I write to you from my deep personal concern about the injustices that have been visited upon the Amirault family of Malden, Massachusetts.
The Amiraults have been much in the news lately because of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruling ordering 73-year-old Violet Amirault and her daughter, 39-year-old Cheryl, back to prison -- for crimes they did not commit because they were crimes that did not occur. Remaining in prison for these non-existent crimes will be Violet's son, Gerald ("Tooky"), now 43.
Most people I've spoken with tell me they just don't know enough about this case to form an opinion. I'd like to present a brief summary.
In 1966, Violet Amirault -- a mother abandoned by her husband to raise two children -- took herself off the welfare rolls by starting a small daycare service in the basement of her home. This grew to the thriving Fells Acres Day School, which soon occupied the whole house plus an addition. The school served over 70 children at a time, and graduated thousands. No accusations of abuse or impropriety occurred. By 1984, Violet -- who no longer taught but was the school's principal -- was thinking about retiring and turning the business over to the children. Gerald didn't teach (his wife Patty did) but did odd jobs -- driving, cooking, repairs, etc. Cheryl taught one toddler class.
The destruction of the Amirault family began in the spring of 1984 with a common enough incident: a four-year-old wet himself during a nap. Such accidents are common at daycares. Gerald cleaned him, changed him into spare clothing, put the wet things in a plastic bag, and sent them home with the boy.
The boy's mother was in the midst of a breakup of a bad marriage, and the boy had behavioral problems: bed wetting, lying, baby talk, hostility. Around the time of the wetting incident, the mother discussed with the boy the alleged sexual abuse of her brother. During the summer, the boy was caught in sex play with a young cousin. This led the mother to have her son questioned by her brother. The boy told his uncle that Gerald had taken his pants down, and the uncle told his sister that he thought the boy's problems resulted from sexual abuse. The mother began questioning the boy, and had him interrogated by a therapist at Children's Hospital. Finally, on the eve of Labor Day in 1984, the boy told his mother that every day at preschool, Gerald blindfolded him, took him to a "secret room" with a bed and golden trophies, and performed sex acts. The mother called a hotline and accused Gerald.
When first questioned by social worker Donna Laspina, the boy denied these accusations, but claimed that Gerald touched and kissed him. Later, he made more accusations and changed the description of the "magic room" to a windowless room with two cots. At the grand jury hearings, the boy's mother also claimed the boy had been forced to urinate in cups and drink the urine.
The Malden police charged into the school, seized class lists, and arrested Gerald. Police and social workers began interviewing children, and asked parents to do the same. One set of parents questioned their three-year-old about a "magic room." After an unknown amount of questioning, the girl claimed to have seen a clown in a basement "magic room." Further questioning by the parents and a social worker eventually yielded an account of abuse by Cheryl and the clown. Another interrogated four-year-old produced a story about being raped with scissors in the "magic room" while being photographed.
A week after Gerald's arrest, the school was closed and parents were summoned to a meeting at the police station. Police and social workers told them that a variety of common childhood behavioral symptoms -- bed wetting, nightmares, changes in appetite, crying on the way to school -- were evidence of sexual abuse. The parents were told to question their children about "magic rooms," "secret rooms," and clowns. The parents were told that a child's denial of abuse should not be believed. At the same time, the relentless Boston media were doing their best to insure that the wild fires of hysteria raged out of control.
The Fells Acres Witch Hunt was on. Zealous investigators probed for "disclosures." (And when a child said nothing happened, that was taken as evidence that he or she was "in denial.") Unfortunately, no tapes were made of most of the initial interviews. But the social worker and police reports contain descriptions of parents or investigators badgering children. Sexual disclosures -- even in the midst of obvious fantasies -- were blindly accepted and credited. And, of course, the prurient investigators had a ball watching the kids play with their anatomically correct dolls.
One of the prosecution's "experts" was pediatric nurse Susan Kelley, and some of her interviews were videotaped. Kelley usually talked to kids after they'd already been interviewed many times by parents, social workers, and police. Kelley used Sesame Street puppets and begged kids for "disclosures." This description of Kelley's technique is taken from a paper by Jonathan Harris, "Junk Science. Junk Justice. The Fells Acres Daycare Case."
"Do you think that you could help me the same way that April did by telling me the story about what happened with the clown in the magic room," she pleaded to one child. Later Kelley asked direct questions about sexual activities and reminded the child "She said that you -- that Jane and April -- you girls -- the clown had you girls take your clothes off in the magic room?" Nevertheless this interview yielded only a story about a clown playing with fire and spanking children.Social scientists have since thoroughly discredited "evidence" obtained by such leading, coercive techniques. Ceci and Bruck, for example, used anatomically correct dolls to try to determine which three-year-olds were touched on the genitals during a doctor's visit. The results were no better than chance. Moreover, several children falsely claimed that the doctors had put their fingers or implements inside them. (Fortunately, the visits were videotaped so the doctors weren't arrested.) Ceci and Bruck do not want to bar children from testifying. But they want to make sure that the necessary precautions will be taken in the future to insure that such testimony can be trusted."Oh, come on, please tell Ernie. Please tell me. Please tell me, so we can help you, please? Mommy would be so happy if you would help us; so would Bert. Please, tell me; tell Bert? OK, you tell Ernie, you whisper it to Ernie, all right; and Susan's going to cover her face, and you whisper it to Ernie, who touched you there?" Susan Kelley begged another girl to make a "disclosure" after already obtaining two no's to her touching question. Could there be any doubt as to why Kelly obtained so many fantastic stories of colored elephants stomping on children and clowns playing hide and seek in magic rooms?
In a recent (April 11) LA Times article, Carol Tavris summarizes the circumstance under which children are apt to produce false testimony:
A study just completed by Sena Garven, at the University of Texas at El Paso, shows how alarmingly easy it is to get young children to agree to false allegations against an adult. A young man visited 3 to 6-year-old children in their preschool, read a story and handed out treats. A week later Garven questioned them about his visit. She asked children in one group leading questions, to see how many false allegations the children would agree with ("Did he shove the teacher? Did he steal a pencil from the teacher's desk? Did he throw a crayon at a kid who was talking?").Gerald's three-month trial began in the spring of 1986. Cheryl and Violet's 11-day trial took place the following year. Nine children testified against Gerald, and four against the two women. At Gerald's trial, the children sat at a small table and Judge Elizabeth Dolan took off her robe and sat with them. Parents flanked the children, so that they wouldn't have to look at Gerald. One child testified via videotape because the prosecution claimed he was too terrified to testify in person. The presumption of guilt was easily transmitted to the jury. The children readily admitted to practicing their testimony. And much of the testimony was quite incredible. According to Harris:Then Garven asked children in another group the same questions, but she added techniques used in the McMartin, Kelly Michaels, and Amirault trials: telling the children what "other kids" had supposedly said; asking the children to "help"; expressing disappointment if answers were negative; and praising the children for making allegations the questioner wanted to hear.
In the first group, children affirmed about 15% of the false allegations of wrongdoing -- bad enough for those who think that children never lie, misremember, or make things up. But in the second group, the 3-year-olds said "yes" to about 75% of false allegations offered to them, and about 50% of the children ages 4 to 6 did the same. And this was with a short interview, lasting only five to 10 minutes. In the major day-care abuse trials, the interviewers kept up their questioning over the course of many weeks
Almost all children testified that they were threatened, even though experts state that when the abuser is not a family member, threatening children frequently causes them to tell about the abuse right away. Even the state's expert, Dr. Renee Brant, could not estimate the probability that a threat would be successful at keeping a child quiet. In ritual abuse cases such as this one, threats have to be successful virtually 100% of the time for the case to be credible, as no children disclosed any abuse until repeatedly questioned. Other psychologists and child development experts point out that a preschool age child does not have the self discipline required to reliably keep secrets; this is how child molesters often get caught. Furthermore, in some cases even the parents admitted that their children told them they liked school, and the prosecution produced not a single caring parent who removed his or her child from the school because their child was unhappy there.In recent weeks, prosecutors have been making claims that there was "physical evidence" presented in the Fells Acres case. They have been especially loud in proclaiming that there was evidence of "genital scarring." (Sounds pretty scary, no?) This is what Harris has to say about the "physical evidence":One boy testified to being tied to a tree in front of all of the students and teachers. He also said that Cheryl killed a dog and buried its blood in the sandbox and that a robot threatened to kill him if he told about the abuse. He even claimed a baby was killed there during one interview, although he forgot this at trial time. Another boy claimed that Vi killed a frog and fed it to him. During the original interview he had said it quacked like a duck and was a monster.
A girl claimed her wrist was slashed and it bled. Under questioning by prosecutor Bernstein she revealed that a robot threw her in circles, bit her on the arm, and scared her. In the cross examination she described the robot as being like R2D2 from Star Wars, having wheels and flashing lights, and talking in a robot language. Another girl talked about a game where she licked ice- cream off of the trunk of an elephant and the trunk was Gerald's penis. Another girl originally told Susan Kelley that the clown had chased her naked into the school yard, and people yelled "Ha, Ha you're outside naked," but denied remembering this on the witness stand.
The descriptions of the magic, secret, and hidden rooms appear to be very inconsistent. Some mention wires on the floor. Others a lamp and a green light and a green or orange rug. Some mention a camera on a tripod. Many of the children claimed that they told their teachers that they were going to the magic room. Others could not remember how they got to the magic room. One child answered the question of how he got to the magic room, with "by Tooky."
Ritual abuse theory promoters cite this as a documented case because all appeals have been lost and there are claims to physical evidence. With the possible exception of one child, the "physical signs" are commonly found in unabused children. The one exception is a girl with a small scar on the hymen. This scar was not seen in an examination of the child soon after the case started, likely because the child's pediatrician did not use a coloscope, a device for examining colons and vaginas under magnification. More recent studies suggest these sort of small scars are normal hymeneal irregularities.Gerald Amirault was sentenced to 30-40 years in prison, and the two women received sentences of 8-20 years. Sixteen families -- including the families of the children who testified -- received a total settlement of 20 million dollars from the Fells Acres insurer. Susan Kelley became the head of Boston College's nursing department and continues actively to promote belief in Satanic Ritual Abuse. Scott Harshbarger -- the Middlesex County District Attorney -- used the cases to bolster his political career, is now Massachusetts Attorney General, and wants desperately to become Governor. (Nothing is quite so heartless as unbridled political ambition. Some may recall Chuck Colson's famous remark, "I'd run over my grandmother if it would help Richard Nixon.")Gerald's family and attorneys maintain that likely this girl had no contact with Gerald during the brief time period she attended the school. Their claim is supported by the fact that the girl maintained that Gerald was a blond, even though he had dark brown hair. She further elaborated that she knew the clown was Gerald because some of the blond hair was exposed. She claimed that Gerald stuck a big knife into her bum (anus). Under cross examination she described how it got stuck inside of her and she screamed. Her teacher then took her back into the classroom and told Gerald not to do that again. The girl had initially had claimed to be assaulted by a robot, a blond man with glasses, and an unidentified "Mr. Gatt".
Dr. Emans maintained that the presence of vulvitis in all three girls participating in the second trial was unusual and significant in identifying sexual abuse; in spite of the fact that the total population really included at least 60 girls. A monograph Emans co-authored in 1982 states explicitly that vulvovaginitis is common and often due to poor hygiene. Vulvitis and vulvovaginitis are mild inflammations which can result from many causes -- irritating soaps, uncleanness, infections, and tight fitting clothing. Furthermore, one of the girls had not been at the school for 18 months by the time Dr. Emans carried out the examination. Vulvitis caused by the rubbing of sexual abuse generally heals within three weeks. Emans had examined the other two girls at least four weeks after the school closed and found vulvitis in them even though their family pediatricians found no vulvitis or other physical signs of abuse during the examinations they conducted almost immediately after the school closed.
How was such madness possible? The national wave of daycare hysteria began in 1983 when similar outlandish accusations were made in California at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California. Because of national media-generated panic, copycat cases (such as Fells Acres) sprung up all over the country. Innocent people such as Kelly Michaels in New Jersey, workers at the Little Rascals Day Care in Edenton, North Carolina, and Bernie Baran of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, were sent to prison. Janet Reno herself prosecuted three very dubious cases, and was rewarded by being made US Attorney General. With a few honorable exceptions (such as Alan Rubenstein, DA of Bucks County, Pennsylvania) politically ambitious prosecutors such as Harshbarger exploited the mindless hysteria for all it was worth.
During the mid-80s, cultural anxieties about sex were at fever pitch, and the panic was promoted across the political spectrum. (Not that it's all that much better today.) The leaders of the conservative backlash against the sexual liberation of the 60s gained political power with the election of Ronald Reagan. In 1978, Anita Bryant had unleashed a wave of national homophobia with a campaign called (naturally) Save the Children. The AIDS epidemic not only devastated the gay community, but reinforced the notion that not only were gay people dangerous, sex in general was dangerous. Prominent feminists -- under the leadership of Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem and others -- promoted the notion that sex is rape, and joined forces with religious conservatives in an attempt to stamp out "pornography." In 1980, the publication of Michelle Remembers popularized the notion of widespread Satanic Ritual Abuse and the scientifically baseless theory of "repressed" memory. Both fictions were quickly endorsed by Steinem and company.
Daycare was generally suspect among conservatives because it enabled women to abandon their "proper" roles as wives and mothers and join the workforce. Men who worked in daycare were doubly suspect -- not only were they enabling women to abandon their traditional roles, but they had abandoned traditional male roles by caring for children. (After all, something must be "wrong" with a man who chooses to nurture children. Almost every daycare case began with a male worker being accused of sexually molesting a little boy.) Mothers who were new to the workforce, and who had reluctantly entrusted the care of their children to strangers, were easily panicked. Given this irrational atmosphere, jointly created by the left and the right, it is no surprise that the Amiraults were convicted.
The Amiraults appealed their convictions. Gerald's appeal was turned down by the SJC in March, 1989. The women lost their appeal before the SJC in July, 1990. After Cheryl and Violet had served five years, they were eligible for parole. All they had to do was admit guilt and express contrition. They refused -- for the simple reason that they were innocent. Parole denied. They were handed the keys to their jail cells, but they refused to use them if it meant confessing to crimes they had not committed. Their trial judge, Paul Sullivan, on October 1, 1992, revised and revoked their sentence to time already served and ordered the two women released. The prosecutors, however, weren't about to stand for this. In an unprecedented move, they appealed Sullivan's revise-and-revoke order, and in May of 1993, the SJC sided with the prosecutors and Violet and Cheryl remained in prison.
The Amiraults filed a new appeal, arguing that the seating arrangement for the child witnesses violated their right under the US and Massachusetts constitutions to confront the witnesses against them. In August of 1995, Judge Robert Barton agreed, granted new trials, and finally ordered the women released. Gerald's appeal, unfortunately, went back before the judge who'd convicted him, Elizabeth Dolan, and Dolan refused to release him. Both Barton's decision and Dolan's decision were appealed to the SJC.
Many of us were cautiously optimistic. Enough had been learned in the past dozen years to demonstrate that the day-care convictions of the 80s were based on sham evidence. After five years in prison, Kelly Michaels had finally won her release. So had Scott and Brenda Kniffen (Kern County, California) and Robert Kelly and Dawn Wilson (Edenton, North Carolina). Dale Akiki had been acquitted in San Diego, and Pastor Roby Roberson and his wife Connie had been acquitted in Wenatchee, Washington. (Many other innocent people, convicted of being part of a non-existent Wenatchee Satanic Ritual Abuse cult, unfortunately remain in prison.)
On January 14 of this year, a few hundred people met in Salem, Massachusetts, on the 300th anniversary of the official Day of Contrition for the Salem Witch Trials. Nationally prominent writers, lawyers, and social scientists spoke. We received support via videotape from Arthur Miller and William Styron. At that conference I had the privilege of meeting Violet and Cheryl Amirault, Gerald's wife Patty, and the Amirault children. I left that conference filled with hope, believing that the mindless hysteria on the past two decades was at last receding, and that a time of reason, compassion, and healing might be at hand.
But my hopes were dashed on March 24 when the SJC turned down the Amiraults' appeal and ordered Cheryl and Violet back to prison -- where 73-year-old Violet will likely spend the last of her days. The Court granted that serious errors had occurred during the trials, but Justice Fried felt that the public's right to "finality" outweighed niggling concerns about mere justice. I have been heartsick ever since. For me, this has been a year without a spring. My faith in our society -- indeed, my very faith in humanity -- has been shaken, damaged, perhaps irreparably shattered. A good part of the time now, life just doesn't make sense to me. But I still refuse to give up the battle.
I write this letter because I hope to connect with others who might join me in the fight for the Amirault family. At the moment, I feel much too alone and powerless. If you want to help, please contact me -- by phone, by email, by letter. If you're unsure, but have an open mind, I also want to hear from you. Maybe I can send you more information that would help you understand the gravity of this injustice.
I know many hearts are hardened against my beliefs about the innocence of the Amiraults and others in their position. Eileen McNamara (the Pulitzer winning Globe columnist), for example, has long made her position painfully clear. Recently my friend Carol Hopkins called McNamara, hoping to arrange a meeting. McNamara replied, "I don't give a whit who you are and what your organization stands for...There is absolutely nothing you could tell me about the Amirault case which could change my opinion about the guilt of these people." And then McNamara slammed down the phone. But if you were as close-minded as Eileen McNamara, you wouldn't have read beyond this letter's first sentence. I realize, however, that my work on behalf of the Amiraults will cost me friendships of many years duration. And at my age, the loss of a friendship can be painful almost beyond endurance.
A blessing, of course, is that I'm making new friends --including members of the Amirault family. Patty (Gerald's wife) is amazing, a true heroine. I called her the night before Easter, and one of her daughters told me she was out getting things for Easter baskets. I was very touched. I was an emotional wreck, and Patty Amirault was level-headed enough to make Easter baskets. Patty's also a fourth-grade teacher, a softball coach, and a devoted hockey mother to her son P.J. Patty takes her elder daughter around to visit prospective colleges, and she just fed and entertained a mob of teenagers after the prom.
Violet Amirault reminds me of my mother and some of my mother's oldest friends. My mother is 76, and did day care in our home after my youngest brother was in school. A different roll of the dice could have put my mother exactly where Violet Amirault is today. Lately, I've been calling Violet every day. The horror of her situation weighs heavy upon her. But she's retained a sense of humor. And she always manages to ask about me, how I'm doing, and shows concern for my life and my writing.
When one gets to know the Amiraults one is struck by how ordinary -- and how extraordinary -- they are. History has thrust an unbearable burden upon them -- and they bear it with amazing strength and dignity. These wonderful people may be sufficient to restore my faith in humanity -- the faith that was almost destroyed by Charles Fried, Scott Harshbarger, Larry Hardoon, Eileen McNamara, and others.
At the same time, I confess I'm growing impatient at having my own humanity and decency questioned and insulted by those who have much to lose if these innocent people win their freedom. In the Boston Globe (April 20, 1997), Attorney General Scott Harshbarger claimed that the goal of people like myself is "to absolutely negate that child abuse occurs." I am sorry, Mr. Harshbarger, but I find that remark extremely offensive. I happen to be a gay man, and have no children of my own. But I am the eldest of six and have 15 nieces and nephews who I dearly love. Don't you dare try to tell me that I don't care about children!
Harshbarger doesn't explain why a concern about innocent people wrongly convicted is equivalent to denying the existence of child abuse. The chief Amirault prosecutor, Larry Hardoon, however, has been clearer. In 1992, Hardoon said that society should be "willing to trade off a couple of situations that are really unfair, in exchange for being sure that hundreds of children are protected." I've heard variations on Hardoon's argument from several soi disant child-protection "advocates." The Amiraults, in other words, are expendable -- necessary casualties in the great moral war against unspeakable evil. Sort of like all those "expendable" Iraqi children who were necessary casualties of the Persian Gulf War. But the Amiraults -- like the Iraqi children -- never volunteered to destroy their lives in furtherance of this great moral crusade.
Recently, Bennington College professor Gladden Schrock phoned Violet Amirault. "If we go back to prison," she said, "please don't abandon us." Schrock replied, "If we abandon you, we abandon our humanity." If we agree with Scott Harshbarger and Larry Hardoon that the innocent Amirault family is expendable, we have indeed abandoned our humanity. But if the Amiraults are expendable, then we all are expendable.
Sincerely,
Bob Chatelle