Last year, while campaigning for the top prosecutor’s job in the rural district that surrounds this close-knit river town, native daughter Jana Bradford cited a tough-on-crime record that she said had brought the worst offenders to justice and comfort to their victims.
“The most important thing that I’m able to do is relate to our victims,” Bradford, a part-time deputy prosecutor in Pike County for more than two decades, told a crowd at a Rotary club meeting. “The child who has been molested by her parents, I’ve held her hand before she testified.”
But time and again, Bradford used her clout and legal skills behind the scenes to assist her pedophile uncle, according to a paper trail of letters and other legal records.
Over the years, she helped her uncle Barry Walker try to get a pardon from the governor for his first felony sexual abuse conviction in another Arkansas county, vigorously disputed a girl’s abuse allegations when he faced more possible charges and tried to get his name removed from Arkansas’ sex offender registry, records show.
Bradford’s efforts to assist Walker have surfaced in recent months as part of a swirling scandal in the wake of what some legal observers describe as one of the worst pedophilia cases in Arkansas history.
Read the full report from NBC News.
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