Wall Street Journal 4/30/04:
…
Today he leaves prison, after serving 18 years on phony charges.
At 10 o’clock this morning, Gerald Amirault will walk out of his Massachusetts jail, a free man.
It is a joyous day for this prisoner, behind bars for 18 years after his 1986 conviction on charges of child sex abuse based on fantastical testimony dragged from pre-schoolers. Gerald’s mother Violet and his sister Cheryl served eight years before their convictions were overturned in 1995.
Our system isn’t always immune to destructive pressures, and the child-abuse prosecutions of the 1980s were one such instance. Mr. Amirault’s prosecution was driven by the passions of the times — in this case, the belief that child predators lurked everywhere and that the child “victims” must be believed at all costs.
Along the way, the law was stood on its head. The rules of evidence were changed to accommodate the prosecution; the burden of proof was put on the accused. Four- and five-year-olds were coached to say what adults wanted to hear. All this was done in the name of virtue, with the result being the kind of catastrophic miscarriage of justice we saw in Mr. Amirault’s case. There never was any truth to the charges brought against him. Nor was there anything that would, in saner times, have passed for evidence in an American courtroom.
…