Information on alleged Kern County "sex ring" cases

Sender: Is there a child sex abuse witchhunt? 
Date:    Tue, 13 Aug 1996 23:22:57 -0400
From:    "Carol L. Hopkins" CAROLHOP1@AOL.COM
Subject: Kern County/Congressional Hearings

The Justice Committee
625 Broadway, Suite 1111
San Diego, CA  92101

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1996

Kern County Superior Court Judge Jon Steubbe today vacated the convictions of
Brenda and Scott Kniffen and Alvin and Debbie McCuan.  He has ordered the
State of California and Kern County to expedite the immediate release of
these prisoners who have each served fourteen years of  combined sentences of
over 1000 years for child sexual abuse.  These are only the most recent
overturned convictions in this type of case.  Kern County alone has already
witnessed numerous others.  The investigation which led to these convictions
was the subject of a 1986 scathing review by the California Department of
Justice which did not, however, take the courageous position of recommending
immediate review by the courts.  Instead, many of those convicted have
languished more than a decade in prison.  In 1995, in a related case, the
California Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Donna Sue Hubbard in a
highly critical, but unpublished, decision.  Donna Sue  served eleven years.

At that time, the Justice Committee wrote a detailed letter to both Attorney
General Lungren and District Attorney Ed Jagels calling for them to stop
contesting the appeals  of the remaining prisoners.  Included in those
letters was  documentation of new scientific evidence regarding the now
discredited standards for physical evidentiaries at the time of the
convictions as well as information regarding recent experiments on child
suggestibility in the face of leading questioning.  Questioning in
Bakersfield went far beyond the definition of leading and was, in fact,
coercive, threatening, brainwashing of young children.

The Justice Committee pleaded fruitlessly with authorities, both in the name
of justice and fiscal prudence, to stop defending these highly flawed
convictions.  Mr. Jagels was quoted in the local press as saying that he had
filed our correspondence in the round file and that he had every intention of
continued, vigorous defense of these convictions.  More than a year later in
the lives of these tortured innocent people, and hundreds of thousands of
taxpayer dollars later, they will finally walk free.

The Kniffens and the McCuans are only four of the Justice Committee s more
than 1000 cases of false convictions resulting from the child sexual abuse
hysteria generated by the McMartin Case. These cases have occurred in every
state in the Union. The Justice Committee has spent the last year moving the
Congress toward hearings into  the causes of these prosecutions and the
remedies for those who have been falsely convicted.  Congressmen Sonny Bono,
Bill Archer,  Dick Armey, among others. have joined with the Justice
Committee and also support the need for these hearings.
Please contact Carol Hopkins for more information about the Justice Committee
and other cases.

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Sender: Is there a child sex abuse witchhunt? 
Date:    Sun, 4 Aug 1996 07:10:28 -0400
From:    Nicholas Peters 
Subject: Edward Jagels Witch Hunt Unembellished

[This is an article from the Bakersfield Californian of July
26, 1996.  The article demonstrates the mode of operation of
the anti-justice, and anti-family and anti-science Kern
County child abuse witch hunt led by District Attorney
Edward Jagels and Assistant District Attorney Andrew Gindes.
It is not a pretty picture.  The witch hunt has continued
from 1982.]

                KNIFFEN SONS WANT PARENT BACK

  Sons of Convicted Parents Tell How Testimony Was Coerced

     Brian Kniffen clung to his mother as the deputies
swarmed around them.
     "Go with these people and do what they say," said
Brenda Kniffen to her weeping 6-year old son that day in
April 1982.  "Then everything will be alright and we'll be
back home."
     Those were the last words Brian heard from his mother
for many, many years, he said Thursday after testifying once
again in a Kern County courtroom.
     He had been here before, as a child, sitting on a
booster seat in a witness chair 10 feet away from his mother
and father, Scott, weeping and scared and made to start over
and over again.
     At that 1984 trial, he testified that his parents,
Brenda and Scott, and their two friends, Deborah and Alvin
McCuan, had molested him in hotels, hung him from hooks in
their homes and sodomized him repeatedly.
     Thursday, he was hoping to make things right by telling
a Kern County judge what really happened.  Now 20, he told
Judge Jon Stuebbe in a closed courtroom that he was coerced
and badgered by social workers and district attorneys, he
said after the hearing.
     "I believed my mother's words when she said to do what
these people said," Brian said.  "And I believed them
(social workers and district attorneys) when they promised I
could go home if I just said it all had happened.  So I did.
     "And I never did go home."
     The testimony of Brian and his older brother Brandon
and the McCuans' two young daughters at the 1984 trial sent
the Kniffens and McCuans to prison for 1,000 years
collectively.
     Brandon, now 23, also testified at the hearing
Thursday, saying he was never molested by his parents and
only agreed after many grueling interviews.
     Attorneys for the Kniffens and McCuans hope the boys'
testimony as men will be a compelling piece of new evidence
for Stuebbe to consider.  The judge is presiding over a
special hearing that is part of the appeal process.
     Because the hearing was closed Brian told his story to
a reporter after the hearing.
     He smiles a lot, and reveals his deepest hurts in
simple words.
     He remembers his life before with nostalgia.  There
were Sunday mornings, walking beside his father with a
plastic toy mower as the two trimmed the lawn.  There were
soccer games and wrestling events and family get-togethers
where the adults played cards and the kids played pretend.
     The night before the deputies came, he had a bad dream.
He crawled into bed with his parents and fell back to sleep.
     "The next thing I remember she was leaning over me,
crying, and telling me I had to go with these people," Brian
said.
     Now his life would become a bad dream, he said.
     The man he remembers most is prosecutor Andrew Gindes,
a tall imposing attorney who scared Brian with his
questioning techniques.
     "He would slam books down, yell when we wouldn't
cooperated.  He was demanding and scared us and wouldn't
take no for an answer.
     "I wish I could talk to him now and ask him... why, why
did he do that to me?"
     Brian and Brandon were whisked away to foster homes and
their relatives kept away except for a few strictly
supervised meetings, according to court records.  Brian
lived in 16 foster homes before hew was 13.  Some were fine,
others made yet another scar on his fragile psyche.
     "There was one foster home where they kicked me out,"
he said.  "I slept walked, and they were really churchy
people.  They thought I was possessed by the devil."
     Brian's grandparents, Dick and Marilyn Kniffen, tried
to get custody of both boys but, for seven years, were
unsuccessful.  At 13, Brian finally moved in with them.
Brandon remained in foster homes, kept away from relatives
for several more years, according to court records.
     "For a long time I felt deserted by my family," Brian
said now.  "I didn't know that all along they were trying to
see me, get custody.  I just thought they had forgotten
about me."
     Those feelings led to rage during his high school
years.  He fought a lot, he was jittery with nerves, moody,
depressed.  His grandparents, who spent hundreds of
thousands of dollars on appeals for Scott and Brenda
Kniffen, put Brian into counseling where he learned to deal
with the ancient hurts and angers.
     "I've always felt different from everyone else," he
said, smiling and shrugged.  "And I don't trust the law."
     Today he lives in a Bakersfield apartment with his
girlfriend.  They both work full-time and part-time jobs.
They just bought a brand new car, he says proudly.
     He was proud of his testimony Thursday, as well, he
said.  He was a man, and could take care of himself.  No one
would ever make him say a lie again, he said.
     "I just wish I was bigger then," in 1984, he said.
     In 1993, both he and his brother recanted their
testimony.  Earlier, at 15, Brian had tried to set things
right, he said, but a social worker told him his life in
Foothill High School would be over if he did.  The endless
days in court would begin again, he would be questioned
again and again.
     "So I just said I couldn't go through with it," he
said.  "That's not the same as taking back my recanting.
It's just saying I couldn't deal with all that court stuff
again at 15."
     A few years ago, he listened to the tape recording of
an interview with former [Assistant] District Attorney Don
McGillivray and himself.  The moment he heard the words
spill out of the speakers, the old fear curled in his gut.
     "They scared me, completely coerced me.  I always knew
it never happened.  But I was only 6, you know what I mean?
And they just kept on and on."
     Today, his greatest wish is for his parents to come
home.  He has visited them numerous times in prison, with
glass barriers and guards keeping the meetings distant.
     He teases his mother into laughing when he comes to
visit.
     "Wherever me and Brandon are is where they want to be
when they get out," he said.  "Because of what's happened to
us, we'll be close the rest of our lives."

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