CONTINUED
The blame for this travesty of justice
must rest largely on investigators and prosecutors. "Believe the
children" became the motto for the trial.
Division of Youth and Family Service
Investigators, convinced of Michaels' guilt and determined to uncover
the
full extent of her treachery, repeatedly questioned children about
possible
sexual abuse. Most children said at first that they liked Kelly
and
that she did nothing wrong. Investigators called this "the denial
phase." The investigators pressed on, pulling out implements and
anatomically
correct dolls, telling them that other kids had revealed Kelly's
misdeeds,
telling them that Kelly was in jail. Kids want to please
adults.
They are easily moved to change answers by suggestive questions.
Eventually the kids provided the answers investigators were
looking--indeed,
hoping--to hear.
Parents were given "symptom charts,"
and asked to report behavior that might be indicative of past sexual
abuse--things
like bedwetting and nightmares. Not surprisingly, symptoms were
found.
In the atmosphere of intimidation and
moral hysteria, those that should have come forward to defend Michaels
did not. Other teachers said later that they believed expressions
of support for Michaels might have led to the filing of charges against
them as well.
Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing about
the Michaels case in Harper's Magazine, offered this reflection on the
case:
We are a
society that, every fifty years or so,
is afflicted by some paroxysm of virtue--an orgy of self-cleansing
through
which evil of one kind or another is cast out. From the
witch-hunts
of Salem to the communist hunts of the McCarthy era to the current
shrill
fixation on child abuse, there runs a common thread of moral
hysteria.
After the McCarthy era, people would ask: But how could it have
happened?
How could the presumption of innocence have been abandoned
wholesale?
How did large and powerful institutions acquiesce as congressional
investigators
ran roughshod over civil liberties--all in the name of a war on
communists?
How was it possible to believe that subversives lurked behind every
library
door, in every radio station, that every two-bit actor who had belonged
to the wrong political organization posed a threat to the nation's
security?
Years from now
people doubtless will ask the same questions
about our present era--a time when the most improbable charges of abuse
find believers; when it is enough only to be accused by anonymous
sources
to be hauled off by investigators; a time when the hunt for child
abusers
has become a national pathology.
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