June 8, 2012

“The duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict.”

– American Bar Association

“The primary responsibility of prosecution is to see that justice is accomplished.”

– National District Attorneys Association

“If you were playing poker, would you be playing with your full hand
showing?”

– Bill Hart, special deputy attorney general, defending his unwillingness
to share evidence with the Little Rascals defense

May 7, 2012

From an exchange with Stephen Ceci, author (with Maggie Bruck) of the landmark “Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony” (1995):

Q: What may have happened to the child-witnesses as a result of being so profoundly misdiagnosed? One Little Rascals child-witness who responded anonymously to an advertisement I placed in the Edenton paper continues to say she was abused by Bob Kelly, although she admits to doubts about the female defendants.

A: We lack good scientific data on the long-term beliefs of individuals who as children were suggestively interviewed. A handful of studies, none of which resemble allegations of sexual abuse, seem to indicate that they grow up with the belief that they were abused, replete with the same psychological sequelae of true abuse survivors.

But you’ll note I use phrases such as “seem to indicate,” because the data are not uniform or consistent and the scenarios are not sex abuse ones. I think many, perhaps most, memory researchers would expect someone who was convinced as a child that he or she was victimized to grow into an adult with the same problems seen in actual victims, e.g., distrust of authority figures, insecurity, etc..

–

What extreme caution Dr. Ceci, an unsurpassed authority on child abuse, uses not to present theory and speculation as fact…. If only the therapists and theoreticians behind the day-care-abuse mania had shown half the professional uncertainty….

March 9, 2017

“As a result of complaints, [scientific] journals have been posting notices of problems with Dr. [Carlo] Croce’s papers at a quickening pace. From just a handful of notices before 2013 – known as corrections, retractions and editors’ notices – the number has ballooned to at least 20, with at least three more on the way, according to journal editors….”

– From  “Years of Ethics Charges, but Star Cancer Researcher Gets a Pass” by James Glanz and Agustin Armendariz in the New York Times (March 8)

Yet another example of professional journals responding with new vigor to faulty articles.

By contrast, no retraction has ever appeared in those journals that lent credence to testimony by the prosecution’s expert witnesses during the day-care panic. Or perhaps some author or editor still wants to defend the likes of “Stress Responses of Children to Sexual Abuse and Ritualistic Abuse in Day Care Centers” and “Satanic Ritual Abuse: A Cause of Multiple Personality Disorder”?

Sept. 28, 2016

“The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children [is] presenting a ‘special issue’ of one of its publications devoted to [Differential response] – or rather, devoted to bashing DR….

“APSAC’s track record for getting child welfare issues right is less than distinguished. As Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker explain in Satan’s Silence, APSAC was formed in the 1980s largely by well-meaning ‘professionals’ who promoted claims of a supposed epidemic of mass molestation and satanic ritual abuse in day care centers.

“ ‘From its inception,’ Nathan and Snedeker write, ‘APSAC’s leadership roster was a veritable directory of ritual-abuse architects.’  Kee MacFarlane, who led the questioning of children in the notorious McMartin Preschool case, served on APSAC’s board – and received the group’s Outstanding Professional award – a decade after McMartin.  And in 1997, three years after writing an article promoting the idea that there really were secret tunnels under the McMartin Preschool, Roland Summit, another former board member, received the group’s Lifetime Achievement award.”

– From “Opposition to Differential Response Dealt Heavy Blow” by Richard Wexler in the Chronicle of Social Change (Sept. 24)

Differential response – a less adversarial, more collaborative approach to reports of child abuse and neglect – isn’t a subject I’m well-informed on. But Wexler’s characterization of APSAC’s culpability for the day-care panic can’t be disputed.

Next: Has APSAC recanted about ‘satanic ritual abuse’?