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Janet Reno's Child Abuse
Robert Rosenthal
On April 30, 1993, the New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the conviction
of Margaret Kelly Michaels, a 26-year-old aspiring actress and teacher
who had been convicted five years earlier of molesting 21 preschool children
by inserting silverware, toys, and swords into their bodily orifices, and
forcing them to eat feces and to have intercourse with her--all during
the school day at the busy Maplewood preschool at which she taught. Michaels
had served five years of a 47-year sentence before the appeals court condemned
the prosecutor's use of threats and bribes to make the alleged young "victims"
testify against her.
Such tactics, the court said, were so coercive that they had probably contaminated
the children's minds with false memories of abuse that never happened.
Because of this, the children's stories were now suspect and could not
be trusted. Eventually, the prosecutor's office dropped the charges against
Michaels.
I was one of Michaels's attorneys, and the day after Kelly was released
from prison I received a call from a woman named Kristine Fuster. Kris
had read about my involvement, and she wanted me to represent her father,
Frank Fuster. In 1985 a Florida jury had convicted Fuster of sexually molesting
21 children whom his wife baby-sat in their home in a Miami suburb.
Kris told me that her father's conviction was an even worse travesty than
Michaels's. She said it was based totally on unreliable medical evidence,
statements by children procured through coercion and deceit, and on the
testimony of a 17-year-old co-defendant who agreed to cooperate only after
being drugged and pressured.
Her father didn't have any money for a lawyer, Kris said, but as I talked
with her I realized that this was a famous case that had been the subject
of both a book, Unspeakable Acts, by Jan Hollingsworth (Congdon
& Weed), and a television movie of the same title. In an attempt to
lure me with a supreme challenge, Kris told me that the person who had
prosecuted Frank Fuster was none other than the current Attorney General
of the United States, Janet Reno, who at the time was the lead prosecutor
in Miami.
I wanted nothing to do with the matter. Since the Kelly Michaels drama
had become national news, my mail and my answering machine had been choked
with requests from prisoners looking for a lawyer to take their case--free
of charge. Having spent several years earning next to nothing working for
Michaels and a slew of other indigent defendants, I was hoping that the
end of the Michaels case was the end of my not-for-profit career. Besides,
I supported Janet Reno's nomination as Attorney General. I couldn't believe
she would have anything to do with a prosecution even half as shameful
as it sounded.
Kris mentioned that her father was already being represented by Fort Lauderdale
attorney Arthur Cohen. Seizing upon this excuse, I said that even if I
were interested, there was nothing I could do if Frank already had a lawyer.
Kris insisted that I talk to Cohen. In an effort to shake her, I called
him. Cohen had taken the matter pro bono. He welcomed me to the case. Before
I knew it, he had shipped me several cartons of trial transcripts and videotapes.
As I waded through the transcript, my curiosity turned to shock. I saw
no reliable evidence that any of the children had ever been molested, let
alone that the culprit was Frank Fuster. Only one of the alleged victims
testified about abuse. For the rest the jury saw videotapes on which investigators
elicited abuse stories from small children using the same coercive tactics
that Michaels's appellate judges condemned.
The Michaels case had already shown that prosecutors and so-called experts
are quite capable of bastardizing the judicial system and the Constitution
to gain convictions in child-abuse cases.
But the Fuster case was much worse than anything I'd seen so far. During
her tenure in Miami, Janet Reno had not only succumbed to the hysteria
of the child-abuse panic of the 1980s, she had reveled in it. The prosecution
of Frank Fuster was one of the first successful "ritual abuse" cases, and
Reno's work on it--intimidation, coercion, and all--would become a national
model for gaining convictions.
There is a striking similarity between Reno's conduct in the FBI assault
on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the prosecution of
Frank Fuster. Reno justified the ill-fated Ranch Apocalypse attack with
the assertion that during the standoff she had been given "the clear impression
that since the FBI had assumed command of the situation, they had learned
that the Branch Davidians had been beating babies." There was no evidence
of this, however. And after the debacle, no one, including Reno, could
remember who had given her that information.
In Miami, nearly a decade earlier, spurred by an accusation against Frank
and Ileana Fuster, Reno had acted no less rashly. She had launched into
an impassioned, high-profile pursuit of a conviction through the systematic
production of evidence to corroborate her impression that Frank Fuster
was a child molester.
At Waco as in the Fuster case she displayed a profound failing when it
came to children. Unmitigated, brute force--children or the innocent be
damned--was Reno's response to any intimation that kids were being hurt,
regardless of evidence to the contrary. In both situations, lives were
destroyed.
From a prosecutor's perspective, Frank Fuster was the perfect child abuser.
A Cuban immigrant, he had already served four years in a New York prison
for manslaughter, and four years probation in Florida following a conviction
for fondling a nine-year-old girl's breast through her clothing.
But by 1984 he had begun a new life. He owned a business and a home in
Country Walk, an upscale subdevelopment near Miami. He had recently married
16-year-old Ileana Flores, a native of Honduras, who had immigrated to
Miami with her mother. Because Frank's business was not entirely successful,
Ileana ran a baby-sitting service from their home.
Donna Silver (some names here and hereafter have been changed to protect
the parties involved) also lived in Country Walk. Donna had left her job
as a lawyer to have a child. When Billy was 18 months old, she decided
to go back to work. A friend recommended Ileana Fuster as a baby-sitter,
and in the spring of 1984 Donna took Billy to Ileana's for the day. It
was the first time the toddler had ever been left with a stranger.
When Donna picked up Billy that afternoon, he seemed cranky and groggy.
Ileana said that Billy had just awakened from a nap, but Donna was suspicious.
Sometime earlier, another mother had been bathing her child when the child
told her to "kiss my body" the way Ileana kissed the babies' bodies. That
child's comment had sparked rumors about Ileana in the Country Walk community.
Donna was not satisfied with Ileana's explanation. She concluded that Ileana
had drugged her son. Rather than immediately take Billy to a doctor, Donna
phoned a neighbor, Jan Hollingsworth, who, before she wrote Unspeakable
Acts, worked for a local television news program that had aired a three-part
expose critical of government regulation of Florida's child-care system.
After hanging up with Donna, Hollingsworth called a contact in Reno's office
and related her friend's concerns. A background check of the Fusters quickly
revealed Frank's criminal history.
When Donna Silver made her accusation against Ileana Fuster, Reno was up
for reelection as state attorney (a Florida counterpart to district attorney).
Hollingsworth suggested that Reno meet with Joseph and Laurie Braga, two
self-styled experts at interviewing children who had been featured in Hollingsworth's
television report. Reno was impressed with the Bragas, and agreed to set
up a special unit in the prosecutor's office where alleged child-abuse
victims could be interviewed by professionals like the Bragas.
The Bragas quickly became featured players in Reno's office. She provided
them with space, and they filled it with child-sized furniture and toys,
as well as with their ever-present "anatomically correct" dolls.
The Bragas were touted as having a special gift for communicating with
children. But their real expertise--as even a cursory review of their interviews
suggests--was in coercing youngsters to talk about sex. The Braga interview
method was a systematic application of suggestion, coercion, and manipulation,
beginning with ingratiating banter, escalating through intimations of sexual
activity that the Bragas thought had happened, and culminating, in the
case at hand, with the outright insistence that Frank and Ileana were child
abusers. Crucial to the Bragas' technique was their refusal to accept a
child's denial of abuse, coupled with the tactic of praising the kids for
any statement, no matter how vague, that might tend to incriminate the
Fusters.
Consider an interview Laurie Braga did with four-year-old Jean.
Surviving videotapes show Laurie Braga telling the girl that her two-and-a-half-year-old
brother, Dan, "talked to us. And he told us about some stuff that happened
when he was at Frank and Ileana's."
"What did he say?" Jean asks.
"Well, ... mainly he showed us some things with the dolls that are over
there. He took the dolls and he showed us some things that happened with
the dolls."
"What happened?" the child wants to know.
"Well, maybe before I tell you what he said, you could tell me if you remember
anything. Okay? Is there anything you could tell me?"
"They never did nothing bad to me," Jean insists.
"So did Ileana and Frank do anything bad to the other children?"
"No."
"Not that you saw," was Braga's retort.
After some discussion, Braga tells Jean that "some of the children said
that they were scared because they [the Fusters] wore masks. Your brother
said that...."
Braga then asks why Jean thinks Frank is "bad."
"My mom told me."
"Did she tell you what he did that was bad?"
Jean shakes her head, no. She asks Braga, "Do you know what he did?"
Braga: "... Would you like me to tell you what Dan said? ... Okay. Dan
said he [Dan] took the dolls ... and one of the things is that he took
all the clothes off the dolls ... He said that [at the Fusters] the children
played a game, like 'Ring Around the Rosy' --"
"With no clothes on?" Jean ventures.
"With no clothes on.... Do you think Dan was telling the truth?" The child
shakes her head, no. "You don't? ... Does Dan tell stories?" Jean nods,
yes. "You don't think Dan was saying the truth?" Jean's answer is inaudible.
Braga: "Sure, we can play that game." Jean: "Because they're only fake
dolls."
Braga agrees. "Right, they're not real, they are just pretend.... Maybe
you can show me if they were just pretend, what they might do.... Now what
kind of a game do you think they would play?.... Just make believe."
The child begins to play "Duck, Duck" with the dolls.
"Let's just pretend that maybe Dan wasn't telling a story. Okay? Maybe
it was true that Frank and Ileana were taking off their clothes and the
children taking off their clothes and ... Frank and Ileana were touching
the children in private places. Let's just pretend that maybe it was true....
If Frank did touch the children--in their private places--then that was
something he shouldn't have done, then that's why they put him in jail."
Jean reiterates her consistent account, "because they didn't do anything
to me ... I would tell my mom, but if they said it was a secret, I would
say I wouldn't do it, but I would trick them ... I would tell my mom and
dad."
Braga offers a new suggestion--fear: "Some of the children ... are afraid....
Some children said that they [the Fusters] were acting like monsters and
they wore these masks and they scared them."
"Is that true?" Jean asks.
"I am not sure," Braga answers, "but some of the children said so, and
I believe the children, because I don't think children make up stories
like that. Do you?"
"Which children?" the girl demands.
"Well, Dan. And some of the other children."
"They were bigger than me?" Jean asks. "...Did they tell that they were
naked or anything like that...? What did they say?"
"They said that they played games with Frank and Ileana--some of the little
children. That everybody took off their clothes and that they played some
games and that people touched each other's private parts."
Jean: "That's true."
"Is it true?" Braga echoes.
Obviously impressed by Braga's reports of the other children's accounts,
the little girl declares: "The other children said it, so Dan might be
right ... because bigger children said that ... now I found out that it
was true, because the other children said it."
Braga tries to get anything new and original from the child--"Maybe you
could tell us something..."--but Jean just shakes her head, no.
Behavioral-science research conducted during the past several years has
revealed that these kinds of techniques are extremely coercive.
While ethics prohibits researchers from replicating the exact interrogations
used during the Reno cases, experiments have been devised that use mild
versions of interview tactics employed by the Bragas and other so-called
experts. The experiments show that the methods used by Reno's investigators
are far more likely to implant false memories in a preschooler than to
uncover what the child's actual experience might have been. (The Bragas
could not be reached for comment.)
It was not until the early 1990s that this research was published, but
that is no excuse for Reno's use of manipulative methods to build her case.
For decades, courts have disqualified testimony obtained through coercion
and suggestion. In fact such methods can be so persuasive that they have
long been known to make people admit to crimes that were never even committed.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Bragas' interviews with Frank's
own seven-year-old son, Jaime. They conducted four sessions with the boy,
and during the first three their standard methods of persuasion are of
no avail. Jaime remains firm. His father never molested him, and there
is nothing that suggestions or anatomical dolls can do to change that denial.
Joe Braga: "Did you ever play any games with people who would take your
clothes off?"
"Clothes off?.... No, never," Jaime replies.
"Never?"
"Never played with people with no clothes on," Jaime insists.
Disbelieving, Braga tries again. "Did anyone ever talk to you, like Ileana
or your father, not to talk about any games where anybody took their clothes
off? .... Did you ever come home to be around the house and see anyone
in your house playing games with children who took their clothes off?"
Jaime explains that he is being truthful. He tells the Bragas that no one
told him to protect Frank. In fact, he says, Ileana told him "just to tell
everybody even the bad and the good....Only that way I could get my dad
out."
Like the other children in the case, Jaime was subjected to a physical
examination. Like the others, the exam did not reveal any evidence of abuse.
The youngsters were also tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Under
the use of a newly developed procedure, the "quick test," Jaime tested
"positive" for gonorrhea of the throat. He was the only child whose test
came out this way. Reno gave the Bragas the "positive" result and instructed
them to use whatever means necessary to make Jaime reinforce the finding
by saying he had fellated his father. Finally, during the fourth interview,
the Bragas wear the boy down through sheer persistence.
"... I know you are not telling the truth, because you said that no one
put their penis in your mouth, but yet you had the test, the test said
you had gonorrhea," Joseph Braga tells him, and continues to pound away
at the boy: "You said you don't remember anybody putting their penis in
your mouth? Do you think it was your father?" Laurie Braga: "Let's suppose
that it did [happen], okay? Because the doctor said it did, even though
you don't remember who did; [do] you think [you know who] might have done
that to you? Do you have any idea, even if you don't remember?" Joe picks
up again: "Do you remember the first time that your dad did it, did you
ask him to stop?" Laurie Braga offers another possibility: "Did anybody
ever hypnotize you?" Both Bragas pursue this theme, Joe asking if it's
possible that Jaime was hypnotized when "anybody put their penis in your
mouth," Laurie adding, "Maybe you were asleep or didn't know."
"You keep saying nobody put penises in your mouth, but you had gonorrhea...,"
Joe persists. "All the other children have told us things, and the same
children told the same story every time. They haven't been talking to each
other. We didn't see them all at once. We see them all one by one. They
never got together. They haven't seen one another since," Joe says.
Laurie takes another tack. "I want to ask you to try to explain something
to me, okay? ... We've talked to you, we've talked to a lot of different
children ... and the children didn't talk to each other, but they talked
to us and told us some things that happened in your house, okay? They talked
about things that they did with clothes off, and things that Frank and
Ileana--"
"Playing 'Ring Around the Rosie,'" Joe inserts. Laurie: "Clothes off and
playing different sex games." Joe: "Kissing each other's penis and each
other's vagina." Laurie: "And [they] said you were involved too, and you
went to the doctor and the doctor found out you had gonorrhea in your throat,
and the only way to get that, as I explained to you before, is if a person
has been putting a penis in your mouth.... Now with all those things, I
know on one side you're saying--on the other side, nothing happened, how
can you explain to me the difference between what you are saying and what
we know from having gone to the doctor and finding out something that is
a fact?"
The interview drags on. Joe asks Jaime if he's getting hungry. When the
boy says he is, Braga tells him to think again about these questions, "because
I have to tell you this: If the test doesn't say that you have gonorrhea,
then I could believe you. If the other children hadn't told me that you
are a part of, then I would believe you, but all the children--" Jaime
wants to go to lunch. "He's going to lunch," Joe Braga taunts. "He wants
to avoid the conversation."
The Bragas finally release Jaime so that he can eat. Following the lunch
break, Jaime quickly complies with the Bragas' demands as best he can,
plying them with the stories of beatings, sexual molestation, and scatological
games they want, so that he would be allowed to go home.
Tapes of the Braga interviews with Jaime were played for the jury, and
contributed in no small part to Fuster's conviction. But in a later deposition,
Jaime insisted that he agreed with them only because he was "tired of saying
the truth, they were keeping saying I don't believe you, I don't believe
you." It was "because I was getting tired ... [that] I told a lie." When
asked how he knew what lies to tell, the child replied, "because the doctor
[Braga] told me." Jaime's recantation was of no moment to the prosecutor.
Even so, Jaime has remained steadfast through the years. After Frank and
Ileana were arrested, the boy went to live with his natural mother and
her husband, who later adopted him. Nearly six years later, Jaime was a
complainant in a civil suit against the insurance company for the Country
Walk development. Several families of children in the case obtained large
cash awards in similar suits. In a deposition taken for an action that
could have brought him more than a million dollars, Jaime, who was now
15, once again categorically denied that his father had ever sexually assaulted
him or anyone else. To this day, he says he has no memory of ever experiencing
or witnessing such crimes. He remembers the Bragas, though. In a sworn
statement in 1994, Jaime said, "I remember them just questioning me and
questioning me and not leaving me alone, and I think it got down to the
point where I didn't know what they said to me. ... I remember just wanting
to leave, just wanting to go."
The Bragas may have browbeat Jaime, but they did sincerely believe that
the gonorrhea test used on him was reliable. They were apparently unaware
that the procedure had drawbacks. After Fuster's trial, researchers at
the Centers for Disease Control concluded that the test is notorious for
giving false positives.
By the time the case went to trial the allegations against the Fusters
included satanic rituals, threats with masks and weapons, the drugging
of 21 children, locking them in closets, forcing them to consume feces
and urine, to dance naked, eat human hands, sip ants through straws--dramatic
and shocking atrocities, if true. But by the time the Fuster case was ready
for court, the use of so-called experts to extract abuse stories from children
had come under fire. Juries, and even some prosecutors, were beginning
to notice that many investigators were telling children what to say. That
many of the children's stories were patently absurd was also becoming apparent.
Reno knew that to succeed where other prosecutors had failed, she would
have to give the Fuster jury more than stories of abuse elicited by the
Bragas and a "positive" gonorrhea test in only one child. The fact that
Frank and Ileana insisted that they were innocent was becoming troublesome.
So Reno's office decided to focus on convicting Frank by offering Ileana
a reduced sentence if she would plead guilty and testify against her husband.
When the Fusters were arrested in August of 1984, they had been married
for only 11 months. Ileana was just 17 years old. Her refusal to cooperate
with the prosecutor resulted in increased pressure on her.
Ileana was not invincible, and Reno played on her weaknesses. Shortly after
Ileana's arrest, she had spent some time in "protective custody"--isolation.
According to Shirley Blando, the prison chaplain, this had a traumatic
effect on Ileana. Private investigator Stephen Dinerstein, a frequent visitor
to Ileana in jail, said, "She was often kept under suicide watch--kept
naked. When I would visit her, the fact that she was in isolation would
be half the conversation. She really had it tough. She was just a kid."
When Ileana refused the prosecutor's requests for testimony against Frank,
she was returned to isolation.
In October 1994, ten years later, Ileana spoke, under oath, with attorney
Arthur Cohen. A sworn statement of that interview was entered into the
court record. She said she'd been drugged most of the time that she was
in jail. The sedation "...would help me rest, they said, because I wasn't
eating properly and ... I wasn't sleeping properly." She was often unable
to keep track of time, or what day it was.
During much of the year she was in jail, her attorney, Michael Van Zamft,
was Ileana's only visitor, and his conversations consisted of repeated
entreaties for her to remember anything about child abuse. As the trial
neared, Van Zamft increased the pressure. In her sworn statement Ileana
recalled, "He said that I needed to remember something, or that I must
have something to say. And then he thought that I had problems and that
I should be seen by a psychologist." He began frightening Ileana, telling
her that the prosecution was going to win the case "and that it was necessary
for me to remember everything and say it." If she didn't, Van Zamft told
Ileana, she would "spend the rest of [her] life in jail."
Despite a reputable psychologist's judgment that Ileana did not suffer
from amnesia or any other memory disorder, Van Zamft hired two other psychologists
to "bring back her memory." Michael Rappaport and Merry Sue Haber ran a
company called Behavior Changers. Their assignment was to work on Ileana
and "retrieve" the abuse memories she had blocked from her mind. Ileana
remembers meeting Rappaport and Haber. "They were very nice.... They asked
me the same questions that my attorney had asked me all that time." As
she had before, Ileana told the Behavior Changers that she had nothing
to say about abuse. The psychologists "explained" to her that she "was
having problems and that they were there to help [her]." They diagnosed
her as having blocked out events from her past.
Rappaport and Haber began visiting Ileana almost every day and some nights.
She was often awakened immediately before sessions with them. At first,
they talked about her childhood and other positive memories, but as Rappaport
and Haber won her confidence, they changed the subject to sexual abuse.
Ileana soon recalled for the psychologists that Frank had abused her during
their marriage. She maintains this recollection to this day. Using notes
from the Braga interviews, the psychologists described vivid scenarios.
Ileana began having nightmares about the actions Rappaport and Haber would
describe to her. She argued with these Behavior Changers for a while, telling
them that her nightmares were their accounts of abuse, not her own memories.
Those things had never happened, she told them. But the long sessions were
tiring, and Ileana's dreams became filled with "the things they were telling
me." She became confused about what really happened, and eventually caved
in to the pressure and became convinced that "probably those things happened,
and I just didn't remember because they were so shocking...."
The "relaxation and visualization" methods used by Rappaport and his partner
have long been known to be remarkably powerful tools. By using these "exercises,"
the Behavior Changers put Ileana into the same kind of trance as that induced
during hypnosis. From there, childhood memories of abuse could be implanted
just like traditional post-hypnotic suggestion. Rappaport recognized the
power of his methods.
In a 1991 interview with journalist Debbie Nathan he described his work
as being "almost like a hypnotic thing ... manipulation ... reverse brainwashing."
Rappaport and Haber declined comment to Penthouse.
Ileana had one other caller: Janet Reno. Rappaport told Nathan that the
prosecutor paid 30 visits to Ileana while the young woman was in isolation.
(Rappaport has since asserted that 30 was an exaggeration on his part.)
Ileana remembers Reno telling her "she wanted to help me, and that something
real bad had happened to me and it was her duty to make sure that justice
was done...."
A year after her arrest, Ileana pleaded guilty to sexual abuse. Even as
she addressed the court, however, she was unconvinced of her guilt. She
told the judge: "[I] would like you to know that I am pleading guilty not
because I feel guilty, but because I think--I think it's ... for my own
best interest and for the children and for the court and for all the people
that are working on the case. But I am not pleading guilty because I feel
guilty.... I am innocent of all those charges.... I am innocent. I am just
doing it--I am pleading guilty to get all of this over ... for my own good...."
Weeks later, Ileana says, while still on the drugs prescribed to her in
jail, she gave three depositions in which she provided Reno with the coveted
testimony against Frank. Rappaport accompanied her, "to give me strength
... so that I could pretend I was talking to him ... because I was afraid
of the attorneys and the courts," and he supplied her with a series of
verbal cues to assist her "recollections" of abuse.
Reno sat next to her and occasionally held her hand. During the depositions,
Ileana recounted the stuff of her newly recovered memories; she told of
being raped, sodomized, cut, burned, and drugged by Frank. She said he
had fondled and kissed the children, and put suppositories into their rectums.
And she provided bizarre stories of torture, claiming that Frank had put
snakes in her vagina and hung her by the wrists in the garage while suspending
Jaime by his feet.
In the end Ileana was sentenced to ten years. After serving fewer than
four, she was released and deported to Honduras. Frank was not so lucky.
He was convicted and sentenced to six life terms.
Several months after Ileana's 1994 sworn statement recounting her experiences
with the Behavior Changers, the Miami trial judge assigned to hear Fuster's
motion for a new trial ruled that that statement was sufficient evidence
to require a hearing, at which Ileana could testify by telephone or satellite
transmission from Honduras. Almost immediately after the judge's ruling,
Tommy Watson, a local minister who had been instrumental in negotiating
Ileana's early release and relocation to her native land, went to see her
in Honduras. He returned with a letter, bearing her signature, which said
she'd been confused during her interview with Cohen, that Frank had indeed
abused her and the children, and that she would not testify in his behalf.
Though Watson has denied influencing Ileana, a source close to her family
reports that she was frightened into believing that her cooperation with
Cohen had put her and her loved ones in danger. That was the last Ileana
has been heard from by Cohen or any of the other people to whom she had
spoken about her incarceration. Van Zamft could not be reached for comment.
The Snowden family read newspaper accounts of what Arthur Cohen and I were
doing to try to get a new trial for Frank Fuster. They got in touch and
asked if we would review the conviction of Grant Snowden. In 1984, Snowden
was successfully prosecuted by Reno, who used the same tactics as she had
in the Fuster case--coercing children, using questionable medical evidence.
We agreed to take a look at the case. As I began reading the records of
the trial and the interviews with the alleged child "victims," it became
clear to me that the Fuster case was no accident or isolated lapse in Reno's
judgment. Her zeal to convict people for child abuse was again the principal
factor. Cohen and I took the case.
In the spring of 1984 Grant Snowden had no idea that he would become the
target of a Reno child-abuse prosecution. Like everyone else in south Florida,
he had heard of the Fuster case, but Grant and his family were so unlike
the Fusters, the suggestion that the Fuster prosecution could have any
bearing on his life would have seemed absurd to him. Grant was a highly
decorated North Miami policeman, and 1983's Police Officer of the Year.
He loved his job and excelled at it. He and his wife, Janice, had been
married for nearly 15 years and had two children. To make ends meet, Janice
baby-sat some neighborhood children.
That spring, Grant noticed that one of them, four-year-old Greg Wilkes,
had welts on his face, as if he had been beaten. Concerned, Grant and Janice
warned Greg's parents that if the boy were dropped off in that condition
again, they would notify Florida's child-protection agency. Soon thereafter,
Greg's father reported to the police that Grant had sexually molested Greg
by kissing the boy's penis and putting his own penis in Greg's mouth.
Reno's office investigated the Wilkeses' allegation, and by June had concluded
that there was "insufficient ... evidence to file charges." Among the information
that undoubtedly led to that decision was the fact that a psychologist
who treated Greg--and who was a witness for the prosecution in the Fuster
case--had felt compelled to warn Mr. Wilkes "to stop putting pressure on
Greg to say things he was not ready to say," particularly "that [Snowden]
had put his penis in Greg's mouth."
In the summer of 1984 the south Florida media became consumed by the Fuster
investigation. Stories condemning the Fusters and warning of the risks
faced by children in child care had become a local obsession. As public
imagination and fear were ignited, Reno's office became deluged with reports
of child abuse. According to a story in the Miami Herald, by the
end of August Reno was investigating 20 criminal cases of abuse, and 11
day-care centers had been closed. Amidst this communal fury, the parents
of another child cared for by Janice Snowden, 11-year-old Carol Banks,
came forward with an accusation against Grant Snowden. The prosecutor's
office reopened its investigation. Snowden was suspended from the police
force.
The Bragas, by then firmly entrenched in Reno's office, were made available
to the parents of the children cared for in the Snowden home. A Braga interview
along with intense questioning by Carol's mother was all that was needed
to make the 11-year-old agree that she was an abused child. Reno proceeded
to trial. The jury returned a "not guilty" verdict. But the prosecutor
wanted a conviction. Grant was told by the prosecutors during the trial
that more "victims" would be produced. He would be tried time and again,
one child at a time, until Reno had her conviction.
The Braga interviews continued. Laurie Braga questioned another child,
Jennifer Blandes. Before meeting Braga, Jennifer's mother had asked the
four-year-old repeatedly if she had been abused. Jennifer was consistent:
Nothing had happened to her at the Snowden home. And as the interview with
Braga got under way, the little girl continued to deny any mistreatment
there. "I need to know what really happened" was Braga's response. When
this proved unsuccessful at persuading the child to accuse Snowden, Braga
provided her with suggestions of sexual acts from which she could choose,
all the while assuring Jennifer that her friends had already described
such abuses. Other children "came and talked to me about a grown-up touching
them and taking their clothes off and doing something with their penis,"
Braga said. Jennifer would feel better if she too would tell the "yucky
secrets." Jennifer refused to oblige, so Laurie Braga stepped up the pressure.
She brought out her anatomically detailed dolls, undressed them, and told
Jennifer to pretend that one of the child dolls was Jennifer and the adult
doll was Snowden. Jennifer agreed, but told Braga that first "I'm going
to put the clothes back on." As a fully clothed Snowden did not fit the
scenario Braga was after, she suggested to Jennifer, "Let's pretend ...,"
and continued to manipulate the undressed dolls until the confused and
frustrated child finally agreed that the Snowden doll put his finger into
the Jennifer doll's vagina.
What was clear in the Fuster case was even more apparent in Grant Snowden's:
All of Jennifer Blandes's sexual allegations came first from Laurie Braga's
mouth. Yet Reno presented Jennifer's testimony as if it were totally from
the child's own recollection.
As if the interviews were not enough, Reno allowed her prosecutors to demonize
Grant in front of the jury. Through several pretrial motions the prosecutor
ensured that the jury would never know of Snowden's exemplary police career,
or that he had been acquitted in the first trial. Children who were unrelated
to the allegations regarding Jennifer were paraded in front of the jury
to testify that Grant had abused them.
Accusing a defendant of "prior bad acts" is usually considered legally
improper because it has no bearing on the case at hand. This is especially
true where the accusations by witnesses are not established as true.
When it comes to child-abuse cases, the Florida courts are exceptionally
generous in allowing "prior bad acts" evidence. But the first witness in
the Snowden case was none other than Greg Wilkes--the same child whose
allegations had been dismissed months earlier, and whose father had been
warned to stop manipulating the child to make accusations against Snowden.
Now the prosecutor embraced the Wilkeses, professing full faith in their
credibility.
Not surprisingly, Reno got her conviction. Snowden is now serving life
in prison.
There is hope for Fuster and Snowden. Across the country, abuse convictions
based on Reno-like tactics are being reversed as courts begin to understand
the travesties perpetrated by zealous and vainglorious prosecutors during
the past decade and a half. Fuster and Snowden face heavy burdens, though.
Since I have been involved in the case, no one has contested that the children
in the Fuster case were subjected to inquisitorial tactics. Nor has anyone
contested that Ileana was manipulated, or that the gonorrhea test used
on Jaime has been shown to be unreliable. It's procedural hurdles that
have stymied Fuster's progress. Snowden also faces procedural problems.
A convicted defendant has a very limited number of opportunities to press
his case, even where injustice seems obvious. A federal appeals court is
now reviewing Snowden's case.
Janet Reno was handily confirmed as United States Attorney General without
being challenged on her handling of any of this. Unfortunately, her first
weeks on the job brought her face to face with what might be her greatest
disaster. Unable to abide even the unsupported allegation that "babies
were being beaten," Reno ordered the assault on Waco. The rest is history.
COPYRIGHT � 1996 PENTHOUSE
INTERNATIONAL, LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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