Anthony Clark always gets away.
It’s amazing, really. And once you learn about his history—his disgusting, despicable history—you’ll wonder just how he has avoided, at the absolute least, termination from employment. You’ll wonder what sort of a state we’re living in where so many people would go to such extraordinary lengths to protect a predator, to give a predator a job, to cover up the misdeeds of a predator. People in positions of power and respect did this—school principals, superintendents, a county sheriff, other teachers. They all looked the other way.
Instead of just firing him.
If you want to know who Anthony Clark is, I suggest you start with the federal lawsuit filed in 2019 by a young woman named Kennadie Wilcox. She was a student of Clark’s at Andalusia High School.
According to the lawsuit, Clark, who was a teacher and basketball coach at the school, coerced Wilcox, who was 17 at the time, into a sexual relationship. Clark, who was married and had a daughter roughly Wilcox’s age, pushed Wilcox into sexual encounters at the school—in closets and empty classrooms—and at his home.
Clark had faced similar allegations at other schools, according to the lawsuit and two other sources that spoke with APR. Those sources provided me with detailed accounts of Clark’s actions at two prior stops, and I wrote previously about the Wilcox lawsuit, an abuse allegation at Boaz in which he struck another student and other claims of sexual misconduct with students.
I wrote about them in 2020.
That was the same year that Morgan County Sheriff Ron Puckett hired Clark to work at the Morgan County Jail.
Let’s be clear here, because the details will matter. He was hired to work at the jail while a federal lawsuit was active. After he had been forced to leave Andalusia High (not fired, of course). With rumors swirling about his conduct with underage girls.
Clark was then promoted in 2022. To jail staffing specialist. A position that allowed him to go to colleges and high schools and meet with prospective employees. A position that gave him power to influence and coerce potential employees. Because what could go wrong?
I asked Puckett about this. I emailed several questions and offered to speak with him by phone about it, because I honestly couldn’t believe that a sheriff would employ Clark. Not with all of that in the public realm.
Puckett’s public information officer, Mike Swafford, answered the email with responses that were, um, not great.
He confirmed that Clark had been hired in 2020 and that he passed a background check at the time. He also said Puckett became aware of allegations at some point and “looked into them,” but there were no charges “that would preclude his employment.”
I’ll just remind you that I wrote about Clark and the lawsuit in 2020. So, I knew, and I wasn’t hiring the guy to go hang around with high school students.
And on that particular issue, Swafford/Puckett downplayed Clark’s work at schools: “His role did not revolve around off-site recruiting except for an occasional career fair where several Sheriff Office/Jail personnel would attend.”
That description was somewhat different from what Puckett told the Hartselle Enquirer in October 2022. In that interview, the newspaper quotes the sheriff saying that Clark goes to “job fairs, high schools, colleges.”
But not to worry, because the sheriff did take action to move Clark off the payroll. According to Swafford’s email, “Earlier this year as a civil case moved forward, the Sheriff’s Office became aware of concerning issues that were represented as fact by the courts. As such they moved beyond the realm of allegations and he was asked to resign.”
Small problem: The case was officially dismissed by the federal court in March 2024, after a multi-million dollar settlement was reached paying Wilcox.
She was destroyed, by the way. In a number of interviews I had with Kimberly Wilcox, Kennadie’s mother, she spoke of her daughter’s struggles in the wake of Clark’s acts. I won’t go into details out of respect for their privacy, but rest assured that it was devastating and heartbreaking and infuriating and just gut wrenching.
All of it made even worse by the fact that no one seemed willing to hold the man accountable for anything.
Well, there was one guy. A former superintendent at Boaz, Mark Isley, tried to hold Clark accountable for his actions. Isley had received a video in 2015 of Clark striking a student during a practice.
Not a coach being a little too handsy during drills. Not a coach trying to direct a player.
Three punches with a closed fist, according to a source who viewed the video.
It was clear what had to happen. Clark had to be fired. It was the right thing to do, both morally and legally.
The school system ended up forcing out Isley over it.
That’s not a typo.
Clark was allowed to resign later, and he was off to his next job at Andalusia, where he’d meet Kennadie Wilcox.
And that wasn’t all. Multiple sources, including the parents of a then-teen girl, told APR that there were inappropriate interactions between Clark and at least one female student at Boaz. During deposition testimony in the Wilcox lawsuit, it was revealed that Clark had another inappropriate relationship with a student assistant during his time at UMS Wright—a relationship that allegedly produced a child, according to transcripts filed in federal court.
And it only gets worse and more disgusting the further you dig.
In the record filed in federal court—a record which District Court Judge Austin Huffaker refused to seal, thank God, despite repeated requests from the Andalusia school system’s attorneys—it becomes obvious very quickly that dozens of people—students, teachers, administrators, law enforcement and parents—were all aware of the ongoing sexual relationship between Clark and Wilcox. Not only that, but it’s also obvious from the records that multiple people in positions of power in the Andalusia school system were aware of the allegations against Clark prior to hiring him.
No one helped the girl.
And a whole bunch of people stuck their necks out for Clark.
It took the threat of a trial before anything even remotely punitive happened to the people involved. Clark lost his teaching certificate—finally—and the school system agreed to pay a multi-million dollar settlement. But Clark slithered away once again, never facing criminal charges despite Kimberly Wilcox repeatedly filing complaints and providing evidence to local police.
Just think about what I’ve told you here. This guy has been allowed to slink away from a relationship with a student assistant at one school. Then was allowed to resign from another school after striking a player and facing other allegations of inappropriate contact with students. Then resigned from another school during a full blown federal lawsuit over an ongoing sexual relationship with a student. Then he was hired by a sheriff to recruit, according to the sheriff, at high schools.
Puckett was correct when he said, in response to my questions, that there was no criminal record available for Clark. There was nothing that sent up a red flag, nothing that would have prevented him from being hired.
Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it?
