In the summer of 1984, over a dozen people were arrested in Bakersfield, California and charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse of a minor. It stunned the community and helped make the career of Kern Co. District Attorney Ed Jagels. But according to Witch Hunt, a new documentary airing on MSNBC, no one was more surprised than the defendants themselves.
Witch Hunt interviews a number of those defendants, a group of lower-class Bakersfield residents who suddenly faced dozens of charges of molestation from neighborhood youths, often including their own children. At trial, the jury was bombarded with tales of lewd sex acts. The defendants claim that they were denied a fair hearing by the judge and that the children's testimony sounded coached. None the less, the jury convicted them, with some offenders sentenced to more than 300 years.
The defendants languished in prison, with some sent to the fearsome California prison San Quentin. Later, stories began emerging in Bakersfield of satanism and human sacrifice among these same families. Then-California Attorney General Jon Van de Kamp was asked to look into it.
What the Attorney General's office found, however, was that not only was there no evidence to support the rumors of Satanism, but that the Kern County sheriff and District Attorney had done a very poor job of prosecuting the child molestation cases, specifically mentioning the improper questioning and "coaching" of child witnesses.
This information lent credence to the defendants' claims of innocence. The D.A.'s case was further undercut when the children who had testified to abuse began changing their stories. As the story came out, more and more children came forward to recant their testimony. Their stories were consistent: police and social workers had coached them. They were threatened, cajoled and coerced into making accusations against their own parents.
Since the convictions had hinged almost entirely on the children's testimony, with the lack of substantive corroboration, the defendants sought to have their convictions overturned. The first success came in 1990, when the convictions of Rick Pitts and six others were overturned.
But the greatest victory for the defendants came when they uncovered new evidence. During the appeals process, defense lawyers for James Stoll received a copy of the state's files on the case. Fortunately for them, the state also included evidence that was never presented at the trial. First was a report from a medical examiner that found no evidence of sexual abuse. The second was an audiotape of an interview with one of the children that clearly illustrated the "coaching" methods used to extract accusations from the children. This evidence was not shown to the defense in the first trial, an egregious case of prosecutorial misconduct. Confronted with this, the prosecution's case was devastated.
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