STORY: "Learning from our mistakes," by Michael King, published by the Austin Chronicle on March 11, 2016.
SUB-HEADING: "Fran and Dan Keller were prosecuted wrongly and unjustly. It's long past time for their complete exoneration."
GIST: "The limited ruling, while welcome in itself, left the Kellers in a legal limbo – permanently accused but not cleared, and never to be tried. Their felony convictions have been "vacated," but they're technically on bonded status, and their daily lives are substantially restricted. "We still have a felony on us," Fran said, because the absence of an explicit exoneration leaves her and Dan at the mercy of any online background search. Without a clearing of their names, not only can they not live openly without fear of disgrace or retribution, they can't readily find employment adequate to their needs, any rental process is a minefield, and they can't hope to buy a home of their own. For fear of another accusation, they avoid being in the company of their 11 grandchildren or 24 great-grandchildren outside the presence of another adult. Even their lives prior to their arrest do not fully belong to them: Fran reports that family photo albums and other keepsakes seized by police during the original investigation – which provided no evidence of any wrongdoing – have never been returned. "It's as though we're still considered criminals," said Dan. "We didn't do anything. We still respect the law. And we're still being punished. Sometimes it feels like we're still locked up."
In the absence of an exoneration from the court, there remains one person who can act upon the complete absence of evidence against the Kellers, and can publicly acknowledge once and for all that the crimes the Kellers were accused and convicted of did not happen. "It's me," said Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg in January........."Everyone thinks this story had a happy ending," says Keith Hampton. "But it still hasn't ended, and it isn't happy." Hampton is the Kellers' (pro bono) attorney, who successfully represented them before the lower and appeals courts and finally persuaded the judicial system to grudgingly, incompletely acknowledge that incarcerating two innocent people for decades was unjust. In the course of that defense, which began in 2012, Hampton has become an encyclopedic authority on the crimes that never happened at Fran's Oak Hill Day Care center. As he wrote in an unsuccessful request that the Court of Appeals reconsider its limited 2015 ruling, "This case has a legal, historic significance. Applicants' convictions were the clear product of a period of hysteria now identified as the 'Daycare Panic' or the 'Satanic Panic.'" The most notorious relic of that period was the McMartin Preschool case in California, which involved more children, more alleged abusers, and equally fantastic tales. But the Fran's Day Care case is Travis County's own miniature McMartin case, an unremoved stain on our local justice system, with similarly devastating effects on the accused – the Kellers and others – as well as on the alleged child victims and their families. Hampton's various briefs recount the incredible, absurd lengths investigators pursued in trying to confirm elaborate, impossible tales imagined by young children, under constant pressure from their credulous parents and investigators: ritual murders of children and animals, shark and tiger attacks, secret burials in various cemeteries, multiplying accusations against randomly selected adults, and so on. Johnson, aptly citing the 17th-century Salem witch trials as historical precedent for the Keller investigation and prosecution, recounted the utterly spurious claims of two children who had been most persistently suborned by adults into telling frankly unbelievable tales, and wrote: "In spite of such fantastical claims, which should have produced total incredulity in the police investigators and prosecutors, charges were filed." The whole story was told here by former Chronicle reporter Jordan Smith, starting with her March 27, 2009, feature, "Believing the Children," and concluding with her December 6, 2013, account of their release, "Freedom for the Kellers." By the time Smith's first article was published, the Kellers had been imprisoned 17 years. In 1992, after months of elaborate and futile investigations and pressurized interviews, three children had claimed Fran, Dan, and several other adults had abused them – including several police officers and various neighbors randomly implicated by the children or their parents. (Some were subsequently sued in a civil action that came to nothing.) Although the children's tales, if remotely accurate, should have been able to be confirmed by voluminous physical evidence, all the prosecution provided was testimony from a young emergency doctor, Michael Mouw, who said he had examined one child for signs of sexual abuse, and that small deformities on her hymen might have been caused by abuse. In the absence of any other physical evidence, some jurors later said they were persuaded by Mouw's testimony. Mouw subsequently told investigators that he had likely been mistaken; with more experience and training, he had since learned that the child's apparent injuries were normal genital variations. Mouw said the investigators told him not to concern himself, that there was plenty of other evidence of abuse. They were lying. In 2009, Smith found Mouw and asked him about his testimony. He was mortified to learn that he had been a conclusive prosecution witness in the Kellers' trial. He has since publicly retracted that testimony, more than once – without it, the case against the Kellers entirely collapsed.........Prosecutors hold a special place in our criminal justice system. They're supposed to prosecute crimes but also see that justice is done. In the Keller case, to date, Lehmberg has abdicated that most important part of the job." Lehmberg might also find recourse and rightful justification for action in the words of Judge Cheryl Johnson: "It was not just Dr. Mouw who was too quick to believe. If he is to be blamed for the failure to provide [the Kellers] with a fair trial, the missteps of other persons and entities need to be examined also. We do not learn from our mistakes unless and until we are required to acknowledge those mistakes.""
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-03-11/learning-from-our-mistakes/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader.
Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case. I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
