Acclaimed
1991-92 San Diego Grand Jury
Child Abuse Report
Demonstrated to be Fraudulent
by Subsequent Grand Jury

by Alex Constantine

In 1992 some 2,300 copies of a report on child abuse were mailed by a San Diego County grand jury to legislators, newspaper reporters, social service agencies and college faculty. The report, Child Sexual Abuse, Assault and Molest Issues, was touted on network television and in the public print. The liberal Mother Jones magazine, in its July 1996 number, lauded the efforts of Carol Hopkins, deputy forewoman of the original San Diego grand jury and organizer of the mailing campaign, for countering "unfounded allegations" child abuse. The Mother Jones story, written by Judith Levine, was typical of the publicity given the report, which claimed "panic" over child abuse "seems to sprout from the desert soil of San Diego as abundantly as neon fuchsia succulents and bougainvillea":

The county has been the scene of a string of highly publicized false allegations of molestation, including satanic ritual abuse, going back to the 1980s. In 1992, a major grand jury investigation found the county's child welfare agencies and juvenile courts to be "a system out of control," so keen on protecting children from predation that it took hundreds of them away from their parents on what turned out to be false charges. The report called for "profound change" throughout the system.

Verbatim copies of the report are available from "men's rights" organizations and legal advocacy groups on the Internet promoting the "false memory" thesis of ritual child abuse. Defense attorneys representing accused pedophiles and ritual abusers have quoted from it in the courtroom.

And much of the report has been proven to be confabulated - fashioned from whole cloth and sewn into a legal parachute for child abuse defendants facing conviction. In the second, unpublicized inquiry into claims made in the 1991-92 report. it was discovered that the first grand jury, chaired by retired Navy Captain Richard Macfie, had misrepresented case histories, cooked courtroom testimony and ignored physical evidence of sexual abuse to arrive at the erroneous conclusion that a "family crisis" exists in the justice system, that a break-up of families is endemic, aggravated by overzealous social workers and a fury of unfounded accusations.

The '91-'92 "Families in Crisis" report concluded that the issue of ritual molestation has "suffered from excessive, sometimes bordering on hysterical, media attention, reporting of inaccurate or questionable statistics, and the failure to define and identify child sexual abuse accurately." In fact, rarely is media support thrown to victims of ritual child abuse. And the panel's own handling of facts and statistics can, ironically enough, be interpreted as an attempt to generate hysteria, to arouse parental fear of child protective services and promote the ongoing backlash against ritually abused children and their advocates.

An April 1993 report by the San Diego County Commission on Children conflicts flatly with the original grand jury's argument that "children lie about these issues." On the contrary, the commission's study, cited in the second grand jury's review, refutes the "false memory"argument and the original panel's suggestion that children frequently "lie" about sexual predation:

Goodman (1986, 1989) and Saywitz (1989) on children's memory and on the reliability of children's allegations of sexual abuse ... demonstrate:

  1. It is uncommon for children to make false allegations about being molested.
     
  2. Children's memories are relatively good when compared to adult's memories.
     
  3. Errors by children in the recall of events are usually those of omission, rather than commission.
     
  4. While children may be more suggestible with respect to their memory of peripheral details, their recall of significant events that they have experienced, rather than things they have merely observed, cannot be easily changed or manipulated.

The second grand jury protested that its investigation was "hampered by missing 1991-92 files," a cover-up. The files "had been removed from the grand jury offices." A grand total of "fourteen files were returned on June 14, 1993, following a court hearing." The review panel's report, completed in 1993, details serious "flaws" in the '91-92 findings, and uncovers an unmistakable pattern of misrepresentation, arriving at the false impression that families are routinely torn asunder by "unfounded accusations."

A review of the original report found more unblushing falsifications in the presentation of abuse histories from county files, as evident in the following excerpts:
 

The 1991-92 Grand Jury Report

"[A] school teacher was tried for child abuse after pushing a child. A jury found her not guilty. It was acknowledged by the supervising Deputy D.A. that this was a weak case, prosecuted "'to teach a lesson, test the parameter of the law, educate the public.'"

Review Findings

The 1992-93 Grand Jury found there were seven victims. The defendant was not charged at all due to technical complications (statute of limitations and lack of witness availability). One child had been lifted by one arm and thrown into his desk, another was slapped hard on the head. She also had her hair pulled. A third child was slapped twice on the head and a fourth was hit on top of the head during a school assembly. The children said that the defendant called them such names as "stupid" or "idiot." This teacher's personnel file showed that she had received ten notices complaining about her inappropriate use of physical discipline on 8-year-old children. One of them suggested termination.

The 1991-92 Grand Jury Report

"A teenager was prosecuted for felony child molest upon an allegation by a foster child in his mother's home. There was no physical evidence. the D.A.'s office prosecuted despite its awareness that this child's DSS file contained references to previous unfounded allegations as well as psychological evaluations of the child as a pathological liar."

Review Findings

The case was based on a report by a 12-year-old boy to his social worker. He said that the defendant had molested him numerous times during a two-year period by oral copulation, sodomy and masturbation/fondling. The abuse began about one month after the victim was placed in foster care at the defendant's mother's house. The victim described weapons that the defendant had either used or threatened to use, including a whip, a knife, brass knuckles and a rifle. These weapons were found in a subsequent police search of the defendant's living quarters. The examining physician detailed physical findings which supported the victim's claim of having been sodomized.

The victim was borderline retarded, had sociopathic behaviors and psychological problems, but no reference to a report that the victim was a pathological liar was found.

The defendant pled guilty to Penal Code 647.6 (child molest). The 1991-92 report makes additional comments about this case ... and alleges that the District Attorney's "decision to prosecute was based solely on the child's accusation." The files that were reviewed contained references to far more physical evidence, and in a civil suit brought by the victim against the County of San Diego, an award of over $1 million was made. This fact is a positive indication that the County felt their the case was valid, and that the victim was truly a victim.

The 1991-92 Grand Jury Report

"A step-grandfather was prosecuted for the felony child molest of his 11 year old granddaughter. He and the family adamantly denied the allegations. Again, DSS files available to the D.A. contained contradictory information and evaluations of the child as a pathological liar. There was also a child molest report involving the natural father and the child. None of this information was revealed to the defense. The child testified at the preliminary hearing but was not cross-examined. At the time of trial, the D.A. stated that the child could not be located. The preliminary hearing testimony of the child was entered. The step-grandfather was convicted. Between conviction and sentencing the defense became aware that the child's whereabouts was known, and had been known, by the D.A. The defense asked for a retrial. It has been granted."

Review Findings

This case involves the molest of a 9-year-old girl by the boyfriend of the girl's grandmother. After trial, he was convicted of eight counts of violating Penal code 288(a) and he was sentenced to six years in a state prison. His motion for a new trial was denied. No reference in the reports contained in the dependency file contained any reference to the victim as a "pathological liar." The girl's grandmother did accuse the girl of being a pathological liar. No police report was ever made regarding a molest of the victim by her father, after a report by the brother of an ex-landlord who said that he once saw some "messing around" between the father and the victim, bit the incident was written up by the San Diego Police Department and referred to Child Protective Services.

The statement that the victim was not cross-examined at the preliminary hearing is untrue, and the preliminary hearing transcript shows such cross-examination. The prosecution found out where the victim was after the trial, when the victim's grandmother told the deputy where she was. Prior to this time, the prosecution had no information on the whereabouts of the girl. The defense did ask for a new trial, but the motion was denied and the defendant was sentenced to prison.

Among other many "flaws" in the '91-'92 child abuse report, the grand jury cited the statement that a chief deputy county counsel pressed subordinates to file charges in cases based on dubious allegations. The counselor in question, however, states that she had overruled deputies on only four pet