On the other side you have people like Carolyn Heim--articulate, committed, highly schooled in the darker side of human behavior; counselor for the children who, one by one, eventually blurted out the stunning accusations. Even Kleier, whose man task force has yet to produce the remains of a single body or even the report of a missing child, admits it will be hard--if not impossible--to prove the stories are true. Although molestation charges have been filed against at least 17 people--with five of them convicted--no one has been arrested or charged in connection with the purported murders.
While charges against six have been dismissed, some of those dismissals are being appealed, six others are awaiting trial, and dozens more named in the investigation await uncertain futures. In the meantime, it seems, everyone is suffering: the children, said to be victims of the basest forms of abuse, isolated from the families and friends they have come to accuse; the accused, fearful of prosecution, deprived of their children, stripped of community presumptions of innocence; even law enforcement officials, smarting under criticism that they are destroying families and hounding innocent people in pursuit of allegations too fantastic to be believed.
Cory Taylor got it from two directions. Or do we have brainwashed children accusing innocent persons of nonexistent crimes? I believe them. Not only have no bodies been found, but at least two of the infants reported slain in the satanic rites are known to be alive, and a third actually died the day after her birth on May 20, If there is a focal point to the whole controversy, it is a bright, personable, handsome year-old named Mike Nokes.
Other children reportedly told investigators that Gonzales and the other man had molested them, too. Gerardo Gonzales, 29, and the other man were arrested. Both currently await trial. As the weeks passed, the children who said they had been molested added the names of additional juvenile victims to the list--among them those of Mike and his sister. Mike started crying. I told him just to tell the truth. But six days later, Muse reported, Mike changed his story, saying he, his sister and other children had been molested by Gerardo Gonzales, Cheryl Gonzales and his father, Brad Nokes, while his mother, Mary Nokes, watched.
Three weeks after that, Mike reversed his field again, denying he had ever been molested. During this period, Mike was placed in the custody of relatives. His parents, denied visitation rights, sent a private investigator, Susan Peninger, to talk to him. In a conversation with Mike recorded by Peninger last November, the boy again denied that he had been abused. On Nov. Mike and his sister were remanded to custody at Jamison Center, a Kern County facility for juveniles.
