Anthony Godby Johnson

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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.

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.

1 Investigation
2 See also
3 Notes
4 External links
5 References

[edit] 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 (real name Vicki Fraginals or Joanne Victoria Fraginals-Zackheim). 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 which suggested that there was no Anthony and the story was fabricated. ^[1]

A Rock and a Hard Place claimed that Anthony's biological parents were arrested and tried for 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.

Finally, many sources find it medically implausible that Anthony could be alive, given that he has supposedly been living with 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 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, 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] later wrote The Night Listener, a novel subsequently made into a film, 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 story also was adapted for a 2002 episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent entitled Faith, with the child's gender being changed to female.

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. ^[4]