National Child Abuse Hysteria
Some of you will remember the national child sexual abuse hysteria during the 80s and early 90s, which allegedly was widely occurring in daycare centers.
The most notorious was probably the McMartin case in Manhattan Beach, California. Several members of the McMartin family were accused of sexually molesting very young children attending the family daycare center. The investigation and trial lasted seven years and was the most expensive in history. At the end, no convictions were obtained.
Other notorious cases were the Fells Acres case and the Bernard Baran case in Massachusetts, the Kelly Michaels case in New Jersey, The Little Rascals case in North Carolina, and the Keller case in Texas.
There were related cases in which the accused were not daycare providers: bus drivers (Robert Halsey in Massachusetts, Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen in Ohio); ministers (Wenatchee, Washington); family members (Bruce Clairmont and Ray and Shirley Souza in Massachusetts), the Yankton Indian Reservation (South Dakota), Bruce Perkins and the San Antonio Four (Texas), Bill and Kathy Swan and Lynn Malcom (Washington); and teachers of older children (Gunther Fiek in Georgia, Arnold and Jesse Friedman in New York).
Most of the people convicted in the daycare cases are now out of prison. Some were exonerated; some were paroled; some served their entire sentences; some died.
Zealous Janet Reno
But a man wrongfully convicted in one of the most notorious daycare cases has now been behind bars for 36 years: Francisco Fuster-Escalona (AKA Frank Fuster). The case is known as the Country Walk Case.
Country Walk was one of three very dubious cases tried by Janet Reno. These cases brought her to a prominence that made her U.S. Attorney General. Bobby Finje was a deeply religious 14-year-old boy who babysat at his church. A mother of a three-year-old had suspicions and took her to a psychologist who elicited an accusation after sessions of coercive interviewing. Panic occurred, more children were questioned, and 21 accusers were found. Many of these accusations were too bizarre to be believed. But they were. Despite the threat of life imprisonment, Bobby refused a guilty plea. After being held for over two years, Bobby was acquitted of all charges.
Reno was more successful with her case against Grant Snowden, a highly decorated Miami police officer whose wife ran a daycare program in their home. He was accused in 1985. He was acquitted of one charge against an 11-year-old girl when it was proven that the girl had never attended the daycare. But he was convicted of abusing three other children under the age of six. He was freed in 1998 by a federal appeals court. A Reno witness had been allowed to say that 99.5% of children told the truth about abuse. The Court considered that permitting this outlandish statement was a critical error of constitutional dimension. Prosecutors dropped the case.
Country Walk
Frank Fuster was a 35-year-old Cuban immigrant and was married to 17-year-old Iliana Flores from Honduras. Iliana ran a babysitting service in their home in Country Walk, a suburb of Miami. Frank worked about an hour away, leaving the house before the children arrived and usually returning after they left. The case began when a three-year-old asked his mother, who was giving him a bath, to “Kiss my body.” He said, “Iliana kisses all the babies’ bodies.” The mother became concerned and reported the comments to the Country Walk manager, who called the Dade County child protection authorities.
Panic spread when two police detectives went house to house, falsely telling people that Frank was on probation for rape. Other accusers emerged. Under Reno’s supervision, the children were coercively interviewed by Laurie and Joseph Braga, not psychologists but an educator and a speech pathologist. They had no qualifications for interviewing children. The Bragas would not take no for an answer. For example, they questioned Fuster’s own son for seven hours. In their videotaped interviews, the children revealed horrifying tales of abuse involving masks, snakes, drills, and other objects. Qualified psychologists, who have viewed these videotapes, have criticized the Braga’s methods as highly leading, suggestive, and unreliable. But Janet Reno was convinced.
While Bobby Finje was an appealing religious teenager and Grant Snowden was a respected police officer, Fuster had a problematic past. In 1969, a man was killed during an altercation and Frank served four years in prison. (He says the man accidentally shot himself with Frank’s rifle during a struggle while Frank was attempting a citizen’s arrest.) In 1982, he was convicted of improperly touching a nine-year-old girl’s breast through her clothing. Fuster has always adamantly denied this. Writer Mark Pendergrast believes Fuster’s account of the incident. But other critics of Country Walk — notably Debbie Nathan, James Woods, and Keith Hampton — find the accusation credible. He was convicted and placed on probation for two years.
His prior record was the first strike against him. The second was that his own son, Noel, tested positive for gonorrhea of the throat. The test used is now known to be inaccurate, with a false positive rate in children of over one third. Retesting was not possible, because the prosecutors destroyed the sample.
The third strike was that his wife and co-defendant, Iliana, plead guilty and testified against him. This confession was obtained through physical and psychological torture.
Iliana’s coerced confession.
Iliana, a teen-aged immigrant, denied guilt for nearly a year, despite being held naked in solitary confinement for much of that time. She was being forcibly held under cold showers. Conditions were unsanitary, and her skin was covered with infections. Reno brought in a Miami psychologist, Michael Rappaport, to get Iliana to confess. During August and August of 1985, Rappaport visited Iliana 34 times, almost always accompanied by Janet Reno. These sessions usually involved hypnosis. In 1991, Rappaport told journalist Debbie Nathan that Reno came with him to see Iliana. When the Clintons nominated Reno to be Attorney General, both Rappaport and Reno denied that Reno had participated in these interrogations.
Iliana pled guilty. After three years in prison, she was released and sent back to Honduras. At her sentencing, she said, “I am innocent of all of these charges … I am pleading guilty to get all of this over.”
Francisco Fuster was found guilty and sentenced to six life terms and 165 days in prison. There have been multiple attempts on his life. A 1996 book, Unspeakable Acts, was made into a movie in 1990. Both book and movie did much damage by depicting Frank as guilty beyond all doubt. Reno became America’s chief law-enforcement officer.
Iliana recants. And recants. And recants.
In 1992, Iliana gave a sworn statement to Frank’s attorney, Arthur Cohen. Iliana described what she had been put through, repudiated her guilty plea, and stated that neither she nor Frank had abused any children. Cohen went before a judge, who ordered an evidentiary hearing.
But in another reversal, a minister, Reverend Tommy Watson, released a letter from Iliana, in which she recanted her recantation, claiming that Fuster’s lawyers had confused and tricked her. Iliana’s letter, in fact, had not been written by her but by the DA’s office. Watson had conveyed the letter to Iliana and pressured her to sign it.
In 2001, Iliana contacted the PBS TV Show, Frontline. According to Frontline’s web site:
“In her FRONTLINE interview with correspondent Peter J. Boyer, Iliana says her testimony in the 1985 trial was false and neither she nor Frank Fuster are guilty of child abuse. She says her trial testimony (as well as the letter sent through Rev. Watson several years later) were both the result of enormous physical and psychological pressures. She recounts a harrowing tale of being kept naked in her Dade County jail cell, forcibly held under cold showers, and subjected to repeated psychological badgering aimed at convincing her that she had repressed memories of Fuster’s abuse. She even recalls late-night visits from Janet Reno.”
Iliana also discussed the letter Watson had pressured her to sign:
Apparently my testimony was going to reopen the case,” she said. “And they remind me that Janet Reno was the United States attorney general. . .. They also remind me of all the trouble that I could go through and I can be put back into a cell. . .. They talked about extradition.” Watson also reminded her that his church’s financial support was predicated on her helping “the children,” the putative victims of her and Frank’s abuse.
Current Status.
Frank Fuster continues to serve his sentence. All his appeals have failed. He hasn’t had a lawyer since 2003. The Innocence Project of Florida looked at the case in 2012 but refused to take the case without giving a reason in 2018. They also refuse to discuss the case.
Janet Reno unsuccessfully ran for Governor of Florida in 2002. She died of Parkinson’s disease on 7 November 2016.
Read Frank’s first-person account of what happened to him.
Frank Fuster will be eligible for parole in 2134.
Find out more about the case.
How you can help