Wee Care Nursery School, located in Maplewood, New Jersey, was the subject of a day care child abuse case that was tried during the 1980s. [1] [2] Although Margaret Kelly Michaels was prosecuted and convicted, the decision was reversed after she spent five years in prison. An appellate court ruled that several features of the original trial had produced an unjust ruling and the conviction was reversed. [3] The case was studied by several psychologists who were concerned about the interrogation methods used and the quality of the children's testimony in the case. [4] This resulted in research concerning the topic of children's memory and suggestibility, resulting in new recommendations for performing interviews with child victims and witnesses. [5] [6]
In April 1985, a nurse took the temperature of a 4-year-old boy with a rectal thermometer and the boy said, "That's what my teacher does to me at nap time at school." The comment was reported to the local authorities, and all the children at the Wee Care Nursery School were questioned. [7] Social workers and therapists collected testimony from 51 children from the day care center. During the interviews, children made accusations such as that Michaels forced them to lick peanut butter off of her genitals, that she penetrated their rectums and vaginas with knives, forks and other objects, that she forced them to eat cakes made from human excrement and that she made them play duck, duck, goose while naked. Michaels was indicted for 235 counts of sexual offenses with children and youths. [3] She denied the charges. [8]
Upon conviction, when asked whether they actually believed some of the more sordid claims from the children, prosecutors Glenn Goldberg and Sara McArdle answered "No" and "Oh, absolutely" simultaneously. [9] But when journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz asked about some of these bizarre elements, such as knives that left no scars, Goldberg replied, "What is there left to know? The jury has spoken. She's convicted." [10]
The trial began on June 22, 1987. [3] "The prosecution produced expert witnesses who said that almost all the children displayed symptoms of sexual abuse." [11] Prosecution witnesses testified that the children "had regressed into such behavior as bed-wetting and defecating in their clothing. The witnesses said the children became afraid to be left alone or to stay in the dark. They also testified that the children exhibited knowledge of sexual behavior far beyond their years." [11] Some of the other teachers testified against her. [11] The defense argued that Michaels had not had the opportunity to take the children to a location where all of the alleged activities could have taken place without being noticed. [11] The jury was not shown the transcripts of the interrogations of the children that produced the accusations. [10]
After nine months, the case went to the jury for deliberation. At that time, 131 counts remained, including charges of aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, endangering the welfare of children, and making terroristic threats. The jury deliberated for 12 days before Michaels was convicted of 115 counts of sexual offenses involving 20 children. [3] [12]
On August 2, 1988, Michaels was sentenced to 47 years in prison, with no possibility for parole for the first 14 years. [3] The judge "said the facts in the case were sordid, bizarre and demeaning to the children." [13] Michaels "told the judge that she was confident her conviction would be overturned on appeal." [13]
In March 1993, after five years in prison, Michaels' appeal was successful and she was released. [3] The New Jersey Supreme Court overturned the lower court's decision and declared "the interviews of the children were highly improper and utilized coercive and unduly suggestive methods." [14]
A three-judge panel ruled she had been denied a fair trial because "the prosecution of the case had relied on testimony that should have been excluded because it improperly used an expert's theory, called the child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome, to establish guilt." [15] In June 1993, the State Supreme Court refused to hear the prosecutor's appeal of the decision. [16] In February 1994, "the court heard arguments...about the admissibility of evidence." [1]
In December 1994, the prosecution dropped the attempt to retry the case "because too many obstacles had been placed in the way of a successful retrial." [17] The major hurdle was that "if the state decided to reprosecute Michaels, it must produce 'clear and convincing evidence' that the statements and testimony elicited by the improper interview techniques are reliable enough to warrant admission." [17] [18] "While the Supreme Court stopped short of instructing the prosecutor to drop the case, the court made it clear that it believed the children's testimony would not hold up." [17]
During Michaels’ appeal, researchers Maggie Bruck and Stephen Ceci prepared an amicus brief regarding the case that pointed out several problems with the children's testimony that was the primary evidence. Some of the issues that were addressed were the role of interviewer bias, repeated questions, peer pressure, and the use of anatomically correct dolls in contaminating the children's testimony. These interview techniques could have led to memory errors or false memories. In addition to the problems with the interviews themselves, the fact that there were no recordings of initial interviews meant that important evidence was missing; therefore, it was not possible to determine the origin of some of the information that children reported (i.e., it could have been suggested to them by interviewers in the early interviews.) [4]
Interviews from the Wee Care Nursery School and McMartin preschool trials were examined as part of a research project on the testimony of children questioned in a highly suggestive manner. Compared with a set of interviews from Child Protective Services, the interviews from the two trials were "significantly more likely to (a) introduce new suggestive information into the interview, (b) provide praise, promises, and positive reinforcement, (c) express disapproval, disbelief, or disagreement with children, (d) exert conformity pressure, and (e) invite children to pretend or speculate about supposed events." [19]
The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith, which used the controversial and now discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. Some allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution.
Gerald A. "Tooky" Amirault is an American convicted in 1986 of child sexual abuse of eight children at the Fells Acres Day School in Malden, Massachusetts, run by his family. He and his family deny the charges, which supporters regard as a conspicuous example of day-care sex-abuse hysteria. Amirault was released from prison on parole on April 30, 2004.
The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case in the 1980s, prosecuted by the Los Angeles District Attorney, Ira Reiner. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with hundreds of acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983, with arrests and the pretrial investigation taking place from 1984 to 1987 and trials running from 1987 to 1990. The case lasted seven years but resulted in no convictions, and all charges were dropped in 1990. By the case's end, it had become the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history. The case was part of day-care sex-abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The Kern County child abuse cases started the day care sexual abuse hysteria of the 1980s in Kern County, California. The cases involved allegations of satanic ritual abuse by a sex ring against as many as 60 children who testified they had been abused. At least 36 people were convicted and most of them spent years in prison. Thirty-four convictions were overturned on appeal. The district attorney responsible for the convictions was Ed Jagels, who was sued by at least one of those whose conviction was overturned, and who remained in office until 2009. Two of the convicted individuals were unable to prove their innocence because they died in prison.
Dorothy Rabinowitz is a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist and commentator.
The Fells Acres day care sexual abuse trial took place in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts following charges initially lodged in the mid-1980s against family members who operated a day care center, Fells Acres Day School, in Malden, Massachusetts. The facility had been opened in 1966 by Violet Amirault (1923–1997). She and her two children—son Gerald Amirault and daughter Cheryl Amirault LeFave —were tried for sexually abusing children at their facility. Gerald was tried in 1986 while his sister and mother were tried in 1987. All three were convicted and sentenced to prison. The Amiraults deny the charges, which supporters regard as a conspicuous example of day-care sex-abuse hysteria.
The Little Rascals Day Care Center was a day care in Edenton, North Carolina, where, from 1989 to 1995, there were arrests, charges and trials of seven people associated with the day care center, including the owner-operators, Bob and Betsy Kelly. In retrospect, the case reflected day care sex abuse hysteria, including allegations of satanic ritual abuse. The testimony of the children was coached.
Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.
Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis was a New Zealand childcare worker who was wrongfully convicted of child sexual abuse. He was at the centre of one of the country's most enduring judicial controversies, after being found guilty in June 1993 in the High Court on 16 counts of sexual offences involving children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Creche and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. He maintained his innocence until his death 26 years later and was supported by many New Zealanders in his attempts to overturn his convictions, although others believed he was guilty. Concerns about the reliability of the convictions centred on far-fetched stories told by many of the children and the interview techniques used to obtain their testimony.
The Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions in Wenatchee, Washington, US, of 1994 and 1995, were the last "large scale Multi-Victim / Multi-Offender case" during the hysteria over child molestation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many poor and intellectually disabled suspects pled guilty, while those who hired private lawyers were acquitted. Eventually all those accused in these cases were released, and the authorities paid damages to some of those originally accused.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
The San Diego Church ritual abuse case was a case of a developmentally disabled individual charged with child sexual abuse in 1991 as part of the satanic ritual abuse moral panic. After a 9-month trial, the accused was found not guilty by the jury.
Kathleen 'Kee' MacFarlane is an American social worker known for involvement in the high-profile McMartin preschool trial in the 1980s. She was the Director of Children's Institute International. She developed the concept of the anatomically correct doll for children to use during interviews concerning abuse and played a significant role in the McMartin trial. MacFarlane has been criticized for her methods of interrogating small children. Charges against the defendants eventually were dropped.
The Essex County Prosecutor's Office (ECPO) is the largest and busiest county prosecutor's office in the State of New Jersey. It consists of approximately 140 assistant prosecutors (attorneys at law), 160 detectives licensed to carry arms, and 125 support staff. It is headquartered at the Essex County Government Complex.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, U.S., is a significant episode in the series of Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States, Ireland and elsewhere. The Philadelphia abuses were substantially revealed through a grand jury investigation in 2005. In early 2011, a new grand jury reported extensive new charges of abusive priests active in the archdiocese. In 2012, a guilty plea by priest Edward Avery and the related trial and conviction of William Lynn and mistrial on charges against James J. Brennan followed from the grand jury's investigations. In 2013, Charles Engelhardt and teacher Bernard Shero were tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. Lynn was the first official to be convicted in the United States of covering up abuses by other priests in his charge and other senior church officials have been extensively criticized for their management of the issue in the archdiocese.
The Country Walk case is a Florida 1985 "Multi-Victim, Multi-Offender" child sex abuse case that occurred during the day-care sex-abuse hysteria. Frank Fuster remains imprisoned. His wife Ileana Flores Fuster initially denied any wrongdoing, but following months of interrogations, she testified against Frank and confessed to the alleged crimes, later recanting her confession, then recanting her recantation, and finally recanting that. This case became known because it seemed to have better evidence than other ritual abuse cases, but scientific findings since Fuster's conviction have challenged the evidence. The case, prosecuted by Janet Reno, was profiled in the 2002 Frontline episode "Did Daddy Do It?"
Bernard F. Baran Jr. was an American day care employee wrongfully convicted in the day-care sex-abuse hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s that was spawned by the McMartin preschool trial.
Alan L. Zegas is an American criminal defense attorney. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, received a Bachelor of Science degree from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, an MBA from The Harvard Business School in 1978, and a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law-Newark in 1981. He said that he became a lawyer to defend the “little, powerless person against the powerful forces of government.”
The Saskatoon foster parent scandal occurred in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. There were two similar events around the same time where an allegation of child sex abuse escalated into claims of satanic ritual abuse. The more widely known of the two is the Martensville satanic sex scandal, and the second but earlier story is of the foster parent scandal in nearby Saskatoon.
Just how to prevent fantasy from being presented as fact in sex-abuse cases is facing the New Jersey Supreme Court in the wake of one of the most sensational of the spate of cases involving day-care workers during the 1980's. The court heard arguments today about the admissibility of evidence in the case of Margaret Kelly Michaels, who was convicted of sexually molesting 19 children, many of them 3- and 4-year-olds, during her seven-month employment at Wee Care Nursery in Maplewood. She served 5 years of a 47-year sentence before her conviction was overturned early last year.
Legal arguments in the nine-month trial of a day-care teacher accused of sexually abusing 20 children at a center in Maplewood ended here today.
Ending one of the most sensational child sex-abuse scandals in the nation, prosecutors today formally dropped their case against Margaret Kelly Michaels, the former day care teacher who spent five years in prison before her 1987 conviction was overturned on appeal last year.
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