STORY: "New film tells story of 4 lesbian Latinas’ long fight for justice in Texas," by reporter Yehidit Mann, published by Fusion, on September 12, 2016.
GIST: "
Two young
girls, ages 7 and 9, sleep over at the house of their beloved aunt
Elizabeth Ramirez, who takes care of them regularly. They spend the
night with aunt Elizabeth and her three friends Kristie Mayhugh, Anna Vasquez and Cassandra Rivera, all of whom were 19 and 20 years old at the time. Weeks later, Elizabeth and her three friends were accused by the
young girls of gang raping them. The state of Texas offered the women
deferred adjudication, meaning they wouldn’t serve prison time but would
be put on probation for 10 years. The four women, convinced that the
justice system would protect them, rejected the offer. They insisted on
their innocence and thought they had nothing to fear. They were mistaken.
In 1997 and 1998 the four women were convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child.
Elizabeth Ramirez was sentenced to 37.5 years in prison, and her three
friends got 15 years each. They were barely in their early twenties, but
faced sentences that would keep them behind bars for most of their
adult lives. Pediatrician Nancy Kellogg, the
expert witness who examined the girls, and whose testimony sealed the
women’s fate, said she found healed scarring in their vaginas, which she
examined two months after the alleged attacks happened, that could
possibly connote molestation. She also testified in a deposition that
she had jotted down that there appeared to be “signs of satanic-related
sexual abuse”. According to journalist Michelle Mondo, who wrote an article about the case in 2010, Kellogg said she based her notes on her “research and experience in this area,” and published studies she could not name. At the time, the United States was emerging from a bizarre period of
mass hysteria in which many daycare workers, babysitters, and family
caregivers all over the country were accused of performing satanic
ritual abuse on their young charges. A cottage industry of child
psychologists and “experts” surfaced, coaxing children to testify in
courts that they had been abuse.
The story of the so-called “San Antonio Four” is the subject of a harrowing new documentary, Southwest of Salem,
which opens in New York, San Antonio and Austin on Sept. 16, and in Los
Angeles on Sept. 30. The film, by Deborah S. Esquenazi, follows the
four women during their trials, their conviction, their parole, and
their ongoing fight for exoneration. The four women were never directly accused of ritual abuse, but
compelled by Dr. Kellogg’s testimony, the prosecutors depicted the
working-class Latinas as living sordid lives of debauchery. The
filmmakers and the women conclude they were accused and convicted of
sexual child abuse, and suspected of being in a satanic cult for one
simple reason: They were lesbians.........So who did it? Most likely, nobody.........
In 2010, 15 years into the women’s
nightmare, Stephanie Limon, one of the accusers, by then a young mother
of 25, recanted her testimony in front of Esquenazi’s cameras and two
lawyers from The Innocence Project of Texas.
Stephanie’s lawyer, Casie Gotro, suspects that her father, Javier Limon
called Child Protective Services on her and accused her of mistreatment
of her child but the case was dismissed in court for lack of evidence. Again, Limon denied involvement. Stephanie’s sister, the second girl who accused the women, refused to recant or be interviewed for the film. Anna Vazquez was granted parole in
2012 based in the recantation and on her polygraph tests, which were
consistent with her claim of innocence. She immediately set to try to
seek justice for her incarcerated friends, who were released on bond in
2013. Dr. Kellogg also disavowed her flawed forensic testimony on the
basis of Stephanie’s recantation. It became the first case in Texas to
get reopened on the grounds of SB 344, the “junk science” statute, a bill unique to Texas that
permits defendants to bring a writ of habeas corpus on the basis of new
or changed scientific evidence. According to the bill, courts must
grant relief in cases where new scientific evidence has come to light,
or where scientific evidence used to convict was shown to be inaccurate,
false, or misleading. Child protection experts like Dr. Kellogg used to claim that certain
marks on little girls’ genitalia were proof they’d been sexually abused,
while later research showed that non-abused girls have the same marks.
The women’s fight for total exoneration continues. In April of last year, all four women went back to court for an exoneration trial
before their original judge, Pat Priest, who ruled that they are
entitled to new trials, but he did not recommend them for exoneration.
Priest claimed that their “assertion of proof for ‘actual innocence’
falls short of the mark.” The case now lies in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Mike Ware,
lawyer for the Texas Innocence Project, who has helped the women file
their appeal, anticipates that the San Antonio Four will be vindicated
and all the charges dismissed. Still, he worries that there are two
other possible outcomes: the court may find there is not enough evidence
for actual innocence, and order a new trial, or they will be denied and
have to return to prison to serve the remainder of their sentences. Today, the women are focused on clearing their names. They are
fighting for a full exoneration and for all charges to be expunged from
their records. According to Esquenazi, the legal term is ‘actually
innocent’, in which sentences are totally vacated and the women receive
restitution for time served. This is important to them because, besides
the restoration of their good name, child sexual assault is still on
their records and they cannot move freely within the country."
