Bernard Baran -- response to article in "Boston Globe Magazine"

Bernard Baran's case

Responses to an article by David Mehegan in the "Boston Globe Magazine,"

first posted y10301
latest minor change y10710

On 1 October 2000, the "Boston Globe Magazine" ran (pp. 12-13, 17-28) a lengthy article by David Mehegan on the Bernard Baran case. It was a mixed bag: Mehegan demolished the physical "evidence" supposedly corroborating the charges against Baran, but nevertheless couldn't bring himself to accept that parents and suggestible toddlers had imagined everything.

"Boston Globe Magazine" received a fair number of letters in response, and ran five of them on Sun 12 November 2000 (pp. 6, 16).

Supporting the prosecution:

Wendy Murphy

Supporting Baran:

Mark Pendergrast

Victims of Memory

Robert B. Chatelle

The fifth letter, by Tom Reeves,

did not discuss Baran's guilt or innocence, but questioned whether even someone guilty of fondling toddlers should get "3 life sentences," when those who maim, even murder toddlers tend to draw shorter terms. With my agreement, the editor cut out most of my letter below, the italicized parts that overlapped what others said.

5 Oct 2000

To the Editor of "Boston Globe Magazine":

There was some good material in David Mehegan's article on the Bernard Baran case (1 Oct 2000, pp. 12-13, 17-28), but why did you have to deface the magazine cover with the "Scarlet A" word and the misleading blurb?

The moral issue is not whether Mr. Baran "got a fair trial": politicized pettifoggers in elective prosecutor offices can always shuffle enough papers to confuse the unwary. Instead, one must keep sight of the core question: "Is it more likely than not that the defendant is innocent?" A trial that convicts an innocent person is, ipso facto, an unfair trial.

Admittedly, the Baran case lacks some of the red flags that discredit the Fells Acres case to any reasonable person (but apparently not the hacks on our Supreme Judicial Court).

(1) Mr. Baran was a sole defendant, rather than an entire family. "Multiple offender" cases have been thoroughly debunked in recent years; molestation is a furtive crime of individuals.
(2) Mr. Baran was snatched up at the very beginning of adulthood, before he could establish a long record of responsibility. In contrast, the Fells Acres day-care center had functioned without complaint for twenty years, before a nationwide day-care hysteria broke out in 1984.

Mr. Mehegan correctly explained that the "physical evidence" used to convict Mr. Baran was worthless.
Nevertheless, he seems (pp. 27-28) to be giving the accusers, particularly the "Gruens" who started everything, more credibility than they deserve. They did not simply "use drugs" at the time. As revealed by cross-examination in their 1995 civil suit against the day-care provider's insurance company, they were also habitually violent and utterly delusional. See the transcript at
http://www.freebaran.org/jhcivil2.html
Once investigators publicized "Susan Gruen"s accusation in the hysteria of 1984, it was an easy matter for other panic-stricken parents to browbeat their toddlers into telling them what they wanted to hear.
I am assured by one of Mr. Baran's friends that he was never molested as a child, and made no such claim to Mr. Mehegan (A tape should tell). This sounds like a myth concocted by the accusers to rationalize a story that otherwise doesn't make much sense.

The biggest red flag of all, however, is the DA office's refusal, even today, to videotape interrogations of children, and their highly convenient "loss" of tapes made in the Baran case. Such contempt for the truth itself should be severely punished as conspiracy against the innocent.

--Hugo S. Cunningham

Bob Chatelle's much more thorough discussion of deficiencies in the Mehegan article.

Return to HSC's main page on Bernard Baran's case

Go to the website of the Bernard Baran Justice Committee

Return to HSC's index page on Fells Acres