Oct. 11, 2013

“Holocaust deniers have managed to receive, in recent years, a respectful hearing on college campuses and elsewhere, despite the existence of mountains of firsthand and corroborated traumatic memories of the Holocaust provided by many thousands of survivors – memories that don’t have to be recovered because they are all too vividly, and all too persistently, remembered.

“Holocaust deniers began to achieve their victory over memory even before efforts were made to establish the new category of ‘recovered memory.’ If recovered memory remains unchallenged as a new form of memory, then one can only guess how much more vulnerable to doubt and manipulation legitimate memory will become.”

– From “The Monster In the Mists” by Walter Reich in the New York Times (May 15, 1994)

Feb. 11, 2013

“After reading a number of these interviews (of children) in the Wee Care (Kelly Michaels) case, it is difficult to believe that adults charged with the care and protection of young children would be allowed to use the vocabulary that they used in these interviews, that they would be allowed to interact with the children in such sexually explicit ways, or that they would be allowed to bully and frighten their child witnesses in such a shocking manner. No amount of evidence that sexual abuse had actually occurred could ever justify the use of these techniques especially with three- and four-year-old children.

“Above and beyond the great stress, intimidation, and embarrassment that many of the children so obviously suffered during the interviews, we are deeply concerned about the long-lasting harmful effects of persuading children that they have been horribly sexually and physically abused, when in fact there may have been no abuse until the interviews began….”

– From an amicus curiae brief to the Appellate Court of New Jersey from Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck on behalf of the 46-member Committee of Concerned Social Scientists (1994)

April 6, 2015

A team from the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic recently traveled to Buncombe and Madison counties to collect documents from court clerks’ offices, to interview witnesses and to inspect locations where Junior Chandler allegedly abused children who rode his day-care bus.

Billy Chandler, Junior’s brother, and Clayton Rice, his lifelong friend, guided the Duke investigators (and me) along Junior’s daily route. The narrow, twisting backroads led us to the sites along the French Broad River where prosecutors claimed Junior had repeatedly committed the most bizarre sexual crimes imaginable.

The photo at the right shows a typical vantage. It has always seemed incredible to me that Junior – as described in Mark Montgomery’s amended petition for writ of certiorari – “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.”

Actually visiting and walking around the supposed crime scenes, which are completely open to neighbors and passersby, only reinforces my impression: The allegations against Junior are simply inconceivable.

So where do things stand as Junior Chandler approaches his 29th year in prison? Clinic co-director Theresa Newman provided this cautious update: “The Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic has spent the past few months studying the file passed to them by previous post-conviction counsel, researching the developments in the relevant medical and psychological science since the mid-1980s, and otherwise trying to master this complicated and complex case. We are now moving into the next phase of our typical investigation….”

The title of Newman’s illuminating TEDx talk at Elon University couldn’t be more apt: “Waiting is a Beast.”

Sept. 29, 2015

“Thomas Quick was the name adopted by Swedish petty criminal and drug addict Sture Bergwall, who under ‘recovered memory’ therapy, confessed to raping, killing and even eating more than 30 victims (during the 1970s and ’80s).

“These were supposedly reenactments of ‘recovered memories of sexual abuse’ he had experienced as a child.

“Extraordinarily compelling in the dock as a witness to his own ‘crimes’ (which he had never committed), he was convicted of eight murders. He had trawled newspapers for unsolved killings and convinced the Swedish police that he was responsible – even though he never led them to a single body.

“In 2008, his ‘confessions’ were shown to be untrue and by 2013 the last of his convictions was overturned. The Swedish government has ordered an inquiry into this devastating failure of its justice system. There will be lessons in it for our own (British) authorities.”

– From “Is the therapy that brings out false memories behind VIP abuse claims?” by Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail  (Sept. 20)

How about that – a government that wants to examine “the devastating failure of its justice system”! If the State of North Carolina ever felt such an urge, I think I could come up with a case or two that meet that description….