Nearly all of those accused in these cases were eventually freed, but no U.S. Governor has pardoned a prisoner convicted falsely as a result of the hysteria.
McMartin Preschool The McMartin Preschool case was the first daycare abuse case to receive major media attention in the United States.—of one of the students, but grew rapidly when investigators informed parents of the accusation, and began interviewing other students.
Country Walk Frank and Ileana Fuster owned the Country Walk Babysitting Service in the
Country Walk suburb of
Miami, Florida,
United States. In 1985, Frank was found guilty of 14 counts of abuse. Fuster had been previously convicted for manslaughter and molesting a 9-year-old child. Fuster's wife, Ileana, recanted her court testimony in an interview with the television program
Frontline, saying that she had been kept naked in solitary confinement, and subjected to other forms of physical and psychological duress until she had agreed to testify against her husband. The case was prosecuted by Dade County state's attorney
Janet Reno, who also prosecuted day-care sex-abuse cases against
Grant Snowden and
Bobby Fijnje. Ileana said that Reno visited her in jail and pressured her to confess. The incident also inspired a 1986 book Fuster continues to serve a 165-year prison sentence, making him the last person imprisoned by the hysteria.
Fells Acres Day School During April 1984,
Gerald Amirault was arrested and charged with abusing children in his care at the Fells Acres Day School in
Malden, Massachusetts,
United States. After Amirault changed the pants on a young boy who had wet himself, the boy's mother, uncle, and therapist questioned him over a period of months, until the boy alleged that Amirault had been sexually abusing him. The boy's mother then telephoned a child abuse hotline to report that her son had been abused sexually, and Amirault was arrested soon thereafter. According to Richard Beck, the case developed "in the usual way" compared to other moral panic cases, with more and more children making increasingly bizarre allegations against the accused during the course of the investigation. According to Beck, one of the prosecutors responsible for the case commented that coaxing allegations out of the children had been like “getting blood from a stone.” Rabinowitz was a finalist in 1996, and winner in 2001, of the
Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her newspaper columns on the issue, and made the Amiraults’ case a centerpiece of her book
No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times. Violet and Cheryl were granted a new trial in 1997, on the basis that they had been denied the right to face their accusers and had been represented inadequately at trial, but Violet died, and a judge reduced Cheryl's sentence to time served before the new trial could proceed. During 2001, the Massachusetts Board of Pardons recommended that Gerald's sentence be commuted, citing "substantial doubt" about his guilt. He was granted parole in 2003. Writing about the case at the time of Gerald's release, the magazine
The Economist suggested in an editorial that while the Amiraults had long maintained their innocence, and had attracted a "string of prominent supporters" who believed that they had been convicted wrongly, "many others continue to believe that Mr. Amirault committed the crimes."
Bernard Baran On October 4, 1984, a drug addicted couple acting as police informants telephoned their contact within the police department of
Pittsfield,
Massachusetts,
United States and accused Bernard Baran of molesting their son. The child had been attending the government operated Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) where Baran, an openly
homosexual 19-year-old, worked as a teacher's aide. The accusers had complained previously to the board of directors that they "didn't want no homo" around their son. Within days of the first allegation, ECDC hosted a puppet show, and delivered letters to parents notifying them about a child at the day care who had
gonorrhea. Five other allegations were made. Baran was tried in the Berkshire County courthouse 105 days after the first allegation, a swiftness noted in the later court rulings. The courtroom was closed during the children's testimony, which Baran claimed violated his right to a public trial. Baran's defense attorney was later ruled ineffective. Baran was convicted on January 30, 1985, of three counts of rape of a child, and five counts of indecent assault and battery. He was sentenced to three life terms, plus 8 to 20 years on each charge. Baran maintained his innocence throughout his case. In 1999, a new legal team accepted his case. In 2004, hearings began in a motion for a new trial. In 2006, Baran was granted a new trial, and released on $50,000 bail. In May 2009, the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the new trial ruling, setting aside the 1985 convictions. The Berkshire County District Attorney's office dismissed the original charges, and Baran's record was cleared.
The Bronx Five Prosecutor
Mario Merola brought prosecutions resulting in the conviction of five men, including Nathaniel Grady, a 47-year-old
Methodist minister, of sexually abusing children in day care facilities throughout
the Bronx. Grady spent ten years in prison before being released in 1996. Three employees of another Bronx day-care center were arrested in August 1984, on the charges of abusing at least ten children in their care. Federal and city investigators then questioned dozens of children at the day care. They were reported as having used 'dolls, gentle words, and a quiet approach'. More children reported being abused sexually, increasing the total to 30. Three more day care facilities also were investigated for sexual abuse. On August 11, 1984, federal funds were ended to the Head Start preschool program at the Praca Day Care Center, and three employees had been arrested. In June 1985, the day care facility was reopened with new sponsorship. In January 1986, Albert Algerin, employed at the Praca Day Care center, was sentenced to 50 years for rape and sexual abuse. In May, Praca employee Jesus Torres, a former teacher's aide was sentenced to 40 years. Praca employee Franklin Beauchamp had his case overturned by the
New York Court of Appeals during May 1989. All five convictions were ultimately reversed. Michaels denied the charges. "The prosecution produced expert witnesses who said that almost all the children displayed symptoms of sexual abuse." Prosecution witnesses testified that the children "had regressed into such behavior as bed-wetting and defecating in their clothing. The witnesses said the children became afraid to be left alone or to stay in the dark." Michaels "told the judge that she was confident her conviction would be overturned on appeal". A three judge panel ruled she had been denied a fair trial, because, "the prosecution of the case had relied on testimony that should have been excluded because it improperly used an expert's theory, called the
child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome, to establish guilt". The original judge was also criticized "for the way in which he allowed the children to give televised testimony from his chambers". In 1988, Williams, an office manager, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. She pleaded no contest to sexual abuse and attempted kidnapping charges involving five boys, and she was released from prison in 1993 after serving five years. In 1989, Toward, the owner of Glendale Montessori School, pleaded guilty to
child sexual abuse charges and received a 27-year sentence. While technically maintaining his innocence, he allowed a guilty plea to be entered against him, convicting him of molesting or kidnapping six boys. Toward was placed in
involuntary commitment due to the
Jimmy Ryce Act. Although he maintained his innocence, Toward said he
plea-bargained to avoid an almost certain life sentence. Despite the severity of some of the alleged acts, parents noticed no abnormal behaviour in their children until after initial accusations were made. Bob Kelly's trial lasted eight months, and on April 22, 1992, he was convicted of 99 out of 100 counts against him. In 1995, the
North Carolina Court of Appeals granted new trials to two defendants, including Kelly. The remainder of the defendants received a variety of sentences.
Dale Akiki Dale Akiki, a developmentally-delayed man with
Noonan syndrome, was accused of satanic ritual abuse during 1991. Akiki and his wife were volunteer babysitters at Faith Chapel in
Spring Valley, California. The accusations started when a young girl told her mother that "[Akiki] showed me his penis," after which the mother contacted the police. After interviews, nine other children accused Akiki of killing animals, such as a giraffe and an elephant, and drinking their blood in front of the children. He was found not guilty of the 35 counts of child abuse and kidnapping in his 1993 trial. In 1994, the San Diego County Grand Jury reviewed the Akiki cases, and concluded there was no reason to pursue the theory of ritual abuse. On August 25, 1994, he filed a suit against the County of San Diego, Faith Chapel Church, and many others, which was settled for $2 million. Akiki's
public defenders received the Public Defender of the Year award for their work defending Akiki. They spent 21 years in prison until their release in 2013. The case began on August 15, 1991, when a 3-year-old girl told her mother that Dan Keller had spanked her. The only physical evidence of abuse in the case was presented by Michael Mouw, a then-novice emergency room physician at
Brackenridge Hospital, who examined the 3-year-old girl in 1991, on the night she first accused Dan Keller of abuse. Mouw testified at the Kellers' trial that he found “deformities—described as possible lacerations to the hymen and a tear of the
fourchette,” and constituted what he considered possible “signs of sexual abuse.” Mouw's determination was confirmed by pediatrician Beth Nauert, who agreed at the time that the child had “deformities to her vaginal area that could be signs of sexual abuse.”
Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions In
Wenatchee, Washington, during 1994 and 1995, police and state social workers performed what was then termed the nation's most extensive child sex-abuse investigation. A jury found the city of Wenatchee and
Douglas County, Washington, negligent in the 1994–1995 investigations. In 2001, $3 million was awarded to a couple who had been accused wrongly as a result of the inquiry.
Christchurch Civic Crèche Peter Ellis, a child-care worker at the
Christchurch Civic
Crèche in
New Zealand, was found guilty of 16 counts of sexual abuse against children in 1992, and served seven years in jail. Four female co-workers were also arrested on 15 charges of abuse, but were released after these charges were dismissed. Ellis was accused, among other things, of suspending children in cages, taking them through tunnels, ceilings and trapdoors, forcing them into a hot oven, burying them in coffins; and one boy claimed he had his belly-button removed with pliers. One parent alleged a boy called Andrew had been sacrificed. No child was actually reported missing by anyone involved. Peter Ellis consistently denied any abuse, and although he died in September 2019, on 7 October 2022 New Zealand's Supreme Court unanimously quashed Mr Ellis' convictions. The Court found major problems in the evidence of the prosecution's expert witness, ruling that it departed from appropriate standards and "lacked balance, suffered from problematic
circular reasoning and had the overall effect of suggesting to the jury that “clusters” of behavior support a finding of sexual abuse...", and that although the risk of the complainants' evidence being contaminated was traversed at the 1993 trial, the jury was not fairly informed of the level of risk.
Martensville satanic sex scandal In 1992 a mother in the central
Saskatchewan city of
Martensville alleged that a local woman who had a babysitting service and day care facility in her home had sexually abused her child. Police began an investigation, resulting in a sudden increase of allegations. More than a dozen persons, including five police officers from two different forces, were ultimately charged with more than 100 charges associated with participating with a Satanic cult named The Brotherhood of The Ram, which allegedly practiced ritualized sexual abuse of numerous children at a "Devil Church". The son of the day-care owner was tried and found guilty, then a
Royal Canadian Mounted Police task force assumed control of the investigation. It concluded the original investigation was motivated by "emotional hysteria". During 2003, defendants sued for wrongful prosecution. In 2004, Richard and Kari Klassen received $100,000 each, out of the $1.5 million compensation awarded for the malicious prosecution. ==See also==