Gov. Charlie Baker’s pardon requests for Gerald Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave, the two siblings convicted of sexually abusing children at the family-owned Fells Acres Day School nearly 40 years ago, were withdrawn on Wednesday after outcry from victims and a lack of support from the Governor’s Council.
Former Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral, who served in the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office in the late 1980s, joined Boston Public Radio on Thursday to share her thoughts on the legacy of the case.
“These prosecutions were done at a time when prosecutors around the country were very much trying to take child abuse allegations seriously, where children were beginning to be believed,” Cabral told hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan.
A six-hour Governor's Council hearing this week detailed concerns over the legitimacy of evidence in the case, as investigatory techniques used at the time to gather witness testimony of sexual assault and abuse from children have since come under scrutiny. But while some question the efficacy of these techniques, not one of the 13 child victims have recanted their stories.
“Subsequent years have taught us that those kinds of kinds of techniques can be duly suggestive. But it does not mean that if a child says they have been sexually abused that they are making it up,” Cabral said. “It just means that when you bring that into a court of law, you have to balance any inherent suggestiveness in interviewing a child against the right of the defendant for that interview to be non-suggestive.”
Adding to the controversy behind Baker’s pardons was his decision not to contact victims or their families ahead of announcing his decision to seek pardons for the Amiraults.
“Ultimately, this has to go before the Governor’s Council, and they didn’t want to hear it,” Cabral said. “And where Gov. Baker didn’t contact any of the victims, which I think is really a part of this. They showed up at the Governor’s Council hearing, and they were hurt.”
