The Enemy Within Read online

  The Bakersfield case emerged during the spring and summer of 1982, out of the tangled relations of a single family group. Indeed, one person, a 37-year-old grandmother, previously diagnosed by psychiatrists as paranoid and delusional, was the source of all the initial accusations. According to this informant, her two young step-granddaughters had been repeatedly molested by several adult relatives (including their mother) and family friends. In due course the county prosecutor, abetted by staff of the local child protection agency, decided to press charges. The upshot was a trial in May 1984—and the conviction of four defendants, each of whom received a sentence of 240 years in prison. From this point on, events mushroomed astoundingly. Soon investigators had identified no fewer than eight supposed sex rings in and around Bakersfield, involving hundreds of suspects (including a district attorney, a deputy sheriff, and several social workers). Moreover, Satanism was added to the rapidly fermenting mix; new charges included not only child rape, sodomy, and pornographic filmmaking, but also the ritual killing of infants and animals—plus black candles, strange disguises, and other such accoutrements of Devil worship. As the web of accusation spread ever wider, and the substance of the allegations strained all credulity, Kern County leaders turned openly skeptical—and the state attorney general’s office chose to characterize the whole affair as an unfounded “panic.” There were no further trials; however, several of those already convicted would remain in jail for another decade or more.

  Meanwhile, 100 miles to the south, seeds of suspicion began to sprout at the McMartin preschool in the affluent suburban community of Manhattan Beach. As in Bakersfield, there was at first just one accuser: a parent who claimed that her four-year-old son had been sodomized by a male teacher. Local police took her seriously enough to send an official letter of warning to the families of 200 current or former McMartin students. This, in turn, sounded a community-wide alarm, and led some parents to believe that their children, too, had been victimized. Prosecutors, private investigators, and therapists who specialized in detecting child abuse all joined in the subsequent investigation; the children involved underwent round after round of intensive questioning. Their answers—most given after initial denials and under great pressure—ran roughly the same gamut as at Bakersfield, from predatory sex acts to ritualized Satanism. The result was a brace of charges not only against the initial suspect but also including his grandmother (the founder of the preschool), his mother and sister (both of them staff members), and several other teachers as well. (A further result was a string of spinoff investigations, 63 in all, at other day-care centers in the greater Los Angeles area; none of these, however, led to formal charges.) Like Bakersfield, the McMartin case would ultimately collapse of its own weight. But unlike Bakersfield, the legal process was so prolonged and so bitterly fought—at 28 months it became the lengthiest, and at $15 million the costliest, prosecution in American history—that no actual convictions were ever returned.

  As noted, Bakersfield and McMartin set the pace for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of subsequent investigations. And McMartin, in particular, got the entire nation’s attention: newspapers and network television followed its winding course from start to finish. Most of this early publicity tilted strongly in favor of the prosecution and thus encouraged similar proceedings elsewhere. The final dimensions of the entire sequence—numbers of communities, of suspects, of supposed victims—may never be known. A survey of 36 different prosecutions begun between 1983 and 1988 yielded the following totals: 91 individuals charged, 45 dismissed (without trial), 11 acquitted, 23 convicted, and 12 whose cases (at that time) were still undecided. But clearly this was just a fraction of the whole. The figure for those charged should, for a start, be multiplied several times over in order to approach the total of suspects. And the number of individuals directly concerned, in one way or another, must have gone much higher still.

  Some cases were small and quickly resolved; others developed the same lethal spiral evidenced at Bakersfield and McMartin. Among the larger ones—for example, Jordan, Minnesota (1983), Chicago (1984), Memphis (1984), El Paso, (1984), the Bronx (1985), and Malden, Massachusetts (1986)—nearly all fell into either the sex-ring or the day-care abuse category. There were some distinctions between the two. Sex-ring prosecutions, those without linkage to day-care or school settings, most often appeared in lower-middle- and working-class communities. The majority of day-care abuse cases, by contrast, involved white-collar and professional folk. With sex rings, moreover, the emphasis on Satanism was usually much stronger. Yet cases of both kinds showed a core of similar elements: parents taking the lead; children asked (or urged, or coaxed, or cajoled) to produce the crucial accusations; zealous prosecutors and child-abuse “experts” eager to push matters into the courts. And through it all coursed such strong emotional currents that families, friendships, even whole communities, could be bitterly riven apart.

  The accusing side maintained an absolute commitment to the sacred cause of child protection. (The flavor here was nicely captured in a comment by the judge who sentenced the Bakersfield defendants: “They have stolen from the children the most precious of gifts—a child’s innocence.”) The accused, for their part, recoiled in shocked bewilderment. And both sides felt—as deeply as possible, though for different reasons—fear, and rage, and a sense of utter betrayal.

  There was, in addition, a certain commonality in the details of the abuse allegations. Sexual assault (rape, sodomy, fellatio) was everywhere the starting point. But much else would be added: ritual acts of urination and defecation; objects (sticks, knives, combs, beads) poked into various bodily orifices; nude photography; animal sacrifice; digging up or burying corpses; the consumption of human blood and flesh; rides in vans, buses, and airplanes; crawling through tunnels and secret passageways; capes and hoods and graveyards; and so on. Much of this was connected—by the adults involved, if not always by the accusing children—with Satanism. Its recurrence in widely different settings was taken by some as the indisputable sign of a nation-spanning conspiracy.

  There was another kind of commonality—in the methods used by the various investigators. As with the trials of medieval and early modern times, a deep wish—a compulsion, really—for punitive retribution was the animating core; ends and means were framed accordingly. Many of the children involved were, at first, unwilling to accuse their caretakers; some strongly rejected the whole idea through hours and hours of pointed questioning. But their interrogators persisted, prodded, offered leading suggestions, promised rewards for more “complete” answers, and otherwise pushed toward the desired (not to say predetermined) outcome. An additional, highly unusual, and controversial tactic was the deployment of “anatomically correct” dolls in games designed to elicit stories of abuse. (When videotapes of the interview process were shown in court, the McMartin jury drew back; indeed, this aspect, more than any other, seems to have turned it against the prosecution case.) Legal precedents were also repeatedly modified in deference to the very young age of the witnesses. Testimony might be filmed, rather than given in person, so as to spare them from encountering their (supposed) abusers. And hearsay was sometimes allowed as evidence—for example, in a parent’s report of his child’s allegations.

  These novelties would eventually undermine the entire project of investigation. And the implausibility, the sheer extravagance, of some of the charges would have the same effect. But it all took considerable time. The number, and scope, of abuse cases—having risen dramatically throughout 1984 and peaked the following year—then began an overall decline. Yet even as late as 1995, a sensational sex-ring prosecution was mounted in the city of Wenatchee, Washington. Indeed, the last embers of this extraordinary conflagration are smoldering still; many of the original convicts remain in prison, and a variety of civil suits filed by the wrongly accused remain unresolved. Nonetheless, it should be possible now to take some measure of the whole.

  The approach followed by investigators has been largely discredited: thei
r resort to coercive (or at least highly suggestive) questioning of the children involved; their propensity to doubt whenever a supposed victim denied abuse, and to believe—virtually without doubt—any and all allegations that fitted their own theories. In these matters “children do not lie”: thus the credo they clung to. (However, as both empirical studies and common experience affirm, children do wish to please adults, and will yield to insistent pressure, including both rewards and threats, and can “fabricate”—a more accurate term than “lie”—when the stakes are raised sufficiently high.)

  Many of the substantive charges—airplane rides, hidden tunnels, buried corpses, the entire array of supposed satanic practices—have also been discredited. (At some sites investigators carried out large-scale excavations in search of bones, costume fragments, and other physical evidence; their yield, in every instance, was nil.) To be sure a rejection of these more fanciful elements does not mean that sex abuse never happened. But it does throw deep shadows of doubt on all the child testimony. The safest conclusion is that while there may have been actual abusive episodes, the number cannot have been large. And, whatever their basis in fact, the suspicions so widely aroused—and the accusations so loudly voiced—led on to a process of elaboration that soon spun massively out of control.

  It remains, finally, to weigh the costs incurred, the damage done, the victims created in the course of this sprawling “crisis.” Any list of victims must begin with the supposed perpetrators, most of them (possibly all?) charged with crimes they did not commit. To be sure, none were executed, or tortured, or otherwise injured in a physical sense. However, the psychological toll on them, the financial drain, the wounds to personal and professional reputation—not to mention the years lost to incarceration—all this was immense and incalculable. A list of victims should also include those who tried to defend friends and neighbors wrongfully charged and who then became “suspect” (and legally vulnerable) themselves. More than a few saw their own lives radically disrupted: endured personal threats and harassment, lost work or public office, were driven from their homes and forced to relocate. A final category embraces the child accusers themselves—or, rather, the children who were turned into accusers by the adults around them. Though not victims in the sense initially supposed, they did nevertheless become victims in a different sense. Many of them have since gone through an agonizing process of readjustment and reappraisal—disavowing as best they can the roles they were once obliged to play, tormented by the harm they now know they brought on others. Some, indeed, feel a crushing burden of guilt, a kind of inner scarring that warps their lives to the present day.

  In truth, the victims were many—and of several sorts. And of victors, there were none. So again we may ask: Was it a witch-hunt? Consider, as this book’s almost-end, a single case—a virtual epitome of the entire subject.

  CHAPTER XII

  Fells Acres Day School: A Question of Abuse

  April 1984; Malden, Massachusetts. At the Fells Acres Day School, a care center for young children, a four-year-old boy (newly enrolled) wets his pants during nap time. His teacher asks a fellow staff member named Gerald Amirault to take charge of changing his clothes. The two of them repair to a bathroom; dry clothes are found; the boy is changed and returned to his class.

  At home that evening—and on many other evenings, both before and after—the boy seems distressed. He is given to frequent bed-wetting, tantrums, lying and concealment, regression to baby talk. His mother, who is just then in the midst of a painful separation from the boy’s father, feels a mounting concern. She wonders whether her son has somehow been molested, as her brother was years ago. She mentions the brother’s experience to her son.

  Some weeks later the boy is discovered in sex play with a cousin, which further alarms his mother; she questions him closely about it. His uncle (the previously molested brother) also speaks with him, as does a hospital therapist. These sessions continue at intervals throughout the summer. Initially, and for some time thereafter, the boy makes no mention of the Day School and its staff. In late August, however, he tells his uncle that Gerald Amirault took his pants down. This leads to deepening suspicion and more questioning; finally, a direct line of accusation opens up. (Over four months have passed since it all began.) Now—according to his mother and uncle—the boy reports that Gerald has repeatedly put him in blindfold, taken him to a “secret room” containing a bed and “golden trophies,” undressed him, and involved him in a variety of sex acts.

  On September 2, the mother calls a government hotline to report Gerald for abusing her child. On September 4, local police enter the school to obtain enrollment lists. The next day they arrest Gerald, and announce a meeting with Fells Acres parents the following week at the Malden police station. On September 7, Gerald posts bail, leaves prison, and arrives home just in time for the birth of his third child.

  By this point rumor and worry are spreading through the community; other Day School parents have begun asking their own children about the “secret room” and the events to which it is linked. On September 11, state authorities close the school. September 12 brings the much anticipated parents’ meeting with the police; more than a hundred attend. The agenda features an elaborate portrayal of abuse “symptoms”: bed-wetting, nightmares, appetite loss, and so on. (When reviewed later on, all of these will seem consistent with more or less ordinary childhood experience.) Parents are urged to “go home and question your children, and don’t take no for an answer.” According to some, the officer in charge also comments: “God forbid you say anything good about these people [the Day School staff], or your children will never tell you anything.”

  This is more than enough to launch a storm of panic among the families involved. The pace of questioning with the children—by parents, police, and therapists—is drastically increased. In the coming weeks and months, at least 19 three-, four-, and five-year-olds will be subjected to interviews lasting, in some cases, an hour and a half. Not one of them volunteers an accusation on his or her own. Many give firm denials when urged to offer more. Several spontaneously declare their liking for the school, and their wish to go back. But such responses are discounted by the authorities as indicative of a child who is “not ready to disclose.” One police investigator will later compare the entire interview process to “getting blood from a stone.” Eventually, however, repeated inquiry—and outright prodding—brings the desired result: a web of accusation that grows to envelop all the teachers at the school, plus a few mysterious outsiders. (At least one of the children implicates a policeman, another mentions a therapist, a third describes the occasional presence of robots equipped with flashing lights.)

  A sample from the interview of a little girl, identified only as J.O., by a pediatric nurse will serve to illustrate the typical sequence. The nurse produces an “anatomically correct” doll, and says: “Let’s pretend this little girl doll is at Fells Acres, okay?” She poses a set of linked questions, ending with: “What would happen if someone touched her [the doll’s] vagina? Would she be sad?” She then turns directly toward J.O. and asks whether anyone at the Day School has ever touched her vagina. Receiving no reply, she adopts a somewhat disapproving tone, and suggests that perhaps J.O. feels “too scared to talk.” Throughout this entire exchange (if it was an exchange), the little girl has not accused anyone of anything.

  Other children, faced with similar questioning, are more responsive:

  “Tooky [Gerald Amirault’s nickname] took out his peepee and . . . [urinated] in front of us.”

  A clown came to the school and “spanked us on the bum-bum and on the face, too.”

  Another clown came and “took out his peepee, and told us to take our clothes off, and put it between our legs.” (Investigators will subsequently conclude that Gerald had frequently dressed in clown costume.)

  “Miss Vi [Violet Amirault] made me eat a frog. . . . The frog went quack-quack.”

  “Miss Cheryl [Amirault] took icky pictures of us.�
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  “Tooky . . . was disguised as a bad lobster.”

  A mysterious man who came to visit looked like “a wicked witch with a mask that doesn’t come off.”

  A teacher “took all the good kids to jail at the police office.”

  “Tooky was sorry for chopping me into little pieces.”

  The children played “an elephant game . . . [where] you lick ice cream off the elephant . . . in Tooky’s lap.”

  There were puppet shows, in the midst of which “they made us kids take our pants off and hold each other’s peepees.”

  The children were driven across town to a house, where “from the inside I see monsters.”

  “There is a forest next to the school with monsters and witches in it.”

  “Sixteen kids have died from that school. . . . Kids have been killed and hurt.”

  The investigation will continue through nearly three years. Local news coverage is extensive and generally favorable to the prosecution. Public interest is high, and still growing. There are threats of vigilante action; according to later reports, Gerald is chased on the streets of his home-town, and on two separate occasions shots are fired into his house. (Local police take no protective action.) In January 1985, with the charges still accumulating, grand jury indictments are secured against three of the alleged perpetrators: Gerald; his mother, Violet; and his sister, Cheryl.

  Malden is one of the oldest communities in Massachusetts. Originally part of Charlestown, the site of a very early witchcraft prosecution, it gained separate incorporation in 1649. Boston lay across the Mystic River to the south. There were hills and rocky outcroppings to the north. And in between lay fertile meadows and marshland. A visitor in the early 18th century described the town as “fruitful and well cultivated, being entirely cleared and enclosed with stone fences.”