[part 7]

As a final note on the Presidio case, a report in the Marin Independent Journal revealed that Aquino owned a building in Marin County - inherited from his mother, Betty Ford-Aquino - that had been jointly leased to the Marin County Child Abuse Council and Project Care for Children. The stated purpose of Project Care was, interestingly enough, to assist parents in locating day care for their children.

As disturbing as the Presidio case was, it was just one of many ritual abuse cases directly tied to one or more branches of the United States armed forces. As the Mercury News reported: "By November, 1987 the Army had received allegations of child abuse at 15 of its day care centers and several elementary schools. There were also at least two cases in Air Force day care centers," and another in a center run by the U.S. Navy.

In addition, "a special team of experts was sent to Panama [in June of 1988] to help determine if as many as 10 children at a Department of Defense elementary school had been molested and possibly infected with AIDS." Yet another case emerged in a U.S.-run facility in West Germany.

These cases erupted at some of the most esteemed military bases in the country, including Fort Dix, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Jackson, and West Point. Many of those making the accusations were career military officers who had devoted their lives to unquestioned allegiance to the U.S. armed forces. Many would resign their posts in outraged protest.

It would be redundant to review all these cases, as most of them followed a remarkably similar pattern. Given though that West Point is America's premier military academy, and given also that the case - like many others - was linked by witnesses to the Presidio, a brief review is warranted here.

As The Times Herald Record reported in June of 1991: "The incidents [at the West Point Child Development Center] unfolded against a backdrop of satanic acts, animal sacrifices and cult-like behavior among the abusers, whose activities extended beyond the U.S. Military Academy borders to Orange County and a military base in San Francisco, parents charged."

The case first broke in July of 1984, when a three-year-old girl found herself in the emergency room of the West Point Hospital with a lacerated vagina. She told the examining physician that a teacher at the day care center had hurt her. The next month, the parents of another child leveled accusations of abuse at the center.

As the Mercury News reported: "By the end of the year, 50 children had been interviewed by investigators. Children at West Point told stories that would become horrifyingly familiar. They said they had been ritually abused. They said they had had excrement smeared on their bodies and been forced to eat feces and drink urine. They said they were taken away from the day care center and photographed."

Despite abundant medical and psychological evidence, and literally dozens of child witnesses, and despite "950 interviews by 60 FBI agents assigned to the investigation, an investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani produced no federal grand jury indictments," according to the Herald Record.

The Herald also noted that: "In 1987, Giuliani said his detailed investigation showed only one or two children were abused." This was, it should be noted, a bare-faced lie from the fascistic future-mayor and would-be Senator, as the Herald report divulged: "a still-secret, independent report - produced by one of the nation's top experts on child sexual abuse - confirms the children's accusations of abuse."

This was not the first time that the prestigious academy had shown an appalling willingness to overlook extreme levels of abuse directed at children by army personnel. A year before the abuse case broke, a 22-month-old child was murdered by an Army staff sergeant. The Mercury News reported that: "After a court martial hearing, the sergeant was given an 18 month suspended sentence and dishonorable discharge."

In other words, he served no time and was essentially given a free ride for murdering a child. With help from Giuliani, the FBI, the U.S. Army, and the grand jury, the abusers of countless children at the day care center (which was, appropriately enough, building number 666 on the academy grounds) were likewise given a free ride.

As with the Franklin case, the children and their parents were to find justice only through the civil courts. The Herald Record reported that: "lawyers for both the government and the 11 child plaintiffs agreed that some children were sexually abused at the center two years ago" (again contradicting Giuliani's bogus conclusions). The government, however, claimed that it could not be held responsible, due to the "assault exemption in the Federal Tort Claim Act."

As the New York Times explained: "under federal law the government cannot be held liable for assaults committed by its employees and thus cannot be sued for assault." In other words, the Army did not dispute the allegations, it just rather

cavalierly maintained that it was exempt from being sued. The court saw otherwise and awarded $2.7 million to nine of the child victims - paltry compensation for their suffering, but a victory of sorts nonetheless.

The Times opined that the settlement amount "was large for a child-abuse case in which no criminal charges were filed." The article claimed that the failure to prosecute the case was due to the fact that "the Federal Bureau of Investigation found 'insufficient evidence to prosecute,'" when in fact the Bureau appears to have deliberately ignored and/or covered-up that evidence.

And so ended the West Point case, except that - as one mother noted - it was hardly over: "These people stole our children. She's nothing like she used to be. She's a very angry little girl. She doesn't trust anyone. She's nothing like she was before this happened. It's never going to be over for them, or for us."

The mother of a Presidio victim had this to say: "People keep telling us we've got to let it go -- just forget about it and go on ... Three weeks ago, our youngest daughter was having nightmares and our other daughter was closing out the whole world, going to her room and siting there, with no radio, no TV, no nothing. Tell me it's over."

"I cannot accept promotion in a system that at first refused to acknowledge and now refuses to deal with the victims of extensive child abuse that occurred at the West Point Child Development Center."

Army Captain Walter R. Grote, refusing a promotion to Major in June 1985. Grote referred to his protest as a "fight for the human rights of all children."

REFERENCES:

• 1. Al-Kurdi, Husayn "Messing With Our Minds," Toward Freedom, May 1998 • 2. Arce, Rose Marie "Liability in Point Abuse Case Debated," The Times Herald Record (Middletown, New York), December 23, 1986 • 3. Blood, Linda The New Satanists, Warner Books, 1994 • 4. Cunningham, Douglas and Alan Snel "A Legacy of Pain: Settlement Doesn't Ease Abused Children's Fears," The Times Herald Record (Middletown, New York), June 11, 1991 • 5. DeCamp, John W. The Franklin Cover-Up, AWT, Inc., 1992 • 6. Ehrensaft, Diane "Preschool Child Sex Abuse: The Aftermath of the Presidio Case," The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, April 1992 • 7. Goldston, Linda "Army of the Night," San Jose Mercury News, July 24, 1988 • 8. Goldston, Linda "Satanic Priest Questioned in New Sex Case," San Jose Mercury News, May 13, 1989 • 9. Hays, Constance L. "$2.7 Million Settles Army Child-Abuse Case," New York Times, May 23, 1991

• 10. Sawyer, Kathy "Army Doctor Turns Down Promotion; Lax Response to Case of Child Abuse Cited," Washington Post, June 25, 1985 • 11. Steinberg, Jeffrey "Satanic Subversion of the U.S. Military," EIR, July 2, 1999 • 12. "Army Doctor Refuses Promotion in Protest," San Diego Union Tribune, June 25, 1985 • 13. "The Keys to Hell and Death - Part II," SFLR News (the newsletter of San Francisco Liberation Radio), May 21, 2001 • 14. Michael Aquino v. The Honorable Michael Stone, Secretary of the Army (Civ. A. No. 90-1547-A), United States District Court, Alexandria Division, July 1, 1991

The Pedophocracy, Part IV: McMolestation

August 2001

"Rarely has such a strange and little-understood organization had such a profound effect on media coverage of such a controversial matter. The [False Memory Syndrome] foundation is an aggressive, well-financed PR machine adept at manipulating the press, harassing its critics, and mobilizing a diverse army of psychiatrists, outspoken academics, expert defense witnesses, litigious lawyers, Freud bashers, critics of psychotherapy, and devastated parents."

Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1997

If there's anyone who can relate to the sentiments expressed by the Presidio and West Point parents, it is the mothers and fathers of the children from the McMartin Preschool - and there are literally hundreds of them. The McMartin case was, of course, the largest and most well-publicized of the multi-victim, multi-perpetrator ritual abuse cases that sprang forth in the 1980s.

It was also a case that was grotesquely misrepresented by the media, both mainstream and 'alternative' - perhaps nowhere more so than in the appalling writings of Alexander Cockburn, the allegedly 'progressive' Warren Committee apologist. Cockburn went so far as to write an op-ed piece entitled "The McMartin Case: Indict the Children, Jail the Parents," which ran in The Wall Street Journal on February 8, 1990.

Virtually everyone agrees that the children of McMartin were victimized, the only debate being whether that victimization was by abusive caretakers or by overzealous therapists and prosecutors. Either way, Cockburn's stance on the case was unconscionable, and should have sent a clear signal to the progressive community that there was considerably more to the McMartin allegations than met the eye.

The harsh reality is that the McMartin Preschool, in conjunction with at least two other Manhattan Beach preschools and one babysitting service, was the center of a massive child prostitution and child pornography ring whose operations were protected and covered up by any number of local, state and federal officials - or so it would appear.

A glimpse of the true nature and scale of the McMartin case is given by an official correspondence from Sergeant Beth Dickerson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to Agent Ken Lanning at the FBI Academy Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia, dated February 10, 1985, and reproduced in Larry Kahaner's Cults That Kill:

"In August 1983, the Manhattan Beach Police Department began an investigation regarding allegations of sexual abuse occurring at the McMartin Preschool ... Altogether, approximately 400 children were evaluated by therapists at Children's Institute International. All interviews were videotaped and 350 children disclosed sexual behavior ...

"In all, the victims named seven teachers (six women and one male) at the preschool as having molested them. These individuals are currently charged with 209 counts of child molestation. Also named are about 30 other individuals still uncharged, as well as numerous unidentified 'strangers.'

"McMartin victims allege sexual abuse occurred on school grounds as well as at a local market, churches, a mortuary, various homes, a farm, a doctor's office, other preschools and other unknown locations ...

"Most children state they were photographed in the nude ... They mention drinking a red or pink liquid that made them sleepy ... Children disclose animal sacrificing (bunnies, ponies, turtles, etc.) and some of this occurred in churches. Victims describe sticks put in their vaginas and rectums and also being 'pooped' and 'peed' on. Children say that the adults sometimes dressed in black robes, formed a circle around them and chanted.

"In May 1984, another preschool investigation began in the same policing jurisdiction stemming from a McMartin victim who identified the Manhattan Ranch Preschool as a place where he was taken and molested ... additional children have begun disclosing sexual abuse (approximately 60) and they have named six or more additional suspects ... These children talk of strangers coming to the school and molesting them, being taken off campus and molested, being photographed nude and some talk of animals being abused. The children talk of being hit with sticks and of being 'peed' and 'pooped' on ...

"[T]he resources of the police department and the District Attorney's office were not sufficient in order to follow up on the multitude of uncharged suspects in both preschools ... The Task Force became operational on November 5, 1984. It should be noted that the Task Force has two other preschools under investigation for alleged sexual abuse in addition to McMartin and Manhattan Ranch. One, the Learning Game Preschool, is clearly linked to McMartin."

An astounding total of 460 children reported being sexually abused at the three closely-linked Manhattan Beach schools. Even more astounding, investigative author Michael Newton (among others) has noted that Children's Institute International determined that: "a full eighty percent displayed physical symptoms, including vaginal or rectal scarring, anal bleeding, painful bowel movements, and the 'anal wick reflex' associated with violent penetration."

The stories told by the victim/witnesses were remarkably similar as to the nature of the abuse, the locations where the abuse took place, and the perpetrators of the abuse. And these were not, as is commonly believed, all preschool children telling these stories; some of the witnesses were former students in their teens and twenties, and their stories corroborated those of the children.

The older witnesses were not allowed to testify at the McMartin trials, however, as the statute of limitations for the crimes committed against them had expired. Many of the younger witnesses were unable to offer testimony as well, for various reasons - most notably because they were too severely traumatized. Even so, as author Jan Hollingsworth has pointed out, prosecutors had at their disposal "more than a hundred child witnesses as old as eleven and a truckload of medical reports bearing documentation of scarred genitals and anuses."

[continued in part 8]