April 10, 2013

“Consider the use of anatomically detailed dolls to prompt shy or frightened children to reveal abuse. This was an innovation of the 1970s, and at first it certainly seemed like an effective and compassionate one.

“But more recent studies have cast doubt on whether these dolls prompt more accurate recall, especially for the pre-schoolage children for whom they are usually deployed.

“The doll is supposed to be a body double for the child him- or herself; but since the vast majority of children this age lack the symbolic thinking required to make such a connection– most two- and three-year-olds, for example, cannot see the relation between a room and a scale model of it – this proposition turns out to be rather dubious.

“More to the point, it seems that some children who have not been sexually abused will also play with an anatomically detailed doll in sexually suggestive ways – promptly removing its clothes, touching or grabbing its ‘genitals,’ sticking their fingers into various orifices. As the authors of one study judiciously put it, the ‘average amount of sexualized doll play by presumably non-abused children is not alarming, but there is enough of it to be potentially problematic in clinical or forensic situations.’

“In other words, if you are prepared to see signs of abuse, you may see them even in behavior that, in other contexts or at other times, would be attributed to normal sexual curiosity.

“And this is precisely the issue: At a time when there was comparatively little data available on what constituted normal sexuality in children, this vacuum was filled by people with a very narrow view of the possibilities.”

– From “Against Innocence: The truth about child abuse and the truth about children” by Margaret Talbot in The New Republic (March 15, 1999)

Prosecution therapists in the Little Rascals case made extensive use of anatomically correct dolls. During Bob Kelly’s trial, therapist Janet Hadler of Chapel Hill showed a video clip of a 5-year-old girl pressing together the pelvises of a male and a female doll. “Children who are demonstrating explicit sexual contact,” Hadler testified confidently, “are doing that because they have some knowledge of adult sexual behavior.”

Jan. 4, 2019

In January 1988 the Memphis Commercial Appeal published a 36-page special section recapping its recent series, “Justice Abused: A 1980s Witch Hunt” by Tom Charlier and Shirley Downing.

“Justice Abused” was the first major news coverage to link “satanic ritual abuse” cases across the country and to
characterize them as a witch hunt.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning criticism of how the news media so often mishandled cases such as McMartin Preschool, David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times credited Charlier and Downing with pointing out “among many other things, the large number of child molestation cases that had resulted in dismissals, acquittals and dropped charges and the startling number of similarities among many of the cases.

Children in both the Memphis and McMartin cases, for example, told of druggings, of animal mutilations, of trips in vans, of bloody rituals, of sacrifices of babies and of being taken on airplanes that resembled those of Federal Express.”

Until now this historically important series has not been available digitally. It is archived in two pieces here and here on our Bookshelf.

June 12, 2014

“He thinks the continued treatment of these cases as a modern-day episode of mass hysteria does disservice to children and even puts them in danger.

“ ‘We have, over the last 20 years, discounted the word of children who might testify about sexual abuse,’ he writes. ‘We have become more worried about overreacting to child sexual abuse than we are about underreacting to it.’

“If that were the legacy of the day-care cases, it would be a damning one. But when I spoke to psychologists in the field – those Professor Cheit cites respectfully, as well as those he attacks – they gave a different account of the science at the heart of this history….”

– From “Abuse Cases, and a Legacy of Skepticism” by Emily Bazelon in the New York Times (June 9)

Thank you, Ms. Bazelon. In the category of “fat books in desperate search of a reason to exist,” Cheit’s “The Witch-Hunt Narrative” belongs right up there with William D. Cohan’s contemporaneous “The Price of Silence,” an account of the Duke lacrosse case that sympathizes not with the railroaded (and later exonerated!) defendants but with District Attorney Mike Nifong, who was disbarred and briefly jailed for conspiring to rig the case against them.

At the core of each book is the unsubstantiated contention that something surely must have happened, either at a Durham party house and at countless day cares. Fortunately, Cohan and Cheit can only gratuitously smear the reputations of innocent defendants, not put them in prison – unlike Little Rascals expert witness Mark “where there’s smoke there’s fire” Everson.

Dec. 3, 2012

Exoneration is in the air!

From Texas to New York – and of course here in North Carolina – more and more prosecutorial abuses are being dug up, dusted off and exposed to long-delayed doses of daylight.

If you’re keeping score, the National Registry of Exoneration has just hit quadruple digits – that’s Bob Kelly, Dawn Wilson and 998 other wrongfully convicted defendants.

So what are the prospects that the State of North Carolina will at last release a Duke-lacrosse-style statement of innocence for the Edenton Seven?

Since last summer, when my petition was kissed off by Mark Davis, general counsel to Gov. Bev Perdue, and I was advised to try Attorney General Roy Cooper, not a peep has been heard in response. It would take a greater optimist than me to believe this silence suggests ongoing thoughtful contemplation.

As the governor prepares to leave office, a valued ally of littlerascalsdaycarecase.org used his access to lobby on behalf of the defendants. But pardon applications have been torrential, he was told, and the Edenton Seven case isn’t among those Perdue is considering.

That still leaves the attorney general – or does it, Mr. Cooper?