Creating victims - false charges of sexual abuse of children

National Review, Dec 5, 1994 by Rich Lowry

JOHNNY said he was hungry. "You're hungry?" asked the social worker investigating charges of child abuse. "Okay. You tell me why you want to hit the ... doll and I'll give you something to eat." Johnny insisted there was nothing to talk about. "Okay," the adult replied, "then I'm gonna stay here and we're gonna keep going on with this. It's okay with me. 'Cause I'm here to help you, and I know you want to tell me something and I'll stay here all day till you tell me."

Johnny was one of the children in 23-year-old Kelly Michaels's class at the Wee Care Nursery School in Maplewood, New Jersey. Interviews like this one help explain how Miss Michaels, well-liked by her young charges and respected by her colleagues, could have been indicted on more than 200 counts of child sex abuse without a single unprompted witness or a shred of physical evidence.

The case demonstrates vividly the officially sanctioned child abuse that can occur when sex-crime investigators refuse to take no for an answer. Parents aghast at the initial allegations, therapists with a financial stake in such cases, and social workers conditioned to expect pervasive sex abuse badger children with questions and suggestions until the children come to believe they have been subjected to unspeakable acts--and suffer the same psychological trauma they would if these acts had really occurred. If the prosecutor is a crusader--like Janet Reno, who was involved in two such cases while a prosecutor in Florida--the accused can get a throw-away-the-key prison term.

Miss Michaels did. In 1988 she was convicted on 115 counts of child abuse and sentenced to 47 years in prison. She spent 5 years behind bars before an appellate court overturned her conviction last March. In June the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's ruling that, because the investigation was deeply flawed, a hearing on the reliability of the children's testimony would have to be held before a retrial. The decision was another blow to the Essex County prosecutors handling the case, who had taken a drubbing on the April 10 60 Minutes. And in October lack of evidence led them to drop year-old sexabuse charges against a principal and seven others in Belleville, New Jersey.

But the prosecutors still maintain that Kelly Michaels is a danger to the public, and they have until November 28 to decide if they will seek a second trial. Even if they finally drop the charges, as now seems likely, the Michaels case remains a cautionary tale about the danger of state power in the service of trendy social theory.

The case, like many others, began with an ambiguous remark. After having his temperature taken with a rectal thermometer, a child commented, "Oh, this is what my teacher does to me at nap time at school." (Wee Care teachers did take children's temperatures--with a plastic strip across the forehead.) The suspicions generated by this remark were passed on to the police; in May 1985 they questioned Miss Michaels, who waived her Miranda rights, for nine hours. She passed a polygraph test denying the allegations.

But the investigation continued, and 6 initial charges had grown into 235 by the fall. Child-abuse experts told parents in meetings at Wee Care that abuse had occurred there and urged them to find out if their children had been among the victims. Then, as the county prosecutor's office was wrapping up its investigation, an investigator from the Department of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), Lou Fonoller-as, took up the case. Mr. Fonolleras (who, it was revealed at the first trial, had himself been abused as a child) and his colleagues conducted massive interviews with the children.

The earliest interviews, including those that resulted in the initial charges, were not recorded. But the ones the interviewers did record relied on various methods that psychological research shows are apt to lead a child to lie. Mr. Fonolleras and his colleagues asked leading questions: "How did Kelly hurt you with the knife?" They offered rewards: "I will get you a badge if you help us get this information ..." They insinuated a negative view of Miss Michaels: "Kelly got caught and she is in a lot of trouble ..." They invoked peer pressure: "Boy, I'd hate having to tell your friends that you didn't want to help them." And they exulted in crudity: "Where's that?" Mr. Fonolleras asked one child. "The butt," the child replied. "The butt!" said Fonolleras. "I love the way she says 'butt.' Boy, she's being really helpful, isn't she?"

Remarks like these weren't the exception; they were standard operating procedure, appearing in almost every recorded interview. One, with two investigators interrogating one child, exemplifies how the DYFS not only didn't "believe the children"--the motto of supporters of the prosecution--but bullied them into submission:

Q: Did she put the fork in your butt?

Yes or no?

A: I don't know, I forgot ... I hate you.

Q: Aw, come on, Peter, if you just an-

swer that, you can go.