An American Lion

Do you remember when zealous prosecutors all over the country were taking the fantastic and the well-coached testimony that they were able to extract from confused children and how, in some cases, were able to turn it into show trials and convictions? And how many lives it ruined? One of the prosecutors from that discredited era is now retiring in Bakersfield, California:

Ed Jagels, renowned as one of California’s toughest district attorneys, built his career on the Kern County child molestation cases of the 1980s, putting more than two dozen men and women behind bars to serve decades-long sentences for abusing children.

Appellate judges now say most of those crimes never happened.

Still, generations of voters have embraced the crusading prosecutor’s tough-on-crime agenda in this blue-collar basin just a mountain range north of Los Angeles.

Now, as Jagels prepares to retire, the get-tough laws he championed are being criticized in a state crippled by soaring prison costs. And some of those he put away are going public with stories of wrongful conviction in a documentary film narrated by Sean Penn, one of his most ardent critics.

The Bakersfield trials - and half a dozen similar cases that rippled across America during the hysteria of that period - are widely acknowledged to have punished the innocent. Most convictions relied solely on children’s testimony, and the state attorney general ultimately found county investigators coerced their young witnesses into lying on the stand and that the probe “floundered in a sea of unproven allegations.”

But the silver-haired prosecutor maintains that justice was done in the cases that made him a darling of California’s conservative movement.

“Innocent people may have been accused at one point or another, but what I really fear is that perfectly legitimate convictions have been overturned,” Jagels said, sitting in his wood-panelled office among portraits of himself with Ronald Reagan and other Republican leaders. “How the people of Kern County feel about what I’ve done is much more important than what anyone else might think.”

As horrible as that period was, it taught this society about how you approach children as witnesses in trials, and how you cannot expect a coached or overly-prepared child to give the kind of testimony that would automatically put an adult in prison. It’s instructive to remember this example:

A man who for 20 years has lived near one of six men accused of sexually abusing young relatives said he finds the allegations “absolutely unbelievable.”

Bob Ramsey, a retired Graceland University chemistry professor and David Mohler’s neighbor in Lamoni, Iowa, said he knows most of the Mohler family.

Burrell Edward Mohler Sr., 77, and his sons Burrell Edward Mohler Jr., 53; David A. Mohler, 52; Jared Leroy Mohler, 48; and Roland Neil Mohler, 47, were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of sexually abusing children.

A sixth family member, Darrel Wayne Mohler, 72, was arrested Friday as he pulled into the driveway of his Silver Springs, Florida home. Darrel Mohler, the younger brother of Burrell Edward Mohler Sr., is being held in jail in Marion County, Florida, charged with two counts of rape in a Missouri arrest warrant.

The six alleged victims — all now adults — came to law enforcement authorities with stories of sexual performances, mock weddings, rape with various objects and a forced abortion during their childhoods, according to court documents obtained by CNN affiliate KSHB in Kansas City, Missouri.

Now, is this case different? My first reaction was, how could the Mohler family have gotten away with such horrible crimes and have been so happily blended into the society around them? If you read the article, one thing stands out—these men had healthy, normal relationships with the people around them and were respected members of their community. There’s something about people who engage in monstrous behavior that stands out—they’re a little off. They rarely fit into polite society. They are certainly exceptions to the rule, but I don’t understand how there is as much widely expressed shock as there has been in this case, especially one involving six different men. How were the six of them able to do what a single abuser can’t do, and that is, lead a healthy, normal life.

Would prosecutors have moved on such outdated allegations without some evidence in hand? Or is this a leftover relic from that era, and has the hysteria returned? Are we now going to accept the adult testimony of people who believe they were abused when they were children? How accurate is that testimony? Is it enough to take away someone’s freedom?