Anthony Godby Johnson

Infobox Person
name = Anthony Godby Johnson


image_size =
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birth_name =
birth_date = 1978
birth_place =
death_date =
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residence = New Jersey, USA
nationality = United Staes
other_names =
known_for = Subject and supposed author of "A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story", an inspirational memoir
occupation = Writer
home_town =
religion =
relatives = Vicki Johnson (adoptive mother)


website =
footnotes = Suspected to be a hoax created by Vicki Johnson.

Anthony Godby Johnson is the subject and supposed author of the 1993 memoir "A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story". Subsequent investigations suggest that there may have never been a person by this name, and that his entire story was a fabrication on the part of Vicki Johnson, the woman who purported to be his adoptive mother.

The book initially appeared to be an autobiography describing Johnson's survival of an abusive childhood with parents who beat him and raped him. The book details his abuse at the hands of his parents and friends, and his discovery at age 11, after he had been adopted by another couple, that he had AIDS.

Investigation

When several magazines and journalists, including "Newsweek" and Keith Olbermann, attempted to investigate the claims of the book and profile Anthony, they contacted the woman who claimed to be his adoptive mother, Vicki Johnson. Suspicion was raised when it was learned that no one other than Vicki Johnson had actually seen Anthony - not his agent, his editor, nor his publicist. Further concerns were raised, when a voice analysis expert analyzed calls from "Anthony" and identified the voice to be that of Vicki Johnson.

As a result of these irregularities, Olbermann hired a special investigator who suggested that there was no Anthony and the story was fabricated.abusing him, and that his police officer father was killed in prison. An alleged conspiracy of rogue police officers trying to kill Anthony was Vicki Johnson's justification for zealously preserving Anthony's privacy. However, no case matching that description could be found at any social service agency.

Many sources find it medically implausible that Anthony could be alive, given that he has supposedly been living with AIDS for over 19 years.cite news | first =Sara | last =Stewart | author = Sara Stewart | coauthors =| url =http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/phantom_boy_entertainment_sara_stewart.htm | title = Phantom Boy: Bogus Tale of 'AIDS' Child -- From White Lie to H'wood Film | work = New York Post (online edition) | date = 2006-07-30 | accessdate = 2006-08-07 ] Most long-term survivors are actually living with HIV but had not yet developed full-blown AIDS; furthermore the medications that slow the progress of the disease were not known at the time that Anthony's AIDS allegedly became severe.

With so many similarities between the purported life of Anthony and proven hoaxes such as that of Kaycee Nicole and Kodee Kennings, the prevailing belief is that Anthony never existed.

Among those who were caught up in the deception were Oprah Winfrey, Fred Rogers (who wrote an afterword for Anthony's book), Mickey Mantle, and Jermaine Jackson.

Paul Monette wrote a foreword for an edition of "A Rock and a Hard Place", later defending the book's veracity. Armistead Maupin, who wrote a blurb for an edition of "A Rock and a Hard Place", [cite news |author = David Valdes Greenwood |url = http://www.portlandphoenix.com/archive/books/00/10/06/ARMISTEAD.html |title = Serial thriller: Armistead Maupin returns to serialize again |work = The Portland Phoenix |date = October 5-12, 2000 |accessdate = 2006-06-27] later wrote "The Night Listener", a novel subsequently made into a film, in which the main character begins correspondence with an HIV-positive boy who is not what he seems. The book parallels Maupin's experience with Johnson. The story also was adapted for a 2002 episode of "" entitled "Faith", with the child's sex being changed to female and illness to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

On January 12, 2007, the ABC newsmagazine program "20/20" revealed new evidence that Anthony was Vicki Johnson's fictional creation. The photo of "Anthony" that Vicki had sent to Anthony's supporters was revealed to be a childhood photo of Steve Tarabokija, now a healthy adult and a New Jersey traffic engineer, who was shocked to find his photo being represented to people as the face of Anthony Godby Johnson. One of the viewers who recognized the photo when it was aired on "20/20" in July 2006 was a woman whose son had been in the same fourth-grade class as Tarabokija. Their teacher for that class was Vicki Johnson. She had been said to have taken pictures of the children in the class especially this child.

Vicki Johnson, whose real name was Joanne Vicki Fraginals, had allegedly handed Anthony over to another caretaker in 1997 when she moved to Chicago and married Marc Zackheim, a child psychologist and owner of the Associates of Clinical Psychology. In 2004, Zackheim was indicted abusing child patients at a treatment center for troubled children in Indiana; his trial began in 2006 at the Marshall County courthouse.

ee also

*List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors

Notes

References

*Tad Friend, "Virtual Love", "The New Yorker". November 26, 2001 (pp. 86-89)

External links

* [http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/kaycee.htm Snopes.com on Kaycee Nicole and Anthony Godby Johnson]
*cite news | first =Sara | last =Stewart | author = Sara Stewart | coauthors =| url =http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/phantom_boy_entertainment_sara_stewart.htm | title = Phantom Boy: Bogus Tale of 'AIDS' Child -- From White Lie to H'wood Film | work = New York Post (online edition) | date = 2006-07-30 | accessdate = 2006-08-07
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20020324/ai_n12597081 The Ghost Writer]
* [http://www.olbermann.org/ko/video_detail.cfm?id=1081 Keith Olbermann reports on how he got scammed]