45 leading cognitive, developmental and clinical psychology researchers filed an amicus curia ("friend of the court") brief stating that: "...if there were incidents of sexual abuse, the faulty interviewing procedures make it impossible to ever know who the perpetrators were and how the abuse occurred....we are deeply concerned about the long-lasting harmful effects of persuading children that they have been horribly sexually and physically abused, when in fact there may have been no abuse until the interviews began" . The interviewers repeatedly told the children that Ms. Michaels was in jail because she had done bad things. They needed the kid's help in keeping her there. Sometimes they implied that their teacher had supernatural powers. The interviewers rewarded children who gave the "right" answers with police badges and other gifts. Those who gave the wrong answers were denied food or humiliated. Ceci and Bruck (1; P.116-118; 121-122; 149-150; 178-179) document some of the unbelievably manipulative questioning, which in our opinion constituted sexual abuse by the authorities.
In an unusual appeal to the homophobia of the jury, two entire days of the trial were devoted to examining a single homosexual experience that Ms. Michaels had during her freshman year at college, and the fact that she had enrolled in a drama class. Both were regarded by the prosecution as evidence that she might be a child molester.
A second interesting twist to this case involved an instance of what might be termed "kiddy-porn". Police found a roll of film in which each picture showed young girls in what are known in the trade as "spread shots". On the photo developer's bag used by the customer to send in the roll was the name "Schocken" - the name of one of the families with a girl in the Wee Care nursery. Mrs Marla Schocken was a state witness in the case; she testified that Ms. Michaels had said to her that she was going to the doctor with a rectal bleeding problem. Michaels denied having said this. There was no evidence that she had sought medical attention for such a problem. Debbie Nathan et al (2) states: "Michaels's [sic] attorneys were gagged from cross-examining her about her [Schocken] involvement in a child-pornography case - which would have discredited her and suggested the obvious: that Schocken's testimony was part of a deal to escape her own criminal indictment." Ms. Schocken's testimony had a major effect on the jury, because it gave support to some of the children's testimony that Kelly had forced them to insert objects into her anus.
Michaels was convicted of all 115 counts and given a 47 year sentence. She was released on appeal by the Appeals Court of New Jersey after 5 years was served. The prosecution decided to not retry the case. 2 excellent articles on this case were written by Dorthy Rabinowitz. (3) It is fairly obvious that sexual abuse probably did not happen at Wee Care.