July 19, 2013

“…There should be lessons here, lessons about the risks in cases so emotional that they take on a life of their own; lessons for prosecutors who need to use their considerable investigative resources to learn, and not to crusade; lessons about the price in credibility paid by a judicial system in which defendants who are not rich are up against tremendous odds….

“The Little Rascals case…. has wasted many years of many lives. The greater waste will be if nothing is learned from it.”

– From “Case dismissed” (News & Observer editorial, May 28, 1997)

July 4, 2012

“The state has done me wrong and imprisoned me for over six years,” Bob Kelly said in 1995 after his conviction was overturned and prosecutors were deciding whether to try him again.

“They want me to take a plea so they can save face. It will never happen.”

Oh, how the prosecution dreamed of at least one of the Edenton Seven rolling over, pointing a finger at a fellow defendant.

Never happened, despite their being held under vague charges for endless months – and later offered every inducement short of a trip to Disney World.

Even when Betsy Kelly and Scott Privott took pleas to reduce their prison time, they continued to insist on their innocence.

There’s painfully little to admire in the story of the Little Rascals case, but the defendants’ strength under pressure was extraordinary.

Oct. 10, 2012

“This case arose during the height of the Child Sexual Abuse Hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s. The McMartin Preschool case, perhaps the most famous such case, was being tried in California at the same time this case was being tried in North Carolina. The prosecution team in this case was led by two members of the Attorney General’s staff who were to prosecute Robert Kelly four years later in the Little Rascals Day Care case.

“The state’s theory was that Junior Chandler, a bus driver for a county day care, would drive off his route to a parking area next to the French Broad River, strip the clothes off the toddlers, troop the naked children down to the river, put them on a rowboat, proceed to insert various objects into their anuses and vaginas, bring them back to the bus, put their clothes back on and deliver them home.

“This theory was the culmination of an investigation that began when one of the children came home one day and announced to her mother ‘we’ve been f***ing.’ Prior to that, there had been no indication of any problems with the children, the day care or Junior. However, fueled by the concern of anxious parents and well-meaning child advocates, this comment morphed into bizarre allegations of widespread sadistic abuse at the hands of several adults, including Junior….”

“Junior Chandler is serving his 26th year in prison, based largely on incredible claims from preschoolers, as elaborated upon and vouched for by six prosecution witnesses. Many defendants in this state have been awarded new trials for far less damaging testimony. Most of the victims of the Child Sexual Abuse Hysteria from around the country, Virginia McMartin, Kelly Michaels, Dale Akiki, Bob Kelly, the Amiraults, etc., have regained their freedom…. Junior Chandler deserves the same relief.”

– From Junior Chandler’s amended petition for writ of certiorari, denied last week by the North Carolina Supreme Court

Oct. 9, 2016

Paul J. Stern, recently retired prosecutor in Snohomish County, Wash., has long served the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children as a board member and as an instructor on forensic interviewing.

At the least his June presentation to a large audience of APSAC conventioneers promised to be provocative: “What Practices Are We Engaging in Now That 15 Years From Now We’re Going to Look Back on and Think ‘What in the World Were We Thinking?’ ”

But the title paled in comparison with what Stern went on to say about the rap sheet of this ostensibly professional organization – its serial gullibility about “satanic ritual abuse,” “multiple personality disorder” and various other “misguided ideas.”

Click below to watch a video of Paul J. Stern’s entire talk.

He rambles, and the video suffers from not showing his accompanying PowerPoint. But the case he makes is powerful, unmistakable and surely discomfiting to audience members such as President Emeritus for Life Jon Conte and Board Member at Large Kathleen Coulborn Faller.

“I may irritate a few of you from time to time,” he noted as he began.

Some excerpts, edited for clarity:

• “I want to start by going back to the ’60s, the ’80s, the things we cared about then…. Some of the things we’ve grown up from in this field…. What were we thinking back then?… Oy! (clutches head, steps away from lectern)….What the hell were we thinking?….”
• “Let’s get the granddaddy of our ‘Oops!’ out of the way: ‘satanic ritual abuse.’ Individuals and agencies that weren’t skeptical failed to recognize that all of the iceberg that existed was the tip….And that melted pretty quickly…”
• “This matters [because] prosecutors sentenced people to prison based on good, scientific evidence that turned out not to be accurate.”
• “Why does all this happen? Child abuse is both an advocacy field and a political field. We’ve got to energize the base, energize the policymakers, get their attention…. Easy answers manage anxiety, and they get attention. ‘Kids never lie!’ ‘Believe the children!’ Great slogans, great bumper stickers,  but it’s a little more complicated than that….”

Prosecutor Stern continued with a call for APSAC to focus on “evidence-based decision-making,” but I remained stunned by his acknowledgement of decades of APSAC’s cocky, costly wrongheadedness. Yes, innocent defendants such as Bob Kelly did indeed go to prison based on unfounded theories and corrupt interview practices.

Thank you, Mr. Stern, for your candor. Will this moment turn out to be an aberration – or is APSAC finally ready to make amends to the real victims of its “satanic ritual abuse” mythology?