THE CASE TODAY

It is impossible to know everything that transpired in the _X_ home in the early 2000s. Nor can we know everything for which the actors in this case (including investigators) may be called “guilty” — whether legally guilty, factually guilty, or morally guilty.

Carson’s moral guilt for molesting his sister (and possibly his brother) is not our concern. He was thirteen at the time. Also, had this case been investigated by competent authorities, Carson as well as his siblings might have received the help they needed.

Nor do we need to entertain the question of whether any teenager should be incarcerated for having consensual sex with another teenager. [6A] Nor can we know, today, to what degree homophobia was a factor in Jeremy’s prosecution.

That said, it is also crucial to reiterate that Jeremy Barney was not charged for the “statutory” offense of consensual sex with another teenager. Instead he was charged and convicted based on false allegations of violent rape and torture: specifically three counts of first-degree sexual assault including the use of force, and three counts of injury and risk of injury to minors.

As previously shown, the State’s own forensic medical examinations (and the laws of physics) preclude even the possibility of the violent crimes for which Jeremy was charged and convicted. To understand these crimes could not have occurred is to understand that they did not occur. The prosecution’s case is, in short, a collaborative fiction, and it follows that Jeremy’s is a wrongful conviction.

These things are certain:

• Demonstrably false statements by Family _X_ are the totality of the State’s evidence against Jeremy Barney.
• Angela was subject to repeated molestations by her older brother. Her brother admitted to this, and Angela’s medical injuries are consistent with the incest she described. Both the State and her parents ignored these facts for the purpose of prosecuting fictional, “sensational” crimes.
• Jeff and Julie _X_ manufactured and destroyed evidence, lied to social service workers, and perjured themselves in police affidavits.
• The Office of the State’s attorney engaged in gross prosecutorial misconduct by withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense and by turning a blind eye to Jeff and Julie’s perjury and evidence tampering — in addition to overlooking actual abuse and endangerment, allowing the _X_ children to continue to live with criminal parents in an incestuous home.
• CAIT forced Angela _X_ to spend hours “remembering” sexual assaults that the State’s own forensic exams had already disproved, and CAIT forced Jesse to do the same, even after his brother’s exam revealed that an unidentified party had caused damage to Carson’s anal and rectal areas after his last contact with Jeremy.

The bitter irony, of course, is the State’s fictional case has resulted in real victims.

Not only were Angela and Jesse forced to imagine horrific crimes and to grow up pretending as if they were real, they were forced to continue living in an incestuous home with criminal parents. In 2018, Jesse could take the pain no longer. On his 22nd birthday he committed suicide.

Jeremy suffered multiple violent assaults in prison. His only option for safety was protective custody — itself a torture, requiring an inmate to stay in his cell for 23 out of 24 hours, with an hour for caged recreation and a guarded shower.

Today, Jeff and Julie are divorced, but both continue to find new ways of surrounding themselves with young children. Julie takes care of special needs children. Jeff has remarried (to a woman who his Jeremy’s age), fathered two more children, and continues to display a fetish for knives. [6B]

Furthermore, the authorities involved in this travesty investigated many other sex crimes in Litchfield County, and we are left to wonder how many other lives of children, teens, and adults have been ruined by their incompetence. CAIT still operates today. James Fletcher still practices law–now specializing in juvenile cases. Only the judge who presided over Jeremy’s bench trial, Robert Brunetti, has “retired” — in 2014, after being caught up in a bribery scandal in which he admitted to leaking grand jury information. [6C]

Jeremy Barney is the only person who has been held accountable in this case, and for the crime of being honest, he lost 18 years of his life to prison. Today he is represented by Katharine Goodbody, Attorney at Law, of the CT Innocence Project Post-Conviction Unit, who is presently seeking to overturn his conviction and see justice done at last.

This website will be updated regularly. Please check back for more news and notes. Readers with further information about the case may contact us via this page.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS OF THIS WEBSITE

JOHN PHILPIN

An independent criminal profiler and a retired psychologist with an international reputation as an expert on violent behavior, John Philpin has appeared on Unsolved Mysteries, America’s Most Wanted, 20/20 Downtown, Inside Edition, and CBC’s As It Happens, and has served as a guest commentator on Court TV’s Prime Time Justice. Philpin’s published nonfiction works include Shattered Justice (Harper Collins), about the murder of 12-year old Stephanie Crowe; Stalemate (Bantam), about a series of child abductions and murders in the San Francisco Bay area; and Beyond Murder (Onyx/Penguin Books), investigating the Gainesville student murders. Philpin has also written several novels, including Dreams in the Key of Blue, The Murder Channel, The Prettiest Feathers, and Tunnel of Night, all published by Bantam, as well Bad Dog, from GenPop Books. A recipient of numerous awards for contributions in murder investigations, Philpin’s forensic work was featured in Philip E. Ginsburg’s Shadow of Death, the investigation of a series of murders along interstate highway corridors of Vermont and New Hampshire in the 1980s. Philpin holds degrees in English, clinical psychology, and forensic psychology from Harvard and Goddard College.

CHRISTIAN PEET

The author of Angela’s Story, a forthcoming true-crime novel about this case, Peet is also the author of Big American Trip (Shearsman Books), Pluto: Never Forget (Interbirth Books) and The Nines (Palm Press). His work in appears in the anthologies A Best Of Fence: The First Nine Years (Fence Books) and A Megaphone (Chain Arts), and in numerous journals and magazines in print an online. Peet received a BA from Bennington College, a MFA from Goddard College, and has taught Literature and Creative Writing classes at Brooklyn College and Hunter College, CUNY. He is the founder and publisher of Tarpaulin Sky Press.