Is Trial of Church Volunteer Accused of Abusing Children a Witch Hunt? : Courts: Deformed man is charged with molesting boys and girls while a baby-sitter. His defenders say his looks are causing the outcry. Reliability of child witnesses is also questioned.

SAN DIEGO —  For two years Dale Akiki has languished in San Diego County Jail, unjustly accused, say his scores of supporters, because of his odd appearance and a witch hunt by the district attorney.

Deformed since birth and with limited intelligence, Akiki faces 43 counts of child abuse and two counts of kidnaping. The alleged crimes, involving boys and girls ages 3 to 5, occurred while Akiki was a volunteer baby-sitter at a charismatic church in nearby Spring Valley.

The case--one of the most controversial prosecutions here in recent history and a hot topic on radio talk shows--rests largely on the oral accounts of preschool children. It has raised new questions about the reliability of young witnesses and the role of therapists, parents and investigators in shaping their stories.

Akiki, 35, suffers from a rare genetic disorder that has left him with droopy eyelids, a clubfoot, limited use of his elbows and a head grotesquely enlarged by the buildup of fluid. But the case is not about appearances, prosecutors say.

They contend that Akiki terrorized children by dunking their heads in toilets, holding them under showers and killing animals. They depict him as an abusive monster who thought nothing of torturing and traumatizing his charges.

“This is a case of physical abuse, sexual abuse and emotional abuse,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Avery said during opening arguments in Akiki’s trial, which began in March and might last through summer. Akiki, who is being held without bail, could be sentenced to 200 years in prison if convicted.

Avery said Akiki tied up the children or put nooses around their necks, took nude photos, kidnaped them by transporting them to a nearby house, and repeatedly threatened them with death for telling anyone what he made them do.

On one wall of Department 6 in San Diego County Superior Court, a poster chronicles the grim accusations. Photographs show smiling children now and at the time of the alleged incidents between June, 1988, and September, 1989.

Across the courtroom sits Akiki, who for most of the trial has sat impassively, occasionally joking or munching on peanuts.

Akiki’s court-appointed lawyers describe him as a kind and gentle man incapable of harming anyone. They concede that children were often frightened by his appearance, giving him a kind of “Elephant Man” persona that fueled fear and suspicion.

“We have evidence that, from the moment Dale began working as a volunteer (at Faith Chapel in Spring Valley), mothers believed he was an inappropriate choice to teach preschool children--simply because of the way he looked,” said public defender Kathleen Coyne.

Akiki first came to the attention of authorities after a girl at the church told her mother that he “showed me him’s penis.” The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department investigated and turned the case over to prosecutors, who considered it for more than six months.

Coyne said that the intervention of a prominent San Diego businessman who is chairman of the local Child Abuse Prevention Foundation prompted the district attorney to reassign the case to a senior prosecutor who founded the anti-abuse organization. The San Diego County Grand Jury indicted Akiki in 1991.

Coyne said her client has passed a sodium brevitol (truth serum) exam and that numerous witnesses who knew or worked with Akiki “never saw, heard or smelled anything unusual going on his classroom” during the periods of 1988 and 1989 in which he worked as a volunteer.

“Not a shred” of physical evidence has surfaced that points to Akiki being guilty, Coyne said.

Prosecutors concede that their case relies almost entirely on the children’s testimony, but they said a disputed medical exam of one girl found vaginal scarring they said was evidence of sexual abuse. They also cite medical evidence of abuse on a second girl whose name has not been raised in the trial.

Defense attorneys have called both findings “highly ambiguous.” Further allegations of brutal sexual abuse and torture, including charges that Akiki bludgeoned animals in the nursery, emerged only after alleged victims were repeatedly interrogated by parents, therapists and San Diego County sheriff’s deputies, Coyne said.

Of the five children to testify so far, the most intriguing was an 8-year-old girl who was on the witness stand this month.

Under questioning by the prosecutor, the girl described “Mr. Dale” as “a bad teacher” who was “mean,” saying he showed her and other children “bad videos” and told her “he would kill my mom and my dad and my brother” if she told anyone what was happening.

But under cross-examination by defense attorney Susan P. Clemens, the girl offered new information.

“Did anybody ever tell you Dale did bad things to children?” Clemens asked.

“Yes,” the girl replied.

“Who told you that?”

“My mom.”

“Did anybody else besides your mom tell you that?” Clemens asked.

“Ellen,” the girl said, referring to her therapist.

“Is that when you found out Dale did bad things to children?”

“Yes.”

“Before that, did anybody tell you that Dale did bad things to children?”

“No.”

Afterward, prosecutor Avery complained that the girl was exhausted, having testified for three hours. But Coyne said later: “We feel we accomplished with this witness what was necessary to acquit our client.”

The defense team cites new studies released independently since the trial began that suggest testimony from children is often unreliable. The studies suggest that persistent questioning of child witnesses can lead them to give elaborate accounts of events that never occurred and which they initially denied.

“Often the therapist is thrashing around, and then something comes out of the kid’s mouth that the therapist really gloms onto,” said Maggie Bruck, a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal and a clinical expert on the suggestibility of children whose work is cited in the new research.

“Sometimes, they ask these children questions that make it absolutely apparent the interviewer is looking for every shred of evidence to indicate even the slightest hint of sexual abuse,” Bruck said. “That one thing pops out . . . and it’s the beginning of the ballgame.”

In this trial, defense attorneys say the stories told now by the children in some cases differ dramatically from what investigators heard almost four years ago.

A 7-year-old boy recently testified that Akiki, his wife and a female co-worker all touched him on his private parts while they were baby-sitting in the nursery of Faith Chapel as parents attended church in a nearby room.

But Coyne said that when the boy was first interviewed on videotape in August, 1989, he repeatedly denied being abused. Questioned again a month later, he said only that Akiki had “showed me his bottom.”

Prosecutors say that Akiki’s victims initially denied abuse because he had scared them into silence.

Akiki’s supporters--many claiming that they were once unjustly accused of child abuse by county authorities--have formed their own organization, which has staged five demonstrations since March, some involving as many as 200 people. One protest took place in front of the office of San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, with hundreds of hecklers calling for his ouster.

This case went to trial, public defender Coyne charged in court, only because Jackson W. Goodall Jr., one of the city’s most prominent corporate executives and an acquaintance of the district attorney’s, asked Miller to prosecute.

Coyne argued that Miller reassigned the case from Deputy Dist. Atty. Sally Penso after Goodall and his wife complained about Penso’s work and about the slowness of the investigation.

In sworn testimony, Mary E. Goodall, the businessman’s wife, acknowledged that she and her husband met with Miller to express concern that no charges had been filed despite six months of investigation.

“I was frustrated with the number of children that were coming out of the woodwork, so to speak,” Mary Goodall said during a hearing in late 1991.

She admitted during the hearing that she had expressed concerns to the district attorney about Penso. Goodall said that she was concerned about the case not being thoroughly investigated and criticized Penso’s interviewing of some of the alleged victims.

She then testified that, within a week after she and her husband went to the district attorney, Avery was assigned to the case. Penso could not be reached for comment.

Public defender Coyne also has questioned the role of prosecutor Avery, who founded the San Diego Child Abuse Prevention Foundation and serves with Jackson Goodall on its board. Goodall, part owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team and chief executive officer of Foodmaker Inc., which owns the Jack-in-the-Box restaurant chain, is board chairman.

In her motion to have Miller and Avery excused from the case, Coyne said the “Goodalls have either given or promised nearly half a million dollars to an agency which Mary Avery demonstrably holds dear to her heart.”

Goodall and Avery declined to be interviewed.

Coyne’s motion was denied, with Superior Court Judge William H. Kennedy calling it “a good example of some smoke, but no real fire.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Williams, who is assisting the prosecution, denied that the case was influenced by the Goodalls or anyone else and said progress was delayed because it is a complicated matter.

Meanwhile, supporters of Akiki, a former data processor in the Navy’s San Diego supply depot, said the prosecution is an unjust crusade and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“In Los Angeles, more than $15 million was spent on the McMartin preschool case,” said Ken Bourke, 52, one of Akiki’s supporters. “The same situations apply to this case--therapist involvement, impressionable children, irate parents and stubborn, stupid prosecution. No win is possible. So why can’t they see that?”