One only has to look at the recently freed Bernard Baran, granted a new trial after 22 years of imprisonment for 'sex-abuse' of two to four year old children at a Day Care Center. In fact his main crime was being working class and gay. I'm curious Jesse's thoughts on the Baran case:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000221/pollitt
Subject to Debate by Katha Pollitt Justice for Bernard Baran
[from the February 21, 2000 issue]
On January 30, 1985, 19-year-old Bernard Baran was convicted of molesting five 3-, 4- and 5-year-old boys and girls at the Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he had been employed as a teacher's aide. The case didn't get much publicity outside the Berkshires, but it nonetheless has a place in history: Bernard Baran was the first person convicted in the wave of daycare-sex-abuse and satanic-ritual-abuse trials that swept the country in the mid-eighties. Moreover, while most of those convicted have been released, Baran, who was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences, just passed the fifteenth anniversary of his conviction--in Bridgewater Treatment Center in Massachusetts.
Compared with other cases that were gathering steam at the same time--the McMartin preschool, the Amirault family's Fells Acres preschool--the Baran case was a pretty mundane affair. No allegations of secret tunnels, pornographic photo shoots, murdered bunnies. Also, unlike the McMartin and Amirault families, long established in the daycare business and in their communities, Bernie Baran was a working-class gay teenager who had dropped out of ninth grade and found his way to childcare work through the CETA antipoverty program. But the Baran case has the classic markings of a ritual-abuse prosecution:....[clip]
Baran's conviction had a lot to do with poverty. His mother's only asset was her car, and his $500 lawyer barely went through the motions. The defense presentation lasted for one day; the jury deliberated for three-and-a-half hours. Baran's homosexuality was also key: David H. had earlier protested to the school that a homosexual was taking care of Peter. In his summation, District Attorney Dan Ford (now a state Superior Court justice) suggested that being gay means being a child molester, comparing Baran to "a chocoholic in a candy store."
Baran has maintained his innocence through his imprisonment, making him ineligible for parole. Given that he has been beaten and sexually abused in prison, that steadfastness says a lot. Believers in his innocence include ECDC staffers and parents, his first therapist at Bridgewater and the insurance lawyer who investigated the case when Julie H. sued ECDC for $3.2 million (it was settled out of court, reputedly for a small sum). Now attorney John Swomley, who is helping in the Amirault case, has got involved in Baran's case, and for the first time in fifteen years there's a chance this shameful miscarriage of justice can be set right--if it is possible to speak of setting right a wrong that has cost a man his youth.
Stephen Philion Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology St. Cloud State University St. Cloud, MN
http://stephenphilion.efoliomn2.com/