amirault and her daughter had both served about six years and gerald had served eight years. and a couple of months after the first piece hit "the wall street journal," they were -- the women were released on a plea, and gerald was kept. and there began our fight to free gerald. the prosecutors fought and fought and fought to get the women back into prison, and they almost won. but by this time, the publicity that had been generated by the writings about this -- which were taken up later afterwards in "the boston globe" and everywhere -- was so great, so enormous, the tidal wave of investigation into what really happened. prior to the amiraults had been my very first encounter with this entire matter. i was working as a television commentator. i was at wwor-tv in new jersey, doing three times a week some sort of media criticism. and i looked up at the screen, something like that, and i saw this woman in her 20s, late 20s, rosy, apple cheeks, innocent, accused of something like 2,800 charges of child sex abuse. oh, i thought, well, that's very odd. but i didn't think -- what d