May 16, 2012

“The researcher-therapist gap came to public attention because of three psychological epidemics, which spread like wildfire during the 1980s and ’90s: recovered memory, multiple-personality disorder and sex-abuse allegations at day-care centers. Each phenomenon was supported by clinical opinion; each has been discredited by empirical research.

“Of course, research never provides ‘the’ answer in a case; and, of course, clinical opinion is sometimes correct. But research does provide ways of correcting biases and testing assumptions. For example, the day-care scandals, from the McMartin case in California to Margaret Kelly Michaels in New Jersey to the Amiraults in Massachusetts, were perpetuated by therapists who testified that children never lie about sexual abuse and aren’t curious about sex unless they have been molested, that masturbation is a sign of sexual abuse and that abuse can be diagnosed by observing how children play with anatomically correct dolls. But each claim has been disproved by research on the cognitive abilities of children, on factors that increase suggestibility, on the normalcy of masturbation and sex play among children and on the way nonabused children play with the dolls….

“The researcher-therapist gap has been institutionalized by the rapid rise of free-standing schools of therapy not connected to university psychology departments. Graduates of these schools typically learn only to do therapy and seldom learn about other areas of psychology relevant to their work – like the limitations of hypnosis, the fallibility of memory or the normal process of suggestion in therapy.”

– From “A Widening Gulf Splits Lab and Couch” by Carol Tavris
in the New York Times (June 21, 1998)

Sept. 12, 2014

Edenton has been the scene of many historic events – the Edenton Tea Party, the escape of Harriet Jacobs, etc. – but surely nothing happened there in the entire 20th Century more significant than the Little Rascals Day Care case.

So why is the case not even mentioned on Edenton’s Wikipedia page?

On Sept. 28, 2013, a rogue editor abruptly removed a passage similar to this one:

“Edenton achieved international notoriety for the Little Rascals Day Care sexual abuse trial, the subject of journalist Ofra Bikel’s award-winning trilogy of documentaries….”

Wikipedia entries are intentionally easy to edit, but the process leaves fingerprints.
The person whose name is attached to the Little Rascals deletion turns out to be an innkeeper in Edenton. He ended our exchange with “I did not remove anything or post anything on that site…. must have been my competitor from across the street.”

I have restored the deleted passage – let’s hope it proves innkeeper-proof.

Feb. 3, 2016

“A new survey finds that adults at school, day care and organizations such as churches and scouting groups are less likely than relatives to abuse or mistreat children.

“In general, organizations that serve young people ‘do not look like particularly risky environments,’ said study co-author David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. This contradicts perceptions by some people who ‘think these are magnets for molesters,’ he said.”

– From “Child Abuse at Daycare, Youth Groups Rarer Than Thought: Survey” by Randy Dotinga in the Northwest Indiana Times (Feb. 2)

Surprising to see Dr. Finkelhor dismiss the notion of day cares as “magnets for molesters,” given that his own overwrought “Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care” (1988) was an influential text in spreading the moral panic.

How did he determine back then whether sexual abuse had actually occurred? “If at least one of the local investigating agencies had decided that abuse had occurred and that it had happened while the child was at a day-care facility….then we considered the case substantiated.” In other words, one supposed “red flag” sighting from Brenda Toppin was certification enough.

As recently as 2012, when I queried Dr. Finkelhor about his beliefs past and present,  he denied being “an authority on the validity of claims” that he had laid out with such credulity in “Nursery Crimes.”

June 18, 2012

“Yes, prosecutors blundered terribly by piling on charges and piling on defendants, just because they could.

“Yes, some of the parents became hysterical and acted out of guilt. That’s the way people act when told their children have been sexually abused – by someone to whom they entrusted them, to whom they personally delivered them every day.

“And here’s another thing the experts are right about. The children weren’t perfect witnesses. They got mixed up. They talked about spaceships and houses that walked.

“But that’s what it means to be a child, and what makes children prey to pedophiles. Children don’t know how to defend themselves. They’re easy to scare and apt to do what adults tell them to do.

“There is plenty to learn from the tragic mistakes in the Little Rascals case. But the final tragedy would be to conclude that child sex abuse is some sort of figment of our social imagination, and not the very real predator it is.”

– From a column by Lorraine Ahearn in the Greensboro News & Record (June 1, 1997)

As previously mentioned, journalists were among those who just couldn’t believe nothing happened at Little Rascals.

Ms. Ahearn, who covered part of Bob Kelly’s trial before becoming a columnist, has changed her line of work since 1997 – has she also changed her mind about ritual sex abuse at day cares? Apparently not:

“I am no longer a working journalist, and I am not interested in weighing in.

“You may glean whatever you wish from the (column). I did cover the trial as a reporter and that was what my column was based upon, not second-hand views about unrelated cases.”

I’d be the last to disparage shoe-leather reporting, but it’s those “second-hand views about unrelated cases” – from journalists such as Debbie Nathan and social scientists such as Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck – that enable us to comprehend the incomprehensible.

●  ●  ●

Do I ever tire of asking the Lorraine Ahearns, the David Finkelhors, the Kathleen Coulborn Fallers, the H.W. Williamses, the Elisabeth Porter-Hurds and the Michele L. Zimmermans, “Have you changed your mind?”

Well, yes, I do. But do they ever tire of insisting they haven’t?