A top Arkansas prosecutor has been accused of using “her clout and legal skills” to protect her longtime pedophile uncle.
The prosecutor, Jana Bradford, worked as a part-time deputy prosecutor in Pike County for more than two decades before being elected last year “as chief prosecutor in a four-county judicial district,” according to NBC News.
But just 16 days after she won the election, something extraordinary happened.
“[I]nvestigators from the state and county, responding to new allegations from three girls, seized a cache of more than 400 homemade videos and thousands of photos and downloaded images of child pornography from [her uncle’s] residence and arrested him,” NBC News reported Saturday.
Her uncle, Barry Walker, has since been convicted (AGAIN) and sentenced this time to 1,710 years in prison.
Meanwhile, Bradford has been named in a civil suit filed by Walker’s victims.
“The lawsuit includes allegations that Walker’s relatives and a former girlfriend intentionally delayed reporting two girls’ sex abuse claims last year to avoid hurting Bradford’s election chances,” according to NBC News.
“The lawsuit also details Bradford’s repeated legal efforts over the years to protect and defend her uncle. It contends she wouldn’t allow her own daughter to be left alone with him, but failed to warn other parents that he was a sex offender who posed danger to their children.”
“You don’t rape this many girls this many times in a small Arkansas town unless someone is running interference for you,” David Carter, a lawyer for the victims, said.
The tragic irony is that Bradford had run for office as a tough-on-crime prosecutor.
“Last year, while campaigning for the top prosecutor’s job in the rural district that surrounds this close-knit river town, native daughter Jana Bradford cited a tough-on-crime record that she said had brought the worst offenders to justice and comfort to their victims,” NBC News notes.
“The most important thing that I’m able to do is relate to our victims. The child who has been molested by her parents, I’ve held her hand before she testified,” she reportedly said in her own words.
Erin Cassinelli, Bradford’s attorney, has for her part said that her client allegedly never knew about her uncle’s abusive ways.
Bradford vehemently denies she had any idea that her uncle had continued to prey on girls after a 2000 rape conviction. Her attorney said she was “horrified” to learn of his “depraved acts against children.”
— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 13, 2023
“Ms. Bradford denies in the most emphatic terms possible that she knew Barry Walker was molesting children or that she did anything whatsoever to conceal his depraved behavior,” she said in an emailed statement to NBC News.
“Since Ms. Bradford did not even know about Barry Walker’s continuing criminal acts, she certainly cannot be held responsible for his actions and the harm he caused,” she added.
The lawsuit says otherwise. It says, for example, that Bradford and other family members frequently “saw prepubescent females riding in Barry’s truck around Glenwood, riding horses with Barry at the fairgrounds, hanging out at Barry’s house and regularly spending the night,” yet they did nothing to intervene.
The lawsuit also accuses Bradford and two of Walker’s siblings of having discussed “how it was strange how Barry always had young girls around him,” especially since he was already a registered sex offender.
His original sex offense traces back to 1999.
“In February 1999, Walker was a married Army veteran and ex-Air Force flight surgeon practicing medicine in Fort Smith, Arkansas, when an 8-year-old girl told her mother that ‘Dr. Walker had touched her in ways that made her feel uncomfortable,’ according to charging papers,” NBC News notes.
“Walker, then 35, and his wife had been over to the home of the girl’s parents for dinner. At some point during the evening, when he and the girl were alone in a home library, Walker sexually assaulted her, the court records say. The girl later told an investigator Walker also had ‘rubbed her privates on two previous occasions.'”
He was eventually charged with child sexual abuse, pleaded no contest, and was sentenced to five years behind bars. He was also forced to register as a sex offender, his wife divorced him, and he lost his medical license.
Walker was accused of abuse again four years later. That same year, Bradford reportedly helped him apply to then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, for “executive clemency” for his 2000 conviction. Huckabee denied the request.
When Walker was jailed in 2014 after yet another accusation — this time from a 4-year-old girl — Bradford and other family members reportedly posted his bond, hired a lawyer for him, and kept his business running by paying his employees.
“She was actively working to protect her uncle against these claims even while she was a deputy prosecutor,” Carter said.
But even that’s putting it lightly.
“In response to the 4-year-old’s claims in 2014, Bradford sent a letter disputing them to Blake Batson, then the top prosecutor in neighboring Clark County, where her uncle lived. In it, Bradford referred to a private polygraph test she had Walker take, accused the girl’s parents of concocting the claims and contended that Walker never had been alone with the girl,” according to NBC News.
But it gets worse. Much worse.
Another four years later, Bradford tried to get her uncle cleared from Arkansas’ sex registry — despite him having been accused of sexually abusing so many children — by arguing that, among other things, he didn’t pose a danger to others.
This particular claim “may well be the falsest claim ever made in a legal filing in the State of Arkansas,” the victims’ lawsuit against Bradford reads.
Note that Bradford hasn’t been charged with a crime herself. However, there is reportedly an ongoing open investigation into her and other “secondary targets.”
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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