…Coakley rose in politics via the Middlesex District Attorney’s office, which was the unrelenting engine behind the Fells Acres Day Care prosecution, perhaps the most notorious among the wave of child sex abuse cases that swept the nation in the 1980s.
Coakley did not prosecute the case, which was already under way when she joined the office as an assistant district attorney in 1986. But years later, after the day-care abuse hysteria had subsided and she had won the office’s top job, she worked to keep the convicted “ringleader,” Gerald Amirault, behind bars despite widespread doubts that a crime had been committed
[…]
This is old news. But it’s hardly less troubling for the passage of time. And given Coakley’s political ambitions, it still resonates. When I went online to see if anyone was making Fells Acres an issue in the Senate race, I quickly stumbled upon a heated discussion on a Democratic blog-Blue Mass. Group. “I’ve not made up my mind on Coakley’s specific record in this case,” said Blue Mass. Group co-editor Charley Blandy in an Oct. 8 post. “But I do think that the bill for overzealous prosecution comes due eventually, and you don’t just keep promoting people upward if you don’t trust their judgment.”
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