#270 Maggie Freleng with Karla Baday

A note for listeners, this episode contains discussion of alleged child sexual abuse. Please alsome with caution and care.

Hey, may hey, Jason, you know, I'm so glad you're focusing on women this season.

Absolutely, and so many of those women are in prison for crimes that never.

Happens, times that never even happened.

Crime.

Yeah, And I think it's especially issues that women deal with, you know, being persecuted for being gay or you know, being sex trafficked. But I think in these instances and these wrongful convictions, especially with the no crime convictions, it happens to women a lot.

They like you being arrested for sexual abuse. In Maria medinezquid, I said, please find out the truth because I didn't do none of these things. Oh are you sure you should? I say yes, I am, Yes, I am. Can you please find out the truth.

From Lava for Good? This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today Carlo Badet. In late January of two thousand and two, twenty four year old Carla Badet was invited to visit her ex girlfriend Maria Medina in Armona, in California's San Joaquin Valley. It was Maria's birthday, and Carla loved spending time with Maria's four young children, so she accepted the invitation. She stayed for a week or so

Carla is just a happy spirit, That's what I am. You know, a happy spirit in somebody who cares and loves people. And she just loved being alive and being me. I'm Carla Baday from Honduras, forty four years.

Old and how long were you incarcerated seventeen years.

Carla Badey was born in Honduras on June seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, to Julio Francisco Salgado and Sonya Mariciella in a little town called Soyo. Carla grew up the fifth of seven children. She was especially close with her youngest sibling.

My name is Joseba Day. I am Carla's little sister, Jisa.

Can you tell me what growing up in Honduras was like with Carla?

Well, when I was in Honduras, I was ten or twelve years old when Carla leave my country, and I remember her. She was happy. She was as long as I remember. She was so caring about us, my nieces and nephews, they were babies, and you know, as a family, I love her.

What do you remember? You know when she left? Because Carla left to go to the United States. I mean, do you understand what was going on or why she was leaving at that time?

Not at that time, I realized when I get older, oh my god, I'm about to cry. I know she lives because our country was her for her. I do remember that she was fighting a lot with my mom in Oh my goodness, I'm sorry.

Carla wasn't happy in Honduras.

When I was growing up, I knew that I was different, and I was like six seven years old, I knew I was different. And then I started knowing that I didn't like boys because everybody was like, oh, you like this boy? Do you like this boy? And I'm like, no, I like the girl. You know.

From a young age, Carla knew she was gay, but in Honduras she couldn't be herself.

Being in that country, you cannot say too much about your sexuality because it's just a Catholic, you know, and they don't like gay people over there. You can get killed, you can get rape, you can get do a lot of things.

Carlo says, from the time she was fifteen to twenty years old, she was harassed by local.

Gangs, the gangs from the town, and they were like, okay, so you look like you're gay and stuff like that. So they were trying to rape me and trying to you know, abuse me or stuff like that and fight me or whatever. So I decided to leave. That was my time to leave, because if not, I would have got killed over there. So and I came to the United States. When I was twenty years old.

In January nine, ten ninety nine, Carla left everything she knew in Honduras to journey to the United States.

That was scary. I went. I went to the border of Salvador, then from Estalbador to Watela Watermela in Mexico, Mexico to the United States. So when I when I'm crossing the border, it's a lot of things going on, and that you you get assaulted by people in there with the mascons. And I was like eight days without eating. My feet were bleeding from walking so much out in shower. I had even lies in my head, you know, and it takes in my body because I was sleeping on

Carla ended up crossing through the desert with some food and water, but very little. She became incredibly thirsty and at some point she found a pot of dirty water that cows used.

Would they do their their necessities? And I'm like, I'm going to have to drink this water. So that's what I did. I went and got the water and I started drinking the water, even though it was gross, but it was I feel like I was dehydrated, completely dehydrated because it was it was hot.

Finally, Carla made it through the desert and into the United States. She arrived in February of nineteen ninety nine, and she felt safe from the dangers she faced in Honduras. As the year wore on, Carla settled into her new life as an openly gay woman in the United States. She was looking forward to having a family and kids and just a normal life. She started dating too. One night, she was in Harmona and went out to a bar with a and there she met someone.

I was used to go play pool because I like to play pool, and then I met Maria.

At first, Carla wasn't interested in pursuing anything with Maria, but Maria was persistent.

Finally I got with her, you know, so it's like finally I said, okay, you know, it's like, let's do it. So I started dating her and then we started dating and then moving with her. She was living in her house with four kids, and so I moved in with her. And you wanted kid, you wanted a family. I wanted a family and she had kids.

So at first it was happy.

At first, yes, Carla and Maria enjoyed their time together for the first few months. Carla loved the four kids, Tony, Corina, Graciela, and Fabian. She loved being a mom to them. But things between her and Maria eventually started to change.

And then everything became like an obsession or I don't know what it was, but it was like controlling, more controlling, and it's like she was not allowing me to talk to my family in the phone, because not everybody from my family was his. She's my brother. But I was calling Honduras. She was not allowing me to talk to my family. She was not allowed me to go to the store by myself. I had to go with one

Carla lived like this for months. After about a year and a half, they broke up. At this point, Carla says Maria was a heavy methemphetamine user and many aspects of the relationship had become unbearable. By this time, Carla's mother had also moved to the US, which helped Carla to realize home wasn't necessarily with Maria.

So I left. I left from her house to my mom's house, back to La.

Some time went by, then in late January of two thousand and two, Maria invited Carla back to celebrate her birthday. Carla was excited to see the children, who she cared for dearly, so she accepted the invitation. She stayed there for a little over a week and then returned to La.

And then an afternoon, my mom was telling me Maria, I been calling you, Maria being calling you. I said, okay, so I'll call you back. I said yes, he said, you abuse my kids. I said, excuse me, and she's like yes, I said, you should be calling the police. You don't call me, you call the police.

And then Carla says Maria threatened her.

She said, if you're not with me, I will kill you or you will be in prison forever. That's what the two thread that she gave me. And then so said, well, you can do whatever, you know. I know I'm innocent and you can do your part, you know. So later that week she did she called the police and then later that week two officers came to visit mea La.

The officers took her down to the station for questioning under the allegations that she abused Maria's kids. They told her the kids said that while Maria was at the store with her eleven year old son Tony, Carla sexually molested the other children, Carina, Graciela Fabian, who were seven, six, and four at the time. The detectives who interviewed her were Jeff Torres and Mark Lusk, but their questions were

How did you feel when they were asking you about your sex toys and your sex life.

It was very embarrassing, especially because they were all men. It was I'm the only female in there, so they were all men, and they were all laughing when they were interrogating me in the room. It was like laughing and she's talking among themselves in English. I didn't know because the translator was not translated what they were saying.

Carla needed a translator present because at the time she didn't speak much English.

So they was just laughing about stuff, and I'm like looking at you know, So it was very embarrassing. They were so like eager to know things to how do you use it? And how many times? And what do you guys did, and it's like it was just very uncomfortable. So they were telling me that I abuse kids and the three kids and Maria and like that. And then I was like, whoa, you know. I said, please find out the truth because I didn't do none of these things. And then so, oh, are you sure? Are you should?

From there, Carla left and went back to her mom's house. About a month later, she says, Maria decided to visit her in La. Despite her allegations against Carla, I was.

Going to the store with Maria when police came all everywhere, you know, and they like, they like, come my name, and then so so police and everybody was she's there, you know, and I'm like okay. They're like, you're being arrested for sexual abusing Maria Medinez kids. I'm like okay. So she was there with me, and then they put handcuffs on me and they put me in a police car.

On March twenty ninth, two thousand and two, Carla was read her Miranda rights and officially arrested and holding Custoday, on May third, she was charged with multiple counts of child sexual abuse. Carla's little sister, Dulce, knows she didn't do this.

I know she has a pure heart and she's not capable of a horrible thing like that. She was caring about us, about my nieces and nephews. I don't believe that they cool think that my sister was capable of that horrible thing.

This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and in the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and

He was always telling me, I'm gonna go visit you to talk with you about the case. Never did not one time. The only time that he spoke with me was at the moment of my trial, five minutes prior to that, and he said, are you innocent? I said, one hundred percent. This is what he say. My wife is at the hospital, so my head is over there. That's what he said. When when he said he was his head was on his wife's hospital, not me, I was like, whoa you know.

Holgren would eventually be disbarred for reasons unrelated to Carlos. Without a rigorous defense, Carla was unsurprisingly found guilty after only two days of trial. She was sentenced to forty five years to life.

When you're in court and they sentence you, you are being sentenced not for being a murderer or a robber, for being a child molester.

Yes, what does that feel like? It was horrible. It was painful because I love the skits so much and I wanted to be a parent. And then she's thinking that you abuse somebody so innocent, and then they were saying that I did that.

When she got to prison, Carla felt hopeless. She had escaped under US to come to the US to be free of persecution, only to be arrested for crime she maintains she did not commit.

I was angry. I was angry not at the kids. I was angry at the law for not finding out the truth. So I was angry at the United States because they said, this is the United States, you know, And if I'm talking about Honduras, I will they can do whatever they want. But in the United States they find out the truth and they didn't.

Her initial years in prison were bleak. Living in that environment was scary, and she still didn't speak any English, so she couldn't read any of her own documents to figure out how to help herself. By this time, Dulce had also made it to the US, and she was doing her best to try and help her sister out.

I tried to look for help. I tried to hire an attorney. But when I get here and I went to that first appointment with the attorney, they say I need fifty thousand dollars to start with the case. And that was super hard.

What did you do when this attorney said fifty thousand dollars? Did you think I can get that or did you think? You know we're doomed?

At that time, I couldn't do anything. I was new to the country. I didn't know about God fundments, I didn't know about anything. I just say, I cannot afford that amount of money. We work really hard, but we cannot afford fifty thousand dollars.

But Carla knew one way she might be able to get help.

Had you ever thought thought about wrongful convictions before those?

Uh?

No, never. So I learned that when I went when I got to prison, and then so I used to watch CSI and stuff like that, and the you know, the in Spanish, of course, and then I always heard about Innocent Project and you know, but I didn't think it was true.

At the prison, Carla made a connection with the California Coalition for Women's Prisoners. She asked them to send her information on organizations that might help her.

So they did. They sent me a full pack of a lot of innocence projects. You know, but at that moment, I don't speaking English, so I say that paper. I say the paper work until I learned English.

Eventually, Carla settled in and her perseverance kept her moving forward even while in prison.

I overcame every obstacle in there is. It was up to me, you know, and what I was in there. I didn't let the walls consume me. I allow myself to expand myself, and they're like, get into I am facilitated for domestic violence. I earned my high school diploma and my AAD degree in arts and humanities.

She also found a purpose in offering friendship to other incarcerated women.

So that was keeping me sane in there, seeing other people smiling, and she's talking to people, and then she's like, you know a lot of times I had a friend who said, did you know her? I don't need to know her, what about she's going through something. I'm just gonna say hi, good morning, how are you You can change somebody's life in that moment, you know. So that was my my thing, was changing somebody's life every day.

Carla was doing okay enough in prison, but the rest of her family was broken without her.

Oh my goodness, it is hard for me thinking about my sister in that place, not being with us on Christmas, on my birthdays, we couldn't hug her with by that pass, and not sharing with her a lot of beautiful moments that we had when I had my first kid. It hurts my heart.

Despite the distance from her family, Carla continued to strive, and that included learning English. With language as her tool, she was finally able to read the research documents on innocence PRIs she saved all those years ago, and when she did, she reached out to the Northern California Innocence Project.

My name's Catherine Boyle and I'm a volunteer attorney with the Northern California Innocence Project.

Catherine is one of the attorneys overseeing Carla's case at the NZIP, along with its co founder and executive director Linda Starr. Catherine says the first thing they did when they read Carla's letter was to try to obtain as much information about the case as they could, but unfortunately the only thing they could get was the trial transcripts.

Even though there was not very much information that we had was that it looked like she had been wrongfully convicted and that there was bias against her based on her sexual orientation as well as her status as an undocumented immigrant.

Can you elaborate on that a little bit? So, how was their bias against her in both of those ways?

Yes, so the bias against her. It kind of pervaded the case in many different ways. One of the things that came out in the transcript was that both Carla's own attorney as well as the district attorney emphasized her status as a lesbian and the fact that she was in a lesbian relationship throughout the trial, even though it was totally irrelevant to the issues at hand. So that

Given the circumstances, the NCIP took Carla's case, believing in her innocence and botched trial.

The younger daughter testified that Carla didn't touch her at all, and the older daughter testified inconsistently with what she had said at other times. And yet Carla's attorney did not pick up on any of that, nor did he cross examine the nurse expert or get an expert on behalf of Carla to testify that there was no basis in medical science for what the nurse was attesting to.

Was there a reason why he didn't call his own experts.

Gosh, we would love to know that. I don't know. I have to think part of it was the fact of there just seemed to be tunnel vision as to Carla's guilt throughout the process, and as I said, partially due to the fact of her status. I also have to say it probably had to do with some financial reasons.

By this, Catherine is referring to how Little Carla's lawyer was earning from the state for defending her.

It was a short two day trial. They get paid a flat fee, and so I think there was not much incentive for him to really investigate the case in the way it needed to be investigated.

But the NCIP did their due diligence.

So the only thing that we had to operate off of were the trial transcripts. So we actually sent the transcripts to one of the premier child sexual assault experts in the state of California, who is director at UCSF Benioff Hospital and one of only approximately two dozen boards certified child abuse pediatricians in California. He reviewed the transcripts and he said it looked like this was false testimony and that what the nurse was testifying to as evidence

After they filed their petition Carla's team was granted an opportunity to show cause, which means they were finally able to get all of the records in the.

Case and find out really what happened in these medical exams. And with the medical records, we saw a box checked on the forms that said that there were videotapes.

Which showed the physical examinations of the children's private parts.

And so we were able to track down the videotapes of the children's exams and show those to our expert, who was able to say conclusively, this is normal human anatomy. She didn't know what she was.

Talking about, meaning the nurse who had testified. After reviewing the tapes, Catherine and her team were granted and evidentiary hearing where they could present this information to a judge and make their case that Carla is actually innocent. But their plans went in another direction.

So we never got to the evidentiary hearing. What happened was we were very close to the evidentiary hearing and everyone was ready, including our big team of law students and Linda Starr and me. We were all ready when a report came in from the DA's medical expert, who agreed with our expert that there was no evidence of sexual abuse. And then it was soon after that that they decided to stipulate to reverse Carla's conviction, which we.

D So what was that like for all of you?

Oh, it was so exciting, so exciting, I mean, just felt like such a victory. But it was only the beginning because they then insisted that they were going to retry Carla on the original charges.

So my question is where were the children at this point? If they were going to retry they would have to testify again.

Well, that's an interesting question. They were no longer in the state, and it seemed like they were not going to testify at trial based on a notice that the DA had served upon us. So basically because they no longer had the medical evidence, their case would have been the prior trial testimony of the children, which again one didn't testify, one said Carla didn't touch her, and the other testified inconsistently with some other reports of her statement.

Carla's in a since was evident at this point and the state had an incredibly weak case, but they insisted on charging her with something, so they told her either accept a plea deal or face a retrial, and after seventeen years in prison, Carla just wanted to go home. She didn't plead guilty to any charges of child molestation or abuse, but to a charge called false imprisonment, which

I still remember that day when they told me Carla will be out. Oh my goodness, that was the best thing that I could ever ask. You know, I was, first of all thanking God because she was getting out. I was how can I say relieve that she was no longer in that place.

But Carla's journey through the United States carceral system wasn't over.

What would normally happen is there would be some processing and we were all waiting out in the hallway, and Carla should have been walking joyfully out to us. But as I mentioned before, Carla is an undocumented immigrant, and so what happened was, while we were waiting out in the hallway for Carla's release, Ice went in the back door and took Carla without telling us.

Carla went straight from prison to the ote Mesa detention center. The NCIP team was devastated.

We had clothes for her, We wanted to give her a hug. There was no chance to celebrate any of the excitement of Carla being released after all that time.

Carla spent about a month in iced attention before she was released and finally free.

It was up and down. I was happy, I was sad, I was happy, I was sad. It was like a roller coaster for me.

Carla currently has a lawsuit pending against the numerous parties whose misconduct led to her wrongful conviction. Among other things, the lawsuit alleges that the medical evidence against her was fabricated and condoned by county officials. These days, Carla works as a landscaper.

It's good because I go beside with the nature and it's not too many people. Because I cannot be around too many people. I'm still battling with my struggles coming out because when I can, I sleep, put the lights off, or I have to check the doors to be locked, because you have to make sure that nobody's going to beat you up in prison.

Considering the trauma she experienced from being in prison as well as from her journey to the US. I asked her about therapy.

Yes, I have therapies every Wednesday. It's pretty good. So Erica that's her name's she worked with the exonerated people before, so so she's pretty good.

So your your spirit is still intact.

You're smiling.

Yes.

And then I have wonderful nieces and nephews. They drive me nuts. You know. It's like they said, I have my baby. They said she's my daughter, because you know, she's a little bit like me. So so I go visit her and then sometimes I take her to the house and stay with us, you know.

So in addition to the nieces and nephews around her, Carla has a new loving partner, Blanca.

I have a beautiful family. She has a daughter.

I was gonna ask, so you have the family you always wants.

Yes, yes, yes, yes I do.

Carla is still afraid to return to Honduras and has applied for asylum.

In the US.

If you'd like to help support the work of the Northern California Innocents Project, go to NCIP dot org slash get dash involved. Carla would especially like to thank Jim Montenaro for his generosity. Next time on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling Alicia Burns.

You know, there were lots of things on TV about human trafficking and sex trafficking and what it looks like, and there was more awareness about it, and I thought, oh, my gosh, that's what happens to me.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flahm and Kevin Wurtis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, researcher Lila Robinson, story editor Sonia Paul, with additional production by Jeff Cleiburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.