Jana Bradford, an elected prosecutor in rural Arkansas, allegedly used her legal knowledge and local connections to cover for her uncle Barry Walker, who pleaded guilty last year to raping and molesting 31 children, some of them repeatedly.
A civil lawsuit, filed in October, alleges Ms Bradford and other family members of Walker “circled the wagons” to protect him and knowingly failed to report his abuse, in an attempt to protect his thriving construction business and Ms Bradford’s political interests.
The family, according to the complaint, “worked collectively to develop a strategy to protect Walker with respect to the investigations because they knew a negative finding could harm the family’s reputation and political interests.”
“The people who knew about Barry are equally complicit in what happened to me and all those other girls,” one of the victims, now 22, told NBC News. “Every adult that was around, honestly. Nobody did s***. They failed us.”
Walker’s behaviours were publicly known for decades, and Ms Bradford worked assiduously to clear the 59-year-old’s name.
In March of 2000, Walker pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting a year girl, and got out a year later.
By 2004, another victim, a 3-year-old, said Walker had abused her, prompting a state police investigation. Ms Bradford petitioned the state to grant Walker clemency.
More allegations followed in 2006, 2010, and 2014, the last of which ended with Walker in jail.
Family members posted his $25,000 bail, hired a lawyer, paid his employees, and kept his business enterprises running. Ms Bradford wrote a letter to the top prosecutor in the area arguing the victim made up her allegations, and the official never charged Walker with a crime.
In 2019, Ms Bradford attempted to get Walker removed from the sex offender registry, even though, the lawsuit alleges, she wouldn’t let her own daughter be left alone with the man, who was often seen driving around town with girls or riding horses with them.
The lawsuit also alleges family members delayed reporting two girls’ abuse allegations until after an election year to protect Ms Bradford’s political ambitions.
“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,” an attorney for the prosecutor told NBC. “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.”
Walker is serving 39 life sentences, totalling 1,710 years in prison, with no chance of parole.
The case is considered one of the worst such series of crimes in state history.
