commentary by Patrick H. Moore
The 1980s was the great age of satanic ritual sex abuse charges focused on day care centers in various part of the United States. Between 1984 and 1989, some 100 people nationwide were charged with ritual sex abuse and 50 were put on trial, according to Debbie Nathan of the National Center for Reason and Justice, which works to free those wrongly imprisoned.
Although most of those who went to trial were ultimately acquitted, some were not.
Two of those convicted in the early 1990s, Frances Keller, now 63, and her husband, Dan Keller, now 71, ran a day care center in Travis County in Central Texas. They received lengthy prison sentencesin 1992 based on the jury’s belief that they sexually abused a 3-year-old girl in their care. In a litany of bizarre charges, they were also accused of dismembering corpses, putting blood in drinks served to children, and flying the kids to Mexico, where they were sexually abused.
At the time of their trial, the damning evidence that swayed the jury was provided by Dr. Michael Mouw who told the jury that lacerations on one of the alleged victims was indication of sexual abuse. This was the only physical evidence in the case. Dr. Mouw has now recanted his testimony, saying what he thought were lacerations were actually normal physiological features.
Dr. Mouy further stated that in an affidavit presented to court this year, that in 1992 when he testified, he was inexperienced with little training and less experience on how to detect sexual abuse in children, which led him to come to the wrong conclusions in examining the child:
‘While my testimony was based on a good faith belief at that time, I now realize my conclusion is not scientifically or medically valid, and that I was mistaken,’ he said in the affidavit, which was obtained by Reuters.
As a result of the new testimony, Frances Keller was released on bond late Tuesday night. It is anticipated that her husband, Dan Keller, 71, who was convicted at the same time, will be released within a week in a deal reached with lawyers for the two, the Travis County district attorney’s office said.
In an interesting further piece of evidence, Texas Public Radio reports that the child in the case now also says no abuse took place — not only that but she had been instructed to make that claim — which means, if this is true, that we have YET ANOTHER CASE OF PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT.
Current Travis County District Attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, was cool as a cucumber issuing a statement saying she agreed to release the Kellers on bond after learning of Dr Mouw’s testimony.
‘There is a reasonable likelihood that (the medical expert’s) false testimony affected the judgment of the jury and violated Frances Keller’s right to a fair trial. The Court of Criminal Appeals will review both cases. No further action or decisions on the case will be made until that review is finalized.’
Fran Keller’s attorney, Keith Hampton, stated: ‘The case was a true witch hunt because the investigators actually believed that this was part of a wide satanic conspiracy.’ He explained that the therapists’ bizarre theory — that the Kellers committed human sacrifices, flew the children to Mexico and dismembered human bodies in cemeteries — has been debunked.
A judge still has to sign off on Dan Keller’s release. Hampton said he did not expect prosecutors to seek a retrial. Hampton said after both of the Kellers are released, he will file court papers to have them exonerated and declared innocent.
The Kellers were sentenced after just a six day trial, according to KUT.
The Keller’s case as well as others in Florida and Northern California were triggered by sensational accusations of widespread sexual abuse at a California preschool in what was known as the McMartin case.
According to Wikipedia, The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case of the 1980s. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987, and the trial ran from 1987 to 1990. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. When the trial ended in 1990 it had been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history. The case was part of day care sex abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The initial accusations in the McMartin case were lodged by Judy Johnson, mother of a preschool student. She complained to the police that her son had been sodomized by her estranged husband and by McMartin teacher Ray Buckey. Johnson’s belief that her son had been abused began when he had painful bowel movements.
According to Wikipedia, Johnson was diagnosed with and hospitalized for acute paranoid schizophrenia some time after the accusations. In 1986, she was found dead in her home before the preliminary hearing concluded from complications of chronic alcoholism.
* * * * *
Attorney Hampton believes that more falsely convicted individuals will be set free in the near future. ‘You are soon going to see a flood of exoneration on these sexual abuse cases.’
Fran Keller’s release comes hot on the heels of four San Antonio women — who were imprisoned for allegedly sexually assaulting two girls in 1994 — being freed last week after a judge agreed with their defense attorney and prosecutors that their 1998 convictions for sexual assault should not stand due to faulty expert testimony.
* * * * *
So what does all this mean? We know from following the daily crime news that an appalling amount of child sexual abuse takes place all across the country on a daily basis. For example, there was the recent day-care pedophilia case in Ohio where 25-year-old Heather Koon was arrested when a video of her having sex with an infant was discovered on her boyfriend James Osborne’s laptop computer. Ms. Koon has since been charged with several more counts of child rape.
What makes today’s cases much easier to prove is the fact that present-day perverts and pedophiles seem compelled to film their activities, which gives the prosecutors a huge leg up when it comes time to go to trial.
Nonetheless, with respect to the old satanic abuse day-care cases, there are still plenty of conspiracy theorists who will swear that the acquittals back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the current spate of exonerations, are all part of a vast conspiratorial cover-up designed to allow the evil satanists — with their ubiquitous connections to people in high places — carte blanche to continue to revel in their foul lifestyle.
What I believe is that child sexual abuse — whether or not there is a satanic tie-in — is a huge moral and legal problem here in the US and that we really have no idea how widespread the problem is.