Feb. 13, 2013

“Can we say beyond a shadow of a doubt that any day-care operators in the country are innocent? No. Can we say that those who claim they were abducted by UFOs were not? No.

“(That) is not a frivolous comparison. The methodology used by therapists on the children is the same methodology used by UFO debriefers. The debriefers ask, Did you see a light? The therapists ask, Did you get taken to a secret tunnel? The debriefers ask, Did you feel a probe by the aliens? The therapists ask, Did Mr. Bob stick a knife in your vagina?

“When people, even fully functional members of their communities, regurgitate what they have been told about space probes, we call them lunatics. When children, after constant prodding, regurgitate what they have been told about intimate probes, we put people in prison.”

– From “Abusing Justice, in the Name of Children” by Ed Siegel in the Boston Globe (Sept. 8, 1995)

June 18, 2012

“Yes, prosecutors blundered terribly by piling on charges and piling on defendants, just because they could.

“Yes, some of the parents became hysterical and acted out of guilt. That’s the way people act when told their children have been sexually abused – by someone to whom they entrusted them, to whom they personally delivered them every day.

“And here’s another thing the experts are right about. The children weren’t perfect witnesses. They got mixed up. They talked about spaceships and houses that walked.

“But that’s what it means to be a child, and what makes children prey to pedophiles. Children don’t know how to defend themselves. They’re easy to scare and apt to do what adults tell them to do.

“There is plenty to learn from the tragic mistakes in the Little Rascals case. But the final tragedy would be to conclude that child sex abuse is some sort of figment of our social imagination, and not the very real predator it is.”

– From a column by Lorraine Ahearn in the Greensboro News & Record (June 1, 1997)

As previously mentioned, journalists were among those who just couldn’t believe nothing happened at Little Rascals.

Ms. Ahearn, who covered part of Bob Kelly’s trial before becoming a columnist, has changed her line of work since 1997 – has she also changed her mind about ritual sex abuse at day cares? Apparently not:

“I am no longer a working journalist, and I am not interested in weighing in.

“You may glean whatever you wish from the (column). I did cover the trial as a reporter and that was what my column was based upon, not second-hand views about unrelated cases.”

I’d be the last to disparage shoe-leather reporting, but it’s those “second-hand views about unrelated cases” – from journalists such as Debbie Nathan and social scientists such as Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck – that enable us to comprehend the incomprehensible.

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Do I ever tire of asking the Lorraine Ahearns, the David Finkelhors, the Kathleen Coulborn Fallers, the H.W. Williamses, the Elisabeth Porter-Hurds and the Michele L. Zimmermans, “Have you changed your mind?”

Well, yes, I do. But do they ever tire of insisting they haven’t?

March 20, 2017

“America saw another record year for the number of prisoners being exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science & Society, University of Michigan Law School, and Michigan State University College of Law.

“For 2016, 166 people were exonerated of crimes and released from prison, 52 of them for murder. Of all the exonerations, 70 cases involved official misconduct of some sort, and in 74 of the cases, convictions came from guilty pleas. And in 94 cases (also a record) it turned out that no actual crime occurred at all. These were mostly drug cases but also some child sex abuse cases. Most famously, the San Antonio Four, four women convicted in 1998 in a fabricated satanic child sex abuse ring scandal, were released in 2016 after it finally became clear the crimes never occurred.”

– From “Decades of exoneration stats show blacks more likely to wrongfully convicted” by Scott Shackford at reason.com (March 7)

Of the Edenton Seven, only Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson, whose convictions were overturned, qualify for the National Registry of Exonerations. As spokesman Ted Koehler told me five years ago, “The Edenton case was a terrible witch hunt. Regretfully, though, [Betsy] Kelly’s and [Scott] Privott’s guilty pleas and the dropped charges against [Robin] Byrum, [Shelley] Stone, and [Darlene] Harris do not fit our definition of an exoneration….”

June 27, 2012

“When well-intentioned but misguided individuals use questioning techniques known to increase the risk of false allegations of sexual abuse, a cascade of unfortunate events can follow.

“Consequences of corruptive interview techniques include the risk of innocent individuals being falsely accused as well as abused children not being believed.”

– From “Forensic Issues in Child Sexual Abuse Allegations” by Charles L. Scott, M.D., in Psychiatric Times (December 1, 2008)

Scott points out a seldom-mentioned but potentially tragic after-effect of the day-care ritual-abuse mania: A loss of credibility for children who actually have been sexually abused. The clouds labeled “McMartin” and “Little Rascals” now hang over every such prosecution.