The Girls: “If it was your daughter”

13:45Ronnie Stoner:I remember seeing a camera in a corner, like high up in a corner. They had a table on the left wall, like a little small table. A lady, I think it was a lady, yes. She was sitting across from that table, and I was sitting on the other side.

14:01Aryalle Stoner:Do you remember how you felt during that forensic interview?

14:04Ronnie Stoner:I was nervous, scared, just because I didn't know what was about to happen. I knew they wanted to talk about it, but it was still fresh, and I wasn't ready to talk about it.

14:18Aryalle Stoner:Ariel says it was too hard for her to say out loud what happened to her. So the interviewer let her write down her answers on a sheet of paper, and then the interviewer read them back to her aloud. Advocates say the CAC and multidisciplinary team model streamline prosecutions, help avoid re-traumatizing kids, and ensure their needs don't fall through the cracks. But it's not clear that this model worked as it should have for Arielle Stoner. Geri Seitz is a national expert on the CAC model. She's a forensic interviewer and trains social workers and law enforcement across the country on child sex abuse investigations.

14:56Aryalle Stoner:I asked her to take a look at the records CPS and law enforcement had on Ariel's case, and she saw a lot of red flags.

15:04Ronnie Stoner:Lots of concerns here as far as the way it was handled from law enforcement and CPS.

15:09Aryalle Stoner:A key component of the forensic interview is that it happens as soon as possible after the allegations are made. Seitz says ideally that's 24 hours. But according to police and CPS files, police waited almost a week to call her mom to set up a forensic interview. By the time they actually got Arielle in, it had been a month since she called the police.

15:32Ronnie Stoner:Which is absolutely unacceptable, especially when it's child sexual abuse and the alleged perpetrator is her father. Because so much can happen in those cases. You know, the child can be pressured to recant before they even get into the interview. And then there's that safety or, you know, protection issue.

15:48Aryalle Stoner:It also means that law enforcement missed an important window to gather evidence. Because the child may disclose details in the forensic interview, the police could try to corroborate.

15:59Ronnie Stoner:There may be semen or DNA evidence somewhere, and oftentimes that exists even with delayed disclosure. If something happened on a comforter, people don't wash their comforter every week, right?

16:12Aryalle Stoner:On top of the delay, Seitz says there are other concerns. The Child Advocacy Center did not give Ariel a medical exam or test for sexually transmitted infections, which Seitz says should be standard practice in child sex abuse cases. There is not a record in CPS or police files that Ariel was offered any services like counseling or therapy, and Ariel doesn't remember anyone reaching out with those kinds of supports. Seitz is particularly concerned about how long it took police and CPS to talk to Ariel's 11-year-old half-sister, who spent significant time with Ronnie. Investigators waited over a month to reach out to her mom, and she was a no-show for her forensic interview.

16:55Ronnie Stoner:Even if the half-sister wasn't sexually abused by the father, it's a safety issue. They have to figure that stuff out within 24 hours. So there's concerns that CPS didn't do their job in an expedient manner, as well as law enforcement.

17:11Aryalle Stoner:The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which oversees CPS, would not talk to me for this podcast, even to discuss general practices around child sex abuse investigations. And the state social workers assigned to Ariel's case didn't get back to me either. From law enforcement records, it appears the police investigation was limited to Ariel's forensic interview and a few phone calls by Louisville Metro Police Department Detective Charles Heller. Those calls can't really be described as investigatory. There's one call with Ariel's mom, Janithia Taylor, informing her that Ariel has made the allegations and scheduling the forensic interview.

17:50Ronnie Stoner:Ma 'am, I've got your daughter's case that came across my desk today. I wanted to reach out and make contact with you.

17:59Aryalle Stoner:Heller explains what the forensic interview is and gets some scheduling information. Then Taylor asks what she should do about Ronnie, who she says keeps calling.

18:09Ronnie Stoner:Her dad, like, you know, he's been calling, calling, calling. And he called yesterday and he's like, I took a missing person out on her. They're going to bring her back to my home. I said, you know, because he's saying this untrue. And I'm like, do you really think they'll do that? That's because my daughter took it upon herself to call the police and, you know, CPS before I even knew about it. So it's like, to me, she was that scared. So what do I do about him?

18:36Aryalle Stoner:Heller tells her she can take out an emergency protective order to prevent Ronnie from contacting them and says a victim's advocate will be in touch.

18:44Ronnie Stoner:I'll talk to you in a little bit. You have a good day. Bye.

18:49Aryalle Stoner:Then there's the call with Tenosha Spillman, the mother of Ariel's 11-year-old half-sister who stayed with Ronnie sometimes. You'll hear silence where LNPD redacted Ariel's name and her sister's name in Heller's call with Spillman. Anything that she could give us would be great, even information about the, there have been allegations.

19:13Ronnie Stoner:Do you understand, do you know anything about the case yet? I guess I'm kind of jumping to conclusions that you know something about the case. She told me that she was interviewed, but very little detail. I really didn't. I know he had custody of her, and I just know that she ran away. That's all I know. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So some allegations about her father, and we're just trying to clear things up. And so we would just want the counselor to talk to your daughter and see if anything, any mistreatment has occurred to her. And if she's seen or heard talk about any mistreatment that's occurred.

20:04Aryalle Stoner:Heller never makes it clear that the father of her 11-year-old child has been accused of sexually abusing his other daughter, starting when she was 11. Spillman never brings her daughter in for the forensic interview. CPS did eventually speak to the sister, but not until more than four months later. Then, in August, six months after Ariel called the police outside Taco Bell, Heller makes his first attempt to contact Ronnie, whose name has been redacted from the audio file.

20:36Ronnie Stoner:This is Detective Heller with the Louisville Metro Police Department, Crimes Against Children Unit. I am calling just to get something on the calendar to have you come down to the office here at 5th and Kentucky.

20:47Aryalle Stoner:Heller leaves another voicemail for Ronnie three days later, but Ronnie never calls back. A few weeks after that, Heller refers the case to the Commonwealth prosecutor. The only evidence he had collected was Ariel's forensic interview. Ariel never knew her case was turned over to the prosecutor. In fact, she knew almost nothing about its progress. After the forensic interview, Ariel says she only heard from her detective once more.

21:15Ronnie Stoner:I know either he called my mom or she called him just for a follow-up. And after that, the case went ghost. There was nothing really else. They had nobody reached out, so we just forgot about it.

21:29Aryalle Stoner:By the next spring, she hadn't heard from police in over a year. And she wasn't talking with Ronnie or anyone else from his side of the family. Except her aunt, Ronnie's sister, Latonda Brooks. They had texted a few times over the months since Ariel left her father's house. Ariel read me their text exchange. Brooks said her dad missed her. She urged her to come home and said she had a hard time believing Ariel was telling the truth about her father abusing her.

21:57Ronnie Stoner:She said, I just don't see that happening. And why wouldn't you tell somebody sooner than what you did? You could have came to me. You know how I am about y 'all.

22:06Aryalle Stoner:Furious, Ariel fired off a long message in response.

22:10Ronnie Stoner:And I put in all caps, your brother raped me, and y 'all just living life like I never existed. Nobody bothered to check up on me, and you are the only person who tried to reach out to me. I don't want to talk.

22:20Aryalle Stoner:But months after that exchange, she softened towards her aunt. She missed her and reached out to see if they could get together. When I got to her house, we talked for hours, like all night, hours,

22:32Ronnie Stoner:just about life stuff and about this situation. And to my face, she told me she believed me.

22:39Aryalle Stoner:She asked her about her plans after graduation, when she planned to go to college. And then this question.

22:46Ronnie Stoner:After she asked me about the college stuff, she was like, well, what do you want to see going forward with your dad?

22:52Aryalle Stoner:Remember, it had been more than a year since Ariel had heard from detectives or anyone at CPS. Half her family had iced her out, and she was terrified of facing her dad in court. I was nervous.

23:05Ronnie Stoner:I didn't want to do that at all. She was like, well, you know, the only way you're not going to be able to face him in court is if you just tell his lawyer it didn't happen. At first I was hesitant and I had to think about it. And I was like, what? I know in the back of my mind that that's not right. I knew it wasn't right, but I did it anyways because I just really wanted to put that past me. I did not want to deal with that. I was really so nervous to see him. face to face.

23:32Aryalle Stoner:Ariel spent the night. The next morning, Brooks called Ronnie's attorney, a well-known local defense lawyer named Rob Eggert.

23:40Ronnie Stoner:And was like, hey Rob, I got Ariel here, Ronnie's daughter, and she would like to talk to you. So I was shaking. I was nervous.

23:48Aryalle Stoner:Her aunt handed her the phone. She could see Brooks out of the corner of her eye, giving her a thumbs up and whispering encouragement. You're so brave, Ariel says she whispered.

23:59Ronnie Stoner:He said, are you sitting here on the phone telling me right now that this did not happen to you? And I said, yes.

24:07Aryalle Stoner:The next day, Brooks drove Ariel over to Eggert's law office downtown. Inside, a sheet of paper was waiting for her on a round wooden table with a pen. It was a sworn affidavit saying Ariel lied about Ronnie molesting her, that she made up the accusations because she wanted to move in with her mother, that Ronnie had never abused her, and that no one was pressuring her to withdraw her allegations.

24:33Ronnie Stoner:I picked up the pen and I signed my name and that was it.

24:38Aryalle Stoner:With college on the horizon, she saw an opportunity to start over and put the abuse behind her.

24:44Ronnie Stoner:Just forget about it. That was my plan. Just go to college and move on with my life. But it didn't happen that way because I found that I was pregnant and I never made it to college. And I had already signed the paper then, So it's too late.

24:58Aryalle Stoner:I called Brooks one day at work to ask her about that night she spent with Ariel and the affidavit. She denied pressuring Ariel to sign it and wouldn't talk with me further about the case. What Ariel did is known in child sex abuse investigations as recanting. It's common, especially when the abuser is a family member. A 2007 study found rates of recantation as high as 23 percent and that children abused by a parent were the most likely to recant.

25:27Ronnie Stoner:When a child recants, then it's up to the teen, the same investigators, to look into that recantation and determine what were the circumstances of the recantation. Was there pressure to recant?

25:40Aryalle Stoner:That's Jerry Seitz again, the national expert in child sex abuse investigations. According to Seitz and other experts I spoke to, it's best practice to investigate the recantation. But that's not what happened here. According to police records, police and CPS got the recantation, they didn't question it, and they closed the case. Unfortunately, Seitz says, that's not uncommon.

26:04Ronnie Stoner:Both systems, criminal justice and child protection systems, are absolutely overwhelmed with their workload. Their cases are high. these cases are very emotionally draining. They cause secondary traumatic stress. So oftentimes when the players in the investigation are uncooperative, people will cut corners and move on. You know, they just don't have the time or energy to really press for justice and protection, which is really unfortunate. And it happens everywhere. It's not just Louisville or metropolitan areas. We're seeing it all over the U.S. Her writing an affidavit just tied it up in a nice, you know, little package for him and they were able to file it away and move on.

26:56Aryalle Stoner:Okay, let's go back in time a little bit before Ariel signed the affidavit and catch up with what Ronnie Stoner was up to in the months after Ariel told police he was abusing her. While Ariel was finishing up high school, estranged from half her family and waiting for a call from her detective, Ronnie's life was moving along as usual. He went to his job at Newburgh Middle School and continued to work with students and coach football. That seemed weird to me. Usually, when the school district learns an employee is accused of misconduct, they move the employee into a position without contact with children while authorities investigate.

27:37Aryalle Stoner:But to do that, the school district has to know about the allegations. That's pretty straightforward when the allegations are reported in a school setting. The school is already in the loop because they are the ones making the report to law enforcement and CPS. But what if the alleged abuse didn't happen in a school setting? What if it's an employee's own child and the child went directly to police or CPS? who was responsible for telling the school system that one of its employees has been accused of child abuse. I wondered. So I called up LMPD detective Charles Heller. Heller still works for LMPD, though he no longer works on the Crimes Against Children unit.

28:18Aryalle Stoner:I wanted to ask if he remembered contacting the school or the district in Ariel's case. Was there any, I'm not seeing any notes about contact with JCPS in here, but I wonder if that may not be reflected in the LNPD file that I got. Is there a protocol for reaching out to the district if you learn that one of their employees is accused of something like this?

28:42Ronnie Stoner:Yes. And I think that we had talked to security and security had said he was already reassigned or something. There was something that there is a protocol under the circumstances. And I vaguely remember a conversation that led us to believe that there's not a continued concern, at least at that moment, with with him in contact with with anyone else. Or again, been a been a little while. Can't remember exactly.

29:19Aryalle Stoner:A quick fact check here. There is no record indicating Ronnie was already reassigned when Ariel came forward to police in 2021. So you do you think you remember talking to JCPS security? I believe.

29:37Ronnie Stoner:Well, if it wasn't security, it would have been one of like the principal is like whoever would have been his direct report principal or something to that effect. hmm like the principal of the school he worked at yes it would have yeah that's who i i believe i spoke with but again it's been a while i can't say for certain i've worked a lot of similar cases where we've worked with jcps and and it could be remembering something else i couldn't be remembering a different case somehow okay um so is that the protocol normally to call the

30:15Aryalle Stoner:the school principal? Yeah, well, on a case like this, let's see. I know I'm asking Heller to reach back years ago about one of many cases he would have had, so it's not surprising he can't remember the details. But what is surprising is that Heller doesn't seem sure what the protocol was. I think that's because there wasn't one. That's right. I scoured every state law, regulation, policy, and operating procedure I could find that govern how police, state social workers, and school districts handle child sex abuse allegations. And there is no clear regulation to ensure schools are notified if their employees are accused of child sex abuse in the community.

31:00Aryalle Stoner:This explains why Ronnie wasn't reassigned from his position working with kids, even though he was under an active police investigation for abusing his own child. The district never knew. Republican Representative James Tipton, the state lawmaker working to curb educator misconduct, brought this issue up in our interview before I even mentioned it. If law enforcement's investigating, I don't know if there's a requirement for them to report to school. That is exactly what I was about to bring up next, actually. I cannot find a requirement. Do you think there is an opportunity for a policy solution to this disconnect?

31:39Ronnie Stoner:We can certainly work on policy to try to. We need to talk to some stakeholders and ask some questions. I want to make sure we're legally, constitutionally, what we're allowed to do. But just from an individual, it's just common sense to me that the school district needs to know. if there's an investigation going on when they've got an employee of the school that is in contact with minor children.

32:05Aryalle Stoner:The LMPD file we obtained includes CPS reports making clear that Ronnie worked at Ariel's school. But there's nothing documenting that investigators from either agency reached out to JCPS. You remember that LMPD Detective Charles Heller said he may have contacted the principal of Newburgh Middle School, a woman named Nicole Adele. I called her up to see if she remembered Detective Heller calling about Ariel's case. Please leave me a message, and I will get back with you as soon as possible. Thanks. Hi, Nicole. This is Jess Clark. I'm a reporter with the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.

32:43Aryalle Stoner:I tried her twice more, but she never got back to me. When we come back, Ronnie finally gets reassigned. But it's not why you think after the break.

33:03Aryalle Stoner:This is Dig. I'm Jess Clark. After Ariel's accusations, Ronnie's life went on as usual for more than a year. Then in May 2022, 15 months after Ariel went to the police, Ronnie is suddenly reassigned out of his role working directly with kids. Ariel says she heard from her aunt that an officer came to Newburgh and told Ronnie to pack his stuff and get out. But Ronnie's reassignment wasn't over his daughter's allegations. It was because that was when Alyssa Foster decided to start a lawsuit and her lawyer, David Maurer, had put the district on notice. When Ronnie was packing up his office, he didn't actually know which child had accused him of misconduct.

33:50Aryalle Stoner:When JCPS investigates educators for misconduct with students, they are not supposed to share the name of the child making the allegation until the first investigative interview. Ariel and Alyssa find this kind of funny.

34:03Ronnie Stoner:If I was Ronnie, I'd be shitting my fucking pants. Because it could be any of the one people that you just fucked over in the last 20-something years. Exactly. You don't have a fucking clue who it could be. And I know for a fact, like, what Alyssa's saying, like, they didn't know. They thought it was me. Everybody thought it was me, the reason he's not coaching and stuff.

34:22Aryalle Stoner:Ronnie and his family thought it was Ariel, her allegations against her dad. That could explain why Ariel's aunt chose the moment she did to pressure Ariel into recanting just two weeks after Ronnie was reassigned. It could also explain why Ronnie Stoner's girlfriend, Jamie Isis, had this phone call with LNPD detective Charles Heller a few months after Ariel signed the affidavit. we got this call through an open records request.

34:55Hello?

34:56Ronnie Stoner:Hi, this is Detective Peller with the Louisville Metro Police Department calling for... Yeah, hey, how are you? Hi, I'm doing well. How are you doing? Thank you for calling me back. I really appreciate it. No problem. I checked my voicemails this morning. I had one from...

35:10Aryalle Stoner:I'm blowing you up. Jamie Isis is Ronnie Stoner's longtime girlfriend. Isis and Ronnie have a lot in common. Isis was another Youth Service Center coordinator, the same position Ronnie had at Newburgh, working with vulnerable kids. She was the coordinator at Barrett Middle School until last July when JCPS promoted her to a bigger role. Just like Ronnie, the School Administrators Association awarded her Middle School Youth Service Center Coordinator of the Year in 2019. And also like Ronnie, she's not shy of media coverage. Today, hundreds of girls from JCPS schools learned life skills and the importance of self-worth.

35:49Aryalle Stoner:ISSIS has been featured several times in positive stories about local schools, like this report from WLKY in 2022 about a program ISSIS helped organize called Women of Worth Empowerment Conference.

36:02Ronnie Stoner:So if they leave today feeling they belonged here today and they belong together as a cohesive family with all schools within JCPS, we won the victory.

36:13Aryalle Stoner:Isis called Heller, the detective on Ariel's case, in August 2022. The school year had started, but Ronnie was still reassigned, and his promotion to Manuel High School was on hold.

36:25Ronnie Stoner:So I'm going to be very transparent, if you don't mind. Why this is like 9-1-1 and why I've been blowing you up is because let me shut the door because I want it to be private and I work in education. Yeah, yeah. Because you're a stepmother, right? Yes, I am a stepmother.

36:41Aryalle Stoner:I'll jump in here to say that Isis and Ronnie are not married, but for years Isis has referred to herself as Ariel's stepmother and Ariel as her stepdaughter. It drives Ariel nuts. Isis herself is a social worker who used to work cases just like Ariel's. She was a CPS worker who assisted the Crimes Against Children unit from 2009 to 2011 before becoming an educator. On the call, Isis starts pressuring Heller to drop the case against Ronnie. Ronnie's name and Ariel's have been redacted from the recording by LMPD.

37:18Ronnie Stoner:So he works in education as well. Got removed from his job on the 18th of May. And so we're going on three months. And JCPS will not tell us what the allegations is over. And so we're assuming it is the allegations that his daughter reported over a year ago. And so it's been very, very stressful, as you probably know and probably can tell.

37:52Aryalle Stoner:Again, what Isis doesn't know is that the reason Ronnie was removed from his job was because of Alyssa Foster's allegations. She thinks this is all about Ariel. Isis tells Heller Ariel signed an affidavit recanting her claims. CPS got the affidavit and closed their case, but Heller never got it. Files show Heller hadn't touched Ariel's case in almost a year. He had referred it to the prosecutor 11 months prior and hadn't heard anything since. So the case was still open, and Isis wanted Heller to drop it.

38:26Ronnie Stoner:I need to get this resolved as quickly as possible so we can go back to normal life. And so I needed to talk to you because I don't know if you are the piece that's holding this up or not, but I have all the evidence and documentation that you would need for your case. And I just wanted to share that with you. And if that is what you need to close your case out, I will hand deliver it.

38:54Aryalle Stoner:The evidence Isis is referring to is the affidavit. Heller explains he still hasn't been able to reach Ronnie and that LNPD doesn't have the authority to reassign educators in JCPS.

39:08Ronnie Stoner:Well, we never make requests like that to remove anyone from their position. So that wouldn't be something that I made or anything like that. No, no, no. No, I know. And I didn't believe. No, no, no. Let me apologize. I don't think you did it per se. I think this is because I used to work for CACU. I don't know if I remember telling you that.

39:26Aryalle Stoner:CACU is the Crimes Against Children Unit. The unit is this worked with as a social worker investigating child abuse for two years. She still works part-time as a state social worker.

39:36Ronnie Stoner:I never was concerned of the allegation by any means. I was more concerned of my daughter acting out and getting her the help that she needed because making this acquisition of her father is concerning to me. and that's a whole other level of you know from the field that you're in so if we can't and I want to use this word the way that it makes me feel but I'm not trying to rush you but if we can expedite this process if we can get this case closed I would greatly appreciate it in every way possible yeah absolutely I'll call the prosecutor Once I get the documents and I look over them, call the prosecutor.

40:25Ronnie Stoner:And I think I could have it closed by either Wednesday this week or at the latest Tuesday next week. That would be absolutely amazing. And I am 100 % grateful for that. You have no idea. We have been, I can't even tell you the rollercoaster ride that we have been through on every level. So if I can get something moving, you are a blessing. Yeah, I don't mind. You know, if there are false allegations and we can prove that, you know, I want to clear the air and get these things closed for sure. Okay, perfect. Get them off my desk. Thank you. I know. Okay, can I have your email address, please?

41:10Aryalle Stoner:She gets his email address and says she'll send over the affidavit and the CPS letter saying the allegations were unsubstantiated.

41:18Ronnie Stoner:Detective Taylor, I really appreciate you. I have been blowing you up and I promise you it's all for good calls. I thank you for taking the time out to talking to me and listening to me and getting this ball rolling for me. I really, really appreciate it. Absolutely. I'm glad to help. All right. Be safe, honey. Thank you. Bye-bye.

41:37Aryalle Stoner:I played this phone call for Ariel and Alyssa in Alyssa's living room one evening. They had a lot to say.

41:44Ronnie Stoner:Oh my God. Jamie makes me so mad. Like, do you hear how she sounds? Like, just listening to that conversation makes me mad because how can you literally sit up here and say, you was never worried about the allegations? Like, what type of person are you? What type of person are you? What type of mother, in quotes, mother are you? Like, be for real. That's crazy. I don't even know what to say. I'm just like. That's a lot to unpack right there. That's a lot to unpack. Yeah, I don't even know where to start either, for real. Like, why is it? The fact that she's pressing, can we just drop the case?

42:28Ronnie Stoner:And he's like, yeah, sure. I'm trying to get dropped by next week. Right. It'll be done by 12. Like, what? I'm sorry. Is it that simple?

42:35Aryalle Stoner:Arielle knew Isis didn't believe her. But now she knows that the woman who calls herself her stepmother, an educator and a social worker, actively pressured police to drop their investigation into her alleged abuse. We reached out to Isis, but she wouldn't talk to us. The phone call also revealed how little police pushed back. No one ever tried to ask Arielle about why she recanted, even though recantation is common in child sex abuse cases, and its best practice to investigate further when kids take back their allegations. Heller didn't seem to know that when we spoke. When you received the affidavit, do you remember, like, were you suspicious of it?

43:15Aryalle Stoner:Or did you, like, I guess, what did you think about that when you received the affidavit and the recantation?

43:22Ronnie Stoner:I can't remember, like, a specific thought that I had about it. I do believe that I received it from an attorney. So from an attorney's office, I believe, I guess I thought it was a believe it seemed unusual to me, but compared to other cases.

43:55Ronnie Stoner:but I know that attorneys have a high standard of ethics, so I trusted the letter.

44:05Aryalle Stoner:The letter from the attorney? Because it came from an attorney?

44:08Ronnie Stoner:Yeah.

44:10Aryalle Stoner:When you say it was unusual, what do you mean by that? Just the form of it or that it happened at all or the timing? or I guess what?

44:20Ronnie Stoner:Oh, just a, yeah, and an official, such a high level of official recant. Most of our recants, when someone recants, it's typically they called me and it's a recorded statement from them to me or from their parents to me, something to that effect. It's not usually done through an attorney.

44:45Aryalle Stoner:After I heard Heller's call with Isis and knew more about best practices, I called him back to see what he had to say. He never returned my call. Sight says what happened to Ariel doesn't look good on the system. If police had got Ariel in sooner and gotten a warrant for her father's home, it's possible they could have collected evidence to corroborate her disclosure. And there were other things police and social workers and the prosecutor could have done to prevent Ariel from recanting in the first place. Connecting survivors to resources and checking in with them regularly can make them feel more confident in moving forward with prosecution.

45:22Aryalle Stoner:But none of that happened in this case. Then there's the four-month delay in getting eyes on Ariel's 11-year-old half-sister to make sure she was safe, and the fact that the school district never knew that Ronnie was being investigated for child abuse. These are things that should have been raised in those multidisciplinary team meetings. Records show the team discussed the case three times, but for some reason, lots of things still fell through the cracks. In the next episode, I'm going to show you how Ariel's case, with all its failings, is representative of a larger problem with how police investigate child sex abuse in Louisville.

46:02Aryalle Stoner:Back in Alyssa's living room, Ariel still can't get her mind around that call between police and Jamie Isis.

46:09Ronnie Stoner:They failed us, just like everybody else failed us, and they could have did way more. Like, that phone call really pissed me off because, why wouldn't you just be like, something's not right about this case? Like, if that was your daughter, I guess, like, I ask people this all the time, like, if that was your daughter, what would you have done? would you have been like, oh, I can close about Wednesday? I doubt it. I doubt you would have did that. Repeatedly, we just keep finding out people just keep failing us over and over and over and over. And it's so irritating. Like, it's frustrating.

46:44Aryalle Stoner:The list of people who failed Ariel and the other alleged survivors is long. They say they were betrayed not only by Ronnie Stoner, but by people and whole systems meant to keep them safe or provide justice. Louisville schools, police, child protective services, courts, and in Ariel's case, her own family. After so many failures, these women now believe the only people they can count on are themselves. Next time on Digg.

47:15Ronnie Stoner:Of course it was wrong doing it to me, but seeing that it was other girls, I was like, I can't just let that slide.

47:30Aryalle Stoner:Dig is produced by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting at Louisville Public Media. This season was recorded by me, Jess Clark, and edited by Jake Ryan and Laura Ellis. Special thanks to Morgan Watkins, Michelle Tyreen Johnson, Roberto Roldan, Amina Alahi, Joe Sanka, Kelly Wilkinson, and Laura Atkinson. Kojin Tashiro created our theme music with assistance from Ryan Marsh. Photos by Justin Hicks and Giselle Rodin. And illustrations by Effie Chalikapulu. Our work is community funded. Visit kydig.org and click donate to help make reporting like this possible.

48:18Ronnie Stoner:Hearing stories like this one can bring up painful feelings and memories, especially if you're a trauma survivor yourself. If you need to talk, you can reach the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE. You'll find that number and more mental health resources in our show notes.