Mass Hesteria in Massachusetts (Again)

Mass Hesteria in Massachusetts (Again)

In 1986, a Massachusetts day-care worker named Gerald Amirault was convicted of sex crimes against children -- crimes so hideous they almost defied description. Also convicted were his mother, Violet, who owned the Fells Acres Day School, and his sister, Cheryl, who also worked there. Yesterday, after 17 years behind bars, Mr. Amirault was finally granted parole. Soon he will be a free man again.

Of all the miscarriages of justice committed during the era of hysteria over child sex abuse, the Amirault case is by far the worst. The evidence that convicted him was preposterous. The methods used to browbeat tiny tots into producing it have been thoroughly discredited. His innocence has been obvious for years. Yet a succession of prosecutors, judges and state governors (to say nothing of the media) did their best to keep him rotting.

Fells Acres was started by Gerald's mother, who, over 20 years, built it into a solid family business. Thousands of pre-school children passed through its doors. Gerald, a soft-spoken, gentle man, was good with the kids. He was a husband and father himself.

But there was a new social panic in the air. Across North America, day-care workers were being accused of mass child sex abuse. Social workers sensed a cause, and ambitious prosecutors sensed an opportunity. The children, badgered to come up with lurid tales, obliged. Sympathetic juries were exhorted to believe the children. Hundreds of preschools closed; many people went to prison before their sentences were overturned.

The Amirault family's troubles began when a four-year-old boy wet his pants. Gerald cleaned him up, gave him fresh pants, and sent his wet underwear home in a plastic bag. Several months later, the boy's mother, whose marriage was falling apart, phoned a child-abuse hotline and complained that Gerald had taken her son into a secret room and molested him. Two days before his third child was born, Gerald was arrested on rape charges.

An usual sequence of events ensued. Police and social workers came and handed out a laundry list of "abuse symptoms" to the anxious parents of every child in the school. Then they began asking leading questions of the kids, and offering rewards for the right answers. Soon they had identified no fewer than 19 victims, who had, they said, been raped with broomsticks and forced to drink urine. The children testified that Violet cut the leg off a squirrel and tied a naked boy to a tree in front of the school while teachers and children watched.