Dec. 3, 2014

“I was in graduate school in Southern California 30 years ago when the McMartin Preschool scandal erupted, featuring tales of Satanic rituals, underground tunnels, group sex with animals and children, and various acrobatic acts that would challenge Cirque du Soleil, all believed credulously by the media and California prosecutors….

“There was something so literally incredible about (such) ‘Satanic ritual abuse’ cults that serious doubts and questions should have been raised right at the outset.

“Some hard questions are starting to be asked about the latest sequel to the Salem witch trials – the college campus ‘rape culture’ hysteria…. The Rolling Stone story about an especially brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia is provoking considerable backlash– with a few critics suggesting the entire story might be a hoax ….

“It took years for the ‘Satanic child abuse crisis’ to collapse, and several months for the Duke lacrosse scandal to turn around. What is interesting about the UVa story is how quickly it is facing credible challenge….”

– From “The Spirit of Salem Lives On” by Steven Hayward at powerlineblog.com (Dec. 2)

March 21, 2016

“Once again advocates of the much discredited Satanic Abuse Panic are making claims of widespread child abuse across Britain.

“Scotland appears to have become caught up in a nationwide frenzy of superstitious irrationality. This moral panic exhibits typical clichés of sensationalist psychology. In England, the case of Carole Myers/Felstead – whose family were falsely accused of an endless variety of insane criminal acts – has comprehensively demonstrated that the existence of Satanic Cults preying on vulnerable children is a myth created on the therapist’s couch…. Real victims of abuse are being let down by focusing on this nonsense.”

– From “Recent Satanic Abuse Claims in Scotland” by the British False Memory Society (March 10)

For whatever reason, the UK seems especially resistant to having its fingers pried from the myth of “satanic ritual abuse,” which migrated from the States in the late ’80s.

Jan. 23, 2012

Last week I visited Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution in Spruce Pine to talk to Junior Chandler, who soon will have served 25 years on charges strikingly similar to those in the Little Rascals case.

Junior, now 54, may well be the last still-imprisoned victim of the ritual-abuse contagion that swept the nation’s day cares in the ’80s and early ’90s.

I’ll be updating his case soon.

In Junior’s former life in the mountain town of Revere, he told me, he was close to his parents, his wife and two boys, his two brothers.

Early on, he and his brothers helped their uncle grow tobacco and corn. Before driving a van for the Madison County Day Care Center, he had worked for the Forest Service, the Department of Transportation and Southern Railroad. At least one job he gave up because it interfered with his softball tournaments and night fishing.

In prison, visits from his family became less frequent, and eventually his wife filed for divorce. “Two life sentences,” Junior says. “She couldn’t wait, you know.” And his sons couldn’t keep watching him aging away in his prison grays.

When his father died in 1997, he attended the funeral in handcuffs. He worries about his mother, who recently suffered a stroke.

He sleeps in a bunk bed in a dorm with 33 other inmates. His assigned janitorial job is cleaning meal trays. For relaxation he plays volleyball and horseshoes, watches Westerns on TV, reads a little. His only write-up was a scuffle not long after he arrived. “It’s learning to walk away and how to carry yourself,” he says.

Of course I was touched by Junior’s deep sadness and resignation. Sometimes I find it too easy to minimize the emotional havoc wrought by incarceration of the guilty – just imagine what it must be like for the innocent.

Sept. 14, 2015

“Rising retraction rates reflect (in part) the fact that scientists, journalists and amateur watchdogs have begun scrutinizing research more closely….

“This heightened scrutiny – the very scrutiny that likely contributed to the retractions surge in the first place – could help reverse the tide, by providing a powerful disincentive to bad behavior. As more scientific misconduct is exposed and shamed, researchers who were previously tempted to play fast and loose with their data may now think twice.”

– From “A Scientific Look at Bad Science” by Bourree Lam in The Atlantic (September 2015)

“The increase in overall retractions is mostly because a higher percentage of journals have begun issuing retractions…. One reason it’s taken a while… could be that they had to develop the necessary guidelines for defining, detecting and dealing with ‘misconduct’….

“(One) study found that editors are retracting articles significantly faster now than in the past. We might be working our way towards a future in which fraudsters like (Diederik) Stapel won’t build up such massive bodies of literature before being unmasked. Their first or second will be caught, before they’ve done too much damage.”

 – From “Scientific Retractions are on the Rise, and That May Be a Good Thing” by Rosie Cima at Priceonomics (June 24)

“Before they’ve done too much damage” – ah, if only that applied to the errant (and still unrepentant) authors and journal editors whose efforts lent credence to the prosecution during the “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic.