July 30, 2012

Death noted: Radical-left polemicist Alexander Cockburn, who as early as 1990 was raging against claims of satanic ritual abuse.

Cockburn gave particular attention to feminism’s role in the mania:

“In the coalition powering the satanic abuse persecutions,” he recalled in a 1999 column in The Nation, “feminists constituted a powerful component, most conspicuously in the form of Gloria Steinem and Ms. magazine.

“How did feminism, a movement that grew out of the radical passions of the 1960s, navigate itself into this demonic alliance? Charges of perverse abuse of children seemed an inviting line of attack in the larger onslaught on patriarchy, sexual violence and harassment. Social workers and therapists – many of them feminists – became the investigators and effective prosecutors.”

Cockburn oversimplified, as was his way, but it’s no stretch to see how feminism fed into not only ritual abuse, but also the sister hoaxes of recovered memory syndrome and multiple personality disorder.

Aug. 19, 2016

The jury is empaneled in Farmville, N.C., where Bob Kelly’s trial has been moved because of pretrial publicity in Edenton.

Dennis T. Ray would turn out to be a major mischief-maker both inside and outside the jury room. Ray read aloud from a contraband Redbook article on how to identify child molesters,  disobeyed the court’s instruction not to visit the alleged crime scenes, reported that a jailhouse snitch had shared personal knowledge of Kelly’s guilt and displayed a supposed “magic key” referred to by several child witnesses.

Unfortunately, Judge Marsh McLelland told defense attorneys he didn’t consider Ray’s rogue behavior – or that of a second juror, who dramatically revealed during deliberations that he himself had been abused as a child – to be a “tremendous problem.”

At least three jurors would later express deep doubts about the guilty verdict.

Roswell Streeter, at 28 the youngest juror, would write:

“I’ll say this to the last day of my life, that the evidence that came through the courtroom did not prove that Bob Kelly committed any kind of sex abuse.” He told “Frontline” he had felt intimidated and confused.

Mary Nichols was suffering from advanced leukemia,  and Marvin Shackelford had suffered two heart attacks. Both acknowledged afterward that worries about their health had moved them to vote guilty simply to cut short deliberations and go home. It had been nine months since the trial began.

March 22, 2013

“’There are some people who said we could have stopped after the first child testified.”

– District Attorney H.P. Williams Jr., expressing confidence that the jury was being persuaded by the state’s stream of child-witnesses against Bob Kelly, The Associated Press, Dec. 9, 1991

July 29, 2016

“Sometimes prosecutors withhold exculpatory evidence of a defendant’s innocence, and don’t turn it over until they are forced to. Take a look at the exonerations reported in recent years and you will see a pattern of prosecutors continuing to fight against our release even when our innocence is uncovered. Many innocent prisoners have been buried alive in these prisons by this kind of corruption….

“How do the culprits sleep at night? Well, to be honest, these people have no consciences. It’s like any other day at the job for them. Some have built their careers on the backs of us innocent prisoners, and now they sit in high places.

“Until the day comes when culprits responsible for wrongful convictions are held fully accountable – wrongful convictions will never stop.”

– From “When Courts Are Used As A Weapon Against The Innocent” by Lorenzo Johnson at Huffington Post (July 12)

Johnson had served 16 1/2 years of a life-without-parole sentence when in 2012 the Third Circuit Federal Court of Appeals found insufficient evidence for his conviction. He remained free for four months, after which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reinstated the conviction and ordered him back to a Pennsylvania prison. He continues to seek a new trial.