NEWARK  -  Essex County prosecutors dropped all charges Friday against Margaret  Kelly  Michaels, conceding  that  they lacked enough evidence to retry  her on allegations that she sexually abused 20 preschool  children at a Maplewood day-care center in 1984 and 1985.

The  decision  ends  a  decade-long ordeal for Michaels, 32, who spent five years  in prison before an appeals court reversed her conviction last year. The onetime aspiring actress says she is the victim of a witch hunt brought on by public hysteria over child abuse.

"It  was so ridiculous and preposterous,"  Michaels said at a news conference  in  her  lawyer's  office.  "If it had not been child abuse, it would  not  have gone this far. It took years for people to look more dryly and intellectually at the facts, and see that this did not happen."

In  a  news  release,  Essex  County Prosecutor Clifford J. Minor said dropping  the  charges  was "the most difficult decision that I have had to make during  my  term  of  office."  He and other prosecutors on his staff declined requests for interviews.

The  Appellate Division and the state Supreme Court harshly criticized the interviewing  techniques  employed by police and investigators for the Prosecutor's  Office. In overturning Michaels' 1988 conviction, the appeals panel said the interrogation of the children, who ranged in age from 3 to 5 years  old,  was so tainted by suggestive and coercive questioning that the youngsters' credibility was in grave doubt.

In  a  brief  filed with the state Supreme Court, 45 social scientists from universities  in  the United States and Canada said the children were questioned so  ineptly  that  their  stories  of  abuse  were  no  longer believable.

"In  fact,  there  may have been no abuse until the interviews began," the brief  said,  suggesting that Essex County investigators may have done great harm by planting false memories of abuse in the children's minds.

Prosecutors  conceded  little  in  their  motion  to dismiss the case, presented at a brief hearing before Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Falcone.

The  motion  noted  the difficulty of reassembling the evidence in the case,  and  of  making sure the alleged victims - now adolescents - had not been tainted during their questioning by investigators.

"This  issue is not one free from doubt," the state's motion said. But prosecutors  added  that  the difficulty of retrying the case "militates in favor of dismissal of the indictments."

Michaels,  who  lives  with  her  fiance  in Rutherford, said she felt "great  relief"  that  her long battle with the criminal justice system had come to  an end. "I am completely innocent of every single charge that has been brought  against  me  in  this case," she told reporters who gathered after the hearing in the West Orange office of her attorney, Alan L. Zegas.

Michaels  said  she  feels  no  bitterness  over  her  prosecution and imprisonment  for  a  crime  she  has  said  occurred  only in the minds of overzealous  prosecutors.  "I love life too much to waste it being bitter," she said.

"You can't get them back," she said of the years spent behind bars and fighting  to  prove  her innocence. "But I have today and tomorrow, and I'm grateful for it."

Michaels  moved  to  the  New  York  area in 1984, hoping to become an actress.  She  took  a  job as a day-care worker at Wee Care Day Nursery in Maplewood.

In   April   1985,   shortly  after  Michaels  left  Wee  Care  for  a better-paying  job,  one of the children at the school told his doctor that Michaels regularly took his temperature with a rectal thermometer.

The  investigation  that  ensued  resulted in a 10-month trial, during which  prosecutors  charged  that Michaels had raped and assaulted children with eating utensils, played the piano in the nude, and led the children in nude pileup games. They said Michaels had threatened to harm the children's parents if they disclosed their activities to anyone.
 

Michaels'  lawyers  portrayed  the  state's case as a witch hunt; they noted  that  her  co-workers  never  saw  her participate in any suspicious activities,  and  that the children showed no fear or reluctance to be with her.

In  April  1988,  Michaels  was  convicted  of  115  counts, including aggravated  sexual  assault and other crimes. She was sentenced to 47 years in prison.

In their friend-of-the-court brief filed with the state Supreme Court, the social  scientists  said  investigators so mishandled the case, no one will ever know the truth of the allegations.

The brief said the interviews were so suggestive, they may have caused them great psychological harm.

Michaels' conviction was overturned by the Appellate Division in March 1993.  Besides  questioning  the children's testimony, the appellate judges said the  trial  judge  showed  bias  when  the  children  testified via a closed-circuit  television hookup from his chambers, and that a prosecution expert  witness  presented unscientific evidence that improperly swayed the jury.

The  state  Supreme Court affirmed Michaels' right to a hearing on the validity of the children's testimony before a new trial could be held.

Michaels   said   she  doesn't  plan  a  civil  lawsuit  for  wrongful prosecution.  "I  have had enough of courtrooms, and enough of being chased by the media and the harassment involved," she said.

One  of  those most convinced of Michaels' innocence is her boyfriend, Jay Romano,  a  freelance  journalist  and  lawyer  who  is  the municipal prosecutor in North Bergen.

Romano  interviewed  Michaels  shortly  after  she  was  released from prison. "I expected to find someone very bitter, and I didn't," he said. "I haven't seen a spark of it since."

"I  am not one to bash the system," Michaels said. "This was a failing of human logic. People buckled under the weight of a horrifying accusation. But I am here to tell about it."  

CHRONOLOGY

• September 1984 - Margaret Kelly Michaels begins work at the Wee Care Day Nursery in Maplewood as a teacher's aide and later becomes a teacher.
• April  15, 1985 - Michaels gives Wee Care two weeks' notice that she is leaving for personal reasons. She explains in a letter to her pupils' parents that she has taken another job.
• April  30,  1985 - Four days after Michaels leaves Wee Care, a child having  his  temperature  taken  rectally by a doctor's aide says, "This is what my teacher does to me at school." That launches the investigation.
• June  6, 1985 - Michaels is charged in a six-count indictment, which was followed by two more indictments, bringing the count of charges to 235.
• June  22,  1987 - Michaels' trial begins in Newark. In months that follow, 19 children testify by closed-circuit television from the judge's chambers.
• April  15,  1988  -  After 12 days of deliberation, the jury returns guilty verdicts on 115 counts of aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, endangering the welfare of children, and terroristic threats.
• Aug.  2,  1988 - Michaels is sentenced to 47 years in prison with no chance of parole for 14 years. She is immediately incarcerated.
• February  1990  - Michaels appeals her conviction with the help of a private  attorney,  Morton Stavis. Stavis, then president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, took the case after the pubic defender's office  had  decided  that  an  appeal  would be unwinnable. Stavis died in December 1992.
• June  20,  1991  - A judge rules that Michaels cannot be released on bail during her appeal.
• March  26, 1993 - A state appellate panel overturns the convictions, citing problems in interviews with the alleged victims.
• Feb.  3,  1994  -  A state judge modifies Michaels' bail conditions, allowing her to reside in New Jersey.
• June  24, 1994 - The state Supreme Court affirms the appellate court opinion  and  orders  a  "taint  hearing" before any new trial to determine whether the children's testimony is reliable.
• Dec.  2, 1994 - At the request of the prosecution, a judge dismisses charges against Michaels.