Sept. 18, 2013

“Joseph B. Cheshire V, Betsy Kelly’s attorney, says the believers in town remain so hostile to the heretics who profess any disbelief over the charges that he no longer feels comfortable vacationing at nearby Nags Head. ‘Good,’ says one prominent Little Rascals father. ‘I almost killed myself last summer running that extra distance past his house, just so he’d know that I knew he was there.’ ”

– From “The Demons of Edenton” by Lisa Scheer and Edward Cone in Elle magazine (November 1993) Download article here

“During (the Little Rascals case), Cheshire was the victim of assaults and for a time wore a bullet-proof vest.”

– From “Nationally known criminal defense attorney Joe Cheshire (’73) talks about his colorful career” by John Trump at Wake Forest University School of Law (April 5, 2010)

July 9, 2012

What happens to a social scientist who builds her career on exposing illusory “sex rings” and “ritual abuse” at day cares? And, more specifically, whose seminar at Kill Devil Hills apparently seeded the hysteria behind the prosecution of the Edenton Seven?

If you’re Ann Wolbert Burgess, it’s no problem. You just plunge ahead – and don’t look back.

Here’s how Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker described Burgess in 2001 in “Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a  Modern American Witch Hunt”:

“promoter of the use of children’s drawings to diagnose sexual abuse, developer of the idea of the sex ring, participant in developing the case that imprisoned the Amirault family and currently a researcher into the traumatic aftereffects of ritual abuse.”

For some people, that would be a career’s worth of wrongheaded ideas. But Burgess, now professor of psychiatric mental health nursing at Boston College, continues to accumulate merit badges on new topics such as heart attack victims, AIDS, infant kidnapping, online predators, nursing home abuse, women in prison, mass murder and elder abuse. Here she is in Raleigh on May 29 testifying as “an expert in crime scene classification and offender typology.”

Whew.

I’ve asked Dr. Burgess to reflect on Little Rascals and other examples of ritual abuse prosecutions. Too bad the subject didn’t come up when she was on the witness stand in Raleigh.

Jan. 4, 2018

“Sexual harassment or assault, by contrast [with the Communism scare in Hollywood], obviously warrants discipline at the very least and criminal prosecution wherever appropriate. But then and now, what’s lacking is any shared obligation to respect constitutional rights, ensure due process or maintain a sense of proportion…. And that’s the thing about moral panics: they may begin with a legitimate societal concern – drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, child abuse, human trafficking – but they can devolve into Prohibition, movie and broadcast censorship, banning comic books and rock ‘n’ roll, and general crusades against anything in popular culture challenging the official conformist line. And if you’re not careful, you’ll soon find yourself succumbing to irrational fears of ‘satanic ritual abuse,’ ‘backward masking’ in rock lyrics and secret pedophilia rings run out of suburban pizzerias….

“It’s not witches, but the witch-hunters, that we should really fear, for they lead us to abdicate our responsibilities to be fair, thoughtful, measured, and rational….”

– From “Season of the witch” by Joel Bellman at LA Observed (Dec. 10)

June 18, 2015

Given my thoroughly unsuccessful attempt to persuade the State of North Carolina to erect a historic marker recalling the Little Rascals Day Care case, I had to laugh at discovering this 1993 letter to the Elizabeth City Daily Advance:

“Dear Editor:

“The year is 2022. The town of Edenton, last stop on the witch-hunt trail beginning in Salem, Mass., with an intermediate stop at Joe McCarthy’s office in Washington, D.C., has finally decided to build a historic marker. (It will be) directly across the street from the town’s $4 million tour center, where people gather from across the nation (indeed, from around the world) to see and feel and learn about the Edenton witch hunts of 1990-1993….

“It is here where the walking tours start, where the T-shirts are sold and where the buses disgorge their curious cargo….”

Letter writer David W. Tucker of San Francisco – who in all likelihood had recently watched “Innocence Lost: The Verdict” – expressed confidence that the marker would eventually be approved, even if not by 2022:

“The only question is whether the marker will speak of the community’s collective shame
or, instead, of the individuals and groups of good will and courage who brought lasting honor to Edenton by rescuing Bob Kelly, Dawn Wilson, the Twiddy family and the others from the nightmare that fear, hate and ignorance visited upon them….”