"I went to that preschool since I was a baby. I even went there during the
first grade after school. I had fun. We painted and colored," Karen (name
changed for privacy), now 16, describes some happy times that ended when her
preschool closed ten years ago. Her parents have similar memories. The
center was open and they could drop in any time. Her father said that today
Karen jumped with joy at the prospect of visiting Miss Vi; but visiting the
school's seventy year old former owner or her two children, Gerald and
Cheryl, is somewhat difficult today. They all remain in Massachusetts
prisons. The school was the infamous Massachusetts daycare, Fells Acres.
Many consider the Fells Acres prosecution, which will be ten years old
this September, a landmark for child protection. Unfortunately, two juries
and the media have overlooked an overwhelming body of evidence that suggests
the case is a complete hoax -- part of the "ritual abuse" hysteria that
began in the 1980s. The result is that for the past seven years three
innocent people have languished in prison.
It was Labor Day weekend of 1984. Gerald and his wife, Patti, were
awaiting the birth of their third child. Cheryl and her husband, Al, married
for scarcely sixteen months, were ready to start their family. Vi was
thinking of retiring and passing the eighteen year old business on to her
two children.
Sunday night the phone rang at a child abuse hotline. A mother told the
staffer that her son had accused Gerald Amirault of molesting him in a
secret room which had a bed and a shelf with golden trophies. The boy had
attended Fells Acres for approximately twenty days the previous spring, and
had left in June for summer vacation.
The mother and son told several conflicting versions of the story. The
boy told the police that he was taken to the secret room on several
occasions when his teachers were sick and Gerald took over the class; but
the teachers knew that Gerald never took over that classroom.
Initially the boy did not know where the secret room was because he was
blindfolded. Another time the room was at Fells Acres. Finally at the trial
the boy testified that he was driven in a car to the secret room and the
magic room which were in a white house and a brown house.
The mother told the grand jury that every day her son attended Fells
Acres, Gerald removed him from the classroom and took him to the secret room
to molest him. She added that he had to urinate in cups and drink the urine
while his teachers were "in the room." The mother's testimony before the
grand jury left it ambiguous as to whether this was supposed to have
happened in the classroom or the secret room and which room the teachers
were in. Nobody bothered to ask her to clarify this. The boy's teachers
never saw him removed from the classroom during nap time or drinking urine.
Police and social workers began interviewing children and asking about
secret rooms. Soon a child accused an unidentified clown, and authorities
warned parents to ask their children about a magic room, a secret room, and
a clown. Accusations arose against Vi, Cheryl, most of the other teachers,
and imaginary people such as Mr. Gatt and Abigail Cooper. By the time the
investigators realized there were no hidden or unused rooms at the school,
there were too many magic and secret room stories. They then decided these
rooms were two classrooms and a bathroom.
The police and DSS made no electronic recordings of the initial interviews,
so it is impossible to evaluate how much the children were pressured into
making accusations; nevertheless, DSS reports show how investigators
subjected the children to repeated leading questions and the use of
anatomically detailed dolls with oversized genitals, even though initially
the children said that no abuse occurred and denied the existence of a
secret room. Recently, researchers Maggie Bruck of McGill and Stephen Ceci
of Cornell have demonstrated that these techniques can produce false
accusations by preschool children. Such interviews themselves are an
insidious form of child sexual abuse.
The transcripts of the two trials read like a farce. Children admitted that
they would have forgotten everything had they not practiced their testimony
with their parents. Prosecutors Larry Hardoon and Patricia Bernstein had to
re-ask and rephrase questions when children responded "no" or "I forget that
one," to abuse questions.
Many children claimed that they were removed from their classes and that
they told their teachers that they were going to the magic room. No teacher
had heard of such a room until the beginning of the investigation. Various
children also described attacks or molestations by clowns, robots, and a
lobster. No teacher ever saw anyone dressed as a clown, except for Hicko,
who performed magic at birthday parties. Supposedly, Miss Vi fed a child a
frog that quacked like a duck; Miss Cheryl killed animals and buried their
blood in the sandbox, leaving not a trace of evidence; and someone tied a
naked boy to a tree in front of the all of the teachers and pupils.
Parents testified on how Fells Acres converted their darlings to monsters.
Every problem -- nightmares, bed wetting, overeating, undereating, temper
tantrums, jealousy, sex play, lying, clinginess -- became a symptom of
abuse. Without any scientific basis, Psychiatrist Renee Brant justified this
interpretation and introduced psychiatric jargon -- rescue fantasies,
transference, and displacement -- to make palatable to the jury the
children's stories of molestations by imaginary people and assaults in the
presence of their teachers.
Prosecutors also introduced pediatric gynecologist Sara Jean Emans to
satisfy the juries' and the public's need for "physical evidence" of the
abuse. She told one jury that the vulvitis, an irritation and inflammation
of the female genitals seen in three of the girls, is a "significant
finding" in an evaluation for sexual abuse. This testimony was admitted in
spite of the fact that one of these girls had not been at the school for
eighteen months at the time Emans had examined her. When due to rubbing from
abuse, such irritations generally heal within three weeks. She further added
that it was unusual to see three girls from the same school with the
condition, even though the gynecology book she co-authored states that the
condition is common and usually due to hygiene problems.
Recently New Jersey freed Kelly Michaels, who was convicted under similar
circumstances. Their supreme court recognized that suggestive interviews of
children combined with the failure to record them and unscientific
psychological testimony similar to Dr. Brant's violate our right to due
process. In other states, the spirit of the Salem witch hunt remains alive.
Not only have our courts upheld all convictions, but the parole board keeps
Cheryl and Vi in prison because they will not confess. Gerald will not even
be eligible for parole until he has spent twenty years in prison.
Many in the psychiatric community make snide remarks about the experts
who tried to warn the jury about how the outrageous interviews prevented
any reliable information from being obtained from the children. Meanwhile,
Dr. Emans, Dr. Brant, and the prosecutors continue to hold conferences
boasting about the success of their "do any thing to obtain a conviction"
approach to justice. As long as this injustice stands, it will be a model
for others to follow, once they have found another victim.
-----
For more details on this and other witch hunts access
my page on the witchhunts, http://liquid2-sun.mit.edu/witchhunt.html.
Update:
Finally the press has started to cover this case. January 30, 1995 the Wall
Street Journal had a beautiful piece written by Dorothy Rabinowitz. This led
to another piece in the Malden Observer by Jay Lindsay. Later Charlie Sennot
did a thorough and dispassionate investigation of the Fells Acres
prosecution in the Boston Globe March 19, 1995, page 1. The Wall Street
Journal has published two more pieces by Dorothy Rabinowitz and an editorial
asking Governor Weld to commute the Amirault's sentences. The WSJ also
announced the establishment of a defense fund for the Amiraults.
----------------------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT ADDRESSES:
Shiela Hubbard, Chair Governor William Weld
Massachusetts Parole Board Room 360, Statehouse
27-43 Wormwood Boston, Massachusetts 02133
Boston, Massachusetts 02210
Give the victims your moral support, and let the know where you stand.
Violet Amirault Gerald Amirault
Cheryl LeFave 26 Long Pond Road
Box 9007 Unit A-1
Framingham, MA 01701 Plymouth, MA 02360
----------------------------------------------------------------------
witchhunt information center: anonymous ftp to liquid.mit.edu
cd to /pub/witchhunt
file://liquid.mit.edu/homepage.html
fells: a more detailed description of this case
who_are_e7: description of largest modern witchhunt in the US and
other ritualistic abuse witchhunts.
--------------------------------------------
About the author and sources:
Jonathan G. Harris is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at MIT
(affiliation mentioned for identification purposes only). He also follows
"fringe science." and as part of this interest has studied the ritual abuse
controversy for over a year. The information in this article comes primarily
from transcripts of Gerald Amirault's trial and Cheryl LeFave's and Violet
Amirault's trial and some DSS and police reports from the Fells Acres
investigation. Also used were appellate court decisions; a friend of the
court brief on behalf of Kelly Michaels written by Professors Stephen Ceci
and Maggie Bruck; interviews with several people involved in the case.
"Karen"(alias) is a sixteen year old girl who attended Fells Acres from when
she was a baby until it closed in September of 1984. Her name has been
changed to protect the family's privacy. The interview was carried out with
the parents' consent Documentation of any facts stated here can be provided
upon request.
Jonathan G. Harris
(617)253-5273 (work).
Dept. of Chem Eng., MIT Rm 66-450
Cambridge, MA 02139
Fax: (617)253-9695
email: harris@mit.edu ----------