Anthony Godby Johnson

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Anthony Godby Johnson is the author of record credited for penning the 1993 memoir A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story. However, subsequent investigations revealed a high probability that there was never actually an Anthony Godby Johnson, and that his entire story was a fabrication.

1 Overview
2 A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story
3 Involvement of media figures
4 See also
5 Notes
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Overview

The book initially appeared to be a non-fictional autobiography describing Johnson's survival of an abusive childhood with parents who beat him and let their friends rape him, and his discovery at age 11, after he had been adopted by another couple, that he had AIDS.

When several journalists, including Newsweek and Keith Olbermann attempted to investigate the claims in the book and profile Anthony, they contacted the woman who claimed to be his adoptive mother, "Vicki Johnson" (real name Vicki Fraginals or Vicki Fraginals Zackheim).

A "red flag" of 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 investigation occurred when a voice analysis expert analyzed calls from "Anthony"; however, the expert identified the voice to be that of Vicki Johnson.
Keith Olbermann hired a special investigator after he felt there were some irregularities (outside noises for a person who was so sick he could get no visitors or non overlapping voices on the telephone) and discovered there was no Anthony and hence no true story.^[1]
Rock and a Hard Place claimed that Anthony's biological parents were arrested and tried by the legal system for abusing him, and that his police officer father was killed in prison. The 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 can be found at any social service agency.
Finally, many sources find it medically implausible that Anthony could be alive, as he supposedly is as of 2006, after having AIDS for over nineteen years.^[2] 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 Anthony's AIDS is supposed to have become 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.

[edit] A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story

The story is a series of essays focusing on episodes in Tony's life. It states 'This is a true story'. Tony was subjected to physical abuse and sexual abuse by both his birth parents, described as "them" who also traded him with their friends, some of whom travelled long distances to abuse the child. Jake, a friend of Tony's birth mother painfully sodomised him. When Tony was aged eleven, he eventually telephoned a child abuse hotline and escaped from "them" into a loving family. Aged thirteen, he discovers that he has contracted AIDS from Jake.

[edit] Involvement of media figures

Among those who were caught up in the deception were Oprah Winfrey, Keith Olbermann, Mister Rogers (who wrote an afterword for Anthony's book), Mickey Mantle, and Jermaine Jackson. ^[2]

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, ^[3] wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Night Listener, in which the main character begins correspondence with a traumatized boy who is not what he seems. The book parallels Maupin's experience with Johnson. The Night Listener was subsequently made into a 2006 film.