Bernard Baran released after nearly 22 years in prison.
New trial ordered by Massachusetts Superior Court Judge.

June 30, 2006. (Boston, MA)-A Massachusetts judge has ordered a new trial for Bernard Baran, who has been in prison for almost 22 years. He will walk out of prison on Friday, June 29, 2006.

Baran’s 1985 conviction on mass molestation charges was overturned last week when a new trial was ordered by Superior Court Judge Francis R. Fecteau.

The judge ruled that Baran’s original attorney provided incompetent counsel, raising questions about whether Baran got a fair trial.

Baran has spent most of his more than two decades of imprisonment at the Bridgewater Treatment Center south of Boston.

His release on June 30, 2006 is due to in part to the fund-raising efforts of a non-profit group in Boston called the National Center for Reason and Justice (NCRJ).

A $50,000 bond has been posted by the Bernard Baran Justice Committee, fiscally sponsored by the NCRJ.

Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless has vowed to appeal Fecteau’s ruling supporting a new trial. However, NCRJ has vowed to continue to support legal work to challenge an appeal.

“Baran was imprisoned based on testimony from children subjected to leading, coercive questions from police and social workers already convinced of his guilt. He is innocent of all charges,” said Bob Chatelle, representative for NCRJ. “Finally he may get a fair trial”.

NCRJ has helped raise some $250,000 for Baran’s appeal and otherwise worked to overturn his conviction.

Background history and details:

Baran’s case is the earliest conviction in the epidemic of day-care sex abuse cases of the mid-1980’s, in which people were accused of “ritual abuse” and grotesque sex offenses against children and adolescents. Like the others, Baran was convicted by juries carried away by emotion and a media feeding frenzy, regardless of the flawed interviews and contradictory, fantastic testimony of children. It was a triumph of junk science in the courtroom.

At the age of only 19, Baran was sentenced to serve three life sentences for supposedly committing abuse at a Pittsfield, Massachusetts child-care center.

The case began in 1984, when the mother of a child in Baran’s care found out that Baran was gay, became angry that he was allowed to work at the center, and started interrogating her son about sexual abuse.

“Bernard Baran is my age,” says John Swomley, his chief counsel. “He went off to prison when I went off to law school. His crime was being a gay teenager and working in a day care center in a blue collar town in the 1980s. He was victimized as certainly as the other children in this drama, by a system that went so out of control that the truth became whatever the believers believed it was.”

Across the country during the same period, hundreds of innocent people were accused in similar cases, and scores were convicted. Among the most notorious were the McMartin Preschool scandal in suburban Los Angeles, the Kelly Michaels case in New Jersey, and the Fells Acres (involving the Amirault family) in Massachusetts.

Judge Francis Fecteau’s 79-page opinion is a devastating summary of everything wrong with these prosecutions – the coaching of the children, putting words in their mouths, refusal to hear their denials that any abuse took place, the careful editing of videotapes to keep the jury from seeing such denials, the misinterpretation of ordinary childhood problems as signs of sexual abuse, the blaming of family problems on day care workers, the suppression of exculpatory evidence by prosecutors. “Judge Fecteau, whether he meant to or not, has aimed a dagger at the heart of all of these phony prosecutions,” says Harvey Silverglate, Baran’s co-counsel (for the full text of Fecteau’s opinion, see www.harveysilverglate.com).

Extensive scientific research into memory, suggestibility and other issues, done since the 1980s, shows that children can easily be pressured into fabricating or fantasizing accounts of abuse that never happened. As this research emerged, defendant after defendant across the country was released following successful appeals. But Baran remained incarcerated. His family could not afford lawyers.

By the mid-1990s, Baran had languished in prison for over a decade. He had suffered repeated rapes, beatings and other humiliations, and was all but forgotten by the outside world.

Then Boston resident Bob Chatelle discovered the case and researched it. Chatelle concluded that a terrible miscarriage of justice had occurred.

Deeply concerned about Baran and people in similar situations, Chatelle founded the National Center for Reason and Justice. The group combats false accusations of child abuse through public education and by supporting the defense of indicted or convicted people who appear innocent of the charges against them. NCRJ’s board of directors and advisers include prominent memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus, writer Carol Tavris, and civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate (see below for a complete list).

Although the peak of the “satanic ritual abuse” and “daycare abuse” hysteria has passed, false accusations of harm to children continue to arise with chilling frequency. Suspicions arise for various reasons. But they often occur during bitter divorce or custody battles, and family disagreements.

All too many interviews with children continue to use leading and improper techniques, and the interviews are not always recorded by video or audiotape. Hearsay evidence is frequently allowed in these cases, which are always highly emotional. The idea of a child being molested is horrifying to most people, including jurors, and DNA evidence will not exonerate such falsely accused people because there probably was never a sex crime in the first place.

The NCRJ currently sponsors only 18 cases (for details, visit our website at www.ncrj.org, and click on the link “Who We Sponsor”).

These are certainly only the tip of an enormous iceberg, and represent only the cases the NCRJ has been able to research. The group receives many other heart-breaking requests for help in similar cases.

The Bernard Baran Justice Committee, which raised Baran’s bail bond, is sponsored fiscally by the NCRJ. Over the years NCRJ has helped raise some $250,000 for Baran’s appeal and otherwise worked to overturn his conviction.

The NCRJ is deeply gratified by Judge Fecteau’s decision, but full justice remains elusive. Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless has vowed to appeal Fecteau’s ruling supporting a new trial. NCRJ will continue to support legal work to challenge an appeal.

“We will defend Mr. Baran’s innocence in whatever forum necessary,” vows John Swomley, Baran’s chief counsel. “If D.A. Capeless intends a new trial we will be ready. As for the appeal, I’d like to think the hard work has already been done. The plain truth that he did not get a fair trial has now been laid out for all to see. I’m not naïve, but I have to believe it would be pretty difficult for any appellate judge to read this record and conclude there was a fair trial.”

NCRJ will also continue to promote justice in other cases in which defendants were unjustly convicted.

On the NCRJ website are several letters Bernard Baran wrote from prison (“Who We Sponsor – Bernard Baran – Bernard Baran in His Own Words”). They are compelling.

On January 7, 2002, for instance, he wrote: “At times I’m good at fooling myself but the truth is I’m scared that I’m never going to go home, that I’ll never make it out of here alive, not to mention the way this whole experience has changed me. I will never again be me for all that has been done to me, for all the ugly has killed the innocence in me.” Bernard Baran went into prison a teenager and will be released on bail (but not yet exonerated) as a middle-aged man.

For more information contact Bob Chatelle at mgr@ncrj.org.

Posted by rbchatelle on Friday, June 30th, 2006 @ 6:31PM
Categories: Bernard Baran
Tags: Newsroom

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