|
False
Memory Syndrome | Clayton
Johnson | Sterlings
| Scandal of the
Century | Expert
testimony | Gerald
Amirault | John Stoll
Dorothy Rabinowitz
from C-Span
Booknotes May 4, 2003
No Crueler Tyrannies:
Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times
by Dorothy Rabinowitz
BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Dorothy Rabinowitz,
where did you get the title, "No Crueler Tyrannies"?
DOROTHY
RABINOWITZ, AUTHOR, "NO CRUELER TYRANNIES": >From
Montesque, the philosopher, by way of my very enterprising
editor at Simon & Schuster. And I thought it served
very well -- no crueler tyrannies than those that are perpetrated
under the shield of law and in the name of justice. A perfect
title.
LAMB: Why the book?
You`ve written a lot about this in "The Wall Street
Journal."
RABINOWITZ: A lot, and
mostly because I came to "The Journal" on the wings
of one case like this. And I had an editor-in-chief at "The
Journal," Bob Bartley, who instantly recognized the
importance and -- of this event that was taking place,
this sweep of false accusations of child sex abuse. And
he recognized that there was a larger issue here called
prosecutorial zealots -- that is, runaway prosecutors who, quite
simply, in many cases don`t care. They don`t really care if you`re
guilty or you`re not guilty and who`ll never give up the conviction.
And all of that -- runaway prosecutorial zealots combined with
the pathos of the cases of American citizens, most of them --
almost all of them -- middle-class, lower middle-class
people who got up and saluted the flag and were genuinely
kind of believers in our society and believed in law and
believed that if you are falsely accused of something,
our system of justice is there for you and you will be
rescued. Someone will come forward.
In every case I wrote
about, these citizens said, It`s a mistake. Someone will
come forward. And they believed it to the end.
LAMB: Before we start on any
of the cases, maybe 15 seconds on each one. I mean -- then
we`ll come back to it. The Amiraults -- who were they?
RABINOWITZ: The Amiraults.
They were caught up at the height of -- in 1984, which
may seem like a long time to people -- ago to people, but it
really wasn`t. In 1984, 1983, 1982 began a great, great sweep,
a tidal wave of false mass abuse -- that is, 20 school
teachers accused. There was the famous McMartin case in
California. Well, prosecutors all over America picked up
on nursery schools. That was where the great thrust of
all of these cases were. Nursery school teachers, child
care workers, all of them were somehow accused of being a part
of child molestation rings, for heaven knows what ends.
And there was something called
the National Child Abuse Act. So the government poured
money into agencies that went out to look for child abuse.
If you pour money in, you`re going to find child abuse. They`d
created jobs for workers to go out and find child abuse.
Anyway, the Amiraults -- an
Italian-American family run by a woman who had been on
Welfare, Violet Amirault, pulled herself up, clawed herself
up into this marvelous position, brought up two children alone
-- very successful child abuse -- child agency. And people
relished getting their children in there. Suddenly, one
day, there was an anonymous phone call. It was Labor Day,
1984. She was advised that her son, Gerald, her adult son,
had been accused of molesting a child.
In 1984 -- and indeed, in some
places still now -- you don`t need any more than an accusation.
Gerald was immediately taken away two days later to prison.
They got him out on bail. No one confirmed the accusation.
No one did anything. As time went on -- and a pattern was established
in all of these cases, and this was typical of the Amiraults.
Mrs. Amirault was then in her late 60s. She was then accused.
Her adult daughter, Cheryl, she was accused. It was alleged to
be a family conspiracy to molest children.
They were arrested. They were
convicted in two separate trials. They were given enormous
sentences. Gerald Amirault, being the male -- and you have
to understand it is the rule in all of these cases that gender
matters. If you were the male, you were seen as a major perpetrator,
although if you were a lone woman, as Kelly
Michaels was, the weight falls on you.
Anyhow, they were sent away
to prison. And I began writing about them after Mrs. Amirault
and her daughter had both served about six years and Gerald
had served eight years. And a couple of months after the first
piece hit "The Wall Street Journal," they were -- the
women were released on a plea, and Gerald was kept. And
there began our fight to free Gerald.
The prosecutors fought and
fought and fought to get the women back into prison, and
they almost won. But by this time, the publicity that had
been generated by the writings about this -- which were taken
up later afterwards in "The Boston Globe" and
everywhere -- was so great, so enormous, the tidal wave
of investigation into what really happened.
Prior to the Amiraults had
been my very first encounter with this entire matter. I
was working as a television commentator. I was at WWOR-TV
in New Jersey, doing three times a week some sort of media criticism.
And I looked up at the screen, something like that, and I saw
this woman in her 20s, late 20s, rosy, apple cheeks, innocent,
accused of something like 2,800 charges of child sex abuse.
Oh, I thought, well, that`s very odd. But I didn`t think
-- what do I know? I was never interested in work in schools
or teachers. It never occurred to me. But something seemed
odd about this.
And you know, when you`re a
journalist, if there is a story that seems very strange
and paradoxical to you, there comes a point when you still
get a little click in your head that says, OK, I see how this
bizarre thing happened, how it`s possible. I never got
this click. I thought, How can one woman, one young, lone
woman in an absolutely open place like the child care center
of the church in New Jersey that she worked for -- how
could she have committed these enormous crimes against
20 children, dressed and undressed them and sent -- you know
what it is to dress and undress even one child every day
without getting their socks lost? -- 20 children in a perfectly
public place, torture them for two years, frighten and
terrorize them, and they never went home and told their
parents anything? Covered them with peanut butter, it was
alleged. And she licked the peanut butter off. Made them
eat feces. Made them drink urine. Terrorized them. This did seem
strange.
LAMB: What was her name?
RABINOWITZ: Kelly Michaels,
Margaret Kelly Michaels.
LAMB: Where is she today?
RABINOWITZ: Margaret Kelly
Michaels -- we did get her out, and she won on her first
appeal, and today she lives with her four children and has
just delivered a fifth children with her husband, former prosecutor,
one of the few people that I wrote about who has put her life
together in so healthful a way and without being haunted. Because
once you endure false imprisonment of this kind -- and
remember, there is no one more despised, no one, than the
alleged child molester. I mean, the Amirault women, when
they were thrown into prison. You could not have imagined
people more used to comfort, upright status. They were
church goers -- be throw into a prison on a dirty mattress while
they waited, being moved to their cell to have people spit
at them, call them child abusers. These people were invariably
thrown into isolation cells for their own protection.
LAMB: I want to come back to
that. I want to just get a little bit on each one of these
people. Grant Snowden (ph)?
RABINOWITZ: Grant Snowden.
As they would say in one of our local papers, hero police
officer, which he was, Miami police officer. Wanted all
of his life to be in police, finally made it, though he was short,
too short. He stretched himself. Accused, because he had a quarrel
with a fellow police officer, of sodomizing a child. It was such
an absurd contention on the face of it that even a Miami jury
-- and this was all in 1980s, the early `80s -- they refused
to convict him.
But here`s the other aspect
of these things. Prosecutors will not accept, even when
a jury says no. They came back with newer charges and newer
victims. And the victims got younger and younger because you
can inform little children with a lot more persuasive memories
of abuse that never took place than older ones. Ultimately,
he got six life terms, and he is now out.
LAMB: Patrick Griffin (ph).
RABINOWITZ: Patrick Griffin.
Patrick Griffin was a much-loved physician in Manhattan.
Some of this doesn`t bear telling, just because of its
stomach-turning aspects. But Patrick Griffin was accused
by a patient who was angry at him for not helping her with her
phony lawsuit against some institution, of sodomizing her
while he was performing a colonoscopy on her. And anybody
who knows anything about a colonoscopy knows that the nature
of what goes on -- remarkably revolting things happen.
And the idea that this man committed oral sodomy on her...
In any event, Patrick Griffin
was convicted, and by the marvel -- marvelous talents of
his appellate lawyer, he was able to prevail. They had
a second trial. Anybody who ever gets to a second trial is in
grave danger because the statistics will tell you a jury
is going to convict you something like 60 percent of all
people who go back, but not in this case. It was something
too grotesque. All of these people I`m telling you about
are haunted by all of this.
And then there were the people
in Wenatchee (ph), Washington, where there was a wholesale
pursuit by one lone detective who decided he knew what
child abuse was. Now, this was in the `90s, so it`s sort of extended.
And he became the hero of the small town of Wenatchee, Washington.
And most of the people he picked up were Welfare clients, people
on Welfare who knew nothing, who had poor lawyers, no lawyers.
And they were all supposed to be part of a sex ring where
people climbed in and out of a church.
Every one of the stories that
I am telling you about was brought on convictions that
no sane jury would have credited, on evidence that was
simply incredible to behold. They were all the same kinds of
pieces of evidence because in all of these cases, the prosecutors
had an interconnected link of intelligence -- the same
charges in every case. They had clowns, bad people dressed
in costumes, children were made to watch animal sacrifices.
I ask you in how many places...
So it was nonetheless the case
that the prosecutors in every case said, This case is different.
It`s not like these other cases. In every case, all the
evidence was the same. That`s because -- I have to stress
this -- they had expert witnesses, and the expert witnesses would
travel from trial to trial to serve the prosecutors. And they
all came up with the same list of charges.
Now, you can ask yourself why
did the jury believe these things? How could the jury believe
that, as in the Amirault case, old Mrs. Amirault, one of
the most upright of citizens, had suddenly turned at the
age of 67 into a child molester who raped children? She was accused
and convicted of inserting a stick into the body orifice of a
little boy, tied him to a tree stark naked in front of
everyone, in front of the house in Massachusetts, and the
children all attested to this, the ones that were part
of the case. Now, who would believe this?
But if you have a prosecutor
who tells the jury, Here are all of these brave children.
These brave children have come forward to ask that you credit
their story because they have endured so much suffering, and
if you don`t do this, you`re betraying the children --
it is not easy to find a jury that is stalwart enough to
say, Hey, you know, this really is a pile of nonsense.
LAMB: John Carroll (ph).
RABINOWITZ: John Carroll, upstate
New York, owner of a boat marina, who simply had no --
no school business (UNINTELLIGIBLE) your wife mad at you,
a woman who is angry at you, a separated wife, and also the sense
of rumor -- the case you speak of now, John Carroll, is the kind
of case that is much more often now heard. You`re not going
to find, because of all of -- all that we know now -- you`re
not going to find people in schools being walked out en
mass, the way they did in the `80s, and chained together.
You`re going to find husbands angry at wives, wives angry
at husbands, bitter divorce cases in which the most powerful
weapon is child sex abuse.
That was never true before
the 1980s. Now it is the weapon of choice, and anybody
can be accused. And in this case, Mr. Carroll was convicted.
The evidence was grotesque -- two detectives who appeared on
the stand to testify that they could tell from his body language
that he was guilty. What was the body language these two
detectives knew? Well, he held his legs like this, and
he moved forward. It meant he was looking at the door.
All of this -- all of this impressed the jury in upstate
New York. The same prosecutor`s witness that testified in
the `80s to the Kelly Michaels case, her theory being that, as
a child says, No, no, no, nothing ever happened, was the
absolute proof that something did happen. And the jurors
bought that. She was here to say that roughly in the same
way again.
How is it, you could ask, that
prosecutors could pick for their expert witnesses so discredited
an expert as this particular one. Eileen Tracy (ph) was
her name. She had been denounced regularly. People wanted
nothing to do with her. Because prosecutors want to win. They
call one another up, and they say, Hey, I need an expert
witness. Call Tracy. We`ll get her for you. That`s the
way it works.
What I`m saying is an ugly
truth I think most people I think apprehend. Prosecutors
have among them some -- many honest and -- people who know
the meaning of their -- the integrity and uphold their --
but others, many others, simply want to win their cases and will
go down to their last breath, when someone has been acquitted,
saying, He`s guilty.
When Dr. Griffin was acquitted
by the second jury trial, and the judge in the case said
to his attorney, Why did you even ask for a jury? I would
have had this man acquitted in two minutes at a benching. Prosecutor
in New York, in the Manhattan district attorney`s famous sex
abuse unit, called me the next day after I wrote the piece about
him and said, He`s as guilty as sin. There has to be something
in the capacity of -- in the mental capacities of prosecutors
who know, against all of the evidence. They want to hold
onto their conviction. And so people are still in prison.
Gerald Amirault is still in prison because the state of
Massachusetts won`t let him go because the integrity of
their case -- he represents their victory.
So you can say, What is one
man`s life? He`s been locked up. Everybody else is out.
He has been locked up in the state of Massachusetts because
the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, one of the most
venerable institutions in the United States -- it was formed
immediately after the Salem witch trials -- that -- it
is that old. Nonetheless, the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts ruled that there have been so many appeals
in Gerald`s case that time is more important than justice.
We have to put an end to this process. This shocked many,
many, many people in the legal establishment in Massachusetts.
So there we are.
LAMB: So how do you know --
I mean, what -- what sense do you have that -- as I was
reading, I was thinking, Why does Dorothy Rabinowitz write
about this? And why are all these other people wrong? I
mean, what...
RABINOWITZ: They aren`t all
wrong. They -- I knew -- the first that told me what was
wrong was -- the Kelly Michaels trial was my first encounter
with this in the `80s. The atmosphere was very like the ayatollah`s
camp when I raised to the television news editor -- I said,
You know, we should do a story on this. There`s something wrong
with this case. And here was a wonderful piece by a journalist
in the "Village Voice," Debbie Nathan (ph), who
also raised questions. The look on the face of the editor
was such that I knew you`re not even allowed to raise this.
He said, Don`t ever mention this to me again. This is the
most hated person in New Jersey. Everywhere in the newsroom
I went, I said, You know, there`s something wrong with this story.
How dare you? It`s the "How dare you?" I knew there
was something sacrosanct about questioning these charges.
This should raise questions.
But how did I know? I didn`t
know. I thought, Well, maybe the prosecutor knows what
he`s doing. So I asked to meet the prosecutor. Glen Goldberg
(ph) was his name. And he was happy to meet with me. Why?
Because I was no liberal person. I was a grown-up woman with
a fairly conservative writing credentials. And he told
me how much evidence he had against her. It was nonsense.
He followed me down the stairs after I raised the questions
and he said, By the way, now I`m going to tell you the
real evidence I have against her. What was that, sir? He
said, She didn`t wear underpants under her jeans. Imagine. I
said, And what did that mean? He said, Don`t you know?
That was the kind of evidence.
LAMB: How did he know?
RABINOWITZ: They arrested her,
and I guess they found out. But the other thing was, they
sealed the transcript. What are they hiding when they seal
a transcript? "The New York Times" went and asked,
in a desultory kind of way, "The New York Times"
and a couple of other papers went to court to open the
record. And they said no. I found my way to the record.
I got somebody to open it for me. And that`s when I knew.
I read the testimony. I read the entire children`s testimony
and the interviews. I saw what the jurors did not see.
And here`s what I saw.
The children are interviewed.
They`re 5. They`re 4. They`re frightened. They want to
please this adult sitting in front of them, and they don`t
know what they`re there for. But the adult is suddenly showing
them a big doll, and the doll has what is called sexual organs,
sexually explicit organs. And the interviewer is very persistent
and very nice and says to the child, Do you want to help? Your
little friends helped. Do you want to tell us if something bad
happened? What, said the children. Well, you know something
bad happened. And the child doesn`t know.
LAMB: Are they doing this,
by the way, alone, just the two of them?
RABINOWITZ: Just the two of
them.
LAMB: So is there...
RABINOWITZ: And...
LAMB: ... a transcript being
created?
RABINOWITZ: That`s right. You
see, they`re so certain of their virtue and the rectitude
of their cause that they let the tape recorders take this
down. And they learned better later. They stopped recording these
interviews. And they would hold up a spoon, say, Show us
where Kelly molested you, did something bad to you? The
child has no idea what`s going on, but the child takes
the spoon and hits the doll here. Where else? Child hits
the shoulder. Where else? Because it`s very clear to the
child by now that her answers are insufficient. She`s not giving
the questioner what they want. There are "where elses"
and "where elses" and "where elses"
until the child comes to the sex organ, hits the sex organ
with the spoon. All the questions stop. Now more "where
elses." The questioner has got what she wanted and
what he wanted.
What`s presented to the jury
is only -- not this odyssey around the doll`s head but
only, Rachel showed us where Kelly molested her with the
spoon. She touched the genitals. That was the kind of evidence.
When you see, I`m saying, in cold print the details of
the questioning, then you know. And you can`t miss it.
LAMB: Why is it admissible?
Why is that kind of evidence admissible?
RABINOWITZ: Because it was
a kind of sacred truth and because this is not hearsay.
They -- they produce -- the prosecutors produce testimony from
children that they dragged from children after hours of questioning
and that is simply distorted.
LAMB: I assume, though, that
in many case, the child`s right.
RABINOWITZ: The child is right?
LAMB: By saying, That`s exactly
where I was touched. I mean, in other words, there are
cases where there are truly child molesters.
RABINOWITZ: Oh, there are child
molesters. There are -- but it doesn`t ever come out like
this. When there are real cases of child molestation, let`s
-- you can take what`s going on with the accusations with
the priests, you know, the molestation. That`s going --
that is such a scandal today. I have no doubt that there are
a number of priests who are falsely accused, but I have
no doubt that when I`m listening to the testimony of these
children, now grown up, that these events took place.
And what is the difference?
One of the differences is there`s a record these people
said something. Even little boys went home and told their mothers,
and their mothers went to the priests, and their mothers went
to places of officialdom. The other thing is, there is
no crazy talk about clowns. There is no talk about bluebirds
being slaughtered or being made to drink urine. You didn`t
need to fancify any of this. He touched me. He did this.
There`s a down-to-earth way of saying this.
So I can vouch for the fact
that these stories about the mad clown molesting all of
these children -- none of that ever took place.
LAMB: The first year, the very
first year, the very first time you looked up on that screen
and saw Kelly Michaels was when?
RABINOWITZ: Yes.
LAMB: What year?
RABINOWITZ: Oh. It was 19 --
I believe it was 1987. I think it was that -- 1987. And
it took me two years to write -- to get published the first...
LAMB: Where did you publish
the first story?
RABINOWITZ: First piece --
"Harper`s" magazine. Lewis Lapham, the editor-in-chief,
took a chance, and very quickly, when everybody else turned
it down. And they turned it down for the strangest of reasons.
I knew almost every editor at the time, and they were filled
with commiseration. They said, Look, but you know, I have
a 4-year-old child, or, I just can`t do this. Because it
was a piece that didn`t just raise questions about her
guilt, it just said this is an innocent person.
You know, when you`ve seen
an innocent person, that you know because you`ve seen the
record, in prison, it`s a life-altering experience. She
was sitting there in solitary for two years...
LAMB: Did you go see her?
RABINOWITZ: Oh, yes. And I
almost fainted, and I don`t faint. I went to this -- one
of the most secure women`s prisons in New Jersey, and it
was a dismal -- and this well-brought-up, highly educated young
woman was talking to me about Einstein, and I was about
to pass out, looking at where she was. It took a long time,
but I did know that if I did not do something about this,
life would not really be the same.
LAMB: Were you -- did anger...
RABINOWITZ: Anger was everything.
LAMB: Anger.
RABINOWITZ: Anger was everything.
Anger and horror, but anger was everything because the
evidence was so doubtless, so overwhelming that these children
came in knowing absolutely nothing about what they were talking
about and were told. These words were put in their mouths. They
were told what happened to them, and they were drilled in what
happened to them. And when they took the stand, they believed
it. And that`s exactly what happened to all of these children.
LAMB: Go back to the Lew Lapham
thing, editor of "Harper`s" magazine.
RABINOWITZ: Yes, editor of
-- so I went through every editor at "The New Yorker,`
the -- this and that -- and finally, I said, You know, I`ve
written it three times for three different people, and they all
in the end back out. Somebody said, Why don`t you try Lewis
Lapham? I called him up and...
LAMB: Did you know him?
RABINOWITZ: Vaguely. You know
in New York when you write you sort of know everybody.
I think I once had met him and he got to the phone and I
outlined the story for ten minutes and he said let`s do it. It
amazed me. Let`s do it. We then sat down in his office
with a couple of his editors and I outlined all of this,
and he had, I believe, more response to that story than
in many, many decades at Harvard.
LAMB: And that year was `86?
RABINOWITZ: It was published
in `90. I spent two years trying to get it published. It
was published in April, 1990.
LAMB: And you were working
where at the time?
RABINOWITZ: I was then at home.
I stopped working on television and I was simply doing
book writing, freelance stuff, and I was just about to
join the "Journal" but I wrote this before the "Journal."
And, with Lapham`s publication of that, we were able to
move. We got money. We got a lawyer.
LAMB: We, meaning?
RABINOWITZ: I and - I did.
I mean I did and then I got the wonderful lawyer Morton
Stavis (ph) to read this, who is now deceased, one of the
great liberal First Amendment - not First Amendment, civil rights
lawyers, and he took some of his students at (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
University and they spent two years putting together her
appeal and they won and she was out.
And, I will never forget that
day when the appellate judges, you know when you go into
argue an appeal this is not like you`re going to get the
decision right there, but this was one of those times when the
appellate court were virtually telling you that this case
is a crock.
But the prosecutors were there
and it was very dramatic. The two prosecutors that had
brought the grotesque stories about how all the children
went home and the evidence like one of the mothers said my child
doesn`t eat tuna fish anymore.
This is a really important
piece of evidence, and what was that supposed to mean?
According to the prosecutors the smell of tuna fish is
very like the smell of vaginas. That was the level of evidence.
At the appellate court, we
were no longer in the state and the prosecutors - I mean
you were no longer at the lower level court and the prosecutors
started to say, judge, Your Honor, children don`t lie. We`d
heard this 1,000 times before, and the judges looked down and
said who are you trying to bamboozle? You call this evidence?
So, we knew.
LAMB: How many articles did
Lou Lapham publish in "Harper"?
RABINOWITZ: One.
LAMB: One article?
RABINOWITZ: It was one but
it was enough. It was enough because it was enough. Everything
was laid out. These are not subtle matters. I mean children
who are told, children who are disrobed, Kelly sang "Black
Magic."
They were given magic juice
drinks. You could not hear more fantastic stories and yet
in the courtroom when she was on trial, the children wanted
to run to her to kiss her. Do you run to kiss someone who has
so terrorized you?
LAMB: Let me, before you -
let me ask more about the journalism of this because you
do tell a story in here where Ed Bradley was sought after
in the CBS lunch room.
RABINOWITZ: Yes. Yes.
LAMB: Who by?
RABINOWITZ: Grant Snowden was
the Miami police officer. You must understand, and I`m
sure you do, that everybody to whom this happened has a
family, so it`s not only the accused that`s taken down but everybody
around him, all of his children.
Grand Snowden`s grief stricken
brothers could not believe that their brothers were going
to be sent away -- his brother was going to be sent away
for life (UNINTELLIGIBLE) something they know never happened.
So, he got on a plane and he
came to New York, not knowing where he was going and he
somehow found his way to the CBS building, carrying a sheath
of papers from the trial and all of what he thought would persuade
someone.
And, he somehow worked his
way into the CBS luncheonette and sort of grabbed Ed Bradley
because they always looked on the media. The media actually
helped bury the accused but they were also the way out.
You know, as soon as there
was an accusation in the early `80s, you did not have reporters
going around saying hey maybe this isn`t true. What you
had was night after night after night on television about the
poor children and the monsters.
Gerald Amirault was considered
and Mrs. Amirault were the monsters and the witches and
life was transformed. What happened to Gerald is unique
in the sense that we live, as they always believed, in a society
where justice triumphs.
Even to the end they still
believed that something is going to happen. The truth will
out and they were right except in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts,
as we say, the apples fall up not down.
Every single newspaper in Massachusetts,
but one, every important legal establishment in force has
virtually said he`s innocent, not just said leave him alone.
They said look it`s clear that this is garbage but they
wanted to hold onto him.
Gerald Amirault left - was
taken to prison when his youngest son had just been born.
He just got to know his daughters. He missed their entire
growing up but, you know, what is so moving about many of these
families, Kelly Michaels` mother, the sacrifices and the
way life sort of absorbed this trauma and they lived nevertheless.
They had birthdays. They had
- Gerald Amirault`s children wore their confirmation clothes
so their father could see them. The girls are now 23, 22,
and the son is 18, but he missed everything. He missed every
graduation, and as it happened, he was one of those fathers
who lived for his children and still does.
LAMB: And you`re absolutely
convinced that he`s totally innocent?
RABINOWITZ: Not only I`m convinced,
everybody is convinced. Let me tell you the Massachusetts
- Governor`s Parole Board of Massachusetts is the toughest
parole board in the country. They have reason to be. Tough
ex-prosecutors, hard-nosed types, they had a special parole hearing
for Gerald, a commutation petition. Unanimously, they declared
that he should receive commutation a couple of years ago,
about a year and a half ago, two years ago.
The majority of the board then
issued a separate opinion that said in essence this case
is based on nonsense and there is every reason to believe
that this person has been falsely sent away. This was completely
unknown in the history of governor`s parole boards and pardons.
That`s how much everyone understood about this case, which has
been exhaustively looked into.
So, he had one foot in the
door and was on his way out. It`s unheard of most - actually
unheard of in Massachusetts history that a governor would
not listen to the parole board, which they issued a scathing
(UNINTELLIGIBLE).
LAMB: But let me interrupt,
though, because the governor in that case...
RABINOWITZ: Yes.
LAMB: ...was Jane Swift?
RABINOWITZ: That`s right. Jane
Swift, though, Jane Swift was fighting for her political
life.
LAMB: She was acting governor?
RABINOWITZ: She was acting
governor but she wanted to be governor, governor. And,
Jane Swift who already had a terrible reputation as the governor,
was advised by her political advisors it would not be good to
allow Gerald Amirault out.
LAMB: Had she had her twins?
RABINOWITZ: She had her twins.
LAMB: And where were we in
the year? I mean she was in a primary?
RABINOWITZ: She was in, was
it a primary? I think, yes I believe it was a primary.
It was just before she had to step down. We got the news
a year ago that she was going to do this. She made the decision
that she knew more. She had done her own investigation.
The Board of Pardons and Paroles had investigated so thoroughly
to make absolutely sure they would make no mistake and
there was nothing anybody could do. She overruled
because she was in the middle of an election, her own board
of pardons, for which she was roundly, you know, attacked and
she even - the citizens of Massachusetts
even declared, you know, their outrage. But you could do
nothing about this now. She put him back in.
LAMB: I want to get the politics
straight. Jane Swift then was running against - Mitt Romney
was running against her?
RABINOWITZ: No, Mitt Romney
was going - Mitt Romney came later. Jane Swift, I forgot
whom she was running against, she was running against someone
else. She was in a primary.
LAMB: I remember in your book
you say something like she was 60 points down.
RABINOWITZ: That`s right. She
was 60 points.
LAMB: Even in her own party.
RABINOWITZ: In her own party,
she was 60 points down. Everybody knew she was going to
lose but she said it had nothing to do with anything. Some
weeks, not many, less than a month after she made this political
decision she never got to run because Mitt Romney, she
had to defer to Mitt Romney because her own party saw her
as so weak. So, the whole gesture was for nothing.
LAMB: But she also had the
other politician in this thing, Scott Harshbarger.
RABINOWITZ: Scott Harshbarger
was the original. He was the - in the 1980s he was the
original chief prosecutor. He didn`t actually prosecute
at the trial. He then went on to greater things.
He ran on his victory in the
Amirault conviction in the `80s. He was advertised as the
prosecutor who would put child abusers away. He went on
to become attorney general of Massachusetts.
LAMB: He was a Democrat?
RABINOWITZ: He was a democrat.
LAMB: And Jane Swift was a
Republican?
RABINOWITZ: Republican.
LAMB: OK.
RABINOWITZ: And Scott Harshbarger
went on to become president of Common Cause, a good government
lobby and has never once yielded his belief. He used to
write letters to "The Wall Street Journal" which is
not known, the editorial page which is not known as a left
of center place, accusing us because of the things we wrote
about this case, of trying to throw child abuse back into
the darkness and of protecting child abusers.
I had to ask myself does this
person actually believe you can get away with a charge
that the editorial page of "The Wall Street Journal"
is out to protect child molesters? Why would we be doing
that? Well, you can`t change the mind of a determined prosecutor,
determined that he will uphold his conviction.
And so, there we are. What
is one man`s life? You`re left with a question, one man.
You know I was always moved in the way I looked at these
people, these families, the anonymous nature of their suffering.
Nobody knew the agony of these families.
There are many other kinds
of agony in the world but the way they made their lives,
the way they sort of held together, the way they went through
every disappointment and they also didn`t know how one man sat,
who had done nothing wrong in his life, whose life was now confined
to this little bed. I went to visit him in prison.
LAMB: Gerald Amirault?
RABINOWITZ: Yes.
LAMB: What prison?
RABINOWITZ: This was in one
of the Boston prisons. I don`t think it was Plymouth. I
forgot which one. There were three. He`s now in a better
one. But I was allowed to visit his cell.
LAMB: Before you do that, quickly,
Violet?
RABINOWITZ: Violet died (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
LAMB: Her relationship to Gerald?
RABINOWITZ: She was the adored
mother and her daughter Cheryl. She had two grown children
and Mrs. Amirault, when she was released and her daughter
Cheryl released by a judge who granted the appeal, had to spend
the last two years of her life, she spent two years in freedom.
She was in her 70s by then and the prosecutor spent all
of their energies on this case trying to put them back
into prison.
LAMB: Where is Cheryl today?
RABINOWITZ: Cheryl has made
her life too. Cheryl is in Boston. Wonderfully enough,
the prosecutor when she agreed that Cheryl would not go
back to prison, made her sign an unofficial, not a binding statement,
that she wouldn`t appear - ever appear on television. Prosecutors
are very unnerved at interviews being given by people who are
released.
LAMB: How can you do that?
How can you...
RABINOWITZ: Well, that was
a real question. Boston papers said what is she afraid
of? She allowed her - she didn`t want her speaking on television.
When I came to Florida, the
day that we knew that we could take Grant Snowden into
freedom after the 11 years, he was not going to serve his life
term but he did spend 11 years in these rat hole prisons in Florida,
the prosecutor who was by then dashed and broken had only one
plea to the judge. Your Honor, we would just ask that Mr.
Snowden not talk to the television interviewers and the
media, and the judge said I don`t think we`re here to cut
off people`s First Amendment rights.
In Cheryl`s case in Boston
it was another matter. The prosecutor has agreed to let
her stay out of prison. Now, you could say gee I wonder why
is she allowed to speak to newspapers, but the power of television
is so great and it`s so intimate and she did not want this
woman, to stand there so obviously innocent, by then everybody
knew, to remind everybody of what they`d done.
LAMB: How old would Cheryl
be today?
RABINOWITZ: Cheryl is today.
She`s in her early 40s.
LAMB: How old is Gerald?
RABINOWITZ: Gerald is about
a year or two older. He`s about 44, 45. He compiled a marvelous
record going to school in prison. One of the things that
has made his life easier, easier, is that everybody in the prison
system knew he was innocent. They know.
This is one of the many things
I`ve learned about in my involvement with these cases.
In prison if someone on the outside, someone in the media,
if the media asks questions about your case, they begin to look
at you as not some kind of monster and child predator.
They begin saying well maybe he`s innocent.
In prison they don`t pretend
if they are child abusers that they are innocent. As Gerald
and others have often said, there are guys here who really
molested children and they don`t pretend otherwise, and that
seems to be true.
LAMB: You went to visit him.
When was the last time you saw him?
RABINOWITZ: About two years
ago. I went in and I saw. There`s a little bunk and on
top of him is another bunk and there`s another bunk, and I looked
at it. I said how can he live? How can you live in this way?
You know and he looked at me with such an odd question
in his eyes. He said you know you get a lot of advantages
when you`re a prisoner for a long time. I thought, you
think this is advantages. Prison so reduces your sense
of expectation.
When Grand Snowden in Florida
first got word that his wonderful attorney Robert Rosenthal
(ph) had actually managed to win a habeas corpus thing,
you don`t get anything harder than that, and he was going
to be out, what the first thing that happened was he was worried.
He was worried what would happen to him.
Eleven years in this horrific
prison and all you want to do is run your concession candy
stand and hold on to your job. He was happy all right.
So, the expectations are shut down and you just do what you have
to do to survive, guilty or innocent.
But in prison, Kelly Michaels,
who came with a lot of education and a lot of spirit and
a lot of spunk, she was - actually people spit in her soup
and they did all kinds of things you do to child - after a couple
of years we thought she should be out in the general prison population
while her appeal was being worked on, and she made friends. People
understood that there was something that this didn`t happen.
When Cheryl was released, Gerald
Amirault`s sister, when the Amirault women were released,
Cheryl had to go back to the prison for a minute the very
day of their release. The entire woman`s prison population came
out to cheer her. These are the same women that had threatened
her, spat upon her years earlier when she first came to
prison, because they ultimately know that something bad
has gone awry and they don`t fool around.
LAMB: Let me ask you about,
in part about journalism, but before I get there about
yourself.
RABINOWITZ: Yes.
LAMB: Where do you come from
originally?
RABINOWITZ: I came from Queens,
New York, and grew up and went to City College at a time
when the city colleges in New York were sort of like Harvard
in what they offered, and then I went on. I thought I would teach
literature. That was a bad mistake. I was not meant to be an
academic, and I quickly found that out and then, I began
to write.
LAMB: What year would you say
you began to write?
RABINOWITZ: I know very well.
I never planned to become a writer and that`s always been
very helpful if you don`t plan it. I planned to become
a teacher. I left graduate school. I had nothing, no way
of earning a living so I thought I would go to work as
a social worker in a home for the aged, and I hardly had any
idea then that this would give me, this had to be in 19
- hum, middle 1960s, and I wrote a piece about the old
people I saw at this home for the aged, and I had no intention.
I just thought I`d take this down. It was so - it just
drove me. It was such an impassioned piece, and I was fortunate
enough to have it published. To have the first piece you`ve
written published is a very good boost. It was published
in commentary and it was immediately asked about. The then
McMillan Company, which we still had, offered me a book
contract, and we were off and running, but I`d never intended
it. And here`s what I learned from that. I often
thought if I ever did teach journalism, I`d like to way
wait until you have something to say before you decide
you`re a writer because then you can transcend everything.
If you get mad enough. If you get - or pained enough, you`re
moved enough, you`re not going to have inhibitions. You`re going
to say I have to tell the story and then I`ll go do something
else. I would not have written any of that. I must
- I have no idea how many pieces I`ve written on all these
people in the "Journal" and the "Journal"
was remarkable in that every quarter of "The Wall Street
Journal" supported this. They allowed me so
much space on this but I could not have done it without
being impelled by pure rage. Of all of the emotions that you
have, pity, it`s not that, and you`re not thinking of the
victims. You`re not thinking of poor Gerald or poor friends.
That`s behind you. What you`re thinking about is the prosecutor.
What you`re thinking about is the totalitarian nature of
this enterprise.
Black is white. Two and two
equal five. A child says nothing happened to me. That was
the most continuous theme, nothing happened, nothing happened,
nothing happened, never enough.
LAMB: Well, when they see you
coming, the prosecutors, do they say oh, here she comes?
RABINOWITZ: Well, the Amirault`s
prosecutor didn`t see me coming because I was pretty new
at it. They didn`t know what I`d had to do with the Kelly
Michaels` case. They did not know it. They were in another
state and I called up and I - you know you`re a journalist.
You have to talk to both sides.
You have to talk to the prosecutor, and I called him and
he was happy to come to the phone because his experience,
Mr. Hardoon (ph), he was the active lead prosecutor his experiences
told him that the press was there for him. The press was there
to carry his story out.
In the midst of his telling
me how successful this prosecution had been, the Amiraults
don`t forget had been locked away in prison by the time
I got there for many years. It was a dead case. They were dead
and buried as far as Boston, Massachusetts was concerned.
I knew about it because I knew
all of the cases where families had been slammed in. There
were such a bunch of them, and I said to Mr. Hardoon, did
it ever occur to you that this case could ever be overturned
on appeal? He said never, never happen.
Well, it wasn`t overturned
for Gerald but three months later, Cheryl and Violet walked
out of prison and I remember by that time everybody knew
who I was and what I had to do with these cases, and the press
was very generous, the local press, and they all - there
were crowds of people from National Public Radio and elsewhere
at the courthouse, this wonderful little place in Boston
where the judge is going to release the women on appeal,
Judge Barton.
And, one young woman, a reporter
said to me just tell me how did you know because she already
knew? I said what did I have to know? You tell me that
this woman, Violet Amirault took a four and a half inch butcher
knife and inserted - this is one of the pieces of testimony,
inserted it into the anus of a 4-year-old child, left no
marks, didn`t hurt the child, but you could do that.
I said what do I have to know?
What kind of expertise? All of the charges were like this.
There was not a single charge brought against them. They
were so fantastic. Cheryl cut off the leg of a squirrel. Stories
change from minute to minute with the children.
The children were making the
stories up because the interrogators were saying if you
don`t help me and tell me, we`re going to be so disappointed.
You`re going to betray your little friends. I mean these are
literally word for word, and the testimony, none of the jurors
ever saw this testimony.
And, I can tell you this, several,
three or four years ago in the effort to overthrow finally
the Amiraults` conviction which always failed, the court
granted a special investigation, a special panel to go
over all of the evidence in this case and it brought all the
reporters in, and for the first time, the reporters - it`s
called a finding of fact here.
The reporters sat listening
to the testimony of the children and I heard one of the
reporters scream as she heard one of these lurid pieces.
Oh, my God, do you hear how - that oh, my God impulse, that reaction
was, of course, the reaction that every reporter who finally
heard what really was in these interrogations but no one
ever heard it.
LAMB: OK, "Harper`s"
in 1990. You went to work for "The Wall Street Journal."
RABINOWITZ: I did.
LAMB: Editorial page.
RABINOWITZ: Editorial page.
LAMB: Then all of this has
not been done on the front pages or the back pages, in
the editorial pages?
RABINOWITZ: The editorial page,
right.
LAMB: So what is it you did
to convince Bob Bartley, when he was editor of "The
Wall Street Journal" that he wanted to put you on his payroll
and then let you do this?
RABINOWITZ: Well, nothing to
do with this. He had been reading my other political work.
I was a media critic and a tough one and one day I just
got - and actually, when he called up and said how would you
like to come to work for the "Journal," I thought
he was talking about Kelly Michaels that had just been
published in "Harper`s."
Actually, he hadn`t even read
that. It was the other stuff I wrote about and I said fine.
But two minutes virtually after I got in to the "Journal,"
Kelly Michaels was there and I wrote about that and he recognized
what I`d done in that case. But it was not until I wrote about
Gerald, the Amiraults, and I won`t forget that day, it was in
January, 1995 that I first sat down to write about this
case, and we were overwhelmed.
And, Bob came out of his office
and said to me, this is fantastic. Do another one. And,
the publisher, Peter Kahn came down and said I hope you
get these people out. Now, mind you, nobody asked me anything.
Nobody said how could you write about anything so delicate,
and that was actually the beginning. After those first
three pieces, a week passed and "The Boston Globe"
sent its reporter down.
The most important thing in
these cases is that the local papers take up these things
and when "The Boston Globe" came down to ask me what
I knew and to take this on too, we were up and running.
So, after they got what I gave them, they undertook a series
of their own and that`s what had the impact.
LAMB: Do you think given what
journalism is supposed to be, if you were working for the
front of the newspaper that they would have allowed you
to have this kind of advocacy?
RABINOWITZ: No, absolutely
not. The front of this paper, no. I got tremendous support
from the front of the paper but it was the editorial page.
They created a unique thing on the editorial page then,
which was investigative reporting carried on in the editorial
columns. Bob Bartley had himself done pieces of investigation
on yellow rain.
And so, I basically had carte
blanche to go right, and these pieces were immense. They
lasted forever, 80 inches, 60 inches, and it went on for
a number of years, and I did my other work there. I was media
television writer, and I wrote other editorials in between.
But what really happened, after
I wrote the first piece about Gerald, the Amiraults, our
readers of which there are very many got really disturbed,
and when I say the phone didn`t stop ringing and all they wanted
to know was what can we do?
And the same was true actually
at "Harper`s" magazine. People had this gut-wrenching
feeling when they read this stuff, pouring money in to a fund
which we didn`t run but which I had our lawyer. When I say our
lawyers, I mean the team of appellate lawyers that I worked
with on all of this who are the heroes.
LAMB: So, what do you say to
the person listening to this and had read your articles
if they can`t get Dorothy Rabinowitz interested they`re out
of luck?
RABINOWITZ: Well, that`s what
they say but you know what, the press now is a very different
press. They ask questions about these kinds of cases now.
What I think is different in what I did, because I was able to
do it, you know, was to do all of the things like get the lawyers,
get the money, do it all, and not just report.
LAMB: Will Gerald Amirault
ever get out of jail?
RABINOWITZ: Yes. Yes, he will
get out of jail. His next appeal, he comes up for regular
parole next September, and I think he will get out. There`s
only one problem. There`s a little law in Massachusetts and
elsewhere called the sexually dangerous persons. The prosecutor
can, even after he`s paroled, decide she`s going to keep
him there anyway as a sexually dangerous person. We hope
it doesn`t happen. We think she`d like to put it behind
her finally but you never know.
LAMB: Here`s the cover of the
book and it`s written by Dorothy Rabinowitz. It`s called
"No Crueler Tyrannies" published by Wall Street
Books through Simon and Schuster. Thank you very much.
RABINOWITZ: Thanks for having
me.
We have illustrated this
interview with videograbs from an American Justice documentary
about the Fells Acres case
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
