April 11, 2014

“It may be hard for you to own the fact that you were duped by therapists and prosecutors, as well as misled by your own naivete about childhood sexuality. While it may be difficult now to acknowledge your five-year-long wrong, it will be far worse if your children have to do it for you, and far worse for you and your children to have history indict you as an unrepentant bearer of these terrible false accusations.

“A place for you in history is already assured. What history finally writes about you now depends on you….”

– From “An Open Letter to the Accusing Parents in the Little Rascals Child Abuse Case” by Raymond J. Lawrence in Contra Mundum (Oct. 1, 1993)

Will even one Edenton parent ever heed Lawrence’s call to “to undo this elaborate fabrication that has caused years of suffering to so many”? What would it take to remove the blinders, to accept responsibility and to separate yourself from the true believers?

Oct. 26, 2016

Janet Rosenzweig, executive director of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, wasted no time kissing off my request that APSAC take responsibility for the damage done by its advocacy of the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care myth:

“On behalf of the Board of Directors  of APSAC, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.  APSAC does not have a position on this issue, and has no plans to take one at this time.”

In reality, APSAC has taken a position on the issue ever since its founding.

As noted in “Advances in Social and Organizational Psychology” by Donald A. Hantula (2006):

“APSAC was founded in 1985 as a professional group of therapists concerned that some people were skeptical regarding claims in the McMartin day care satanic abuse case. At the same meeting at which APSAC was formed for professionals, ‘Believe the Children’ was formed for parents of McMartin children…. Thus, from the start, APSAC has been an advocate of the reality of satanic and sexual abuse in day care….”

As stingingly acknowledged by prosecutor Paul J. Stern, the shared history of APSAC and the day-care panic is indisputable. Only one question remains: What now? Does APSAC really want its professionalism forever compromised by clinging to its perverse origin story?

Are its members in 2016 still wedded to the discredited concepts first promoted 30 years ago by Jon Conte,  Kathleen Coulborn Faller, Kee MacFarlane, Ann Wolbert Burgess, Susan J. Kelley, Roland Summit, Mark Everson and Little Rascals prosecutor Nancy Lamb?  Would Dr. Rosenzweig dare to ask the membership at large if it shares the board’s resistance to making amends?

Jan. 8, 2014

“Among the atrocities that Frances and Dan Keller were supposed to have committed while running a day care center out of their Texas home: drowning and dismembering babies in front of the children; killing dogs and cats in front of the children; transporting the children to Mexico to be sexually abused by soldiers in the Mexican army; dressing as pumpkins and shooting children in the arms and legs; putting the children into a pool with sharks that ate babies; putting blood in the children’s Kool-Aid; cutting the arm or a finger off a gorilla at a local park; and exhuming bodies at a cemetery, forcing children to carry the bones.

“It was frankly unbelievable – except that people, most importantly, a Texas jury, did believe the Kellers had committed at least some of these acts. In 1992, the Kellers were convicted of aggravated sexual assault on a child and each sentenced to 48 years in prison….

“(Today) after multiple appeal efforts and 21 years in prison, the Kellers are finally free….

“The doctor who provided the only physical evidence that any sexual assault had taken place recanted his testimony. Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg agreed that their conviction should be overturned, allowing the Kellers to be released while their appeals move through the courts….

“Their release may also finally mark the end to one of the strangest, widest-reaching, and most damaging moral panics in America’s history.”

– From “The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse” by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie at Slate.com

What a day-brightener – spotting McRobbie’s thorough tracking of the Fran and Dan case atop Slate magazine’s home page.

Yes, miracles do happen – a Texas doctor recanting his testimony, and a DA agreeing the convictions should be overturned.

But as long as Junior Chandler remains imprisoned in North Carolina, it’s way too soon to “finally mark the end” to the ritual abuse panic.

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”?