Friends of Justice

Dr. Bernard Rosenthal is a distinguished scholar and historian who is a leading expert on the Salem Witch Trials. While serving on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Reason and Justice, he became interested in the wrongful conviction in Lorain, Ohio of Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen.

Dr. Rosenthal befriended them both and spent years carefully researching the case.

Please read his just published book, Injustice in Ohio: The Wrongful Conviction of Allen and Smith.

Click here to order directly from the publisher.

The book is also available on Amazon.

photo credit: jim d’entremont

National Center for Reason and Justice ─ NCRJ

For immediate release: February 25, 2022

Contact: Bob Chatelle mgr@ncrj.org

Ohio DA dismisses all charges against Joseph Allen, one of the last people falsely imprisoned in 1990s daycare abuse panic

On February 25^th , Lorain County Judge Chris Cook granted a new-trial motion for Joseph Allen and his co-defendant, Nancy Smith. District Attorney J.D. Tomlinson then requested that charges be dismissed, and the judge granted his motion. This case is finally over.

In 1993 Smith, a 37-year-old white bus driver for the Lorain Ohio Head Start Program, was accused of taking a four-year-old girl to the house of a man named Joseph, where the child was allegedly physically and sexually abused. The mother contacted other parents and went to the media, causing a panic. More accusers emerged. Eventually Allen, an uneducated working-class Black man who did not know Smith, was arrested. No reliable evidence was produced, but both defendants were convicted and given long prison sentences.

In 2009, a judge reviewed the evidence and acquitted both. The DA appealed, and in 2013 Allen was sent back to prison, while Smith remained free. In all Smith was incarcerated for 15 years, Allen for 24.

In Granting the motion, Judge Cook said: “All of the evidence submitted in support of the motion for a new trial is new evidence…[the evidence] is compelling. The Grondin affidavits present a pattern of sinister manipulation by Margie [Grondin] to manufacture allegations of sexual abuse of children by Smith and Allen for Margie’s own financial gain.”

After the motion for new-trial was granted, DA Tomlinson directly addressed Smith and Allen: “I apologize to you, especially for what was done to you and your families, as a result of this ill-conceived prosecution. On behalf of the state of Ohio, I wish for nothing but the best for you and your loved ones. I hope that in the future, only happiness and good fortune will follow you.”

Both Smith and Allen made emotional statements after charges were dismissed. After her thanks to those who helped her, she also had something to say to her accuser and to her prosecutor: “To Margie Grondin, who orchestrated this horrible alleged crime that never happened and the other parents who thought that it was OK to follow suit with her, that one day you will answer for this…and to Jonathan Rosenbaum, my hope and prayers are that you will answer for this wrongful persecution that you put me and many others through and hopefully God will forgive you. But I want you to know I’ve never known such evil until that day 27 years ago, and it changed my life forever.”

The nonprofit National Center for Reason and Justice brought the case to public attention in 2002 and has been contributing to Smith’s and Allen’s legal, financial, and emotional support ever since. “We are overjoyed that Nancy and Joseph are both free,” said NCRJ Executive Director Bob Chatelle. “But we will not stop fighting until they are fully exonerated and compensated for the terrible wrong the state of Ohio perpetuated against them.”

The NCRJ works for rational, science-based child-protective policies and restorative approaches to serious harm. It fights against false accusations of harm to children and seeks to repeal draconian policies affecting those convicted of sexual crimes, a class of people widely shunned even by many who otherwise passionately defend civil and human rights. The NCRJ has been instrumental in securing freedom in other important cases, including Bernard Baran of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, The San Antonio Four, and Victor Rosario, of Lowell, Massachusetts.

For more information, visit www.ncrj.org

National Center for Reason and Justice  ─ NCRJ

For immediate release: December 22, 2021

Contact: Bob Chatelle  mgr@ncrj.org

The NCRJ hopeful for victory at last in the Nancy Smith-Joseph Allen Head Start abuse case

The National Center for Reason and Justice is encouraged by today’s action by Lorain, Ohio Judge Chris Cook in scheduling a hearing on the new-trial motion filed by Mark-Godsey of the Ohio Innocence Project and by Joseph Allen’s attorney, Richard Parsons. We are exceptionally pleased that this motion is unopposed by Lorain District Attorney, J.D. Tomlinson. And we rejoice that Joseph Allen today was released from prison on bond.

The NCRJ has been fighting for justice in this case since our founding in 2002. We had hoped the case had ended in 2009, when Judge James Burge examined the evidence, set the convictions aside, and acquitted both defendants.

Unfortunately, the prosecution appealed the acquittals to the Ohio Supreme Court, which reinstated the conviction. Nancy Smith was resentenced to time served. But Joseph Allen was returned to prison in 2013, where he has remained since.

Since 2013, NCRJ has focused on helping Joseph. We found him excellent attorneys, Paula Brown and Richard Parsons, and raised the money to pay them. We sent him commissary funds every month and paid for his family phone calls. Executive Director Bob Chatelle kept in constant contact him by mail, email, and telephone. We believed that keeping up his spirits was as important as getting him legal help.

NCRJ’s expertise is in investigating suspected false allegations of harm to children, including sexual abuse. Our support was instrumental in securing freedom in other important cases, including Bernard Baran of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, The San Antonio Four, and Victor Rosario, of Lowell, Massachusetts.

NCRJ is overjoyed that Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen are on the road to freedom and we hope exoneration.

But the road is long and hard, Anyone accused of hurting children is automatically considered the lowest of the low. Such people find it almost impossible to get help to preserve their due process rights, even from those who otherwise passionately defend civil and human rights.

This has to change. This is why NCRJ sponsors cases like the Smith-Allen  and others nationwide. We do this to help free innocent people and make the criminal justice system more rational, humane, and just. We do it so people can learn about the larger issues embedded in these cases, then confront them. What are these issues?

For one, what happened to Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen shows how easy it is in America for ordinary people to be falsely accused, denied due process, and banished from society. All kinds of ordinary people get caught up in our justice system. Some are more vulnerable than others.

Joseph Allen is a working-class black man. Bernard Baran was gay. Victor Rosario is Puerto Rican. The San Antonio Four are Latina lesbians. Justice is hardest to obtain for racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. Most of the cases NCRJ has sponsored fall into these categories.

As the criminal justice system can railroad the innocent, it tramples the civil and human rights of people who have committed crimes. Child sex abuse is a terrible crime. But using society’s revulsion for this crime, the system has employed sex offenders as a wedge to treat every accused person with increasing harshness both in prison and afterward—sometimes for a lifetime.

Even guilty people have human and due process rights. Yet even when they have served their time and paid their debt to society, they are typically banished from the community, undermining their ability to reintegrate as law-abiding people, and hurting their families and communities.

One form of banishment is the sex offender registry and accompanying restrictions on housing, work, travel, and social life. These policies do not protect children. In fact, studies show that they may put children at increased risk. These rules are often senselessly cruel.

More than two million people are in prison in the U.S. Per capita, and in pure numbers, we incarcerate more people than any other country. Many good people are disturbed by this. Many worry about the barbaric way that the accused and convicted get treated. But when confronted with people labeled as child abusers, many good people stop thinking.

This situation endangers us all. As long as we allow some people to be turned into pariahs, the justice system will be able to get away with injustice—denying due process to anyone and everyone.

That’s why our cases are so important. That’s why NCRJ is proud to support Nancy Smith, Joseph Allen, and many others.

For more information, visit www.ncrj.org