Dec. 5, 2011

In this (Nov. 29) New York Times analysis of science’s ever-growing skepticism about eyewitness testimony I noticed a familiar name:

“One of the earliest and more famous experiments to demonstrate that memories are malleable was conducted by Elizabeth Loftus, a psychology professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an early pioneer of witness memory research.

“In a 1974 study published in The Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, (Loftus) asked participants to view films of fender-benders in which no car windows or headlights were broken. Later, the subjects who were asked how fast the cars were going when they ‘smashed’ into each other – as opposed to ‘hit’ – were more likely to report speeding and describe shattered glass they never actually saw.”

While researching a book on the Wenatchee, Washington, ritual sex abuse case (1994-95), Kathryn Lyon asked Loftus about the consequences when professionals contribute to and reinforce false memories in children.

“If you believe real child abuse has long-term deleterious consequences,” Loftus responded, “then what happens when you create a false memory of child abuse? Are you creating a victim who is also likely to have long-term troubles?

“Having a real and a pseudo memory are in many ways the same. If you create the memory, are you not creating child abuse?”

Lyon, a lawyer, spent a year in Wenatchee to write the thorough and chilling “Witch Hunt: A True Story of Social Hysteria and Abused Justice” (1998).

Dec. 28, 2012

Let’s not leave behind “Ritual Abuse: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to Help” without considering Appendix B, “Similarities in the Lives of Ritual Abuse Survivors.”

Author Margaret Smith “asked survivors to note any clues or indicators in their lives that may have suggested they were ritually abused as a child.” She then “organize(d) these responses into meaningful categories.”

Like the symptom charts of psychologist Catherine Gould, these “meaningful categories” strain to make the wildly anecdotal seem scientific.

“Reactions to Objects That Trigger Memories,” for instance, includes not only “Preference for red meat,” but also “Hated read meat. I have been a vegetarians since I was a child.”

“Indicators from Childhood or Adult Behavior” covers both “Threw up a lot” and “Would never allow myself to vomit.”

And just what manner of abuse might be revealed by “clues” such as – I wish I were kidding – “Addicted to book reading”?

Jan. 16, 2012

Darkness to Light is a Charleston-based nonprofit with the goal “End Child Abuse.” Since its founding in 2000, D2L claims to have trained adults in 48 states and 10 foreign countries in how to prevent, recognize and react to child sexual abuse. Among its allies: YMCAs.

Unfortunately, D2L is less than meticulous in associating itself with other organizations. This is a letter I sent D2L officials on Dec. 5:

Darkness to Light does a disservice to the public and to your cause when you include on your list of resources the Survivorship website.

Survivorship’s board president is Neil Brick, who identifies himself as “the founder of S.M.A.R.T. (Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today) at http://ritualabuse.us. He is a survivor of ritual abuse and a survivor advocate. He works on developing supports for survivors and getting information out to the general public about ritual abuse. He runs yearly ritual abuse conferences on the east coast of the United States every year at http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference. Links to his presentation transcripts and research papers are http://ritualabuse.us/smart/neil-brick.”

S.M.A.R.T. is perhaps the most prominent organization still insisting that numerous day-care providers in the 1980s and early 1990s subjected children to “satanic ritual abuse.” Although the day-care panic eventually waned and courts freed nearly all the unfortunate defendants, S.M.A.R.T. continues to see abuse in every one of these cases – from McMartin to Little Rascals to Fells Acres, etc.

Like Scientologists and Holocaust deniers, S.M.A.R.T. has been banned from editing Wikipedia entries. Neither should its disinformation campaign be given a platform by Darkness to Light.

Darkness to Light has yet to respond to that letter or to a Dec. 30 follow-up soliciting “a statement explaining why you continue to support this organization.”  I’d be happy to publish such an explanation, but even happier to learn that D2L has cut its ties to the ritual abuse movement.

April 5, 2014

“Outside of science, progress is simply a myth.… In science the growth of knowledge is cumulative. But human life as a whole is not a cumulative activity; what is gained in one generation may be lost in the next.”

– From “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals” (2002) by John Gray, British political philosopher

An arguable proposition, certainly – but how else to explain the widespread acceptance of day-care ritual-abuse claims 300 years after the Salem Witch Trials? As noted by sociologist David G. Bromley, this chronic failure to learn-and-remember makes inevitable yet more moral panics – whatever their specifics.

And how else to explain this just-published revisionist history?