James G. Roberts
SALINE CO.—Wednesday’s report of James G. Roberts’ arrest and charges of child sex abuse has apparently riled some folks right up.
In the overnight hours Wednesday/Thursday night, we received this call from a woman named Tina who claims through her very southern drawl to be Roberts’ daughter. She claims that “everything is wrong” about this article but when I called her Thursday afternoon to see if we could clarify anything, she only wanted to yell and complain, and would not clarify even when given the opportunity.
“Tina” claimed Thursday afternoon that she “knows” who Disclosure‘s sources are on the matter, but again, just like with the offer for publishing of clarification, “Tina” wouldn’t come off the information.
She also complained that she’d never heard of Disclosure, and when advised that we’d been in business since 2002 and have a combined journalistic background of 40 years’ experience, she apparently couldn’t do basic arithmetic (Jack = 21 years in the business, Ang = 19 years), claiming she’d lived in southern Illinois when she was 9 and “had never heard” of us. So this case obviously has some people pretty upset, to the point that they can’t think straight and use logic, but especially the analytic reporting style is boggling the southerners, whom, we’ve seen, are indeed hitting the website in droves according to the IP addresses showing up.
As featured in the call, “Tina” seems to have problems with the states listed. Disclosure did not state that Roberts resided in any of the states, but only that these were states we were checking for any possible background of such activity, as these were states he advised the Illinois State Police that he’d either lived in or had spent time in due to friends or relatives being there. She did (before she got all worked up) state that he’d never lived in Michigan or Georgia. Again, Disclosure didn’t state that, but only stated that he’d been “tracked down” to said states, which is true…probably due to his employment as a truck driver lo these many years ago.
As an update to Roberts’ case, he’s now been set for a prelim on April 15. Ms. Tina has said she’s talked to her father at length; we’ll see if any of his family shows up at the hearing, which kicks off at 11 a.m. on that date…and if Ms. Tina does, we’ll see if she’s any more polite than what she just was on the phone.