Southwest Of Salem - The Story of The San Antonio Four

A bizarre obsession gripped America in 1980s and into the 1990s that daycare workers and others who worked with small children were ritually and systematically violating children sexually in order to brainwash them. That narrative had no basis in fact, and there was no evidence to support it -- but that didn't stop it from creating a wave of criminal cases that tended overwhelmingly to target GLBTs.

It's against this backdrop that the story of "The San Antonio four" unfolds. In brief, The San Antonio Four are a quartet of lesbians from San Antonio, Texas: Anna Vasquez, Cassie Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Liz Ramirez. The four women were caught up in a hostile, anti-gay corrections system after they were accused of sexually violating two small girls, the nieces of Liz Ramirez.

The documentary, by director Deborah S. Esquenazi, retraces the history of what looks, on the basis of what we see presented here, like a case of a "false accuser" -- Liz's then-brother-in-law -- who had, evidently, been writing Liz love letters and was allegedly angry that she rejected him. Were a similar accusation to be made today, it probably would not result in a trial, much less the convictions of four women, but the accusations were made in 1994 -- "the last gasp of the Satanic ritual abuse panic," as one expert puts it -- and the convictions handed down in 1998, with Liz being sentenced to 37.5 years and the others receiving 15-year sentences.

The place work and trial were so full of overt homophobia and bias that the four women knew they had only themselves to rely on, so they set about trying to gather evidence of their innocence. It was a short-lived project, but not entirely fruitless: We see here the evidence of their investigations, which seriously challenge the already inconsistency-riddled story the girls told.

Only after 16 years did one of the nieces in question, Stephanie, re-enter the picture, and that was to say that she and her sister had been coached -- and threatened -- about the stories they should tell about how their aunt and the others had raped them. For daring to speak up, Stephanie faced an attempt by her father -- the same man who sent love notes to Liz -- to take her children away.

With even the pediatrician who originally testified against the four retracting her original testimony and noting the flaws in the forensic science she had been using at the time, the viewer might think the case of the women's exoneration would be straightforward. Not so: "If people only know how little truth and justice had to do with the way the legal system works," one justice advocate tells the camera, "they'd probably amass at courthouses with lighted torches."

The documentary hints at the sorts of shortfalls and abuses that riddle the system when Anna laments how her refusal to participate in a program for sex offenders costs her privileges she'd earned for her good conduct while behind bars. (In fact, she ended up in solitary confinement for refusing to subject herself to the program, a Catch-22 worthy of anything women accused of witchcraft in Salem suffered -- you can see why the documentary is titled as it is.)

There is a silver lining, however, in Texas lawmakers having introduced legislation that would allow inmates to challenge their convictions on the basis of flawed forensic analysis.

The San Antonio Four still have not achieved justice, and it's an open question as to whether they ever will. Meantime, "false accusers," we are told, continue to exploit the justice system in order to settle grievances, with shattered lives, devastated families, and taxpayer dollars all wastefully mourning up as the cost.