Shelby Steele: Ghettoized by Black Unity •

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FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES TO A JAIL CELL Child Abuse and the Abuse of Justice: A Case Study By

BUT WHAT ABOUT AFRICA? On the Global Economy's Lost Continent By Richard]. Barnet

A LIFE COLORED BY WAR Amsterdam, May 1940: When the Germans Came By Hans Koning ELEANOR IN THE UNDERWORLD A story by ]. S. Marcus

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FROM THE ~10UTHSOF BABES TO A JAIL CELL Child abuse and the abuse of justice: A case study By Dorothy Rabinowitz

On August 2, 1988, September 1984 to April 1985, Kelly Michaels, Margaret Kelly Michaels, then twenty-six years according to the prosecutors, raped and assault- old, was sentenced by a New Jersey judge to ed them with knives, forks, a wooden spoon, forty-seven years in prison. It was as harsh a sen- and Lego blocks. The prosecution maintained tence as any judge in this country is likely to that she had been able to do all this unnoticed mete out for a crime involving neither drugs nor by her fellow teachers, by school administrators, murder, but it was not nearly harsh enough for by parents and other visitors to the school, and most of those assembled in the courtroom that unnoticed as well by anyone working for the day at the Essex County Court House in New- church or attending services at the church- ark. She faced, according to those moved to that is to say, unnoticed for nearly 150 school carefully calculate such things (and there were days by any adult. Unnoticed, and on a daily ba- many on hand), an imprisonment of no fewer sis, Michaels had also, according to the prosecu- than 730 years. Three months earlier, Michaels tors, licked peanut butter off the children's genitals, played the piano in the nude, and had been convicted on 115 (of an alleged 131) made them drink her urine and eat a "cake" of counts of sexual abuse against twenty children, her feces. For 150 school days, not a single child ranging in age from three to five. Each of the ever said so much as a single word about any of children had been in her charge at the Wee these crimes because-again according to the Care Day Nursery, an exclusive preschool in the prosecution-Kelly Michaels had forced them suburban community of Maplewood, New Jer- to keep at least 115 terrible secrets. sey, about twenty miles from ; Although monstrous in its allegations, the each of the crimes was said to have been com- case against Kelly Michaels was as much a work mitted during regular school hours at the nurs- of the prosecution's feverish imagination as a ery, essentially a few rented rooms in the construction of the law. A substantial body of basement and on the second and third floors of evidence suggests that Kelly Michaels was con- the town's large Episcopal church; each day dur- victed of crimes she did not commit. Her story ing the seven months she worked as a teacher's deserves telling in some detail because the cir- aide and then as a teacher at Wee Care, from cumstances that resulted in her arrest, trial, and Dorothy Rabinowitz writes frequently on social and political imprisonment bespeak a condition of national issues. She lives in New York City. hysteria not unlike the hysteria that seized the

52 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / MAY 1990 Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth decided to go back and research the history of The accused century during the excitements of the Salem this case, beginning with the first allegations tend to be witch trials. If Kelly Michaels was unjustly con- made against her in the spring of 1985. In the victed, it is because we live in an age of trial by course of my research, I read through trial mate- teachers and accusation. Our society, at the moment, is rials and interviewed most of the leading par- counselors. The quick to condemn anybody and everybody ticipants: the investigators, prosecutors, judge, cases almost charged, on the flimsiest of evidence, with the and parents, as well as the convicted defendant crimes of abusing or molesting children. In the herself. What emerged at the end of that re- always rely interest of a higher virtue (i.e., protecting the search was not only the story of a young woman on only the children), a credulous public and a sensational- whom I believe to have been falselyaccused and testimony of ist press stand willing to cast aside whatever civ- unjustly condemned but also an understanding small children il liberties or constitutional rights obstruct the of the ways in which the laws can be made to judgment of heaven. sustain the decrees of fear and superstition. In At the time of Kelly Michaels's conviction, I almost every detail, the prosecution of Kelly was working for WWOR- TV, New Jersey's Michaels replicated the prosecution of similar largest television station. I reported and wrote cases being brought against alleged child mo- commentaries about the media for the station's lesters everywhere in the United States. The ac- evening news program, and because the Michaels case was one of the ies~onsiblY';:if"i. biggest local stories, I had followed udYlng the. trial it for months. From the beginning, Y·knew t " are s I found something strange about sealeg), the state's case-something incom- te of"y prehensible in the many counts of abuse, in the large number of chil- dren allegedly victimized, in the highly improbable circumstances in which Kelly Michaels was said to have accomplished the molestation of half the children in the school. I found no less strange the reactions of my colleagues to my casually voiced doubts to the effect that the case against Kelly Michaels was as rotten as last week's fish. Youngish journalists who prided themselves on their skepticism-types who automatically sniffed with suspicion at any and every pronouncement by a government official-were out- raged by the merest suggestion that the state's charges against Kelly Mi- chaels lacked credibility. In late July 1988, just before Michaels's sentence was to be handed down, I told one of the station's news man- agers that I planned to do a commentary on the cused tend to be teachers, camp counselors, and media coverage of the trial. The Village Voice members of "sex rings." The cases almost always had published a lengthy story on the case by rely on only the testimony of small children; journalist that raised critical and this testimony invariably comes to involve questions about the press coverage. The story more and more victims, who describe more and provided, I thought, the perfect opportunity to more bizarre, cruel, and lurid acts. All the cases raise certain, by now deeply nagging, questions also make extensive use of child-abuse "special- of my own about this case. ists" and "investigators," who insist that par- "Forget it," the news managers informed me. ents, prosecutors, and jurors must-in a phrase This meant, in translation: This news organiza- whispered frequently at such trials and even af- tion is not prepared to air doubts about the trial fixed to posters and buttons-believe the chil- of one of the most despised defendants ever con- dren. As proof of the prevailing doctrine, Essex victed in a New Jersey court-a child molester. County Assistant Prosecutor Glenn Goldberg, Shortly after Kelly Michaels's sentencing, I who tried the state's case against Kelly Mi-

lIIustrations by Victoria Kann REPORT 53

------""""'''''''''''''''''-_ .•...-.~_.-•..-.- . People chaels, kept a button mother) in Manhattan Beach, a well-to-do sea- everywhere pinned to his office bulletin board. side city that is a part of greater Los Angeles, By and large, this commandment has been was said by the children to have stuck silverware in the country obeyed. People everywhere in the country have in their anuses, taken them on visits to cemeter- have believed believed. Believed almost anything and every- ies, and killed a horse with a baseball bat. The tales as fantastic thing told to them by witnesses under the age of parent who first came forth after believing her as any story six. Believed tales as fantastic as any fairy story son, a woman named Judy Johnson, died in ever told by the Brothers Grimm. In Sequim, 1986 of an alcohol-related illness; not long ever told by Washington, investigators listened attentively after her initial charge against Buckey of child the Brothers as children in a local preschool charged that sodomy, she made a similar allegation against Grimm they had been taken by a teacher to graveyards . an AWOL marine, claiming that he and forced to witness animal sacrifices. In Chi- T also had sodomized the family dog. cago, children told sympathetic authorities of how they were made to eat a boiled baby. A .the prosecution of Kelly Michaels took Memphis preschool teacher, Frances Ballard, place in the midst of a national hysteria about was acquitted of terrorizing children into watch- the crimes of child abuse that, by the spring of ing her put a bomb in a hamster and exploding '1985, had become as virulent and as contagious as the Asian flu. Kelly Michaels left t;d\y told the Wee Care Day Nursery on April 'bly" 26, 1985, in order to accept a bet- ist in• 1 g the tna ter-paying job in the nearby town of w this ~ East Orange, New Jersey. Four days still t . later, on April 30, one of her former :d), the 't students, a four-year-old boy whom I will call Terry Weldon,' inadver- tently set in motion her transforma- tion into an object of revulsion. His mother had taken him to his pedia- trician for a checkup, and a nurse began to take his temperature by putting a thermometer in his rec- tum. Terry played quietly for a half- minute or so and then said, "That's what my teacher does to me at nap time at school." When the nurse asked him what he meant, he an- swered, "Her takes my tempera- ture." His nap-time monitor was Kelly Michaels. Kelly Michaels had not come to Maplewood from Pittsburgh, where she was raised, to teach pre- schoolers. Nor, for that matter, had she come east to settle in Maple- wood. She loved the theater and wanted to be an actress. She was it, and of fifteen other charges no less fantastic; pretty in a traditional, American-girl sort of but, in a trial to rival those of the Salem witch- way, with a dimply smile and eyes, as even her es, she was convicted of kissing the genitals of a childhood photos show, that knew how to meet four-year-old boy. a camera lens. She was voted "best actress" of The most sensational case of child abuse her high school, St. Benedict's Academy, and reached its denouement on January 18 of this went on to major in theater at Seton Hill, a year, when a jury in Los Angeles acquitted Ray Catholic women's college near Pittsburgh. In Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin the summer of 1984, then just a few credits shy Buckey, on fifty-two counts-this after deliber- of her B.A., she took up the offer of a college ating for nine weeks over evidence presented in friend who had invited her to share an efficiency the course of thirty-three months at a trial that apartment in a poor, mostly black neighbor- cost the taxpayers of California an estimated $15 million. Buckey, a teacher at the Virginia •All the names of the Wee Care preschoolers and of their McMartin Preschool (founded by his grand- parents have been changed.

54 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I MAY 1990 hood in East Orange. For the time being, East liked the children and their parents too, but the We have now Orange was as close as she could get to Manhat- salary proved impossible to live on. When she in this country tan's theaters and drama schools. went home for Christmas, her parents told me, Up to this point, she had lived with her par- she said she planned to leave Wee Care and re- a vastly ents, John and Marilyn Michaels, and her four turn to Pittsburgh. John Michaels, to his bitter increased sisters and brothers in a pleasant, woodsy, regret, urged her to be responsible and finish out number of middle-class section of Pittsburgh called White the year. Kelly Michaels returned to Wee Care child-protection Oak Heights. Her early life had been, from all but did not finish out the year; she left two evidence, a happy one as the eldest child of a months before the school was to close for the agencies and close-knit family. They were a talkative, book- summer in order to take the job in East Orange. experts. Funds ish lot, given to heated debate on art and poli- Ten days after Terry Weldon's checkup, Es- begat staffs, tics, which might explain Kelly Michaels's sex County Investigator Richard Mastrangelo rather extraordinary command of the lan- and Maplewood Detective Sergeant John which grew, as guage-a faintly formal, old-fashioned elo- Noonan knocked on the door of the apartment did their zeal quence that made her seem, at times, the child Kelly Michaels shared with her friend Cynthia. of another era. Terry Weldon's mother, upon arriving home When I met Kelly Michaels for the first time, after his examination, had fixed her son lunch in the dark visitors' cubicle at the women's pris- and then phoned the doctor to talk about the on in Clinton, New Jersey, two months after temperature-taking incident. The doctor ad- her sentencing, she still retained some of the vised her to call the state child-protective agen- wholesome look I had seen in her school photo- cy, the Division of Youth and Family Services graphs. Her shock at the accusations brought (DYFS). Her call was referred to the agency's against her were still as fresh in her mind as at Institutional Abuse Unit, which contacted the the moment when she was first questioned in Child Abuse Unit of the EssexCounty prosecu- 1985. Her gift for language allowed her to ex- tor's office, which agreed to initiate an investi- press not only rage at her accusers but also an gation. We have now in this country a vastly intellectual scorn for the absurdity of their increased number of child-protection agencies charges. On several subsequent occasions when and experts. This is largely a result of the pas- I spoke to her, she never failed to voice her sage in L979 of the Federal Child Abuse Act, amazement that a jury had believed the charges. which dramatically increased funds available to "To watch these witnesses, these prosecutors states and localities for such agencies and ex- with their details-and none of it had ever hap- perts. Funds begat staffs, which grew, as did pened," she once told me. "Yet, all these people their zeal. were coming up to the stand to give descriptions On May 2, Terry's mother-the wife of a Ma- of what never happened." plewood police officer and the daughter of a After arriving in East Orange, Michaels be- prominent Essex County judge-brought him gan looking for work. She answered a number of to the Essex County prosecutor's office in New- want ads, including one for a teacher's aide. She ark, where he was questioned by the head of the had never worked in the child-care field, but office's Child Abuse Unit, Assistant Prosecutor the director of the nursery was impressed with Sara Sencer, now Sara McArdle. She happened her. She was subsequently hired by Wee Care to live in Maplewood. (the pay was about four dollars an hour) and be- McArdle questioned Terry, handing to him gan work there in September. Her mother, during the interview what is called, by child- Marilyn, told me last year, when I visited her in abuse experts, an "anatomically correct" doll- White Oak Heights, that she had teased Kelly that is, a rag doll that has an anus and when she called to say she had begun working at genitalia. On the basis of what the child does a preschool. Be careful, she told her daughter, with-and to-such a doll, investigators like look at what is happening in Los Angeles to McArdle say they can conclude whether and those teachers in the McMartin case. what type of abuse is likely to have occurred. Within a month at Wee Care, Kelly Mi- Under questioning by McArdle, according to a chaels was promoted to teacher. She had im- prosecutor's report, Terry Weldon stuck his fin- pressed her supervisors and appeared to be ger in the doll's rectum. popular with the three-year-olds whose class she Terry also told McArdle that two other boys took charge of and with the other children had had their temperature taken. Both were whom she supervised during nap time. Follow- questioned. The boys seemed to know nothing ing days that she stayed home sick, children about temperature-taking, but one of them, ac- would run to greet her-a fact the prosecution cording to McArdle, said Michaels had touched would not deny but rather pointed to as evi- his penis. Then a fourth allegation was made: dence that Michaels "was an actress" and that The Weldons had notified Wee Care director "child abusers are very clever people." Michaels Arlene Spector of their son Terry's story, and

REPORT 55

------~_._•.._. - ~------The child~ Spector, in turn, had notified the members of There, a case was opened after a woman abuse experts the school board. Under repeated questioning named Christine Brown alleged that her daugh- from his father, a board member-with the fa- ter had been sexually abused by James Rud, a convince parents ther telling him "he was his best friend and that trash collector and a neighbor in the trailer park that the number he could tell him anything" {this from the pros- where she and her daughter lived. Other chil- of abuses and ecutor's office report)-another boy said that dren in the trailer park were questioned, and Michaels had touched his penis with a spoon. A some acknowledged that they, too, had been abusers is decision was made to bring Kelly Michaels in for victimized-by Christine Brown. She was virtually questioning. charged soon after with eighteen counts of limitless, The two investigators who arrived at Kelly criminal sexual activity. A mother of five with beyond their Michaels's apartment on the morning of May 6 little money, Brown approached her older sister 'f found only one bed in the apartment, and this, and brother-in-law, Helen and Tom Brown (the imagination Michaels later said, at once attracted their at- shared surname is coincidental), for help, and tention. She said they exchanged sly and sig- they agreed to mortgage their house to post nificant glances. She was told she was not under Christine's bail. Two months later, the prosecu- arrest and did not need a lawyer but that she was tor in the case, Kathleen Morris, had Tom and under investigation and would she please come Helen arrested for child abuse, and they spent to the prosecutor's office for questioning. Once five days in jail. Several dozen-local residents there, she waived her Miranda rights and spent met at City Hall to protest the arrests, among several hours insisting that the allegations were them an automobile painter named Bob Bentz, unfounded and that she was innocent. About his wife, Lois, and a local policeman, Greg temperature-taking, she explained that teachers Myers. Not long after, all three were arrested on took it by placing plastic strips on the children's, charges.otchild abuse, along with Myers's wife foreheads. She was urged to take a lie-detector and a married couple who had driven the test and did; she passed. Two and a half years Browns home from jail. later, at Michaels's trial, the county prosecutors In nearly all such cases, the allegations and prevented the results of this polygraph from be- the numbers of suspects begin to mount only ing admitted into evidence, basing their objec- after the entry of investigators and of represen- tion on a state law stipulating that any person tatives of child-abuse agencies. It is these ex- submitting to a police lie-detector test must first perts who convince parents and children alike sign an agreement authorizing future use of the that the number of abuses and abusers is virtual- results. Michaels, who had never before been ly limitless-beyond their imagination. brought into a police station, knew nothing of On May 15, 1985, nine days after Kelly Mi- this requirement; nor did the detectives ques- chaels had been brought in for questioning, tioning her see fit to mention it. Wee Care convened a meeting of parents. The She was driven home, and, shaken though school had sent out a letter on May 8, informing she was at the end of this day, she remembers the parents that a former employee of the school reaching the conclusion that it must all have was being investigated "regarding serious allega- been some kind of bizarre misunderstanding. In tions made by a child," and while this prompted .• one sense it was: The jury eventually rejected a flurry of phone calls by parents.to the school, the charge that she had taken Terry Weldon's no other allegations against Michaels emerged. temperature rectally-the very charge that pro- The prosecutor's office was set to wrap up its voked the entire investigation: anal penetration case-based on the allegations made by Terry of the boy. But, as is invariably true in these Weldon and the two boys who alleged Michaels cases, the first accusation was followed touched their penis-and present it to a grand by more accusations-many more. jury. But the Wee Care board thought it best that the parents be informed about abuse by an No one examining the scores of such child expert, in this instance, Peg Foster, a social sexual-abuse cases can fail to be struck by the worker who codirected a Sexual Assault Unit at way in which, in almost every instance, an ini- a Newark hospital. tial accusation leads to others and still others- On the evening of May 15, Foster told the as- and on and on, until the charges number in the sembled parents a number of things they had hundreds. At one point during the McMartin never heard before. She told them that sexual case, the police announced they had thirty-six abuse is not unusual. She told them that, al- suspects and had uncovered as many as 1,200 al- though she could point to no hard evidence- leged victims of sexual abuse. An investigation because no such evidence exists-she believed begun in Jordan, Minnesota, at about the same that one in three children in the United States time that Judy Johnson first made her allega- has had an "inappropriate sexual experience" by tions about Ray Buckey, followed a similar-if the time he or she reaches the age of eighteen. even stranger-pattern. She encouraged the parents to take their chil-

56 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / MAY 1990 ___~-~~~~-~~~-~- ~------_ -~~----~~~~--~~-~-~-•...- •._•...._- L- ~~-"---~- _ dren to their pediatricians to check for physical choir room, place kitchen utensils on the floor, Listening to injury. She told them to go home and begin and make the children strip and, once naked, tapes of the checking their sons and daughters carefully for roll around together. genital soreness-and also for nightmares, bit- In the days that followed, Fonolleras con- interviews with ing, spitting, bed-wetting, masturbation, or for ducted interviews with other Wee Care chil- the allegedly what might be construed in any way as sexual dren, bringing to these meetings not only abused behavior, or, for that matter, for any sort of no- crayons and paper but knives and forks and children, one ticeable changes in behavior. She did not tell spoons. Remarkably, he made no tape record- them, of course, that the "symptoms" are for ings of these interviews, nor did he keep his might be struck many children a normal part of development. written records. At the Michaels trial, he told lry how little " On May 22, the state's Division of Youth and the court that he had destroyed all the notes he they actually Family Services-the agency that Terry Wel- took at these initial meetings because, at the confided on don's mother had first contacted-initiated its time, he saw no reason to save them. He was own investigation. The agency had allowed the not at this time gathering evidence for a crimi- their own county prosecutor's office to have the first nal prosecution-although, as it turned out, chance at the case, but by law its staff was there would have been no prosecution, beyond , required to undertake its own inquiry. That af- the six initial charges, had not Fonolleras, ternoon, a DYFS social worker named Lou moved by what he heard in these unrecorded in- Fonolleras made his first of many visits to Wee terviews, raised the specter of widespread child Care and conducted his first of many interviews abuse. During my conversation with him, he with the school's children. It was Fonolleras, a explained that the only way to understand his roundish man of thirty-four with a B.A. in psy- technique of eliciting testimony about child chology, who played the crucial role in building abuse was to know what the children had told the case against Kelly Michaels. him in the very first interviews-the records of Something of the state of mind that Fonol- which, of course, he had thrown away. leras brought to his work is perhaps revealed in Sometime in mid-June, Fonolleras called the his official report of his first day at Wee Care. county prosecutor's office with the suggestion Describing the large, stone-faced church's many that it might want to look further into the Wee nooks and crannies, he noted that these would Care case. The prosecutor's office and the DYFS make ideal hiding places for child molesters. In agreed to launch a joint investigation and also his report, he described the school as a "pedo- brought in Peg Foster, who had earlier instruct- phile's paradise." But no child he interviewed ed the Wee Care parents on what she believed that first day told him that he or she had been to be the symptoms of child abuse. For two abused by Kelly Michaels, or by anyone else. months-during July and August of 1985-this Two days after Fonolleras's visit to Wee Care, investigative team talked with the Wee Care the county prosecutor's office brought its case to staff and with parents, and also recorded inter- the grand jury, and the grand jury, agreeing that views with the children. These interviews, it is the state had a case, handed up an indictment. important to understand, are not like those that On June 12, Kelly Michaels was arrested and might take place between two adults. Listening charged with six counts of abuse; she pleaded in- to tapes of the interviews, one might be struck nocent to all charges. She was taken to the by how little the children actually confided on county jail, where she was confined in protec- their own and also by the wholly fantastical na- tive custody. ture of so much of what they did say. Most of the Fonolleras continued to suspect that there children were confused, had nothing to say, or was more to the Wee Care case than six counts flatly denied that anything had happened to of abuse. When I met with him more than two them. It was also clear that what a child actually years later, he explained that despite the denials said during the questioning often carried little of abuse voiced by the children he had talked weight with the investigators. If a child persist- with that day in May, he had glimpsed clues in ed in denying that anything had been done to "the children's body language," and that "you him or her, Fonolleras or another investigator can't go by what they say"-though, of course, would typically write: "At this time Hugh de- he himself eventually did just that. On June 6, nied victimization. It should be noted [that] he returned to Wee Care at the behest of a par- during the interview, Hugh was victimizing an ent who, following instructions, had noticed anatomically correct doll." her son behaving strangely. During the course As a rule, the children were given knives and of this interview, Fonolleras has said, he learned forks and then asked to show-on an anatomi- of the "pile-up" game. The "pile-up" is said to cally correct doll-where Kelly had hurt them. have worked this way: During nap time in a On the tapes that I heard, a child's first response basement classroom, Kelly Michaels would more often than not was to poke the doll in the march her students upstairs to a third-floor eye or the neck or a knee. Invariably, the listen-

REPORT 57

_ .. _._.--._------As the er then hears the voice of Fonolleras, urging, FONOLLERAS: Did she do anything else to your "Where else? Uh-huh, where else?" After a suc- bottom? investigations LUKE: That's all she did. cession of "where else?" responses, the child progressed, it winds up poking at a penis, or a vagina, or an There followed a series of "I forgot" and "I became amply anus. Here, the "where elses" stop. Later, Fon- don't know" responses. Finally, tiredly, Luke clear that some olleras's official report typically would note how said, "Okay, okay, I'll try to remember." He then said-in an obviously playful, make- of the parents a child "described" the penetration of her vagi- na or his anus. believe tone-"She put that in my heinie." took as true Fonolleras was quick to praise those who con- FONOLLERAS: The fork! every word of firmed his suspicions: "Boy,' you're doing so LUKE [shrieking):Yes! the stories good." But he was stem with those who re- There were more questions, and more noes· of abuse sponded with firm ontrequent noes. Here' isFon- from Luke. Fonolleras then said, in a disap- olleras with one tiny recalcitrant: "If you don't pointed tone, "I thought you were going to help help me, I'm going to tell your friends that you me." The session ends with Luke shouting, "It's not only don't want to help me but you won't all lies!" help them." If the parents of the Wee Care children har- What follows is part of a transcript of an bored any doubts about these interviews and the interview with Luke, age four, conducted by resulting abuse charges, they kept those doubts Fonolleras and Essex County Investigator to themselves. One Wee Care parent, grateful Richard Mastrangelo. for the kindness Kelly Michaels had shown his child, did write to express his faith in her inno- FONOLLERAS: A lot of other kids have helped us cence. Still, the months of group meetings with since we sawyou last. investigators and other parents eroded his faith. LUKE: I don't have to. No! At the trial, this father took the stand as a vocal FONOLLERAS: Did we tell you Kellyis in jail? witness for the prosecution. LUKE: Yes,my mother alreadytold me. FONOLLERAS [indicatingMastrangelo]:Did I tell As the investigations progressed, it became you this is the guy who arrested her, put her in amply clear that some of the parents took as true there? Don't you want to ask us any questions? every word of the stories of abuse they began LUKE: No! hearing from their children. One mother ex- Fonolleras at this point handed Luke an ana- plained (to a grand jury) how her four-and-a- tomically correct doll, then proceeded with his half-year-old son had told her that Kelly had questioning. stuck a spoon and a pencil in his ear, that her aide, Brenda Sopchak, had given him a "truth FONOLLERAS: What color did Kelly have down there? Brownlike her head? Didshe have hair un- drink," that Kelly had begged the aide not to der her arm? call the police, that she had told the little boys LUKE: My daddydo. she would cut them in pieces and throw them At this point, Luke began to shriek, and away so the mothers couldn't find them again. there are indications that he was kicking Fonol- Asked if she thought her son might have leras. Fonolleras offered him a piece of cake anu been fantasizing, the mother, a school board asked him if he would like to' see Investigator member, answered, "No." He was, she further Mastrangelo's badge. Mastrangelo then said to explained, "merely recounting what had hap- Luke, "So your penis was bleeding?" Luke pened during the day." laughed. If Kelly Michaels's fellow teachers harbored doubts about her guilt, they, too-with one no- FONOLLERAS [takinga new tack]: Did Kellyplay "Jingle Bells"with clothes on? table exception-kept these doubts largely to LUKE [screamingnow];No, I sawher penis!I peed themselves. There were children, it appears, on her! who had told investigators that other teachers FONOLLERAS: Youpeed on her? had been present when they were being molest- LUKE: No, she peed on me! ed by Kelly. Some of the children named every At this time Luke told Fonolleras that he teacher in the school. This would explain the wanted to stop. But Fonolleras urged him to clear eagerness to please in the answers some continue. He asked more questions about Luke's teachers gave during their grand jury testimony. penis, about whether he put it in Kelly's mouth. Before being questioned herself, Kelly Mi- chaels's classroom aide, Brenda Sopchak, was FONOLLERAS: Whose mouth did you have to put your penis in? played a tape of a child accusing her. She now LUKE: Nobody. began to remember things: Michaels's suspi- FONOLLERAS: Did anybodykissyour penis? ciously even temper, how she seemed to be in a LUKE: No. I want to go home. daydream like state at times, and the like. An- FONOLLERAS: Did she put this fork in your bot- tom? Yesor no. other teacher testified that Kelly wore no under- LUKE: I forgot. pants under her jeans. Only Wee Care's head

58 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I MAY 1990 teacher, Diane Costa, remained unwaveringly sought to stir outrage-and, of course, to con- Lacking supportive of Kelly Michaels, whom she de- vince the jurors that they should simply believe material scribed as a "model teacher." But Costa herself the children. was indicted on the charge of failing to report They needed some sort of facsimile evidence, evidence, the child abuse, which meant that she could not and in the summer of 1985, months before the prosecutors testify at Michaels's trial without placing herself Z35-count indictment against Michaels was sought to stir under the threat of prosecution. The indict- handed up, they began instructing Wee Care ment effectively silenced the one authoritative parents in the preparation of charts and diaries outrage-and, voice capable of undermining the state's case. detailing the "symptoms" of abuse-the bed- of course, to After closing for the summer, Wee Care did wetting, nightmares, changes in behavior, and convince the not reopen in September 1985. Only the mem- so on-that they had first learned of at the jurors that they bers of the investigative team returned from meeting at Wee Care in mid-May of that year. time to time to the classrooms. Assessing their During my interviews at the prosecutor's office should simply months of research, these investigators claimed in the winter of 1988, I saw huge stacks of these believe the that Kelly Michaels had, in her seven months charts. One of the more noteworthy symptoms children at the school, sexually abused the entire Wee of abuse listed on the charts was "child won't eat Care student body, fifty-one children. Two peanut butter." The children's lack of appetite more grand juries were convened, and in December, Kelly Michaels was indicted on Z35 counts of abuse against thirty-one T children .

• he trial of Kelly Michaels be- gan on June ZZ, 1987. (One of the Wee Care families had moved out of ,\\ Ietul Maplewood, and others had chosen ng. Sbe.f Vl not to expose their children to the ;'s con ground: rigors of a jury trial; as a result, the me CQu charges against Kelly Michaels now ;ged chilo numbered 163.) Because the Mi- has the chaels family had run out of money, e accus. Kelly Michaels was defended by a ional ct team of "pool attorneys" appointed ts have by New Jersey's Office of the Public her apP Defender. Pool attorneys are not ; will be salaried employees of the state but article free-lancers permitted to pick and noW. choose among available cases. Mi- chaels's case went unassigned for .lon th four months: It would seem that iey, and the Mall many of these lawyers were reluc- ornicas tant to take on a case that looked as 1 ces . though it would drag on for months, to P a "'5000 resl- " The M' • or to defend a woman accused of lnd the. 17~O~,,:~ sexually assaulting, among others, the grandson of a prominent local judge. (The for peanut butter, the prosecutors contended, judge, as it turned out, was the first witness was proof of the charge made by the children called by the prosecution.) that Michaels had spread peanut butter on their Harvey Meltzer and Robert Clark, the de- genitals and then licked it off. Sometimes it was fense attorneys eventually assigned to the case, peanut butter alone, but sometimes-as the tes- believed their client to be innocent. They timony evolved in ever more elaborate detail- hoped to base their defense on logistics and it was peanut butter and jelly. common sense-on the contention that no one I met that winter as well with a number of could have abused children sexually in every Wee Care parents who were eager to tell me all comer of the school without anybody else find- the significant changes they had noticed in ing out about it. their children, in particular their suddenly sex- The prosecutors, for their part, knew their ualized behavior. Each time I was told a new de- hopes lay in the emotional nature of the case. tail-how a child grabbed his father's genitals Lacking material evidence, the prosecutors or talked about kissing penises-I inquired

REPORT 59 No matter when this kind of behavior or talk had begun. a way of explaining all types of problems they what else might Invariably I was told, "Just after disclosure." had with their children. That their children had That is, not after Kelly Michaels is said to have been molested at school now served to explain be going on at begun sexually molesting the children, in the everything. As one parent said, "Everything my home, the fall of 1984, but after the parents were told, in husband and I had passed off as just some phase parents held the spring of 1985, to look for portents and our child was going through, we could look back that their signs. on and say, 'Now, now we could understand One mother told me, "My daughter was all why.''' Other parents cited the molestation as children's over my husband. She had turned into a little the cause of their marital breakup. No matter problems five-year-old whore!" what else might be going on at home, parents 'f stemmed from I asked her when this behavior had begun. held that their children's problems stemmed "After disclosure." from abuse at Wee Care. abuse Disclosure, like so many other quasi- In court, the charts aided the parents in their legalisms that support the accusations of child testimony and perhaps aided Judge William abuse, became a household word among the Harth in his decision to allow such testimony. Wee Care parents. It never occurred to the In a similar case, a higher state court in New mother in question or to any of the other moth- Jersey subsequently ruled as inadmissible-as' hearsay-the testimony of parents on the subject of what their chil- dren told them. Michaels's lawyer Harvey Meltzer requested a mistrial based on this ruling, which was handed down after the prosecution had presented its case. The judge re- fused to grant the mistrial. Instead, he instructed the jury to disregard some twenty charges based on hear- say; but he did not give the instruc- tion until much later, just prior to the jury's deliberation. Thus, the jurors had been allowed to listen for months to hearsay that at the last moment they were told to erase from their minds. In Judge Harth's courtroom, the parent-plaintiffs were treated with unstinting consideration for their every concern, particularly the con- cern for anonymity. The guarantee of anonymity, of course, encourages the multiplication of charges and accusations. To the privacy of the parents and children Judge Harth accorded something akin to sacred status, while the name of the ac- cused-like that of the accused and ers with whom I spoke that the hypersexuality of their families at similar tribunals across the na- their children might have to do not with Kelly tion-was emblazoned in headlines, irremedi- Michaels but with the exhaustive questioning, ably tarnished. and lurid disclosures, to which they were sub- To protect the Wee Care families' anonym- jected by investigators and by their parents. ity, the judge strictly curtailed the amount of (There were parents, I learned, who kept sepa- investigation into their backgrounds he would rate charts listing suspicious behavior they allow defense attorneys. To protect that ano- began to remember having occurred prior to dis- nymity, the judge sealed the trial transcript. closure. But not one of these parents had found Nor were the children required to testify in open the behavior unusual enough at the time to con- court. They testified in the judge's chambers, sult a pediatrician or ask a Wee Care teacher and their testimony was shown to the jury on about ir.) closed-circuit TV -a not uncommon arrange- The charts were useful not only to the pros- ment at such child-abuse trials. Judge Harth ecution. They also provided some parents with also refused to allow the defense psychologists to

60 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I MAY 1990 examine the children, as the prosecution doc- tin trial, at which jurors rejected the children's Not even the tors had been able to do. These children (who stories, but it did obtain at the trial of Kelly Mi- principle of due had, in fact, been analyzed and counseled for chaels. Prosecutor Glenn Goldberg advised the some two years prior to the trial) would, the jury at the outset that it was not necessary to process was judge said, be too traumatized to answer ques- believe everything the children said. Where a match, tions by a second set of psychologists. The de- child abuse is concerned, the prosecutor told apparently, for fense argued in vain that its psychologists must them, "there is no physical evidence. Is the the revered have a chance to determine whether the chil- jury going to be able to understand this?" dren were, in fact, traumatized, but the judge In effect, the prosecutor asked the jurors if status accorded held firm. It was a decision that violated the they could bring themselves to forget certain alleged victims most fundamental principle of due process-the 'values with which they had been imbued as citi- of child abuse principle that both sides must be heard in a court- zens of a democracy, values such as the impor- room. Not even a cardinal principle of the justice tance of evidence in a criminal trial, and if they system was a match, apparently, for the revered could suspend their belief in the Constitution in status accorded alleged victims of child abuse. the interest of protecting children. As the ver- At the trial the children's testimony, given dict proved, they could. • after two and a half years of preparation and Perhaps the most important witness for the training, was rich in detail, a startling difference prosecution was not a child or a parent but from the earlier denials and bewilderment re- Bronx psychologist Eileen Treacy. An article in corded during the investigative phase. One wit- New York magazine later revealed that the cur- ness was Luke, who had shouted "It's all lies!" at riculum vitae of this particular child-abuse "ex- Fonolleras's questions. Mindful of this taped pert" exaggerated her credentials. The article outburst, prosecutor Sara McArdle asked Luke also cited a ruling by a New Jersey judge, Mark whether he hadn't meant he washoping it was all Epstein, in a similar child-abuse case. That lies. This time he didn't disappoint his inter- ruling declared, "The most damning wit- rogator: Yes, the child answered, he had been ness [against the prosecution] was Eileen hoping it was all lies. Treacy.... Ms. Treacy's questioning gently but Still, even now there were child witnesses surely led [the child] where Ms. Treacy wanted who continued to change stories, mid- to take him." The judge was convinced, he said, testimony, or to deny that anything had hap- that Treacy would have been able to elicit the pened. One child told the court that Kelly same accusations from children who had not forced him to push a sword into her rectum. A been abused. lengthy and earnest colloquy then took place, If a child said emphatically that nothing had between the attorneys and the judge, as to happened, the denial, Treacy explained, was whether the child was saying sword or saw. After the very proof that the abuse had taken place. In he had pushed the sword, or saw, into his teach- this expert's view, all friendship or affection er's rectum, the boy told the court, she told him shown by teacher to child signified an effort to to take it out. seduce. At the Michaels trial, Treacy testified "What did Kelly saywhen you took the sword that the Wee Care students were "the most out?" the child was then asked. traumatized group of children" she had ever "She said, 'Thank you.''' seen. She explained the trauma by referring to Brad Greene told the court that Kelly threat- the theories of Suzanne Sgroi, a pediatrician ened to tum him into a mouse-that, in fact, and the discoverer of the Child Sex Abuse Syn- she had turned him into a mouse for a little drome. According to Dr. Sgroi, the syndrome while during a plane trip to visit his grandmoth- develops in a number of phases. There is the er. Child witness Celine Mauer said that she "engagement phase," during which time the had been "tractored" by Kelly; that is, been abuser seduces the child into the activity. This abused, with other children, inside a tractor. is followed by the "secrecy phase," the "suppres- Indeed, the prosecutors went to some trouble to sion phase," and so on; and Treacy explained substantiate this claim-bringing a representa- each of them to the jury. "Proof of the suppres- tive of the Maplewood street maintenance de- sion stage," she said, "is the succession of no, partment to confirm that a tractor had been no, no answers." When one child, during testi- parked in the vicinity of the schoo!' mony, expressed concern for Michaels, this Who would have believed any of this? Surely demonstrated "that she [the child) had a rela- no reasonable adult, no jury. Yet it was offered tionship with Kelly, and that fits into the en- as evidence. Thanks to the current zeal to pros- gagement phase." ecute child abusers, strange new rules have Treacy, it should be said, did not limit herself come to obtain at these trials according to to interpretations based on the theories of Dr. which the witnesses need not be credible all the Sgroi. In one of the abuse diaries, a parent had time. These rules did not obtain at the McMar- noted that her child no longer liked tuna fish.

REPORT 61 The psychologist This, Treacy pointed out to the jurors, was sig- song that Kelly Michaels had copied into her had in effect nificant. "It's well known," she said, "that the roll book. The lyrics included the lines "Your smell of tuna fish is similar to the odor of vaginal lover who just walked out the door / Has taken told the jury excretions." In the winter of 1988, when I vis- all his blankets from the floor." The prosecutor, that they must ited Treacy in her office in the Bronx, I re- who has an undergraduate major in psychology, suspend all marked on the many children's drawings on the told the jury that the song was very significant, rational belief if walls. She told me that if I looked closely at the that it was an extremely important clue to Kelly drawings, I would "see how obvious hands are in Michaels's secret life as a sexual criminal. The they were to all their pictures." The predominance of hands, Wee Care children, he told the jury, "slept on understand the she explained, was a strong sign that the blankets and mats.") abuse the children who drew these pictures had been With no character witnesses called-no old 'f molested. classmates, friends, neighbors, or teachers to children had To encounter Treacy's Kafkaesque testimony color in, with stories and comments, the outline suffered is to understand how a jury managed to find the of a normal life-the jurors saw only the Kelly accused in this case guilty, however improbable Michaels of the Wee Care case, the abuser of the evidence. The abuse expert, a psychologist, children so luridly portrayed in the testimony. had in effect told the jury that they must sus- For the jurors who doubted that one woman pend all rational belief if they were to under- could commit so many awful crimes, Assistant stand the abuse the children had suffered. It was Prosecutor Sara McArdle reminded them in her a world in which no meant yes, black meant summation that Adolf Hitler, "one man," had white. Yet, the jury was told, they must believe persecuted not a "little school" but the "entire its premises, believe the children, or else be world"-"Jews, Gypsies, Czechs, and blacks." counted guilty of betraying these young victims. Blacks, of course, were not among Hitler's vic- The principal witness for the defense was Dr. tims, but many of the jurors were black. , an avowed opponent of the Bearing in mind, perhaps, that prosecutorial child-abuse investigators' techniques, their reli- excess is one of the grounds relevant to an ance on dolls and children's drawings, and their appeal, prosecutor McArdle later vehemently insistence on finding child abuse whether or not denied any intentional parallel between the de- any took place. At the Michaels trial, Dr. Un- fendant and Adolf Hitler. She went on to say derwager said, "The child is interrogated and that she could not imagine that anyone could desperately is trying to figure out what are the read anything untoward into this simple histori- rules, what's wanted of me by this powerful adult cal analogy. Thus, the prosecution, which had before me? The child says no, Kelly's clothes vested so much faith in a lack of appetite for were on, when the interrogators want the re- peanut butter, and which divined damning sponse 'Her clothes were off.' And what hap- proofs of guilt in Bob Dylan lyrics in a roll book, pens? The interviewer doesn't stop, doesn't now disdained as fanciful any notion that a believe the child, repeats the question. It just comparison to Hitler might be something other tells the child: What you told me before isn't than a neutral reference. enough. It isn't right. It's not what I want ... " It took the jury thirteen days to reach its ver- His testimony said, in effect, that nothing had dict that Michaels was guilty of 115 counts of happened to the Wee Care children except the abuse. Meltzer requested that the court consider visits of the investigators. The Wee Care par- granting his client bail pending appeal. The ents I talked to vehemently agreed that, of ev- judge turned down the request: Michaels, he erybody on the defense side, the person they said, was a danger to the community. He said, hated the most was Dr. Underwager. "I just cannot forget the children." Defense attorneys Clark and Meltzer made But a three-member appellate panel agreed the decision early not to present character wit- that, because of the legal questions the trial nesses to testify on Kelly Michaels's behalf. raised, Kelly Michaels should be granted bail Such a witness may be asked anything under pending appeal. Among the questions the cross-examination, and what the attorneys judges doubtless had in mind was the defen- feared most was the discovery that Michaels had dant's constitutional right to face her accus- been involved in two brief homosexual love af- ers-denied in this trial, as in many of the other fairs. Kelly Michaels refers to the liaisons as trials involving children's hearsay testimony. nothing more than youthful experiments, but News that Kelly Michaels might get bail the defense lawyers reasoned that the prosecu- raised storms of protest from the Wee Care par- tion would seek to make a damaging connection ents. The prosecutors appealed. Local politi- between her sexual history and the criminal acts cians, declaring themselves outraged, joined with which she was charged. them. The parents marched and picketed. One (Prosecutor Goldberg sought to nourish this mother, weeping, told reporters that when she view by close textual analysis of a Bob Dylan had informed her child that Kelly had been con-

62 HARPER'S MAGAZINE/MAY 1990 victed, the child had said, "Now I'm safe." tion and trial is that-however unfounded the However "What do I tell her now? Now, my daughter's charges-the child witnesses grow up having unfounded the not safe!" The state's highest court, in internalized the belief that they have been the short order, vacated the bail decision. victims of hideous sexual abuse. No one who charges, the saw them will soon forget the frenzied faces of child witnesses In the days immediately following the end of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old former McMar- grow up the McMartin trial and the acquittal of Ray tin pupils in the hours following the verdict. believing they Buckey and his mother, the Los Angeles Times These adolescents had spent their last six years published an analysis of the press coverage of -fully half their lives-instructed in the faith have been the the case. The headline above the first install- that they had been subjected, at ages four and victims of abuse ,. ment in the series could as easily have been af- five, to unspeakable sexual horrors; this belief fixed to analyses of the Michaels trial: WHERE they had come to hold as the defining truth of WAS SKEPTICISM IN MEDIA? PACK JOURNALISM their lives and identities. It is not surprising that AND HYSTERIA MARKED ... COVERAGE .... FEW these children should have wept and raved JOURNALISTS STOPPED TO QUESTION THE BE- when the verdict was handed down denying all LIEVABILITY OF THE PROSECUTION'S CHARGES. that they believed in. During the trial, stories began leaking from Believe the children is the battle cry of the the prosecutor's office suggesting that Kelly child-abuse militants, who hold as an article Michaels had herself been sexually abused by of faith that a pederast lurks behind every door her parents. The stories were widely circulated and blackboard. But child after child repeatedly among reporters covering the case. One of said that Kelly Michaels had done nothing- them, a television reporter, told me of stories and they had not been believed. The prosecu- she had heard that Kelly Michaels's mother had tors had brought experts to court to testify that molested her and sent her nude photographs of children denying abuse should not be believed. herself; and of how Kelly Michaels's father- Believe the children apparently means-to those who, the story went, also molested his daugh- raising the rallying cry-believe the children ter-had called Wee Care every day to make only if they say they have been molested. "To sure that she was initiating the children in the believe a child's no is simplistic," prosecutor practices of pederasty. McArdle had told the jury. Such stories were not broadcast or printed. The scores of investigations and trials of al- Still, they had enormous impact on the press, leged child molesters, undertaken in the name for they meshed nicely with current dogma- of a good-protecting children-have irrepara- and the press is nothing if not up on the latest bly shattered lives and reputations. It is not an dogma-which holds that children who are mo- unfamiliar pattern in our history. We are a soci- lested become molesters themselves. The ru- ety that, every fifty years or so, is afflicted by mors that Kelly Michaels had been sexually some paroxysm of virtue-an orgy of self- abused by her parents thus counted heavily in cleansing through which evil of one kind or an- persuading many reporters that she was guilty. other is cast out. From the witch-hunts of Salem In turn, these reporters, subtly and sometimes to the communist hunts of the McCarthy era to not so subtly, conveyed their belief to rheir the current shrill fixation on child abuse, there readers and viewers. runs a common thread of moral hysteria. After Of course, the newspapers and the TV sta- the McCarthy era, people would ask: But how tions no longer concern themselves with Kelly could it have happened? How could the pre- Michaels, who will not come up before a parole sumption of innocence have been abandoned board for twelve more years. When she does wholesale? How did large and powerful institu- come up for parole, the Wee Care parents have tions acquiesce as congressional investigators vowed they will be there to see that it is denied. ran roughshod over civil liberties-all in the Her attorney is moving ahead with an appeal. In name of the war on communists? How was it the meantime, Kelly Michaels sits in her small possible to believe that subversives lurked be- cell at the women's prison in Clinton, New Jer- hind every library door, in every radio station, sey, where the Wee Care parents are deter- that every two-bit actor who had ever belonged mined to keep her. to the wrong political organization posed a The Wee Care Day Nursery closed down in threat to the nation's security? the aftermath of the investigation; the former Yearsfrom now people doubtless will ask the Wee Care students, it would appear, thereafter same questions about our present era-a time went to another sort of school: one in which when the most improbable charges of abuse find they were instructed, by child-agency investiga- believers; when it is enough only to be accused tors and by prosecutors, in the details of the sex by anonymous sources to be hauled off to the crimes supposedly committed against them. Per- investigators; a time when the hunt for child haps the worst thing about the long investiga- abusers has become a national pathology. •

REPORT 63

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