News Slant	News Slant Archive

On April 30, defendants in two of the most notorious, least credible child-abuse cases of the 1980s attained belated measures of justice.

In Massachusetts, at his earliest moment of eligibility, Gerald Amirault, 50, was paroled after serving 18 years of his 30-to-40-year sentence for alleged rape and "indecent assault and battery" of nine preschool children. A few hours later, in Bakersfield, California, Judge John Kelly voided the conviction of John Stoll (see The Guide, March 2004), imprisoned since 1985 for purported sex with half a dozen boys, aged six to eight, during orgiastic rites at his home. On May 4, Stoll's 61st birthday, the original charges against him were dismissed, and the man prosecutors had portrayed as ringmaster of a Satanic, omnisexual three-ring circus gained his freedom.

View our poll archive

Stoll, a foreman at a gas plant, was arrested in June 1984, when his volatile ex-wife claimed he was having sexual relations with their son. The allegations expanded. In September, not long before the Bakersfield man and his three codefendants went on trial, Gerald Amirault was taken into custody in Malden, Massachusetts, where he worked at the Fells Acres Day School, a daycare facility founded by his mother in 1966. On January 22, 1985, around the time Stoll was found guilty on 17 counts of child abuse, Amirault was indicted, together with his mother and sister, for a range of sexual crimes against children.

Rooted in communities 2600 miles apart, both cases grew out of a panic that swept the US for more than a decade, generating mass-molestation arrests in at least eight states. The hysteria intensified in 1983, when the McMartin daycare case erupted in Manhattan Beach, California, and may have peaked the following year, when proliferating myths of global cult-borne depravity produced a bumper crop of wrongful indictments. Amirault prosecutors even flew to California to consult with self-appointed experts shaping evidence against the McMartin defendants. More than seven years after it began, the McMartin case ended without a single conviction, but by then its influence had metastasized.

At trial, Stoll and his codefendants were depicted as the nucleus of an intergenerational sex cabal. The Kern County DA's office claimed that eight such groups were running amok within its jurisdiction. These sometimes overlapping "sex rings" were ultimately shown to be imaginary, but not before more than 80 adults were accused of sexual depredations against countless real and nonexistent children. At least 22 of the 46 Kern County sex-ring convictions have since been thrown out on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct, improperly obtained evidence, or judicial missteps. John Stoll may have been imprisoned longer than any other sex-ring defendant from the Bakersfield area. Two of his codefendants successfully appealed and were freed in 1989; the third was paroled last year.

The Stoll case was brought back into court by the Northern California Innocence Project. At a review hearing that began in January, 2004, four of Stoll's six original accusers publicly recanted, stating under oath that police and therapists coerced them into spinning tales of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). A fifth accuser said simply that he does not remember being involved in sexual activity with any adult. Only John Stoll's son, now 26, still believes he was sexually mauled by his father, although he admits he has no memory of any such incident.

The Stoll and Amirault cases share similarities with most of the child-molestation witch hunts of the '80s and '90s. One is that many of the allegations were clearly fanciful. A 7-year-old Stoll accuser, for example, claimed to have sodomized a tall adult male by standing on tiptoe. The Fells Acres daycare center was said to be the site of rape with a butcher knife, naked torture sessions in the open schoolyard, and assault by Star Wars robot Artoo Detoo.

At both trials-- and at the separate trial of Amirault's mother and sister-- physical evidence was minimal. "Expert" testimony about vaginal and anal irregularities proving penetration, questionable then and since refuted, was presented at the Amirault trial. No such evidence was heard at the Stoll trial, since the children, despite their claims of having been subjected to injurious forced sex, were never examined by doctors.

Spectral kiddie porn figured in both cases. Stoll was supposed to have thrown sex parties at which children orgied with adults while the action was caught on camera. Amirault was alleged to have maintained a "magic room" used as a porn studio for toddlers. The trouble with both scenarios was that no child pornography linked to either case was entered into evidence, none was found, and none of the defendants was charged with producing it. These factors did not deter chief prosecutor Stephen Tauzer from alluding to John Stoll's putative production of child pornography, nor did they prevent Tauzer's Massachusetts counterpart, Larry Hardoon, from repeatedly suggesting to the press that kidporn production was an Amirault family sideline.

Another shared element was that crucial testimony came from grilled and rehearsed child witnesses. Nearly all the children "disclosed" sex crimes only after police, therapists, and parents wore them down with grueling interviews, leading questions, trick questions, threats, and bribes. Some of the children became convinced they had really experienced outré sexual acts. Others told the adults what they wanted to hear and then recanted, some immediately, some years later. The recantations of most of Stoll's alleged victims-- along with specific accounts of pressure tactics cueing false testimony-- enabled Judge Kelly to end Stoll's ordeal on grounds that "the interview techniques... resulted in unreliable testimony from child witnesses."

No such outcome was forthcoming in the Massachusetts case. Many of Amirault's designated victims, recipients of handsome insurance settlements, have remained silent into adulthood. Three others have been rounded up by the Middlesex County DA's office and tossed before television cameras at regular intervals. The most vocal of these continues to insist that Amirault abused her when she was three. The mother of a second Fells Acres alumnus rails about her son's victimization whenever the press provides opportunities to do so.

In 1984, when the Fells Acres investigations began, the children denied being abused. But during the 18-month gap between Amirault's arrest and the beginning of his trial, therapist Susan Kelley and others helped the children concoct narratives that soon became embedded in their personal histories. Kelley's methods included sexualized play with "anatomically correct" dolls.

Gerald Amirault was convicted in July, 1986; his mother, Violet, and sister, Cheryl Amirault LeFave, were convicted eleven months later. The surrounding media frenzy demonized the Amirault family while pumping up the stature of Middlesex County DA Scott Harshbarger, who soon became state Attorney General, and his prosecutorial staff. The case became politically charged. To discredit the Amirault prosecution was to question the integrity of powerful members of the Boston legal and political establishment.

Nevertheless, an expanding chorus of skeptics raised public objections. MIT professor Jonathan Harris established a website filled with troubling information about the Fells Acres prosecutions. Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote a series of devastating op-ed pieces debunking the case. In 1995, the women were freed when Superior Court Judge Robert Barton ordered a new trial.

But Violet Amirault, who died of cancer in 1997, did not live to see the end of the ensuing legal turmoil. The case bounced back and forth between lower-court judges who recognized its injustice, and a politicized state supreme court. Cheryl LeFave, who narrowly avoided returning to prison in 1999 when her conviction was reinstated, was finally pressured into accepting a sentence-reduction deal that enabled the Middlesex County DA's office to save face. She continues to affirm her innocence.

In June 2001, acting in its secondary role as the Board of Pardons, the Massachusetts Parole Board unanimously recommended commutation of Gerald Amirault's sentence. Appended to the recommendation was an unprecedented statement by a majority of board members noting that "at the minimum, real and substantial doubt exists concerning the petitioner's conviction." Nevertheless, after weighing its political implications, Acting Governor Jane Swift refused to approve the commutation. Her successor, Mitt Romney, avoided any action in the case.

The parole board's remaining option was to release Amirault at the earliest date permitted by his sentence. Granting parole to a convicted sex offender who has spurned all so-called treatment while insisting on his innocence is an unusual step for institutional gatekeepers famed for severity. Middlesex DA Martha Coakley, who makes few concessions, had to admit, at least, that there is no evidence that Amirault is sexually dangerous.

After walking out of the Bay State Correctional Center on his first day of freedom, Amirault met with his parole officer, then rode into Boston with media helicopters in pursuit. Eluding the press, Gerald, his wife, three children, and sister made their way to an Italian restaurant for a celebration attended by approximately 70 family members and friends. Having missed most of the milestones in his childrens' lives, Amirault looks forward to his daughter Katie's wedding in July.

Most of those convicted in the fantasy-driven abuse cases of the '80s have now left prison via successful appeal, judicial intervention, commutation, or parole. A few remain, however. Lawyers are seeking a new trial for Bernard Baran of Pittsfield, Mass., the first to be convicted in the '80s abuse panic and the only openly gay man. Baran will mark his 20th anniversary behind bars in October 2004. In Texas, Daniel and Frances Keller are entering their 13th year of incarceration for alleged sexual abuse of a child at Fran's Day Care Center near Austin.

The late-blooming Keller case was rife with rumors of Satanist activity. Even now, speculation that ritual-abuse hysteria has run its course seems premature. In Toledo, Ohio, a local woman recently accused Rev. Gerald Robinson, a 66-year-old semi-retired priest, of forcing her to participate in rites that included child sacrifice, ingestion of human eyeballs, and sexual penetration with a snake. The allegations have resulted in Robinson's arrest for the 1980 murder of an elderly nun.

As Amirault joins his sister on the rolls of the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry, he says he remains committed to proving his innocence. "I just want to clear my name," Stoll recently told the Associated Press. "It's all I have left." But true believers in ritual abuse have perfect faith in the guilt of both men.

"I believe he committed these crimes," deputy Kern County DA Lisa Green told reporters just before Stoll's release. "The judge obviously disagrees on a technical basis." For Stoll, as for Amirault, complete exoneration will remain elusive.