Scene of the Crime with Tony Harris TV - The Austin Chronicle online - 20/20: The Arena Story TV -
When it comes to allegations of a child sex crime no-one, especially law enforcement, wants to risk letting the guilty walk free … Two brothers who both claim they’re innocent convicted of the same sex crime. Scene of the Crime with Tony Harris s1e2, ID 2017
What on Earth happened here? Was justice served? ibid.
In October 1999 two teenage brothers, John and Michael Arena, lost that freedom when they were convicted of an horrific sexual assault on their young cousins. ibid.
She [Stephanie] tells her father she and Austin had lied about the abuse. ibid.
Twenty-eight-year-old John Arena would like to visit California. He’s never been there – in fact, he’s never traveled very far from his childhood home in Harker Heights, in Bell County. He’d like to see the California coast and to visit with the parents of his girlfriend, who is also the mother of his three children. But he’s too scared to travel that far from home. ‘To me it's just not safe,’ he says.
It’s not safe because John Arena is a registered sex offender. Unless he can find a way to clear his name, he will have to register with the state for life for having allegedly molested his cousin Stephanie when he was 15 and she was just 7 years old.
In April 1999, after questioning by police, John confessed to having sexually abused Steph anie Arena, and he was subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison. The problem, according to John, his family – including Stephanie – and other supporters, is that he didn’t molest Stephanie. Instead, he says, he falsely confessed to the crime after being pressured to do so by a police detective, and then took a plea deal to avoid a trial that he was told would land him in prison for decades. In fact, John says he confessed in part because he was told that if he did so the state would not prosecute his younger brother, Michael Arena, whom Stephanie had also accused. Yet Michael was also charged with the crime. Michael did not confess and instead took his case to trial; in 1999, he was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years behind bars.
At 9 years old, Stephanie testified against Michael in court; two years later she recanted her testimony. She had been told to implicate her cousins, she since says, by her mother, who at the time was involved in a bitter divorce from her husband Stephan Arena, Stephanie's father and the boys’ uncle. Stephanie has maintained, for more than a decade, that her original testimony was in fact a lie. (Initially, her younger brother Austin Arena, then 5, also said the cousins molested him. But John’s confession mentioned nothing about Austin, and at Michael’s trial the court dismissed for lack of evidence a charge related to his having molested Austin.)
Although both brothers and their original accuser insist the men are innocent, the courts have disagreed, concluding that Stephanie’s recantation is not as credible as her initial allegations – despite the fact that she has steadfastly maintained not only that her cousins are innocent but also that no sexual crime against her ever occurred. The Austin Chronicle online article 5th November 2010, ‘How can you be exonerated for a crime that never happened?’
She accused her cousins of sexual abuse. Now she says her mother made her lie. Who’s telling the truth? 20/20: The Arena Story, Youtube 2011
Her testimony helped put her two cousins in prison, but now she says she lied because her mother forced her to. ibid.
It all started for Stephanie when she was just seven, and the centre of a ruthless custody battle, becoming the victim in what some call a revenge plot orchestrated by her mother. ibid.
She lived just down the road and the brothers say they felt like her protectors. But Stephanie’s life of chaos is about to take a tragic turn. ibid.
A judge found the mother’s judgment so poor he took Stephanie away from her and granted sole custody to her dad. ibid.