“If you can wait and
not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating...”
— Rudyard Kipling, “If”
Kipling, had he known him,
could have been describing my friend Gerald Amirault. Somehow, after
30 years of injustice, Gerry remains an optimistic, unbitter, and
honorable man, as he waits for his nightmare to finally end.
Charlie Baker has been
governor for two weeks now. It’s time to remove the ankle bracelet
from Gerald’s ankle, to drop the curfew, to allow him to get a job
and start helping his wife earn money to pay the mortgage acquired
during his defense.
For those who just
arrived, a summary of what happened to the Amirault family, a modern
equivalent of what happened to accused witches in the 17th century
here in the Salem area:
It began in the mid-1980s.
Across the country, wild accusations about events in private daycare
centers appeared in the media. Instead of being investigated and
discharged as no proof was found, they were made worse by social
workers who encouraged children in their imaginative tales, then
used by ambitious prosecutors to advance their careers. The terror
spread, and daycare workers went to jail for alleged crimes.
The Amirault family —
Violet, age 60, owner of Fells Acre Day Care, her son Gerald, 31,
and her daughter Cheryl — was charged after a series of police,
social worker and prosecutorial errors; there was no attempt at
fairness, no ridicule of the wild stories about children tied naked
to trees in this residential neighborhood, being forced to eat frogs
that went “quackquack,” etc.
The two women were tried
together and went to prison until 1998; Gerald was tried separately
and remained in jail. My co-worker Chip Faulkner clipped columns
from the Wall Street Journal about the Amiraults by Dorothy
Rabinowitz, who
won a Pulitzer Prize for them. I arranged to meet Gerald at the
Plymouth Correctional Facility, hoping to sense guilt so I could
ignore Chip’s insistence that I “do something!”
Instead, the more I
learned, the more horrified I was by the injustice that we taxpayers
were funding — as all three refused to admit guilt, even for reduced
sentencing, and Gerald refused to curry favor by participating in
sex offender therapy because, he said, “I’m not a sex offender.”
Along with
writing columns, which appeared in this newspaper, I appealed to
the governors I knew. Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci were waiting for
the parole board to finish its investigation and, I was sure, were
prepared to grant a commutation as soon as possible.
 |
|
|
Gerry at the CLT office after his release in 2004 |
|
Two judges, one liberal,
one tough, argued for a new trial or commutation. Civil libertarians
like
Harvey Silverglate and
Charles Ogletree were on board. On July 6, 2001, the parole
board made an unanimous decision for commutation, stating that there
were serious questions about the validity of the conviction.
Newspaper editorials were supportive. But by then, Weld and Cellucci
had left office and Jane Swift was acting governor. I’d been working
with her administration for months to make sure of internal support;
her decision not to commute was the biggest political shock of my
life. The next day I called Mitt Romney at the Winter Olympics in
Utah, begging him to come home to run against her; if he hadn’t I
was prepared to run against her myself.
Gerald was finally
released on parole in 2004; after 18 years he was happy to be with
his wife and children again. He’d received his bachelor’s degree
from Boston University in prison;
Citizens for Limited Taxation hired him to do a report for the
25th anniversary of Proposition 2½, which showed excellent research
skills. We couldn’t afford to keep him on, but it seemed likely he
would soon find work elsewhere.
However, his parole
conditions were increased over the years as real sex crimes were
committed in the commonwealth. They became more burdensome:
polygraph exams, exclusionary zones (towns he isn’t allowed to
enter); he can’t leave the state without a permit that must be voted
on each time by the parole board, and only for two weeks. For years
his monthly GPS surveillance fee was $380; this has been dropped to
$80 for parole supervision.
There are good people in
this story too. The parole board always treats him well, and gives
the permits. Someone who heard his story recently on the Howie Carr
show has been sending four $20 bills anonymously in the mail each
month.
The harshest provision
seems to be the ankle bracelet, which keeps him from wearing shorts
in the summer or ski boots in the winter, from swimming at the beach
with his grandchildren. He has to keep a log of everywhere he goes
outside his house.
Yes, these burdens would
be appropriate for real sex offenders; but keep in mind that Gerald
is innocent. The outrage is unimaginable, yet he remains positive,
insists he enjoys his life and remains convinced that things will
get better, especially now that Charlie Baker is governor. Having
done some work when incarcerated with prisoners who had drug issues,
he’d like to get a job with the Opiate Task Force, which Gov. Baker
has called a priority of his administration.
Charlie Baker’s father
asked me several years ago if he could help; after we had lunch
together, Charlie Sr. tried to find Gerald a job that wouldn’t
require him to be near a school. Charlie Jr. met Gerald and one of
his daughters on the campaign trail and assured them this will be
one of the first things on his agenda. His opponent, Martha Coakley,
was one of Gerald’s ambitious prosecutors, and I suspect many voters
who know this story voted against her because of it.
The new governor faces
many complicated challenges. Getting this one right might also take
some time, but Gerald and his wife, Patti, are presently asking for
the simplest of remedies: just call the Sex Offender Board and ask
to have him re-classified from Level 3 to Level 1 to ease his
restrictions. Or ask them to vote to take him off parole; his
lawyers know how this is done. Otherwise he’ll be suffering unfair
indignities until 2024.
Clearly there is no way
for Massachusetts to make up for 30 years of injustice. “Pardon” is
the wrong word, since the Amiraults did nothing wrong, but it may be
the only remedy since governments don’t usually do “apology.”
Barbara Anderson of
Marblehead is president of Citizens for Limited Taxation and a Salem
News columnist.
For a detailed history of this travesty of
justice
visit Citizens for Limited Taxation's project webpage:
