|
The family members and close
friends of Violet Amirault, former owner of the
Fells Acres Day School in Malden, Massachusetts,
came to say goodbye over the last few days. Mrs.
Amirault, whose inoperable stomach cancer was
diagnosed only a few weeks ago, is not expected
to live out the week. The world came to know her
name, of course, because of the sensational
child sex-abuse case which the then district
attorney Scott Harshbarger brought against her
and her two children, Gerald and Cheryl--a case
built out of thin air, political ambition and
the relentless coercion of four- and
five-year-olds, pressed to make charges against
the accused.
This, precisely, is what
happened to Gerald Amirault, given 30 to 40
years, who has been behind bars since 1986, and
to Violet and Cheryl Amirault who served eight
years before their convictions were overturned
in 1995. By now, most of the rational world
acquainted with the facts of this case
understand that three innocent people were
convicted in the Fells Acres prosecution--with
its patently incredible charges involving robots
and animal slaughter, secret rooms and the
prosecutors' ludicrous charges of rape with
butcher knives and other sharp instruments that
somehow managed to leave no evidence of injury.
This comprehension of
reality, needless to say, did not extend to the
exterminating angels who preside over the system
of justice in Massachusetts. While the state no
longer burns witches at the stake, some quite
similar impulse explains how it came to pass
that Violet Amirault has spent most of the last
decade of her life in prison--and the remaining
two struggling to survive the district
attorney's determined efforts to get all the
Amiraults back into prison and preserve their
convictions.
It also explains the scenes
at the end of Violet Amirault's life. That would
include the last sight of her son Gerald,
released from prison for a final visit. In cuffs
and leg shackles, and with two prison guards
standing by, in addition to security guards
outside the door, Gerald Amirault said his final
farewell to his mother. He was given 15 minutes.
Violet Amirault, whose life
of hard won success, and abundance, came to a
crashing end with a prosecution begun 13 years
ago, has come to the end of her struggles. For
her, the justice delayed, in this case will be
forever justice denied.
That leaves for us the
state's political establishment. Scott
Harshbarger is now Massachusetts Attorney
General and the Democrats' gubernatorial
candidate to succeed William Weld. District
Attorney Tom Riley has spent the last months
pressing efforts to put the Amirault women back
in prison. And of course we had the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's ruling
reinstating the women's convictions. All these
may be considered participants in the same
lightning of false accusation that seared so
many other lives since the early 1980s.
The sitting governor, who
succeeded Mr. Weld, is Republican Paul Cellucci,
who will be Mr. Harshbarger's opponent. Mr.
Harshbarger expects to ride the Amirault bonfire
into the statehouse. Governor Cellucci, a huge
underdog, could extinguish his opponent's
precious torch and do personal, political and
moral credit to himself--and his state--by
pardoning the two members of this family who
survive Violet Amirault. |