By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff, 07/07/2001

t began with horrid tales of clown rapists, child-eating robots, and dismembered squirrels. It became, for a 1980s America still adjusting to households with two working parents, a seemingly horrifying peek behind the curtains of a day care center. And then, in the 1990s, it served as a national symbol of the excesses of the so-called "victim culture." Now, the 15-year-old Fells Acres sex abuse case requires only gubernatorial approval to come to a quiet end.

But its legacy has been anything but quiet.

In the years since the allegations surfaced, psychiatrists overhauled methods of determining sex abuse, lawyers reconsidered the wisdom of allowing children's testimony without cross-examination, sociologists compared 1980s sex abuse hysteria to the witch hunts of the 1600s, and dozens of similar convictions of child rape were overturned after challenges.

Meanwhile, the three family members convicted in the case -- Fells Acres owner Violet Amirault and her two children, Gerald Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave -- fought the charges from jail cells. And some of their accusers grew into lives of despair, therapy, and attempted suicide.

Only Gerald Amirault's conviction remains in place and he's still behind bars pending a decision by Acting Governor Jane Swift.

Many of the children and parents who made allegations to social workers in 1984 still believe that the Amiraults are guilty of sexual abuse, but the procedures used to convict them have been largely discredited. That fact was noted by the parole board yesterday in ruling that Gerald Amirault -- the last member of his family still behind bars -- should be freed because his co-conspirators drew lesser sentences for similar crimes.

"The investigative procedures in similar cases elsewhere in the nation have since led to the discrediting of some of those convictions," the parole board opinion said.

In retrospect, the case seems the product of an impassioned movement spawned in the 1980s, a combination of newfound awareness of sexual abuse, families torn by divorce, psychologists' championing of victims, and a more sensational mass media.

After several cases fell apart in courtrooms, the movement was discredited. The Amirault case is perhaps the most belated example.

Indeed, the Amirault case was one of dozens, the facts of which seemed culled from horror movies.

At the McMartin Preschool in Los Angeles, tales surfaced of sexual and physical abuse, forced visits to graveyards, and horses slaughtered with baseball bats.

In New Jersey, a young teacher was convicted of 115 counts of sexual abuse of children..

Perhaps the most famous was the Little Rascals Day Care case in Edenton, N.C. The center's head was convicted of rampant abuse of 12 children based mostly on the testimony of abuse specialists. The charges were later dropped, and most of the case was eventually called into question.

The Fells Acres case included charges that Gerald Amirault committed numerous rapes and assaults, including taking children into a "magic room" where he attacked them dressed as a clown. Violet Amirault, the mother, was charged with about half as many rapes. Cheryl Amirault LeFave had similar rape charges.

Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer at the Wall Street Journal, championed the Amiraults' innocence in her columns, gaining them much support and many donations. After speaking with a stunned Gerald Amirault yesterday, she recalled the atmosphere of the times.

"There was an ideology, that there were male predators out there and there were victims who were women and by extension children," she said. "It was a cult of victimology."

Into this, said psychiatric specialists, stepped eager mental health professionals.

"I'm just amazed at the psychiatry at the time, that they could be so ferociously confident of their opinion," said Dr. Paul R. McHugh, head of the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins University and a high-profile critic of the "repressed memory" movement that produced many of the cases.

"It is now clear from research that children are vulnerable to suggestions presented to them," he said.

McHugh, a Massachusetts native who followed the Amirault case for years, said a number of now-discredited assumptions fueled the movement: Many victims of abuse repressed their memories of it; most neuroses stem from prior sexual abuse; no external verification of abuse claims was needed.

"They tolerated the wildest kinds of ideas," he said.

Cases like Fells Acres spurred reform within the mental health profession. Today, therapists are warned to be aware of their own biases and to seek multiple indicators of abuse, included corroborating evidence, before determining that a crime has been committed.

The rash of cases also caused introspection among lawyers. Last year, a conference focusing on Amirault-like cases was held.

"What we have found in case after case, jurisdiction after jurisdiction, is that often, with the urging of adults, children exaggerated and misstated crucial facts," said Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree, who represented the Amiraults before the parole board.

Perhaps more telling of how society has changed was the firm agreement between Ogletree, a staunch liberal, and Rabinowitz, a conservative. They each expressed a sense of exhaustion at the 15 years of legal ups and downs of the Amirault case.

"The first message is that all of Massachusetts is saying, `We've had enough of the Fells Acres cases. We should put it behind us,' " said Ogletree.

Added Rabinowitz: "Justice does find its way."