The following is article by Paul-Noel Chretien is from the Wall Street Journal, Nov. 29, 1995. Chretien is an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice:

There are good reasons that most of the mass child sex-abuse convictions of the 1980s have been reversed. But this news hasn't apparently reached Wenatchee, Wash., where dozens of men and women are accused of child sex abuse in a series of bizarre prosecutions that have been reported in these pages by the Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz.

It has long been clear that little or no evidence has ever been found in most of the mass child sex-abuse cases of the 1980s. You'd think that this dearth of evidence would make prosecutors wary of bringing new cases, but because the allegations are so abhorrent, states often overreach and prosecute even when they have no proof. In addition, MANY PROSECUTORS DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THE OVERWHELMING SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE DEMONSTRATING THE INHERENT UNRELIABILITY OF TESTIMONY EXTRACTED FROM YOUNG CHILDREN. Faulty news coverage of mass child abuse cases has also fueled the fires of wrongful prosecutions. All of these factors have played a role in the Wenatchee prosecutions.

When the first big case erupted at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, Calif., in 1983, prosecutors and courts with no experience in investigating or trying cases of alleged mass child abuse used techniques that exacerbated the initial false accusations. Sensationalized reporting and then-fashionable theories about a silent epidemic of massive nationwide child sex-abuse rings created a near-hysterical atmosphere about molesters in daycare centers. Ray Buckey, charged with dozens of counts of child abuse at the McMartin Preschool, was the first victim, JAILED FOR FIVE YEARS AWAITING TRIAL. After two trials without a conviction, Mr. Buckey's prosecutors gave up.

A FALSE BELIEF THAT CHILDREN CANNOT LIE ABOUT ATROCITIES LED SOCIAL WORKERS TO PERSIST IN THEIR QUESTIONINGS--EVEN WHEN THERE WAS NO MEDICAL EVIDENCE OF ABUSE. AFTER MONTHS OF INTERROGATIONS AND COACHING, IT IS NO SURPRISE THAT SUGGESTIBLE YOUNG CHILDREN CAN TELL FANTASY STORIES ABOUT BIZARRE ACTS, MUTILATIONS AND TORTURE; THE ONLY SURPRISE IS THAT THESE TALES BECOME THE BASIS FOR INDICTMENTS. In the McMartin case, seven people were accused of hundreds of incidents of abuse.

THE MCMARTIN DEFENDANTS' FINAL VINDICATION TOOK SEVEN YEARS; NOT ONE PERSON WAS CONVICTED. Other defendants were not so lucky, being convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. Yet, one by one, appellate courts are now reversing the convictions. Most experts now believe that no abuse--much less mass abuse--took place.

USUAL RULES OF PROCEDURE AND EVIDENCE HAVE RARELY BEEN APPLIED AT THESE TRIALS. THE RULING MANTRA, HYPNOTICALLY ASSERTED BY THE INVESTIGATORS, IS THAT CHILDREN DO NOT LIE ABOUT ABUSE--EXCEPT WHEN THEY DENY IT. Thus, three-year-olds with no symptoms and no recollections of abuse have been subjected to months of "memory recovery therapy" before ultimately "remembering" the incidents.

Once a tale of atrocities emerges, the investigators' motto is "believe the children." Some early courts allowed child-witnesses to testify sitting facing the jury and away from the defendants. The New Jersey judge in the Kelly Michaels case denied defense psychologists access to the child-witnesses before trial. Hearsay evidence rules have been flouted to admit specious statements. Child-witnesses have told of robots with blinking lights, magic wands and animal mutilations--exactly the type of fantasy stories unharmed children will tell after sufficient bullying and leading questions. Prosecutors have no difficulty with a lack of physical or medical evidence; they simply explain that the depraved defendant was clever enough to leave no traces.

Gender also plays a role. Men unlucky enough to work at daycare centers have been targeted as the most dangerous perpetrators and have received far longer sentences than women. For Lawrence Hardoon, who prosecuted Gerald Amirault in Massachusetts, the rule in guarding against child abuse was, he told a reporter, to look for a child suddenly uncomfortable "being in the company of male relatives."

One reason appellate courts have reversed convictions is that trial judges have encouraged child-witnesses to lie by refusing to let defendants face them while testifying. The New Jersey Supreme Court overturned Kelly Michaels' conviction in part because the trial judge was so child-friendly that the children appeared to be the judge's witnesses. In these reversals, appellate courts have been guided by the Supreme Court's 1988 Coy v. Iowa ruling that the right to confront witnesses face-to-face is as important as the right to cross-examine and is critical to an accurate determination of truth.

Appellate courts have also noticed the evolution in expert opinion about the reliability of children's testimony. Studies have proven that young children can easily be coaxed into believing almost anything. In one experiment by Cornell University researchers, children aged three to six quickly were led to believe that they had gotten their hands caught in a mouse trap and been taken to a hospital. Other research suggests that therapists' common use of anatomically exaggerated dolls has an error rate of up to 70%.

State law-enforcement authorities have been less willing than courts to accept this new knowledge. VIOLET AND CHERYL AMIRAULT WERE IMPRISONED FOR EIGHT YEARS UNTIL AN OUTRAGED MASSACHUSETTS JUDGE ORDERED THEIR RELEASE THIS SUMMER; GERALD AMIRAULT REMAINS IN JAIL.

Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, the district attorney who supervised the prosecutions, has been confronted with mountains of scientific evidence demonstrating the falseness of the testimony that convicted the Amiraults, but he insists that those who bring the new information to light are part of a "backlash." (Because this was the first case I had seen in my legal career in which it was evident that innocent people were imprisoned, I entered the Amirault case pro bono and joined their attorney Dan Williams in a fight to obtain a new trial; my conclusions, and this article, do not necessarily reflect the view of the Justice Department, where I work.)

The current child abuse prosecutions in Wenatchee combine the flaws of past trials with two new twists: Investigators do not videotape or even retain the notes they take of their interrogations of children, thus making it impossible to trace how the children made their "disclosures." Even more ominously, many defendants have been charged only after publicly criticizing earlier prosecutions.

INDIVIDUAL CASES OF CHILD SEX ABUSE REMAIN A SERIOUS PROBLEM, BUT THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF NATIONWIDE CONSPIRACIES OF MASS CHILD SEX ABUSE. It is to be hoped that the prosecutors pressing charges in Wenatchee will finally learn from the earlier cases and spare everyone, not least the children, these show trials.