АҚШ: Балалар бақшасындағы зорлау ісінің тарихы

American day care sex abuse trial
The Fells Acres day care sexual abuse trial took place in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts following charges initially lodged in the mid 1980s against family members who operated a day care center, Fells Acres Day School, in Malden, Massachusetts. The facility had been opened in 1966 by Violet Amirault (1923–1997). She and her two children—son Gerald Amirault (born 1954) and daughter Cheryl Amirault LeFave (born c. 1957)—were tried for sexually abusing children at their facility. Gerald was tried in 1986 while his sister and mother were tried in 1987. All three were convicted and sentenced to prison. The Amiraults deny the charges, which supporters regard as a conspicuous example of day care sex abuse hysteria. Violet and Cheryl were freed on appeal in 1995. Violet died in 1997. The appeal was ultimately denied, but Cheryl avoided a return to prison via a deal struck with prosecutors in October 1999. The police called the parents of all the children to a meeting at the police station to discuss the situation. They were instructed to interview their children and to look for signs of sexual abuse. Examples of behaviors parents were told were symptomatic of abuse included bed wetting, changes in appetite and nightmares. The children were also questioned by the police, social workers, therapists, and others.

Eventually, Amirault was charged with molesting more children, and charges were brought against his mother, Violet Amirault, and sister, Cheryl Amirault LeFave. The main criticism of this case centered on the reliability of the information obtained from the children. The bulk of the evidence was developed through videotaped interviews conducted by Susan J. Kelley, a pediatric nurse. The children repeatedly told interviewers, including Kelley, that nothing happened to them, that there were no secret rooms, and there was no clown. However, the questioning continued and eventually the children claimed all these things happened. One police officer, John Rivers, said at a seminar that interviewing the children was "like getting blood from a stone". At one point, an interviewer told a child that the child's friend had already testified that the clown had them take their clothes off. The girl being interviewed denied this happened, at which point the interviewer said that she believed what the child's friend told her. Kelley also rejected alternative explanations for events and ignored the children's denials of the abuse scenarios. The chief prosecutor of both of the Amirault cases maintained that "the children testified to being photographed and molested by acts that included penetration by objects the implication that the children's allegations of abuse were tainted by improper interviewing is groundless and not true."

In October 1992, Violet and Cheryl's sentences were reduced by their original trial judge, John Paul Sullivan of the Middlesex County Superior Court, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) reversed that ruling in 1993. In March 1995, Charles M. Sennott published an article in The Boston Globe that was sympathetic towards the Amiraults and reported that Miriam Holmes, who was assigned as a counselor by the Department of Correction to Violet and Cheryl, and Joel Skolnick, who counseled Cheryl, believed that both women were innocent. Joel Skolnick, a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW), interviewed Cheryl Amirault while she was incarcerated in MCI Framingham as well as reviewed transcripts of interviews administered by the Department of Social Services. Skolnick determined that the interviews were not administered properly and biased the children's responses, making them unreliable. Furthermore, he noted that the vast majority of sex offenders will readily confess to their crimes if offered freedom in exchange for doing so, and that because of this the steadfast refusal of the Amiraults to do the same was further indication of their innocence. A study by a McGill University psychologist of hundreds of children aged 4 to 6 found that the kind of prolonged, repeated questioning used on the children in the Amirault case frequently results in false reports. Other studies had shown that the method of interrogation via anatomically correct dolls also had an incredibly great margin of error.

Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2001, partly for her coverage of the case. ." The case was featured in her 2003 book about miscarriages of justice, No Crueler Tyrannies. The Massachusetts parole board recommended the commutation of Gerald Amirault's sentence in July 2001, an action that the alleged victims strenuously objected to. The then Acting Governor, Jane Swift, rejected the decision in February 2002. Gerald Amirault was ultimately released from the Bay State Correctional Center on April 30, 2004. In November 2022, outgoing Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker recommended pardons for Gerald Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave due to "grave doubt regarding the evidentiary strength" of their convictions. The recommendation required approval by the Massachusetts Governor's Council.