Baran Information

On June 20, 2006 Bernard Baran was granted a new trial . He was released on bond ten days later. But the DA refused to give up for the next three years. While practically everyone knows about McMartin and some of the other day-care-panic cases of the 80s, few have heard of Bernard Baran, the first day-care worker convicted. Baran a working-class gay man from Pittsfield, Massachusetts and an aide at Pittsfields Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) was arrested on October 6, 1984 and charged with sexually assaulting two 3-year-olds. He was then 19 years old. He is now 42. Baran abandoned by his father when he was three dropped out of school after 9th grade and went to work at ECDC at 16. Bernie was openly gay, which outraged the parents of one of the boys in his care. (Click here to hear the mother express her feelings about gay people in a sworn deposition. The accusing stepfather eventually came to doubt Barans guilt. Click here for an excerpt from his deposition. The two depositions paint an interesting picture of the moral character or lack thereof of the couple who destroyed Bernard Barans life.) They complained to ECDC that no ninth-grade dropout homosexual would help take care of their son. At the time, the McMartin case was major national news and accusations of sexual abuse of pre-school children at the Fells Acres Day School in Malden, Massachusetts were dominating the New England news. (Gerald Amirault had been arrested one month before Bernie.) A few weeks later, this couple who were drug addicts well-known to the authorities for their history of violence called the police to accuse Baran. The police went to ECDC, telling them that Baran was under suspicion. The schools new Coordinator was alarmed by the police visit. She called a friend, the mother of a girl who had attended the school. The mother, a self-identified survivor of sexual abuse, began urgently interrogating her daughter, specifically about Baran. The mother then called the police to accuse Bernie as well. He was arrested and panic ...