by Edward Humes
For years, Mary Ann Barbour had been concerned about Jenny and Jane being molested, and she made a habit of closely inspecting their vaginas for signs of bruising or redness during visits. She also questioned them about molestation. Now, finally, after two years of amateur gynecological examinations and pointed sexual questioning, Jenny said her Grandfather Rod had molested her, just as Mary Ann had always feared. She immediately took the girl to a doctor, who found bruising and swelling and concluded Jenny had, indeed, been molested.48 Mary Ann then told Jenny’s parents and reported the matter to the authorities in Bakersfield.
A Kern County Sheriff’s detective and a social worker interviewed Alvin and Debbie, found them completely cooperative, and secured their promise to keep the girls away from Rod Phelps. Then they interrogated their suspect. Sobbing, Phelps admitted to molesting Debbie McCuan when she was a teenager, but denied doing anything to Jenny. Jenny, for her part, when interviewed by Kern County authorities, denied that anything had happened, but after lengthy questioning by a social worker named Velda Murillo—who began the interview by telling Jenny that she knew the girl had been molested—Jenny finally agreed that Phelps had fondled her. Later, after more questioning, Murillo reported that Jenny described other sex acts with Phelps, including intercourse.
Velda Murillo, who would soon become a central figure in the Witch Hunt cases, shared with a small but influential cadre of Kern County colleagues the belief that the use of leading and suggestive questions was not only acceptable, but essential as the best way to overcome a child’s natural tendency to deny being molested. Fear, embarrassment and a desire to protect their relatives, even abusive ones, would lead child victims to deny that anything happened—unless they were pushed, Murillo believed. This approach, coupled with the credo that “children never lie” about molestation when they claim it occurred, became the hallmark of child sexual abuse cases in Kern County. When officials suspected a child had been abused, the approach in Kern County boiled down to this: Questioners simply wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The problem was, the social workers, sheriff’s investigators and prosecutors who believed this were dead wrong. This strategy has since been revealed to be the absolute worst way of questioning children. Study after study has shown that such aggressive, leading questioning often generates false statements by children, not only when it comes to allegations of molestation, but on any subject.49 Young children may try to be truthful, but once subjected to suggestive questioning by adults in authority, they can have difficulty separating genuine recollections from suggested ones. Children have a tendency to say what they think adults want to hear, and Murillo left no doubts about what she wanted her interviewees to say. Because her sessions alone with Jenny and other children she spoke with during the Witch Hunt were never recorded, and she seldom wrote reports herself detailing who said what during these interviews, no one knew exactly how she got kids to level their accusations until many years later, when she was subpoenaed and required to testify about her practices. It turned out the common practice in use during the Witch Hunt went like this: Murillo would lock herself in a room with a child thought to have been molested and “help” him or her recount the abuse by graphically describing an act of molestation, after which she would urge the child to agree that it had occurred. Once this process was completed, Murillo would next brief a sheriff’s investigator, relaying the “disclosures” she had just obtained from the child. Then that investigator would question the child again for the record and file a report on the results, or simply rely on Murillo’s “filtered” account. In either case, the report would be written in such a way that a reader would be led to believe that it was the child who first described the acts of sexual abuse, not the social worker. If during a follow-up interview a child failed to repeat the explicit and often sensational allegations Murillo reported, the investigator would remind the child of “the truth” they had previously “told” Murillo, so that they would not waver from the initial story. A child who subsequently denied being molested simply would not be believed. In such cases, it would be assumed that a molester or other relative had pressured or threatened the child into withdrawing the allegations; it never occurred to the authorities that it might be the investigators themselves applying the pressure on children to level accusations in the first place.50
Although Kern County investigated the case, San Luis Obispo County authorities ultimately prosecuted Rod Phelps, as the molestation was alleged to have occurred in their jurisdiction. The case later was dropped when Jenny refused to testify and again denied anything had happened. While Kern County authorities still believed Phelps to be a child molester, they were satisfied at the time that Debbie and Alvin McCuan would protect their daughters from future abuse. Jenny had clearly stated only her grandfather had harmed her, no one else.
Mary Ann Barbour, however, was not satisfied. She insisted to the sheriff and welfare authorities that the children had to be removed from the McCuan home for their own safety. The detective on the case considered her claims irrational, and perhaps he was right: Barbour was soon involuntarily admitted to a county mental hospital after threatening to stab her husband, and complaining of being unable to eat or sleep, obsessed with molestation and profoundly depressed. Doctors initially diagnosed her as delusional, but after a week, she was sent home with nothing more than sleeping pills.51
Mary Ann came home in January 1980 still obsessed and convinced that Jenny and Jane were at risk and that their parents were part of the problem. When the Kern County Sheriff’s Department and social workers wouldn’t do anything more, she called Betty Palko, a county adoptions worker she knew, and asked her to close down Debbie McCuan’s day-care center. Palko arranged an unannounced inspection by another social worker, but nothing amiss could be found. When the matter was not pursued further, Mary Ann decided Palko must be part of a criminal plot as well. When she found out that Palko’s boyfriend, Larry Walker, worked at the railroad yard with Alvin McCuan, and that the two couples sometimes played cards together, she became convinced that there was indeed a conspiracy at work.
Eighteen uneasy months passed, with Mary Ann continuing to question and examine Jenny and Jane during every visit, their parents unaware of the weekly inquisitions. Then, shortly after making contact with a child-abuse crusader who had close ties to the Kern County DA and a firm belief in the existence of large-scale molestation conspiracies, Mary Ann made a new, far more dramatic report to the authorities.52 This time, Jenny and Jane, ages eight and five, both were victims. And this time, their father, Alvin McCuan, was accused along with Grandfather Phelps, putting the case squarely in the hands of Kern County authorities for the first time. Velda Murillo again questioned the girls in her usual way, and emerged from the interview with descriptions of terrible sexual abuse by their father, something Jenny had previously denied. The girls were taken into protective custody and placed in a county-run shelter for abused children, while Alvin McCuan was promptly arrested. When Debbie McCuan—who had not been accused as yet—referred sheriff’s investigators to her lawyer instead of coming in for an interview, the district attorney responded by seeking a court order removing Jane and Jenny from her custody. Then, despite her history of mental problems, Mary Ann Barbour received custody of the girls.
During Jenny and Jane’s first interviews with Velda Murillo, the only molesters mentioned were the father and grandfather. Jane in particular was quite specific in saying only her father and grandfather had molested her and her sister. “Nobody else ever tried to do those things,” she said. It was a statement that the authorities would soon ignore.
For after Jenny and Jane moved into the Barbour home, it seemed just about everyone Mary Ann Barbour feared, blamed or resented was eventually accused of molesting the girls: Debbie McCuan, whose continued visitation rights with the girls rankled Mary Ann; the social worker Betty Palko, who had not closed down Debbie’s day-care center, and her boyfriend; and the girls’ uncles Larry and Tom McCu
an. The sheriff’s department held off making any more arrests while they investigated, wondering just how big the case might get, hoping to lull their suspects into a false sense of security.
Mary Ann, meanwhile, again unable to sleep, kept the girls up all night with her several times, and then breathlessly called social workers and sheriff’s detectives with new revelations from predawn question-and-answer sessions. She began claiming she was being followed and threatened. She said Betty Palko appeared in a Halloween costume, threatening to “wipe out” the girls. Over time, she made many more revelations—that the girls had been involved in child pornography, bestiality and orgies; that they had been sold as sex slaves at motels by their own parents; that they had been shown snuff films in which children were murdered, with a narrator pronouncing, “This is what happens to little girls who talk.” She also said that Palko, in another threatening conversation, had called the girls “sow sluts,” a supposed devil worshiper’s term, and an ominous hint of the satanic allegations that were soon to blossom in Kern County.53
When questioned by a sheriff’s investigator, the girls at first denied these new and sometimes patently absurd statements—in other words, Mary Ann said it, but the girls didn’t. After spending more time alone with Velda Murillo, however, the girls started repeating the allegations and adding to them. The pornography, snuff films and orgies were all true, the girls finally agreed, their stories growing increasingly grotesque, with detectives and prosecutors assuming every word to be true and to have originated with the girls, not with Mary Ann Barbour. Any official who expressed doubts about the case was silenced by subtle intimidation and veiled threats that they, too, could fall under suspicion.54
On April 2, 1982, long after their father was arrested and charged, Jenny and Jane accused Scott Kniffen, an inventory manager for a diesel company, and his wife, Brenda, a Sunday-school teacher, of being involved in the orgies and molestations as well. The Kniffen name had never come up before, though the girls had been interviewed countless times by then. Indeed, just six months earlier, the girls had firmly stated that their father and grandfather were the only ones who had ever molested them. Now, though, the girls said not only were the Kniffens child abusers, but their two young sons, Brandon and Brian, who the girls knew and had played with, were victims as well.
These new accusations came shortly after Alvin McCuan, the only person who had been arrested and charged so far in the case, asked his friend Scott Kniffen to be a character witness for him.
In short order, the accusations grew even worse. The girls started claiming they had been strung up from hooks in the Kniffens’ living room and raped while dangling in the air. The girls had been filmed having sex with adults and other children, and the movies and camera equipment were stored at the Kniffen household, they said. Each new revelation was promptly rewarded with ice cream and other treats.
By this time, the molestation “ring” included at least ten adults, and the investigation had reached a frenzied pace, unlike anything ever seen before in Kern County. A young deputy DA, Medalyian Grady, who had yet to prosecute a felony in her brief career, had inherited the case—an assignment she first received when Alvin McCuan was still the only suspect, with no hint of the massive allegations to come. The assignment of a neophyte to prosecute a molester was not unusual for the time—in that era, cases such as the initial child abuse prosecution of Alvin McCuan would have been handled as a misdemeanor, for sex crimes against children were considered “family problems.” But when Grady first reviewed the original McCuan case, she decided the traditional approach would be wrong, and she pushed her office for a precedent-setting felony prosecution.55 Hearing the little girls relate graphic sexual scenes most adults couldn’t imagine left her physically ill, and convinced her they were telling a terrible truth. “No five-year-old child could know those things without having experienced them,” she would say after interviewing the girls, unaware that Velda Murillo had described the sex acts to Jane and Jenny, not the reverse. “How else could they know more about sex than I know?”56
Grady’s decision to handle the original case as a felony proved prophetic—and convenient, once the additional eight defendants were added. And so, the novice prosecutor, with the best of intentions and an admirable dedication to saving abused children, launched the first of the big “ring” cases to be pursued in Bakersfield—or anywhere, for that matter. It was the biggest criminal case to hit Kern County since Dana Butler was murdered and Police Commissioner Glen Fitts killed himself over it, dominating the news for weeks, and breaking in a particularly sensational manner. Over Grady’s principled objections, the DA and the sheriff invited newspaper reporters, photographers and news crews to accompany the six law-enforcement teams fanning out in Kern County as they made nine dramatic arrests early on the morning of April 8, 1982. Predictably, the resulting reports were blasted across front pages and on the evening news, sparking protests at the courthouse, widespread public revulsion, and demands that the authorities get tougher on child molesters.
Brenda Kniffen, her long blonde hair uncombed, her eyes still bleary from sleep behind her thick glasses, was standing in the kitchen, staring out the window while waiting for the morning coffee to brew when she saw the uniformed men with shotguns storm her house shortly after seven that morning. News photographers immortalized the moment. She still remembers young Brian wailing for her as she was sped away in handcuffs. The two young boys were brought to the district attorney’s sex-abuse coordinator, Carol Darling, and her colleague Velda Murillo, who awaited them with cookies and milk and questions. Then the boys were interrogated by a detective and a deputy DA. Brian and Brandon were subjected to lengthy and suggestive questioning during this process. Their repeated denials that they had been molested were ignored until they agreed, under pressure, that they were abused.57
Placed in the care of Kern County and kept apart from their families—not just their mom and dad, but their aunts, uncles and grandparents, who had never been accused of doing anything wrong—Brandon and Brian came to believe their family had forsaken them and hated them. They became creatures of the government after that, their story changing over time in accordance with what prosecutors needed to prove. If prosecutors needed them to say they were brought to motels—something they had previously denied—then they were brought to motels. If money had to have changed hands, or pictures had to have been taken, then those elements, too, appeared in their stories despite previous denials. No one in law enforcement questioned these inconsistencies—so long as the accusations grew worse and more numerous. Only if the children backed off an accusation did the authorities begin to question their veracity, assuming that someone in their family had gotten to them. “If anybody is brainwashing children, it’s the family of the defendants,” Deputy DA Grady told reporters after one member of the Kniffen family complained about police tactics in the case. “They are lying about law enforcement.”
Even when the older McCuan girl, Jenny, told Grady flat out that Mary Ann Barbour had pressured her into falsely accusing one of her uncles, the push to prosecute did not slack off. Jenny’s revelation came after she and her sister were placed in out-of-town foster homes for their safety, in the wake of Barbour’s constant claims that she and the girls were being followed and threatened with death. As soon as the girls were away from Mary Ann’s influence, Jenny began recanting. But when that happened, both girls were whisked right back to Mary Ann Barbour, and the recantations stopped—along with the talk of threats. Eventually, the DA grudgingly withdrew charges against the falsely accused uncle, though the fact that charges against one alleged molester had been manufactured seemed to cause no official concern.
“You just made a mistake, right?” Grady asked the little girl, who sat on the prosecutor’s lap as they spoke.
“It was just a mistake,” Jenny agreed.
“And that’s the only mistake you made, right?” Grady prodded further.
The child nodded, telling the p
rosecutor what she wanted to hear.58 It was a perfect illustration of a prosecutor’s tendency to view his or her own witnesses’ contradictions as honest and isolated mistakes with no overarching significance, while condemning a suspect like Pat Dunn’s inconsistencies as evidence of overall untrustworthiness and guilt. Despite the naked admission that Mary Ann Barbour had coerced a key witness into fabricating allegations that put an innocent man in jail and his children into custody, no questions were raised about the remaining charges. The case continued unabated against the others as if nothing had happened.59
Not even a total lack of corroboration of the girls’ stories—reminiscent of the lack of physical evidence in the Dunn case years later—slowed down the investigation. The children described in detail where the pornographic films were kept, where the police could find the camera equipment used to photograph the orgies, where the sex toys were stored, and even where the hooks in the ceiling were supposed to be located in the Kniffens’ house; Jenny in particular had been quite specific about where these items could be found, pointing out rooms, closets and cupboards. But none of it was true—not a shred of physical evidence could be found where the girls said it would be. Nothing was ever found, even though the arrests had been secretly planned and carried out in order to preserve all this “evidence” the girls had described.60 Undeterred when it was proven there had never been hooks in the Kniffens’ home capable of supporting a child, the sheriff’s department responded by having Jenny stand in the living room with her hands extended over her head, as if suspended from the hookless ceiling, so a police photographer could capture the moment. The resulting photo, gripping and sad, was then entered into evidence by the DA, a powerful image for the jury to consider, though it illustrated something that could not have happened. Prosecutors later went to a local porn shop and bought several dildos to wave around as courtroom props—even though no such sexual devices ever turned up in any of the defendants’ homes.61
