Fells Acres Day Care Center preschool trial

Fells Acres Day Care Center was located in Malden, Massachusetts, in the United States and was part of the day care sex abuse hysteria of the 1980s. Violet Amirault (1923–1997) opened the facility in 1966.

In 1984, a four-year-old student at the Fells Acres Day School wet himself while taking a nap. Upon direction by the child’s teacher, Gerald Amirault changed the boy into spare clothing. Later that year the boy was discovered playing sexually-suggestive games with his cousin. After being questioned about this by his mother and uncle, who himself had been molested as a child, the boy said that Amirault had sexually abused him. Shortly thereafter, Amirault was arrested on charges of raping the boy.

The police called the parents of all the children to a meeting at the police station to discuss the situation. They were instructed to go home and interview their children and to look for signs of sexual abuse. Examples of behaviors parents were told were symptomatic of abuse included bed wetting, changes in appetite and nightmares. The children were also questioned by the police, social workers, therapists, and others.

Eventually, Amirault was charged with molesting more children, and charges were brought against his mother, Violet Amirault, and sister, Cheryl Amirault LeFave.

In 1986, Gerald Amirault was convicted of assaulting and raping nine children and sentenced to 30 to 40 years in prison. In 1987, at a separate trial, his mother and sister were convicted of similar crimes against four children and sentenced to jail for eight to 20 years. At both trials the children testified in open court sitting directly in front of the jury with their backs to the defendants and their faces to the jurors.

Much of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ case depended on the information obtained in the interviews of the children who were allegedly sexually abused by the Amiraults. The interviews claimed that the children were raped with knives, sticks, forks, and magic wands; were assaulted by a clown (allegedly Gerald) in a "secret room" and a "magic room"; were forced to drink urine; were tied naked to a tree; and many other acts.

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