Bernard F. Baran Jr. (May 25, 1965 – September 1, 2014) was an American day care employee wrongfully convicted in the

day care sex abuse hysteria Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collect ...

of the 1980s and 1990s that was spawned by the

McMartin preschool trial The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case in the 1980s, prosecuted by the Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with hu ...

. Unlike other day care cases, the Baran case garnered little national press coverage. The Baran case spanned almost 25 years from his arrest in October 1984 until all charges were dropped in June 2009. Baran maintained his innocence throughout his case, making him ineligible for parole. Baran was accused, tried and convicted within a three-month period and sentenced to three life sentences in January 1985. In 2009, the Massachusetts Appeals Court vacated the convictions, deeming the case "notorious," and citing the behavior of the original prosecutor as "troubling." Superior Court Criminal Action. The Baran case is the subject of the 2010 documentary film '' Freeing Bernie Baran''.

Background

Bernard Baran took a job as a teacher's aide in 1983 at the Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) in his hometown of

Pittsfield Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. Pittsfield� ...

, the county seat of

Berkshire County Berkshire County (pronounced ) is a county on the western edge of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. As of the 2020 census, the population was 129,026. Its largest city and traditional county seat is Pittsfield. The county was founded in ...

Western Massachusetts Western Massachusetts, known colloquially as “Western Mass,” is a region in Massachusetts, one of the six U.S. states that make up the New England region of the United States. Western Massachusetts has diverse topography; 22 colleges and u ...

. Shortly before his employment, social workers placed a four-year-old boy at ECDC due to the child's home environment. Eventually, the child ended up in the classroom where Baran worked. In September 1984, accusations of sexual abuse at the Fells Acres Day School in

Malden, Massachusetts Malden is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, the population was 66,263 people. History Malden, a hilly woodland area north of the Mystic River, was settled by Puritans in 1640 on la ...

, made news across the state and beyond. Shortly thereafter, the parents of the boy complained to the board of directors of ECDC that they "didn't want no homo" working with their child. The Board of Directors held a meeting on September 12, 1984, to specifically discuss Baran's

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

, and the possibility of terminating his employment because of it. Baran retained his job after being questioned about his homosexuality by his superiors.

First allegation

On October 1, 1984, the parents of the boy in question removed him from ECDC in protest of Baran's continued employment. The parents were drug addicts and police informants. On October 5, 1984, they called their connection at the Pittsfield police department drug control unit. They alleged that Bernard Baran molested their son at ECDC that day, three days after they had removed the child from the day care. The following day the police began an investigation at ECDC and validated this claim of sexual abuse.

Hysteria

Word of the first allegation broke shortly after the investigation began. Within days the day care center had sponsored a puppet show to facilitate other children's ability to talk about abuse. The day care also notified all the parents that a child at the day care had gonorrhea. After multiple children were interviewed with anatomically correct dolls at both of ECDC's locations, one where Baran worked and one where he did not, Baran was indicted on 3 counts of rape and 5 counts of indecent assault on November 5, 1984.

Trial

Baran's case went from arrest to trial in 105 days, convening in court on January 23, 1985, receiving significant local media attention. The court room was closed to the public and the press during the children's testimony without any hearing into the necessity for closing the court, which Baran claimed violated his 6th Amendment right to a public trial. Baran was positioned in the court room so that he could not even hear the testimony of the children. On January 30, 1985, he received three life sentences for three counts of

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ag ...

of a child and five counts of indecent assault and battery. His conviction held up on appeal in 1986. The law firm that handled his appeal eventually destroyed his defense case file.

Motion for new trial

In 1999 a new legal team took Baran's case. In a series of hearings from 1999 to 2005, the original defense file was recreated from the contents of the civil suits filed against ECDC after the Baran conviction. The

motion In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and mea ...

for a new trial contained over 300 flawed items in the original trial, including

prosecutorial misconduct In jurisprudence, prosecutorial misconduct or prosecutorial overreach is "an illegal act or failing to act, on the part of a prosecutor, especially an attempt to sway the jury to wrongly convict a defendant or to impose a harsher than appropri ...

ineffective assistance of counsel In United States law, ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) is a claim raised by a convicted criminal defendant asserting that the defendant's legal counsel performed so ineffectively that it deprived the defendant of the constitutional right gua ...

, and the use of suggestive interviewing techniques with the children. The motion rested in June 2005.

Release and freedom

Baran was granted a new trial in 2006. The Berkshire County District Attorney's office appealed the granting of a new trial in 2008. In 2009 the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the 2006 ruling and set aside the 1984 convictions. In 2010, Baran's lawyers began the process of suing multiple parties in civil court on his behalf. Even though a $400,000.00 settlement was reached in 2010 the state has denied liability and thus has yet to expunge his record.

Death

Baran died suddenly on September 1, 2014, at his home in

Fitchburg, Massachusetts Fitchburg is a city in northern Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The third-largest city in the county, its population was 41,946 at the 2020 census. Fitchburg is home to Fitchburg State University as well as 17 public and private e ...

References

Bibliography

* Commonwealth versus Bernard F. Baran, Jr. Massachusetts Appeals Court Docket 07-P-1096. 2009-05-15. * Superior Court Criminal Action No. 18042-51. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts versus Bernard F. Baran, Jr. Memorandum of Decision and Order on Defendant's Motion For A New Trial. 2006-06-21. * Pollitt, Katha
''Justice for Bernard Baran''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

, 2000-02-03.

External links

Memorandum of Decision and Order on the Defendant's Motion to Dismiss

The Bernard Baran Justice Committee

The Boston Phoenix: "The Trials of Bernard Baran"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baran, Bernard Day care sexual abuse allegations in the United States Overturned convictions in the United States 1965 births Gay men LGBT people from Massachusetts Place of birth missing 2014 deaths Daycare workers Satanic ritual abuse hysteria in the United States False allegations of sex crimes