Agreed. But in this case there was at least one kid with...have you finished breakfast?...gonorrhea of the throat.
I remember seeing on television some woman pointing to areas on a doll while asking a three-year-old girl if some guy had touched her there or there or there. I was creeped out in thinking of how my nieces might have replied.
When that child later tested positive for gonorrhea of the throat, Ford used the test against Baran at trial, even though a) the child never accused Baran of forcing him to perform oral sex, b) the child, in fact, specifically denied having sexual contact with Baran on the witness stand, c) Baran tested negative for gonorrhea, d) the boy had told his mother two months prior that his stepfather had orally raped him, and e) on the very day Baran was convicted, charges against the stepfather were turned over to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution. Baran’s counsel was never informed of the allegation against the stepfather. Addressing the gonorrhea issue in his closing arguments, Ford implied that Baran’s “lifestyle” made it probable that he contracted gonorrhea at other times and knew how to quickly eradicate it to cover his tracks.
This would have been sufficient to me, if I were on the jury and had been informed, to have doubted this part of the prosecution. As for your point about a 3 yo child being shown on a doll, this has been a technique that was easy to abuse. I believe that current procedures ask the child to independently point to where they had been touched. Numerous cases from this 1980s period also had the children subjected to multiple interviews until their testimony was 'correct' and then only that evidence was brought forth.
I would designate that prosecutorial abuse as child abuse in and of itself!