After the shocking decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) 18 Aug 1999 to railroad Cheryl Amirault LeFave back to prison, the only realistic hope to preserve her freedom was political, either through the Governor, or a plea bargain with the Middlesex DA Martha Coakley. Petitions on her behalf set off the following debate on Usenet newsgroup ne.politics.
Parts have been edited for economy or for clarity, but arguments of Cheryl's opponents (Dan Kennedy and "Chessie") have not been distorted.
Space-saving note:
Except for the first message, the "newgroups" and "subject" lines will be deleted, since they are all identical:
Newsgroups: ne.politics,ne.general
Subject: Re: Fells Acres: Short-deadline petitions for Cheryl Amirault LeFave
"Hugo S. Cunningham" wrote:
> chessie
[...]
> >> She, her mother, and her brother made the mistake of continuing to run
> >> a day-care center in the mid 1980s, when the whole country was swept
> >> with hysteria about "Satanic cults" taking over day-care centers and
> >> torturing small children (magic torture that left no physical
> >> evidence, and which was never witnessed by the steady stream of
> >> parents and tradesmen who made unannounced visits to day-care centers
> >> throughout the day).
> >So, why was this one center chosen for martyrdom?
> Why didn't such cases turn up at *any* daycare centers before the
> 1980s? Why don't we see them nowadays?
What difference does that make? No buildings in Oklahoma City were bombed in 1982 --what does that have to do with a case a decade later? You haven't provided any evidence.
> >None of the other day care
> >centers in the area had these accusations leveled against it.
> I do not accept your word on this; many accusations could have been
> resolved at a lower level. Presumably, however, Harshbarger's office
> had their hands full with Fells Acres.
Could have... presumably... Do you have any proof, any evidence, or just more probablies and could haves?
> >Was this a
> >plot against the Amiraults?
> It was a plot *for* Scott Harshbarger, a Middlesex County DA who
> already wanted publicity for statewide ambitions. The Amiraults just
> happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Any evidence of this? Any proof, or is this another "Well, it could be...?"
> It also opened up career opportunities for quack psychotherapists,
> a major industry in Massachusetts.
Any proof that all of the therapists were quacks? Any evidence? Of course, they could have conspired with the police, the prosecutor.....
> > Maybe the CIA, delivered to the court every day
> >in black helicopters? Or, just perhaps, were the jurors and the trial judge
> >and the appeals judges right, and these people did abuse many of the
> >children in their care? Any chance of that?
> And maybe the Russian government was right in 1912 that Menahem Beilis
> really did murder a Christian boy and drain his blood in an gruesome
> Jewish ritual? How can I be so sure that just because all the other
> "ritual murder" cases throughout the centuries stank of panic,
> hysteria, bigotry, and villainy, that maybe this one case did not
> actually have substance to it?
And this proves what about Fells Acres?
> >> The "investigation" and trial
> >> that secured her family's conviction were a disgrace, bearing the same
> >> relation to the Salem Witch trials as the urbane and modern Herr
> >> Doktor Goebbels would to the medieval Torquemada.
[...]
> The witches were not taken out and lynched.
> The problem with their fate was not the less elaborate legal system
> of 1692, but rather the reliance on "spectral evidence": testimony of
> the children that the accused witches had appeared to them in dreams.
> Similarly today, the problem is not with legal procedure, but
> rather with defective evidence: the brainwashing of 3-4-year-old
> children, a brainwashing which itself is a devastating form of child
> abuse.
Show some proof that THESE CHILDREN were brainwashed. All of them. Then you have a case for appeal. You haven't shown any evidence from this case.
> >> Another, equally destructive, crime did happen, however: the
> >> permanent brainwashing of 17 reasonably-healthy 3-4 year olds with
> >> toxic garbage. The perpetrators hope that by burying the Amiraults,
> >> they will be able to maim the minds of other small children (eg in
> >> bitter child-custody disputes) without being called to account.
> >Your evidence for this is? You have testimony from how many of the children?
> >How many of the interviewers? What physical evidence?
> >You have studies from other states, proving that children 'can be
> >brainwashed.'
> So Massachusetts children are different from children everywhere else?
> When they testify that witches appeared to them in dreams, they must
> be believed? When they describe attacks by clowns, robots, and a
> lobster, they must be believed? When they testify that Miss Vi fed a
> child a frog that quacked like a duck; Miss Cheryl killed animals and
> buried their blood in the sandbox, leaving not a trace of evidence;
> and someone tied a naked boy to a tree in front of the all of the
> teachers and pupils, they must be believed?
In other words, you have no proof.
> >You have the testimony of three convicted felons,
> An interesting point. They had clean records before the 1984 hysteria
> at Fells Acres. Real molesters of young children don't suddenly drop
> the habit; police investigators, once alerted to them, usually have
> little trouble finding suggestive facts from the past.
Every convicted child molester at one time had no record. Right?
> >which
> >testimony was specifically not believed by a jury.
> A jury that was told by a quack psychotherapist that they had to
> disregard their own common sense, and accept implausible testimony by
> child witnesses as evidence of some deeper truth.
Proof that the psychotherapists (all of them) were quacks?
> A jury that did not have access to the 1991 research of Ceci and
> Bruck, proving that young children can be brainwashed.
Proof that these children were brainwashed?
> A jury that was prejudiced by lurid testimony about child pornography,
> even though no pornography associated with Fells Acres has ever been
> found.
> >You have nothing else, do
> >you? Direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, errors of law by the judge --
> >any of these would have caused the convictions to be overturned.
> And have in other states. The Massachusetts SJC has uniquely
> disgraced itself.
What evidence in the Fells Acres case was presented in other states?
> >> No Amirault defender would deny that small child are sometimes abused.
> >> It is, however, a stealthy crime of *individuals*, generally with
> >> records suggestive to experienced police investigators (eg unexplained
> >> moves and job changes), not of bizarre cults.
> >There are no cases where a group of people engaged in abuse?
> Please name some, with enough identifying detail so we can look them
> up.
Is that a joke?
> >Never. Is that
> >your claim? If not, then this is meaningless.
> In other words, it is up to the defendant to prove his *innocence*
> beyond a shadow of a doubt? Again, this is a curious reversal of the
> norm for civilized democracies.
When you are convicted, the burden is on the appelant to show new evidence, reversible error, etc to obtain a new trial. If you're an attorney and don't know this, you're a terrible attorney. If you do know it, you are being extremely disingenuous.
> >> When a real serial
> >> abuser is brought to justice (eg Father James Porter), his appearance
> >> on TV is likely to bring forth new accusations from those who had
> >> earlier decided to let him slide, or had even forgotten about abuse
> >> many years earlier. In the Fells Acres case, however, no accusers
> >> came forward from the previous 20 years of the day-care center.
> >Likely to.
> Are you still waiting for some? It's been 15 years now.
> >How many abusers have been arrested and have not had other
> >victims come forward. This is meaningless.
> How many serial abusers have been spread all over the TV like Porter
> and the Amiraults have? Again, major abusers don't suddenly drop
> their habits.
So, no other serial abuser has been arrested without other victims coming
forward? Or, is this another could be, might be...?
If you could provide some evidence that the Amiraults were not guilty, you would. Since your arguments show no evidence (as the SJC found in the appeal) you are
unconvincing.
========
chessie chessie@tiac.net wrote:
>"Hugo S. Cunningham" wrote:
[...]
>> Why didn't such cases turn up at *any* daycare centers before the
>> 1980s? Why don't we see them nowadays?
>What difference does that make? No buildings in Oklahoma City were bombed in 1982
Buildings were bombed in numerous other places.
>--what does that have to do with a case a decade later? You haven't provided any
>evidence.
>> >None of the other day care
>> >centers in the area had these accusations leveled against it.
>> I do not accept your word on this; many accusations could have been
>> resolved at a lower level. Presumably, however, Harshbarger's office
>> had their hands full with Fells Acres.
An additional point:
Some good came out of the panic, eg law-enforcement agencies made it easier for day-care centers and school-bus companies to run criminal-record checks on prospective employees. But the overall effect, the spurning of children in their earliest, most
socially-dependent years, was harmful. (I understand that day-care centers have gotten less tense in recent years, as the kind of investigative techniques used at McMartin Preschool and Fells Acres have been discredited in other parts of the country.)
(When I first heard about the McMartin case in 1983-84, long before it occurred to me to question such cases, I recall agreeing with a co-worker that we would never want to work in a day-care center unless every room was wired with 24-hour surveillance cameras; how else could one prove one's innocence? Incidentally, this was a purely theoretical speculation; I never intended to work with children.)
>Could have... presumably... Do you have any proof, any evidence, or just more
>probablies and could haves?
>> >Was this a
>> >plot against the Amiraults?
>> It was a plot *for* Scott Harshbarger, a Middlesex County DA who
>> already wanted publicity for statewide ambitions. The Amiraults just
>> happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
>Any evidence of this? Any proof, or is this another "Well, it could be...?"
>> It also opened up career opportunities for quack psychotherapists,
>> a major industry in Massachusetts.
>Any proof that all of the therapists were quacks? Any evidence? Of course, they
>could have conspired with the police, the prosecutor.....
Why didn't *any* of them appear at Judge Borenstein's 1998 hearing, to rebut Dr. Bruck's testimony and defend the evidence used to convict Cheryl Amirault? The prosecution couldn't find *anyone* willing and able to face cross-examination.
>> > Maybe the CIA, delivered to the court every day
>> >in black helicopters? Or, just perhaps, were the jurors and the trial judge
>> >and the appeals judges right, and these people did abuse many of the
>> >children in their care? Any chance of that?
>> And maybe the Russian government was right in 1912 that Menahem Beilis
>> really did murder a Christian boy and drain his blood in an gruesome
>> Jewish ritual? How can I be so sure that just because all the other
>> "ritual murder" cases throughout the centuries stank of panic,
>> hysteria, bigotry, and villainy, that maybe this one case did not
>> actually have substance to it?
>And this proves what about Fells Acres?
To a student of history, the patterns of hysteria and panic are recognizable again and again, whether it be "ritual murder" supposedly by Jews, or witchcraft, or the capture of daycare centers by Satanic cults.
[...]
>> Similarly today, the problem is not with legal procedure, but
>> rather with defective evidence: the brainwashing of 3-4-year-old
>> children, a brainwashing which itself is a devastating form of child
>> abuse.
>Show some proof that THESE CHILDREN were brainwashed. All of them. Then you have
>a case for appeal. You haven't shown any evidence from this case.
Charles Demas gave you an excellent answer to this on his post to this thread
(I recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet)
Among other good points, he said,
=It is impractical to study the children to determine if their
=testimony was tainted by their questioning. Do you expect one of
=them to remember and declare that they felt pressured at the age of 4
=to change their stories to something their inquisitioners wanted to
=hear?
=I suspect that you set an impossible standard in your argument.
=What evidence of the children being "brainwashed," as you put it,
=would be acceptable to you?
=I suspect that you cannot name what that evidence might be, and that
=you are therefore rhetorically asking for the impossible. A nice
=rhetorical tactic, but not very productive.
[...]
>> >You have the testimony of three convicted felons,
>> An interesting point. They had clean records before the 1984 hysteria
>> at Fells Acres. Real molesters of young children don't suddenly drop
>> the habit; police investigators, once alerted to them, usually have
>> little trouble finding suggestive facts from the past.
>Every convicted child molester at one time had no record. Right?
When a whole gang of serial abusers are caught at once, the odds are overwhelming that at least one of them must have been noticed doing something suggestive in earlier years. Even if he/she wasn't arrested, there are likely to be unexplained moves or job-changes, and/or witnesses stepping forward to say, "Now that you made me think
of it ..."
The Amiraults were not the only ones accused by the children. Either all, or nearly all, the other teachers were also accused, as well as people who did not work at Fells Acres. Please state whether you think these other people were also guilty.
>> >which
>> >testimony was specifically not believed by a jury.
>> A jury that was told by a quack psychotherapist that they had to
>> disregard their own common sense, and accept implausible testimony by
>> child witnesses as evidence of some deeper truth.
>Proof that the psychotherapists (all of them) were quacks?
Again, why didn't they come forward in the 1998 hearing to defend their work?
[...]
>> >> No Amirault defender would deny that small child are sometimes abused.
>> >> It is, however, a stealthy crime of *individuals*, generally with
>> >> records suggestive to experienced police investigators (eg unexplained
>> >> moves and job changes), not of bizarre cults.
>> >There are no cases where a group of people engaged in abuse?
>> Please name some, with enough identifying detail so we can look them
>> up.
>Is that a joke?
No. I claim that multiple-offender, multiple-victim cases involving strangers (eg day-care and "Satanic cult" cases) tend to be false, marked by investigative incompetence. You ask us to believe such cases are true, and I ask you for some examples. Put up or shut up.
[...[
>> In other words, it is up to the defendant to prove his *innocence*
>> beyond a shadow of a doubt? Again, this is a curious reversal of the
>> norm for civilized democracies.
>When you are convicted, the burden is on the appelant to show new evidence,
>reversible error, etc to obtain a new trial. If you're an attorney
I am not, as I said before. Many readers of this group know who I am, and there are clues on my website. Would you wish to disclose to us something about you?
> and don't know this, you're a terrible attorney.
>If you do know it, you are being extremely
>disingenuous.
I am not an attorney; I write as a student of history, and of those places where politics and morality intersect. Your attitude (and that of the prosecution) is "We got a conviction, never mind by what flawed
and discredited means, so Nya-nya-nyaa -- you have to prove yourself innocent, and we have rigged the game so you can't anyways!" It reminds me of Ronnie Biggs of Britain's "Great Train Robbery," living in comfortable Brazilian exile: Never mind how he got his money;
under Brazilian law he is perfectly entitled to enjoy it in peace -- so there!
[...]
--Hugo S. Cunningham
Editor's note -- this was the last we heard from the mysterious "Chessie," previously, and subsequently, unknown on Usenet news groups ne.general and ne.politics.
========
What's truly shocking about the continued controversy over the Fells Acres case is the way the Amiraults' defenders blatantly mischaracterize the evidence -- especially the videotaped interviews, which were not
investigatory but, rather, were a failed attempt to get the victims to say on video (to an interviewer they'd never met) what they had already disclosed to their parents and to investigators, for possible use in
court.
See:
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/alt1/archive/news/quote/FELLS_ACRES.html
It's from 1995, but since no one has said anything new for years, I think it holds up rather well.
Dan Kennedy
========
Dan Kennedy dkennedy@shore.net wrote:
>What's truly shocking about the continued controversy over the Fells Acres
>case is the way the Amiraults' defenders blatantly mischaracterize the
>evidence -- especially the videotaped interviews, which were not
>investigatory but, rather, were a failed attempt to get the victims to say
>on video (to an interviewer they'd never met) what they had already
>disclosed to their parents and to investigators, for possible use in
>court.
What's even more shocking is the cynicism of prosecution advocates, who would have us believe that the original "disclosures" to parents were spontaneous, not elicited by repeated leading questions. It was fiendishly clever of the prosecution to spread panic among parents, eg
with a disastrous mass meeting at the Malden police station, and tell *parents* to assault their children's minds with sexualized and repetitive questioning. (1) The parents' questioning would not be videotaped, and (2) the parents would be permanently tied to the
prosecution: any accusation against the prosecution would seem to be accusation against themselves.
--Hugo S. Cunningham
========
As someone who has only followed this story by what he saw on TV, I have one question regarding all of this:
There is a lot of support for Cheryl Amirault LeFave and her (now-deceased) mother Violet Amirault in all of this. Yet, support for Gerard "Tooky" Amirault seems virtually non-existent (or at least isn't reported in the news). Why? Is the general perception that he did
molest the kids, but the women did not? Do people just assume that he could have done such things, but these women could not have?
I am not trying to defend anyone in all of this - I am just pointing out that, on the surface, to this relatively uninformed observer, there seems to be a disparity in the treatment of people charged (and
convicted) of the same crime. It also appears (to me anyway), that some of this disparity may be that people might be able to accept the crimes of Gerard, but not be able to accept that Cheryl and Violet could be
capable of a similar crime. If someone can enlighten me on this subject, I would appreciate it.
Multiple answers
========
In article <37EF72FB.39A8109F@mitre.org>,
John A. Swartz jswartz@mitre.org wrote:
[...]
It's really very simple:
Women GOOD. Men BAD.
I'm suprised you haven't noticed this by now.
pciszek@otherworld.std.com
Scroll ahead to Part 5 of this debate
> >"Hugo S. Cunningham" wrote:
[...]
From: hcunn@removethis.tiac.net (Hugo S. Cunningham)
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 22:58:45 GMT
>> chessie chessie@tiac.net wrote:
>> >"Hugo S. Cunningham" wrote:
*After* the panic broke out at McMartin Preschool, Little Rascals, Fells Acres, Country Walk, and scores, even hundreds of other day care centers around the country, the remaining day care centers took drastic precautions to protect themselves and their employees. Some closed or reduced their business, others remodeled their architecture to make sure every spot was visible to multiple witnesses, and, especially important, they put down strict guidelines to reduce contact between daycare workers and small children. No changing
diapers, no washing, and no befriending of individual children, unless enough witnesses were available to convince DAs nothing evil happened. And day-care charges went up sharply, as ritual-abuse cases drove
insurance costs through the ceiling.
Date: 27 Sep 1999 05:42:33 GMT
Lines: 110
Message-ID: 7sn049$nde@news-central.tiac.net
Does your Userid represent more than one author?
Are you, or are you involved with (professionally or personally), a therapist or social worker?
Are you, or are you involved with (professionally or personally), someone on the prosecution?
There is no need to answer; it's just that your curiosity piqued my own.
From: Dan Kennedy dkennedy@shore.net
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 12:30:42 GMT
Senior writer
The Boston Phoenix
http://www.shore.net/~dkennedy/phoenix.html
From: hcunn@removethis.tiac.net (Hugo S. Cunningham)
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 23:42:32 GMT
From: "John A. Swartz" jswartz@mitre.org
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 09:37:08 -0400
From: pciszek@otherworld.std.com (Paul Ciszek)
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 16:54:41 GMT
(BTW: Note that I have not taken sides on the guilt or innocence issue. Whether guilty or innocent, people are more likely to fight for the release of a female convict. Remember the flak Texas got from folks who ordinarily support the death penalty when the state
executed a woman for multiple pick-axe murders?)
Please remove "other"
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