Gov. Charlie Baker recommended pardons on Friday for Gerald Amirault and Cheryl Amirault Lefave, whose convictions in 1986 and 1987 for sexual abuse at the Malden daycare they operated has been been questioned for decades because of interrogation techniques that are now widely discredited.
The prosecution was based on testimony of nine children, who said under questioning that they had been molested at the Fells Acres daycare center. The Amiraults have consistently proclaimed their innocence. Gerald and Cheryl's mother, Violet, was also convicted in the 1987 trial. She died in 1997 as the case was being appealed, and the charges against her were dismissed posthumously a year later.
Almost immediately after the convictions, serious questions were raised about how the young accusers were interviewed, and whether leading or suggestive questions created false memories in their minds. No physical evidence of abuse was ever presented. The Fells Acres case was one of several prominent child abuse cases across the country that led to reforms and new protocols around interviewing potential child sex abuse victims.
Amirault LeFave was interviewed on GBH’s Greater Boston in 1997 as she and her mother were seeking a new trial. She called the case against her family “outrageous.”
“The investigation,” she said, “needs to be looked at, and that's all we want as a family. We want to be able to take this back to the initial stages, and apply it, and stop the victimization that's occurred both to the children and their families and to my family.”
Baker’s pardon must now be reviewed and approved by the elected Governor’s Council before it takes effect.
“The investigations and prosecutions of the Amiraults in the 1980s took place without the benefit of scientific studies that have in the intervening years led to widespread adoption of investigative protocols designed to protect objectivity and reliability in the investigation of child sex abuse cases,” Baker said in a written statement. “Given the absence of these protections in these cases, and like many others who have reviewed the record of these convictions over the years, including legal experts, social scientists and even several judges charged with reviewing the cases, I am left with grave doubt regarding the evidentiary strength of these convictions.”
Gerald Amirault spent 18 years in prison before his parole in 2004, and his sister Cheryl served eight years and 10 more on probation. Gerald is now 68 and Cheryl is 65. Despite having already served their time, a pardon would be significant, their attorney, Jamie Sultan, told GBH News.
"The Amiraults and their whole family, they live with this — this badge, this stigma of being convicted child sex molesters every day of their lives,” Sultan said.
“Gerald is still on parole now, 38 years after these charges were brought, he still is wearing an ankle bracelet,” Sultan added. “He is still subject to extremely stringent parole conditions. He is still polygraphed every couple of months. He can't travel. He and his wife can't travel to places that they've always wanted to travel to. And he is on the sex offender registry for life because of that unjust conviction.”
A pardon wouldn’t undo the pain the family has endured the last several decades, Sultan said.
“But it does something to at least fix things, and rectify them, so that they no longer and their family no longer have to bear this awful and unjustifiable burden,” he said.
WATCH: 1997 interview with Cheryl Amirault LeFave and Violet Amirault on GBH’s Greater Boston
Sultan said he’s confident the Governor's Council will approve the pardon.
“If they look objectively at all of the evidence that we’ve presented, at the petitions that we’ve presented, I believe that they will — a majority, if not unanimously — agree that this controversial case needs to be brought to an end, and that pardoning these two individuals is the right way to end the case,” he said.
The state’s parole board voted to release Amirault from prison in 2002, but Acting Governor Jane Swift refused to commute his sentence. Swift declined to comment for this story. Former Attorney General Martha Coakley, who also lobbied against Amirault’s commutation at the time, had no comment.
Sultan said both of his clients were thrilled when they were told of Baker’s decision.
"But Gerald, who has gone through so many disappointments in this case... he was much more cynical," Sultan said. "And his response was, 'I'll believe it when I see it.'"
