Jan. 2, 2013

What a bittersweet moment, reading Gov. Bev Perdue’s statement announcing her pardon of innocence for the Wilmington 10.

Surely, for the six surviving defendants, the pardon represents far too little justice, far too long delayed. But so many of Perdue’s words apply poignantly to a more recent “dark chapter in North Carolina’s history” – the prosecution of the Edenton Seven:

“I have decided to grant these pardons because the more facts I have learned… the more appalled I have become about the manner in which their convictions were obtained….

“This conduct (of prosecutor Jay Stroud) is disgraceful. It is utterly incompatible with basic notions of fairness and with every ideal that North Carolina holds dear. The legitimacy of our criminal justice system hinges on it operating in a fair and equitable manner…. That did not happen here. Instead, these convictions… represent an ugly stain on North Carolina’s criminal justice system….

“Justice demands that this stain finally be removed. The process in which this case was tried was fundamentally flawed….”

As noted previously, state government has continued to withhold exoneration from the Little Rascals defendants. In addition to these reasons that the Edenton Seven haven’t matched the Wilmington 10 in capturing the public eye, there is this notable difference in the two cases:

No one involved in prosecuting the Wilmington 10 remains in office, and the current Pender County district attorney has accepted Perdue’s decision without complaint. But two decades after prosecuting the Edenton Seven, Bill Hart and Nancy Lamb remain on the job, no doubt ready to beat down any hint of exoneration.

Aug. 24, 2014

“The following dialogue is from Daniel Goleman’s article ‘Studies Reflect Suggestibility of Very Young as Witnesses,’ in the New York Times (June 11, 1993). It is an excerpt from 11 interviews of a four-year-old boy, who each week was told falsely: ‘You went to the hospital because your finger got caught in a mousetrap. Did this ever happen to you?’

“First Interview: ‘No. I’ve never been to the hospital.’

“Second Interview: ‘Yes. I cried.’

“Third Interview: ‘Yes. My mom went to the hospital with me.’

“Fourth Interview: ‘Yes. I remember. It felt like a cut.’

“Fifth Interview: ‘Yes.’ (Pointing to index finger….)

“Eleventh Interview: ‘Uh huh. My daddy, mommy, and my brother (took me to the hospital) in our van…. The hospital gave me . . . a little bandage, and it was right here’ (pointing to index finger).

“The interviewer then asked: ‘How did it happen?’

“ ‘I was looking and then I didn’t see what I was doing and it (finger) got in there somehow…. The mousetrap was in our house because there’s a mouse in our house…. The mousetrap is down in the basement next to the firewood…. I was playing a game called “Operation” and then I went downstairs and said to Dad, “I want to eat lunch” and then it got stuck in the mousetrap…. My daddy was down in the basement collecting firewood…. (My brother) pushed me into the mousetrap…. It happened yesterday. The mouse was in my house yesterday. I caught my finger in it yesterday. I went to the hospital yesterday.’ “

– From “Case Study of Implanted Memory” by Martin Gardner in Skeptical Inquirer (Fall 1994)

Does this experiment’s series of 11 interviews strike you as extreme? For at least one of the Little Rascals children, Judith Abbott, lead therapist for the prosecution, conducted biweekly sessions for six months!

Feb. 24, 2014

Why would Dr. Richard Kluft “take exception to” and “(raise) the issue of legal liability” over “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil”?

It’s not as if the record of Kluft’s involvement in promoting “satanic ritual abuse” and “multiple personality disorder” could be any longer or better-documented.

And it’s certainly not as if he has ever acknowledged the error of his ways.

In this exchange from a 2009 interview on CBS “Sunday Morning” he confidently posits a nationwide epidemic of undiagnosed cases of MPD:

Tracy Smith: So do you think that there are, what, thousands of people walking around out there with MPD who don`t even know it?

Kluft: Oh, easily.

Smith: Tens of thousands?

Kluft: Easily.

Smith: Hundreds of thousands?

Kluft: Easily.

Smith: Millions?

Kluft: We might be at that level.

Passing off such fantasy as expertise would be knee-slappingly funny, of course, had it not typified the thinking that fostered scores of wrongful prosecutions and ruined thousands of lives….

I remain baffled – what exactly has Richard Kluft done to deserve such obeisance from Psychiatric Times?

Feb. 20, 2014

Following up on the curious case of Richard Noll v. Psychiatric Times, I wrote editor-in-chief James L. Knoll IV to ask about the removal of Dr. Noll’s “satanic ritual abuse” essay from the Psychiatric Times website.

Did the journal plan to address in some fashion the issues raised in Dr.
Noll’s piece? “Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to comment on the situation,” Dr. Knoll replied.

Next I turned to Psychiatric Times’ editorial board, described on the site as “(not) just figureheads with impressive résumés…. They give us their frank and unblinking appraisal of the contents of each and every issue….”

This is from a letter I sent to 22 PT board members:

“I am writing you in response to Dr. Allen Frances’s call for psychiatrists to ‘step forward and do the right thing’ about the profession’s failure to confront the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ claims of the 1980s and early ’90s.

“As you know, Psychiatric Times removed from its website Dr. Richard Noll’s history of the SRA era….

“Dr. Noll concluded by asking: ‘Are we ready now to reopen a discussion on this moral panic? Will both clinicians and historians of psychiatry be willing to be on record? Shall we continue to silence memory, or allow it to speak?’

“How do you, as a member of the Psychiatric Times editorial board, answer these questions?

“Would you now be willing to join with Dr. Frances in formally setting the record straight about SRA and in making amends to the scores of wrongfully prosecuted victims of the moral panic?”

So far I have not been overwhelmed with responses to these questions. In fact, I have received only a single “frank and unblinking appraisal” – from Thomas G. Gutheil, professor of psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard
Medical School.

“I do agree (with Dr. Frances),” he writes. “The 1992 FBI report compiled by Kenneth Lanning should have put an end to this, when he investigated many claimed cases from law enforcement viewpoint and in multiple cases found not a shred of physical evidence, DNA, cells or bloodstains from butchered babies or sacrificed virgins.

“The problem is that social viruses like this are hard to assess and halt, like their biologic counterparts. I agree that individuals, especially in the legal system, should own up to their serious errors and miscarriages of justice, since improved science has blown up many claims, yet some prosecutors (e.g., Martha Coakley in Mass.) have not reversed themselves nor freed the imprisoned.

“However, I am not sure the entire mental health professions should share the blame.”

To be sure, distribution of responsibility among the professions is uneven – the Little Rascals prosecutors called on no psychiatrists at all, only psychologists, off-brand psychotherapists, etc.