Watch how this interview was described in closing arguments
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In 1998, a Frontline program called "Child Terror," done by the same people as "Did Daddy Do It?", covered the same three cases that are discussed in this program. It remains unclear why a 1989 case (Finje) has anything to do with the Country Walk case in 1984-85. Anyway, on their web site for "The Child Terror," Frontline provided the following synopsis of the Country Walk case: "At first, none of the children came forward to implicate the Fusters, but after repeated questioning the children accused Frank of a number of abuses…." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/innocence/etc/other.html#4
This is a serious misstatement of the facts and chronology of the case. It ignores pre-case disclosures of numerous children, including the three described below and that of one of the older and more articulate children who disclosed significant details the first day he was interviewed.
Frontline and other Fuster supporters ignore the fact that the case began with the kind of evidence considered the most reliable by those concerned with "child suggestibility" – there was a spontaneous disclosure. The spontaneous disclosure was so powerful that the boy’s mother removed him from the day care immediately, warned her friend, and swore her to secrecy. These events (in late April 1984) created the basis for eventual lawsuits against the Arvida Corporation because the mother’s decision to keep the matter a secret, apparently to protect her husband's job interests (as property manager for the Arvida housing development at Country Walk), put other children at risk from the Fusters. It also meant that the Corporation had actual knowledge of the concerns in late April.
The cover-up "worked" for three months. The case formally began at the end of July when a mother, who had left her child at the Fuster’s for the first time, was extremely suspicious upon picking her child up that he had been drugged. She would be the last in a string of unrelated parents who, over the period of nine months, either sought medical attention and/or pulled their kids out of the Fuster’s day care. This web of powerful, reinforcing "warning signs" and documented medical evidence are omitted entirely from Frontline’s program, which was named as if the only important charge in the case was against the one person who has since recanted—Fuster’s son.
The individual context of each child’s disclosures are ignored completely by Frontline and others. A full accounting of this complicated evidence will be taken up in the future. For now, perhaps the most glaring omissions in the Frontline account are three children whose specific situation and statements and situations are entirely overlooked. While Frontline focuses all of its criticism on Drs. Joseph and Laurie Braga, who interviewed children at the State Attorney’s Office, they ignore entirely the numerous statements made in advance of anyone talking to the Bragas. They distort the Bragas interviews in other ways briefly mentioned below.
Three critical children, all overlooked
1. David M.
The first child interview used in the legal proceedings against Frank Fuster was a 34-minute interview with the "index child," David M. (Messerschmidt, "Fuster Denies Abuse Charges, Says He Never Baby-Sat", Miami Herald, August 13, 1984, p. 3D). David, three years old, came out of shower one day in late April 1984 and asked his mother to kiss his penis. The nature of the request was unmistakable to the mother, and she asked the boy where he learned about such a thing. "Ileana kisses all the babies" that way, he told her. As it turned out, the father of this boy was the Director of Property Management for Arvida (See paragraphs 1-41, subsection IIA of Plaintiff’s Exhibit 5 in the civil litigation, L. v. Escalona aka Fuster).
The boy’s parents knew that they had a serious problem on their hands, but they helped cover it up for several months. Mrs. M. warned a good friend, who removed her child, but she swore the woman to secrecy. Arvida’s liability was predicated on the powerful evidence that they knew in late April and did nothing—except pulling an ad from the Country Walk newspaper and writing, in July, to tell the Fusters to stop running an illegal business.
The second (and final) interview with this boy was on August 31, 1984. The defense tried to keep this interview from coming into evidence in the Probation Violation hearing—and both Frontline and Fuster’s supporters have essentially ignored this interview ever since. But the tape was allowed into evidence, Dr. Joseph Braga established the chain of custody, and he confirmed that the tape contains "comments about sexual behavior at the Fuster home." The tape was played for the jury in its entirety. Frank Fuster’s aggressive defense lawyer, Mr. Samek, had no questions for Dr. Braga. (Probation Violation hearing, tr. 24)
Other documented disclosures before any Dade County interviews
2. Tiffany L.
A second child to testify against Fuster is Tiffany L, who went the Fusters for nine times in May. Her parents then stopped sending her. And while the "child suggestibility" defense has focussed on snippets from the interviews by the Drs. Braga, there has been little or no recognition that this child disclosed abuse before seeing the Bragas. Recognizing all of the similar disclosures in this case changes the child suggestibility defense from one that has placed all the blame on the Bragas to one that places equal blame on a host of unrelated parents, police, and rape crisis workers -- who all allegedly "brainwashed" every single child who said anything in this case. It’s such a preposterous theory that Frontline and Fuster’s other defenders studiously ignore the evidence that raises these issues. Consider, for example, the testimony when Mr. Samek suggested that the Bragas planted the ideas:
Q: And now that the Bragas have told you that your child told them that something was going on and your daughter subsequently told you, you now believe that something was going on and so you assume they must have done something to her that made her sleep so long?
A: No, Mr. Samek. My daughter talked prior to going to the Bragas.
Q: When did your daughter tell you that? When did your daughter tell you that Frank Fuster put his finger in her vagina?
A: At the rape treatment center.
Q: When was that?
A: August 8, prior to bringing her here.
Q: Sorry. I didn’t hear the day?
A: August 8, prior to bringing her to the Bragas or the state attorney’s office.
(Transcript of proceedings, State v. Fuster [Case No. 81-21904], August 12, 1985, tr. 42-43)
3. David L. (Different "L")
Too young to be a witness, but what he told the police the first day, before Fuster had been arrested or there was any publicity, is striking. When asked by Detective Meznarich - again before ever being interviewed by the Bragas - if Frank Fuster ever hurt him anywhere, David said something about Frank hurting his "peepee" and Ileana hurting his "tushie" (Deposition of Regina L., State v. Fuster Escalona, July 8, 1985, tr. 62). Dr. Dorothy Hicks, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Miami School of Medicine, also testified that this boy had a "reddened" anal area that appeared unusual. (Deposition of Dorothy Hicks, State v. Fuster-Elcalona (sic), January 31, 1985, tr. 17).
Note on the inaccuracy of claims of "repeated" interviews by the Bragas
Frontline’s 1998 assertion that "none of the children came forward to implicate the Fusters, but after repeated questioning the children accused Frank of a number of abuses" is highly inaccurate. Not only were there numerous disclosures before the children ever saw the Bragas, but some simple math on the number of children interviewed and the total number of interviews starkly challenges the notion that the children were subject to highly repetitive interviews.
While various sources disagree slightly about the aggregate numbers, there is general agreement that the Bragas interviewed approximately 21 children. (Eight were ultimately involved in the criminal case.) There were a total of approximately 43 interviews with a total elapsed videotape time of approximately 80 hours.
Most of the children were interviewed only once, a fact which hardly squares with the claim that the interviewers were looking for abuse and interviewing until they somehow "found" it. A few were interviewed more than once to deal with specific questions or issues as the case evolved or because a child or parent requested it. All contacts with any of the children were recorded.
The child whom the defense made the most concerted effort to impeach (Justin C.) disclosed significant details the first day that he was interviewed. There were four subsequent meetings between this child and the Bragas. One was a brief interview to establish a time line, for legal purposes, on when and where the child had last seen the video camera and tapes he’d discussed in the previous interview. The other contacts were not interviews.
In the years since the Country Walk case began in 1984, one of the rallying cries of defendants and their supporters has been that child interviews should be videotaped so that they can assess the influence of the interviewers on the child witnesses’ statements. The Bragas, themselves, insisted at the time that all contact with any of the children be videotaped in order to avoid a charge that communication of some significance for the case had occurred outside the context of the videotaped interviews. For this reason, so there are video recordings of meetings between the children and the Bragas that were not interviews, but merely visits.
Why didn’t Frontline create a table of all children interviewed, indicating the total number of interviews (versus brief contacts that were recorded but have nothing to do with investigative interviewing)? Such an accounting would also describe when children first disclosed. Perhaps the reason is that this simple exercise would disprove almost every single insinuation about the interviews in this case.
Independent withdrawals and other prior indications
At the end of July, Jarad S. came home with an anal rash that was so unusual and serious that his mother called the pediatrician. She called around and learned of the children who had been pulled out earlier. Then she called the authorities.
Numerous families independently reached the conclusion that something was amiss during the nine months that the Country Walk babysitting service was in business. The L’s withdrew their daughter Tiffany after leaving her for just nine days in May. The P’s "got a bad feeling" when asked to sign a legal waiver. The U’s, whose young boy was hospitalized immediately after both of his stays at the Fuster’s, decided not to come back (Hollingsworth 1986, p. 129). The M’s, who thought their child had been drugged when she went there, withdrew their child. The older boy has since come forward as a possible witness for the prosecution.
There were also many parents like Jolene W, who left their child with the Fuster’s only once. Mrs. W. left her two-year-old boy with the Fusters for four hours on January 12, 1984. She returned a half-hour earlier than she had intended. In her words:
"No one answered the door immediately. I could hear my son screaming, crying from outside the door. I saw my daughter seated at a living—not living room—dining room table. Then she [Ileana] volunteered to go get my son and bring him to me. She left the room, went to another room which I could not physically see, brought him back to me and he was extremely upset and I was dissatisfied" [Deposition, p10]. Mrs. W. told Ileana that she would not bring the children back [Deposition, p10].
There were also an array of documented medical conditions and concerns. As Hollingsworth (1986, p. 312) described:
"[Christina Royo, state investigator] collected the children’s medical records, which documented that many of them had suffered chronic infections during and immediately following the period during which they had stayed with the Fusters--the majority of complaints being upper respiratory or throat infections, which had been treated by the children’s pediatricians with repeated doses of penicillin."
Frontline did not mention any of the many prior indications that something was wrong at the Fusters’ babysitting service.
Ignoring the most significant interview in the case
Frontline and other Fuster supporters have glossed over the most significant interview in the case: Justin C’s interview in the afternoon of August 9th. This interview contains detailed and explicit disclosures after a very open-ended questions. Jan Hollingsworth (1986, p. 541) called it the interview in which Justin "spilled his guts." These disclosures defy explanation under the well-publicized literature on child suggestibility. This was the first day that he was interviewed; it was also the first day the Bragas interviewed any children—long before the interviews could have any ideas about the case and long before the boy could be subject to repeated interviews.
It should be noted that Justin’s testimony stood up to a brutal cross-examination in deposition. The confrontation was so brutal that an appellate judge reported the defense lawyer to the statebar. But the child did not back down. Moreover, at trial, they tried to trick him, asking about "the time Frank killed a cat" (after some reference to the time Fuster killed a bird). Justin would not be misled. "Frank never killed a cat," he responded.
This interview was overlooked entirely by Dr. Lee Coleman. Coleman, who testified that he viewed 60 hours of tape, skipped over the most significant tape in the case—the session with Justin C. on August 9. Here is Dr. Coleman’s entire response when, after omitting the interview from his chronological critique of the case, the prosecutor stopped him short:
"My apologies. I did not mention the August 9 interview with Justin and Jonathan because I wrote one word on my notes, which is playing. My recollection simply playing with Jonathan, nothing of major significance one way or another was said. Therefore, I didn’t have any comments on them. I comment last on August 10. Now moving to August 13." (transcript 75; stamped 4270)
The defense lawyers have since tried to minimize the role of this disclosure by saying that "JPC did make some allegations of abuse," but was the only child to do so the first day of interviewing. (Petitioner's Reply Brief and Amended Petition for Habeas Corpus, Fuster-Escolona v. Singletary, p. 4) What neither the defense nor Frontline added was the critical contextual information that Justin was the only one of the first five interviewed who was both old enough to talk and was a regular and continuous attendee.
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