Anthony Godby Johnson - Aftermath

Aftermath

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, later wrote The Night Listener, a novel subsequently made into a film, in which the main character begins correspondence with an HIV-positive 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 sex being changed to female and illness to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

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 was a woman whose son had been in the same fourth-grade class as Tarabokija. Their teacher for that class was Vicki Johnson, who was said to have taken pictures of the children in the class.

Vicki Johnson, whose real name was Joanne Vicki Fraginals, had allegedly handed Anthony over to another caretaker in 1997 when she moved to Chicago and married Marc Zackheim, a child psychologist and owner of the Associates of Clinical Psychology. In 2004, Zackheim was indicted for abusing child patients at a treatment center for troubled children in Indiana; his trial began in 2006 at the Marshall County courthouse. He was acquitted of one felony count of practicing medicine without a license and three misdemeanor counts of battery for inappropriately touching boys. He died of a heart attack in 2009.

ABC subsequently ran an update to the story, which included an 147-page response from Vicki Johnson's lawyer in response to ABC's questions about Steve Tarabokija. ABC also included an anchor that informs viewers that Johnson and Zackheim have both died since their original 2007 story.