FEMALE EXONEREES:
TRENDS AND PATTERNs
Only 8% of the exonerees we know about are women (119/1,432), about the same proportion as female prison inmates in the United States.
There are two major, interrelated differences between female exonerees, as a group, and male exonerees.
Child victims: 40% of the women in the Registry (47/119) were exonerated of crimes with child victims, compared to only 22% of male exonerees (293/1,313). Most of these women were convicted of child sex abuse – 22%, compared to 11% of male exonerees – but none were convicted of sexual assault on an adult. In addition, nearly 30% of female homicide exonerees were convicted of killing children (15/51), but only 17% of male homicide exonerees (105/601).
Nonetheless, men account for 86% of exonerations with child victims because male exonerees outnumber females by 11 to 1.
No-crime cases: 63% of female exonerees were convicted of crimes that never occurred (75/119), three times the rate for men (21%, 271/1313). Seventy-five percent of female no-crime exonerations involved violent crimes (56/75); and in three-quarters of those cases the supposed victims were children (42/56).
Nearly 90% of women exonerated of crimes against children were convicted of violent crimes that never happened (42/47). Nearly 70% of these cases were in two comparatively uncommon categories:
- Child sex abuse hysteria cases. None of the 26 women exonerated in a child sex abuse case was convicted of a crime that actually occurred. (By comparison, 27% of men exonerated in child sex abuse cases were convicted of actual crimes that other men committed.) The major reason is that 80% of these women (21/26) were exonerated in "child sex abuse hysteria" cases.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, some prosecutors and child welfare workers around the country became convinced that people caring for children, often day care workers and school employees, were sexually abusing those children on a massive scale. More than a hundred defendants were convicted as a result, often based on accusations including bizarre, unsubstantiated and highly improbable satanic rituals. The Registry lists 51 child sex abuse hysteria exonerees, 21 women and 30 men; all were convicted of crimes that never happened. They make up 0.2% of exonerations of men, but 28% of exonerations of women.
The most recent child sex abuse hysteria conviction in the Registry occurred in 1995. Since then, only one woman has been exonerated for any crime involving child sex abuse.
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Shaken Baby Syndrome cases. Twelve exonerations involve "Shaken Baby Syndrome" or SBS (now called "Abusive Head Trauma"). In almost all, the exonerees were convicted on a now widely discredited theory that violent shaking of infants can produce immediate and extreme neurological damage or death without external or skeletal injuries. It now appears that these deaths and injuries were caused by unrelated accidents or undiagnosed pathologies.
Two-thirds of SBS exonerees are women (8/12), which is hardly surprising. One implication of the theory of SBS is that the infant was injured or killed by shaking by the last adult who took care of the child before medical personnel intervened, and women do the vast majority of the work of caring for infants.
Five additional women were exonerated after convictions for killing children who died by accidental means unrelated to claims of shaking.
A terrible consequence of these trends is that some innocent mothers –Teresa Engberg-Lehmer and Nicole Harris, for example –must grieve for children who died of accidental or natural causes, while in prison for killing those children themselves.
In sum, while most female exonerees were falsely convicted of violent crimes against adult victims, or of non-violent crimes, a substantial and disproportionate minority were convicted of violent crimes against children, usually violent crimes that never happened. Judging from known exonerations, women are the likely victims of false convictions for violent crimes that are believed to have been committed by care-takers in roles that are overwhelmingly filled by women – as parents and other family care givers, and as day care workers and teachers of young children.
- Kaitlin Jackson & Samuel Gross
9/27/2014