Nov. 27, 2015

“We cannot bring criminal prosecutions based upon what we think the facts might be, out of our love for animals or in response to public pressure. Down that road lies the wreckage of the Duke lacrosse case, the Little Rascals Day Care case and other prosecutorial misadventures…..”

– District Attorney J. Douglas Henderson, explaining his dismissal of animal cruelty charges against the former director of the Guilford County (N.C.) Animal Shelter

An animal shelter isn’t a day care center, euthanasia isn’t “satanic ritual abuse” and Henderson’s decision hasn’t met with unanimous community support, but how encouraging to see a DA who seems to have learned appropriate lessons from two of the state’s most notorious “prosecutorial misadventures.”

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.

May 4, 2012

“Written reports that contain statements such as ‘The child said that Mr. Bob told them secrets’ are meaningless.

“We need to know whether this was a spontaneous remark, whether this was prompted by an open-ended question (e.g., “What did Mr. Bob tell you?”), or whether this is merely the interviewer’s memory of the gist of a conversation in which the interviewer asked, ‘Did Mr. Bob ask you to keep secrets?’ and the child reluctantly may have replied, ‘Yes.’

“Some summaries of the interviews are written in such a way as to make one believe that children made spontaneous and detailed statements about sexual abuse. However in the few instances where we have transcripts of other interviews, it is clear that the child only responded ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a barrage of leading questions.”

– From “Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s
Testimony” by Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck (1995)

Feb. 9, 2018

“Both prosecution and defense [in a trial in Palo Alto, Calif.] called expert witnesses to testify to ‘child sexual-abuse accommodation syndrome’….

“Roland Summit, a southern California psychiatrist, coined the term in 1983. He defined the syndrome through five categories: secrecy, helplessness; entrapment and accommodation; delayed, unconvincing disclosure; and retraction. The categories describe how victims often do not resist the abuse because of power dynamics in the relationship with an adult, often delay disclosing the abuse and may change their stories due to pressure or guilt….

“Blake Carmichael, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, Davis, testified for the prosecution that child sexual-abuse accommodation syndrome is not a diagnosis but rather a set of concepts that provide context for a child’s experience of sexual abuse. He testified that research supports Summit’s original claims.

“By contrast, William O’Donohue, a clinical psychologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, testified for the defense that Summit’s paper is ‘junk science’.

“O’Donohue co-authored a literature review of Summit’s work that determined the syndrome is not a scientific theory grounded in research. O’Donohue noted that a second article Summit published in the 1990s described child sexual-abuse accommodation syndrome as his ‘clinical opinion’ and a ‘pattern’ rather than a diagnosable condition.”

– From “Former teacher denies sex-abuse allegations” by Elena Kadvany in Palo Alto Weekly (Feb. 7)

So here we are, 35 years after Roland Summit fanned the flames in the McMartin Preschool case, and prosecutors are still using his cockamamie conceit to win over jurors. It’s not just on the internet that no bad idea ever dies….