-Caveat Lector- NOTE: The following articles were writtten by people who seem to view claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse as the result of "false memories" and "hysteria"; I suspect that these children WERE ritually abused...
``This was the mother of all these cases,'' says the Kniffens' attorney ++++++++ http://www.edwardhumes.com/kniffens.htm 4 to appeal molestation convictions >From the Bakersfield Californian --- [7/14/96 ] By TAMARA KOEHLER ; Californian staff writer They were what most people would call good parents: Coaching their two young sons in soccer, taking them to church. They were children themselves of upstanding, close-knit families. Brenda and Scott Kniffen were certainly not what most people would think of when conjuring up pictures of sexual orgies and child pornography. But these seemingly ordinary, middle-class parents, whose ancestral roots stretch back to the country's heartland, would soon give birth to a national hysteria. They and their friends, Alvin and Deborah McCuan, would become defendants in the first prosecution of a child molestation ring in the 1980s, a case that spawned a decade of similar cases nationwide, including the notorious McMartin Preschool trial in Los Angeles. ``This was the mother of all these cases,'' says the Kniffens' attorney, Mike Snedeker, who will be arguing their case again this week in Kern County Superior Court. The Kniffen-McCuan case is complete with chilling tales of stolen innocence and sexual torture, stories that horrified local law enforcement, social workers and ultimately a Kern County jury. But it also is a tale of questionable interrogation tactics, controversial medical evidence and children who later recanted their testimony. On Monday, the two couples _ convicted in 1982 of molesting their own children in freakish orgies _ will appear before Superior Court Judge Jon E. Stuebbe by order of the 5th District Court of Appeal, which has overturned several other local molestation ring cases from the 1980s. Reporters from ABC's news magazine ``Turning Point'' and other national journalists will document the hearing. Despite the questions raised about the way the case was handled, the Kern County district attorney and the courts remain steadfastly in favor of keeping the Kniffens and McCuans in prison. Two years ago, a motion for a new hearing in the Kniffen-McCuan case was denied in a terse, three-page written ruling by Kern County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Twisselman. Snedeker appealed to the 5th District, which ordered the Kern County courts to hold a new hearing and allow attorneys to argue new evidence. That new evidence will include testimony from national experts blasting the way social workers and the district attorney's office interviewed the children as well as medical evidence undermining a doctor's diagnosis of molestation in the case, Snedeker said. If Snedeker and a team of Bakersfield defense attorneys are successful in proving the Kniffens and McCuans did not receive a fair trial in 1982, the judge will overturn their sentences and convictions. Those sentences reflect the feelings of the time. The Kniffens, at ages 30 and 31, were convicted of 70 felonies each and sentenced to 1,000 years in prison _ terms much longer than those given Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer. That sentence was later reduced to 240 years each. The McCuans were convicted of 75 felonies each. McCuan, then 30, was sentenced to 268 years in prison; his wife, then 27, was sentenced to 252 years in prison. The victims were the couples' own children, according to prosecutors _ the Kniffens' 6- and 9-year-old sons and the McCuans' 5- and 8-year-old daughters. In gripping detail, the children testified they were hung from hooks and raped, forced into bestiality, and sold for sex to strangers at hotels in the small mountain town of Lebec. Brandon and Brian Kniffen, now 23 and 20, have both recanted their testimony against their parents. The two girls have not. Prosecutor Collette Humphrey says she is not concerned about the appellate court's recent reversals or the Kniffen boys' retractions. ``They've recanted, then unrecanted, then recanted again; what are you going to believe?'' she said. ``I don't know if they think they're going to wear us down or what (by bringing the appeals) but we'll fight this case until doomsday if we have to.'' Today, the Kniffens' sons are bitter, says Teresa Shipp, a cousin of Brenda Kniffen. They believe they've been molested by the system, she says. They want their parents home. Throughout their 12 years in prison, the Kniffen family has stood by their imprisoned relatives. Scott Kniffen's parents _ Richard and Marilyn _ hired a private detective to prove their son and daughter-in-law were wrongly convicted. They used up their life savings accrued through Richard Kniffen's successful business as an accountant. They raised Brian and Brandon. And when they died three years ago, the elderly couple left their house to Scott and Brenda _ a place to come home to one day. ``Getting this case reversed is not so much a mission for me as it is like taking the garbage out,'' says Snedeker, an attorney from Portland who co-authored ``Satan's Silence,'' a book about hysteria over ritual abuse. ``This was a garbage case, like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. These people were in the wrong place at the wrong time.'' The place was Kern County and the time was 1982. It was the beginning of a 33-month period of fear in this county, where urban sprawl threads through cotton fields and residents' trust in police is second only to trust in God. From 1982 to 1985, neighbors eyed each other with distrust and police tore up entire parcels of land looking for bones of sacrificed babies. During this time, 51 people were accused of being involved in molestation rings. Four fled the county and 47 were arrested. ``It was a time of paranoia,'' recalls Stan Simrin, who earned an acquittal for the boyfriend of a social worker also accused in the Kniffen-McCuan case and will be working with Snedeker in court this week. ``Everyone in law enforcement was looking at people with the worst suspicions in mind. They were going out and terrorizing whole groups of people, digging for bones; it was a time of real fear.'' The most notorious case erupted in June 1984, when a minister and five others were accused of molesting a 5-year-old girl _ a charge that mushroomed into 500 accusations of mass murder, cannibalism, satanism and kidnapping. That investigation began with then-Sheriff Larry Kleier's pledge that every resource of his department was available to a special sheriff's task force on ritual abuse. District Attorney Ed Jagels offered the services of investigators and legal help. The Welfare Department, with workers newly trained in spotting signs of satanic ritual abuse, promised to assist investigators. For months, sheriff's deputies dug holes in the backyards of suspects, looking for dead babies. In one instance three years after accusing their own parents of sexual torture, the McCuan girls told FBI agents and Atascadero police they saw satanic murders in their grandparents' Atascadero home. For three days, the officers dug up a brushy hillside in San Luis Obispo County. Nothing was found. The girls had never before made claims of satanism in the three years of court hearings against their parents. Their accusations only surfaced after they entered counseling with Carolyn Heim, a social worker who operated a therapy group for molested children at the Henrietta Weill Memorial Child Guidance Center in Bakersfield. ``Basically, I think these therapy groups at the (Henrietta Weill) center were at the root of the problem,'' Snedeker said. ``This social worker goes to a seminar on satanism and all of a sudden there's a bunch of satanic ritual abuse in Kern County.'' Heim worked closely with the Sheriff's Department and Sheriff's Sgt. Brad Darling, head of the department's satanism task force. In May 1984, Darling visited detectives investigating allegations concerning owners and teachers at the McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach. Darling told the detectives to suspect everyone and that in Kern County he had investigated lawyers, doctors, a reserve deputy sheriff, a coroner's office employee, a mortuary owner and a cemetery owner. More accusations of child molestation rings in which children were photographed nude, sold to strangers for sex and other atrocities continued to surface until 1986, when the state attorney general's office issued a scathing report on Kern County's investigation methods. No one was spared from criticism, including the district attorney's office, the courts, the sheriff and welfare department. ``It seemed to die down after the attorney general's criticism of the local district attorney's office,'' Simrin said. ``Before in these cases, almost all the children interviews were being done without tape recording. Now these kinds of interviews are always taped so we can get to the truth. Is it the child who is telling these things or the investigator?'' Jagels would not comment for this story. His office issued guidelines in 1986 on interviewing techniques of children, requiring that conversations be taped. The McCuans and Kniffens' case began at the insistence of Mary Ann Barbour, the grandmother of the McCuan girls and Alvin's mother. The McCuan girls stayed six weeks every year with the Barbours. One day in 1980, the older McCuan girl, then 7, told Barbour she had been molested by Rod Phelps, her stepgrandfather and the husband of Deborah Mc-Cuan's mother. Barbour took the girl to a doctor, who detected signs of sexual abuse. Phelps was arrested and later skipped bail and town with his wife, Linda Phelps, who also was accused. About this time, Barbour was diagnosed as being obsessive about molestation and was locked in Kern Medical Center's psychiatric ward after she waved a gun around and threatened to commit suicide in 1981. Her medical records were kept secret until they were subpoenaed the next year. A few months later, the girls accused their father, Alvin. Social workers, unaware of Barbour's medical history, placed the children in the Barbours' home, and their mother was allowed only supervised visits. Soon, just about everyone Barbour knew or resented was accused of molesting the girls, according to Snedeker and court records. Social worker Betty Palko, who gave a positive evaluation of the McCuans' day care program operated out of their home, was arrested along with her boyfriend Larry Walker. Barbour told social workers the girls named the Kniffens as well, who were friends of the McCuan family. The girls also accused their uncles, Larry and Tom McCuan. The Kniffen boys, along with the girls, were taken to counselors at the Henrietta Weill center, who led the children through a series of suggestive questioning sessions, Snedeker says. ``The social workers would have anatomically correct dolls and get the kids to name the private parts with whatever name they had for them like `wee-wee,' '' Snedeker said. ``Then they would ask the kids questions like, `Did daddy put his wee-wee in yours?' They'd get the children to give yes or no answers. Today, we know that it is very easy to generate false memories in children.'' During the investigation, the children were isolated from all family members and treated like ``they were being deprogrammed from a cult,'' Snedeker said. Transcripts from each stage of the hearings show Brian and Brandon changed their testimony under lengthy questioning by deputy district attorney Andrew Gindes, who prosecuted many of the child molestation ring cases in Kern during the 1980s. Barbour could not be reached for comment. At this week's hearing, Dr. Maggie Bruck will testify that the way the children were questioned in the Kniffen-McCuan case as well as cases nationwide in the 1980s most likely implanted false memories into their minds. Bruck, a psychologist at the McGill University in Montreal, is known nationally for her work on children's suggestibility and has conducted numerous studies since the 1980s. The defense attorneys also will be questioning the medical testimony presented at the first trial by Dr. Bruce A. Woodling, a Ventura physician who examined the children and who also was used in the McMartin case. Woodling's reliance on a physical examination method called the ``wink test'' did not meet scientific standards, according to Snedeker. Other cases around the country that relied heavily on this test have fallen apart. Recent studies published in pediatric journals show that 49 percent to 62 percent of children who have never been molested respond positively to the wink test, a reflex measurement of the rectal muscles. The method is now discredited in the medical community. Since the 1980s, wrongful claims of molestation have seemed to die down, but Simrin fears the hysteria that fosters such cases is still simmering in American communities. Currently, the small town of Wenatchee in Washington is besieged with such fear. About 40 people have been arrested in this agricultural area on suspicion of swapping children around in sex rings. ``It's always the same,'' Snedeker says. ``It's always the marginalized people living on the edge of town who are picked up for this sort of thing. The whole town gets upset, into a frenzy of fear, and everyone afraid of being the next one accused.'' Simrin said he still sees the lingering shadow of fear in Bakersfield, left over from the 1980s' panic. ``It was a climate of fear which to some extent even affects us today in terms of teachers afraid of being alone with kids and people are afraid that the most innocent act will be turned into a ghastly crime.'' ==== http://www.nemasys.com/rahome/resources/ra_cases.shtml Bakersfield: Alvin and Deborah McCuan, Scott and Brenda Kniffen, and Rodney and Linda Phelps (parents of Deborah McCuan) were indicted in 1982 on charges of sexually molesting children. The alleged victims included their own children, traded between families and used for group sex, as well as children from the Bluebird troop run by Deborah McCuan and the unlicensed day care facility in her home. The McCuans and Kniffens were convicted on all counts in 1983, drawing aggregate prison terms in excess of 1,000 years. The Phelps fled town and disapeared after being charged with 33 counts. Ritual elements in the case were ignored by authorities at the time. (Newton, 1996). In August 1996, a judge overturned the child molestation convictions of Alvin and Deborah McCuan and Scott and Brenda Kniffen.** (Northwest Herald, August 14, 1996). A second intrafamilial child-sex ring was exposed and prosecuted in Bakersfield, with trials continuing into 1985. Five adult defendants were convicted, including: Richard Cox, 47 (14 counts); Ruth Ann Taylor, 31 (14 counts); Anthony Cox, 25 (7 counts); George Cox, 24 (7 counts); and Theresa Cox, 21 (3 counts). Prison terms ranged from 10 to 41 years. (Newton, 1996). Seven defendants in another Bakersfield child-sex ring were convicted in August 1985, with multiple charges including child molestation and endangerment, assault with a deadly weapon, and production of child pornography. Wayne Forsythe, 28, was convicted on 41 separate counts. Other defendants, each convicted on a minimum of 50 counts, included Forsythe's wife, Colleen Dill Forsythe, 26; Ricky Pitts, 31, and his wife Marcella Pitts, 29; Wayne Dill, 26 (Colleen Forsythe's brother); Grace Dill, 50 (mother of Colleen Forsythe and Wayne Dill); and Gina Miller. Cumulative prison sentences in the case came to 2,100 years. (Newton, 1996). Leroy George Stowe III was convicted on 16 counts of child molestation and sentenced to 30 years in March 1985. Shortly after his conviction, victims in the case expanded their disclosures to include graphic descriptions of satanic ritual abuse and murders, involving nine more defendants. In January 1987, Gerardo Gonzales (facing 117 charges) pleaded no contest to one count of molesting a 5-year-old girl, and Rev. Willard Lee Thomas (facing 43 charges) pleaded no contest on two counts, including child endangerment and unlawful sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old girl. Both defendants were released from jail on the basis of time served, and charges against the remaining defendants were dismissed as part of their plea bargain. In February 1987, a California appeals court reversed Leroy Stowe's conviction on 12 of 16 felony counts, with the grounds cited as a technical insufficiency in the pleadings.** (Newton, 1996). ==== http://www.ags.uci.edu/~dehill/witchhunt/cases/kern_county.htm Articles on these cases culled from the FMSF and Witchhunt Mailing Lists (opinions are those of the authors): ********************************************************************** F M S F O U N D A T I O N N E W S L E T T E R (e-mail edition) Vol 5 No. 8, September 1, 1996 ********************************************************************** 3401 Market Street suite 130, Philadelphia, PA 19104, (215-387-1865) ********************************************************************** . . . ___________________________________________________________________ Judge Frees 2 Couples Imprisoned 14 Years in Child Molestation Case San Diego Union-Tribune Aug. 14, 1996 Two couples will be freed from prison following dismissal of their convictions of child molestation because authorities repeatedly asked the children leading questions thereby tainting their testimony. Scott and Brenda Kniffen and Alvin and Deborah McCuan will not be retried because so many years have passed and because two Kniffen boys now say they were not molested. In the Kern County Superior Court ruling, Judge Jon Stuebbe wrote, "It is apparent to this court that the result of the interviewing techniques used in this case was to render fundamentally unreliable the children's testimony at trial." This included "telling the child reports of abuse would help their parents and they could all go home and live together again." These families are two of several who were prosecuted for sexual molestation in Kern County in the 1980's and have since had their convictions overturned. ________________________ Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 07:39:51 -0400 (EDT) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Freyd) Subject: Victory in California Carol Hopkins writes: Kern County Superior Court Judge Jon Steubbe today [Mon, Aug 12] overturned the convictions of the Kniffens and McCuans!!! He has ordered that they be released immediately. These two couples were convicted during the Kern County "sex ring" trials and have served fourteen years. Mike Snedeker was the appellate attorney who prevailed after also obtaining overturned convictions in a number of the other Kern County cases. For some of the background: ********************************************************************** F M S F O U N D A T I O N N E W S L E T T E R (e-mail edition) Vol 4 No. 8, September 1, 1995 ********************************************************************** ____________________________________________________ APPEALS COURT OVERTURNS CHILD-MOLESTATION CONVICTION Fresno Bee, August 10, 1995 Robert Rodriguez Donna Sue Hubbard was convicted of child molestation in 1985 and given a 100-year sentence. The 5th District Court of Appeal overturned the conviction which was one of the famous Kern County cases during the mid 1980s. "The climate at the time was one of mass hysteria," said Glenn Cole, former Kern County grand jury foreman. "There is substantial likelihood that the children's resulting testimony was false and thus unreliable," appellate Justice Thomas Harris wrote. The court also faulted the trial judge for faulty instructions to the jury. The decision will result in a new trial if prosecutors choose to retry the case. According to the article the "allegations began 10 years ago when police investigated the possible molestation of a 6-year-old boy by one of Hubbard's neighbors. As investigations continued, the allegations became increasingly detailed and horrific. The neighbor was accused of "tying him up -- placing him on a wall hanger with either a rope, harness or chain -- and molesting him." Investigators found only a small cup hood with a shank three-eights of an inch long in the apartment. Hubbard became involved after a neighbor said that Hubbard's son was also at the neighbor's house. She became a suspect after a paid informant "accused her of receiving money for allowing others to molest her son." ********************************************************************** F M S F O U N D A T I O N N E W S L E T T E R (e-mail edition) Vol 4 No. 9, October 1, 1995 ********************************************************************** _________________________________________________________________ "MANY KERN COUNTY (CALIFORNIA) MOLESTATION" CONVICTIONS OVERTURNED _Fresno Bee_, 8/30/95 On August 7, 1995 the 5th District Court of Appeal in California overturned the conviction of Donna Hubbard. She was one of 37 people convicted in the early and mid-1980s as Kern County prosecuted eight "rings" of child molesters. Since that time, 14 of the 26 people found guilty have had their convictions overturned. Hubbard and two men were convicted in 1985 of the molest of Hubbard's 9-year-old son and two other boys. She was sentenced to 100 years. Hubbard's son later recanted much of his testimony. In its 470 page opinion, the Appeals Court was sharply critical of the Kern County investigators' interview methods. The court noted that investigators repeatedly used leading questions and conducted numerous interviews with the children. The court said that there was "substantial likelihood" that Hubbard's conviction was based on false evidence. ++++++ M. F. Abernathy -- [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] -- 04/07/02 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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