ResearchEditor (talk | contribs) updating references with links |
ResearchEditor (talk | contribs) adding one line to section with link - the above link is dead |
||
Line 31:
=== Fells Acres Day Care Center ===
{{main|Fells Acres Day Care Center}}
The incident began in 1984, when a 5-year-old boy told a family member that [[Gerald Amirault]], administrator and handyman at the Fells Acres day care center, had touched his penis. <ref name=pbs/> The boy's mother notified the authorities, and Gerald was arrested. The children told stories which included being abused by a clown and a robot in a secret room at the day care center. They told of watching animals being sacrificed, and one girl claimed Gerald had penetrated her anus with the twelve-inch blade of a knife (which left no injuries). In the 1986 trial, Gerald was convicted and sentenced to thirty to forty years in state prison. He was released in 2004.<ref>{{cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Day Care Workers Get Retrial, As Accusers Did Not Face Them. |url=http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F6061EFB345E0C738FDDA10894DD494D81 |quote= A judge ruled today that two women convicted of sexually abusing children at a suburban day care center in the 1980s should be granted a new trial because some of their child accusers were allowed to face away from them while testifying. The judge, Robert A. Barton of Lowell Superior Court, also set a bail hearing for Thursday for the women, Violet Amirault and her daughter, Cheryl Amirault LeFave, who have been jailed since they were convicted in 1987. The women could be released from prison while awaiting the new trial. Prosecutors said they would appeal. |publisher=[[New York Times]] |date=[[August 30]], [[1995]] |accessdate=2007-07-21 }}</ref> {{Dead link|date=November 2007}} The “chief prosecutor of both of the Amirault cases” stated that “the children testified to being photographed and molested by acts that included penetration by objects” and “the implication...that the children's allegations of abuse were tainted by improper interviewing is groundless and not true.” <ref>{{cite news | last = Hardoon | first = Larry | publisher= WALL STREET JOURNAL | title = Letters to the Editor: The Real Darkness Is Child Abuse | url = http://web.archive.org/web/20010719201703/http://www.vocal-nasvo.org/hardoon.htm | language = English | date= 02/24/95}}</ref>
===The Bronx Five===
|
Revision as of 02:06, 26 November 2007
Template:Npov-title Day care sex abuse hysteria occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s. [1] [2] This occurred mainly in the United States, with some cases in Canada and New Zealand. A prominent case in Kern County, California first brought the issue of day care sexual abuse to the fore in the public consciousness, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade.
The Kern county case was followed by a wave of similar accusations that started in California and spread throughout the United States, as well as to Canada, New Zealand and some European countries.
Significant cases
Kern county child abuse cases
The Kern County child abuse case was the first prominent instance of accusations of ritualized sex abuse of children. In 1982 in Kern County, California, Debbie and Alvin McCuan were accused of abusing their own children. The initial charges were made by Mary Ann Barbour, the children's step-grandmother. Barbour had a history of mental illness. The authorities used coercive techniques to get the children to tell of abuse by their parents. In 1982, the girls further accused McCuan's defense witnesses: Scott Kniffen, his wife Brenda, and his mother. Mary Ann Barbour reported that the children had been used for prostitution, used in child pornography, tortured, made to watch snuff films. The McCuans and the Kniffens were each sentenced to over 240 years in prison in 1984. Their convictions were overturned in 1996.[3]
McMartin preschool trial
It started in 1983 when a mother with schizophrenia, and a history of false accusations accused the McMartin family of sexually abusing her child. [1] After seven years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. As of 2006, it is the longest and most expensive trial in the history of the United States. The accusations involved hidden tunnels, killing animals, Satan worship, and orgies.[4]
Nine of 11 jurors at a press conference following the trial stated that they believed the children had been molested. These same jurors stated that they believed that the evidence did not allow them to state who had committed the abuse beyond a reasonable doubt. [5]
However at least one former "victim" has completely retracted his story and admits he lied, believing he was protecting his younger siblings, and to please his parents. [6]
In The Devil in The Nursery, Margaret Talbot for the New York Times summarized the case:
When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80's -- the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities. [7]
David Heckler, author of The Battle and the Backlash - The Child Sexual Abuse War, states:
“What happened at the McMartin Preschool will be debated for a long time. Few aspects of the case are clear, but it requires no strain of credulity to believe that the children could have been abused at the facility without being diagnosed by a pediatrician.” [8]
Dade County Day Care Center Panic
Miami-Dade County, Florida state's attorney Janet Reno crafted a "children's rights" approach to the prosecution of several suspected child abusers during her reelection campaign in 1984. Hundreds of prosecutors nationwide patterned themselves after her systematic style, including some of the other examples listed here.
Starting in 1984, Reno used Joseph and Laurie Braga, two self-styled experts at interviewing children, to gain most of the "confessions" from the children. The Bragas coerced numerous children into confessions that were thrown out on appeal in both state and federal courts years later. One federal judge described the confessions as "fundamentally unfair." Some of the kids later admitted that they confessed only because they were told other children claimed abuse, and that they were tired of being told "I don't believe you," and "because I was getting tired ... [that] I told a lie." [1]
Fells Acres Day Care Center
The incident began in 1984, when a 5-year-old boy told a family member that Gerald Amirault, administrator and handyman at the Fells Acres day care center, had touched his penis. [1] The boy's mother notified the authorities, and Gerald was arrested. The children told stories which included being abused by a clown and a robot in a secret room at the day care center. They told of watching animals being sacrificed, and one girl claimed Gerald had penetrated her anus with the twelve-inch blade of a knife (which left no injuries). In the 1986 trial, Gerald was convicted and sentenced to thirty to forty years in state prison. He was released in 2004.[9] [dead link] The “chief prosecutor of both of the Amirault cases” stated that “the children testified to being photographed and molested by acts that included penetration by objects” and “the implication...that the children's allegations of abuse were tainted by improper interviewing is groundless and not true.” [10]
The Bronx Five
In The Bronx, prosecutor Mario Merola, convicted five men, including Nathaniel Grady, a 47 year-old Methodist minister, of sexually abusing children in day care centers throughout the Bronx. [1] [11]
Wee Care Nursery School
It started in Maplewood, New Jersey in April of 1985. [1] A nurse took the temperature of a four-year-old boy with a rectal thermometer and the boy reportedly said: "That's what my teacher does to me at nap time at school." The comment was reported to the local authorities. The children were interviewed and the following accusations were heard from the children: 23-year-old Kelly Michaels had spread peanut butter on their genitals and licked it off; she had penetrated their rectums and vaginas with knives, forks, and other objects. In August of 1988, after 11 months of trial, she was convicted of 115 counts of sexual abuse and sentenced to 47 years in the New Jersey state prison. After five years in prison her appeal was successful and she was released. The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision and declared "the interviews of the children were highly improper and utilized coercive and unduly suggestive methods."[12]
Cleveland child abuse scandal
The allegations of child sexual abuse were being made by Marietta Higgs, a pediatrician at a Middlesbrough, United Kingdom hospital. Using a technique known as reflex anal dilatation, in 1987 she diagnosed 121 children as victims of sexual abuse. Once the allegations had been made, social workers were compelled by law to remove the children from their families and place them in foster care. Initially public opinion favored the doctor and the social workers but as the number of cases increased a public inquiry was enacted, led by Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. The courts dismissed some of the cases but others were tried and prosecuted.
Little Rascals Day Care Center
In April of 1989 in Edenton, North Carolina, Bob Kelley was arrested and charged with child sexual abuse. By the end of the investigation 6 other people were charged, including a woman who was in a child custody case with her police officer husband, who had no connection to the facility or the Kelleys. On May 23, 1997, the prosecution dropped all charges related to the Little Rascals case against Bob Kelley and his wife.[13] [1]
Dale Akiki
Akiki, 36, in 1991 had Noonan's syndrome. He was recently married and was arrested in May of 1991. He and his wife were volunteer baby-sitters at Faith Chapel in Spring Valley, California. On each Sunday, they would keep an eye on the children while their parents were attending services in the church next door. The accusations started when a young girl told her mother that "He [Akiki] showed me him's penis." The mother contacted the police. After interviews, nine other children accused Akiki of killing animals and drinking their blood in front of the children. He was found innocent of the 35 counts of child abuse and kidnapping in his 1993 trial. Cite error: A <ref>
tag is missing the closing </ref>
(see the help page).
Wenatchee Sex Ring
In Wenatchee, Washington in 1994 and 1995 police and state social workers undertook what was then called the nation's most extensive child sex-abuse investigation. [1] Forty-three adults were arrested on 29,726 charges of child sex abuse involving 60 children. Parents, Sunday school teachers and a pastor were charged and many were convicted of abusing their own children or the children of others in the community. Courts ultimately determined the charges weren't true. Police coerced children into giving false statements, and false testimony in court.[14] A consultant, retired Bellevue Police Chief D.P. Van Blaricom, hired by a city insurer who looked into how the Wenatchee police ran the child abuse investigations stated that the cases were handled properly. A Justice Department investigation also found that was no evidence of civil rights violations. [15] Dr. Deborah Harper testified in the trial "One girl showed definite medical signs of sexual abuse and it could not be ruled out for two others." [16]
Causes
Guilt
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, more and more mothers were working outside of the home, resulting in the opening of large numbers of day-care centers. Anxiety and guilt over leaving young children with strangers may have created a climate of fear and readiness to believe false accusations. [7] [17] There was also the problems of using leading questions, that can create false memories in young children. John Myers says: "At the time McMartin and Michaels began, there was very little awareness of the special issues that arise in questioning children about abuse." [18]
In The Devil in The Nursery, Margaret Talbot for the New York Times writes:
Our willingness to believe in ritual abuse was grounded in anxiety about putting children in day care at a time when mothers were entering the work force in unprecedented numbers. It was as though there were some dark, self-defeating relief in trading niggling everyday doubts about our children's care for our absolute worst fears -- for a story with monsters, not just human beings who didn't always treat our kids exactly as we would like; for a fate so horrific and bizarre that no parent, no matter how vigilant, could have ever prevented it.[7]
False allegations when interviewing children
While it was not fully understood at the time of these cases, subsequent research has shed light on the inherent difficulty associated with child testimony. In particular, it has become clear that children are very vulnerable to outside influences that lead to fabrication of testimony.[19] Such testimony can be influenced in a variety of ways.
Some studies suggest that children incorporate aspects of the interviewer’s questions into their answers in an attempt to tell the interviewer what the child believes is being sought. [20] This contention has been disputed, however. [21] Studies also show that when adults ask children questions that do not make sense (such as “Is milk bigger than water?” or “Is red heavier than yellow?”), most children will offer an answer, believing that there is an answer to be given (rather than understand the absurdity of the question).[22] Furthermore, repeated questioning of children causes them to change their answers. This is because the children perceive the repeated questioning as a sign that they did not give the “correct” answer previously.[23] Children are also especially susceptible to leading and suggestive questions.[24]
Interviewer bias also plays a role in shaping child testimony. When an interviewer has a preconceived notion as to the truth of the matter being investigated, the questioning is conducted in a manner to extract statements that support these beliefs.[25] As a result, evidence that could disprove the belief is never sought by the interviewer. Additionally, positive reinforcement by the interviewer can taint child testimony. Often such reinforcement is given to encourage a spirit of cooperation by the child, but the impartial tone can quickly disappear as the interviewer nods, smiles, or offers verbal encouragement to “helpful” statements.[26] Some studies show that when interviewers make reassuring statements to child witnesses, the children are more likely to fabricate stories of past events that never occurred.[27]
Peer pressure also influences children to fabricate stories. Studies show that when a child witness is told that his or her friends have already testified that certain events occurred, the child witness was more likely to create a matching story.[28] The status of the interviewer can also influence a child’s testimony – the more authority an interviewer has (such as a police officer), the more likely a child is to comply with that person’s agenda.[29]
Finally, while there are supporters of the use of anatomically correct dolls in questioning victims of sexual abuse/molestation, there are also critics of this practice.[30] Critics argue that because of the novelty of the dolls, children will act out sexually explicit acts with the dolls even if the child has not been sexually abused.[31] Another criticism is that because the studies that compare the differences between how abused and non-abused children play with these dolls are conflicting (some studies suggest that sexually abused children play with anatomically correct dolls in a more sexually explicit manner than non-abused children, while other studies suggest that there is no correlation), it is impossible to interpret what is meant by how a child plays with these dolls.[32]
Timeline
- 1982 Kern county child abuse case
- 1983 McMartin preschool trial in California
- 1984 Fells Acres Day Care Center
- 1985 Wee Care Nursery School in New Jersey in April
- 1987 Cleveland child abuse scandal in England
- 1989 Little Rascals Day Care Center scandal in Edenton, North Carolina
- 1990 All charges dropped in McMartin preschool trial
- 1991 Christchurch Civic Creche
- 1992 Martensville Scandal, Martensville, Saskatchewan, Canada
- 1994 start of Wenatchee Sex Rings case
- 1996 Convictions in the Kern county child abuse case overturned
See also
- False allegation of child sexual abuse
- Child sexual abuse
- False memories
- Moral panic
- Salem witch trial
- Satanic ritual abuse
References
- ^ a b c d e f g "Innocence Lost, The Plea". Frontline. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
The McMartin Preschool case was one of the earliest and largest child sexual abuse cases in this country. Although none of those charged were ever convicted, the 28-month trial was the longest and costliest criminal prosecution in U.S. history. This case is often cited as triggering the wave of pre-school sexual abuse cases during the mid-1980s.
{{cite news}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "Parole Board recommends Amirault's commutation" (courtesy link from Truth in Justice). Associated Press. July 6, 2001. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
The Amiraults always insisted they were innocent, the victims of a sex abuse hysteria that swept the country in the 1980s and questionable testimony from child witnesses.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "Who Was Abused?". New York Times. September 19, 2004. Retrieved 2007-07-21.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "Los Angeles Pressing Inquiry Into Sexual Abuse Of Children". Associated Press. April 1, 1984. Retrieved 2007-07-21.
To the children at the Virginia McMartin Preschool, it was The Hollywood Game or Naked Movie Star. Adults use more sophisticated terms to describe the sexual games the children were reported to have played with trusted teachers, such as pedophilia, felony child abuse, child pornography. Despite stricter laws against the sexual abuse of children, three cases pending in Los Angeles alone indicate that trafficking in children for pleasure or profit has not disappeared. Seven defendants, including 76-year-old Virginia McMartin, who founded the school in 1956; her daughter, granddaughter and grandson, are scheduled to be arraigned Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. They face a total of 115 counts of having sexual relations with children as young as 2 years old at the preschool center in suburban Manhattan Beach.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "Tapes of Children Decided the Case for Most Jurors". Los Angeles Times. Friday, January 19, 1990. pp. A1 and A2.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Unknown parameter|coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (help) - ^ "McMartin Preschool accuser recants". Los Angeles Times Magazine. October 30, 2005. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
One of the 360 children who made accusations says he lied to protect his siblings and was never raped.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ a b c Talbot, Margaret (January 7, 2001). "The Lives They Lived: 01-07-01: Peggy McMartin Buckey, b. 1926; The Devil in The Nursery" (reprint from New America). New York Times. Retrieved 2007-07-21.
Buckey's ordeal began in 1983, when the mother of a 2 1/2-year-old who attended the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, called the police to report that her son had been sodomized there. It didn't matter that the woman was eventually found to be a paranoid schizophrenic, and that the accusations she made -- of teachers who took children on airplane rides to Palm Springs and lured them into a labyrinth of underground tunnels where the accused "flew in the air" and others were "all dressed up as witches" ...
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ Hechler, David (1988). The Battle and the Backlash - The Child Sexual Abuse War. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. ISBN 0-669-14097-x.
{{cite book}}
: Check|isbn=
value: invalid character (help) - ^ "Day Care Workers Get Retrial, As Accusers Did Not Face Them". New York Times. August 30, 1995. Retrieved 2007-07-21.
A judge ruled today that two women convicted of sexually abusing children at a suburban day care center in the 1980s should be granted a new trial because some of their child accusers were allowed to face away from them while testifying. The judge, Robert A. Barton of Lowell Superior Court, also set a bail hearing for Thursday for the women, Violet Amirault and her daughter, Cheryl Amirault LeFave, who have been jailed since they were convicted in 1987. The women could be released from prison while awaiting the new trial. Prosecutors said they would appeal.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ Hardoon, Larry (02/24/95). "Letters to the Editor: The Real Darkness Is Child Abuse". WALL STREET JOURNAL.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help) - ^ "20th-century witch hunt". Associated Press. December 1, 1996.
The Rev. Nathaniel Grady, a pious man and a fiery orator, was born to do the Lord's work. As a boy, he walked to Sunday school hand-in-hand with his mother and sister. As an adult, he became a Methodist minister, shepherding a devoted flock in the rugged East Bronx while fostering friendships with judges, bishops, police chiefs, an ex-governor. Yet, prosecutors ignored Nat Grady's past when he was accused in 1984 of sexually abusing a half-dozen ...
{{cite news}}
:|access-date=
requires|url=
(help); Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "Recovered Reputations". New York Times. April 6, 2003. Retrieved 2007-09-25.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "Day-Care Owner Is Convicted of Child Molesting". New York Times. April 23, 1992. Retrieved 2007-08-21.
The longest and costliest criminal trial ever held in North Carolina ended today when the owner of a day-care center was convicted on 99 of 100 charges of sexually abusing 12 children there. After 14 days of deliberating, a Pitt County Superior Court jury found the 44-year-old defendant, Robert F. Kelly Jr., guilty of 4 counts of rape, 46 of taking indecent liberties, 36 of first-degree sexual offense and 13 crimes against nature. He was acquitted only of a single charge of taking indecent liberties with one of the 12 children.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "Pastor and Wife Are Acquitted on All Charges in Sex-Abuse Case". New York Times. December 12, 1995. Retrieved 2007-07-21.
{{cite news}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "Consultant finds no fault in sex ring probe". Associated Press in Tri-City Herald. February 22, 1996. pp. A7.
- ^ "Doctor confirms abuse in sex-ring case". Associated Press. December 5, 1996.
{{cite news}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=
(help) - ^ Pendergrast, Mark. Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives. ISBN 0942679180.
"It seems [the day-care sex- abuse hysteria] had something to do with this fear that we'd turned our kids over to total strangers," sociologist Catherine Beckett says ...
{{cite book}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ "The Child terror". Frontline. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
{{cite news}}
: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=
(help) - ^ Sherrie Bourg Carter, Children in the Courtroom (2005) (hereinafter “Carter”), p.21.
- ^ Ceci, Stephen J. (1995). Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony. ISBN 1557986320.
{{cite book}}
: Unknown parameter|coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (help) - ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.78.
- ^ Lucy S. McGough, Child Witnesses: Fragile Voices in the American Legal System (1994), p.72.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.79.
- ^ Carter, p.21.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.79.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.81.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.140.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.146-47.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.152.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.162.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.162.
- ^ Ceci and Bruck, p.162.