Kern County child abuse cases

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The Kern County child abuse cases started the day care sexual abuse hysteria of the 1980s in Kern County, California. ^[1] The cases involved claims that sadistic ritual abuse that were performed by pedophilic sex rings with as many as 60 children testifying they had been abused. At least eight people were convicted and most of them spent many years imprisoned. All of the convictions were eventually overturned on appeal.

1 History
2 See also
3 References
4 External links
5 Books

[edit] History

In 1982, Alvin and Debbie McCuan's two daughters, coached by their step-grandmother, who had custody of them, alleged they had been abused by their parents, and accused them of being part of a sex ring that included Scott Kniffen and Brenda Kniffen. The Kniffens' two sons also claimed to have been abused. No physical evidence was ever found, but the McCuans and Kniffens were convicted in 1984 and each sentenced to hundreds of years in prison. ^[2]

The convictions of the McCuans and Kniffens were overturned in 1996 and the two couples were released. In 2001, a TV movie about the plight of the Kniffens was released under the name Just Ask my Children^[3]. The cases were stopped when children began to accuse police officers and social workers of being members of sex rings.

Six similar cases occurred quickly throughout Kern County. For instance, the testimony of five young boys was the prosecution's key evidence in a trial in which four defendants were convicted, with John Stoll, a 41-year-old carpenter, receiving the longest sentence of the group: 40 years for 17 counts of lewd and lascivious conduct. "It never happened," Ed Sampley, one of the accusers, told a New York Times reporter in 2004. He lied about Stoll, an easygoing divorced father. Sampley and three other former accusers returned in 2004 to the courthouse where they had testified against Stoll, this time to say that Stoll never molested them. In their late 20's, each of them said he always knew the truth -- that Stoll had never touched them.^[4] In the case, the only defendant with a previous conviction of molestation was Grant Self, who rented Stoll's pool house briefly. John Stoll had to wait until 2004 for the reversal of his convictions, but was released on the new testimony. Self remains in a mental hospital for sexual offenders because he had a prior conviction for child molestation.

[edit] See also

Day care sexual abuse hysteria
McMartin preschool case, the next widely publicized case after Kern County
Wee Care Nursery School
Fells Acres Day Care Center
Pedophilia and child sexual abuse in films

[edit] References

^ "Who Was Abused?", New York Times, September 19, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. "There are several ways to view the small white house on Center Street in Bakersfield, California. From one perspective it's just another low-slung home in a working-class neighborhood, with a front yard, brown carpeting, a TV in the living room."
^ Kern County ritual abuse cases. Religious Tolerance. Retrieved on 2007-08-26. “The triggering incident occurred in 1980 when Becky McCuan disclosed that her grandfather, Rod Phelps, had touched her inappropriately. The family doctor confirmed the abuse.”
^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280474/
^ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/magazine/19KIDSL.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&position=&oref=slogin