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ReEntry Stories

Season 5 Episode 3, Wrongful conviction: I thought God was not with me

By Mary Evans
Published December 10, 2024 at 6:00 AM EST
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Conversations, stories, and perspectives from returned citizens in Southwest Ohio.
Steve Rumbaugh
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Conversations, stories, and perspectives from returned citizens in Southwest Ohio.

[Warning: this podcast discusses false allegations of child sexual abuse]

Click the "Listen" button above to hear this podcast.

ReEntry Stories features conversations, stories, and perspectives from returned citizens (people who served time in prison) in Ohio. This season, we are focusing on wrongfully convicted people who spent time in prison for crimes they didn't commit.

Today, we hear from Nancy Smith. She is a former Head Start bus driver from Lorain, Ohio, who was arrested and falsely charged with sexually abusing children in her care in 1994.

Full AI-generated transcript

Smith served more than 15 years in prison for crimes that never took place.

WYSO Community Voices Producer Mary Evans asked Smith what advice she would give to people in a similar situation to hers.

Support for ReEntry Stories comes from The Montgomery County Office of Reentry and the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.

Tags
Exoneration PrisonsMass IncarcerationIncarcerationReentryReEntry StoriesCommunity Voices
Mary Evans
Mary Evans is a Dayton, Ohio-based activist, abolitionist, and journalist. She holds a BA in the Business of Interdisciplinary Media Arts from Antioch College. In 2022 she was awarded the Bob and Norma Ross Outstanding Leadership Award at the 71st Dayton NAACP Hall of Freedom Awards. She has been a Community Voices producer at WYSO since 2018. Her projects include: Re Entry Stories, a series giving space to system-impacted individuals and West Dayton Stories, a community-based story-telling project centered on the people and places of Dayton’s vibrant West Side. Mary is also the co-founder of the Journalism Lab and helps folks in the Miami Valley that are interested in freelance journalism reach some of their reporting goals.
See stories by Mary Evans