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July 2003
Bernard Baran's Nightmare
Anti-gay bias fueled daycare witchhunt in Pittsfield
By
Jim D'Entremont
Ten months after a September, 2000 commutation hearing replete with weeping "victims" and cries of "He made them eat food off his penis!" from Middlesex County Assistant DA Lynn Rooney, the normally implacable Massachusetts Board of Pardons unanimously
recommended commutation of Gerald Amirault's prison sentence. Pressured by DA Martha Coakley, cowed by the
Boston Globe's campaign against Catholic priests, Governor Jane Swift nevertheless rejected Amirault's bid to be freed in the 17th year of his 30-to-40 year sentence. Swift's
successor Mitt Romney, a fellow Republican, likewise chooses to avoid the political fallout likely to descend on any governor opting to return Amirault to his wife and children.
The state's establishment press, having profited from selling Amirault's guilt to the public, has been unwilling to report fairly on the now obvious vacuity of the case against him. The weekly
Boston Phoenix, whose publisher is Stephen Mindich, husband of former Justice
Maria Lopez, partakes of this failure. One Amirault supporter calls the Lopez case "a prime example of 'What goes around comes around.'"
The current legend among victim cultists is that the Amirault women were simply guilty of facilitating Gerald's depredations, but that Gerald, the real culprit, has deserved his fate. Amirault will probably be paroled in November 2003, in time to attend the wedding of his
daughter Katie, who was two when he was imprisoned. Martha Coakley will then be able to perpetuate the myth of his guilt, while assuring the public that the system works.
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