For more than 20 years, the NCRJ has been instrumental in supporting, freeing, and winning exoneration for people falsely convicted of crimes against children. And now, the board of directors has decided to close up shop. We wish to thank all our supporters and say goodbye.
The NCRJ was founded in 2002. It grew out of the Bernard Baran Justice Committee, set up by Bob chatelle, lawyer Harvey Silverglate, and journalist Debbie Nathan. In 1985, 19-year-old “Bee” Baran was convicted in a kangaroo court and given three life sentences for outlandish, horrific sexual abuse of the children in his charge, crimes that never occurred. Bee was the one of the first daycare workers accused in what could become a flagrant sex panic that spun accusations of ever-more outlandish sexual abuse and satanic ritual sexual abuse. None of these acts was real, but the panic lasted into the 1990s and destroyed the lives of scores of innocent people: sentenced to decades, sometimes centuries, in prison, like Bee most of these people refused to show remorse or undergo treatment related to crimes they did not commit. As a result, they could never be granted parole. Some of them died behind bars.
Over the years the roster of our “sponsees” shrank—because they were finally released from prison, and in some cases exonerated. At the same time, we broadened our purview to include people wrongly accused of other crimes against children, typically with use of “junk science” evidence—homicide by arson or by shaking, for instance. As the Sex Offender Registries and their accompanying systems of restriction and surveillance of people convicted of sex-related crimes became denser, more byzantine, and crueler, we began to work against these laws and the hysteria and hatred that produces them.
Also in the past two decades, a small movement of people—mostly those on the registry and their families—emerged to oppose the sex offense legal regime. Like us, the people in this movement believe that no one, guilty or innocent, deserves the perpetual ostracism and punishment these laws impose. Everyone deserves fairness, dignity, and another chance. NCRJ also made alliances with the strengthening prison abolition movement. The need for our work diminished, and with it, our activities.
The board is hugely grateful to our donors, advisors, and past board members; to the lawyers, social workers, researchers, and others who have worked indefatigably for the people we’ve sponsored; to the journalists who’ve investigated and publicized their cases; and, most of all, to our executive director, Bob Chatelle, without whom the NCRJ would not have existed and none of what it did would have happened.
For justice,
The NCRJ Board of Directors
