On December 11, a jury in Wenatchee, Washington, acquitted Robert and Connie Roberson of 14 counts of child molestation. Since March, the Robersons had been in custody, charged with raping children on the altar of their church during Sunday services (Roberson is a Pentecostal minister). For those who followed their trial — as well as the trials of some of the 40 other people in Wenatchee who have been arrested on similar chaiges recently — the outcome came as a relief but not as a surprise. Like many people accused of serious crimes, the Robersons have always claimed they are innocent. Unlike most, they almost certainly are.

Thousands of miles away in New York, in the editorial page offices of the $ UWall Street Journal, a writer named Dorothy Rabinowitz anxiously waited for the verdict in the Roberson case. Since the late 1980s, Rabinowitz has worked to free a number of people she believes were wrongly convicted of molesting children. She has been startlingly successful. For all of the high-minded talk that swirls around journalism, few reporters actually write stories that change people’s lives for the better, that right egregious wrongs or make society a more decent place. Rabinowitz has. At least five people imprisoned on child sex charges can trace their eventual release — and vindication- directly to her efforts. And not one of them has gone on to commit other crimes after getting out.