March 9, 2017

“As a result of complaints, [scientific] journals have been posting notices of problems with Dr. [Carlo] Croce’s papers at a quickening pace. From just a handful of notices before 2013 – known as corrections, retractions and editors’ notices – the number has ballooned to at least 20, with at least three more on the way, according to journal editors….”

– From  “Years of Ethics Charges, but Star Cancer Researcher Gets a Pass” by James Glanz and Agustin Armendariz in the New York Times (March 8)

Yet another example of professional journals responding with new vigor to faulty articles.

By contrast, no retraction has ever appeared in those journals that lent credence to testimony by the prosecution’s expert witnesses during the day-care panic. Or perhaps some author or editor still wants to defend the likes of “Stress Responses of Children to Sexual Abuse and Ritualistic Abuse in Day Care Centers” and “Satanic Ritual Abuse: A Cause of Multiple Personality Disorder”?

Aug. 16, 2015

“In 1689, the English Bill of Rights outlawed the widespread practice of keeping defendants in jail by setting deliberately unaffordable bail, declaring that ‘excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed.’ The same language was adopted word for word a century later in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

“But as bail has evolved in America, it has become less and less a tool for keeping people out of jail, and more and more a trap door for those who cannot afford to pay it….

“Across the criminal-justice system, bail acts as a tool of compulsion, forcing people who would not otherwise plead guilty to do so….”

– From “The Bail Trap” by Nick Pinto in the New York Times (Aug. 13)

Could there be a more bare-faced example of “excessive bail” than that set for the Edenton Seven?

• Bob Kelly, $1.5 million (later reduced to $200,000 – after his conviction was overturned – then $50,000 )
• Betsy Kelly, $1.8 million (reduced to $400,000)
• Scott Privott, $1 million (reduced to $50,000)
• Shelley Stone, $375,000
• Dawn Wilson, $880,000 (reduced to $200,000)
• Robin Byrum, $500,000 (reduced to $200,000)
• Darlene Harris, $350,000

Did prosecutors fear that the defendants would flee to Argentina? That they would prowl the town’s playgrounds in search of new victims? No, these absurd amounts surely had no purpose but to coerce confessions. How shocked and disappointed they must have been that not one of the defendants, though crushed financially, succumbed.

Feb. 27, 2015

“…. A social worker from North Carolina informed the group (the Society for the Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse) that in the day-care sex-abuse case she was investigating, she thought she remembered the kids talking about black helicopters. She said she would look into it.”

– From “Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference” by Evan Harrington in the Skeptical Inquirer  (September-October 1996)

The “ritual and cult abuse” conference took place in Dallas in March 1995, several years after the trials of Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson (and just a couple of months before the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned their convictions). But I wouldn’t be surprised if the social worker chatting with Dr. Harrington was a prosecution therapist still eagerly accumulating and broadcasting claims … this one perhaps.

Nov. 26, 2012

Although no mention of the notorious Report of the Ritual Abuse Task Force is to be found on the Los Angeles County Commission for Women web site, I was curious whether an original booklet might still be available.

Sure enough, a few weeks after I mailed my request to the commission a pristine copy arrived. The text is widely available online, but somehow the experience of holding and reading it is even… creepier.

“Ritual abuse is a serious and growing problem in our community and in our nation…,” it begins. “Society is only just beginning to recognize the gravity and scope…. Parents need to be educated about the hallmarks of this abuse occurring in preschools and day care centers….

“The ritual abuse in such an institutional setting is not incidental to its operation, but is in fact intrinsic, the very reason for the institution’s existence….

“To victimize and indoctrinate as many young children as possible, (ritual abusers) frequently function together in groups in the operation of preschools, day-care services and baby-sitting services, providing themselves access to children outside of their own families.”

Even now, when the case for ritual abuse no longer draws a crowd, the Report of the Ritual Abuse Task Force continues to be cited respectfully, as in “Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control” (2011), “If the West Falls: Globalization, the End of America and Biblical Prophecy” (2011) and “Healing the Soul after Religious Abuse: The Dark Heaven of Recovery” (2009).

What must it take to slay the ritual-abuse dragon – a stake through the heart?