(Radio Iowa) – The lawyer for a man who was recently awarded 12 million dollars after he spent six years in prison for a sex crime he did not commit, says his client has post-traumatic stress disorder that will follow him the rest of his life. Donald Clark was convicted in 2010 on charges he sexually molested a student at Helen Lemme Elementary School in Iowa City where Clark was a counselor.

A judge later ruled his defense attorney was ineffective and that the child in the case had admitted to lying under oath. Clark was released from prison in 2016. Attorney Mel Orchard told K-C-R-G T-V that Clark stood strong in the face of the false accusation. “I don’t have the strength he had, to endure what he had to endure in prison. Unbelievable,” Orchard says.

Orchard says Clark maintained his innocence throughout, even when there was the temptation to take a deal that he was offered before his trial.  “That if he would just admit it happened, he’d get a lesser crime, No way. Because I didn’t do it, and I’m not going to admit to something that’s a lie, even if it costs me a prison sentence,” Orchard says.

Orchard said issues around Clark’s identity as a gay man were brought up in the malpractice lawsuit against Clark’s first lawyer and the state of Iowa. He says Clark was looked at differently because he was gay, and that should have been brought out in the original trial.