May 18, 2012

“Discredited child-sex rings like McMartin actually may not be a bogeyman of the past. Some parents, therapists and child-protection professionals continue to believe ritual sex abuse took place at McMartin preschool.

“ ‘In 10 to 15 years, there will be an attempt to rehabilitate the ritual abuse scare,’ says (James Wood, psychologist at the University of Texas El Paso). ‘You can bet on it.’ ”

– From “Who Was Abused?” by Maggie Jones in the New York Times (Sept. 19, 2004)

March 24, 2014

As described in Richard Noll’s “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil,” the 7th annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, held in Chicago in November 1990, proved to be a turning point in mainline psychiatry’s attitude toward “satanic ritual abuse” and the multiple personalities it supposedly spawned.

It was also notable for the involvement of perhaps the country’s most celebrated believer in SRA.

“A large hotel ballroom (was) filled with most of the more than 700 conference attendees,” Noll recalled. “Television crews were on hand…. So was Gloria Steinem….

“(Anthropologist Sherrill) Mulhern and I were strident in our outright rejection of the veracity of SRA claims….

“Steinem approached me after my talk and suggested materials to read which she felt would help me change my opinion of SRA accounts….”

Not only had Steinem been using Ms. magazine to promote claims of ritual abuse, MPD and repressed memory, but also – just months before the Chicago conference – she had underwritten an archeological search for the imaginary “McMartin tunnels.”

I asked Noll what else he remembered about their encounter.

“She came up to me while I was still sitting up on stage and hundreds of people were still milling around.  I didn’t recognize her at first until I stared down at her name tag, then she rolled her eyes and made a face that indicated, ‘Yeah, it’s me . . . .’

“She wrote down a couple of titles that I frankly do not remember….You know, for years I saved that piece of paper she wrote on.”

As far as I can tell, Steinem has never removed her name from the very long list of unapologetic SRA believers.  But who knows – maybe it’s a position she will want to reexamine as an octogenarian.

Feb. 12, 2017

“One day after Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb pardoned him for a 1996 armed robbery he did not commit, [Keith] Cooper, 49, said he was grateful to the new governor for doing something his predecessor, Vice President Mike Pence, long had refused to do….

“Cooper spent nearly a decade of a 40-year sentence behind bars before he was released in 2006. Nearly three years ago, after the victims who had identified him as the shooter recanted and DNA evidence pointed to another man, the Indiana Parole Board unanimously recommended Cooper be pardoned. His request, though, sat unsigned on Pence’s desk….

“In response to a request for comment, the vice president’s spokesman did not address the Cooper pardon but said Pence ‘is proud of his record’ as Indiana’s governor.”

– From “Wrongly accused of armed robbery, he says Pence ‘abandoned me‘ ” by Christy Gutowski in the Chicago Tribune (Feb. 11)

It wasn’t easy, but Pence made North Carolina’s former governor seem absolutely eager to rectify a wrongful prosecution.

Feb. 3, 2016

“A new survey finds that adults at school, day care and organizations such as churches and scouting groups are less likely than relatives to abuse or mistreat children.

“In general, organizations that serve young people ‘do not look like particularly risky environments,’ said study co-author David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. This contradicts perceptions by some people who ‘think these are magnets for molesters,’ he said.”

– From “Child Abuse at Daycare, Youth Groups Rarer Than Thought: Survey” by Randy Dotinga in the Northwest Indiana Times (Feb. 2)

Surprising to see Dr. Finkelhor dismiss the notion of day cares as “magnets for molesters,” given that his own overwrought “Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care” (1988) was an influential text in spreading the moral panic.

How did he determine back then whether sexual abuse had actually occurred? “If at least one of the local investigating agencies had decided that abuse had occurred and that it had happened while the child was at a day-care facility….then we considered the case substantiated.” In other words, one supposed “red flag” sighting from Brenda Toppin was certification enough.

As recently as 2012, when I queried Dr. Finkelhor about his beliefs past and present,  he denied being “an authority on the validity of claims” that he had laid out with such credulity in “Nursery Crimes.”