March 28, 2016

“I was thinking about recent public panics and started listing a few of them in my mind. This is just off the top of my head:

• Crack babies
• Super predators
• Lehmann/AIG/Countrywide etc.
• Mad cow
• Deepwater Horizon
• Daycare child molesters
• Ebola
• ISIS/Syrian refugees

“I’m not saying that none of these were justified. Big oil spills are no joke. Ebola was certainly a big deal in Africa. The financial collapse of 2008 wasn’t mere panic.

“And yet, generally speaking it seems as if public panics are either completely unjustified or else wildly overwrought. Am I missing any recent examples where there was a huge panic and it turned out to be wholly justified? HIV would have been justified in the early ’80s, but of course we famously didn’t panic over that — other than to worry about getting AIDS from toilet seats. Help me out here….”

– From “Do We Panic Too Much? (Spoiler: Yes We Do)” by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones (March 24)

March 30, 2014

A welcome contribution to the unraveling of the “satanic ritual abuse” case against Fran and Danny Keller was this letter from Chicago psychology professor Evan Harrington dismantling the testimony of prosecution witness Randy Noblitt, a psychologist and self-described expert in ritual abuse.

Here’s how the Austin Chronicle summarized it:

“The letter, signed by 39 leading experts from across the country and around the world, presents the court with evidence not only that Noblitt was, and is, unqualified to serve as an expert at all, but also that ‘ritual abuse’ is a topic unsupported by any empirical research. Indeed, at trial the state called Noblitt to describe how the children’s allegations against the Kellers were believable and to avow that the allegations comported with ‘behaviors associated with so-called ritual abuse,’ reads the letter.

“ ‘In summary, the world portrayed by Dr. Noblitt is one in which thousands of cult abusers have infiltrated respectable society, and specifically daycare centers, in order to operate a clandestine subculture engaged in massive levels of felonious criminality,’ reads the letter. To the contrary, Harrington writes, there is not now, nor was there in the early ’90s, any mainstream support for, or scientific evidence to demonstrate, that ritual abuse is a real phenomenon. ‘In conclusion, Dr. Noblitt stated in testimony at trial that there is little controversy about his descriptions of ritual abuse,’ reads the letter. ‘This statement was not factually true in 1992, and is less true today.’ ”

I have long wondered: Why do the Ann Wolbert Burgesses, the Susan J. Kelleys, the Mark “Where there’s smoke…” Eversons and the Randy Noblitts continue onward in their careers while their victims get not even a ‘Gee, sorry, guess I was wrong’?

How do professionals, however dubiously credentialed, manage to keep their licenses and their jobs after testifying so confidently, so misleadingly and so destructively against defendants such as the Kellers and Bob Kelly?  What can be done to hold them accountable?

Dr. Harrington, who teaches at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, says this question sometimes comes up in his class on mental health law.

“The answer, for better or worse, is ‘nothing,’ “ he says. “When you look at an ‘expert’ like Dr. James Grigson in the case of Barefoot v. Estelle, it becomes very clear that there is no remedy for dealing with bad ‘experts.’

“The best one can hope for is that sufficient scientific evidence exists to prevent such a person from getting on the stand in the first place, or that the jurors are wise enough to discard the fallacious testimony. But there really is little that can be done after the fact, except to try to exonerate those who are factually innocent.”

Grigson was a Dallas psychiatrist notorious for persuading juries that defendants deserved capital punishment.  “Dr. Death,” as he was known, was expelled from the American Psychiatric Association and the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians but kept his license and continued to practice.

Feb. 27, 2015

“…. A social worker from North Carolina informed the group (the Society for the Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse) that in the day-care sex-abuse case she was investigating, she thought she remembered the kids talking about black helicopters. She said she would look into it.”

– From “Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference” by Evan Harrington in the Skeptical Inquirer  (September-October 1996)

The “ritual and cult abuse” conference took place in Dallas in March 1995, several years after the trials of Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson (and just a couple of months before the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned their convictions). But I wouldn’t be surprised if the social worker chatting with Dr. Harrington was a prosecution therapist still eagerly accumulating and broadcasting claims … this one perhaps.

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