Oct. 20, 2015

“(Richard Beck’s “We Believe the Children”) addresses only the question of why those events unfolded in the particular way that they did, at one particular moment – not why this hydralike form of communal social hysteria can be stamped out in one place only to rear another ugly head elsewhere.

“Perhaps there is no answer to that question – or, at least, no answer we want to hear. Politics, social mores, human psychology, a rye-eating fungus: all these submit calmly to our investigations. But a hard core of evil in the soul of humankind? That might be the real witchcraft, one we dare not examine too closely.”

– From “Trial and Error: Three centuries of American witch hunts” by Ruth Franklin in Harper’s Magazine (Oct. 17)

Nov. 30, 2011

“You have to start with the matter of probability. What every one of these (day care sex abuse) cases has in common is that no adult observer has actually seen a molestation in progress.

“Supposedly, these abuses are going on continually over a period of months. Almost always, they supposedly involve a number of adults and many children, with outsiders constantly walking in and out of these centers. Yet we have no corroborating eyewitnesses. None….

“Throughout it all, these children somehow always come home in the right shoes and socks and underpants. Do you have kids? Do you realize how hard it is to dress two kids in a hurry without some kind of mix-up, let alone 10 or 12 or 20 kids?”

– Dr. Richard A. Gardner, clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, quoted in Playboy magazine (June 1992)

July 5, 2013

“RALEIGH – During a hearing at the state Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Gerald Arnold repeatedly asked a state prosecutor about the fairness of testimony by (Bob) Kelly’s former attorney in Edenton. Arnold said the attorney had, in effect, testified that he believed in Kelly’s innocence until he learned his child had been abused.

“ ‘How can you argue that it was not extremely prejudicial?’ the judge asked.

“Associate Attorney General Ellen Scouten argued that Chris Bean did not divulge confidential information and did not violate an attorney-client relationship with Kelly. She said Bean testified as a parent and a crime victim.

“Arnold said Bean, now a district court judge, had gone beyond describing what he had seen and witnessed as a parent.

“ ‘This boils down to the most fundamental questions of fairness,’ Arnold said. ‘When you have an attorney testifying that “I was Mr. Kelly’s attorney and I believed in him very strongly until I learned the truth, that is to say that he’s guilty, and then I was shattered.” How can there be more prejudicial, stronger evidence put before a jury than to have a former attorney, the defendant’s attorney say that?’

“Scouten said that because the defense had contended that accusers in Edenton were hysterical people on a witch hunt it was fair to allow the state to show the type of people involved.

“ ‘Mr. Bean and his wife were reputable, respected thoughtful, educated people – not the type of people that would be swept up by community hysteria,’ she said.”

– From “Appeal of 2 defendants in Little Rascals case draws a crowd” in the News & Observer (Jan. 10, 1995)

Given this line of questioning, it came as no great surprise when four months later the Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of both Kelly and Dawn Wilson.

Bean’s unfettered opinionating was only one of three major defects cited by the court, the others being the withholding of exculpatory evidence by prosecutors and the testimony of parents as expert witnesses.

The prosecution got off light – the brief filed by appellate defender Mark Montgomery claimed no fewer than 222 potentially reversible errors.

Nov. 28, 2012

“There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that someone else is an evil-doer.”

– Robert Lynd, Irish essayist  (1879-1949)

The average Edentonian may have been too fearful and confused to feel good about demonizing the Edenton Seven – ah, but what a rush it must have given the cocksure therapists and prosecutors!