his case<\/a>\u00a0soon.<\/p>\n![\"120123Chandler\"](\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/120123Chandler.jpg\")
In Junior\u2019s former life in the mountain town of Revere, he told me, he was close to his parents, his wife and two boys, his two brothers.<\/p>\n
Early on, he and his brothers helped their uncle grow tobacco and corn. Before driving a van for the Madison County Day Care Center, he had worked for the Forest Service, the Department of Transportation and Southern Railroad. At least one job he gave up because it interfered with his softball tournaments and night fishing.<\/p>\n
In prison, visits from his family became less frequent, and eventually his wife filed for divorce. \u201cTwo life sentences,\u201d Junior says. \u201cShe couldn\u2019t wait, you know.\u201d And his sons couldn\u2019t keep watching him aging away in his prison grays.<\/p>\n
When his father died in 1997, he attended the funeral in handcuffs. He worries about his mother, who recently suffered a stroke.<\/p>\n
He sleeps in a bunk bed in a dorm with 33 other inmates. His assigned janitorial job is cleaning meal trays. For relaxation he plays volleyball and horseshoes, watches Westerns on TV, reads a little. His only write-up was a scuffle not long after he arrived. \u201cIt\u2019s learning to walk away and how to carry yourself,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Of course I was touched by Junior\u2019s deep sadness and resignation. Sometimes I find it too easy to minimize the emotional havoc wrought by incarceration of the guilty \u2013 just imagine what it must be like for the innocent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jan. 23, 2012 Last week I visited\u00a0Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution\u00a0in Spruce Pine to talk to\u00a0Junior Chandler, who soon will have served 25 years on charges strikingly similar to those in the Little Rascals case. Junior, now 54, may well be the last still-imprisoned victim of the ritual-abuse contagion that swept the nation\u2019s day cares in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1996,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}