March 1, 2013

“Now, you can ask yourself why did the jury believe these things? How could the jury believe that, as in the Amirault (day-care ritual-abuse) case, old Mrs. Amirault, one of the most upright of citizens, had suddenly turned at the age of 67 into a child molester who raped children?

“She was accused and convicted of inserting a stick into the body orifice of a little boy, tied him to a tree stark naked in front of everyone, in front of the house in Massachusetts, and the children all attested to this, the ones that were part of the case. Now, who would believe this?…

“But if you have a prosecutor who tells the jury, ‘Here are all of these brave children. These brave children have come forward to ask that you credit their story because they have endured so much suffering, and if you don’t do this, you’re betraying the children’ — it is not easy to find a jury that is stalwart enough to say, ‘Hey, you know, this really is a pile of nonsense.’”

– From a C-SPAN “Booknotes” interview with Dorothy Rabinowitz, author of “No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness and Other Terrors of Our Times” (May 4, 2003).

July 3, 2013

“(Nancy Lamb) is aware of the naysayers, those who say she ran a witch hunt, gleaning hundreds of charges against (Bob) Kelly and his staff from the children’s accounts, which included trips aboard spaceships.

“ ‘You have to look at the big picture,’ she said. ‘You have to know that there are fantastic elements in children’s accounts of abuse, while they also say things that are quite believable.’ ”

“And believe she did….”

– From “How hard it is to say, ‘Enough’ ” by columnist Nicole Brodeur in the News & Observer (May 28, 1997)

What self-serving speciousness. Could there be a better example of failing “to look at the big picture” than Lamb’s focusing on only those fragments of the children’s manipulated testimony that supported her case?

Oct. 8, 2012

“Even those (ritual-abuse day-care cases) that resulted in acquittals… reflect hundreds of children and their family members referred to counseling.

“Many families were limited to a handful of approved counselors, who also helped police and prosecutors by eliciting testimony from the children. One must wonder what these counselors counsel these children about, particularly in cases in which allegations were later proved to have come from them rather than from the children – and considering that the children began showing symptoms of abuse only after disclosing – the reverse of abused children’s usual responses to counseling.”

– From “Assessing the Costs of False Allegations of Child Abuse: A Prescriptive” by Susan Kiss Sarnoff (IPT Journal, 1997)

What a calamitous exploitation of the children – but what a canny career move for the therapists!

June 3, 2014

“I want all of you to ask yourselves: If you were to find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being the victim of a crime, who would you want representing your interest in the criminal justice system?

“Would you want someone like me, with 30 years experience as a veteran prosecutor, a person who has prosecuted every kind of criminal case there is?

“Or would you want someone like my opponent, whose entire criminal experience comes as in the role of being a criminal defense attorney, defending criminals who commit crimes against the people of the 1st District?”

– Little Rascals prosecutor Nancy Lamb, now a candidate for district attorney, comparing herself – most favorably! – with incumbent Andrew Womble

Lamb won the Democratic nomination for DA in last month’s primary and will face Republican Womble in the general election. Although her campaign website boasts that she has been  “nationally recognized for her work with child abuse,” it somehow neglects to mention her star turn in one of the country’s most publicized “satanic ritual abuse” prosecutions. Fortunately, the five months between now and Nov. 4 should provide ample opportunity for her to address that issue.