The Enemy Within (41 page)
Authors: John Demos
This is more than enough to launch a storm of panic among the families involved. The pace of questioning with the childrenâby parents, police, and therapistsâis drastically increased. In the coming weeks and months, at least 19 three-, four-, and five-year-olds will be subjected to interviews lasting, in some cases, an hour and a half. Not one of them volunteers an accusation on his or her own. Many give firm denials when urged to offer more. Several spontaneously declare their liking for the school, and their wish to go back. But such responses are discounted by the authorities as indicative of a child who is “not ready to disclose.” One police investigator will later compare the entire interview process to “getting blood from a stone.” Eventually, however, repeated inquiryâand outright proddingâbrings the desired result: a web of accusation that grows to envelop all the teachers at the school, plus a few mysterious outsiders. (At least one of the children implicates a policeman, another mentions a therapist, a third describes the occasional presence of robots equipped with flashing lights.)
A sample from the interview of a little girl, identified only as J.O., by a pediatric nurse will serve to illustrate the typical sequence. The nurse produces an “anatomically correct” doll, and says: “Let's pretend this little girl doll is at Fells Acres, okay?” She poses a set of linked questions, ending with: “What would happen if someone touched her [the doll's] vagina? Would she be sad?” She then turns directly toward J.O. and asks whether anyone at the Day School has ever touched
her
vagina. Receiving no reply, she adopts a somewhat disapproving tone, and suggests that perhaps J.O. feels “too scared to talk.” Throughout this entire exchange (if it was an exchange), the little girl has not accused anyone of anything.
her
vagina. Receiving no reply, she adopts a somewhat disapproving tone, and suggests that perhaps J.O. feels “too scared to talk.” Throughout this entire exchange (if it was an exchange), the little girl has not accused anyone of anything.
Other children, faced with similar questioning, are more responsive:
“Tooky [Gerald Amirault's nickname] took out his peepee and . . . [urinated] in front of us.”
A clown came to the school and “spanked us on the bum-bum and on the face, too.”
Another clown came and “took out his peepee, and told us to take our clothes off, and put it between our legs.” (Investigators will subsequently conclude that Gerald had frequently dressed in clown costume.)
“Miss Vi [Violet Amirault] made me eat a frog. . . . The frog went quack-quack.”
“Miss Cheryl [Amirault] took icky pictures of us.”
“Tooky . . . was disguised as a bad lobster.”
A mysterious man who came to visit looked like “a wicked witch with a mask that doesn't come off.”
A teacher “took all the good kids to jail at the police office.”
“Tooky was sorry for chopping me into little pieces.”
The children played “an elephant game . . . [where] you lick ice cream off the elephant . . . in Tooky's lap.”
There were puppet shows, in the midst of which “they made us kids take our pants off and hold each other's peepees.”
The children were driven across town to a house, where “from the inside I see monsters.”
“There is a forest next to the school with monsters and witches in it.”
“Sixteen kids have died from that school. . . . Kids have been killed and hurt.”
The investigation will continue through nearly three years. Local news coverage is extensive and generally favorable to the prosecution. Public interest is high, and still growing. There are threats of vigilante action; according to later reports, Gerald is chased on the streets of his home-town, and on two separate occasions shots are fired into his house. (Local police take no protective action.) In January 1985, with the charges still accumulating, grand jury indictments are secured against three of the alleged perpetrators: Gerald; his mother, Violet; and his sister, Cheryl.
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Malden is one of the oldest communities in Massachusetts. Originally part of Charlestown, the site of a very early witchcraft prosecution, it gained separate incorporation in 1649. Boston lay across the Mystic River to the south. There were hills and rocky outcroppings to the north. And in between lay fertile meadows and marshland. A visitor in the early 18th century described the town as “fruitful and well cultivated, being entirely cleared and enclosed with stone fences.”
Malden is one of the oldest communities in Massachusetts. Originally part of Charlestown, the site of a very early witchcraft prosecution, it gained separate incorporation in 1649. Boston lay across the Mystic River to the south. There were hills and rocky outcroppings to the north. And in between lay fertile meadows and marshland. A visitor in the early 18th century described the town as “fruitful and well cultivated, being entirely cleared and enclosed with stone fences.”
From its traditional farm-based economy and orthodox Puritan tone, Malden gradually evolved toward the medium-size, diversified city it is today. Its now nearly 60,000 residents are predominantly, though not exclusively, white, including many of 19th- and 20th-century immigrant stock. Most would qualify as middle- or working-class; only a few are truly affluent. Its spatial configuration is a checkerboard of quite distinct neighborhoods; typically, these are organized around small squares or parks. The housing stock ranges from numerous multifamily dwellings (“triple-deckers”), to occasional clusters of fine old Victorian homes, to some newly constructed redevelopment units. There are many local businesses scattered about and several factories. In spite of its fundamentally urban character, Malden likes to claim a “small-town feel.”
It was amid this rather unremarkable environment that the Fells Acres Day School was founded (1964), when Violet Amiraultâthen a recently divorced mother of three, eager to escape welfareâdecided to open a care center for local toddlers in the basement of her home. From there the school expanded and flourished impressively, moving in short order to its own space and acquiring a strongly positive reputation among hundreds of grateful families. Through almost two decades not a single serious complaint was brought against it.
As Violet's children grew to adulthood, the school itself became a family operation, with daughter Cheryl coming on as a teacher and Gerald serving as a kind of handyman-assistant. In due course, Gerald's wife, Patti, also joined in. By now Fells Acres was serving some 70 pupils, with a staff of around 10 and Violet acting as principal. When Cheryl married in 1983, the entire school was invited to the wedding, and the pews of the Immaculate Conception Church were packed with wide-eyed children eager to support a favorite teacher. The start of the “abuse” investigation was barely a year away.
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Gerald's trial begins on April 29, 1986, in Middlesex County Court, with Judge Elizabeth Dolan presiding. From the outset there are some highly unusual arrangements. The Fells Acres children are seated, as a group, on small chairs down in front, with their parents just behind; this means the defendant is out of their line of sight. (One child will testify only by videotape; apparently he is too frightened to be there in person.) The judge removes her official robes, leaves the bench, and sits beside the children.
Gerald's trial begins on April 29, 1986, in Middlesex County Court, with Judge Elizabeth Dolan presiding. From the outset there are some highly unusual arrangements. The Fells Acres children are seated, as a group, on small chairs down in front, with their parents just behind; this means the defendant is out of their line of sight. (One child will testify only by videotape; apparently he is too frightened to be there in person.) The judge removes her official robes, leaves the bench, and sits beside the children.
The prosecution outlines its case and opens the questioning. The children answer in a mostly halting tone; jury and spectators alike strain to hear. Some begin by denying any knowledge of abuse. When that happens, the prosecutors are allowed to reframe, and re-ask, the same question. And sooner or later, they get what they are looking for.
The children's testimony has been carefully rehearsed (as they readily acknowledge). On the whole, it follows the pattern of their many previous interviews with therapists and othersâsprawling across a broad range, but returning frequently to the “secret room” (also called the “magic room”) and the various sex acts allegedly performed there. The latter include: masturbation, fellatio, anal and vaginal intercourse, plus frequent picture taking in the nude. The prosecutors have struggled from the start to discover a motive behind the crimes at the school. And now they feel they have one: the production, and sale, of child pornography. Thus they make much of cameras and film seized on school property. (When examined closely, however, the photographic subjects seem innocent enough: birthday parties, classroom games, swimming lessons, nothing more.) In addition, they offer graphic descriptions of worldwide “rings” devoted to “kiddie porn.” (But none of these can be linked, even remotely, to Fells Acres.)
There is some physical evidence as wellâor so the prosecution contends. A pediatrician is called to testify about small signs of hymenal scarring and vaginitis in two or three of the little girls involved. The defense counters that such conditions are relatively common in children, for all sorts of reasons having nothing to do with abuse (soaps, minor infections, even tight-fitting clothes).
Meanwhile, 17 former staff members offer testimony on behalf of the accused. They know of no school space that could conceivably have served as a “secret room.” (Nor could the children ever identifyâor the police ever discoverâany such area.) They saw none of the usual indicators of abusive treatment (bruises, lacerations, emotional stress). Moreover, the school was an open setting, with parents, deliverymen, and others coming and going on a frequent basis; how, then, could so much criminal activity have remained entirely unobserved?
On July 8, the case goes to the jury. Eleven days later, after 64 hours of actual deliberationâthe longest such time period in Massachusetts trial historyâthe jury returns a verdict: guilty on all counts. A month later, Judge Dolan pronounces sentence: Gerald must serve 30 to 40 years in prison.
The prosecution turns next to Violet and Cheryl, who will be tried together. Their case begins on June 1 of the following year, with Judge Paul Sullivan presiding. Once again the children are seated so as not to face the accused. Their testimony covers by-now familiar ground: the “secret room,” coercive sex, nude photography. As before, some of it strains the limits of credulity. One child was hung upside down and made to eat white pills.
Another was sodomized by Violet with a 12-inch butcher knife (but apparently emerged without injury). A third watched Cheryl cut the leg off a squirrel. A fourth was undressed and tied to a treeâat midmorning, in front of the school, and facing a busy street. A fifth was accosted by a robot, which twirled her around and bit her on the arm. A baby was murdered, a dog was butchered (with its blood buried in a sandbox), bears and elephants and raccoons wandered by. As with Gerald's trial, the prosecutionâand the press coverage as wellâtends to ignore these more fantastic elements.
Another was sodomized by Violet with a 12-inch butcher knife (but apparently emerged without injury). A third watched Cheryl cut the leg off a squirrel. A fourth was undressed and tied to a treeâat midmorning, in front of the school, and facing a busy street. A fifth was accosted by a robot, which twirled her around and bit her on the arm. A baby was murdered, a dog was butchered (with its blood buried in a sandbox), bears and elephants and raccoons wandered by. As with Gerald's trial, the prosecutionâand the press coverage as wellâtends to ignore these more fantastic elements.
Once again, teachers, teachers' aides, and school visitors are called as defense witnesses. And once again, they report having seen nothing at all untoward. But it makes no difference; the children's testimony easily trumps theirs. The trial lasts 11 days. And this time the jury deliberates for only a few hours. Violet and Cheryl are, like Gerald, convicted on all counts. Their sentences are identical but somewhat less than his: imprisonment for 8 to 20 years.
With the second trial ended, the Fells Acres case moves into a less focused, more protracted phase. The scope of public interest widens considerably as events in the Middlesex courtroom are joined to a “crisis” of national proportions. The final, inconclusive result of the McMartin case in California gives at least some cause for reflection and reconsideration. In this shifting context, the Middlesex district attorney's office reaches an important decision. Even though other teachers besides the three Amiraults have been accused, charges will not be brought against them.
In the meantime, Violet and Cheryl go off to prison. The years to follow will bring a steady stream of appeals, motions for a new trial, and other efforts on their behalf. It is, however, very slow going. In 1992, their parole request is turned down because they refuse demands to acknowledge guilt. In 1995, a judge new to the case, Robert A. Barton, accepts their motion for retrial and releases them on bail. (A similar motion by Gerald, in a different court, is rejected.) Further legal maneuvers lead, finally, to an extended hearing before the state's Supreme Judicial Court (1997).
But this court revokes the previous retrial order, meaning both women will have to return to jail. Chief Justice Charles Fried writes the opinion for a not quite unanimous majority. (One judge stands apart and produces a
long, impassioned dissent.) According to Fried, there were indeed questionable aspects to the prior legal proceedings, including some encroachment on constitutional rights. Nonetheless “the communityâs interest in finality” overrides all other considerations. “The mere fact that if the process were redone, there might be a different outcome, or that some lingering doubt about the first outcome may remain, cannot be a sufficient reason to reopen what society has a right to consider closed.”
long, impassioned dissent.) According to Fried, there were indeed questionable aspects to the prior legal proceedings, including some encroachment on constitutional rights. Nonetheless “the communityâs interest in finality” overrides all other considerations. “The mere fact that if the process were redone, there might be a different outcome, or that some lingering doubt about the first outcome may remain, cannot be a sufficient reason to reopen what society has a right to consider closed.”
That same summer, Violet is diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer; she will die in September. Cheryl, still temporarily free on bail, looks after her; Gerald is allowed to leave prison, in shackles, for a single, brief farewell. Meanwhile, defense lawyers renew their effortsâand the momentum begins to shift slowly in their direction. Judge Barton recuses himself from further participation, saying he can no longer be “fair and impartial” given his personal belief that the accused “did not receive a fair trial, and justice was not done.” In June 1998, his replacement, Judge Isaac Borenstein, grants Cheryl a retrial under very different ground rules, noting “serious, overwhelming errors” in the earlier proceedings. But this, too, will be reversed on appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court. Finally, in October 1999, Cheryl's lawyers strike a deal with the district attorney that revises her sentence to time served and sets a number of highly restrictive conditions for her release; apparently, it is the best she can hope for.
Gerald will have to wait several years more for a similar opportunity. In 2001, the state's parole board votes unanimously in his favor, but then-governor Jane Swift turns down its recommendation. In October 2003, his renewed application for parole is granted. Yet he remains in jail while the district attorney determines whether or not to commit him to an institution as a “sexually dangerous person.” That decision will, at long last, be made in his favor; on April 30, 2004, he goes home on parole. Even so, he is given official classification as a Level Three (that is, extremely serious) sex offenderâa stigma he will carry, presumably, for the rest of his life.
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