MONSEY, NY — Valerie Carlton fled to Monsey last year after being released from a Maryland jail when state prosecutors dropped 28 felony charges of sexual abuse involving two young girls for lack of credible evidence.
Maryland authorities have pursued Carlton to Monsey on a charge of assaulting a correction officer during her 13-month solitary confinement in the Hartford County jail.
Carlton, 42, an Orthodox Jewish divorced mother of a 6-year-old girl, has been held for about a month in the Rockland County jail pending an extradition hearing on a fugitive from justice warrant lodged by the state attorney in Hartford County.
She is fighting extradition.
Carlton's supporters argue Hartford County prosecutors filed false sexual abuse charges and are continuing their attempt to imprison her on false assault charges.
The Hartford County state attorney denied the accusations.
Carlton's supporters contend the false charges evolved from her divorce from her abusive husband, a Baptist from an evangelical family, and when she became an Orthodox Jew in 2005 and later tried raising their 6-year-old daughter in the faith during her visitation times.
They argue her ex-husband was aided by a neighbor in facilitating false sex abuse charges so the husband could get full custody of the couple's daughter.
A dozen of her supporters from Monsey rallied on her behalf outside the Rockland County Courthouse on Thursday.
It's a travesty of justice that they continue to pursue her on a misdemeanor charge," said Michael Ettinger, one of her lawyers who has a Nyack office.
She was vilified by the state prosecutor and media as a pedophile," Ettinger said. "She was put in solitary for her own protection from other inmates. She was abused and tortured by the guards in solitary."
The characterization of the criminal charges and her treatment was vehemently denied by Hartford County State Attorney Joseph Cassilly, who prosecuted the sexual abuse charges against Carlton.
Cassilly acknowledged the abuse charges were dropped. He said the girls changed their accounts and were not remembering what they had earlier told investigators.
Cassilly said he couldn't discuss details that he said involved two girls, ages 5 and 6 from January 2008 to April 2009.
The grand jury indictment in June 2009 also included charges of attempted kidnapping and extortion.
Cassilly said Carlton and her supporters are misrepresenting the facts and trying to make her a martyr.
No one is going after her because of her religion," Cassilly said. "Her husband has no political influence. The case didn't work out well. The thought was we're not going to make this case and put the child through this."
He said the assault charge came while she was being held on $10 million bail. He said after the sex abuse charges were dismissed Carlton was released and promised to stay with an advocate in the community to face the assault charge, but instead fled.
He said the assault was captured on surveillance video at the jail, among other evidence and witnesses.
"She should have stayed and settled the case, if she had a problem," Cassilly said. "I don't have too many assaults in the jail." He added they were pursuing the charge.
Ettinger said a forensic review of the video reveals the correction officer attacked Carlton and she defended herself. She was holding a pen and left marks on the officer.
Her supporters also filed a letter in Rockland County court in which a Maryland public defender says he was told by a jail officer that Carlton was being targeted by correction officers.
Cassilly said he wasn't aware of the letter from attorney Roger Malik nor did he give credibility to an anonymous officer supposedly talking to Malik.
Ettinger said Cassilly wanted Carlton to plead to being not criminally responsible to the sex abuse counts. She refused and got a private lawyer, and after some months the charges were dismissed rather than go to trial.
Ettinger criticized the prosecution, saying a child originally told investigators about an event that occurred eight months earlier and her answers were contradictory.
Carlton had watched the neighbor's girl and the girl's mother had made previous accusations against others, Ettinger said.
Dr. Mark J. Mills, a forensic psychiatrist, said in a letter that his evaluation of Carlton found she is not psychotic, not dangerous and it is extremely unlikely that she would commit sexual abuse on her child or any other child.
Mills also wrote that he reviewed the transcripts testimony by the two girls and found no credible evidence of abuse.
The letters were sent to Lenore Rosen, a Maryland-based advocate for abused women and an Orthodox Jew who is supporting Carlton. Rosen spoke at the rally on Thursday.
She said when Carlton became an observant Jew she was punished physically and lost custody of her daughter.
Rosen said Carlton's husband was convicted of hitting her, but not jailed, and has admitted he wants full custody of their daughter.
Cassilly said Carlton was released to stay with Rosen. U.S. Marshals were used to find Carlton in Monsey and arrested her as a fugitive.
Carlton's lawyer in Rockland is Phil Murphy, who said he will seek to have her released on bail pending the extradition proceeding. The case is before state Supreme Court Justice William Kelly.
Murphy said returning Carlton to Maryland could be hazardous, saying "from all objective measures she appears to have been subjected to abuse and torture while in the custody of Maryland."
"Nobody gets charged with 28 counts of child sex abuse and then sees the case dismissed if there was a credible case to begin with," Murphy said.
Murphy said he found the prosecution's position unsustainable on the assault charges, saying there's no evidence that the correction officer was hurt.
Before an extradition hearing can take place, the Maryland governor must send documents to New York's governor seeking Carlton's return.
No such papers have come to the Rockland District Attorney's Office, which will represent Maryland on the extradition issue, not the charges.
No comments:
Post a Comment