My response
to Cheit's
ManningDebunked
website

“Did he do anything with his hands while you were rubbing up against his bum?”

“Yeah.... hitting us.”

This article rebuts “The Legend of Robert Halsey,” by Ross Cheit. Excerpts from the trial transcript and police reports are quoted to dispute Cheit’s assertion that the accusations brought against Robert Halsey, a Massachusetts school bus driver, by five young children, were “credible.” Other statements of fact made by Cheit are shown to be erroneous.

In “The Legend of Robert Halsey,” Ross E. Cheit argues that Halsey, a school bus driver
convicted of sexually assaulting young children, is guilty as charged. He thinks Halsey’s
defenders are guilty as well -- guilty of portraying Halsey as an innocent victim of a witch
hunt. Those who contend for Halsey’s innocence, he says, have failed to examine the case.

If Halsey has become a “legend,” it would come as a great surprise to him, nor did he
benefit from the distinction. He’s been behind bars since his arrest and his one publicly
funded appeal failed. He was in his sixties when convicted and had driven a school bus for
twenty years, before that he worked in a factory, before that he served in the Navy. He
and his wife had one daughter, and they were so poor that he collected bottles and cans
from the side of the road to supplement their income. He had no criminal record. He was
just an ordinary man -- until he was accused of being a monster. His story is tragic; and for those who have studied the ritual abuse trials, it is familiar.

The credibility of the child witnesses

At the heart of the case against Halsey are the allegations brought by twin brothers, almost
nine years old at the time of the trial. Halsey’s defenders have found these allegations to be
absurd on their face, but Cheit finds them “credible.”

Cheit contends that the children could not have been and were not influenced by the adults
in their lives. “The most common objections to child interviews, (e.g. Ceci & Bruck, 1995)
simply do not apply in this case,” Cheit writes. “There were no repeat interviews, the boys
disclosed significant details after the most open-ended questions, and they were
interviewed almost immediately after disclosure.”

The twins first accused Halsey almost a year after he had ceased to be their bus driver. On
a Friday in January, 1993, Mr. W.1 took his sons to the hospital to see their mother, who
had just given birth to the couple’s third child. The father was handing out cigars in
celebration.2 That triggered a remark from B.W., one of the twins -- something about Mr.
Halsey.3 The scene calls for our compassion, whatever actually happened. The mother,
lying in her hospital bed, holding her newborn infant and recovering from her caesarian, is
suddenly flooded with the conviction that her children have been molested, horribly
molested. As she said in her victim impact statement: “When they disclosed in the hospital,
a part of my soul died which can never be revived. The sleepless nights, the many tears I
have cried is a process of mourning which will never end.” (2019:23)

However, we’ll never know exactly what the children said, or what was asked of them by
their anxious parents. Three days later, they were interviewed by the school counselor,
with the town’s police chief taking notes. The counselor, Jane Satullo, later told the jury
that she avoided asking leading questions. (Perhaps this is what Cheit relies on when he
says the children were asked “the most open-ended questions.” The interviews were not
recorded.) Satullo also said that she saw it as her role to : “open the child’s -- open the
child -- really, in some ways, opening their heart, feeling safe, it’s okay, they can talk, they
can tell their story in their own words,” (1279:14) In other words, she comes from a
therapeutic, not a forensic, perspective.

In brief, the boys said that they had been tied up with rope and tape, frequently hit and
threatened, and were sexually assaulted, and that Mr. Halsey had also tied up other
children. They mentioned one gun and some knives.4 Later that day, the police searched
the Halseys’ home, confiscating knives, a .38, a pellet gun and a starter pistol, a broken
BB gun, rope, duct tape and adult pornography.5 They noticed that the small rancher was
cluttered with, among other things, cardboard boxes.6

In the seven months before trial, the boys were in therapy, as might be expected. During
this period, they developed further allegations: They added all the guns found at Halsey’s
home to their allegations, as well as every knife, to their narratives. They claimed Halsey made them eat urine, feces and vomit. He sprayed them with a “sleepy spray.”7 He killed small animals. They also said that Halsey made them hold up targets and he would shoot at them.

Cheit doesn’t state how he knows that there were no repeat interviews conducted with the
twins. In fact, at 1590:11 and 1640:11 the police chief confirms that he spoke with the
boys on multiple occasions. All the allegations were somehow placed into a kind of
narrative by the time of trial, which implies interaction between the children and the
prosecutor’s office. Although the children were vague as to times, dates and frequency of
the assaults, the prosecution were able to divine a “pattern” in the alleged attacks.

Timothy Shugrue, the prosecutor, told the jury that the assaults started in the fall of ‘90
with physical threats and animal torture (“a reign of terror”), and didn’t become sexual in
nature until the spring of ‘91. (521-2) It was Shugrue, not the children, who insisted
throughout the trial that Halsey stored his guns, knives, tape, rope, and baseball bats in the
back of the van, and not, as the children were wont to testify, under the front seat or in the
glove compartment.

Another late-arriving allegation was that Halsey threw the twins in the lake. It raised the
obvious question: why didn’t they arrive at school or home sopping wet? The boys’
answer incorporated the cardboard boxes into the narrative. They explained that Halsey
sometimes took them to his house and stuck them in a box and made them watch adult
pornographic videos while he dried and ironed their clothes. By the way, Mrs. Halsey says
that if her husband knows how to do laundry, it’s news to her.

The trial testimony

Cheit doesn’t quote more than fragments from the children’s accusations at trial, to bolster
his assertion that the children are “credible.”

The trial opened with A.W., who testified that the first strange thing Halsey did, was to
detour onto a secluded dirt lane called Nobody’s Road, and make the twins hold up
targets that he shot at a la William Tell. From the transcript, it appears that A.W. answers
readily, although he contradicts himself at times (For example, he says he saw his brother
tied up (525:5), and later says he didn’t. (576:2))

Cheit describes B.W., the youngest twin by five minutes, as being “timid.” It’s true that
when B.W. took the stand, Shugrue tried to get him to corroborate his brother’s
testimony, but ran into difficulties. Shugrue introduces the target shooting narrative with,
“Could you tell me, at some point in time did things become not okay with Bob (Halsey)?
(805:22).

“Yes,” answers B.W.
“What was it that made it not okay with Bob?”
“He started hitting us and pulling down our pants.”

Shugrue asks again for the first incident. B.W. responds: “He pulled down our pants and
stuck his penis into our butt.” Shugrue repeats, “Tell me about that first, when did that
start,” B.W. says, “The second day of school,” and adds, “He was hitting us and putting
our heads in the pond.” Shugrue persists, “What happened at first?,” B.W. says, “First I
hit him because he said something to me, and then he started hitting me, then dunked my
head in the pond.”

And so through six more pages of testimony, Shugrue coaches and hints, B.W. fails to
produce the desired testimony. Is he timid? Is he confused? Is he just making stuff up? No
need for the jury to ask themselves this question, because Shugrue provides the answer.
He asks, “Do you feel uncomfortable today? A little nervous being up here? Do you want
to tell me everything and get right off? Is that what you’re trying to do?” “Yeah,” says
B.W.

Shugrue tries three more times to elicit the target shooting story, B.W. fails to answer
correctly, so finally Shugrue says, “Do you remember seeing any targets?” To which B.W.
answers, “He used to make us hold them up and shoot at them.”

In this example, B.W. is supposed to answer that Halsey is trying to get him to engage in a
sex act:

“Did he do anything with his hands while you were rubbing up against his bum?”
“Yeah.... hitting us.”
..... “What was he trying to have you do?
“Pee on his back.”
“And what was he grabbing for back there?”
“Me.”
“What part of you?
“My hair” (882:2-17)

B.W. isn’t timid when he accuses Halsey of attempted murder, but Shugrue completely
ignores what he says in favor of the established script:

“Did you ever see him do anything with this gun with your brother A.?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell the jurors...”
“Put it to his head and tried to shoot it.”
“Did you ever see him discharge it, fire it off in front of your brother?”
“Yeah.” (819:22 - 821:10)

On cross-examination, B.W. is asked four times if he was thrown in the lake. He answers
“no,” “no,” “sometimes” and “yeah.” Is this timidity, or something else?

Here’s B.W. during cross-examination:

“Did he put anything else inside you?
“He might have, but I didn’t see it.”
“Did you think that he ever put any light bulb inside you?”
“Yeah.”
“And make you sit down real hard?”
“Yeah.”
“And it broke?”
“No.”
“It didn’t break?”
“It did, but there wasn’t any marks.” (954:17-25)

(see below for link to next page)

---------------------------------------------------

1 Initials are used instead of names throughout this article. Professor Cheit uses the
children’s first names, however, given that the girls have fairly unusual names, I chose not
to repeat this practice.

2 Both father and mother testified that the children “disclosed” at the hospital, not, as Cheit says, at home.

3 According to the police report, the family were together in the hospital room and “Mr. W.
pulled out a congratulatory cigar and one of the boys made the comment, “just like Bob
your (sic) going to puff, puff, puff.” Mr. W. asked the boys what that meant and B.W.
said, “that’s what Bob the bus driver would do light a cigar and fill the van with smoke so
we couldn’t see.” As Mr. W. inquired about Bob the boys began to tell him of what had
occurred to them over a year and a half period of time that Bob was there (sic) bus driver.
Mr. W. jotted down some notes...”

4 Some more excerpts: “B.W. told us that he and A.W. never talked about the incidents
that occurred with Bob, but he said that he did tell his pre-kindergarten teacher, Mrs.
Jackson that Bob was hitting him."

5 Cheit says that the jury “never heard the evidence concerning the pornography in Halsey’s
house,” which is incorrect. He more correctly states elsewhere, “These items were not
actually admitted into evidence at trial, but testimony concerning the items was allowed.”

6 Mrs. Halsey states she was saving boxes to cut up to make starter fuel for the wood stove.
(personal communication to author)

7 from notes taken by the consulting pediatrician, Dr. Matthew Sadof. The feces, vomit and
urine allegation and the “sleepy spray” allegation were not presented at trial.

(Continue - the tickling incident)