People who believe Roberson is guilty have also repeated claims that he sexually abused Nikki.

But only one nurse made that accusation: Andrea Sims, who said at trial that she was a certified sexual assault examiner before later admitting under cross-examination that she was, in fact, not certified.

Roberson’s attorneys and Brian Wharton, the lead investigator on the case, said Sims examined Nikki for signs of sexual abuse without being asked by authorities.

Sims testified that she saw three anal tears that led her to conclude it was sexual abuse. The prosecutor then asked him to give his opinion, before the jury, about pedophiles and anal sex.

Squires, the Dallas pediatrician, refuted Sims’ conclusion, saying she observed a tear and took it as typical for a small child.

Then, even after dropping the charge as grounds for capital punishment, the prosecutor spoke of sexual abuse in his closing statement to the jury.

Roberson’s attorneys condemned the sexual abuse allegation as baseless and prejudicial to Roberson’s trial, noting that the state offered no evidence beyond Sims’ testimony. They added that Nikki struggled with diarrhea in the week before her death.

“In my opinion, this is being spread recklessly and dangerously all over the Internet right now, that Roberson sexually assaulted and did other things to Nikki,” state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, said Oct. 21.

He asked Salzman, who supported Roberson’s appeals, if “there has ever been a shred of substantiated evidence to support that claim.”

“Absolutely not,” Salzman said.

At his Oct. 23 release, Paxton also detailed a jailhouse informant’s claim that Roberson had admitted to sexually abusing Nikki, a report that was not even mentioned by the prosecution during the trial.

“By including this information, (the attorney general’s office) has repeated a lie with, at best, complete indifference to the truth,” the lawmakers wrote in their rebuttal. “The ‘jailhouse snitch’ here wove a story so outrageously contrary to the evidence that prosecutors did not use it at trial.”