Eight years in Kafkaland - personal narrative of Kelly Michaels, falsely convicted of child abuse at the Wee Care Day Nursery in Maplewood, New Jersey, 1985

National Review, Sept 6, 1993 by Kelly Michaels

|Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" said the jury foreman, rattling off the words with the efficiency of an auctioneer. "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!"

"But this is absurd!" I whispered. "Impossible! I did not do these things!"

Turning to look at the packed courtroom I scanned the hushed crowd with horror. Amid people gawking and pointing fingers at this notorious woman - now convicted of the most bizarre and preposterous child-sex-abuse crimes in anyone's memory - there were journalists, stuffed like sausages in narrow rows of wooden benches. Their heads bobbing like balloons in a May breeze, they hunched over notebooks and word processors, busily scribbling and typing with no look of skepticism on their faces. What in God's name had just happened?

As a 22-year-old theater and English major just out of a small Catholic college near Pittsburgh, I had come to the New York area eager to be immersed in what I believed was the intellectual and cultural center of the nation, as well as the fifth-column capital of the world. Like many young people just starting out, I ended up working outside my field of interest just to keep myself financially afloat. In the fall of 1984, I accepted a job as a teacher's aide in a private preschool called Wee Care Day Nursery in Maplewood, a small suburb in northeastern New Jersey. I would later be elevated to the position of full-time teacher. The following April, I left Wee Care to accept a job in another day-care center because the higher pay and flexible schedule were more appealing.

An avid student of English literature, black-and-white photography, and the theater, I spent my evenings and weekends concentrating on creative projects and eagerly planning my young future. Yet I was soon to be yanked off course by a single sentence that began the twisting of a legal noose that continues to encircle me.

Eight years ago, a three-year-old child, lying on his pediatrician's examining table and leafing through a coloring book while having his temperature taken, made an idle comment that set in motion the Kafkaesque destruction of my life.

"That's what my teacher does to me at school," the three-year-old boy said, as he toyed with a handful of crayons.

"What does your teacher do?" the nurse calmly asked as she continued the procedure.

"Her takes my temperature," he replied, then returned to his coloring book.

The nurse discussed the seemingly off-handed remark with the boy's mother, who happened to be the daughter of a local judge. Puzzled by the statement, the mother discussed it with the child when they got home. Once the teacher was identified as "Kelly," she phoned the doctor, the school, and the police, feeling that something improper could have occurred at the preschool.

After the police questioned the child, they obtained the names of other children at the school. These children were then visited by police and extensively questioned.

Within days, the Division of Youth and Family Services, a "child protective arm" of the New Jersey state government, decided to launch a major investigation of Wee Care. Their work with these children and parents would act like a virus, contaminating everything it touched.

As word spread of the investigation, worried parents began phoning other parents to share the latest allegations obtained by social worker Lou Fonnoleras and his police assistants.

With a frighteningly focused zealotry, these investigators inundated the three- and four-year-olds with graphic sexual material, including details of anal and oral penetration.

Using anatomical dolls, complete with adult genitalia, these "institutional abuse investigators" would invite these very young children to undress and name the "private parts" of the dolls. After graphic sexual material was introduced into the discussion, the children were handed various eating utensils, including knives, forks, and wooden spoons, and, using the dolls, told to "tell us where Kelly might have hurt you or your friends." Transcripts of the interviews reveal that children were routinely chastised for "no" responses with such threats as "I'm going to have to tell your friends [or in some cases Mommy] that you aren't going to help us."

The delicately uncertain line between fantasy and reality in the minds of these preschoolers was forever shattered by the shamelessly coercive interrogations of these investigators. During the four years until the trial, these little ones would be pressured by well-meaning parents, as well as therapists and prosecutors, to "disclose" incidents of abuse.

Panic spread like a plague. Parents were encouraged to seek state-funded psychological "help," including group therapy, and to further cooperate with authorities in prosecuting what had become the largest child-sex-abuse case in the state's history.

A casual statement while filling in a coloring book at a doctor's office eventually led to a 235-count indictment. The unspeakably bizarre charges would include insertion of tableware into "private parts," nude games, the consumption of "pee pee" and "poop," and intercourse with preschoolers.