SAN DIEGO — In May, 1991, the newly married Dale Akiki boarded a bus that would take him from his job at a Navy supply depot to a stop near his home, where his wife was waiting. As he stepped off the bus, he vividly remembers someone shouting.
"You're under arrest!"
Akiki's life--already burdened by a rare genetic disorder--would soon enter a far more grueling phase. Charged with multiple counts of child sexual abuse and kidnaping, he spent the next 2 1/2 years in San Diego County Jail.
In a stunning rebuke to the system that arrested and tried him, Akiki was acquitted Nov. 19 by a jury that rendered a verdict in the seven-month trial after deliberating 6 3/4 hours. Said juror David Fava: "It seemed like a witch hunt to me."
Dubbed "San Diego's McMartin" by some, from the beginning the case was a tale of contradictions. At its center, though, lies the clash of two groups often victimized by the very legal system that promises to safeguard their rights: children and the developmentally disabled. Moreover, it reflected the controversy over the increasingly prominent role of social workers and therapists in child abuse trials and the bizarre legal puzzle presented by undocumented charges of ritual abuse.
Akiki's trial put all those contradictions in high relief. It pitted Akiki, 36, against nine children who accused him of bludgeoning live animals and drinking their blood as part of his satanic repertoire. One boy even accused Akiki of murdering a baby.
The children alleged that these acts occurred in a church nursery school where Akiki and his wife worked as volunteer sitters on Sundays--right down the hall from where their parents were worshiping as part of the charismatic congregation at Faith Chapel in Spring Valley.
Although there was no physical evidence against him, Akiki was denied bail on five occasions. During his 30 months behind bars, Akiki was protected from harm by sheriff's deputies and members of the notorious Syndo Mob street gang. After a verdict that came so quickly it stunned even Akiki, he sped away in a waiting limousine--paid for by the deputies who guarded his cell.
"Merely the accusation of child abuse can destroy a person's life," said Public Defender Kathleen Coyne, who represented Akiki. "But here you have a man who has extreme physical manifestations of a terrible disease. I find that all of that taken together poses an injustice of considerable magnitude."
Akiki's condition--a debilitating disease known as Noonan's syndrome--has left him with droopy eyelids, a concave chest, club feet and wide ears that sag almost to the base of his broad neck. His enlarged head--the result of hydrocephalus, or water on the brain--rests under a mane of woolly hair.
Doctors once told Akiki's family that he would probably not live to adulthood. In addition to physical impairments that have required 13 corrective surgeries, Akiki is a person of limited intelligence; Coyne said his IQ is between 89 and 93.
Evidence presented during the trial showed that the Faith Chapel children were often terrified of Akiki's appearance and that mothers believed he was an inappropriate choice to baby-sit preschoolers--before any allegation had surfaced.
When allegations did surface, they took on a bizarre nature.
Witnesses said Akiki conspired with his wife and another sitter to subject the children to rituals of mayhem, involving urine, feces, water torture and animal mutilation--including the slaughter of an elephant, a giraffe and a rabbit.
They accused him of dunking the children in toilets and threatening them with guns, knives and death should they report the abuse to elders. His wife and the other sitter were accused of child abuse but never charged and will not be tried, officials said last week.
Despite his exoneration, Akiki's supporters say the system failed him by trying him in the first place. His supporters have called for the resignation of San Diego County Dist. Atty. Ed Miller and for a state and federal investigation.
Members of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors called last week for revamping the way therapists are used in determining the truth in child-abuse investigations.
Coyne charged that therapists were allowed to "subvert" the role of law enforcement and San Diego County sheriff's deputies "rubber-stamped" the therapists' findings, and failed to produce even a shred of physical evidence.
Moments after the verdict, Miller, 67, who became district attorney in 1971, defended his prosecutorial team but has since promised an internal review of the case, which drew national attention and became a running local drama that lifted Akiki to the status of a \o7 cause celebre\f7 .
Among Miller's critics are Carol Hopkins, deputy forewoman of the San Diego County Grand Jury in 1991-92, who said no surgical technique exists that can fix "the miscarriage of justice" perpetrated against not only Akiki but also the children named as victims.
