The Trial That Unleashed Hysteria Over Child Abuse

[DonViejo]

Early in the 19th century, two unmarried women who ran a school for girls in Edinburgh found themselves accused by a student of being lesbians. The charge, quite grave in that era, was baseless, and in time the women won a libel suit. But not before they had lost everything, including their school. If this story rings a bell, it may be because Lillian Hellman used it as a starting point for “The Children’s Hour,” her 1934 play about a couple of schoolteachers whose lives similarly come unraveled after a malicious student falsely accuses them of lesbianism.

It has long been said, in varying language, that a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. You do not have to reach back 200 years to Scotland to find enduring wisdom in that adage. You need return only to the 1980s and to the subject of this week’s Retro Report documentary video, part of a series re-examining news stories from the past. This week’s subject is the notorious McMartin Preschool abuse trial.

Starting in 1983, with accusations from a mother whose mental instability later became an issue in the case, the operators of a day care center near Los Angeles were charged with raping and sodomizing dozens of small children. The trial dragged on for years, one of the longest and costliest in American history. In the end, as with the Scottish women, lives were undone. But no one was ever convicted of a single act of wrongdoing. Indeed, some of the early allegations were so fantastic as to make many people wonder later how anyone could have believed them in the first place. Really now, teachers chopped up animals, clubbed a horse to death with a baseball bat, sacrificed a baby in a church and made children drink the blood, dressed up as witches and flew in the air — and all this had been going on unnoticed for a good long while until a disturbed mother spoke up?

Still, McMartin unleashed nationwide hysteria about child abuse and Satanism in schools. One report after another told of horrific practices, with the Devil often literally in the details.

Criminal cases of dubious provenance abounded. One that received great attention involved Margaret Kelly Michaels, convicted in 1988 of rampant sexual abuse at the Wee Care Day Nursery in Maplewood, N.J., where children said she had sexually abused them with knives, spoons and forks, and had urinated in their mouths. None showed signs of injury. Six years later, Ms. Michaels’s conviction was overturned. Another prominent case from those days involved charges of rape and sodomy brought against the operators of the Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton, N.C. As with McMartin, there were bizarre allegations early on about babies being murdered and children thrown in with sharks. Though defendants were found guilty, their convictions were later overturned and charges were dropped.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/us/the-trial-that-unleashed-hysteria-over-child-abuse.html?emc=edit_th_20140310&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284&_r=0

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Everything changed in my NYC daycare as a result of the McMartin case.

In 1984, all of a sudden all teachers and staff had to be fingerprinted if you wanted to keep your job.

You were no longer allowed to hug or touch a child or be alone in a room with a child.

I quit due to the restrictions. It was timely because about half of my co-workers were baselessly accused of child abuse by the parents through their children. I say baseless because I spent 12+ hours a day in the daycare and knew every single person in that small facility and there was never any impropriety. Some of them lost their jobs, others suspended. It eventually closed the daycare. And what a shame it did because we had very progressive education programs that went beyond public school kindergarten (three languages other than English, art, music, dancing, advanced reading).

They never found any evidence of child abuse at my daycare.

[pipoman]

2. These were the days of "kids don't lie about these things"

Disgruntled parents would accuse each other and estranged significant others of abuse. Coach or influence a child or children to make false claims resulting in charges against the person. Once charges were filed, conviction rates were high. For so many decades before claims of legitimate abuse were ignored, as so often happens, when the pendulum swung the other direction it over adjusted. The fact these claims are now often looked at with incredulity on their face is a good thing imo.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Lesbians were never acknowledged or targeted by legislation in the UK.

.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Nor does this article say that they were.

nt

[Hoppy]

5. Aren't operators of a Massachusetts day care center still in prison over similar nonsense?

[DonViejo]

6. Here's your answer...

-snip-

Superior Court Judge John Paul Sullivan reduced Violet and Cheryl’s sentences, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed that ruling in 1993.[8] In 1995, after serving eight years in state prison, Violet and Cheryl were freed on a successful appeal. A Lowell Superior Court judge ruled that their convictions were wrongful because they were not able to directly confront their accusers.[4] However, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reinstated the conviction, citing the need for "finality."[8] While awaiting this verdict, Violet Amirault died.

-snip-

In October 1999, the new Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley and Cheryl Amirault LeFave reached an agreement whereby Cheryl would be sentenced to the time served and she was released from prison. In exchange, Cheryl agreed to 10 years probation, and also could not give any television interviews, could not contact the families of the victims, could have no unsupervised contact with children, and could not profit in any way from her trial and imprisonment.

The Massachusetts parole board recommended the commutation of Gerald Amirault's sentence in July 2001 (an action that the alleged victims strenuously objected to[11][12]). The then–Acting Governor, Jane Swift, rejected the decision in February 2002. He was ultimately released from the Bay State Correctional Center on April 30, 2004.

more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fells_Acres_Day_Care_Center_preschool_trial

[CVN-68]

7. Who can ever forget the Wenatchee Witch Hunt in the mid 90's?

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=7065

Wenatchee Witch Hunt: Child Sex Abuse Trials In Douglas and Chelan Counties


Wenatchee, Washington, got world attention in 1994-1995, when it found itself in the midst of what was characterized as history's most extensive child sex abuse investigation. Three years later, the investigations had fallen apart amidst accusations of abuses by police and state social workers, and alleged false confessions, badgered child witnesses, and evidence based on the generally discredited "recovered memory" theory. The cases eventually came to be known as the Wenatchee Witch Hunt.

Some unscrupulous case workers and a overzealous cop were responsible for this.

[mainer]

8. And never forget this San Diego case case

Prosecutors alleged multiple sex acts against the children and claimed they had “dozens and dozens” of children who would testify, but called only nine to the stand, according to Akiki’s co-counsel, Susan Clemens. The children were about 3 and 4 when the events supposedly occurred, and 6 to 8 when they testified. Among other bizarre things, they told the court that Akiki had killed a giraffe and an elephant in their presence and sacrificed a child and drank its blood in the nursery.

What the charges boiled down to was a twisted doctrine called “ritual sexual abuse” that gained a following back in that day: in effect, modern-day witchcraft.

When testimony ended in November 1993, the jury took only seven hours to return a not-guilty verdict. Akiki wept as the clerk’s words told him he was finally going home.

Later, jurors were withering in their denunciation of every aspect of the state’s case and anyone associated with it. The county grand jury later joined the chorus.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/May/09/dale-akiki-reflects-historic-molestation-trial/

[Bill USA]

9. another very sad example of this kind of hysteria was the McMartin preschool trial in 1987

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial

The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case of the 1980s. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987, and the trial ran from 1987 to 1990. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. When the trial ended in 1990 it had been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history.[1] The case was part of day care sex abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.
(more)

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcmartin/mcmartinaccount.html

The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial, the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history, should serve as a cautionary tale. When it was all over, the government had spent seven years and $15 million dollars investigating and prosecuting a case that led to no convictions. More seriously, the McMartin case left in its wake hundreds of emotionally damaged children, as well as ruined careers for members of the McMartin staff. No one paid a bigger price than Ray Buckey, one of the principal defendants in the case, who spent five years in jail awaiting trial for a crime (most people recognize today) he never committed.

~~
~~

The effects of the McMartin trial even extended beyond the state of California. Across the country, day care providers resisted the temptation to hug or touch children--contact almost all child experts say children need--out of a fear that their actions might be interpreted as signs of abuse. Many day care centers were forced to close their doors after insurance companies, fearing molestation lawsuits, dramatically raised liability insurance rates. Early publicity surrounding the McMartin investigation also spawned a rash of charges against day care providers elsewhere, many of which proved to be unsubstantiated.


There are many lessons to be learned from the McMartin Preschool Trial. There are lessons for police and prosecutors, but there are also lessons for the media. It was "pack journalism"--slanted heavily toward the prosecution, providing sensational headlines day after day, almost never seriously questioning the allegations--that turned the McMartin trial into the expensive and damaging fiasco that it became.

(more)

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2007/09_10/2007_10_03_Wikipedia_McMartinPreschool.htm

The original accuser, Judy Johnson, was diagnosed in [font color="red"]1985 [/font]with paranoid schizophrenia, and in 1986 was found dead in her home, from complications of chronic alcoholism.

Johnson was out of her mind. I wonder what the excuse was for the interviewers of the children who prompted the children to say (i.e. repeat) the interviewers projected imaginings.

recommended

BTW..

..In the interest of precision, it was Mark Twain who said: "A lie will fly around the world, while the truth is pulling its boots on."... Twain's my favorite author.

But there are those who say it was

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) who attributed it to an old proverb in a sermon delivered on Sunday morning, April 1, 1855. Spurgeon was a celebrated English fundamentalist Baptist preacher. His words were: "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on."

http://www.twainquotes.com/Lies.html