June 18, 2018

“Ted Cross, a senior research specialist at the University of Illinois School of Social Work, [said] separation of the two interventions – forensic and therapeutic – is critical for the child, but is also important for practical reasons: ‘You don’t want the therapeutic work to taint a criminal investigation. If a child is in therapy at the same time that the forensic interview takes place, the attorney representing the offender can say the therapist planted the idea of abuse in the child’s head.’.

“This point is of particular importance in the wake of high-profile cases such as the McMartin Preschool trial during the 1980s, in which therapists’ interviewing techniques were so suggestive that the children falsely accused their teachers of abuse….”

– From “How to Build a Space to Support Abused Children” by Mimi Kirk at Atlantic Cities (March 29)

Did the Little Rascals therapists offer children any therapy at all? What do you think?

Nov. 23, 2011

“Finally, after eight years, the Little Rascals case is over. We can consign to history what has to be the most bizarre and disturbing episode in the annals of North Carolina law…..

“Never has the state devoted such resources to wrecking lives with such flimsy evidence and unconscionable delays.

“As a case history of mass hysteria, the Edenton story will enrich textbooks for generations. As a cautionary tale of what can happen when otherwise sensible people come under the spell of self-styled victim advocates, one can only hope the memory of Little Rascals will help others stop the next case before it gets out of hand.

“The state’s most effective weapon… was not evidence, but time. By holding (defendants) behind bars month after month, the state managed to inflict enormous punishment… without having to prove a thing.

“As fiction, the Little Rascals story would have strained the combined imaginations of Charles Dickens and Stephen King. As news, it is a chilling example of a judicial system that was unchecked by common sense or common decency.”

– Editorial in the Greensboro News & Record, May 28, 1997

When Gladstone (or whoever) first posited that “Justice delayed is justice denied,” could he have envisioned such a calculated demonstration?

June 3, 2017

How did prosecutors let go ‘16 psychotic, baby-killing pedophiles’?

“An early indicator of the bizarre and fickle nature of the [Little Rascals] prosecution was that in all, 23 Edenton residents were named by the children (via counseling) as having engaged in essentially the same abominable acts as those indicted.

“Yet the county DA’s office arbitrarily pared the case to seven, leaving, one assumes, 16 psychotic, baby-killing pedophiles to walk freely on the streets of their small city….”

– From “A ‘Frontline’ documentary on child abuse hysteria shows how good TV can be” by Brian Lambert in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press (May 27, 1997)

Among the lucky 16: the mayor and sheriff.

Feb. 27, 2013

“The difficulties in debunking blatant antireality are legion. You can make up any old nonsense and state it in a few seconds, but it takes much longer to show why it’s wrong and how things really are.

“This is coupled with how sticky bunk can be. Once uttered, it’s out there, bootstrapping its own reality, getting repeated by the usual suspects….”

– From “Debunking the Denial: ‘16 Years of No Global Warming’” by Phil Plait at Slate.com