Sept. 4, 2013

In her appreciative review of “The Hunt,” the new Danish movie about a kindergarten teacher wrongfully accused of child sexual abuse, Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times writes:

“If you were in Los Angeles in the 1980s, it is impossible not to be reminded of the McMartin preschool case that dominated headlines for nearly a decade and still remains a question mark in so many minds.”

Linking “The Hunt” to the day-care ritual abuse panic is certainly apt – but in whose minds does McMartin “remain…. a question mark”?

In the mind of law professor John E.B. Myers, perhaps. But what credible social scientist today will argue that cases such as McMartin and Little Rascals were grounded in anything but therapist-created fiction?

Oct. 22, 2015

North Carolina isn’t the only state that has failed to mitigate – however little and late – the injustices it inflicted during the “satanic ritual abuse” era.

In Massachusetts, the Fells Acres Day Care case of 1984 resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of Violet, Gerald and Cheryl Amirault. Even more than in other such cases, the prosecution was gratuitously and unceasingly hateful. In 2002, at the urging of District Attorney Martha Coakley, Acting Gov. Jane Swift refused to sign the parole board’s unanimous recommendation of commutation. (At least voters managed not to rewardCoakley, with either a Senate seat or the governorship.)

In 2004, Gerald became the last of the three Amiraults to be released, but his parole carried numerous restrictions.

Barbara Anderson, a longtime advocate, provides this update:

“Gerald’s parole conditions became more burdensome over the years as real sex crimes were committed in the commonwealth: polygraph exams; exclusionary zones (towns he isn’t allowed to enter); a ban on leaving the state without a permit that must be voted on each time by the parole board (and then for no more than two weeks). For years his monthly GPS surveillance fee was $380; this has been dropped to $80 for parole supervision.

“The harshest provision seems to be the ankle bracelet, which keeps him from wearing shorts in the summer or ski boots in the winter, from swimming at the beach with his grandchildren. He has to keep a log of everywhere he goes outside his house.”

During last year’s gubernatorial campaign, Republican candidate Charlie Baker told Anderson that if elected he would address Amirault’s plight. Baker narrowly defeated Coakley, but so far he hasn’t followed through.

Anderson again calls on Baker “to remove the bracelet from Gerald’s ankle, to drop his curfew, to allow him to get a job and to start helping his wife earn money to pay the mortgage acquired during his defense.

“Just call the Sex Offender Board and ask to have him re-classified from Level 3 to Level 1 to ease his restrictions. Or ask them to vote to take him off parole…. Otherwise he’ll be suffering unfair indignities until 2024.

“Clearly there is no way for Massachusetts to make up for 30 years of injustice. ‘Pardon’ is the wrong word, since the Amiraults did nothing wrong, but it may be the only remedy since governments don’t usually do ‘apology.’ “

If Gov. Baker should belatedly rouse himself to unshackle Gerald Amirault, might his fellow Republican governor in North Carolina – or that governor’s would-be successor – take notice? The Edenton Seven may not suffer the continued punishment still visited on Amirault, but their lives too were forever and indelibly damaged by the state.

Nov. 18, 2015

“Readers who want a deeper look at how young children’s accounts of CSA (child sexual abuse) were discredited in the same time frame of the (Roman Catholic) clergy CSA scandal should read Ross Cheit’s 2014 book ‘Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children’….

– From “ ‘Spotlight’ Gets A Lot Right” by Colleen Friend in the Chronicle of Social Change (Nov. 15)

Whoa.

The clergy sex abuse scandal at the center of the just-released newsroom drama “Spotlight” had nothing to do with the “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic so earnestly if unpersuasively denied by Professor Cheit.

Clergy abuse was all too real, and the evidence proved undeniable; abuse in day cares was a fantasy produced by undertrained and overreaching therapists. Tragically, the children’s accounts that were “discredited” were their original denials that they had experienced abuse.

Worth noting: Dr. Friend is former director of Stuart House in Santa Monica, Calif., a child abuse treatment center opened to accommodate the tidal wave of (mostly imaginary) abuse cases spawned by McMartin.

July 4, 2012

“The state has done me wrong and imprisoned me for over six years,” Bob Kelly said in 1995 after his conviction was overturned and prosecutors were deciding whether to try him again.

“They want me to take a plea so they can save face. It will never happen.”

Oh, how the prosecution dreamed of at least one of the Edenton Seven rolling over, pointing a finger at a fellow defendant.

Never happened, despite their being held under vague charges for endless months – and later offered every inducement short of a trip to Disney World.

Even when Betsy Kelly and Scott Privott took pleas to reduce their prison time, they continued to insist on their innocence.

There’s painfully little to admire in the story of the Little Rascals case, but the defendants’ strength under pressure was extraordinary.