It started when Dr. Ellyn Lerner walked into her office at the New Road School of New Jersey, one of four state-funded institutions dedicated to helping kids whose intellectual or physical differences kept them from fulfilling the requirements of a so-called regular education in a so-called normal classroom.

That fateful morning Ellyn was ambushed by investigators from the state’s Division of Criminal Justice. Their appearance was promulgated by what would later turn out to be erroneous charges leveled by a disgruntled former New Road employee. However, during the days that followed, agents turned the place upside down, looking for evidence of financial wrongdoing.

They scrutinized every book and record and found that contingent pay was given to staff and that there was significant spending during the spring semester, which indicated that the school was in a “use it or lose it” situation with the Department of Education. Although neither of these acts was illegal, the deputy attorney general’s office attempted to prove that they were, claiming that they had helped to falsely inflate New Road’s tuition. This was not true, and the Division of Criminal Justice should have been forced to admit its error and that it had wasted a significant amount of resources on the investigation, which uncovered no real wrongdoing. Undaunted by the facts, however, the DAG’s office continued on this path, waging a four-and-a-half-year war against Ellyn Lerner and her company.

The investigation into the New Road special education schools lasted longer than Ken Starr’s Whitewater inquiry or the Warren Commission’s probe of President Kennedy’s assassination. Investigators went after New Road’s employees, its finances, even its contractors—snooping, poking, prying. The investigation devolved into a multimillion–dollar, taxpayer-funded fishing expedition. The DAG’s office cast its line over and over again, desperately hoping for a bite of evidence of a nonexistent criminal action.

Even by the standards of overzealous prosecutors, this was looking increasingly like an obsession, an inquisition, a witch hunt. And in the end, they got nothing from it. Well, almost.

Any persecution takes its toll both emotionally and financially and in Ellyn’s case, it was a one-two punch: first the government prosecutors and their vindictive investigation, then the banks began to deny New Road’s lines of credit and accelerate its mortgages. Bankruptcy loomed. If an indictment were to be handed down against the school or its employees, it would be a death blow. The schools would be placed on conditional approval until after the trial, which meant no new students could be accepted. The declining enrollment, along with the accelerated mortgages, could have meant the schools would be forced out of operation.

Faced with emotional torment and an endless, expensive legal battle that could ruin her schools, Ellyn made a bold decision: she would sacrifice herself to the legal system and her relentless persecutors. She would be the scapegoat the DOCJ demanded. And what did the prosecutors get for their misspent millions of taxpayer dollars and their nearly five years of legal zealotry? Ellyn took a plea of misconduct by a corporate official and served three months in prison, then was released under an intensive supervision program. In addition she had to give up her beloved and hard-earned position as head of New Road Schools.

Hundreds of Ellyn’s students, friends, family members, work associates and many other wrote letters in her defense, all of which were presented at her sentencing hearing. Even the presiding judge stated her actions weren’t out of anything but the desire to give New Road’s students the best programs possible. He further acknowledged that her actions did not appear to be out of personal greed and that she had taken no profit from them. Nor had anyone else; as the judge noted, not one cent had gone from the schools into anyone’s pocket. He also remarked on how Ellyn never took the full payments from New Road that she could have as allowed by law—instead she reinvested everything in the schools.

But none of this mattered to the media. Their sensationalized use of terms such as fraud and bilking damaged Ellyn’s professional reputation almost beyond repair.

Still, always the educator, Ellyn spent her months of incarceration helping other inmates write letters of appeal and tutoring them for their GEDs. As for the New Road Schools, with her vision solidly in place, they grew and the students flourished.

For Ellyn Lerner, that is as close to justice as she could hope to get.