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JAMES WATT/JEANETTE MARTIN WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK CONVICTED: 1987 I have only partial details of this case but it has all the hallmarks
of a ritual abuse panic Precisely what happened, if indeed anything happened, to the children
in this case is Initial allegations: In May of 1985, “a Mount Vernon detective was called to the emergency room of a local hospital where the parents of a 3-year-old said their child had been sexually abused by a teacher at a day-care center” in White Plains, New York. The daycare was a private, unlicensed family daycare in the home of Jeanette Martin, then 51. Other children attending (or who had attended) the daycare were questioned, and initially denied they had been abused. With repeated interviewed, however, they began to tell "bizarre" storie about abuse that had been going on for years. "It all started from one parent and it mushroomed, " said William Bolger, Watt’s defense attorney. This genesis is typical of other daycare ritual abuse cases, such as McMartin Daycare and the Kelly Michaels case. The first allegation sparks panic among the other parents, and children are questioned repeatedly by parents, social workers and detectives, who do not relent in their questioning until the child says, “yes, something happened.” Experts tell the parents that if their child has experienced nightmares
or night terrors, James Watt has been variously described as a boarder at the home and as an employee of the daycare. He and another boarder, along with Mr. and Mrs. Martin, owners of the house and the daycare, were all charged. The trial was held in April, 1986 and went for 13 months. Very young children claimed to have been raped and sodomized repeatedly, “Twelve of the children who testified were said to have been victims of sexual attacks when they were 5 to 9 years old. The others were said to have been witnesses to the incidents.” Parents testified that their children were afflicted with many symptoms of distress, and that they were terrified of going to the day care. The first child witness, 10 years old, testified to events that had allegedly occurred years before, but she had never told anyone about. “She had not told her parents of the incidents she described because someone had warned her ‘they would be killed.’” She could not remember who it was who had threatened her. She was unable at first to pick out James Watt in the courtroom. Watt’s defense attorney William Bolger pointed out that children were “extremely subject to persuasion and fantasy” but the defense attorneys were handicapped when it came to cross-examination. Some of the children just sat there and refused to answer. “If we kept pushing to try to get them to answer, it made us look bad,” he pointed out. Ordinarily, if a witness refuses to answer on cross-examination, it would be grounds for striking that witnesses’ testimony on the basis of the defendant’s sixth amendment rights. But the judge in this case made exceptions for the children. Child abuse is a “heinous crime,” Bolger said at the time, but “I don’t think I want to lose my constutional rights if I’m accused of it.” Medical evidence: According to Bolger, the prosecution charged
that one of the girls, Ritual-type accusations: According to Bolger, there were
some ritual/satanic-type Expert Testimony: the defense tried to question (with a Frye hearing) the prosecution’s use of an expert witness Eileen Treacy, whose use of “Child Abuse Accommodation Syndrome” pseudo-evidence was thoroughly rebutted in the New Jersey courts in the Kelly Michaels case. Just as in the Michaels case, Treacy’s role was to affirm that the children appeared to have been sexually abused, based upon their behavior. She was in effect vouching for their credibility to the jury, thus impinging on the jury’s role as a finder of fact. Further, her testimony about “clustering” of symptoms is non-scientific nonsense. A child may have temper tantrums or pick at their food for a variety of reasons, not always having to do with being molested. At the time she testified, Treacy had no master’s or doctorate. The verdicts: Indicate that the jury selectively chose which allegations to believe. Jeanette Martin was acquitted on charges of rape and sexual abuse, and found guilty of two counts of child endangerment. Female sex offenders in their 50’s are rarer than unicorns and the jury apparently concluded that she did not participate in any acts, but negligently allowed them to occur. They came to this conclusion not because of what the children said, but despite what the children said. One child, for example, accused that Watts had raped her and that Martin had held her down while she was being raped. Another child alleged that Mrs. Martin fondled her while giving her a bath. The jury simply disregarded that testimony, yet found the testimony against Watts to be credible. Although the prosecutor initially charged that there was an active conspiracy and sex ring at the daycare, charges against other co-conspirators were either dropped or failed to result in convictions. Charges against Harold Martin, Jeanette Martin’s husband, were dropped. “They never produced any evidence that Mr. Martin did anything,” explained Bolger. Richard Freeman, another boarder at the house, was acquitted. Although he had been charged, the children didn’t actually mention him in their testimony! Watt was found guilty of 11 counts of rape and 5 counts of sodomy. Despite the failure of the prosecution to prove what was obviously in their eyes a “sex ring” case, Prosecutor Barbara Egenhauser boasted that Watt’s conviction “would set new standards for the prosecution of child -abuse cases in the country,” and that “My kids stood up to lengthy cross-examination and came out credible.” Parents followed up with a lawsuit against the State, County and
City for failing to After the ordeal of the 13 month trial, after having her reputation ruined and undoubtedly being ruined financially as well, Mrs. Martin served a one-year sentence for child endangerment and died shortly afterwards. James Watt was sentenced to a total of 165 years in prison, some
of which would be On appeal, his sentence was reduced to 15 years. He is still in prison. ====================== “Girl, 10, Tells of Sex Attacks in Trial of 4 in Westchester,”
New York Times, April 11, “Girl Tells of Rape at Day-Care Center,” NYT, April 12, 1986 “Day Care Owner Acquitted,” NYT, Feb. 10, 1987 “Victims’ Testimony Key to Child-Abuse Cases,” NYT, Feb. 15, 1987 “Day Care Center Worker Gets 165 Years,” NYT, Mar. 13, 1987 |