Excerpt Four: Revealing a Literary Hoax: The Strange Case of Anthony Godby Johnson

     When it comes to tragic stories, Anthony Godby Johnson's is without equal. According to his 1993 book, A Rock and a Hard Place, his parents beat him, allowed their friends to rape him, and denied him food and a bed. In 1989, when he was eleven and on the verge of suicide, Tony fled from his horrific abuse and into the arms of a New York city couple who adopted him. Yet there was more tragedy lying in wait: Tony soon found out that he was dying of AIDS. Tony's book garnered much acclaim, with USA Today calling Tony a "boy with a powerful will to love"; and book reviews posted on Amazon.com gush of this "powerful" and "incredible" story. Tony's book may be the true story of a brave young man against incredible adversity-or one of the longest-running modern literary hoaxes. Newsweek reporter Michele Ingrassia tried to track Tony down to verify his story, but found not a sick, tragic boy but a byzantine Chinese puzzle: "Paul Monette, the award-winning author who wrote the foreword to the book, has never met Tony in person. . . . Tony's agent has never seen him, nor have . . . Tony's editor and publicist. The litany of Tony non-sightings could populate an Elvis convention: Norma Godin, executive director of the New Jersey Make-A-Wish Foundation, which gave Tony a computer, has never met Tony. Neither has her son Scott, who installed the computer in his house. . . . The only person Newsweek could find who says she has seen Tony is his adoptive mother, and she ferociously guards every shred of information.

     Following the publication of that article, an Associated Press reporter said she was granted an interview with Tony, though she refused to divulge any quotations or details of the meeting. Tony's adoptive mother said she has received death threats and fears for Tony, and that is why she refuses to grant access to him. (Note that this excuse has been used before to cover up faked stories.)

     Nearly ten years after Tony's book came out, there is still no evidence that the "author" even exists. Contacted in 2000, Ingrassia says that, to her knowledge, Tony has never been seen publicly, despite making an "appearance" on Oprah, interviewed with both his identity and face obscured. And there's another reason to doubt his story: According to his book, Tony contracted AIDS in the very early 1990s. That means he has been dying from AIDS-related illnesses for more than a decade. And since drug cocktails to slow the progress of AIDS have been available only in the past few years, that means that we're being asked to believe that a boy with an already compromised immune system is still alive and (fairly) well after being ravaged by unchecked AIDS for at least a decade. Yes, there are people living with AIDS who are in seemingly good health; they are the lucky people who started taking the drugs in the early stages of their disease, not after many years.

     He has suffered from an amazing variety of health problems, including immune problems, tuberculosis, a stroke, recurring pneumonia, syphilis, and shingles, as well as losing a leg, his spleen, and at least one testicle. One doctor at Northwestern University School of Medicine, and an expert on the life expectancy of AIDS patients, expressed doubt that Johnson could live this long with all the health problems he claims to have had: "This is one unique individual." A person claiming to be Tony's adopted mother sounded exactly like Tony on the telephone (and an expert in voice analysis concluded they were the same person). Searches for Tony's birth certificate have come up empty. Though Tony claims his parents were tried for abusing him (and his police officer father was supposedly killed in prison) no one at the Manhattan district attorney's office or the New York Department of Corrections has heard of the case. A young woman who fits the description of Tony's sister said she'd never met him. And so on. Over and over, Tony's facts just don't check out. The remarkable story is far too complex to go into here; readers are invited to read Tad Friend's excellent article in the New Yorker (Tad Friend, "Virtual Love," New Yorker, November 26, 2001, pp. 88-99). A quote Tony provided Newsweek hints at his disregard for truth and reliance on feelings: "It's a book about my feelings and perceptions." But the setting and framework for those "feelings and perceptions" are supposedly real events: Either they happened or they didn't.

     Apparently, in the rush to defend Tony's book (and avoid tarnishing the reputation of a vocal AIDS advocate), those surrounding Tony abandoned even a modicum of skepticism. In follow-up letters to the editor in the June 21, 1993, issue of Newsweek, both the senior editor at Tony's publishing house and the executive director of Northern Lights Alternatives (an HIV/AIDS support organization) vociferously defended Tony's reality. Wrote Amy Amabile of Northern Lights, [M]any so-called journalists are willing to expose and exploit people with AIDS and victims of child abuse for the sake of a story. . . . This is not the first time a child prodigy's words have met with skepticism. . . Fortunately, Tony has enough self-esteem to believe in himself, whether or not Newsweek does." The issue is thus framed as an attack on an abused child's self-esteem, not a legitimate inquiry into the reality of an author and the truth of his story.

     When I posted my suspicions about Johnson in a review of his book on Amazon.com, many readers jumped to his defense, some quite angrily. They said that Tony doesn't meet people because he is concerned about his privacy. I was accused of being "intimidated" by Johnson's talents, called "a conspiracy theorist with an axe to grind," and my suggestion that Johnson may not exist was characterized as "an effort to destroy Tony and, by association, anyone else who was moved by Tony's book." Another writer compared me to a Holocaust revisionist, saying that "There are people who still choose to belief [sic] Auschwitz didn't happen. Deny reality and it disappears."

     Curiously, though all the writers claim friendships with Tony, not one of them claims to have actually met him in person. They mention e-mails, letters, and telephone calls, but no face-to-face meetings. The public's reluctance to closely examine its heroes insulates them from honest criticism. A sampling of reviews from Amazon.com for A Rock and a Hard Place show that many readers, though apparently believing Tony's book, seem to suspect that perhaps the real author is someone older than the fourteen-year-old the author claimed to be:

• In a review posted August 25, 1998, a New Hampshire reader wrote, "Anthony Godby Johnson has the wisdom of someone [sic] twice his age."
• A review posted January 20, 1999, by a chaplain from Altus, Oklahoma read, ". . . [N]ever have I been so taken by the words of one so much wiser than his years."
• A reader from Carmel, California, posted a review on June 5, 1999, saying, "Anthony Godby Johnson was one extraordinary youngster and his book reads like an adults [sic]."
• Says a reader from Fort Collins, Colorado, in a posting on November 8, 1997, "I had to look again to verify that a fourteen-year-old wrote this book." Indeed.

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All contents copyright 2003 by Benjamin Radford. All rights reserved.