Oct. 24, 2012

“Indeed, at a time when the (Los Angeles County) Board of Supervisors has been meeting just five floors below the (Ritual Abuse) task force to dismantle county health care programs, lay off part-time employees and cut all other services because of a severe budget shortfall, some are questioning whether the group – and particularly its obsession with poisoning – is not just a little frivolous.

“One county employee suggested that the task force has not been disbanded because it is ‘one of the few that actually make money.’ Since 1989, the task force – made up of therapists, alleged victims and religious leaders – has sold a handbook that outlines the telltale signs of ritual abuse. More than 17,000 copies of the handbook have been sold at $1 apiece, more than enough to offset the costs of the task force.”

– From the Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1992

Early on, the task force handbook –“Ritual Abuse: Definitions, Glossary and the Use of Mind Control” – played a significant role in inflaming fear of ritual abuse.

By 1992, however, the last charges in the McMartin case had been dropped, and skepticism about ritual abuse was finding its voice. (But not among Little Rascals prosecutors – Bob Kelly had just been convicted and Dawn Wilson was being tried.)

Today the Los Angeles County Commission for Women website makes no mention of its onetime task force.

May 7, 2016

Twenty-five years ago today, “Frontline” aired Ofra Bikel’s landmark two-hour documentary on the Little Rascals Day Care case. It turned out to be the first of three installments over the next six years.

About the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care panic of the 1980s and early ’90s, historian Mary De Young says:

“Ofra Bikel certainly pounded a nail in its coffin. Her excellent work on the Little Rascals case appeared after the last day care ritual abuse case was prosecuted, but she created a reason to be profoundly skeptical of all the cases that came before.”

“Innocence Lost” is unavailable on DVD, but you can view all eight hours here.

Dec. 10, 2012

I’ve been surprised – naively, I suppose – by the refusal of professional journals such as Nursing Research, Child Abuse & Neglect and Relational Child & Youth Care Practice to retract articles that supported the moral panic of ritual abuse in day cares.

The editors’ common justification is that they published no “specific errors,” such as citing the Little Rascals case by name. This seems to me a narrow and disingenuous view. These articles are wrong to the bone, as wrong as if they had been based on cold fusion or the Protocols of Zion.

Here’s what the Charlotte Observer, my former employer, had to say in 2006 about how it had contributed to the infamous Wilmington coup d’etat of 1898:

“An apology is inadequate to atone for the Observer’s role in promoting the white supremacist campaign. But an apology is due….

“We apologize to the black citizens and their descendants whose rights and interests we disregarded, and to all North Carolinians, whose trust we betrayed by our failure to fairly report the news and to stand firmly against injustice.”

Newspapers, as “the first rough draft of history,” enjoy and deserve some leeway in reaching their standards of accuracy. But the editors at the Observer (and other participating North Carolina dailies) didn’t quibble over “specific errors.” They addressed the root defect in their coverage. Is it too much to expect the same from the editors of professional journals?

Sept. 13, 2013

“I am urging you to treat Elizabeth Kelly as you would treat anyone else with the same case file.  I am asking you to demonstrate that we are all ‘equal under the law.’  Any other inmate with the same sentence and clean record would have been eligible for parole the minute she walked through the gates of the prison…. I am appealing to you not to withhold that which she would otherwise likely receive — minus her publicity, minus the rhetoric of politicians.  I am imploring you not to deal more strictly with her than with others simply because she is Elizabeth Kelly.”

– From a letter to the North Carolina Parole Commission by Jane W. Duffield of Raleigh  (April 5, 1994)

The Parole Commission proved unable or unwilling to consider Betsy Kelly’s case “minus her publicity, minus the rhetoric of politicians.” Bill Hart, vengeful over her unwavering insistence that she was innocent, reneged on a plea agreement not to contest her release, and the Parole Commission obediently sent her back for seven more months of wrongful imprisonment.