https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria
Kern County child-abuse cases[edit]
Main article: Kern County child abuse cases
The Kern County child abuse case was the first prominent instance of accusations of ritualized sex abuse of children. In 1982 in Kern County, California, Debbie and Alvin McCuan were accused of abusing their own children. The initial charges were made by Mary Ann Barbour, the children's step-grandmother, who had a history of mental illness. Coercive interviewing techniques were used by the authorities to elicit disclosures of parental sexual abuse from the children. In 1982, the girls further accused McCuan's defense witnesses: Scott Kniffen, his wife Brenda, and his mother. Mary Ann Barbour reported that the children had been used for prostitution, used in child pornography, tortured, and made to watch snuff films. In 1984, each of the McCuans and the Kniffens was sentenced to over 240 years in prison. Their convictions were overturned in 1996.[3]
McMartin Preschool[edit]
Main article: McMartin preschool trial
The case started in August 1983 when Judy Johnson, the mother of a 2½-year-old boy reported to the police that her son was abused by Raymond Buckey at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California.[1] After seven years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. As of 2006, it is the longest and most expensive criminal trial in the history of the United States.[1] The accusations involved hidden tunnels, killing animals, Satan worship, and orgies.[4] Judy Johnson was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia[5][6] and in 1986 was found dead in her home from complications of chronic alcoholism.[7] Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin, were eventually released without any charges. In 2005 one of the testifying children retracted his testimony and said he lied, to protect his younger siblings and to please his parents.[8][9]
In The Devil in the Nursery in 2001, Margaret Talbot for The New York Times summarized the case:
"When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again.
Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80s — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities."[10]
The trial was the subject of Indictment: The McMartin Trial, a made for TV movie that originally aired on HBO on May 20, 1995, starring James Woods.
Country Walk[edit]
In 1985 Frank Fuster, the owner of the Country Walk Babysitting Service, in a suburb of Miami, Florida, was found guilty of 14 counts of abuse.[11] He was sentenced to a prison sentence with a minimum of 165 years. Fuster's victims testified that his "unspeakable acts" included leading them in Satanic rituals and terrorizing them by forcing them to watch him mutilate birds, a lesson to children who might reveal the abuse.[11] Fuster had been previously convicted for manslaughter and for fondling a 9-year-old child.[1] Testimony from children in the case was extracted by Laurie and Joseph Braga, a husband-and-wife team who resorted to coercive questioning of the alleged victims when the desired answers were not forthcoming.[12] The case was prosecuted by Dade County state's attorney Janet Reno.[13] As of 2014, Fuster continues to serve a 165-year prison sentence.[13][14]
Fells Acres Day Care Center[edit]
Main article: Fells Acres Day Care Center preschool trial
The incident began in 1984 when a 5-year-old boy told a family member that Gerald Amirault, administrator and handyman at the Fells Acres day care center, had touched his penis.[1] The boy's mother notified the authorities, and Gerald was arrested. The children told stories that included being abused by a clown and a robot in a secret room at the day care center. They told of watching animals being sacrificed, and one girl claimed Gerald had penetrated her anus with the twelve-inch (30 cm) blade of a knife (which left no injuries).
In the 1986 trial, Gerald was convicted of assaulting and raping nine children and sentenced to thirty to forty years in state prison; in a separate trial his mother, Violet Amirault, and sister, Cheryl Amirault LeFave, were convicted and sentenced to jail for eight to 20 years. He was released in 2004.[15]
In 1995, a critical series of articles in The Wall Street Journal by Dorothy Rabinowitz alleged that the convictions relied entirely on testimony from the children that had been coerced by dubious interrogation techniques, with no corroborating evidence.[16][17] The chief prosecutor of both of the Amirault cases responded to the articles with statements that "the children testified to being photographed and molested by acts that included penetration by objects" and "the implication … that the children's allegations of abuse were tainted by improper interviewing is groundless and not true."[18]
Bernard Baran[edit]
