Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [42]
Susan and Felix had been married for two years when their first child, Adam Eric Polk, was born on January 3, 1983. The delivery was difficult for Susan.
In a letter to Adam in June of 2002, Susan explained that she had planned to experience natural childbirth, going so far as to read books, attend classes, and hire a midwife in preparation for his arrival. Everything was moving along smoothly until the last month of the pregnancy when she was told the baby was in the breach position. Things worsened when her water broke three weeks before her due date. She was having no contractions, and doctors were facing the prospect of a risky, dry breach birth.
According to Susan, the doctors decided to proceed with the delivery. All they needed was her signature on a consent form. “I asked a few questions, creating complications,” Susan wrote in the letter:
They were eager to try out this natural delivery. I was being a problem. Then something welled up inside of me, it was a colossal no. I said, “Why am I not having a C-section? Why am I not having it now? The longer we wait, the greater the danger of infection to my baby, right? Didn’t you just tell me that? What are we waiting for? I want a C-section, and I want it now!”…Afterwards the doctors were angry at me. They were annoyed by my willfulness. I was there for a few days. The nurses were running off with you against my instructions to the incubators where they stuck enormous needles, IVs, in your little hand. I hobbled after you with my cart containing my IVs, ticking off the nurses. You developed asthma in the incubators, possibly a drug reaction.
The doctors blamed it on your premature birth.
It is clear from Susan’s writing that she felt a need to control her world—a symptom often seen in people whose lives are out of control. This was her child, and she wanted to make sure that he was okay.
More than two years later on June 2, 1985, Susan gave birth to Eli, while Gabriel arrived on January 10, 1987. Though Susan was a stay-at-home mom who felt comfortable with her boys, she and Felix enrolled Adam in day care shortly after Gabriel was born. It seemed the right time for Adam to get out and enjoy the company of children his age, so the couple placed him in a private day care program in the home of an upper-middle-class family. There was only one other child in the program, the caretaker’s own child, who was anxious for a companion.
After a diligent check of references, Adam attended the program about eighteen hours per week, in six-hour intervals. One morning, while standing in the kitchen getting ready for breakfast, Adam told his mother he didn’t want to go to “school” that day.
“Why don’t you want to go to school today?” Susan reportedly asked him.
“I don’t know, I’m tired,” Adam told her, playfully pulling open a drawer in the kitchen.
Adam said that his mother asked if anybody at the preschool had “touched” him.
He simply said, “Yeah, that’s it.”
Then only four and still in diapers, he later claimed he was not even aware of what it was she was asking him. But his response set off a chain reaction that landed Adam in therapy. According to Adam’s sworn testimony, his desire to stay home from day care that morning led to his mother’s belief that he had been sexually abused there. The Polks took Adam to see a therapist who reportedly confirmed that the youngster had been the victim of ritualistic sexual abuse during his four months at the day care program.
The unfortunate reality was that the fears that the Polks were experiencing were nothing new. At that time, allegations of ritualistic sexual abuse of children were making headlines. Newspapers in California were reporting charges of sexual abuse at a preschool in Manhattan Beach. The mother of a male student there had complained to police that a part-time aide at the McMartin Preschool had molested her son. Police found no physical evidence to support the claim, and the district attorney declined to prosecute. However,