Judge Denies Request for Info

A Middlesex Superior Court judge ruled last week that attorneys for a Harvard professor and his wife will have to wait until the trial next month to get detailed information about anatomically correct dolls used to elicit allegations of sexual abuse from the couple's grandchildren.

William L. Moran, the Mellon Professor of the Humanities, and Suzanne D. Moran, an administrator at the First Congregational Church in Cambridge, were indicted December 8 on charges that they raped their two grandchildren while they were supposed to be babysitting them.

"If the interviewing process was affected because the dolls were used improperly, then we're entitled to know that," argued Brackett B. Denniston, attorney for William Moran.

But Judge Hiller B. Zobel '53 denied the request, saying that the issue of whether the dolls were misused could be raised at the trial, which is slated for May 22 and could last for two weeks.

Split Personality

Attorney Judith L. Lindahl told Zobel that the mother of the children has a number of psychological problems, including a split personality, and asked the court to obtain the mother's mental health history so that her reliability as a witness could be questioned.

Lindahl also said that the mother claims to have been abused as a child and raised the issue of whether the mother may have prompted the children to make false allegations about their grandparents.

"The mom's need to validate her own victimizations" may have influenced the children, Lindahl said. She characterized the mother's state of mind with regard to sexual abuse as one of "hypervigilance" and "obsessive concern."

Assistant District Attorney Ellen Caulo said that the mother, who now lives out of state, would oppose any effort to order her therapy records into court. "She'll fight this," Caulo said.

Zobel then refused to order the records released and cautioned the attorneys against making overly broad requests for personal information. Zobel reminded them that defendants in criminal cases are not entitled to the pre-trial disclosure common in civil suits.

The Morans, who are free on their own recognizance pending trial, sat quietly throughout the lengthy hearing.