated child molestation.
Ms. Evans testified that she treated all three girls beginning in 2008 and still is treating two of them. But in December 2008, she was removed as therapist for the third girl, court documents show.
During a separate case involving a custody battle between the girl's parents, Hamilton County Circuit Court Judge L. Marie Williams removed Ms. Evans as therapist for the girl. The judge said Ms. Evans' "entire testimony was/is not credible" in a previous deposition that discussed the condition of the third child, the ruling shows.
However, Judge Williams' order was not allowed as evidence in Ms. Craft's trial. Catoosa County Superior Court Judge Brian House ruled in a past hearing that the order could not be entered, calling it hearsay. He upheld that order Wednesday.
Unable to bring up Judge Williams' order, defense attorney Demosthenes Lorandos instead asked Ms. Evans why she had filed a motion in December 2009 to intervene in the parents' custody battle, a motion later denied by Judge Williams.
Ms. Evans said that, after the judge had questioned her credibility, she was afraid she would lose her job as a counselor and wanted to defend her reputation.
The 2009 motion also said she had a "financial interest" with getting involved in the custody battle. But Ms. Evans testified Wednesday that she could not go into details without bringing up what actually was said in the hearing in front of Judge Williams.
Ms. Evans also acknowledged that her post traumatic stress disorder was revealed when her therapist testified at her divorce hearing.
In Ms. Craft's case, the first girl had an emotional breakdown at school almost a year after she began seeing Ms. Evans, according to earlier testimony. Earlier in the trial, the girl's mother testified that it was after the breakdown that the child told her she had more to say about Ms. Craft.
The second girl's first-grade teacher, Kimberly Parvin, testified that she acted shy and closed off at school while she was in therapy in the fall of 2008 but improved after she stopped going to therapy.
"When she quit going to counseling, she got better," Ms. Parvin testified.
During cross-examination, Catoosa County Assistant District Attorney Chris Arnt brought up the therapy sessions Ms. Evans conducted with the three girls and asked about the reports she had written.
While Ms. Evans had not taken notes during the sessions, she testified that she typed up reports after each one.
In her notes from 2008, she wrote that the third girl had told her she was having bad dreams about Ms. Craft but said she didn't want to talk about it, Mr. Arnt pointed out.
About two months later, Ms. Evans wrote in her notes that the child told her that Ms. Craft had touched her and that it happened "all over the house."
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