Nov. 16, 2012

“In North America in the 1980s, the moral panic about organized child abuse arose in a context that included the following scares:

• “a moral panic about satanic activity;
• “a scare about missing and murdered children;
• “great public anxiety about incest, redefined as child sexual abuse during the 1970s;
• “a wave of disputed custody cases in which women accused their former husbands of sexually abusing children during court-ordered visitations;
• “self-help books by women claiming to be ‘survivors’ of incest and ritual abuse;
• “therapists’ claims that many of their adult women patients suffered from multiple-personality disorder as a result of severe childhood sexual and ritual abuse.

“Of particular importance were claims that society was in denial about widespread child sexual abuse…. Thus, claims about organized child abuse by caregivers were made in a context of claims about similar issues, and the effect of claims in one panic was to reinforce claims in another.”

– From “Wrongful Conviction and the Moral Panic About Organized Child Abuse: National and International Perspectives” by Randall Grometstein (2005)

June 14, 2018

“America has a long history of episodic moral panics in which self-styled experts, sensationalistic journalists and public officials used emotionally charged language and a barrage of (often distorted) statistics to portray a particular social problem as widespread and urgent….

“The 1980s brought [a] moral panic precipitated by unease about double-income families and the supervision of children by strangers at day-care centers….

“All these scares produced unexpected political alliances. Conservatives concerned with moral purity, law-and-order and Christian values joined forces with feminists worried about victims of sexual trauma and liberals in favor of strong government regulation. When forces from the right and left converge in a moral panic, their causes possess greater appeal to the public. We see this today as women’s rights advocates join the sex-trafficking fight along with the religious right. The result is a runaway train with no real political force left in opposition….”

– From “President Trump signed a new law that aims to fight online sex trafficking. Here’s why that’s bad.” by Sascha Cohen in the Washington Post (April 12)

May 10, 2013

“Evidence at the trial of Robert F. Kelly Jr. consisted mainly of the fantasy-laced testimony of children and no physical proof. His conviction was overturned by an appeals court that said the proceedings had been unfair. Now prosecutors have dug into their bag of tricks and, ta-dum, come up with a new set of sex-abuse charges against him.

“It may turn out that Nancy Lamb has better documentation for the latest accusations, which date to 1987 and involve a girl who was then 9. She better have. Otherwise, the public will be left to conclude that the prosecution is simply engaged in a malicious effort to save face.”

– From “Never-ending prosecution” (News & Observer editorial, May 7, 1996)

Unable to gin up such documentation, of course, Lamb finally dropped the new charges – 2½ years later! And the public was indeed left to conclude that they had all been “a malicious effort to save face.”

Feb. 9, 2015

The Little Rascals Day Care case has often been likened to the Salem Witch Trials, but this lengthy list from “Understanding The Crucible: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents” by Claudia Durst Johnson and Vernon Johnson (1998) drives home the point:

• Both involved children as accusers.
• Convictions were determined almost solely on the basis of the children’s testimony.
• Everything escalated rapidly – the number of children involved, the number of the accused, and the different kinds of charges.
• The minds of the children were in both cases manipulated by adults.
• Charges were instigated by adults who held grudges against the accused.
• There was an absence of corroborating evidence.
• “Fanciful” testimony was regarded seriously. In Salem, it was spectral evidence. In the twentieth-century cases, it included children’s stories of spaceships, sharks, and ritual murder.
• Community hysteria arose from the feeling that evil – witches and sex abusers – had access to their children.
• “Poppets” or dolls were involved. In the Salem trials, little dolls were immediately seized upon as poppets used by witches to pierce with pins with the object of inflicting torture. In sexual abuse cases, “anatomically correct” dolls were used by psychologists to coach details from the children.
• There were charges that satanic rituals were conducted.
• The prosecution showed a single-minded determination, by threat or bribe, to get the accused to confess.
• The prosecution showed a single-minded determination, by threat or bribe, to get children to disclose more and more details of misconduct without regard to truth.