April 13, 2012

“A decade-long investigation by the FBI has found no evidence linking child abuse with organized satanic cults.

“In a recent report by the agency, Special Agent Kenneth Lanning warns about the influence of ‘overzealous intervenors,’ such as therapists and parents, ‘who may be affected by their zeal to uncover child sexual abuse, satanic activity, conspiracies.’ Their influence can contaminate a case so much that no one will ever determine what, if anything, really happened….”

– From the San Diego Union-Tribune (December 27, 1992)

Oct. 21, 2011

How would you handle six years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted? Here’s how Bob Kelly did it:

“In jail (in Chowan County before being found guilty) there was nothing but sitting and waiting. Central Prison was easier – I could work.

“A warden told me, ‘Whoever kills Bob Kelly will have a trophy. I can put you in lockup, where you’ll be safe.’ But that would’ve meant spending 23 hours a day in a cell. I said, ‘Put me in the general population. I’ve got 12 life sentences, and I’m not going to do my time hiding.’

“But I tried to be smart. It was two years before I went outside in the yard. All I could think of was, if I got in a fight, how would that affect the appellate court?… Only one time did a jailhouse gangster lay his hands on me, and I realized I had to stand up to him to keep it from happening again….

“My first job was janitor in G block. I waxed the floor, emptied the trash, kept it like my home. They don’t allow bleach, because it would get thrown in the guards’ eyes, but I managed to talk a guy in the laundry room out of a bottle. It was great for spraying down the showers. My block was the only one in the whole prison that smelled like Clorox….

“My next job was running the canteen for lockup. The guys who had been there before me had watered down the Cokes and coffee and pocketed the difference. I wanted to run the best canteen I could, so I started giving full measure….

“You know what the other prisoners said? ‘You’re stupid – don’t you know you could be making money?”

July 27, 2012

“It has always intrigued me that, in a culture that is relentlessly self-critical… the pre-school hysteria and witch-hunts of the 1980s and ’90s (have) attracted little, if any, notice among historians and social analysts.

“Which is odd: We moderns like to think that we are exempt from some of the baser instincts of human nature, but hysteria, mob rule, and spectral fears are still very much with us.

“Moreover, in this instance, the American judicial system failed systematically, blighting hundreds of lives: Many more genuinely innocent people went to prison, and for longer terms, than any Communist during the McCarthy era.”

– From “Remember McMartin” by Philip Terzian in the Weekly Standard (Nov. 11, 2011)

May 7, 2016

Twenty-five years ago today, “Frontline” aired Ofra Bikel’s landmark two-hour documentary on the Little Rascals Day Care case. It turned out to be the first of three installments over the next six years.

About the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care panic of the 1980s and early ’90s, historian Mary De Young says:

“Ofra Bikel certainly pounded a nail in its coffin. Her excellent work on the Little Rascals case appeared after the last day care ritual abuse case was prosecuted, but she created a reason to be profoundly skeptical of all the cases that came before.”

“Innocence Lost” is unavailable on DVD, but you can view all eight hours here.