MVMO ritual abuse cases

Bakersfield / Kern County, CA

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The McCuan and Kniffen Families

This was the first large Multi-Victim Multi-Offender (MVMO) child abuse case in North America. It was centered in Bakersfield and Kern County, CA. Two couples, Alvin & Debbie McCuan and Scott & Brenda Kniffen, were tried in 1983, found guilty, and given centuries-long jail sentences.

The McCuan/Kniffen convictions were overturned on appeal. The two couples were released from jail in 1996-AUG, after having spent 14 years in prison, isolated from each other.

The McCuan and Kniffen Investigation

The triggering incident occurred in 1980 when Becky McCuan disclosed that her grandfather, Rod Phelps, had touched her inappropriately. The family doctor confirmed the abuse. No charges were laid. Becky's mother, Debbie McCuan arranged for her daughter to obtain counseling. But Debbie's step-mother, Mary Ann Barbour, who is believed to have had a history of mental illness, felt that her step-granddaughters were not sufficiently protected. She obtained the assistance of the Mothers of Bakersfield, a group concerned about child abuse. Jill Haddad took particular interest in the case; she was the spokesperson for the group, and had many relatives working for local police forces.

Ms. Barbour claimed that Alvin and Debbie McCuan were not good parents, and that Debbie's day care license should be revoked. She asked the Social Services Department make a surprise inspection. The social worker, Betty Palko, found no major infractions and took no action to revoke the license.

Mary Ann Barbour became distressed when she heard that the McCuans had taken their two daughters on a supervised visit to see the alleged abusing grandfather and his wife. She is reported to have ended up in the psychiatric ward as the result of a psychotic episode. At a custody hearing in 1982-MAR, she was able to gain custody of her step-grandchildren. County officials filed child endangerment charges against the McCuans. At this point, Ms. Barbour started to believe that a large "sex ring" existed in Kern County. "There is a group of people involved in molesting the girls. They are all in on it! "

The girls, Becky and Dawn were repeatedly questioned. They confirmed what their step-grandmother had said. Over many months, their disclosures became increasingly bizarre. They said that had been hung from ceiling hooks, beaten with belts, rented to strangers in motels and been forced to act in "kiddy-porn" movies. They claimed that they were abused by a sex ring which involved their grandparents, their parents, their father's brothers, friends of their parents (Scott & Brenda Kniffen), the social worker who did the inspection, a co-worker of their father, and two unnamed welfare workers.

On 1982-APR-6, Becky was driven around the area to the homes of the alleged sex-ring members. She said that there were pornographic pictures, a sex toy and other evidence in the Kniffen home. The Kniffens were arrested two days later.

The Kniffen sons, Brian and Brandon, were repeatedly and suggestively interrogated. The interviewers would describe a sex act and then ask the child to confirm or deny that it happened. When questioned separately, each was told (falsely) that their brother had disclosed abuse by both the parents and the rest of the sex-ring. Brian and Brandon claim that they were yelled at and terrorized by the interrogators. They were told that they could go home again if they testified about the abuse. These manipulative and coercive interrogation methods are now known to generate false allegations. "Questioning in Bakersfield went far beyond the definition of leading and was, in fact, coercive, threatening, brainwashing of young children." ₁ Unfortunately, in early 1983, basic research into child interview techniques was in its early stages; direct questioning and manipulation of children was common practice. ₂ The Kniffen boys finally caved in under the pressure and said that abuse had occurred.

During a supervised visit Brandon Kniffen was asked by his grandmother whether the charges were true. He answered "No. None of those things ever happened.". The grandmother was arrested for discussing the case with her grandchild; she was not allowed to testify at the trial, and had her visits terminated for years afterwards.

The 1983-4 McCuan and Kniffen Trial

Dr. Bruce Woodling testified that his "wink response" tests on the children proved that sodomy had occurred. In the test, the anus is touched with a swab and a reaction is looked for. This test has since been totally discredited. Controlled tests have revealed that anal winking occurs in both abused and non-abused children. There was no other hard evidence of sexual abuse. The McCuans and Kniffens were convicted on multiple charges and given a combined sentence of over 1000 years.

Brian Kniffen later recanted, and said that he had been told what to say at the trial and had been promised that he could be with his parents again if he cooperated. His brother Brandon has also recanted. They have stated that the abuse never occurred and that they were led and coerced to testify as they did.

Margie Grafton, Tim Palomo, Grant Self and John Stoll:

These Kern County residents were accused of having formed a "sex-ring" to sexually molest boys over an interval of several months in the mid-1980's. John Stoll had rented his poolhouse at the back of his house to Grant Self, a homeless man. Unknown to Stoll, Self was a convicted child molester. John had recently been divorced after a long and bitter custody fight. His wife is reported to have spent time in a psychiatric institution and is alleged to have had difficulty separating reality from fantasy. In 1984, Stoll's ex-wife and a pastor that she was dating filed a complaint against him for allegedly abusing their son. An unrelated charge was made against Grant Self. Margie Grafton and her boyfriend Tim Palomo were also charged. They had often visited Stoll to enjoy his swimming pool. The prosecutors may have concluded that the four defendants might be involved in a sex-ring, because they all had apartments in the same property.

Children were interviewed and asked repeated, direct, leading and suggestive questions by Deputy Erickson. He did not follow the California Commission's "Peace Officers Standards and Training" manual on interview methods. He said that he had never heard of the POST manual; he had never taken the training courses recommended in the document. Recent research shows that the types of questioning used by Erikson will often cause the children to disclose details about events that never happened. ₂ Unfortunately, these findings were not available to the Kern County officials at the time.

John Stoll was charged with 70 felony crimes; the other three defendants were charged with fewer. Their trial in the Kern County Superior Court started on 1984-SEP-24. Four children gave testimony. Child "A" answered that he didn't know or didn't remember to almost all of the questions raised by the defense attorneys. Child "V" admitted during questioning by a defense attorney that it is OK to lie, that it is OK to make mistakes while testifying. He said that he did not know what the oath was. At one point, he denied that any sodomy had occurred. In violation of court orders, he spoke to his mother and to a prosecutor overnight. The next day, he "recalled" acts of sodomy. One of the children testified that he had been in the Stoll house five times. Actually, he had never been inside. Under cross-examination, he was unable to describe a single item in the house.

There was no physical evidence to support the charges. The children rarely agreed on the details of various alleged molestations (e.g. time, place, adults present, children present). Some of the acts that the children testified about were physically impossible to commit. The defense attorneys asked that the children be medically examined. The court denied their request. No medical examinations were ever performed on any of the boys.  This was indeed unfortunate, because anal rape of a small child by an adult will cause obvious wounds that are easily detectable. A medical exam might well have proven that no sodomy actually occurred. The prosecution made many references to kiddie-porn -- photographs taken of the sexual molestations. As in other MVMO cases, no such photographs were ever found and introduced into evidence. The prosecution produced at court numerous erotic magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse. Some were found in rooms not rented by the defendants. This probably had the effect of prejudicing the jury. In fact, the magazines could have been used as an indicator that the defendants were not pedophiles. If an adult male enjoys "girlie magazines" they are probably sexually attracted to adult women; this would make it more probable that they were not attracted to little boys.

The defense attorneys were not allowed to present the POST manual as evidence. They had hoped to demonstrate the flawed nature of the child interview techniques. Stoll's defense was poorly prepared; his lawyer only had 24 days to assemble the defense; he was unable to locate two defense witnesses and to obtain copies of some records in time for the trial. The judge denied the lawyer's request for a delay in the trial. During the trial, John Stoll ran out of money. His lawyer repeatedly asked to be relieved of the case; these requests were denied. Dr. Roger Mitchell, a clinical psychologist, had conducted psychological tests on Graton and Palomo. He would have been able to give expert testimony on whether these defendants were sexual psychopaths, but his testimony was not allowed.

Following the trial two children, "J" and "C," admitted in public statements that they had lied during the preliminary hearing and the trial.

"As early as 1986, a yearlong investigation of the Kern County cases was done by the California Attorney General's Office. The investigation concluded that local authorities had used 'suggestive' questioning that led children to give answers that they wanted. At that time, the 'attorney general said there was both a shortage of corroborating evidence and that some alleged victims were simply parroting what they were told in questioning or what they heard other children say'." ₁₅

All four defendants were convicted and received long sentences. Margie Grafton and her boyfriend Tim Palomo had their convictions overturned after eight years in jail by a California Appellate Court. The basis for dismissal was that a psychiatric profile which suggested that she was innocent was kept from the jury. They have not been retried. If they were retried at this time, the result would undoubtedly be an acquittal. The children's testimony could be easily shown to be suspect; there is no hard evidence to show that they are guilty, and no hard evidence to show that abuse actually occurred. Grant Self and John Stoll continued to rot in prison. _6,7

By 2004-MAR, Grant Self had been released from prison and is now "...in a state hospital for mentally ill offenders. He can be kept there until authorities decide he is not a danger to others." ₁₆ John Stoll remained incarcerated until 2004-MAY.

Other similar cases in and near Bakersfield CA:

A total of seven additional Kern County cases, generally in the towns surrounding Bakersfield, were tried in the three years following the McCuan and Kniffen trials. They also alleged child sex-rings involving other adults. "The prosecutors and sheriff's investigators...spiced up the cases with allegations of satanic sacrifices, and said as many as 29 babies had been killed." ₁₃ All cases involved the same social workers, child abuse coordinators, deputy sheriffs and district attorney. A very serious error was made by the investigators. They interviewed various children from numerous cases together. This resulted in cross-germination of ideas among the cases; elements of one case suddenly popped up in others. Children of different ages described fictional events using identical terminology. All of this led naive investigators to conclude that multiple sex-rings were involved.

At one time, 60 children had accused various adults of perpetrating Satanic Ritual Abuse. Eventually, the children started to accuse some of the social workers, deputy sheriffs and deputy district attorneys of being perpetrators of sexual and ritual abuse. Further investigations and charges ceased at that time. In the later years of these investigations, the professionals involved may have been aware that at least some of the children's stories were untrue. The DA, social workers, and police officers may have suspected that they had not sexually abused the children. And yet they proceeded with similar allegations by these same children against other adults. One is forced to question their ethical standards. One is also reminded of the witchcraft cases in Salem, MA, in the 1790's. Those accusations also only ceased when the children accused the wife of the Governor of being a witch.

The Kern County Grand Jury had asked the Attorney General's office over a period of two years to investigate the interrogation methods used in these child sexual abuse cases. Their request was stonewalled, until a local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee learned of the matter. Jim Boren was a reporter at the time and is now the editorial page editor. He recalls this time. He wrote:

"The [Sacramento] Bee stories finally caught the interest of the state Attorney General's Office, and a yearlong investigation concluded that local authorities had used 'suggestive' questioning that led children to give answers that they wanted. The attorney general said there was both a shortage of corroborating evidence and that some alleged victims were simply parroting what they were told in questioning or what they heard other children say. In many cases, young children were interviewed numerous times by authorities until they finally admitted to being molested. In one case an alleged victim had been interviewed 35 times before giving the 'right' answer that his parents had molested him."

"A 10-year-old boy was hypnotized after denying that he had been molested by his family. The boy was in county protective custody for almost two months when he was administered 'reassuring hypnotic messages,' according to investigative files. He finally told investigators what they wanted to hear -- he'd been molested by his parents and others."

"Public pressure then forced the Attorney General to take action. Released in 1986, the investigation revealed that there had been 23 major procedural errors in the McCuan/Kniffen case and similar 'sex-ring' cases. The techniques used by the DA's office, sheriff's department and social workers were severely criticized. Unfortunately, the inquiry did not take the logical step of urging judicial review of the trials." ₁₃

Although some have had their convictions overturned, other innocent people, convicted over a decade previously, continued to rot in jail. In early 2004, John Stoll was the final innocent person to be released. Dozens of children have been at least partly disabled by horrendous memories of events that probably never happened.

The 1996 McCuan and Kniffen Appeal

On 1996-AUG-12, Judge Jon Steubbe of the Kern County Superior Court overturned the convictions of both the Kniffens and McCuans, and ordered their immediate release. His main reason was that the "the interviewing techniques used to obtain information from the minors were fraught with undesirable consequences." ₅ They had been in prison for 14 years and isolated from each other for crimes that they did not commit -- in fact for crimes that never happened. Ed Jagels, the current Kern County District Attorney, described the case as being currently "unprosecutable" and has declined to retry the Kniffens and McCuans.

The Kniffens, parents and sons, have been able to reunite into a loving, supporting family. But the boys have since grown into men. The parents were absent from their lives for 12 years. Becky and Dawn McCuan have never recanted their court testimony. Their original accusations, obtained through improper interrogation methods, have probably coalesced into false memories. They probably believe that they were ritually abused over a decade ago. They have had no contact with their parents in 12 years.

The Jeffrey Eugene Modahl appeals:

One of the many adults caught up in the Bakersfield Satanic panic was Jeffrey Eugene Modahl. He, and several others, were accused by his daughter, Carla Jo Modahl-Owen. She was the only witness at several trials in the mid-80's. He was convicted of 10 counts of child molestation in 1986. He received a sentence of 48 years

Jeffrey Modahl obtained an appeal in 1987. By this time, Carla had recanted her trial testimony and testified that she had not been abused. But the appeal failed; the judge ruled that her trial testimony was believable but that her later recantation was not.

On 1997-DEC-26, a Superior Court judge granted Modahl another "habeas corpus" hearing. Jeffrey was then 43 years of age. Carla, then aged 23, stated that neither her father nor four other co-defendants molested her. Jeffrey Modahl's lawyer, Jeanne W. Peden, has obtained a tape recording of a 1984 interview of another alleged victim. It shows that the children were subjected to questioning which is (by today's standards) incompetent and liable to generate false memories. Penden says that the "leading and suggestive nature [of the interview is] explosive."

Superior Court Judge John I. Kelly found that the new tape demonstrated that the interviewers used techniques "likely to generate false and unreliable accusations." Modahl, was finally freed in 1999-MAY after having spent 15 years behind bars, 

John Stoll's appeal:

Stoll described his arrival in prison: "I was terrified. I knew the odds weren't real good that I wasn't going to get stabbed going to prison as a convicted child molester." He created a cover story that he had been a drug runner. A fellow prisoner had visited the prison law library and found out about Stoll's case. But before he could spread the information, he was involved in a prison riot and relocated. In early 2004, nineteen years after the charges were brought, John Stoll remained the only one still held in prison out of the 39 persons who had been convicted of sexual child abuse. At the age of 60, he had spent most of the previous two decades in jail.

Stoll came to the attention of the California and Northern California Innocence Project. They are part of the National Innocence Network which links similar groups across the U.S. "Innocence Project students work alongside practicing criminal defense lawyers to seek the release of wrongfully convicted inmates who maintain their factual innocence." ₁₁  His case was reviewed by judge John Kelly on 2004-MAR-15. Four of the six boys who testified against him in his original trial recanted; they said that they were forced to lie. One said that he doesn't remember what happened. The sixth male, his son, Jed Stoll, continues to maintain that he was molested.  Justin Brooks, of the Project, said that Jed: "...testified in the preliminary hearing, and at the trial, that he had lied, multiple times. And he testified in this hearing multiple times that he had lied. The only thing that he keeps sticking to is, 'I know I was molested.' And that makes sense, because Jed Stoll was told he was molested his entire life."  Innocence Project attorney Jill Kent said in closing arguments on MAR-15: "Mr. Stoll's conviction hangs on the falsehoods told by frightened and confused children 20 years ago. It was all a result of suggestive questioning." Kern County officials defend Stoll's conviction. Prosecutor Lisa Green told the judge: "These kids were telling the truth back then and they are not for whatever reason today."  Stoll's lawyers won a major victory during the hearing. Judge Kelly agreed to accept the testimony of defense experts that would compare Stoll's case with that of Jeffrey Modahl. Judge Kelly had overturned his conviction in 1999, partly because the investigators had coerced false testimony from the child witnesses. The same investigators had also interviewed Stoll's accusers.

Kathleen "Cookie" Ridolfi, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project, said: "These witnesses were forced to tell lies that robbed a man of 20 years of his life and robbed them of their innocence. The children grew up knowing an innocent man was sent to prison because of something they did. John Stoll is a victim but so are the boys and their families. The biggest crime of it all is the District Attorney's continued refusal to assume responsibility for any of it. Without accountability, we won't learn from the mistakes, we'll just keep making them."

Judge John Kelley denied bail to John Stoll. _9,10,11 "After a lengthy hearing, Judge Kelly noted that prosecutors had presented no physical evidence at the original trial and that none of the six children who accused Stoll had been examined by doctors. The case rested solely on the children's testimony that the defense contended had been coerced. Four of the six accusers recently testified that they had lied on the stand, saying they were coerced. Unfortunately, Stoll's son has stuck to the original claims he made during a bitter divorce and custody fight." ₁₅

On 2004-APR-30, Judge Kelley vacated Stoll's conviction, saying that "The petitioner has met the burden of showing that the interview techniques ... resulted in unreliable testimony from child witnesses." Stoll walked free on MAY-4 and celebrated a meal with his lawyers on his 61st birthday. "He has no other family left. His mother, who paid for his defense, died while he was behind bars." He remains estranged from his son. _12,14,16  District Attorney Ed Jagels still believes that the convictions were warranted. He issued a statement saying:  "My office remains convinced on the evidence presented at the 1984 trial and 2004 evidentiary hearing, that the children were, in fact, molested by John Stoll."

Follow-up in the media: