Feb. 6, 2013

“Panic provides a rationale for action, sometimes overreaction or even manipulation. As such, it is the subject of heated accusation and denial that can create a swirl of confusion and frustration.

“Nonetheless, some lessons stand out in the long history of panic. There is no basis for imagining that the frenzied 19th century reactions to disease are a slumbering beast waiting to be roused. Too much government infrastructure and information stand between populations and unfettered panic….”

– From “A Brief History of Panic” by Amy L. Fairchild, David Merritt Johns and Kavita Sivara Makrishnan, public health researchers at Columbia University  (the New York Times, January 28, 2013)

“Frenzied…. reactions” to disease epidemics may have subsided since the 19th century, but they were crucial in animating the day-care ritual-abuse prosecutions of the 1980s and ’90s. And “government infrastructure” – that is, district attorneys’ offices – wasn’t a deterrent but an accelerant!

April 6, 2012

“Parent-experts made a specific kind of sense of their children’s behaviors and emotions by retrospectively interpreting them as sequelae of day care ritual abuse rather than as reactions to familial stress, the vicissitudes of growing up or, for that matter, the stress of the investigation and the interrogations. ….

“Parent-experts testified that they never had reason to worry about their children’s behavior until they disclosed ritual abuse. Then, to the parent-experts, the tantrums, fears and sleep disturbances that once had looked like nothing more than normal growing pains were retrospectively interpreted….”

– From “The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic”  by Mary De Young (2004)

Judge Marsh McLelland’s allowing parents to testify as experts about their children’s behavior was one of the key defects pointed out by the N.C. Court of Appeals in overturning the convictions of Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson.

April 18, 2012

“One of the more surprising aspects of this (Little Rascals) case…. was that none of the parents… had observed anything that caused them to suspect their children were being abused or tortured during the period of the alleged abuses; there were no reports of unusual incidents from their children.

“Nor did the parents detect anything unusual when, without notice, they dropped in early to pick up their children from the day care (e.g., to take them to a doctor’s appointment).

“It was only after allegations began to grow that parents also began to remember events or behaviors consistent with their child being abused.”

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

Prosecutor Nancy Lamb gave the Charlotte Observer her response to “Jeopardy in the Courtroom”: “It’s unfortunate that these two people who have a good reputation – or at least Ceci did – have written this. It’s garbage.”

Oct. 17, 2012

“Little Rascals is a most important case, because it demonstrates how the mind set of interviewers can be transmitted to the children and persuade them to disclose events that never happened. A San Diego grand jury which investigated child abuse observed:

Of particular interest is the information received about the Little Rascals case in North Carolina. Eighty-five percent of the children received therapy with three therapists in the town; all of these children eventually reported satanic abuse. Fifteen percent of the children were treated by different therapists in a neighboring city; none of (these) children reported abuse of any kind after the same period of time in therapy.

“In effect, the Edenton (multiple victim, multiple offender) case was a real-life replication of the type of laboratory experiment that could never be done for ethical reasons:

• Select a town or city in any area of the U.S. or Canada.
• Take 90 children, and divide them into two equally sized test and control groups.
• Have the test group interrogated by therapists who believe in ritual abuse, using direct and repeated questions.
• Have the control group independently interrogated by therapists who are skeptical of ritual abuse using general questioning.
• Compare rates of disclosures of ritual abuse from the two groups. “

The probable result would be that close to 100% of the test group and about 0% of the control group would reveal ritual abuse.”

– From “Ritual abuse cases in day care centers” on ReligiousTolerance.org, (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance)