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In the early evening darkness of January 13, 1997, a candlelight procession filed quietly along the empty streets of downtown Salem, Massachusetts, from the Witch Museum to the Salem Witch Memorial. In solidarity with the falsely accused, then and now, about 150 people gathered in the granite-walled enclosure honoring the victims of the witchcraft panic of 1692. Forensic psychologist Ralph Underwager, presiding, offered a prayer that concluded, "We Americans will no longer abide the creation of multitudes of widows, widowers, orphans, smashed, and murdered love within our nation by the mindless enthusiasms, the dogmas of destruction, and the self-serving ambitions and rationalizations of our woefully erring government." Connie Roberson of Wenatchee, Washington sang, in a small, wan voice, a hymn she had composed in prison, then led the group in "Amazing Grace."

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Among the speakers was Mrs. Roberson's husband, Pentecostal minister Roby Roberson, who, like her, had been accused, imprisoned, and finally exonerated of participation in "Satanic ritual abuse" (SRA). Among those present were some two dozen former prisoners and members of their families. These ranged from Peggy Ann and Ray Buckey, two survivors of California's notorious McMartin Preschool debacle, to the relatively obscure Nathaniel Grady, an African-American clergyman from Yonkers, New York, whose conviction had recently been reversed. For some, like Kelly Michaels Romano, freed after five years' incarceration for 115 fabricated sex crimes, the event presented opportunities for closure. For Violet Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave of Malden, Massachusetts, temporarily released from prison during an appeals process in the Byzantine nightmare that is the Fells Acres daycare case, the occasion offered hope. Together with family members, supporters, and an array of social workers, psychologists, medical professionals, attorneys, and journalists, they stood through a half-hour presentation in bone-chilling cold.

This event was the centerpiece of an historic conference organized by Carol Hopkins of the San Diego-based Justice Committee, an organization formed in 1993 to perform advocacy work for those unjustly prosecuted and imprisoned as a result of false accusations of sexual abuse. Hopkins thought it appropriate to hold such a conference in Salem on the 300th anniversary of the Day of Contrition, proclaimed on January 14, 1697, by Governor William Phipps, as a time of repentance for the hysteria-driven wave of destruction that swept Salem Village five years before. This new gathering was meant to address the modern wave of destruction that began in the early 1980s and continues.

Unquestioned faith

As the 80s progressed, true believers in all-pervasive ritualistic abuse and abuse conspiracies gained positions of power in welfare bureaucracies and law enforcement. Encouraged by these adherents of a new and militant secular faith, claims of abuse became more and more outlandish: children had been raped in tunnels, flying saucers, and "magic rooms" by robots, clowns, and lobsters; penetrated with knives and kitchen utensils; made to drink urine and eat feces; compelled to pose for pornographic pictures; subjected to scenes of ritual torture, murder, cannibalism, and mass depravity. Most of these claims were extracted from children who had repeatedly denied abuse until worn down by zealous investigators. As a result of these claims, innocent people were convicted and sent to prison. Many remain there today.

Members of the abuse-recovery movement nearly prevented the Salem conference from taking place. Communicating by means of an Internet mailing list, they organized a phone and fax campaign targeting the Peabody-Essex Museum (where the principal sessions were to have been held), the Salem Office of Tourism, the Salem Evening News, local radio and community-access TV, the mayor, the Witch Museum, and the Hawthorne Hotel. Their tactics almost succeeded. Succumbing to cowardice, the Peabody-Essex backed out of its commitment to rent meeting space. Fortunately, the Hawthorne Hotel, less easily bullied, provided facilities at the last minute.

Social psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, since named head of the American Psychological Association, led a preliminary forum on social-science issues on the afternoon of January 13th. Temple University doctoral candidate Evan Harrington gave a presentation on SRA convocations where fundamentalists, far-right conspiracy theorists, and anti-sex feminists come together to fuel one another's paranoia. Audience members from Peter Freyd of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation to Charlotte Vale Allen (author of Daddy's Girl, one of the first feminist critiques of incest)-- raised a spectrum of concerns. The discussion finally focused on the insidiousness of investigative techniques now being used to produce evidence of sexual abuse. "Sometimes people want to be right so bad they don't care how they get their answers," said 17-year-old Noel Fuster, the son of Francisco Fuster-Escalona, a Cuban immigrant now serving time in a Florida prison on trumped-up charges of child molestation.

The 1997 Day of Contrition observance ran for seven hours on January 14th with 200 people in attendance. There were videotaped presentations from playwright Arthur Miller and novelist William Styron. Author Donald Connery and Bennington College professor Gladden Schrock served as moderators. Connery noted that the McCarthy era came to an end only when people in power began to speak up, and that baseless sex-abuse prosecutions continue because the accused have no power and few resources. Schrock said that as a society, we have entered a phase where "personal narration is deemed the fountainhead of truth, and self-esteem is construed as entitlement."

Misplaced passions

Many speakers stressed that while sexual abuse is real and sexual monsters, like the late Jeffrey Dahmer and child murderer Lewis Lent, do exist, witch hunts often bypass actual instances of abuse while mobilizing resources against the innocent. Yale historian John Putnam Demos (Entertaining Satan) recounted the succession of conspiracy panics from Salem to the present, from the late 18th-century terror of the Bavarian Illuminati to the Red scares following both world wars. Demos pointed out the many parallels between Salem and contemporary daycare hysteria: the power of rumor and hearsay, psychological contagion, belief in a broad conspiracy, the collapse of standards of evidence, children as "victims" and accusers. In both instances, the children expressed pathologies that belonged less to them than their communities' adult members.

Berkeley professor Frederick Crews emphasized that false accusations succeed through suggestibility. "Suggestibility is coercion," he emphasized, "and it works best when it is subtle." He also observed that there is not (and never has been) a scientific theory of the unconscious, that dreams cannot be reliably interpreted, and that the beliefs that underlie therapy have no empirical basis. Richard Leo of the University of Colorado added that suggestibility is not just a problem with child witnesses and the mentally challenged, but is a cause of false confessions in general. False confessions are extracted using both threats and bribes, such as offers of reduced charges. Police are poorly trained and their interrogations are influenced by confirmation bias. Psychiatrist Richard Gardner underscored the need to videotape all interviews, and to stop the use of such leading devices as "anatomically correct" dolls.

Defense attorney Michael Snedeker charged that in contemporary sex-abuse cases, as in Salem, judges have erred by admitting spectral evidence evidence that, in the words of investigative journalist Moira John- son, "only manifests itself in the mind." Snedeker also chided judges for abandoning the belief that one is innocent until proven guilty, ignoring constitutional guarantees, for example, by permitting children to testify outside the presence of the accused. He deplored the fact that so many now view the US Constitution as a refuge for child molesters.

In bed with the police

Prosecuting attorney Alan Rubenstein supplied a welcome reminder that not all prosecutors are willing to twist facts to advance their careers. When outlandish accusations were made against the staff of the Breezy Point School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Rubinstein investigated thoroughly and fairly. When no evidence could be found, he exonerated all of the accused.

Tom Grant, an investigative TV reporter who covered the Wenatchee, Washington, witch hunt, concentrated on the failure of the media to provide accurate, impartial reportage on accusations of sexual abuse. (He mentioned two notable exceptions: Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal and Kathryn Lyon, author of The Wenatchee Report.) The press for the most part has refused to take a critical look at the issues. "Journalists believe that police and prosecutors have the credibility of the Pope," said Grant, adding that "journalists sleep with local officials." In Wenatchee, he said, the press overlooked inconsistencies and problems, and ignored what the children were actually saying.

The most thoughtful analysis was presented by journalist Debbie Nathan, co-author, with Michael Snedeker, of Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt. Nathan emphasized that false accusations hurt women and children, stressing that 40% of those accused in the daycare cases were women. She spoke about Salem, where the girls who acted as accusers were engaging in activities forbidden by their culture fortune telling and casting spells. (Knowing the future, she noted, has always been a women's industry.) The children's fits, interpreted then as possession, may have expressed guilt. She also remarked that the Salem children were slow to cooperate, making their first accusations six weeks after the fits began. She compared Salem to the Bakersfield case, which began with a five-year-old playing doctor. Currently, people believe that all sex play by children is inherently pathological. Our fierce contemporary drive to romanticize childhood innocence parallels past needs to romanticize women, and the associated belief that only "pure" women could protest men's mistreatment.

Don't forget class

Because of our attitudes towards children, to be a sexually assaulted child is to deserve unstinting sympathy. But false accusations deflect attention from the true issues of child welfare. According to current myth, childhood sexual abuse does not correlate with economic status. Nathan affirmed that this is false. Child sexual abuse is six times more likely to occur in families with annual incomes under $15,000 and 40 times more likely to occur when family income is $25,000 or less (though these figures may be skewed by the greater vulnerability of poor people to state intrusion into their families). Because of society's growing animus against the poor, many people prefer not to hear this. Nathan also noted that physical neglect is far more prevalent than sexual abuse, and that physical abuse is often far more traumatic.

Many other presenters and attendees took a black-and-white view of childhood sexual activity, shying away from discussion of age of consent. The term pedophile was almost consistently misused as synonymous with child molester. (The media has so misused the term for so long that it is now probably pointless to use pedophilia in its clinical sense.) The question of when any individual becomes sufficiently mature to consent to sex with another is more challenging and complex than most Salem conferees granted. Given that young people are demonstrably suggestible, accurately determining consent can be difficult. That age-of-consent laws vary wildly from country to country and state to state indicates this confusion and uncertainty. Childhood sexual experiences with age-mate or elders are neither universally abusive nor universally non-abusive.

Another area the conference might have examined more closely concerns children who have not been sexually coerced, but have been neglected or subjected to other forms of cruelty. Since women especially have no socially sanctioned ways of expressing resentment for this kind of treatment, they are easy prey for therapists eager to have them recall the kind of mistreatment that society does take seriously. As Debbie Nathan pointed out, false memories have a social meaning and falsely accused parents may, in fact, have given their children, especially daughters, valid reason for complaint.

Red scare redux

The conference as a whole nevertheless was a brave and useful convergence of diverse individuals and groups united by belief that grave injustices had been committed. The atmosphere at the Hawthorne Hotel, whose doors were anonymously plastered with red "Child Abuse Is Real" stickers, was charged with fear of sabotage or disruption. Among those in the abuse-recovery movement are many fanatics, eager to label those concerned with the falsely accused as child molesters or their fellow-travelers. Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger who helped prosecute the Amiraults recently said that the goal of those who believe the Amiraults are innocent is "to absolutely negate that child abuse occurs." Anyone who tries to deal soberly with these issues must be prepared to fend off McCarthyite attacks from the devotees of the abuse-recovery movement and those who pander to them for political gain.

Despite the specter of ruthless opposition, Day of Contrition attendees were heartened and inspired. The most moving moment came at the concluding presentation of the Morton Stavis Memorial award to Dan Williams and Michael Snedeker, two attorneys who have been successful in reversing wrongful convictions. The award to Williams was presented by Kelly Michaels Romano, who, having weathered half a decade of incarceration for fantasized crimes, had come to Salem with her husband and child. At one point during the presentation Kelly mentioned having just said good-bye to her mother, and how that reminded her of all those times in prison when her mother came to visit, and the anguish that she felt when visitation time ran out and they were forced to say good-bye. She began to cry, and Cheryl and Violet Amirault, sitting in the front row, began to cry with her. There was a short, rapt pause as waves of emotion tore through the room. The horror of years of injustice rose up like a dark and terrible shadow, and everyone was overwhelmed. **

Panic in Salem Village

The first witch hunt was bloody but brief

On January 20, 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams screamed blasphemies, fell into trancelike states, and shook with convulsive seizures. Other Salem girls soon emulated this behavior. Within weeks, physicians concluded that the children were under the influence of Satan.

The girls accused three women of afflicting them, and warrants were issued for their arrest on February 29. Panic spread, and more and more women and one man, John Proctor, were soon also accused. Under interrogation by magistrates, two women actually confessed: Tituba, a West Indian slave, and Abigail Hobbs. More accusations against both men and women flourished.

On May 27, the new governor, William Phipps, established a special Court of Oyer and Terminer to try the accused. On June 10, Bridget Bishop was hanged. Over the next four months, 19 more innocent people were convicted on the basis of the girls' testimony and executed. Then Phipps put an end to the madness and dissolved the Court. **

Are We Complicit?

Panic has anti-gay roots, but gays also helped it along

Because lesbians and gay men have for so long been falsely and effectively labeled "child molesters," we have been reluctant to speak out against the injustice of false accusations. Emulating liberals such as Hubert Humphrey, who abandoned his commitment to civil liberties to become a rabid anti-Communist in the 1940s, gay leaders rushed to take the strongest possible stand against child "abuse," even in cases devoid of credible evidence.

Daycare hysteria was a predictable extension of anti-feminist and anti-gay panic. But instead of fighting it, we ignored it at best and encouraged it at worst. Rather than rallying to the defense of the falsely accused, we wasted our time working to insure that NAMBLA wouldn't be allowed to march in "our" parades. We fell into the trap of fighting homophobia by promoting sexphobia.

"Originally, homophobic paranoia" is at the root of daycare sex-abuse panic, maintains Debbie Nathan, a journalist who has written extensively on the topic, for the Village Voice, New York Times, and others. "In the late 1970s and early 1980s," says Nathan, "a Boston-area child protection researcher, psychiatric nurse Ann Burgess, began elaborating the totally unfounded idea that gay men were organizing into international 'sex rings' to fly boys around the world, distribute them among networks of men, and make child pornography. This notion enjoyed a lot of currency in the Justice Department and police departments during the Reagan years. Burgess and one of her students, Susan Kelley [an interrogator in the Amirault case], went on to promulgate the belief that 'sex rings' had extended to satanist groups operating in daycare centers."

While Burgess and Kelley are apparently heterosexual, the most influential and destructive book promoting "repressed" memory and general sex hysteria, The Courage to Heal (1988), was written by lesbians Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. Both co-authors have been widely honored in gay and lesbian circles. Among gay men, Mike Lew's flawed and problematic Victims No Longer has attracted a worshipful following. By promoting sexphobia, Bass and Davis and Lew have done lasting damage to the fight for the rights of sexual minorities.

Witchfinder General Janet Reno remains unaccountably popular within the gay community. Many even like to suggest that she herself is a closeted lesbian, as if her inclusion within our ranks would somehow do us honor. And in June 1996, when Boston gay activists held a rally to celebrate the overturning of Colorado's Amendment 2 by the US Supreme Court, the star speaker, accorded a standing ovation, was none other than Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger.

Having built his political career railroading the Amiraults into prison, Harshbarger still steadfastly refuses to admit that he might have made a mistake. **

The Shame of Massachusetts

State politicians are oblivious to the lessons of Salem

For 18 years, the Fells Acres Day School was run by Violet Amirault, her daughter Cheryl, and son Gerald in Malden, Massachusetts. The school operated without incident and gained community respect. In April 1984, a new four-year-old student wet himself during a nap and Gerald changed him into spare clothes.

This incident prompted his mother's suspicions. She interrogated the boy, and so did her brother (who alleges he suffered abuse as a child), and a therapist. In September, the boy told his mother that every day at preschool Gerald blindfolded him, took him to a "secret room" with a bed and golden trophies, and molested him. The mother called a sex-abuse hotline.

Police went to the school, seized class lists, arrested Gerald, and shut the school down. They summoned parents to a meeting at the police station, where social workers panicked them into questioning their own children, advising them not to believe denials.

Eventually, through biased, leading, and coercive interrogation techniques (since discredited), wild charges were confabulated not only against Gerald, but his mother and sister as well. Prosecutors accused the trio of molestation by clowns and robots, of tying naked children to trees, of killing of animals, urine drinking, shoving butcher knives up anuses, producing child pornography. Yet no credible physical evidence corroborated these stories. No "secret room" was ever found.

In 1986, Gerald was sentenced to 30 to 40 years. In 1987, his mother and sister received 8-to-20-year sentences. In 1992, the women were offered the keys to their cells: admit guilt and be paroled. They refused. Their trial judge then ordered them released, but the prosecutors appealed this decision and won. In August 1995, the two women were awarded a new trial and finally released. But on March 24 of this year, this order was overturned, leaving the threat of reimprisonment hanging over the heads of Cheryl and Violet, now nearly 74. But then on May 9, Judge Isaac Borenstein extended their bail and ordered them retried. The prosecution, publicly demonizing Violet and Cheryl as "dangerous criminals," is appealing Borenstein's ruling. **

Abuse Hysteria in America

A chronicle of cases

Bakersfield, California-- In 1980, Mary Ann Barbour insisted that her two young step-granddaughters were being sexually abused by the man now married to Barbour's husband's former wife. Barbour was a psychiatric patient, with a plate in her head as a result of a childhood accident. Alvin McCuan, the girls' father, promised to keep his daughters away from this man, who was not, however, charged with any crime. Then the girls implicated McCuan, who was arrested at once. The arrest came after the girls were interrogated by child-protection authorities, as Barbour's allegations persisted and widened. The girls were placed in the Barbours' care. In 1982, as the McCuan case approached trial, the girls implicated character witness Scott Kniffen, his wife Brenda, and their mother. Relentlessly grilling her two charges, Mary Ann Barbour reported that they had been used in prostitution and pornography, tortured, made to watch snuff films, and forced to allow animals to eat pet food out of their vaginas. She added Betty Palko, a social worker, to the list of perpetrators, along with Palko's boyfriend, various welfare workers, McCuan's grandparents, and others. Charges against these people were eventually dropped. In Palko's case, they were dropped in exchange for consent to the sealing of Mary Ann Barbour's mental health records. The McCuans and the Kniffens, however, were each sentenced to over 240 years' imprisonment in 1984. In 1996, an appellate court determined that in the light of the children's recantation and other findings, an evidentiary hearing was in order. After a review of the case, both couples were released.

Manhattan Beach, California-- In August 1983, an alcoholic woman (later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic) became concerned about the bottom of her two-year-old son, who was pre-verbal. His bottom was too red, she thought, and she accused Ray Buckey, a 25-year-old worker at the McMartin Preschool, of child sodomy. Local police, without bothering to investigate, sent a letter to over 200 McMartin parents, warning them of "possible criminal acts," such as "oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttocks or chest area, and sodomy." Social workers began extracting lurid tales involving elaborate sexual rites, production of child pornography, and animal sacrifice. Panic spread, and accusations soon involved Buckey's mother and sister, as well as other teachers and the school's founder, Buckey's grandmother Virginia McMartin. The school grounds were excavated by archeologists in a fruitless search for "abuse tunnels." A nationwide kiddie-porn hunt produced no incriminating pictures. The ordeal dragged on for six years. In 1990, after the longest and most expensive trial process in American history, all defendants were acquitted. <

Jordan, Minnesota-- Twenty-four citizens of this town near Minneapolis were rounded up in the spring of 1984 and charged as co-conspirators in a Satanic sex ring that held intergenerational orgies, produced child pornography using their own children, and committed human sacrifice. Their children were placed in custody and rigorously prompted to "disclose" abuse.

Charges against all but three of the accused were dropped by the end of the year. According to Nathan and Snedeker's Satan's Silence, "In early 1985, the state attorney general's office issued a report placing the blame for an investigation gone awry on the relentless, unending interviewing of children." Veterans of this case including, Bob and Lois Bentz, formed an organization, Victims of Child Abuse Laws (VOCAL), that seeks to curb state intrusion into family life.

Country Walk, Florida-- Francisco Fuster-Escalona, a Cuban immigrant, was accused in 1984 of molesting children in the home-based babysitting service he ran with his 17-year-old Honduran wife Ileana in Country Walk. The charges included drugging children for use in production of (nonexistent) porn, and forcing them to offer prayers to Satan. Lacking evidence, the politically ambitious prosecutor held Ileana naked in solitary confinement for nearly a year. Accompanied by a quack Miami psychologist named Michael Rappaport, the prosecutor visited her cell at least 34 times, holding Ileana's hand while they led her in guided imagery and visualization. The prosecutor and Rappaport finally wore her down. She confabulated sensational testimony against her husband in exchange for her freedom and permission to return to Honduras. Francisco remains in prison. The prosecutor, Janet Reno, is now US Attorney General.

Pittsfield, Massachusetts-- Bernard Baran, a 19-year-old gay man, was working in 1984 as an attendant at Pittsfield's Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC). Affronted by the presence of an open homosexual, the uncle of one four-year-old boy complained to the administration. When Baran retained his job, the uncle and the boy's mother called police and accused him of rape. Tests (which have a high rate of false positives) appeared to show that the boy had gonorrhea of the throat. Baran, who tested negative, was charged with molestation. On the witness stand, the boy refused to testify against him. Baran was, however, convicted of molesting four children at ECDC. Evidence was virtually nonexistent; the prosecution's case was driven by homophobia. Serving two concurrent life sentences, Baran remains in prison pending his second appeal. (For more on the Baran case, see Bernie Baran's Story)

Maplewood, New Jersey-- In 1984 and '85, New Jersey prosecutors alleged, 22-year-old preschool teacher Margaret Kelly Michaels singlehandedly committed mass sexual assault at the Wee Care Day Care Center. The case arose when a four-year-old boy whose temperature was being taken rectally said, "This is what my teacher does to me at nap time." When his mother relayed this to the State Division of Youth and Family Services, the abuse machine was set in motion.

The case escalated until Michaels was charged with 235 counts of sexual assault on 31 children. Her alleged offenses included inserting flatware and Lego bricks into children's orifices, performing acts of sodomy on the boys, singing and playing "Jingle Bells" on a classroom piano in the nude, and organizing sex romps featuring kinky applications of peanut butter and jelly. In 1988, convicted of 115 counts of abuse against 19 children, she was sentenced to 47 years in prison. She served five before her conviction was thrown out on appeal. In an 84-page report, an appellate panel of judges wrote that the children's testimony against Michaels was inadmissibly corrupt and coercively obtained. Upon her release, Michaels married attorney Joseph Romano. She now lives in New York with her husband and infant daughter.

San Diego, California-- In 1988 and '89, Dale Akiki, a day nursery volunteer at Faith Chapel, a suburban church, supposedly kidnapped nine children for purposes of "Satanic ritual abuse." Akiki, physically challenged and mildly retarded, was easy prey. Therapists acting as investigators elicited sensational fantasies of blood-drinking, coprophagy, human sacrifice, elephant slaughter, and weird sex.

By the time Akiki was finally acquitted on all counts in 1993 following a seven-month trial, he had been held without bail for two and a half years. Community support for Akiki grew into the Justice Committee, which now performs advocacy work for similar cases nationally. Prosecutorial blundering in this case provided enough breaches of immunity to enable Akiki to sue successfully for an undisclosed amount, reportedly over three million dollars.

Miami, Florida-- In 1989, Bobby Fijnje, a 14-year-old part-time daycare worker at Old Cutler Presbyterian Church, was accused of molesting children in his care when a three-year-old girl mentioned being "afraid" of Bobby. Although the girl eventually made it plain that she meant his sometimes raucous games made her nervous, Fijnje was arrested for raping her. The charges multiplied and soon encompassed depredations, including forced devil worship, against other children. Fijnje was held without bail for 20 months and tried as an adult. He was found innocent on all counts. But by this time local rumor-mills alleged that Fijnje's father, a retired Dutch diplomat, might be a child pornographer. The Fijnjes moved to the Netherlands.

A second Dade County abuse case based on contrived and flimsy evidence involves former South Miami police officer Grant Snowden. Snowden remains in prison. Both cases were vigorously prosecuted by Florida state attorney Janet Reno.

Olympia, Washington-- In 1988, Deputy Sheriff Paul Ingram was arrested following allegations made by his 18 and 22-year-old daughters who, inspired by a charismatic Christian speaker at a church retreat, claimed to have recovered memories of cultic sexual assaults. Soon the entire Ingram family, including Paul himself, began "recovering" memories of bizarre sex parties and Satanic rites involving dozens of people. Ingram later retracted his statements regarding these purported memories. Despite the lack of corroborating evidence, Ingram was sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he remains today. This case is the subject of Lawrence Wright's extraordinary book Remembering Satan, which provides a detailed account.

Lowell, Massachusetts-- Ray and Shirley Souza, grandparents in their 60s, remain under house arrest while appealing a 9 to 15 year prison sentence for the rape of two granddaughters. The allegations came from the girls' mother, who in 1990 "recovered" memories of abuse in a dream and entered therapy. She then concluded that her parents must have been abusing her children as well, attributing such problems as bed-wetting to sexual abuse, and called in the authorities.

Edenton, North Carolina-- Forty-four-year-old Robert F. Kelly and his wife Betsy, co-owners of the Little Rascals Day Care Center, were charged in 1991 with a combined 429 counts of "crimes against nature," "taking indecent liberties," first-degree sexual assault, and conspiring to abuse. The case appears to have been touched off by a vindictive parent who objected to the Kellys' disciplining her child. On the aggressively cultivated and rehearsed testimony of 12 children ("They've been through more dress rehearsals than the cast of Cats," one attorney told the New York Times), Kelly was convicted on 99 counts sentenced to 12 consecutive life terms. A plea bargain secured Betsy Kelly a mere seven years. Five other adults were accused, two of whom the daycare center's cook Dawn Wilson and video store owner Scott Privott were tried and convicted.

In 1993 the gross inequities of this case were exposed in a powerful four-hour PBS documentary by Ofra Bikel. In 1995 the North Carolina Supreme Court, citing an array of corrupt and prejudicial elements in their trials, threw out Kelly and Wilson's convictions and released them on bail. Betsy Kelly and Scott Privott's sentences were reduced to time served.

In May 1997, prosecutors finally dropped all 99 charges against Robert Kelly and the seven charges against Dawn Wilson, ending the threat of retrials for both. However, prosecutor Nancy lamb announced that she would seek to convict Kelly in an unrelated abuse case involving one child.

Wenatchee, Washington-- This vast and complex case erupted in 1994, when after considerable coaching an 11-year-old girl known only as D.E., foster daughter of Wenatchee's self-appointed sex-crimes investigator Robert Perez, began making accusations that soon engulfed at least 80 adults. At one point, D.E. accused people at random as she was driven around town. Grilled by Detective Perez, other children began making accusations to corroborate hers.

At the center of this multi-ring circus was an alleged "Satanic ritual abuse" cabal based at Pastor Robert Roberson's Pentecostal church. Roberson, his wife Connie, Sunday school teacher Honnah Sims, and others were charged with conducting orgies involving vegetables, inflatable toys, perverted daisy chains, and devil-worship. The Robersons and Sims were acquitted, but bankrupted by their legal fees. Other defendants, mostly those too poor to hire legal counsel, remain in prison. D.E. eventually admitted to reporter Tom Grant that she had been pressured to lie. Following this disclosure, the girl was placed in a mental institution and remains inaccessible. Journalist Kathryn Lyon, who wrote the definitive report exposing this madness, narrowly escaped arrest. **

Editor's Note: from The Guide, July 1997