Kern County child abuse cases

Between 1983 and 1986, numerous cases of criminal child molestation were tried in Kern County, California. The cases involved claims that Satanic rituals were performed by pedophilic sex rings with as many as 60 children testifying they had been abused. At least eight people were convicted and most of them spent many years imprisoned. All of the convictions were eventually overturned on appeal. It was later found that the child witnesses had been subjected to suggestive interrogation techniques in the gathering of evidence at trial. Many of the children recanted their testimony in adolescence or adulthood, and the cases stand as egregious examples of injustice in American history.

The first case involved Alvin and Debbie McCuan. In 1982 the two sisters, coached by their step-grandmother, who had custody of them, alleged they had been abused by their parents, and accused them of being part of a sex ring that included Scott and Brenda Kniffen. The Kniffens' two sons also claimed to have been abused. No physical evidence was ever found but the McCuans and Kniffens were convicted in 1984 and each sentenced to hundreds of years in prison.

In September 1984, an unrelated case was commenced against Margie Grafton, Tim Palomo, Grant Self, and John Stoll. They were accused of forming a sex ring to abuse young boys and produce child pornography. Various boys testified at the trial. Again, no physical evidence was presented - and, again, all four defendants were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. The convictions of Margie Grafton and Tim Palomo were overturned soon afterward.

Six similar cases occurred quickly throughout Kern county. They were stopped when children began to accuse police officers and social workers of being members of sex rings.

The Kern county events marked the beginning of a series of over forty similar cases all over North America, lasting until about 1995, when prosecutors across the United States and Canada began to realise there was something fishy going on. Many of the cases relied upon so-called "recovered memories," as well as deliberate exploitation of children's imaginations, both of which were ultimately found to be completely unreliable scientifically and legally. The children did not so much "make up" stories of abuse as have them planted in their minds by ambitious, and in some cases ethically questionable, psychologists.

The convictions of the McCuans and Kniffens were overturned in 1996 and the two couples were released. In 2001, a TV movie about the plight of the Kniffens was released under the name Just ask my children. John Stoll had to wait until 2004 for the reversal of his convictions. Stoll was released but Self remains in a mental hospital for sexual offenders because he had a prior conviction for child molestation.

See also

• Day care sexual abuse hysteria
• Satanic ritual abuse
• McMartin preschool case, the next widely publicized case after Kern County
• Wee Care Nursery School
• Fells Acres Day Care Center
• Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in films

Reference

• New York Times; September 19, 2004; Who Was Abused? There are several ways to view the small white house on Center Street in Bakersfield, Calif. From one perspective it's just another low-slung home in a working-class neighborhood, with a front yard, brown carpeting, a TV in the living room. Now consider it from the standpoint of the Kern County district attorney's office: 20 years ago, this was a crime scene of depraved proportions. According to investigators, in the living room with brown carpeting and a TV, boys between the ages of 6 and 8 were made to pose for pornographic photos. On a water bed in the back bedroom, the boys were sodomized by three men, while a mother had sex with her own son. But look at the house once again -- this time, through Ed Sampley's eyes. Twenty years ago he was one of the boys molested in the house where sex abuse was part of the weekend fabric. That's what he told Kern County investigators. That's what he told a judge, a jury and a courtroom of lawyers. The testimony of Sampley and five other boys was the prosecution's key evidence in a trial in which four defendants were convicted, with John Stoll, a 41-year-old carpenter, receiving the longest sentence of the group: 40 years for 17 counts of lewd and lascivious conduct. ...