Dr. Robert Bruce Craft of Augusta, Ga., the child psychologist and amateur photographer, remains in prison. He remains in prison as a living testimony to the horrendous and malignant scheming of the local legal system.
Bruce Craft, now aged 61, is a kind, gentle and deeply thoughtful man with no criminal tendencies. As a practicing child psychologist, esteemed by his colleagues, he explored the innovative use of both still and video photography in his practice. But that activity left him open to sinister accusations. In the 25 years that Craft had been practicing psychology, nobody had made a complaint of inappropriate behavior either in his practice or his private life.
In early 1995, Craft was seeing a disturbed 3-year-old, who at a therapy session pulled down the front of his pants and appeared to saw on his erect penis with a plastic knife. Since the child had a questionable history and was likely to be the subject of a custody battle, Craft was interested in this behavior and photographed it for the clinical record.
The pictures were referred by the film processors to the FBI as possible evidence of child molestation. In October, 1996, despite Dr. Craft's explanation, search warrants were issued to enable the FBI to rake through the Craft residence, his car, and his offices. Thirty-seven thousand photos, mostly of family matters, travel, and scenery were confiscated.
Nothing further happened at that time and Craft, unaware that his continued photography would be regarded as illegal, continued to take pictures of children.
A year and a half later, in March 1998, after the FBI had questioned many local patients and their parents without hearing any complaints, they declined to prosecute the case themselves and turned it over to the GBI and the local DA. Craft was effectively declared guilty when, on the day after his arrest, he was denied bail.
At the time of the arrest, another search of his house was done, and thousands more photos that had been taken in the interim were scrutinized, but very few were seized.
In mid-April, Craft was released on bond, and he remained free until late January, 1999, when he was indicted and arrested again to await his trial in March, 2000.
Ultimately about 74,000 pictures were scrutinized by law enforcement, of which 115 were used as charges against him.
That means that for every "criminal" picture Craft had taken about 650 other pictures.
The legal system would have us believe that a man of higher than average intelligence would take 650 pictures in the hope of getting one that shows minimal exposure of a child's genitals?
At the bench trial, neither the thousands of pictures that had been trumpeted by the district attorney to be "too obscene to be described in a family newspaper" nor the "hundreds of pictures of naked children" were shown. They do not exist.
At trial, other than the investigators, the sole witness was a child who had spent six weekends as a guest in the Craft home over a period of about three years. His testimony would not have been accepted by experts in the field of child witnesses, as he had been told things by the FBI prior to their questioning of him. Even though he was "tainted," his testimony was hardly damning.
At the trial a number of "similar transactions" were presented, pictures of fully clothed children sitting spread-legged on the floor, in which the prosecution purported that the camera was deliberately centered on the crotch.
But it is only the perverted attitude of the prosecution that renders the pictures criminal. In the evil minds of the prosecution a glimpse of a small girl's underpants becomes "lewd exhibition of the genitals." The small boy whose penis is visible within the floppy leg of his pants is exhibiting "sexually explicit behavior." A picture of a clothed child sitting on the toilet making a silly face or of a child playing in the tub with no genitals visible becomes child pornography. A picture of a group of boys changing clothes in the woods after swimming in a stream must necessarily be sexually exciting. A picture of a fully clothed child was deemed to be lascivious, because their attention was drawn to "the crotch."
For people with a normal healthy view of things sexual, the pictures are innocuous. Some may perhaps be inappropriate, but they are certainly not criminal. Because they were deemed obscene by the judge as sole arbiter in the bench trial, they are by definition illegal. For this Craft faces essentially the rest of his life in prison.
An objective test for child pornography is the application of the "Dost factors."
If two or more of the factors are positive then a picture is deemed to be lewd: if the picture is centered on the child's genitalia; if the setting is sexually suggestive; if the child is naked or partially clothed; if the child appears to be sexually receptive, or the photo seems designed to be sexually exciting. None of the Craft pictures could be defined as obscene by the Dost factors.
Dost factors are "not the controlling authority" in this state. The Dost factors are accepted as a valid objective test of obscenity in many other states, but not in Georgia. So their application in the Craft case was rejected. With the absence of an objective standard, it becomes a matter of opinion whether a picture is obscene. It was to the advantage of the prosecution to arbitrarily define the Craft pictures as obscene.
The prosecution vigorously denied Craft access to the seized photos, so he was not able to place the "criminal" pictures in context and prove the innocuous circumstances. His defense was thus hampered.
As the trial unfolded it became more and more obvious that he was to be found guilty. Concerned that his house would be forfeited and his wife made homeless, Craft entered into a deal where the house would be immune from asset forfeiture in exchange for his not presenting a defense.
Craft was thus found guilty.
At sentencing, former patients and their parents lined up offering to testify that the children had not been molested, that he was a caring and effective therapist who didn't deserve to be imprisoned. Other psychologists and psychiatrists, several who were professors at the Medical College of Georgia, skilled and expert in the diagnosis of abnormal behavior, affirmed these views. None recognized any sign of pedophilia in Craft. Many suggested a sentence of time served.
But the expert opinion of the psychiatrists, several of whom had known him for decades, was rejected in the face of the power of the judge. Craft was sentenced to 20 years on each of the charges, to be served simultaneously.
Even though the judge had left clear potential for parole, subsequent dealings by the District Attorney with the parole board caused them to conclude that Dr. Craft should never be eligible for parole.
The Georgia Court of Appeals has overturned two-thirds of the convictions for "no evidence," but, because of the structure of the sentence, he still faces prison for 20 years.
A valuable, honorable, productive, and innocent member has been lost to society. There would seem to be no apparent reason for this persecution other than career enhancement for the members of the prosecution.
It is sometimes difficult to remember that the United States is the land of "Freedom and Justice."
Dr. Geoffrey King
GeoffKing@aol.com