Too late

 and
sent dad to prison for rape,
but DA upholds conviction ............. A woman who claimed her father sexually assaulted
her as a child now is recanting her story and trying
to vindicate her imprisoned dad. A man serving 40 years for raping his eight-year-old
daughter has lost his bid to be released from prison,
even though the alleged victim has insisted for the past
15 years that the crime never happened, and that she
only said it had because her drug-addicted mother
threatened to beat her. In a letter to Daryl Kelly's attorney, Orange County D.A.
Francis Phillips said he stands by Kelly’s 1998
prosecution, because of the findings of a re-
investigation conducted at his request by the
Committee on the Fair and Ethical Administration of
Justice of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York (DAASNY). “After a thorough investigation, the CFEAJ has
determined that Kelly was not wrongfully convicted,”
wrote Phillips. “That conclusion is, in my opinion
amply supported by the evidence and the reasoned
analysis in the report.” Read the DAASNY report here. “I’m absolutely devastated,” said alleged victim
Chaneya Kelly, now 25, who first told her story to NBC
News in August. “My father didn’t rape me, and I don’t
know why they just won’t believe me.” She vowed to
continue fighting on behalf of her father, and has written a letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo saying she was “completely insulted” by the re-
investigation. “Every time I told them that my father did
not commit any of the malicious crimes he was
convicted of,” she wrote in the letter, “they treated me
as if I was lying.” Read the original NBC News report on Chaneya and Daryl Kelly. The DAASNY reinvestigation included extensive
interviews with nearly everyone involved in the original
prosecution. The report, which Phillips received last
month, says “every conceivable effort has been
undertaken to find the unvarnished truth regardless of
how or whom it impacts.” Daryl Kelly’s attorney, Peter Cross, disagrees. “Anyone
who looks at the facts of this case will see that Daryl is
obviously innocent,” said Cross. “Based on
information I’ve gathered since this report was written,
it is provably biased.” One of the individuals
interviewed by the state committee sent Phillips a letter saying the report contains “misleading and inaccurate
quotes,” and an expert he hired sent Phillips a letter
calling the committee’s rejection of Chaneya’s
recantation “unscientific.” Representatives of the DAASNY did not respond to
requests for comment. Courtesy of Chaneya Kelly Chaneya Kelly, her son and her father Daryl
at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New
York, 2012. It all began in October 1997 in Newburgh, N.Y., where
Daryl Kelly was living with his wife, Charade, and their
five children. Chaneya, their oldest child, was two
months shy of her ninth birthday. At the time, Daryl -- a Navy veteran -- says he was
trying to kick a drug habit to take care of his kids. But
Charade was at rock bottom, even turning to
prostitution to feed her addiction. Chaneya remembers being downstairs with her father
one morning before school when she had to use the
bathroom. When she was done, she went upstairs, and
that's when Chaneya says her mother asked her a
question that came out of the blue. "She repeatedly asked me, has my dad touched me,"
recalled Chaneya. "I was like, 'What do you mean, did
he touch me?' And she was like, 'Did he touch you in
your no-no spot?' And I would repeatedly say no." Chaneya says the more she denied any abuse, the
more irate her mother became - and even threatened
her with a belt. According to Chaneya, her mother said,
"If you don't tell me the answer that I want to hear, I'm
going to beat you." To avoid a beating, says Chaneya,
she told her mother that her father molested her even though it wasn't true. Chaneya repeated the charge of molestation to police,
and was examined by nurses and doctors. They issued
a report in which they determined there was "possible
sexual abuse" because of some redness -- but
Chaneya's hymen was intact even though she claimed
her father had penetrated her. But with both Chaneya and her mom telling police the
same story, Daryl Kelly was charged with multiple
counts of rape and sodomy. Kelly refused a plea deal that would have made him
eligible for parole in six years, and within a year he
faced a jury, was found guilty and sentenced to 20 to
40 years. Six months after her father's conviction, however,
Chaneya came forward to her grandmother, saying she
was never raped, and that the story had been born out
of fear of her mother. Chaneya’s grandmother took her to Kelly’s appellate
attorney, who videotaped her recantation. On the tape,
Chaneya looks uncomfortable, mumbling short,
hesitant answers like, "No," and "I think so."  The
prosecutor argued that the recantation looked coerced,
and the same judge who oversaw Kelly’s original trial a year earlier agreed. He refused to vacate Kelly's
conviction. When NBC News spoke with Chaneya's mother in
August, she said she'd been drug-free for many years,
and said that she had threatened her daughter with a
beating, blaming the incident on a drug binge. "I was
really deep in the grip of my addiction." When asked
why she would threaten her daughter if she didn't lie, Charade said, "I have no idea, I really don't." Over the years, Chaneya says she never gave up on her
father. When she was 15, she convinced the courts to
allow her to once again have contact with him -- and
that’s when she went to visit him in prison. “The first thing my dad did was that he hugged me and
he told me that he loved me and … that he doesn’t
blame me for anything,” Chaneya recalled. “It was
priceless to me.” Since then, she’s been talking to anyone who would
listen about her father. Ultimately, the case was
reopened at Chaneya’s request, but it didn’t end the
way she hoped. NBC News This combination of two screen gabs taken
from video shows Daryl Kelly, left and
daughter Chaneya Kelly during recent
interviews with NBC News. Chaneya says
that in 1997, she falsely accused a man of
raping her. That man - who has always maintained his innocence -- is Daryl Kelly,
Chaneya's father. credit: NBC News The district attorney association’s report lists various
reasons to support its conclusion that Daryl Kelly is
guilty: -- A judge evaluated the same evidence 15 years ago
and has already decided the recantation wasn’t
credible. -- In a recorded prison phone call, prosecutors found it
disturbing that Kelly once greeted Chaneya by saying,
“Hey, sexy." -- Kelly lied about being awarded a purple heart when
he was in the Navy, showing his true character. -- Experts caution to be wary of recantation, especially
in a case like this. “The relationship between the
defendant and his recanting accuser — father and
daughter — is renowned at law and in social science as
one most likely to breed a false recantation,” said the
report. -- Most of all, the report claims that despite Chaneya’s
insistence that she wasn’t raped, her story is not
credible, saying she “can neither explain why she
falsely advanced such a horrible allegation, nor why
she adhered to it for so long and repeated it to so many
different people.” James Winslow, Kelly’s original trial attorney in 1999,
is quoted extensively in the DAASNY report,
suggesting that Kelly might be guilty and that the case
against him was strong. After reading the report,
Winslow wrote a critical letter about its contents to
District Attorney Phillips. “It has raised grave concerns for me regarding the attribution of certain opinions and
loose, misleading or inaccurate quotes alleged therein
to be from me,” wrote Winslow. Most troubling to Peter Cross, Kelly’s current attorney,
is that only lawyers – not mental health professionals
-- assessed Chaneya’s credibility as a witness. So
Cross hired a mental health expert, Dr. Roy Lubit, who
interviewed Chaneya, found her “highly credible” and sent his report to DA Phillips. Lubit’s work was paid for by the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which tries to reverse allegedly wrongful convictions. Lubit said that he believed Chaneya’s recantation, say
there was “no corroborative evidence of the alleged
abuse. “ He cited the lack of psychological trauma, the
consistency of her recantation over time, and the lack
of grooming of the alleged victim by the perpetrator.
“To a reasonable degree of medical certainty CK’s recantation of her allegation her father sexually abused
her when she was 8 years of age is not only credible
but true,” wrote Lubit.  “The basic scenario leaves more
than reasonable doubt that the child was sexually
abused by her father.” In Phillips’ letter upholding the conviction, he said he
had taken Lubit and Winslow’s criticisms into account.
“We have considered the letter of Mr. Winslow and the
report of Mr. Lubit. Our decision is based on all the
information we have reviewed.” As for Daryl Kelly, he says he won't truly be free until
he's vindicated. "This fight will never end," he said. "I
will continue to fight for this. This is my reputation.
This is my decree. This is the truth. It's not just for me.
It's for my daughter as well."