2007-01-25
How to get to wrong: "BT" was one of the alleged victims.
Here's how Prosecutors got her to incriminate the Fusters.
In their first interview with BT, the
Bragas repeatedly question the child about a secret game she played with the
Fusters, a game BT has never mentioned. When the Bragas ask BT to tell them
what the secret game is, BT answers, "I think we played grocery store."
(9/13/85, 54) Joseph Braga, evidencing clear bias, responds, "Grocery store.
That is not the secret game. . ." (Id. 54-55) The Bragas continue to ask BT
what the secret game is, using anatomical dolls and pretending to be Mr.
Fuster asking the question. Then, getting no response from BT that fits
their preconceived belief of what happened at the Fuster house, Joseph Braga
introduces an idea never mentioned previously by BT. "Do you remember,
though, do you remember the baby-sitter sometimes would play games without
clothes on? Would she take her clothes off and play some of the games we
play without clothes?" (Id. 55) Despite BT’s continued insistence that she
knows of no secret game, this theme of questioning was continued through the
course of the interview, with both the Bragas and BT’s father alternately
insisting that secret games were played and that BT is not being
cooperative; suggesting that BT knows about a secret game called the "pee
pee" game; and that BT is withholding information because, perhaps like the
other children, she is afraid to tell because Frank and Iliana had told the
children not to tell. See, e.g. 9/13/85, 62, 63, 66, 68, 73, 74-75, 78, 99
(L. Braga by this time, tells BT that she does not have to talk about what
happened to her; she can just tell about what happened to the other
children. Again, the implicit bias that something happened to the other
children. Id, 99) BT never makes any allegation of abuse during this
interview. Laurie Braga concludes the interview, telling BT’s parents that
BT is in denial, (Id., 110), another clear showing of bias.
From
Frontline.
Think about that. If BT had disclosed abuse-- under enormous pressure by the
Bragas to disclose something, anything salacious: she is finally telling the
truth. If she doesn't-- it's because she is denial. In other
words, once the Bragas were involved, there was only one possible outcome of
the investigation.
"So, the jury listened to all evidence, hears all the experts. You
know the verdict is coming.
They announced they had reached a verdict. Then we had to wait
several hours for Janet Reno to get there before the judge would let us hear
the verdict.
Why did she want to be there?
Again, you'd have to ask her...."
You have no idea of how hard it is for me to continue to insist that the statement in the title of
this page is, in the face of the successive abuses of John Ashcroft and
Alberto Gonzalez, both of whom have argued that it is or should be legal to
arrest and hold people with no charges or evidence, or to torture people, or
kidnap them, or imprison them for an indefinite period of time. Reno
didn't argue that it was legal to abuse people-- she just did it. She
decided that several innocent people were guilty and should be punished and
abused. She was responsible for Waco, which is why she was also responsible in
some measure for Oklahoma. So there it is and I stand by it. So
the four worst attorney-generals in the history of the United States are:
Janet Reno, John Mitchell, John Ashcroft, and Alberto Gonzalez. These
are your highest ranking law-enforcement officers, America!
I have nothing new to say about Janet Reno. Here's what I already
said. I just think it's important that time does not heal this
wound: Janet Reno's breath-taking, vicious incompetence should
be broadcast as widely as possible, at least until
Frank
Fuster is released from jail.
In a nutshell, Frank Fuster was convicted during the
hysterical 80's rash of Satanic Ritual Abuse Cases which, to most sensible
people, has now been as thoroughly discredited as the Salem witch trials.
Prosecutors believed that the the children, who almost
always initially denied that abuse had taken place, were lying, and had to
be "compelled" to give accurate testimony, through hours and hours and hours
of interrogation, if necessary. Ileana Fuster, Frank's wife, was
mercilessly bullied, threatened, and frightened into testifying against her
husband.
(It is remarkably possible that the prosecutors honestly
thought that Frank was guilty. I don't think that excuses the
absolutely militant stupidity with which they proceeded. I say militant
stupidity-- there's no other excuse for it.
Behold the intensity of their ignorance and tremble: anyone could be the next
victim of their inquisitorial passion.)
The children, under these conditions, would frequently make numerous accusations, often
including preposterous incidents like the perpetrator taking the children up
in a helicopter and dropping them into a shark-infested pool. The
prosecution would rarely-- if ever-- supply an actual criminal event: a date
and time and location-- because, of course, they couldn't. In fact, in
several cases, they couldn't even demonstrate that there was a time and
place where the defendant was alone with this victims.
The prosecution would also ignore the more ridiculous
charges and bring only the reasonably creditable ones to court, though, in
some of the later cases, they were compelled to present all of the
testimony, including the fantastical elements. They would then argue
that the fantastical elements were child-speak for abuse they could barely
comprehend: something must have happened.
Nothing I have ever read about or encountered has done
more to depress my view of humanity than these cases.
Not only did prosecutors and judges make utterly inane and
reprehensibly stupid judgments about facts, they admitted into court
numerous so-called "expert witnesses" who all asserted that Satanic Ritual
Abuse was rampant in the United States, that denial of abuse is a symptom of
it, that up is down and down is up, and that Alice really did run down the
rabbit-hole. Almost without exception, none of these witnesses ever
offered any empirical evidence in support of their contentions, either about
the prevalence of child-abuse, or of how young children react to abuse.
To a large extent, the convictions became the proof that there had to be
more convictions.
The Mad Hatter's best guest at this
tea party was the guest who confessed, under horrendous pressures in a plea-bargain arrangement,
because that proved that the guest was mad because who else but a mad guest would confess?
Many of the convicted have been released after appeals or
retrials.
Frank Fuster is still in jail.
*
After reading more about the case, I became interested in the question that
goes to the heart of the entire scandalous series of prosecutions that
became known as the Satanic Ritual Abuse cases. At all of these cases,
so-called experts testified that though almost all of the children initially
denied abuse, and though virtually no external evidence could be adduced
(not even as to time and place or opportunity), the prosecutions believed
that children almost always deny abuse at first, then disclose, then recant,
and so on. This explains why the children initially denied abuse, they assert.
They told the court, we are experts. We have truth.
We are reliable.
Nobody seemed able to come to grips with
this ephemeral truth. How did they know that abused children rarely
disclose when questioned? Well, they would trot out numbers-- hundreds
of abused children, that we have interviewed.... We know.
But experts for the defense examined the actual research and found that only
about 5-8% of abuse victims do not disclose. Isn't that
amazing? That's quite a discrepancy.
In turns out
that the prosecution experts were somewhat cavalier with the data.
They didn't distinguish between validated cases of abuse and cases that they
had decided for themselves were valid but may never have been prosecuted.
That is a much bigger tea bag.
In an other large study, in which the perpetrator is known to have
threatened the children if they disclosed, 66% still disclosed!
Anyway, at least one of Janet Reno's victims is still in prison. I
believe we must never forget to remind Janet Reno that she was the worst
attorney-general in the history of the United States.
