[Base] [Index]

The Country Walk Case

Our attorney general, Janet Reno, has been accused of managing SRA prosecutions (see "Trial by Therapy," Natl. Review, Sept. 6, 1993; "Justice Gone Crazy", Readers Digest, Jan 1994.) One, the Country Walk Case resulted in a conviction. Frank Fuster is serving a 2 life terms and a 165yr term. Country Walk is often cited as a well documented case because of the confession of Illeana Fuster and the fact that one child tested positive for gonorrhea.

In Revisiting Country Walk (Debbie Nathan, Issues in Child Abuse Accusations Vol. 5, p1, (1993)) Debbie Nathan reveals that much of the evidence in this case is extremely dubious. The gonorrhea test was later found to yield false positives one third of the time. Illeana confessed during intensive therapy sessions in which she was kept in isolation for almost a year, except for visits by her defense attorney, prosecuters, and therapists. Her attorney insisted on getting a confession and plea bargain as the only way out of a life prison sentence. His strategy was successful, Illeana received a ten year sentence and was released and deported after three years.

More recently Illeana has recanted her "confession." She had initially refused to get involved, but more recently wrote a deposition describing how prosecution psychiatrists essentially "brainwashed" her. Also Fuster's son has recanted all his accustions [He actually recanted immediately after making them, but nobody believed him]. In recent depositions he described how he made the accusations because interviewers Jo and Laurie Braga would not let him leave the room until he told them what his father "had done."