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Gerald Amirault's Day
He will finally go free--17 years too late.

Monday, October 20, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT

The end of Gerald Amirault's long struggle for freedom is in sight. A Massachusetts parole board saw to that with a unanimous decision on Friday granting his petition for release--officially set to occur at the end of April.

It was a joyous day for this prisoner of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, behind bars since his conviction, in 1986, as a molester of nursery school children in a case based on bogus testimony dragged from browbeaten child witnesses. It was an exultant day too for his family, which has kept its hopes up despite years of having them dashed.

Mr. Amirault's freedom could have been derailed by one factor of consequence to Department of Corrections parole boards--namely the prisoner's refusal to agree that he was guilty. Like his mother and sister, who were also wrongly accused but were released earlier, Mr. Amirault refused to attend sex offender classes despite what it could cost him. They refused to do anything that would suggest there was any merit to the charges against them.

It no doubt helped that two of the three members of the parole board had also served on the Governor's Board of Pardons, which had earlier commuted Mr. Amirault's sentence, only to be overruled by former Governor Jane Swift, who was then hopelessly scrambling to win re-election. The pair were also among the signers of a statement that there were "real and substantial doubts" about the merits of the Amirault prosecutions.

By now, too, the recognition that this prosecution--and other child abuse cases like it around the country--was built on concocted testimony has become widespread. So widespread that it is now the sort of thing studied in colleges and universities. The 49-year-old Mr. Amirault is about to finish his liberal arts degree in prison. Not long ago he had the surprising experience of opening a sociology textbook, and finding there--in a list of hysteria-driven prosecutions--the Amirault case. Things have certainly come far since the day he was carted off to do 30-40 years, a despised cast-off from society....