CameronBasic

THE CAMERON TODD PAGE

The Basic Story

In March of 1997 Cameron Todd graduated From the Police Academy, near the top of his class. He had been on the Houston, Mississippi, Police Department for several months before attending The Academy but his graduation was the culmination of a dream he had held for a very long time. In August of the same year everything changed. He found himself suddenly on the other side of the law; arrested and charged with Capital Rape. He was devastated. He had never before been arrested for anything. He was sure it had to be a mistake and that it would soon be cleared up. That did not happen; instead he was formally arraigned and his bail was set at one hundred thousand dollars. This was soon reduced to fifty thousand but was still a staggering amount for his family to post. After the money was raised and he was released on bail he began to meet with his family, his friends and his Attorney to try to understand what had happened to him.

What he learned was puzzling. A group of people had been arrested for setting fire to a neighbor's home. The group included three adults and several teens. After the arrests, one of the teens, a thirteen year old girl, claimed to have had sex, several times, with him and with a Deputy Jailor from the county jail. She had named, in all, twelve individuals in the charges; four adults and several teens. One of the adults was a woman who shared the same residence as the girl. One of the really puzzling aspects of the nightmare was that he and the jailor were being linked in the headline stories of area newspapers and television news reports as ring-leaders of a major "Child Prostitution, Drug and Pornography" operation. The burned out trailer was said to have been headquarters for the group.He was not well acquainted with the jailor or with any of the others named in the indictment but, Mike Doss, the Chief Investigator for the Chickasaw County Sheriff's Department was being quoted as having said that there was plenty of "hard evidence" behind the charges and that they were the results of a 90 day investigation. The trailer fire was said to have been started by "some kind of altercation" between the adult members of the "Ring".What he learned was that he had just become the latest victim of what is, perhaps, the most ominous undercurrent in modern law enforcement. He was being prosecuted, not only for a crime he had not committed, but for a crime in which the Constitutional presumption of "Innocent until proven guilty" is replaced by "Guilty until proven innocent".

Officer Todd found that his case was not unique. The number of innocent people currently serving time for a crime they did not commit is alarming. Like most of us, Todd had assumed that "The System works" and that, if a person has been charged and convicted, he is probably guilty. That is not always the case and those who are convicted are not always there because of an "honest mistake" by law Enforcement officials or Prosecutors. There is a growing trend for Law Enforcement Officials to intentionally prosecute a person they know to be innocent. There are many cases now making their tedious way through the process of appeal and review which, to anyone with knowledge of the basic facts, are obviously fraudulent. Countering this ominous trend is a growing body of groups and organizations working (sometimes Pro Bono) to free the wrongly imprisoned.

One of the better known and more effective such groups is The Innocence Project. The project, founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, has been instrumental in obtaining freedom for more than 100 individuals who were serving long sentences for crimes of which they were innocent. The project has become a network of organizations across the country using new DNA technology to bring Justice to those who most deserve it.

In the weeks following his release on bail Cameron and his supporters became more hopeful. The obvious flaws in the case were coming to light almost on a daily basis. First, the crime scene had to be moved. The investigators had indicated that the alleged "ring" operated from the site of the arson fire but the residents of that trailer were not suspects in any investigations. The only crime which could be said to have occurred there being the arson. The primary suspects all lived in a frame house some distance away; except for the two police officers who, it was developed, had no connection whatever to the trailer or to it's destruction in the fire. Next, the "Prostitution, Drugs, and Pornography Ring" disappeared. No evidence could be found to support allegations of any sort of conspiracy to engage in prostitution, drug trafficking, or pornography. Soon the allegation that the whole thing was masterminded by the two officers acting in concert also was withdrawn when it became impossible to establish even the most tenuous of connections between them. They worked in different departments and did not move in the same social circles. The sheriff's department quietly dropped their assertion that "Cameron Todd had transported the deputy to a private residence, in his patrol car, for the purpose of engaging in illicit sex with a minor child, and then had stayed to watch". This was replaced with the allegation that each officer, acting on his own and without the knowledge of the other, had approached the child and engaged in acts of a sexual nature with her.The child's state appointed guardian, who was also one of her aunts, was said to have encouraged the wrongdoing and to have participated in the sexual encounters, along with another adult female. This new "group sex" angle grabbed the headlines for a while but later would be revealed to have been as much a fabrication as the previous stories.In a matter of weeks after the sensational headlines had begun it became apparent that no evidence had been found and that it was not likely that any more would turn up in the future. What the prosecution had was what they had started with; the statement of one troubled young woman alleging that she had been involved in sexual situations with several people including the two officers.

The prosecutor, District Attorney, Jim Hood and a local Department of Human Services Social Worker, Pammy Davidson, had proceeded on the assumption that "Children don't lie about this kind of thing", and possibly expected, at least in the beginning, to uncover corroborating evidence of a more substantial nature. Neither the District Attorney's office, The Department of Human Services, or the Sheriff's Office seemed inclined to investigate the possibility that the girl's testimony was unreliable.After having stated, for the cameras, that there was "plenty of hard evidence" and learning that they had been too hasty in making that declaration, they set out to either find or fabricate the evidence using whatever resources were available to them without regard for the principles of Truth or Justice. They decided to do "whatever it takes" to convict several people of crimes which none had committed . In doing that they stepped over the line separating the pursuit of justice from wrongful imprisonment.

False reports are especially problematic when made by children. We have a natural tendency to believe the children; "Why would they say this if it is not true?". In most cases it is true and this has given birth to the Myth, current with social workers, that, "Children don't lie about this kind of thing!" This simplistic thinking ignores the fact that they sometimes do lie! When we ask, "Why would they lie?", we should make some effort to learn whether there is anything in their circumstances that would be a motive to lie.

Chickasaw County officials did not attempt to answer the question, "Why would she lie?" but just rushed to judgement on the basis of her unsubstantiated allegations. If the Social Workers, The Prosecutor's office, the Sheriff's Dept. investigators or the State Police investigators had adopted deliberate, systematic and thorough approach to uncovering the facts behind the allegations... they would have saved a number of people a great deal of unnecessary pain. All professionals in the field know that, when investigating accusations of sexual misconduct, there are certain "Red Flags" to look for; elements of the accusation that should serve as a caution to the investigator; and the presence of one or more of these well established indicators should be reason when investigating accusations of sexual misconduct, there are certain "Red Flags" to look for; elements of the accusation that should serve as a caution to the investigator;and the presence of one or more of these well established indicators should be reason enough to delay proceeding with charges until the doubt is removed. John J. Baeza lists sixteen of these "Red Flags" in the Baeza False Report Index. This index includes false reports by either children or adults so we would not expect all the indicators to be present in any one case. Seven of the sixteen are very obviously present in this case. (See numbers 3,10,11,12,14,15,and 16 in the INDEX) If the professionals in Chickasaw County did even the most basic preliminary examination of the facts, they knew that they were dealing with a false report. For reasons of their own they set out to prove that it was true.

To return to the specific question, "Why would she lie?", the answers are abundant and would have been clear to any unbiased observer. She was a 13 year old who had never experienced childhood. Her Mother and Stepfather were in prison for sexually molesting her some years earlier in another state. (Red Flag #11 from the BAFRI Index). She was "in the system" and had been bounced around among foster homes and group homes since being taken from her mother. Besides the pressures any 13 year old girl goes through with adjusting to her new status as a young woman, she found herself in a completely untenable position as to family and social situation. Her foster home, at the time, was with an Aunt in Houston. Life in the home was chaotic, to say the least. Police logs show that there was hardly a day while the girl was in the home that one or more cars were not dispatched to quell "domestic disturbances" there. Family and friends report that she was on the phone daily to "The Welfare" complaining about living conditions. She is said to have spent as much as an hour at a time on the pay phone with the social worker, reporting the incidence of alcohol and drug abuse and violence in the home. She claimed that there was no regular meal time, no regular bed time, and no possibility of doing homework in the chaotic environment. She was concerned, too, for a younger foster sister she had grown very close to. They both wanted out! The 13 year-old had another aunt in the same town whose home, she believed, would be a more loving, nurturing environment and would provide something more like a stable home environment. The 10 year-old foster sister had a Grandmother who wanted her and could provide a suitable home; unfortunately, for the child, the Grandmother was in another state. Her complaints were brushed off as just the whining of an unhappy child when one phone call to local police would have furnished evidence to back up everything she was saying! She was ignored by those who had responsibility for her well being.

When both girls were picked up in the aftermath of the arson they were determined never to go back to that home again. She had already complained to the bureaucracy about the two of them being forced to remain immersed in the atmosphere of drugs, alcohol, sex, and violence which prevailed in the "Social Worker Approved" environment they lived in. She needed a weapon with more power and she knew where to find it. She wrote out a statement outlining the problems in the home but started it with a list of people with whom she claimed to have had sex. She gave, as the reason for the statement, that she wanted to be moved to live with her other aunt. (Red Flag #12 from the BAFRI Index.) She had, more than once in the past, used a false report of sexual abuse to make "The System" sit up and listen. (Red Flag #10). When her social worker took her to the Court House to file the formal charges, they went with documents recanting charges she had recently made against another man in the area, (Jimmy Anders) who was out on bail awaiting trial, and one charging an impressive list of unsuspecting new people.

There is no excuse with which to justify making false accusations of this magnitude. None will be offered here; but, we will try to approach the situation with at least a little understanding of why it happened and what may have been her motivation. She was a thirteen year-old girl afflicted with all the emotional excesses and instabilities common to that age. She and her foster sister were trapped in a Hellish environment from which, it seemed, there was no escape. The police were no help, they had been called repeatedly, several times she had placed the call herself. The social workers were no help... they refused to believe her in spite of the fact that her charges could be corroborated by official police reports. She had gone "through proper channels" only to find that it is sometimes an exercise in futility leading to utter frustration. She finally gave up and did something that she knew would work. She probably knew it was wrong... even a thirteen year old knows something about the difference in right and wrong... but, she would have believed that she could repair the damage later and make everything "all-right".If it is difficult to excuse her behavior in this-- it is impossible to make excuses for the professionals to whom she appealed, in vain, for help. When they knew she had given them a false report and knew that they should look behind the allegations to find her motivation and steer her in the right direction to extricate herself from the situation, they chose, instead, to exploit her misery to further their own selfish agendas.

The investigators found no "hard evidence"; no physical evidence, no DNA, medical examination revealed nothing, there was no corroborating eye-witness testimony. They had her words alone and the probability that her testimony was suspect was beyond doubt. They did not try to answer the question, "Why did she lie?" because that would have lead to the recognition that she lied because the system failed her, utterly and completely, and would have indicated that they should be trying to help solve her REAL problems instead posing for the cameras and pretending that their brilliant detective work had uncovered a major scandal. They should have recognized the fact that the allegations were simply a tool she had been forced to use and meant to discard when the job was done.

Cameron Todd has spent more than four years of his life in a sort of legal limbo fighting to prove his innocence in a case where he knows he is "Guilty until proven innocent", and his accuser has spent the same time in her own legal limbo as a ward of the state, held in "protective custody" and cut off from family and friends. The accuser lost her childhood to the exploitation of the adults who held the power in her life in those years, and she has lost her teen years to the exploitation of those placed in power in her life by the state of Mississippi. Accuser and accused are both victims of official corruption and incompetence run amuck!

Todd has had two trials and one Supreme Court (Mississippi) appeal and is waiting for the results of another appeal. Time will tell. The truth is out there and will be discovered and revealed.



	THE CAMERON TODD PAGE

			The Basic Story In March of 1997 Cameron Todd graduated From the Police Academy, near the top of his class. He had been on the Houston, Mississippi, Police Department for several months before attending The Academy but his graduation was the culmination of a dream he had held for a very long time. In August of the same year everything changed. He found himself suddenly on the other side of the law; arrested and charged with Capital Rape. He was devastated. He had never before been arrested for anything. He was sure it had to be a mistake and that it would soon be cleared up. That did not happen; instead he was formally arraigned and his bail was set at one hundred thousand dollars. This was soon reduced to fifty thousand but was still a staggering amount for his family to post. After the money was raised and he was released on bail he began to meet with his family, his friends and his Attorney to try to understand what had happened to him. What he learned was puzzling. A group of people had been arrested for setting fire to a neighbor's home. The group included three adults and several teens. After the arrests, one of the teens, a thirteen year old girl, claimed to have had sex, several times, with him and with a Deputy Jailor from the county jail. She had named, in all, twelve individuals in the charges; four adults and several teens. One of the adults was a woman who shared the same residence as the girl. One of the really puzzling aspects of the nightmare was that he and the jailor were being linked in the headline stories of area newspapers and television news reports as ring-leaders of a major "Child Prostitution, Drug and Pornography" operation. The burned out trailer was said to have been headquarters for the group.He was not well acquainted with the jailor or with any of the others named in the indictment but, Mike Doss, the Chief Investigator for the Chickasaw County Sheriff's Department was being quoted as having said that there was plenty of "hard evidence" behind the charges and that they were the results of a 90 day investigation. The trailer fire was said to have been started by "some kind of altercation" between the adult members of the "Ring".What he learned was that he had just become the latest victim of what is, perhaps, the most ominous undercurrent in modern law enforcement. He was being prosecuted, not only for a crime he had not committed, but for a crime in which the Constitutional presumption of "Innocent until proven guilty" is replaced by "Guilty until proven innocent". Officer Todd found that his case was not unique. The number of innocent people currently serving time for a crime they did not commit is alarming. Like most of us, Todd had assumed that "The System works" and that, if a person has been charged and convicted, he is probably guilty. That is not always the case and those who are convicted are not always there because of an "honest mistake" by law Enforcement officials or Prosecutors. There is a growing trend for Law Enforcement Officials to intentionally prosecute a person they know to be innocent. There are many cases now making their tedious way through the process of appeal and review which, to anyone with knowledge of the basic facts, are obviously fraudulent. Countering this ominous trend is a growing body of groups and organizations working (sometimes Pro Bono) to free the wrongly imprisoned. One of the better known and more effective such groups is The Innocence Project. The project, founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, has been instrumental in obtaining freedom for more than 100 individuals who were serving long sentences for crimes of which they were innocent. The project has become a network of organizations across the country using new DNA technology to bring Justice to those who most deserve it. In the weeks following his release on bail Cameron and his supporters became more hopeful. The obvious flaws in the case were coming to light almost on a daily basis. First, the crime scene had to be moved. The investigators had indicated that the alleged "ring" operated from the site of the arson fire but the residents of that trailer were not suspects in any investigations. The only crime which could be said to have occurred there being the arson. The primary suspects all lived in a frame house some distance away; except for the two police officers who, it was developed, had no connection whatever to the trailer or to it's destruction in the fire. Next, the "Prostitution, Drugs, and Pornography Ring" disappeared. No evidence could be found to support allegations of any sort of conspiracy to engage in prostitution, drug trafficking, or pornography. Soon the allegation that the whole thing was masterminded by the two officers acting in concert also was withdrawn when it became impossible to establish even the most tenuous of connections between them. They worked in different departments and did not move in the same social circles. The sheriff's department quietly dropped their assertion that "Cameron Todd had transported the deputy to a private residence, in his patrol car, for the purpose of engaging in illicit sex with a minor child, and then had stayed to watch". This was replaced with the allegation that each officer, acting on his own and without the knowledge of the other, had approached the child and engaged in acts of a sexual nature with her.The child's state appointed guardian, who was also one of her aunts, was said to have encouraged the wrongdoing and to have participated in the sexual encounters, along with another adult female. This new "group sex" angle grabbed the headlines for a while but later would be revealed to have been as much a fabrication as the previous stories.In a matter of weeks after the sensational headlines had begun it became apparent that no evidence had been found and that it was not likely that any more would turn up in the future. What the prosecution had was what they had started with; the statement of one troubled young woman alleging that she had been involved in sexual situations with several people including the two officers. The prosecutor, District Attorney, Jim Hood and a local Department of Human Services Social Worker, Pammy Davidson, had proceeded on the assumption that "Children don't lie about this kind of thing", and possibly expected, at least in the beginning, to uncover corroborating evidence of a more substantial nature. Neither the District Attorney's office, The Department of Human Services, or the Sheriff's Office seemed inclined to investigate the possibility that the girl's testimony was unreliable.After having stated, for the cameras, that there was "plenty of hard evidence" and learning that they had been too hasty in making that declaration, they set out to either find or fabricate the evidence using whatever resources were available to them without regard for the principles of Truth or Justice. They decided to do "whatever it takes" to convict several people of crimes which none had committed . In doing that they stepped over the line separating the pursuit of justice from wrongful imprisonment. False reports are especially problematic when made by children. We have a natural tendency to believe the children; "Why would they say this if it is not true?". In most cases it is true and this has given birth to the Myth, current with social workers, that, "Children don't lie about this kind of thing!" This simplistic thinking ignores the fact that they sometimes do lie! When we ask, "Why would they lie?", we should make some effort to learn whether there is anything in their circumstances that would be a motive to lie. Chickasaw County officials did not attempt to answer the question, "Why would she lie?" but just rushed to judgement on the basis of her unsubstantiated allegations. If the Social Workers, The Prosecutor's office, the Sheriff's Dept. investigators or the State Police investigators had adopted deliberate, systematic and thorough approach to uncovering the facts behind the allegations... they would have saved a number of people a great deal of unnecessary pain. All professionals in the field know that, when investigating accusations of sexual misconduct, there are certain "Red Flags" to look for; elements of the accusation that should serve as a caution to the investigator; and the presence of one or more of these well established indicators should be reason when investigating accusations of sexual misconduct, there are certain "Red Flags" to look for; elements of the accusation that should serve as a caution to the investigator;and the presence of one or more of these well established indicators should be reason enough to delay proceeding with charges until the doubt is removed. John J. Baeza lists sixteen of these "Red Flags" in the Baeza False Report Index. This index includes false reports by either children or adults so we would not expect all the indicators to be present in any one case. Seven of the sixteen are very obviously present in this case. (See numbers 3,10,11,12,14,15,and 16 in the INDEX) If the professionals in Chickasaw County did even the most basic preliminary examination of the facts, they knew that they were dealing with a false report. For reasons of their own they set out to prove that it was true. To return to the specific question, "Why would she lie?", the answers are abundant and would have been clear to any unbiased observer. She was a 13 year old who had never experienced childhood. Her Mother and Stepfather were in prison for sexually molesting her some years earlier in another state. (Red Flag #11 from the BAFRI Index). She was "in the system" and had been bounced around among foster homes and group homes since being taken from her mother. Besides the pressures any 13 year old girl goes through with adjusting to her new status as a young woman, she found herself in a completely untenable position as to family and social situation. Her foster home, at the time, was with an Aunt in Houston. Life in the home was chaotic, to say the least. Police logs show that there was hardly a day while the girl was in the home that one or more cars were not dispatched to quell "domestic disturbances" there. Family and friends report that she was on the phone daily to "The Welfare" complaining about living conditions. She is said to have spent as much as an hour at a time on the pay phone with the social worker, reporting the incidence of alcohol and drug abuse and violence in the home. She claimed that there was no regular meal time, no regular bed time, and no possibility of doing homework in the chaotic environment. She was concerned, too, for a younger foster sister she had grown very close to. They both wanted out! The 13 year-old had another aunt in the same town whose home, she believed, would be a more loving, nurturing environment and would provide something more like a stable home environment. The 10 year-old foster sister had a Grandmother who wanted her and could provide a suitable home; unfortunately, for the child, the Grandmother was in another state. Her complaints were brushed off as just the whining of an unhappy child when one phone call to local police would have furnished evidence to back up everything she was saying! She was ignored by those who had responsibility for her well being. When both girls were picked up in the aftermath of the arson they were determined never to go back to that home again. She had already complained to the bureaucracy about the two of them being forced to remain immersed in the atmosphere of drugs, alcohol, sex, and violence which prevailed in the "Social Worker Approved" environment they lived in. She needed a weapon with more power and she knew where to find it. She wrote out a statement outlining the problems in the home but started it with a list of people with whom she claimed to have had sex. She gave, as the reason for the statement, that she wanted to be moved to live with her other aunt. (Red Flag #12 from the BAFRI Index.) She had, more than once in the past, used a false report of sexual abuse to make "The System" sit up and listen. (Red Flag #10). When her social worker took her to the Court House to file the formal charges, they went with documents recanting charges she had recently made against another man in the area, (Jimmy Anders) who was out on bail awaiting trial, and one charging an impressive list of unsuspecting new people. There is no excuse with which to justify making false accusations of this magnitude. None will be offered here; but, we will try to approach the situation with at least a little understanding of why it happened and what may have been her motivation. She was a thirteen year-old girl afflicted with all the emotional excesses and instabilities common to that age. She and her foster sister were trapped in a Hellish environment from which, it seemed, there was no escape. The police were no help, they had been called repeatedly, several times she had placed the call herself. The social workers were no help... they refused to believe her in spite of the fact that her charges could be corroborated by official police reports. She had gone "through proper channels" only to find that it is sometimes an exercise in futility leading to utter frustration. She finally gave up and did something that she knew would work. She probably knew it was wrong... even a thirteen year old knows something about the difference in right and wrong... but, she would have believed that she could repair the damage later and make everything "all-right".If it is difficult to excuse her behavior in this-- it is impossible to make excuses for the professionals to whom she appealed, in vain, for help. When they knew she had given them a false report and knew that they should look behind the allegations to find her motivation and steer her in the right direction to extricate herself from the situation, they chose, instead, to exploit her misery to further their own selfish agendas. The investigators found no "hard evidence"; no physical evidence, no DNA, medical examination revealed nothing, there was no corroborating eye-witness testimony. They had her words alone and the probability that her testimony was suspect was beyond doubt. They did not try to answer the question, "Why did she lie?" because that would have lead to the recognition that she lied because the system failed her, utterly and completely, and would have indicated that they should be trying to help solve her REAL problems instead posing for the cameras and pretending that their brilliant detective work had uncovered a major scandal. They should have recognized the fact that the allegations were simply a tool she had been forced to use and meant to discard when the job was done. Cameron Todd has spent more than four years of his life in a sort of legal limbo fighting to prove his innocence in a case where he knows he is "Guilty until proven innocent", and his accuser has spent the same time in her own legal limbo as a ward of the state, held in "protective custody" and cut off from family and friends. The accuser lost her childhood to the exploitation of the adults who held the power in her life in those years, and she has lost her teen years to the exploitation of those placed in power in her life by the state of Mississippi. Accuser and accused are both victims of official corruption and incompetence run amuck! Todd has had two trials and one Supreme Court (Mississippi) appeal and is waiting for the results of another appeal. Time will tell. The truth is out there and will be discovered and revealed.