Inquisition 21
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1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
A country by country report on the progress of the sex abuse Inquisition
The McMartin and other US stories
There were so many US cases that this is just a summary.
1983. The McMartin Preschool, Santa Monica, California. One of the earliest and largest child sexual abuse cases in the US, the first in a wave of pre-school cases. It was started by mother suspecting that a male teacher had touched her son, when she noticed his sore bottom. Under interrogation he and other children made further accusations of touchings and of bizarre satanic ritual abuse. A woman and other men were then also accused. The woman and one man spent years in jail before eventual release. The 28-month trial was the longest and costliest criminal prosecution in US history.
1984. The Fells Acres Day Care Center. A boy reported that a male helper had touched his penis. Other children were interviewed and allegations of widespread satanic ritual abuse emerged. Physical examinations by experts revealed hymen and anal scars (these would also emerge in other since discredited cases around the world). Here as in all other SRA cases, the same phenomenon are reported by the children – clowns, animals sacrificed, secret rooms, naked adults in circles, and so on.
The male accused was sentenced to 30-40 years in prison, two women to 8-20 years. In 1995, after 8 years in prison, the two women were released as their conviction was overturned, but one died shortly after. The man is still in prison.
1984. The Country Walk case, Miami, Florida. A boy told his mother that his day care mother kissed all the babies while bathing them. States Attorney, Janet Reno, called in child abuse experts, and sets in motion a moral panic that engulfed Dade County and set off many other highly publicized day-care sex abuse prosecutions. Under aggressive interrogations, other children began to report SRA happenings. Under blackmail ‘plea bargaining’, the day care mother was eventually persuaded to testify against her husband. She later retracted this. He received a life sentence.
1986. The Westchester-Tremont Day Care Center, the Bronx, NY, and other centers. A boy (three years old) reported that a Methodist minister was molesting children during nap times.
Despite the evidence of 26 character witnesses, including a bishop, a judge, and a police commissioner, he was convicted on January 20, 1986, and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
In follow up investigations others were accused and convicted, including four men, one a 21 year-old college student, all working at other local centers. Vital evidence, which would have undermined the allegations, was withheld.
Between May 1989 and the fall of 1996, all the convictions were overturned, but one accused had spent 10 years in jail.
1988. The Wee Care Nursery School, Maplewood, New Jersey. Also known as the ‘Kelly Michaels case’ after 23 year-old Kelly Michaels was convicted of 115 counts of sexual abuse against 20 children in her care. A boy reported that she had checked his temperature using a rectal thermometer. Under interrogation 51 other children reported SRA type activities with her.
She was convicted in August, 1988, after an 11-month trial, and sentenced to 47 years in prison, serving five years before a successful appeal in 1993.
1991. Faith Chapel, Spring Valley, California. A girl claimed that a male volunteer babysitter flashed at her. He suffered from the rare genetic disorder of Noonan's syndrome, which left him physically deformed, and potentially frightening to children. Parents did not approve of him being a baby sitter. After numerous interviews, nine other children made SRA type admissions. The baby sitter was arrested in May 1991 and charged with 35 counts of child abuse and kidnapping. During the 1993 seven-month trial, in which 11 children testified, a parent withdrew his son who was giving evidence on the basis that it was not believable. This was a critical moment, ten years after the 1983 McMartin Preschool case.
Skepticism spread to the press. On the defendant’s 35th birthday, hundreds gathered outside the courthouse in a candlelight vigil. After seven hours deliberation, the jury acquitted him on all counts. The jurors interviewed did not believe that the testimony of the children was credible. The investigator and district attorney were chastised.
The acquitted man filed suit against prosecutors, therapists and the church, for emotional distress, slander, libel, false imprisonment, professional negligence and civil rights violations. The county and the defendants eventually settled and he received over $2 million. This would be echoed seven years later in the malicious slander awards to the falsely accused and imprisoned in the Saskatoon and Shieldfield cases. See those stories above.
1995. Wenatchee, Washington. The East Wenatchee Pentecostal Church of God House of Prayer. Policeman Bob Perez was the local sex-crimes investigator. In 1995, his 12 year old foster daughter, who came from a poor home, told him that her natural mother and father had sexually abused her and her siblings. She had already accused someone else who was jailed as a result. When her new story was confirmed by some of her siblings, her mother and father confessed and were imprisoned. Thereupon she made further disclosures of an SRA type pedophile ring called ‘The Circle’, which included the Wenatchee Pentecostal Church, 24 adults and the abuse of 50 children. This increased to more than 100 Circle members and thousands of counts of abuses. Under interrogation Perez got corroborative evidence from a 13-year-old girlfriend of his foster daughter and a woman member of the church, who confessed to being a member of the sex ring, an admission she later recanted. The pastor and his wife were arrested on 22 counts of allegedly raping and molesting children at their house and during Bible classes at the Church. After 9 months in prison they were acquitted, but 19 other accused were still in jail.
In June 1996, the foster daughter, now 13, ran away from the Perez home, called a TV station, and in a long taped interview recanted her testimony and claimed that she had been pressured by Perez to make up the stories. She said that she had never been sexually abused and never saw the abuse of anyone else.
Editors note. Interesting that five out of the six US day care center scandals were started by remarks from small boys. The girl, the sixth, reported a flashing, not a touch. On the other side of the ocean in the UK, a boy-mother combination (he was only two and a half) started the Shieldfield affair, and Rochdale was set off by the fantasies of two boys. In Canada a boy started the Saskatoon one, and in New Zealand a boy told his mother he did not like his crèche minder’s ‘black penis’, starting the Ellis travesty (Peter Ellis is white). Both the Swedish Alexander and Finnish Niko cases began with boys. The Cleveland scare was started by two pediatricians examining the rectums of every boy and girl in the children’s hospital, and Orkney appears to have been only the second of the major scandals begun by a story from a girl. The Mr. Bubbles affair in Australia was begun by a mother looking at her daughter’s posture, not by the girl herself. Leaving aside the Perez case, as it was highly unusual (a sex abuse hunting policeman and his foster daughter), most of the moral panics we have looked at were begun by suspicions concerning the behavior of boys, remarks made by boys or mothers suspicious that something had happened to their boys.
Why are boys and boys’ mothers so prominent in false allegations of child abuse. Why not girls?
Country by country
Clint Betterridge - stop this extradition! It's over.
The Peter Ellis story
The Shieldfield travesty
The Saskatoon story
The McMartin and other US stories
Act of infamy – the Nora Wall story
Bart Lauwaert tells his own story
Australia’s criminal involvement in Cambodia
Graham Cleghorn writes from Cambodian prisons
The setting up of Rudolf Knuchel
The Pitcairn sex trial – the cast and the story
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