Fells Acres : Bad clown spooks her now as adult

For all the questions raised in nearly two decades since the Fells Acres case broke, a young woman who testified against Gerald "Tooky" Amirault said she has vivid memories and no doubts whatsoever about what happened to her as a toddler in day care.

"There was a bad clown, yes," said the woman, now 22 and an expectant mother with a 3-year-old son in a North Shore town. She spoke to the Herald on condition that her name not be used.

"The bad clown was Tooky," she said. "He would bring us into the magic room . . . sometimes singly, sometimes in groups."

Friday, the state Parole Board recommended that Amirault's 30- to 40-year sentence be commuted to time served, and that he be released with parole supervision. The Parole Board was not allowed to rule specifically on Amirault's guilt or innocence, but added in its decision, "it is clearly a matter of public knowledge that, at the minimum, real and substantial doubt exists concerning petitioner's conviction."

Prosecutors maintained that about 40 preschoolers told the truth when they described being tied to trees, sexually penetrated with knives and tortured by a "bad clown" in a "secret room." No corroborating physical evidence supported the allegations.

Similar flaws in procedures, along with a lack of physical evidence to corroborate extraordinary allegations of abuse, led to other child-abuse convictions being discredited elsewhere in the nation, the board wrote.

The Amirault defense team has argued that investigators, therapists and parents asked leading questions that prompted the young children's testimony and created memories.

But the young woman and other witnesses, all now in their 20s, have maintained for years their memories are the truth.

"Nothing was planted in my head. What I said was absolutely true," said the woman, who was at Fells Acres Day Care between the ages of about 3 1/2 and 4 1/2.

"I still have back flashes. I have days when I don't feel like getting out of bed," said the woman, who said she was in therapy over abuse-related issues up until last year.
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She and other victims and their parents have said they are stunned by the Parole Board's unanimous decision to recommend that acting Gov. Jane M. Swift commute Amirault's sentence to time served. They testified to the psychological damage they had suffered before the Parole Board last September, and since Friday's decision, several have said they are vehemently opposed to the idea of Amirault taking a breath of free air.

Amirault was convicted in 1986 of molesting and raping eight children at his family's day care center in Malden. His sister, Cheryl LeFave, and mother, Violet Amirault, were convicted in a separate trial.

The Amiraults always insisted they were innocent, the victims of a sex abuse hysteria that swept the country in the 1980s and questionable testimony from child witnesses.

Amirault's sister and mother were released five years ago after serving eight years in prison when a Superior Court judge ruled there were flaws in the way children were allowed to testify without facing the accused. They were never retried and Violet died two years later.

The Parole Board said Friday Amirault had "demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that his further incarceration would constitute gross unfairness."
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