Oops. I may have spoke too soon.

After Gerald Amirault (see previous post) came to our class and answered our questions, I was convinced that he was innocent.

But I may have spoke (spoken?) too soon.

The next day, to my shock and delight, Larry Hardoon, the prosecutor who prosecuted Gerald's case came to our class and told us his version of the events. He was very convincing and now I'm confused.

Is Gerald guilty? Is he innocent?

Certain things about Larry’s presentation raised doubts in my mind. The first hole that Larry poked was the main foundation upon which I had built Gerald’s innocence on, which was the interviewer’s horrendous techniques while questioning the children. That was a really dispositive fact in my mind. No way could Gerald’s trial have been fair if the evidence of his conviction rested mainly on these horrible interviews.

But Larry pointed out that the interviews were not for disclosure, but only for documentation. The children had all disclosed their alleged assaults prior to the taping of the interviews.

Another detail that made me question Gerald’s innocence was the fact that most parents were extremely reluctant to press charges against the Amiraults and were very hostile to the idea of their kids having been sexually assaulted. A particular story about the little girl who stuck toys into her vagina while bathing and saying that she was “playing school,” also made me question my initial assumptions.

But the most devastating blow to my once stalwart belief that Gerald was innocent, was the way Larry presented a plausible explanation for not only what the Amiraults were doing but also their possible motives behind their alleged sexual assaults. It is very hard for me to believe that a mother and daughter would turn the other way and let their son and brother have his jollies with little kids simply because the mother and daughter were indulgent people.

But it is much easier for me to believe that a mother, daughter, and son would conspire together to make a big profit on illicit pictures taken of the kids, because greed is a motive I can understand. It is a little suspicious that the Amiraults were financially better off than one might expect from people in their line of work. And it is a little suspicious that the kids spoke of pens and knives being stuck in them and a camera-like device in the magic room, which correlated to a certain genre of pornographic pictures in the outside world. It doesn’t help the prosecution’s case that they never found a shred of evidence to support that theory, but there was a suspicious fire that destroyed a lot of film.

Regardless of the evidence, or lack of evidence, the theory is compelling. It supplies a good motive. Added to "opportunity", which came when kids were left with the Amiraults during field trips, my doubts grew to disturbing proportions.

In the end, I decided that I could not say whether Gerald was guilty or innocent.

Without looking at all the evidence (How suspiciously wealthy were the Amiraults? What exactly did the doctors find when they examined the kids? How exactly were the initial disclosures handled? Why were the kids so reluctant to recount their assaults when videotaped? etc.) I simply can not make a determination.

And I think that is a valuable lesson to learn.

I feel silly that I so readily jumped on the unjust-conviction-bandwagon proclaiming Gerald’s innocence the day he came to class. But it bears learning anew that trite but trusty proverb: There’s two sides to every story. And that’s the truth.