March 17, 2015

“Warren Twiddy, 68, father of defendant Betsy Kelly, said he’s been ‘shunned, blocked out’ by some residents and nearly run out of his church.”

– From “Trial rips fabric of community” by Mark Mayfield in USA Today (March 20, 1992)

“Twiddy sold his insurance business and exhausted his retirement savings to pay his daughter’s legal fees. Old friends, he says, won’t even say hello on the street. Clients canceled policies after his daughter was indicted.”

– From  “Town’s pain is revived by TV film” by Andrea Stone in USA Today (July 22, 1993)

“Twiddy admits… some bitterness toward his neighbors, who ignored him at church and at the country club.

“ ‘Before, the bulletin board was full with places we were supposed to be up ’til Christmas,’ he said. ‘After this, nothing, buddy.’ ”

– From “Talk of new trial makes Edenton shudder” by Carol D. Leonnig in the Charlotte Observer (Sept. 10, 1995)

“Our need to matter and our need to belong are as fundamental as our need to eat and breathe. Therefore ostracism – rejection, silence, exclusion – is one of the most powerful punishments that one person can inflict on another.

“Brain scans have shown that this rejection is actually experienced as physical pain, and that this pain is experienced whether those that reject us are close friends or family or total strangers, and whether the act is overt exclusion or merely looking away….”

– From a delanceyplace.com summary of “The Pain of Exclusion” by Kipling D. Williams in Scientific American (January/February 2011)

The misery caused by wrongful prosecution of the Little Rascals case extended far beyond courtrooms and jail cells. Defendants’ family members such as Betsy Kelly’s father endured many years in a hell of ostracism.

Warren Twiddy died in 2012. He was 89.

Oct. 26, 2016

Janet Rosenzweig, executive director of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, wasted no time kissing off my request that APSAC take responsibility for the damage done by its advocacy of the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care myth:

“On behalf of the Board of Directors  of APSAC, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.  APSAC does not have a position on this issue, and has no plans to take one at this time.”

In reality, APSAC has taken a position on the issue ever since its founding.

As noted in “Advances in Social and Organizational Psychology” by Donald A. Hantula (2006):

“APSAC was founded in 1985 as a professional group of therapists concerned that some people were skeptical regarding claims in the McMartin day care satanic abuse case. At the same meeting at which APSAC was formed for professionals, ‘Believe the Children’ was formed for parents of McMartin children…. Thus, from the start, APSAC has been an advocate of the reality of satanic and sexual abuse in day care….”

As stingingly acknowledged by prosecutor Paul J. Stern, the shared history of APSAC and the day-care panic is indisputable. Only one question remains: What now? Does APSAC really want its professionalism forever compromised by clinging to its perverse origin story?

Are its members in 2016 still wedded to the discredited concepts first promoted 30 years ago by Jon Conte,  Kathleen Coulborn Faller, Kee MacFarlane, Ann Wolbert Burgess, Susan J. Kelley, Roland Summit, Mark Everson and Little Rascals prosecutor Nancy Lamb?  Would Dr. Rosenzweig dare to ask the membership at large if it shares the board’s resistance to making amends?

Nov. 27, 2014

“Of the dozen or so historical markers clustered in the town of Edenton, only one – recognizing novelist Inglis Fletcher – postdates the 1800s.

“The North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Committee now has the opportunity, 25 years after the first arrest in the Little Rascals case, to add to that number a 20th Century event inarguably significant in the legal and social history of not just North Carolina but also the nation.”

– From my application proposing “history on a stick” recognition for the Little Rascals Day Care case

The marker committee, composed of historians from four-year colleges across the state, will meet in December to decide which pending applications meet its criteria.

Jan. 25, 2013

“With regard to recovered memories, ritual abuse charges and multiple personalities, the tide seems to have turned. Courts are continuing to reverse decisions…The Edenton Seven have been released from prison…. Yet many of these people’s lives have been wrecked by false allegations….

“If, as some polls claim, millions of Americans believe in alien abduction, we have a long way still to go before credulity, superstition and hysterical epidemics are on the wane…”

– From “Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media” by Elaine Showalter (1998)