Fells Acres Sexual Abuse Trials: 1986-87

Not unexpectedly, the Fells Acres case produced a lengthy and complicated series of legal actions. Gerald appealed his case on numerous grounds and in several courts but was never able to gain a new trial, let alone his freedom, and short of a commutation, it appears he will be in prison until at least 2015. Violet and Cheryl, however, were released on an appeal in 1995, and in May 1997, their convictions were overturned on the grounds that the children, while testifying, had not been required to face them. The state appealed this, but that September Violet died. Then in June 1998 Judge Isaac Borenstein ruled in favor of Cheryl's motion for a new trial on the grounds that there was new evidence that testimony of very young children can be drastically distorted by suggestive interviewing techniques of the kind applied in the Fells Acres case. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned Judge Borenstein's ruling in August 1999, the state negotiated an agreement with Cheryl: in return for ceasing all attempts to clear her name via both the legal system and the media, Cheryl's sentence was reduced to time already served plus 10 years of supervised probation.

But the issues raised by this and similar cases of child abuse still trouble many people—numerous articles, books, television programs, and movies have been based on these day-care cases alone. One such issue was that the parents and others who interrogated these children appeared to have set out with an agenda to prove they had been abused. Another issue was how it was possible for Violet Amirault to have had some 3,000 children pass through her school during 18 years before any such charges surfaced. Equally troubling to logic was another question: how is it that, after the wave of institutional child abuse charges swept across the country in the 1980s, the phenomenon seems to have vanished from the American scene?