This man came to my class today and told us his incredible story of tragedy and injustice

4-5 year old kids at the Fells Acre Day School told police investigators about a bad clown that took them to a "magic room" and stuck magic wands and knives up their anuses and vaginas.

Amirault was wrongly convicted of sexual abuse.
They said that "Tookie", the name they called the assistant director, Gerald Amirault, was the bad clown that did this to them.

Thus Gerald Amirault was arrested and convicted of sexually assaulting those kids in 1986 and was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment.

But he was innocent.

Never was there a shred of corroborating evidence that Amirault had done the heinous acts that he was convicted of. There were no marks or bruises on the kids. There were no alleged pornographic pictures of the kids. And no teachers or parents of the daycare center ever saw suspicious activities or a so called "magic room".

So how did this horrible nightmare happen?

It was a trainwreck of bad police investigation, appalling techniques used in child interviewing, overzealous prosecutors, and self-serving judges. It was the criminal justice system at its worst.

You could say it began with a soggy underwear. One of the kids at the daycare center wet his pants and a teacher asked Gerald to help the kid change since the teacher was busy at the time. Many months later, the kid's family discovers sexual abuse issues related to the kid's cousins and uncles and asked the kid about his experiences at the daycare. The kid mentioned that Gerald took his pants off one day and that unleashed the "hounds" of criminal investigation.

Police came to the daycare center, and immediately started asking the kids and parents about suspicious behavior and sexual assault that might be related to Gerald. Kids were subjected to hours of interrogation full of leading questions and some might even say badgering.

An example of the horrible interviews conducted is as follows:

Interviewer: So, what did this bad clown do to you?

Kid: There's no clown.

Interviewer: Yes there is. What did he do to you?

Kid: There's no clown.

Interviewer: Didn't he touch your butt?

Kid: No.

Interviewer: Yes he did. He touched your butt. You're friend Suzy said he touched her butt too.

Kid: No. She's lying.

You get the idea. This particular interview went on for four hours every day for a nearly a week until the poor kid finally broke down and said, "Yes. There was a clown and he touched my butt. And he stuck a wand up it." To this day, this witness feels like it really did happen to her!

And so Gerald was put in prison. He and his lawyers tried very hard to get his case overturned on appeal somehow, but it never happened despite to mountain of evidence that pointed in Gerald's favor. Finally Gerald was paroled in 2003 after serving 18 years of his sentence. He has yet to be acquitted.

I was amazed to see him in our class today. We had free reign to ask him all about his experiences and how he dealt with the horrible pain and injustice of it all.

He said that he focused on his wife and 3 kids and worked out a lot. The man is ripped. He also kept himself busy getting a BA from Boston University through correspondence and of course worked tirelessly on his own case.

He was a really nice and surprisingly well adjusted man who said he wanted to move on and not dwell on the terrible injustice that happened. Being consumed with bitterness would just steal more of the precious life that was taken from him.