![]() ![]() Minor announced in December that he would not seek to retry the case, calling the decision "the most difficult" of his time in office.Ī second prosecution would have faced a huge legal obstacle. Michaels was freed on $75,000 bail in March 1993 after an appeals court ruled that her trial involved flagrant prosecutorial abuses, including questioning of the children that tainted their testimony by planting suggestions. She was sentenced to 47 years in prison.Īfter her conviction, journalists researching the case began to read transcripts of the children's interviews that suggested to them that the children had been coaxed or prodded into saying that Ms. She was accused of performing sexual acts on the children in 19, including playing naked games, probing their bodies with knives and forks and forcing them to eat feces and defecate on her. Michaels was convicted on 115 counts of sexually abusing 19 children ages 4 and 5 at the Wee Care Day Nursery in Maplewood, N.J., where she was working to make ends meet. ![]() Minor, said, "We don't have any comment on it and are not planning any."Ĭharged during a rash of multiple-child sex-abuse scandals in the 1980's, Ms. Ray Weiss, a spokesman for the Essex County Prosecutor, Clifford J. None of the potential defendants in the suit would comment. Those named include the state itself, the Attorney General, the Division of Youth and Family Services, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, the Essex County police, the Newark police and various employees who worked on the case. ![]() Santore, has served notice to seven government agencies and 10 current or former state employees that he intends to file suit for malicious prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest, negligence and civil rights violations, among others. "What I am trying to do is a positive thing to put this case to rest, to have the truth be known, to insure by having a judgment against the State of New Jersey that they will be careful before bringing this kind of suit again." Michaels, 33, who was a 22-year-old aspiring actress when her legal battles started in 1985. "It was a reckless prosecution," said Ms. Margaret Kelly Michaels, the former day care teacher who spent five years in prison before her conviction on sex-abuse charges was overturned in 1993, said today that she planned to file suit for damages from state and local agencies for her arrest and prosecution. ![]()
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