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1841696
    In  California,  a  Question  of  Abuse; An Excess of Child Molestation
Cases Brings Kern County's Investigative Methods Under Fire.
   The Washington Post, May 31, 1989, FINAL Edition
   BY: Jay Mathews, Washington Post Staff Writer
   SECTION: Style, p. d01
   STORY TYPE: News National
   LINE COUNT: 314    WORD COUNT: 3456
 
   BAKERSFIELD,  Calif. -  Only two of the children at the trial could even
identify   Gina  Miller.  She  was  Colleen  Forsythe's  friend,  the  only
nonrelative  in  Bakersfield's  infamous Pitts family child molestation and
pornography ring.
 
   Identified or not, the jury found her guilty with the others in 1985 and
sent  the  soft-spoken,  auburn-haired  fast-food  worker to prison for 405
years,  forcing her to end abruptly the breast-feeding of her fourth child,
10-month-old Tammra.
 
   After  hearing  the lurid allegations made during the seven-month trial,
the  12  jurors  from  this  San Joaquin Valley city of oil wells and fruit
trees  may  have  felt  even  the  most severe punishment was insufficient. 
Children  testified that several adult members of the Pitts family gathered
regularly  to  sodomize  and  molest  their own sons, daughters, nephews or
nieces,  often  after  forcing drugs or alcohol on them. Children said they
saw cameras apparently filming the sexual acts.
 
   There  had  never  been  anything  like  it  here, and in a city full of
families  from  Oklahoma  and  the  South  who  prided  themselves on their
Christian  values  and  adherence to law and order, the reaction was horror
and   outrage.  Children  could  not  make  up  such  stories,  prosecutors
repeatedly  reminded  the  jurors  and  the  public. "I can't conceive of a
reason for something like this," said Superior Court Judge Gary T. Friedman
as  he  pronounced sentences. "I doubt if our friends in the animal kingdom
would treat their young in such a fashion."
 
   A  few  defense  attorneys raised objections to the extraordinary prison
terms.  The total of 2,619 years for the seven defendants set a child abuse
case  record  for  California  and  probably  the  whole  country.  Defense
attorneys noted that no adults had testified to witnessing the crimes, that
there  was no sign of the alleged pornographic films or videotapes and that
the  medical evidence was controversial. But such objections were buried in
an outpouring of disgust at the trial testimony and a growing concern about
mass child abuse cases materializing in many other parts of the country. 
   Then,  as  months  went  by, a few Bakersfield residents began to wonder
about the Pitts case and several other sexual abuse investigations that had
been  carried out for several years by a number of very active officials in
the  Kern  County  district  attorney's and sheriff's offices. One analysis
showed  that  in  1982 the county's rate of arrests for child molesting was
twice  the state average. Investigations that initially focused on just one
or two children seemed to grow to include many more.
 
   Finally, a county investigation of an alleged satanic cult, a group that
made the Pitts defendants appear kindly by comparison, careened irrevocably
out  of  control. Child witnesses who had been repeatedly interviewed, much
like the witnesses in the Pitts and several other cases, told investigators
that  the cult had not only molested children but conducted blood rites and
even   killed  babies.  Frantic  efforts  to  discover  the  bodies  proved
fruitless,  and  then  three young witnesses went one crucial step further.
They identified as members of the satanic ring a sheriff's deputy, a social
worker  and a deputy district attorney--persons with impeccable reputations
who could not possibly have been where the children said they saw them.
 
   This  was  the  turning  point.  The  credibility  of both witnesses and
investigators in the series of molestation cases began to come into serious
question.  Gina  Miller,  obsessed  with thoughts of her children, said she 
felt  her  spirits  lifting for the first time. Perhaps she had a chance to
get out soon.
 
   Within  months  a  special  investigative  team  from the state attorney
general's  office had descended on Bakersfield and produced one of the most
damning  reports  one California agency had ever written about another. The
80-page document concluded that a county child sexual abuse coordinator and
sheriff's deputies overinterviewed and pressured child witnesses, gave them
opportunities  to  share accounts of the case, and assumed anything a child
said  was  true. The report said this prompted investigators "to accept the
children's   statements  without  question,  to  neglect  to  verify  those
statements  through  additional questions of the victim and others close to
the  victim,  and  to  fail  to  seek  additional corroborative evidence to
support the children's claims."
 
   The county's investigation, the report concluded, "foundered in a sea of
unproven  allegations,  insufficient  corroborative  evidence,  and bizarre
allegations  that  in  some  instances  were  proven to be false and raised
serious questions about the victims' credibility."
 
   The  state's  highest  law  enforcement  officials  had decided that, in
Bakersfield  at  least,  horribly detailed stories of abuse and molestation 
told by innocent children might not always be true. Not only did the report
challenge  an  article  of  faith in the conviction of the Pitts family and
other  defendants  here,  but  it  was directly critical of methods used by
investigators  who  had  participated,  at  least  in  part,  in  gathering
testimony used against the Pitts family and many others.
 
   The  resulting  furor  has not drawn much attention outside California's
San  Joaquin  Valley. Notable molestation cases like the McMartin Preschool
trial  in Los Angeles have preempted most national media attention. But the
attorney general's report on Bakersfield paints a picture of what has to be
considered   one   of  the  clumsiest  and  most  destructive  child  abuse
investigations  in  American  history.  The  report  leaves unanswered many
questions  about how to deal with such tragedies, and what to do about many
other Kern County residents left in prison whose cases have not attracted a
full-scale second look.
 
   For  the attorney general's report said nothing directly about the Pitts
defendants.  Miller said she experienced a sinking feeling that the state's
exposure  of  investigative  clumsiness  might not help them after all, and
others raised the same concerns.
 
   Glenn Cole, a retired accountant who led the county grand jury from 1983 
to 1985, said he believes "innocent people are in jail right today" because
children were "questioned to the point where they could not tell truth from
fiction."  He  said  he  thinks the initial investigators were not properly
trained  and  the  attorney general's office should have done more to right
the  wrongs.  "I  try to put it out of my mind," Cole said, "but I get very
emotional about it."
 
   Some  attorneys, particularly those defending the Pittses, are beginning
to  compare many of the Bakersfield child abuse investigations to the Salem
witch  trials.  They say they fear that instinctive loathing over unusually
egregious  accounts  of child molestation has subverted the rule of law and
due process and unnecessarily shattered dozens of lives, including those of
several children.
 
   In  some  minds  the  parallels  across  three centuries are very close.
Michael  Snedeker,  a  San Francisco attorney representing one of the Pitts
defendants,  said  the  Salem  trials  began in 1692 with two children who,
after  repeated  questioning, identified many local people as witches. "The
Salem  witchcraft  fever  did  not break until the children made absolutely
unbelievable  accusations, pointing their damning fingers at the governor's
wife,"  he  said. "They also accused those most eager in the prosecution of
witches.  Once  disbelieved  in  a  few particulars, they lost the power to 
condemn they undoubtedly never sought."
 
   Bitter arguments have broken out here over the guilt or innocence of the
Pitts  defendants and several others jailed after investigations similar to
the  discredited  satanic  case.  At  the very least, the turmoil shows how
damaging  a misstep in a child abuse case can be, and how it may take years
to  erase  the effects of overzealous interviewing and an unshakable belief
in the veracity of children, even those under severe emotional pressure.
 
   In the last several months two of the alleged child victims in the Pitts
case  have  recanted,  saying nothing at all happened in the green house on
Sycamore Street where the molestations were supposed to have occurred.
 
   The  sudden  shift  in  the  cases sparked unusual tensions between many
leading  Bakersfield  citizens.  Andrew  Gindes,  a  former  prosecutor who
handled   the   Pitts   case,   has   sued   Alfred   T.   Fritts,   former
co-publisher/editor  of  the  Bakersfield  Californian, for libel after the
newspaper   printed  a  story  about  one  witness's  recantation.  Gindes'
complaint  alleged that Fritts was hostile toward him because Fritts feared
his  "own activities would be disclosed if a vigorous policy was pursued by
law  enforcement  against  child  molesters."  Dennis Kinnaird, an attorney
representing Fritts and other defendants in the case, called the allegation 
"totally incorrect" and said, "We don't think it has any basis in fact."
 
   Gindes, in an interview, expressed outrage that the results of a lengthy
jury  trial  were now being questioned, and accused attorneys for the Pitts
defendants of organizing a "media hype." "I don't think the media should be
used  to  conduct  a  public relations campaign to attempt to prejudice the
judicial system," he said.
 
   Investigators  and  prosecutors  here  who handled most of the cases say
that  their  evidence stands up, and bitterly denounce the decision to drop
the  satanic cult case. Kern County District Attorney Edward R. Jagels, who
refused  to  prosecute  the  satanic  case, still defends the investigative
methods  and  lengthy  prison  sentences  in  the  Pitts  and  other cases.
Arguments against them, he said, "just don't hang together."
 
   Although  some  attorneys  with  the  state  attorney  general's  office
privately  express  doubts  about the evidence in the Pitts and other cases
brought  during  the widespread molestation investigations of 1982 to 1985,
they  say  they  can  do nothing to overturn jury verdicts. Deputy Attorney
General  Thomas  Gede,  who  was assigned to the Pitts case on appeal, said
that  after reading all 14,000 pages of trial transcript he is convinced of
the guilt of all seven defendants. 
   While  those  verdicts are being appealed, the Pitts defendants and many
others  remain  in  prison  with multiple life sentences, wondering if they
will  ever  leave prison and, if they do, ever restore a semblance of their
previous lives.
 
   Colleen  Forsythe,  sentenced  to  373 years in the Pitts case, said her
13-year-old  daughter  Windy,  one  of  the two witnesses who have recently
recanted, has been through several foster homes and returned more than once
to the custody of juvenile authorities.
 
   During trial, Forsythe, now 30, insisted on her innocence. "There was no
way  I  was going to say that I did something like that when I didn't," she
said  during  an  interview  at  the  California  Institution  for Women in
Frontera.
 
   Miller  rejected  an  early  offer of a lighter sentence in exchange for
testifying  against  the  others.  "People think I was crazy for not taking
that  deal,  but how could I take responsibility for all these people?" she
said.
 
   Bakersfield  tree  surgeon  Roy Nokes, who spent $50,000 in a successful
fight  to  clear  his  son  and  daughter-in-law  of molestation charges in 
another  case, said he thinks some innocent people who lacked the necessary
financial  resources accepted shorter jail terms after seeing the huge jury
verdicts   against   those   in   the  Pitts  case  and  others.  His  son,
daughter-in-law  and  others are suing a prosecutor and an investigator for
the alleged harm done them and their families.
 
   "They  should  be  hit hard enough that they never do anything like this
again," he said.
 
   The  Pitts case began in 1984 when Ricky Lynn Pitts, now 36 and a former
truck driver and bartender, and his wife Marcella were accused of molesting
Marcella's  three  sons  by a previous marriage. The new wife of Marcella's
ex-husband  told  authorities  the  boys had reported being molested during
weekend visits to the Pittses' house on Sycamore Street.
 
   Marcella  Pitts,  34,  serving a 373-year sentence in the case, said the
wife  of her ex-husband made false charges because "she knew I was going to
fight  for  custody  of  those  kids  and  she knew I'd win." But the boys'
account  led  authorities  to  take  custody of them as well as eight other
children  and,  after  weeks  of  interviews  with the 11 children, to file
molestation charges against the Pittses, Forsythe, Forsythe's husband Wayne
(they  have  since  divorced), Forsythe's mother Grace Dill, 55, Dill's son 
Wayne Dill Jr., 33, and Miller.
 
   At  the  trial, some children said they were injected with drugs, forced
to  drink urine and alcohol and to engage in sex acts with adults and other
children  while as many as three cameras recorded the scene. In some cases,
Ricky  Pitts was accused of threatening children with being tied to a board
hanging on the wall.
 
   The  seven defendants all insisted on their innocence, and four took and
passed  lie  detector  tests. But the prosecution produced testimony from a
physician,  Bruce  Woodling,  that  there  were signs of molestation in two
children.  The prosecution said it produced medical testimony on only these
two because they were the only ones who denied being molested.
 
   Many  child  witnesses were interviewed repeatedly by Carol Darling, the
district  attorney's child sexual abuse coordinator, before telling stories
of  abuse  and agreeing to testify. Darling, who declined to comment on the
case,  retired  on  a disability pension last year for excessive mental and
emotional stress.
 
   Andrew  Rubin, an attorney who represented Ricky Pitts, said he saw many
inconsistencies in the children's testimony and thought it sounded as if it 
came  from  an outside source, but the jury seemed impressed by the medical
testimony and one moment of courtroom drama.
 
   A  6-year-old  girl  witness,  whom Pitts said he had disciplined in the
past,  began  screaming  hysterically, "Don't let him get me! Don't let him
kill  me!"  when  she  was  asked to identify him at the defendants' table.
Uncontrollable, she ran into the arms of Judge Friedman, who said after the
trial he felt "she was definitely traumatized, as were the other children."
 
   At  that  point  in  the trial, Rubin said, "I realized I was in serious
trouble in this case."
 
   The  defendants  began  serving  their  sentences in the summer of 1985.
Their  continued  protestations  of  innocence  were  largely ignored until
Christina  Hayes,  now  14,  Ricky Pitts' niece and the eldest of the child
witnesses,  had  a  conversation  with  her guardian's wife during the 1986
Christmas season.
 
   The  wife, Mary Isabell, said she was concerned about the girl's hostile
attitude  and  poor study habits. After a visit by Christina's grandfather,
who  firmly  believed  in  the  innocence  of the Pitts defendants, Isabell
invited Christina into her bedroom to discuss the trial. 
   "I  said, 'We have to talk about it,'" Isabell said in a taped interview
with  private  investigator  Denver  Dunn,  which  is now part of the court
record.  "I  told  her,  'You  have  to  tell me the truth. Good God, if it
happened a little bit, not at all, a whole bunch, whatever happened, I need
to know so that I can help you.'"
 
   After  thinking  about  it for a moment, Christina changed her story and
said  that nothing had happened. In the course of several days of talk with
Robert  Hayes,  the guardian she refers to as her father, and with Isabell,
she  said  her  trial  testimony  had emerged from hours of interviews with
social  worker Carol Darling and other investigators, in which she was told
accounts of what other children were saying. She said Darling told her some
potentially violent friends of the Pitts family were out to do her harm.
 
   "They told me that if I didn't cooperate they would take me away from my
dad  (Hayes)  and  put me in a foster home," Christina said in an interview
conducted  during  a  walk  in  her  Bakersfield neighborhood with no other
adults  present.  Her  natural mother, Clovette Pitts, disappeared when the
others were arrested.
 
   Hayes said he believes Christina is now telling the truth and noted that
her  grades  and  general  attitude  have  improved. But Jagels, the county 
district  attorney,  and  other  county investigators said her new story is
false,  perhaps concocted to relieve tension in the family. They emphasized
her lengthy, detailed testimony on the stand, which defense attorneys point
out  consisted mostly of short, affirmative answers to detailed prosecution
questions. Jagels said he thought it significant that she could not specify
precisely  where  and  when  she  heard the details of the molestations she
testified  to.  Jagels  also  noted  her recantation came shortly after she
learned her grandmother, Grace Dill, had broken her leg in prison.
 
   Three weeks after Christina Hayes changed her story, district attorney's
investigator  Tam Hodgson interviewed Windy Betterton, Forsythe's daughter,
producing a transcript that is now in the court record:
 
   Hodgson:  "Okay.  Those  things  that  you testified to, are all of them
true, some of them true, none of them true?"
 
   Betterton: "None of them are true."
 
   Her cousin, Sherril Boyd, told Hodgson that she had informed the girl of
Christina Hayes' recantation and cautioned Windy to be sure she was telling
the  truth.  Boyd  said the girl began to cry, and then said "the people at
the DA's office had kept asking, or saying over and over and over that they 
knew  she had been molested. She had finally just made up something to keep
them from questioning her anymore."
 
   In  the  satanic  cases,  the  attorney general's report criticized Kern
County  investigators  for  interviewing  "victims repeatedly, covering old
ground,  reiterating  other  victims'  statements,  failing to question the
children's  statements,  and  urging  them  to name additional suspects and
victims."  Despite  state guidelines against multiple interviews, one child
in  the  satanic case "was interviewed 24 times by sheriff's deputies and a
total of 35 times in the investigation," the report said.
 
   Critics of the Kern County investigations, citing the attorney general's
report,  have  focused  on  several other cases investigated about the same
time  by some of the same Kern County officials or by other officials using
similar methods:
 
   Scott  and Brenda Kniffen and Alvin and Deborah McCuan, two couples with
two  small  children  each, were given prison terms of 240 to 268 years for
molesting  their  children,  despite evidence that some of the children had
falsely accused other adults and had come under the influence of a mentally
disturbed  relative  who  resented some of the defendants. Prosecutors used
testimony   from   Woodling   that   was   challenged  by  David  Paul,  an 
internationally recognized child abuse expert.
 
   David  A.  Duncan,  a  39-year-old  former oil field worker, was sent to
prison  for 60 years in 1984 on a molestation charge. Duncan was accused by
child  witnesses  discovered  during  a  sweep of a neighborhood in another
investigation.   The  children  were  repeatedly  interviewed  before  they
testified,  and  testimony  by a jail-house informant was also used against
Duncan. He was released in late January after an appeals court reversed his
conviction and the prosecutor dropped the charges.
 
   Howard L. Weimer, a 65-year-old former automobile repair shop owner, has
been in prison for a year after a woman he and his wife cared for as foster
parents  years  before  accused  him of molesting her. Eventually sheriff's
deputies,  in  part  through  lengthy  interviews,  found four other former
foster children of the couple who made similar accusations. The trial judge
imposed a 42-year sentence.
 
   John  A.  Stoll,  a  45-year-old  former  gas  plant foreman, received a
40-year sentence after being convicted of molestation on testimony from his
son and some other children, including some who later recanted.
 
   Many  investigators  and  attorneys  who handled Bakersfield child abuse 
cases  in  the early 1980s vigorously defend their actions and ridicule the
attorney  general's  report.  "It  was  just  junk," former deputy district
attorney Gindes said in an interview. He said he still believed the satanic
cult accusations might have merit.
 
   In  a  follow-up  interview,  Gindes  denied  criticizing  the  attorney
general's attack on the satanic case investigation or saying he thought the
satanic  case  might still have merit. He declined to say what his attitude
toward the case was.
 
   Carol  Darling's husband Brad, a lieutenant in the Kern County sheriff's
office, has continued to speak to church groups about his belief in some of
the satanic charges. He told one group, according to a transcript, that his
witnesses  "described  things  that I can't fathom a child knowing about or
learning on television." The Darlings declined to be interviewed.
 
   Snedeker  said  an  expert  witness,  University  of  California  Irvine
gynecologist  R. David Miller, has concluded that the medical evidence used
at the trial was meaningless. But appeals and new trials take time. Despite
the  widespread  doubt about many of the Bakersfield molestation cases, the
people sent to prison expect to be there for some time. 
   Gina Miller said she is certain she will be free some day and thinks she
can start a new life with her children in another state. Her friend Colleen
Forsythe  is  less hopeful. When she is freed, she said, she may not try to
retrieve her children from their new homes.
 
   "I'm scared of kids. I'm scared to death of kids," she said. "I'm glad I
can't have any more."	
 
   CAPTIONS: Gina Miller, of the defendants in the Bakersfield trial.
   Grace Dill, Marcella Pitts and Colleen Forsythe in prison.
   Christina  Hayes,  eldest of the child witnesses, has since recanted her
testimony. LV  witnesses, has since recanted her testimony. LV  
 
   NAMED  PERSONS:  MILLER,  GINA;  FORSYTHE,  COLLEEN;  PITTS, RICKY LYNN;
    PITTS, MARCELLA
   DESCRIPTORS: Child molestation; Trials; California       ;^   \  PMODEM  FON            ^       ABALON TXT              9*  FORCE   TXT            
    