Small-Town Horror Stories

The accusations multiplied until the sexual-abuse scandal in Jordan, Minn. (pop. 2,663), gripped the entire community. After a mother told police last year that her teen-age daughter had been abused by a neighbor, 24 adults were charged with molesting 37 children, including their own. The children provided graphic testimony, and James Rud, 26, a convicted child molester, described a perverted version of hide-and-seek in which, he said, the adults would search out the children and spend five or ten minutes sexually molesting each one.

The first case to go to trial ended in an acquittal last month. Just as a second trial was getting under way last week, all of the cases were dropped. Reason: to spare the children further trauma and to prevent the release of information involving a related investigation "of great magnitude." The FBI and the state attorney general's office have now entered the case in the wake of claims by some of the children that boys brought in from elsewhere to participate in sex parties and pornography sessions had been murdered. Said John Erskine, chief of Minnesota's bureau of criminal apprehension: "We have to assume there is something to it."