Dec. 28, 2011

“Throughout the trial, prosecuting attorneys (in the Little Rascals case) repeatedly pursued their hunches without an apparent desire to test an alternate theory. This resulted in a rather spectacular false admission by 6-year-old Andy, who had been a 3-year-old at the time of the alleged sexual abuse by Bob Kelly.

“ ‘Prosecutor: Do you remember a time where you ever had to do anything to Mr. Bob’s hiney with your mouth?

“ ‘Andy: No, ma’am.

“ ‘Prosecutor: Do you remember telling Dr. Betty that one time you had to lick Mr. Bob’s hiney? Did that happen? Did you ever have to do that, that you didn’t want to do it?

“ ‘Andy: Yes, ma’am.’

“In reality, the prosecutor had made a mistake, thinking that the charge was that Andy had sodomized Bob Kelly, rather than the other way around. The state dropped this charge after it realized Andy had admitted to the wrong charge.

“This ought to have sensitized the prosecution to the very real dangers of pursuing a single hypothesis in the relentless manner we have described, but unfortunately it did not appear to have done so.”

– From “Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony”
by Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck (1995)

Jan. 25, 2015

Q:  You said that Mr. Bob made spaghetti at the day care…. Now, when did Mr. Bob say that there was poop in the spaghetti?

A:  After we, um, ate it.

Q:  All right. Did – did you ever have to eat poop at the day care?

A:  No.

Q:  Okay. Did anybody try and make you eat poop at the day care?

A:  Yes.

Q: Who?

A:  Mr. Bob.

Q:  Tell me about it.

A:  I don’t remember it.

Q:  You don’t remember it?

A:  No.

Q:  Well, how do you know Mr. Bob tried to do it?

A:  What?

Q:  Did somebody tell you about it?

A:  No.

Q:  Okay. Well, then tell me how Mr. Bob tried to make you eat poop.

A:  Um, he told me, um, to eat it.

Q:  Okay. Where was it?

A:  I forgot.

Q:  You forgot. Well, was it in Ms. Shelly’s room?

A:  No.

Q:  Was it in the kitchen?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Okay. Well, did he make other kids eat poop while you were there?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Okay. Well, um, what happened when they ate it?

A:  I don’t know.

– From defense attorney Jeffrey Miller’s cross-examination of a child witness in the trial of Bob Kelly

This exchange represents only a tiny fraction of the 7-year-old girl’s testimony, which stretched over two days and included similarly incoherent references to Kelly and other defendants having raped her, urinated in her mouth, threatened to kill her parents, sodomized her with pencils and sewing needles, taken her on boat and truck rides, forced her to witness the killing and burial of babies and small animals…..

How funny and trivial such childish imaginings would seem, if only the jury’s gullibility hadn’t sent Kelly to prison for six years. “The children were convincing,” insisted rogue juror Dennis T. Ray.

Aug. 29, 2012

“Los Angeles County’s Satanic Abuse Task Force, an official sub body of the Los Angeles County Women’s Commission, concluded (in 1992) that Satanists were trying to pump diazinon poison into their office and home air vents in order to silence them. Task force members became suspicious, according to president Myra Rydell, after experiencing bouts of profound exhaustion, headaches and, perhaps most significantly, ‘the inability to think straight.’

“McMartin parent Jackie McGauley, also a task force member, told a reporter that, according to her doctor, diazinon would be ‘virtually impossible to detect’ if given in small doses over a long time period. The County’s epidemic specialist said that diazinon was easy to detect and after his own investigation called the claims ‘outrageous.’”

– From “The Dark Truth About the ‘Dark Tunnels of McMartin’” by John Earl (IPT Journal, 1995)

No single reason accounts for the country’s belated skepticism about ritual abuse, but the poison-gas episode in Los Angeles surely qualified as a “jump the shark” moment.

Sept. 16, 2013

“The prosecution-minded are careful to say that they do not believe everything a child says. For example, they do not believe 3-year-old Virginia’s statement that ‘Karen was cooked in a microwave.’

“But they do believe her when she says, ‘I helped my teacher put a playhandle in Karen’s heinie’ – even though one 3-year-old sodomizing another with a ‘playhandle’ an inch or 2 wide and not causing bleeding from a torn rectum is as unbelievable as cooking a child in a microwave.

“Accepting half a child’s statement and rejecting the other (death by microwave) is capricious: The truth is not a smorgasbord from which we can choose the facts we fancy and leave behind those we do not.”

– From “Magical Child Molestation Trials: Edenton’s Children Accuse” by Margaret Leong (1993)