April 27, 2012

Friday news roundup:

■ Darkness to Light, the Charleston-based nonprofit with the goal “End Child Abuse,” has responded to my request to disassociate itself from one of the last promoters of the ritual-abuse day-care hoax. This is from Erika Rowell, program coordinator for D2L: “After taking a long look at the Survivorship website we have decided to remove it from our resource list.”

■ The North Carolina Supreme Court’s latest release on petitions allowed and denied included no ruling on Junior Chandler’s appeal. Next possible release date: June 14.

■ The New York Times reports a jarring increase in the number of retractions published in scientific journals. The Times focuses on heavyweights such as Science and the New England Journal of Medicine, but I have to wonder whether – OK, hope that – this phenomenon might one day extend to the likes of the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, the Journal of Psychohistory and Treating Abuse Today, all of which failed to apply professional skepticism to the abuse fantasies of their contributors.

Oct. 28, 2011

“If the defendants were guilty, the prosecution failed.

“If the defendants were innocent, the prosecution failed.

“The prosecution failed at everything but taking years from people’s lives, ruining their reputations, breaking up their marriages, dividing the people of a small town, wasting more than $1 million of the taxpayers’ money and smearing North Carolina’s reputation.”

– Editorial in the Wilmington Star-News, September 27, 1999

June 13, 2016

“…A large community of like-minded people on the internet who call themselves ‘targeted individuals,’ or T.I.s…. is organized around the conviction that they are victims of a sprawling conspiracy to harass thousands of everyday Americans with mind-control weapons and armies of so-called gang stalkers. The goal, as one gang-stalking website put it, is ‘to destroy every aspect of a targeted individual’s life.’…

“An internet search for ‘gang-stalking’… turns up page after page of results that regard it as fact. ‘What’s scary for me is that there are no counter sites that try and convince targeted individuals that they are delusional,’ said Dr. Lorraine Sheridan, co-author of perhaps the only study of gang-stalking. “They end up in a closed ideology echo chamber.’”

– From “United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers” by Mike McPhate in the New York Times (June 10)

The T.I. phenomenon is new to me, but the proliferation of true believers sounds all too familiar. And my own Google alert continues to turn up page after page of supposed validation of “satanic ritual abuse.”

Not surprisingly, T.I. and SRA hang out in the same rationality-resistant neighborhoods. This is a promo for a recent conspiracy podcast:

“Meet David and Patty: David was raised in a Satanic cult under MK Ultra mind control. Patty is being burned with plasma lasers and having her thoughts extracted without her consent. We talk about electronic harassment, microchipping, breathable nanotechnology, mind control, sex kitten programming, project Monarch, brain mapping, gang stalking, voice to skull technology (V2K), and Satanic ritual abuse. And we find out how much it costs to build your own laser at home….”

Oct. 12, 2012

The exoneration of Willie Grimes warms my heart, and not just because the 66-year-old parolee has become “Free at last!” after a 1987 rape conviction in Hickory.

As often lamented on this site, prosecutors such as those in the Little Rascals case simply refuse to acknowledge, much less take responsibility for their mistakes.

In the Grimes case, however, District Attorney Jay Gaither told the Innocence Inquiry Commission panel, “The State cannot argue any conclusion other than for innocence in the case of Willie Grimes,” then rested the state’s case and sat down.

Afterward, he explained that “In this week’s presentation of evidence we counted no less than 35 pieces of evidence and testimony in support of innocence…. The fact that the three-judge panel was so emphatic in its conclusion and decision only strengthens the confidence I have in our decision.”

But Gaither went even further, on camera and rebroadcast by WSOC-TV: “On behalf of the district attorneys of North Carolina, I want to offer an apology to Willie Grimes.”

Yes – an apology!

Although the Grimes conviction occurred long before Gaither took office in 2002, DAs often feel compelled to defend even their predecessors’ performance. As former New York prosecutor Bennett Gershman has observed, “The prosecutor can’t do anything that undermines the public’s confidence in the prosecutor’s office. Once the public begins to doubt that prosecutors convict guilty people – that there may be mistakes in the system – that undermines confidence in the prosecutor….”

Gaither took the opposite approach. “You don’t just brush off 24 years of a man’s life and go on,” he told me Wednesday. “A series of events denied Mr. Grimes a fair trial. Closure was required.

“I wanted the public, as well as Mr. Grimes, to know that we weren’t just beat down, but that we were actually sorry.” (Click Gaither’s picture above to watch the broadcast that includes video of the courtroom apology.)

Also notable is how Gaither framed his apology: “I was speaking not so much for district attorneys as individuals, as for the State of North Carolina…. Only 44 of us have that right to say ‘The state says….’ ”

In this case, that right was admirably used. Would that it happened more often.