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 pre-schoolers.
Most peculiarly, these unbelievable acts were to have been perpetrated
by a lone woman right under the watchful eyes of other teachers and
school staff. Not a single child, teacher, family physician, or parent
reported an incident or even a suspicion of abuse to anyone during the
school year in question.
In order to make credible these coerced and coached absurdities, the
psychological proponents of this nightmare had to quite literally
rewrite our universally accepted understanding of early childhood
behavior.
Bedwetting, thumbsucking, temper tantrums, and an affinity for cartoon
heroes like Batman and Spiderman were presented as ``behaviors
indicative of abuse.''
While naively clinging to the battered faith that somehow my innocence
would be enough to save me, I also believed that the sheer
preposterousness of the charges would trigger the well-known
skepticism of the New York press corps. But I found myself abandoned
by them as well. To be accused of child abuse was to be branded a
leper.
In late spring of 1988, nearly three years after the Essex County
Prosecutor's Office first launched its investigation of Wee Care, I
would sit in stunned silence as a jury rattled off 115 guilty
verdicts, and later sentenced me to 47 years in prison.
At a time when the issue of child abuse was receiving national
attention in the media, as well as a great increase in government
funding, no one, it seemed, wanted to raise the specter of reasonable
doubt. The reluctance to examine the facts critically left the
inflammatory sensationalism untempered by even a modest journalistic
analysis until years later, when a then freelance writer named Dorothy
Rabinowitz (now a critic for the Wall Street Journal) would pry open
the quarantine door.
I would spend five years in Clinton Correctional Facility for Women
until the New Jersey Appellate Court completely overturned the
conviction with an 84-page opinion blasting the prosecution for the
methods used to obtain both the charges and the conviction.
Though state agencies such as New Jersey's Division of Youth and
Family Services misued public money and abused their powers, though
the interviews of these children by social workers and therapists were
shockingly inept, there would not have been a case had the parents not
relinquished their own authority, and the public not been so willing
to buy the state's self-serving posture as the savior from such evils
as day-care sex abusers.
I will never forget the furious shock of the first moments as those
``guiltys'' rang out like gunfire and rifled through my body. It was
an absolute betrayal. What had happened to common sense, to logic, to
decency? I turned to look at that sea of faces -- the huddled groups of
families, spectators, lawyers, and journalists sitting in crowded rows
behind me. No one sported a set of horns or smelled of sulphur. These
were well-dressed middle-class folks from my neck of the woods. People
just like me, who could have been, but for the grace of some Power
greater than us, sitting in my fateful seat, heartbroken in outrage
and dread, and wondering these same things: Can't you see my humanity
staring right back at yours? How could you have believed these
impossible and absurd things? Don't any of you have minds of your own?
By KELLY MICHAELS
Copyright 1993 by National Review Inc.
Vol. 45, National Review, 09-06-1993, pp 36.
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