Trouble in East Texas

Thad Davidson, Kelly's lawyer, says his client, who will appeal, is innocent and had even passed a lie detector test. Davidson suggested Kelly was done-in by a right-wing jury swayed by their emotions against someone they likely viewed as trailer trash. During the trial, Davidson presented eight former members of the swingers club, each of whom testified that no children were ever present at the adults-only venue. And an expert psychological witness said he saw evidence that the children's foster mother, Margie Cantrell, had coached them during some of their videotaped interviews with authorities, and could have encouraged the children to believe implanted memories of events that never happened. "Just because you're a swinger it doesn't mean you're a pedophile," Davidson says. "But for Margie Cantrell, there would not have been these indictments and there would not have been these convictions. She started the fire."

Cantrell, now the children's permanent guardian, says the legal battle has taken a terrible toll on her family as well. In July, her husband John, a jolly man with a long white beard and uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus, was arrested and charged with sexually abusing one of his foster children in Solano County, California, 18 years ago. Law enforcement officials surrounded their home on a private lake in Mineola and took him away, just as he was settling down in front of the TV with a tuna-fish sandwich and his current brood of 10 children and assorted Pomeranian Chihuahuas.

John Cantrell invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to speak when called to the stand during Kelly's recent trial over the Mineola sex club. But Margie Cantrell insists her husband is innocent of the unrelated molestation charges, which she sees as retribution for their outcry against the swingers, and says her husband plans to enter a not guilty plea. They were so wary as career foster parents of false accusations they removed the closet doors in their former home and put glass doors on their bedroom, she says. "I'm fighting with my life and John's life for these babies," she said, sobbing. "It's huge. There are so many other people involved that haven't been found. So they want us to shut our mouths," she told NEWSWEEK.

Cantrell says it's overwhelming sometimes, but she won't give up on the Mineola sex club survivors. "I can't. My life means nothing compared to the pain they've gone through. They're heroes," she says, grabbing the lithe arm of the eldest girl as she drifts into the room for a moment. The girl, who was seven or eight when she says she was forced to perform as a sex worker, gives her foster mother a tight-lipped, embarrassed smile at the compliment. "She saved so many other children's lives who are still out there, and we can't find them," Cantrell moans.

© 2008