...71, it was a special contract...
...to make up and then actually believe stories that never really happened.
And tonight you'll see this with your own eyes.
As John Stossel reports, the findings could change the outcome of sexual abuse cases which rest on a child's testimony.
In Lowell, Massachusetts, Shirley Sousa watches while her husband Ray tends his vegetable garden.
Looks like a normal suburban scene, but the Sousa's life is anything but normal.
It's a half a dozen cucumbers.
My phone's ringing.
Several times a day the phone rings because the State Department of Corrections wants each of them to face the camera attached to the phone.
Shirley Sousa, 285 Princeton Boulevard, Lowell, Mass.
The Sousas are prisoners in their home.
They're under house arrest.
It's part of the nine to 15 year sentence they received for molesting their two grandchildren.
The first charges came in a letter from the district attorney.
I came home from work and I walked in and Raymond said, I wasn't going to show this to you but you better look at it.
And I couldn't believe it when I looked and I read it.
I just...
Could you imagine myself or any human being putting your head in a vagina?
Sticking toes, touching different places, putting a fist up the Raymonds.
It just wouldn't make it. Wouldn't there be some sort of serious damage? Wouldn't you notice right away?
Every year thousands of people like the Sousas are convicted of child abuse even though there's no direct physical evidence.
They're convicted simply on the word of four and five year old kids.
Conventional wisdom is that kids that age wouldn't make such things up.
They simply don't know enough about sexuality to come up with detailed accounts of sexual abuse.
But then Cornell University professor Stephen Cece read the testimony of some well known molestation cases
and concluded that interviewers had led the kids on by asking suggestive questions.
The interviewers could say, how else can we get this information out because the kids won't volunteer it.
The problem is that from a research standpoint we are now discovering that if you put kids who were not abused
through the same kind of highly leading repetitive interview, some of those children will also disclose
events that seem credible but in fact are not born in actuality.
Now others have suspected this but Cece decided to test that theory.
He set up an experiment known as the Sam Stone study.
He told a classroom full of four, five and six year olds that a man named Sam Stone would come to their class
and that he was very clumsy. Then the man came in, stayed a few minutes and left.
That's it. He didn't do anything clumsy.
Then four times in the next few months half the kids were asked leading questions about the man's visit.
Do you remember when Sam Stone came to the school and he broke that toy? Did he do it on purpose or was it an accident?
Well he didn't break a toy. So it's highly suggestive, erroneously suggesting questioning.
After that another interviewer simply asked,
I wasn't there that day and I want to know everything that happened that day that Sam Stone came to visit.
Can you tell me what happened?
This little boy said Sam Stone was reading a book during the visit to the classroom.
He was doing it so fast that he ripped one of the pages.
Really?
This girl said Sam Stone threw dolls and books in the air while he was in the class.
Well when your teacher saw that he was throwing things in the air what did she say?
He said you need to go.
You need to go?
Yeah but he's putting, looking at stuff.
Just asking leading questions inspired most of the kids to make stories up.
In real life cases though are the investigators as suggestive as your testers are?
What we do is a pale version of what happens in real cases.
It doesn't come close for example to what was done in the Kelly Michaels case.
The Essex County Prosecutor's Office says 26 year old Margaret Kelly Michaels is a manipulative sadistic child.
Preschool teacher Michaels was convicted of molesting 19 children.
Molesting them in bizarre ways and in the middle of this crowded New Jersey school without any teacher or parent noticing anything.
She served five years in jail until this year when her conviction was overturned by an appeals court that questioned the reliability of the children's testimony.
One day you're getting ready for work making coffee, minding your business, trying to get along as best you can,
being a reasonable, decent, honorable citizen and the next minute you were an accused child molester with the most bizarre, I had never even heard of such things even being done.
They say you inserted objects including Lego blocks, forks, spoons, serrated knives into their anuses, vaginas, penises.
And a sword.
That you made children drink your urine, that you made kids take their clothes off and lick peanut butter off them.
It's very hard to believe yet the jury believed it and not you.
No one is willing to doubt a child and I think that's how the state won their case.
They didn't have to present a credible case of how it could happen or recreate the scene of the crime or even presenting witnesses.
They knew it was any of these little children saying yes Kelly was a bad person and she hurt me at this school.
That no one would dare question that.
She has a point.
This past decade has seen a skyrocketing number of molestation claims.
Often against family members like the Suses and against daycare operators like McMartin in California and little rascals in North Carolina.
All these cases are based primarily on the word of children who after the fact had repeatedly been asked questions like this.
Do you remember that time when Mr. asked you to stick his penis in your mouth?
Okay.
None of the child abuse investigators would agree to be interviewed for this story.
Some clearly go too far.
You're pressing your peepee against me though.
It feels good when you do that.
Maybe is that what they did too?
Steve CeCe's questioning in the Kelly Michaels case was just as leading as this.
They say to the child we want you to tell us what Kelly did.
The kid says I don't remember.
Oh yes you do. You remember.
No I don't remember.
You do so. We know you remember.
At this point the child is crying.
I want to get out of here.
You're not going anywhere until you tell us what we know you want.
We basically were barraged with questions and coerced, manipulated, begged, made to feel guilty.
It just was disgusting.
But where would the kids come up with saying things like she put the knife in my vagina or she covered me with peanut butter?
Children have incredible imaginations.
Anybody who is a parent who is honest knows what kids are capable of saying.
Ray and Shirley were astonished when they heard their grandchildren's testimony.
They said we used the machine as big as this whole house on them to violate them.
We had a cage in the cellar that we locked them up. Never produced. Nothing.
But why would kids make such things up?
That's what convinces juries. You hear those stories and you say, okay maybe it's not all true.
Maybe the machine wasn't as big as a house.
Maybe Kelly Michaels didn't smear them all with peanut butter.
Teachers would have smelled that.
But there must be some truth to it.
How could children come up with so many inventive, kinky activities and describe them with so many details unless something really happened?
It's a persuasive argument until you hear about Cece's next experiment.
He had researchers ask four and five year olds to pick a card out of a deck of ten.
On each card was a question.
Okay, Derek.
This one says, have you ever seen a baby alligator eating apples on an airplane?
No.
No?
Have you ever had your finger caught in a mousetrap and had to go to the hospital?
No.
No?
At first, almost all the kids say no.
Mm-mm.
But then, once a week, for the next ten weeks, they ask the question again.
No coercion, no leading questions as in child abuse cases.
They just gently repeat the question.
You went to the hospital because your finger got caught in a mousetrap.
Did that happen?
Uh-huh.
Yeah?
By week four or six or ten, most of the kids are saying, yes, it happened.
And not just saying yes, but giving such precise information about it that you'd think it must have happened.
Did it hurt?
Yeah.
Yeah?
Who took you to the hospital?
My daddy, my mommy, my brother.
So where in your house is the mousetrap?
It's up there down in the basement.
Down in the basement?
What is it next to in the basement?
It's next to a firewood.
Anyway, what you see here is a child who's given you a lot of perceptual detail.
He's telling you where the mousetrap was.
It was next to a wood pile in the basement.
He had gone down there because he wanted to tell his dad who was down there collecting firewood that he was ready for lunch.
He gets in an argument with his brother Colin, which he later goes on to describe.
They were fighting over some action figure.
Colin pushes him next to the wood pile.
He doesn't see where his hand's going, and he gets caught in a mousetrap.
Were you surprised at the answers you got?
I think it's fair to say that my colleagues and I were absolutely shocked that by the tenth week,
not only were they assenting to some of these things that didn't occur,
but they were giving very coherent narratives, highly elaborated narratives, that are, I think, quite persuadable.
By the time I met the same boy, it was weeks after the experiment,
but he still could give lots of convincing details about things that never happened.
Was there a time when you got your finger caught in a mousetrap and had to go to the hospital?
Mm-hmm.
Which finger was it?
Remember, this is the result after a researcher simply asked the question once a week for ten weeks.
In real abuse cases, kids are questioned for years, often by parents, doctors, then by the investigator,
perhaps a therapist, then by lawyers.
Who went with you to the hospital?
My mom and my dad and my brother Colin, but not my baby.
It was in my mom's tummy.
This boy's testimony is even more remarkable, because just a few days earlier,
his father had discussed the experiment with him.
He'd explained that it was just a test and the whole mousetrap event had never happened.
The boy agreed it was just in his imagination.
Still, listen to this.
Let me ask you, did your father tell you something about the mousetrap finger story?
Is it true? Did it really happen?
It really happened.
It really happened? You really got your finger caught? It really happened?
Yeah.
I assume the child isn't lying. They aren't intentionally making up stories.
Absolutely. I think they've come to believe it. It is part of their belief system.
Some experts believe they'd come closer to the truth using anatomically correct dolls.
With dolls, they wouldn't have to ask so many questions.
But CeCe's colleague, Dr. Maggie Brook, conducted tests that led her to conclude
using dolls also leads kids on.
I would think anatomically correct dolls would be a good, neutral way to ask questions.
I thought the very same way, but after having had this experience, I'm not quite sure how you do that.
Brook had this pediatrician add some extra steps to his routine physical examination of preschool kids.
He measures the child's wrists with a ribbon.
He puts a little label on the child's stomach, and he tickles the child's foot with a stick.
Never does the doctor go anywhere near the child's private parts.
Then, right after the exam using an anatomically correct doll,
Brook asks leading questions about the doctor's exam.
Can you show me on the doll how Dr. Emmett touched your vagina?
No, he didn't.
He didn't?
The child tells the truth.
But just a few days later, Dr. Brook and the child's father again ask about the doctor's visit.
It's a different story.
Before Brook has a chance to even bring out the doll,
the child shows how the doctor had strangled her with the ribbon.
He put that around your neck?
What the?
Show time.
And watch what happens when the doll's brought out.
She's asked to explain what the doctor did that day.
What did he do?
He put a stick in my vagina.
He put a stick in your vagina?
Yeah.
Just like that?
It gets even more violent.
She claims the doctor hammered the stick into her vagina.
Then she shows how the doctor examined her.
He looked where?
My honey.
He did look in your honey?
Of course, none of it is true.
The doctor found that when dolls were used, half the kids who'd never had their private parts touched
claimed the doctor had touched them.
These tests make Dr. Brook question some of the recent testimony by children in court.
You think there are dozens of people in jail now who are totally innocent?
Yes.
I do.
The researcher's findings are only beginning to be heard in courtrooms.
Most prosecutors still argue that children wouldn't lie.
Prosecutors want to put Kelly Michaels back in jail.
In a few months, they plan to retry her with the same charges.
I will fight to the end because I am an innocent woman and I can look anyone in the eye
and I've had to fight for the rest of my life and I will do that.
So I am prepared for whatever will happen.
You don't sound scared.
No, I'm not scared.
I'm angry and I'm outraged.
But I'm not scared.
The Susas are planning an appeal of their own.
Like Kelly Michaels, they believe a day will come when the courts and their grandchildren
realize the truth.
When those kiddos grow up, when they become adults,
they're going to realize that these things never happen between Shirley and I and them.
And I know that they're going to realize that.
They're bright children and they have a mind of their own.
Nobody's prompting them when they grow up.
They can remember and will embrace.
Well, John, you know, I remember I first worried about this sort of thing after some of the
early cases that we reported.
But children can be so convincing.
How do we separate out when they're telling the truth and when they're not?
There is no good way.
There are all kinds of experts who will testify in court as paid expert witnesses.
And they often say they can tell, but Dr. Cece ran a test where he showed them tapes of kids,
some of them were lying, some were not.
And the experts would say, oh, I can tell.
But what they said was wrong half the time, in fact, more than half the time.
So they did worse than chance.
Clearly there are real cases of sexual abuse of children.
We have to address that.
Yes.
And Dr. Cece won't testify on behalf of the defense because he's afraid he'll let a real
molester off because of this.
It's important not to influence the children.
And Cece says to test an alternative hypothesis, in other words, to ask the child, well, Joe
did this to you, and then what did Jane do to you?
If the child starts talking about more people, then at least you have a reason to be suspicious.
Thank you, John.
Well, next, for more than 11 years, she was one of the most powerful.
Now, for a story that just might come at you in your dreams tonight, in a good way, we're
about to show you the future, a small part of it anyway.
How would you like to go to movies and actually become part of the action up on the screen?
Well, thanks to the supercomputer animation and the extraordinary vision of one man, it's
not only possible, it's being done right now.
It's a technique that opens up a whole new dazzling dimension in fantasy.
And I think you'll agree with me, you've never seen a movie like this one before.
The man who created this striking and dark, high-tech vision of the future in the movie
Blade Runner is now reinventing the idea of moviemaking and family entertainment in ways
that will surprise you.
His name is Douglas Trumbull, and he created the special effects that brought action and
excitement to some of the most memorable science fiction movies ever made, including the award-winning
2001, A Space Odyssey, which he did at the age of only 23.
He went on to create more mind-boggling special effects for movies like Close Encounters of
the Third Kind and Star Trek, the movie.
But Doug Trumbull wanted to bring the action and excitement to audiences in a way that
had never been done before.
And here's how he did it, by building a movie theater where the seats are part of the action.
The ideas he had in his head just couldn't be conveyed in normal movies, so he has developed
all new technologies and given new meaning to the term motion pictures.
He's known as the inventor of the movie ride.
It's the concept of not only being in a movie rather than looking at a movie, but being
completely overwhelmed by it, being involved in it and having the movie take you somewhere.
And now he's gone even further.
Imagine being able to actually live inside a movie for a couple of hours or even a couple of days.
That's now possible because of what Doug Trumbull began creating several months ago
inside this giant pyramid in Las Vegas, and we had a chance to watch him do it.
The new Luxor Hotel contains what may be the future of movie making, with films you experience
rather than just watch.
Doug Trumbull had already created the popular Back to the Future ride for the Universal
Studio tours in Florida and Hollywood.
Doug Trumbull is a man with an idea, and the idea is that movies could look more realistic
and be more involving than they are.
After nearly 20 years of striving for special effects excellence on a series of top movies,
he suddenly turned his back on Hollywood in 1987, full of disappointment after directing
the movie Brainstorm.
It was a troubled project during which star Natalie Wood died in an unrelated drowning accident.
Trumbull had wanted Brainstorm to be shot and projected using a revolutionary new film
process that he invented called ShowScan.
It looks as if the screen is a window and you can really look into through that window
and see whatever is behind there.
It was so completely realistic that the screen for the first time didn't seem like a flat
surface, it seemed like a window to another world.
Brainstorm was a heartbreaking experience for him because there was no backing for the
release of the movie in that process, and so eventually they just brought it out as an
ordinary 35 millimeter movie and that was that.
I think in Hollywood he's seen as this guy who has a great idea that would cause them
all a lot of trouble if they tried to implement it.
Frustrated with Hollywood, he came here to the scenic Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts
to create his own film studio on his own terms.
It was just too hard and too painful and I said enough of this, there's got to be another
way to make a living where I can have clean air, seasons, fresh water, quiet solitude,
and just get on with my work as an artist.
For the past year and a half, Doug Trumbull and his team at the Berkshire studio have
been creating some amazing futuristic worlds for the Luxor project in Las Vegas.
To create those worlds, Trumbull starts with miniature sets like these.
They provide the background for the action that will be added later from two other sources.
Mark!
Source number one is actors performing dialogue and action in the conventional way as they
do in most ordinary movies.
But then the actors and the miniature sets are combined with a third element, computer
animation, which Trumbull uses to a much greater extent than has ever been done before.
You're in a movie that completely surrounds you.
And by taking the story that we're telling, which is about a discovery at this pyramid
that's being made at this moment as you are here, breakthroughs are being made, news is
out, the word is on the street, there's a buzz on the site, they're going to find the
obelisk today, that's the drama that you're going to get sucked into.
Even the pyramid itself is part of the plot.
Visitors are told that in excavating to build the hotel, remnants of a strange underground
civilization were found.
In the first movie episode, the heroine, Corina, battles the villain, Dr. Osiris, for possession
of a magic obelisk found deep underground beneath the hotel.
When Corina is kidnapped, the audience joins the chase.
The second movie uses Trumbull's show scan film process to create what appears to be
a talk show featuring a live report from Egypt during a solar eclipse.
Suddenly during the report, strange things begin to happen.
If it's successful, I think it will be a moment in movie history where it will be the first
time that anybody seeing a movie was ever convinced that what they saw was in fact happening
live in real time, not a movie.
You won't know that it's a movie.
Audience members, given these dark glasses to protect their eyes during the eclipse, don't
realize they're really 3D glasses, so they're taken by surprise when the screen literally
jumps out at them.
In the third movie, a seven-story high screen towers over audience members who are jolted
by vibrations from speakers in the seats as they're propelled 100 years ahead into Doug
Trumbull's vision of the future.
When the Luxor Hotel with Trumbull's movies as a star attraction finally opened to the
public a few days ago, there were rave reviews and huge lineups.
And this is something you may be seeing soon in your neighborhood, according to Roger Ebert.
This kind of interactive multimedia film experience is going to be widely franchised.
So I think you'll see these in big hotels and casinos and airports, in sports complexes,
in shopping malls, all over the country as a profit center.
And Doug Trumbull believes that the new technology he's pioneering can become much more than
just entertainment.
I know I'm not going to get to the moon, and I'm probably not going to climb to Mount Everest,
and I'm probably not going to get to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
So the idea of being able to present, not only to myself but to others, these experiences
that expand our awareness of life and the world and cosmos and time and space, I say
let's go there and let's explore that territory, not via another actor or actress who are in
it, but I want to be in it.
I want you to be in it.
I want us to go there.
Paul, you look scared.
I was.
When we come back, I mean you've gone underwater and up in the sky, I'd like to know how it
really feels.
You'll tell us?
Okay, we'll be right back, stay with us.
We've got to move fast, Kirby.
I hope you booked Hertz.
Not exactly, but this company's fast.
As fast as Hertz number one club goal?
Not exactly, but they do have a special place to pick up the car.
Like Hertz?
Not exactly, but it'll be waiting.
Under a canopy?
With the keys in it?
Not exactly.
And protected from the weather?
Not exactly.
In Rent-A-Car, there's Hertz and there's not exactly.
Make sure you choose the right one.
Counting on that promotion, Kirby?
No, not exactly.
This dress is definitely dangerous.
No matter what your favorite look.
It looks like...
Help keep that look by including Kellogg's Special K. Great toasted taste, 110 calories,
and fat free.
I like what I'm seeing.
Kellogg's Special K. Great taste, never looks so good.
Thank you.
Hi, this has to be in LA tomorrow?
No problem, sir.
With express mail from the Postal Service, you're never left in the dark.
Yes, your package is in LA and will be delivered.
Morning.
From just $9.95, we track, we trace, we deliver for you.
From the day we first opened our doors, we've made it our business to save you money.
Now it's Walmart's 31st anniversary.
And everybody who's been here...
Right from the start.
And those of us just starting...
Are celebrating all month long with 31 days of anniversary savings at Walmart.
From the very first day to the start of each new day, we put you first.
And that's why you save.
Savings right from the start.
Walmart, always the low price, always.
Sunday, when Lois and Clark go undercover...
You're jealous.
Are you out of your mind?
How far will they go?
Here she is, your leak.
Lois Lane, reporter for The Daily Planet.
To get the story...
Don't even think about it.
Lois and Clark, Sunday.
Monday, it's happening across America.
Mystery fires that burn hotter and faster than anything seen before.
And no one knows what's causing them.
Plus, sentenced to die in Oklahoma, to live in New York.
He says, kill me.
The man caught in a capital punishment tug of war speaks out in an exclusive interview on day one, Monday.
Well, you have flown jets gone underwater with sharks.
Is this really scary?
It is more scary than that, really.
It makes you gasp more than flying at Mach 2 or anything like that.
Yeah, but you know you're safe.
Yeah, you know you're safe, but at the same time, with things flying at you and with you being thrown around in your seat,
there's such reality to it that your senses put you on alert and make you very scared.
But it sounds, as you describe it, like one of the Disney rides, you know, where things are coming out afterwards and you're moving.
It's more than that.
It's more than that, really, because of the computer technology and everything.
It adds to realism more than anything I know.
Anyone get sick?
Well, people can, yeah.
And it's a special bay for people who don't want the motion, who can see the motion picture.
You can't quite get across on television the feel of the G-forces being thrown around and the reality of it.
But it is scary. It is a thrill, there's no doubt about it.
And it'll be in many places, and you and I can finally feel what it's like to go to the moon.
I'm going to take my family there as a matter of fact.
Yes?
Yes.
I see. We'll be right back with a little more.
From October 18th through...