TV Reviews : ‘Frontline’s’ ‘Innocence Lost’ Conjures Up the McMartin Case

The puzzling, paranoid, nightmarish phenomenon that was the McMartin child abuse trial is repeating itself in the quiet town of Edenton, N.C. And no, this is not a movie-of-the-week. In the meticulous, gut-churning two-hour report, “Innocence Lost,” that producer Ofra Bikel has compiled for “Frontline” (tonight at 9 p.m., Channels 28 and 15; 10 p.m. on Channel 50), the loaded word McMartin is never mentioned. But Bikel’s investigation into the flurry of charges of child abuse at Edenton’s Little Rascals day-care center--charges that have resulted in indictments against seven defendants--conjures up all of the worst aspects of the earlier, notorious case.

If anything, the Edenton story may actually be worse. It began with a whimper: Little Joel Mabry told his mother, Jane, that he was slapped by an adult at Little Rascals. Jane claims that she was friends with the center’s owners, Bob and Betsy Kelly, and yet, inexplicably, Jane says that from this single incident, she suspected something worse.

That “something” became charges of sexual abuse of 90 children who attended the center. Claims of general abuse evolved into surreal-sounding reports of sex with snakes and abuse with microwave ovens. Like McMartin, the suspicions spread as much from rumor as anything else, and Bikel suggests that the small-town atmosphere was an ideal breeding ground for a wave of paranoia.

The camera patiently fixes on Kelly family figures, the accusing parents and parents such as Debbie Forrest who scoff at the charges. As with few recent programs on television, the viewer is allowed generous time and space to consider the claims and counterclaims, to play the role of a jury member.

In this twisted, tragic saga, one of the most troubling issues raised is the abuse of American jurisprudence. The seven defendants, for instance, have been held in prison a year without trial. Each will be tried separately, ensuring a courtroom marathon. Only the prosecution has pre-trial access to conversations between the allegedly abused children and their therapists, even though these sessions form the bulk of the prosecution’s case.

And as Edenton townspeople tell it, the defendants are assumed guilty before proven innocent.

Following Bikel’s extraordinary look at ugliness beneath a small town’s placid facade is a 30-minute discussion, “When Children Testify,” about the nettlesome use of child testimony in a court of law.