March 4, 2013

“What did Mark Everson, Dr. (Jean C.) Smith, Dr. (Desmond K.) Runyan, Dr. (Doren D.) Fredrickson… all say about behaviors of children who are sexually abused?”

 – From Nancy Lamb’s closing argument in the trial of Bob Kelly (March 23, 1992)

Although Lamb was understandably pleased with her parade of expert witnesses, their testimony brought only discredit to themselves, to their professions and to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, especially its School of Medicine.

The prosecution called on psychologist Mark “Where there’s smoke….” Everson to explain away the child-witnesses’ wild inconsistencies and on pediatricians Smith, Runyan and Fredrickson to serve as “educators of the jury” about the case’s dubious physical evidence. (As detailed in this article in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, the pediatricians overreached but at least testified with less enthusiasm and more caution than Everson.)

One Chapel Hill faculty member, however, wasn’t fooled by the funhouse mirrors. I’ll be writing about sociologist Anthony Oberschall in Wednesday’s post.

Dec. 28, 2013

End-of-year grab bag from the wide world of justice delayed:

● Thanks to Professor P. S. Ruckman Jr. at Pardon Power for posting my comments on Andrew Junior Chandler.

● Two glimmers of light on misrepresented “genital scarring” and other examples of junk science – from Texas of all places!

● In New York a remorseful former judge testifies against his own verdict.

● Recently uploaded onto Vimeo by the Alfred I. duPont Awards: a three-minute, full-screen excerpt from “Innocence Lost”. (The complete series can be viewed from the “Innocence Lost” page of this website in small-screen format.)

● Gov. McCrory proves himself able to dispense clemency to LaMonte Armstrong – can he find it in his heart to be similarly just to the no less innocent Junior Chandler?

May 21, 2018

“Cops, district attorneys, defense attorneys, and judges make mistakes all the time. Mistakes don’t obstruct justice. Justice is obstructed by refusing to acknowledge and rectify mistakes, and instead doubling down on and repeating them….”

– From “For a small, blue state, Massachusetts wrongfully convicts a lot of people”  by George Bullen at 50 States of Blue (Jan. 30)

The prosecution of the Edenton Seven blew through one red light after another, willfully blind to the enormous mistakes it had made and hell-bent on making even more.

Feb. 17, 2012

“The named children were sent to predominantly four therapists (Betty Robertson, Judy Abbott, Susan Childers and Michele Zimmerman).

“The therapists were not only overzealous and inadequately trained, but also proceeded in an unethical fashion with the children. Reporting frequently to the district attorney’s office, they provided more names of children and adults and more specific allegations of abuse. These were not spontaneous names and allegations, but data specifically and persistently introduced by the therapists. The personal and familial issues that the children brought into the so-called therapy were ignored….

“From my review of the therapists’ notes of the 17 children who testified, it was clear the therapists were not treating these children psychotherapeutically, but were agents of the prosecution in preparing children to testify falsely with credibility…..

“Significantly, those parents who took their children to therapists in other communities or avoided these four therapists had no allegations of sexual abuse and their children were symptom-free. In contrast, the children who provided stories of sexual abuse became increasingly symptomatic over time, and their behavior became more disturbed.”

– From “What I learned from the Edenton Little Rascals sex abuse trial” by
Moisy Shopper, M.D. (in the peer-reviewed journal Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2009)

Dr. Shopper testified as an expert witness for the defense.