A child who was attending the day care disclosed to his uncle that a man named "Tooky" had pulled his pants down. This was accurate; both the boy's teacher and Gerald Amirault remember that Gerald had changed the boy after he wet himself during nap time. After a great deal of questioning by the boy's mother, he disclosed that "Tooky" had taken him to a secret room and molested him. He described the room as having a shelf with golden trophies, no windows, and one or two beds. When interviewed by a social worker, he denied most of the allegations and said that Mr. Amirault had only touched and kissed him. He named a fellow student as also having been molested; the other boy denied this. He said that the abuse happened when Mr. Amirault took over teaching the class due to illness with the regular teachers. The teachers stated that he had never taught the class.
During the police investigation, over 100 parents were invited to a meeting where social workers gave them a list of symptoms which might indicate sexual abuse: (appetite problems, bedwetting, crying when being taken to school, nightmares, etc). The police suggested that parents question their children repeatedly and persistently about abuse at the school; if the children denied abuse, they should not be believed.
40 potential cases quickly arose. Of the 19 children who were interviewed most initially said that they liked school and wanted to go back. But, after lengthy questioning they eventually accused a variety of adults of bizarre abuse. In addition to the three adults who were charged, they also accused most of the other teachers, and an imaginary Mr. Gatt who could never be located. The 9 most credible children were selected to testify. During the grand jury, one parent said that Mr. Amirault forced her son to drink his own urine in front of his teachers; none of the latter could remember any such incident, nor could they recall any "magic room" or remember Mr. Amirault taking the child out of the classroom, or remember seeing Tookie (or anyone else) ever dressed in a clown suit.
During the trial, when the prosecuting attorney asked the children whether they had been abused, many replied that they had not been. But after sufficiently pointed questions, they testified that they had been sodomized; forced to engage in fellatio; attacked by a robot; molested by clowns and lobsters; tied to a tree naked and upside down in full sight of the teachers and other children; present when a baby and a dog were killed; forced to eat a dead frog; forced to lick ice cream off of the trunk of an elephant; chased around the school yard naked in the presence of others; etc. Many of the children said that they had told their teachers that they were going to the secret room; none of the teachers could recall this.
On cross-examination, children explained how they had extensively rehearsed their testimony. The children testified that the defendants had threatened them with punishment if they revealed the abuse to anyone. (Most experts believe that such threats will often cause a child to disclose abuse without prompting; but none did).
The children testified to having been taken from their room each weekday over a period of many months and taken to the "secret" room. Each would have walked the route from their classroom to the room over 100 times. Yet they were never able to retrace their steps for the police, and find the room. In spite of diligent searching by the police, no "magic room" was ever found.
One rare feature of this case is that the prosecution claimed that hard evidence of abuse existed. Expert witnesses testified that they had found vaginal and anal irregularities on some of the children. Now, a decade after the trial, this testimony has been shown to be worthless. Recent research revealed that these same irregularities are also found on young people who have never been abused. (One special case was a girl witness who has a small scar on her hymen of unknown origin. But she testified to having been anally sodomized with a knife, not vaginally raped.) One expert witness claimed that all three girls at the second trial had been found to have vulvitis, (inflammation of the vulva), a common medical problem that can be caused by poor hygiene or by sexual activity. If due to sexual abuse, the inflammation normally heals within 3 weeks. But 2 of the children were examined at least 4 weeks after the school was closed; the third more than a year later. So, assuming that they were all abused on the last day of school, their inflammation would have totally disappeared by the time they were medically examined. Their vulvitis must have been caused by hygiene problems.
All three of the adults appealed their sentences. Violet Amirault, and Cheryl could have been paroled earlier, except that they refused to confess to a crime that they did not commit - in fact, a crime that seems never to have happened. They were finally released after 8 years in prison when their convictions were overturned. The state is appealing. Tooky's sentence runs out a quarter of the way through the next century. His appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled for early Fall, 1996.
In our opinion, no ritual abuse occurred, and all three defendants are innocent.