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Show AG-ends investigation off Lehi sex abuse charges By MARC HADDOCK Utah Attorney General David Wilkinson is closing his office's formal investigation of child sexual abuse which centered around a Lehi neighborhood. A news release issued last Thursday by Wilkinson's office said the investigation won't be reopened re-opened unless there is new evidence evi-dence discovered in the case. But the news release provides a controversial closing to the allegations allega-tions which implicated several Lehi residents and attracted statewide state-wide attention with the trial of Allan B. Hadfield the only person tried in the case. "The fact that no other charges will be filed based on the current state of evidence we have discovered discov-ered should not be interpreted as a finding that nothing ever occurred as alleged by the children," said RobertN. Parrish, Assistant Attorney Attor-ney General. "There were children in the neighborhood with demonstrable physical evidence of sexual abuse, which could not be explained in any other reasonable way," Parrish said. "The troubling issue for the Attorney General's Office was not in determiningthat sexual abuseof some children had occurred, but rather in proving beyond any reasonable rea-sonable doubt who committed the abuse." Allegations of child sexual abuse on a massive scale surfaced more than three years ago when children reported they had been sexual abused by older children in their neighborhood. According to testimony in Hadfield's trial in 1987, children in the neighborhood then began mak ing broad allegations of child sexual sex-ual abuse by dozens of adult neighbors. neigh-bors. The Utah County Attorney's office investigated the case for a year before dropping the investigation investiga-tion because of lack of evidence. That's when Wilkinson's office took up the case, and investigated almost two more years before leveling level-ing any charges seven counts of child sex abuse-related crimes against Hadfield. Hadfield was convicted on all counts in December 1987, and placed on probation by District Judge Cullen Y. Christensen in a controversial ruling by the judge The fact that no "" other charges will be filed ... should not be interpreted as a finding find-ing that nothing ever occurred as alleged by the children.' Robert N. Parrish stating that Hadfield met the requirements re-quirements for the state's "incest exception" to a mandatory sentence. sen-tence. Hadfield, who has served six months in jail and is under-going court-ordered treatment for child sex abusers, maintains his innocence. inno-cence. But the charges against Hadfield Had-field didn't focus on a neighborhood child sex abuse ring mentioned in the trial, but on specific incidence between Hadfield and his children who were key witnesses at the trial. The investigation had a devas tating effect on the neighborhood. Children were taken away from their parents by the Division of Family Services, and then returned re-turned after no evidence of child sexual abuse was found. Two divorces have been attributed attrib-uted to the case -- including Allan Hadfield's. Several of Hadfield's neighbors, who felt they had been accused without being formally charged, appeared on a Channel 4 television news special to refute the accusations. accusa-tions. In Thursday's news release, Associate As-sociate Deputy Attorney General Paul M. Warner said the statement that 30 to 40 adults had been accused ac-cused in the case was wrongly attributed at-tributed to the Attorney General's office -- and saidtheyhadnotfound enough evidence to prove any type of organized child sex abuse was going on in Lehi. "What we are saying today is that we cannot prove there was a ring of adults abusing children in Lehi," Warner said, "if we had been able to prove that beyond a reasonable reason-able doubt, we would have charged more people." But the news release said no more charges were filed because, despite the lengthy investigation, "none of the allegations could be sufficiently corroborated to meet thehigh standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt." Parrish added: "Due to the many complexities of this investigation, investi-gation, including the facts that many of the children who originally disclosed abuse were not allowed to talk to us, that if physical evidence ever did exist it was gone long before be-fore our office became involved in the investigation, and the very high level of public disbelief created by some of the people who felt they were 'accused' in the case; we proceeded pro-ceeded very carefully and held ourselves our-selves to a higher standard of proof." Parrish also said some children who had initially presented strong testimony about the abuse had later withdrawn their testimony. Throughout the investigation and trial, allegations were made accusing Dr. Barbara Snow, a social so-cial worker who specializes in child sex abuse cases, of undue influence in the child's testimony. Parrish countered those accusations accusa-tions by saying: "There was never any cause to believe that the children chil-dren had been 'brainwashed' or 'What we are saying today is that we cannot can-not prove there was a ring of adults abusing children in Lehi.' Paul M. Warner coached into believing they were abused when they were not, despite de-spite the apparently popular notion no-tion of the uninformed to the contrary." con-trary." Associate Deputy Attorney General Warner said that if new evidence comes out in the future and within the statute of limitations, limita-tions, further charges might be forthcoming. But for the time being, he said, all leads had been exhausted. |
