Dec. 3, 2014

“I was in graduate school in Southern California 30 years ago when the McMartin Preschool scandal erupted, featuring tales of Satanic rituals, underground tunnels, group sex with animals and children, and various acrobatic acts that would challenge Cirque du Soleil, all believed credulously by the media and California prosecutors….

“There was something so literally incredible about (such) ‘Satanic ritual abuse’ cults that serious doubts and questions should have been raised right at the outset.

“Some hard questions are starting to be asked about the latest sequel to the Salem witch trials – the college campus ‘rape culture’ hysteria…. The Rolling Stone story about an especially brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia is provoking considerable backlash– with a few critics suggesting the entire story might be a hoax ….

“It took years for the ‘Satanic child abuse crisis’ to collapse, and several months for the Duke lacrosse scandal to turn around. What is interesting about the UVa story is how quickly it is facing credible challenge….”

– From “The Spirit of Salem Lives On” by Steven Hayward at powerlineblog.com (Dec. 2)

Dec. 16, 2015

On this day 25 years ago: Bonds for Little Rascals employees Robin Byrum and Dawn Wilson are reduced to a still excessive $200,000 – Byrum’s from $500,000, Wilson’s from $880,000.

Byrum will be released four days later, Wilson not for eight weeks.

Because she went to trial and the jury returned a guilty verdict (eventually overturned), Wilson’s story is much better known.

But Byrum suffered her own coercive torture at the hands of prosecutors before charges were dropped in 1996.

Nineteen years old when she was arrested in January 1990, she spent almost a year in jail, leaving her 7-month-old baby in the care of her husband. Had she agreed to testify against Bob Kelly, she could have walked out a free woman – and mother.

In “Innocence Lost: The Plea” (1997), Byrum explained why she had been tempted by but repeatedly refused the prosecutors’ deal:

“…. I would not ever have to be separated from my child again. But then I’d have to live with the rest of my life that I (said I) did something when I didn’t do it.”

May 27, 2015

“Here’s an observation from the (“satanic ritual abuse” day-care) panic that I don’t think has been fully explored: These kids didn’t make up these stories.

“In this case (of Fran and Dan Keller) and dozens of others, the kids were telling tales with details about geography, history and current events about which kids of their age couldn’t have known. That’s likely what made their stories seem somewhat credible. But the fact that it all was fictitious reveals a particularly unsettling truth:

“These sick, lurid, unimaginable abuses could only have been a product of the imaginations of the therapists, social workers, cops and/or prosecutors who interviewed the children. If the memories were implanted, those are the only people who could have implanted them.

“That means that the same people entrusted to protect these kids, and in whom these communities trusted to police the streets, prosecute crimes and administer therapy, were ultimately the ones capable of dreaming up detailed sexual fantasies that put children in bizarre rituals involving violence, animals, corpses and so on.

“There’s a lot to be learned from these cases. For one, there are lessons about professional accountability:

“Not only were the vast majority of the prosecutors who put these innocent people in prison in these cases never sanctioned, but also most went on to great professional success, sometimes because of their role in these high-profile cases, and sometimes even after it was widely known that the people they prosecuted were innocent.

“There are other lessons here about how we screen ‘expert’ witnesses, and how bad science gets into the courtroom. There are lessons about the power of suggestion that could be applied to eyewitness testimony and how we conduct police lineups.

“But the drawing of lessons is something we typically do once a crisis is over. This one still isn’t. There are “still people in prison awaiting exoneration.”

– From “The ongoing legacy of the great satanic sex abuse panic” by Radley Balko in the Washington Post (May 26)

Is there something about “satanic ritual abuse” cases that knocks courts off their game? Although the Texas Court of Appeals manages to overturn (at last!) the child sexual abuse charges against day-care operators Fran and Dan Keller, it can’t bring itself to acknowledge their actual innocence. Thanks to Judge Cheryl Johnson for her clear-eyed concurring opinion noting that “This was a witch hunt from the beginning.”

Aug. 16, 2013

“Ritual abuse may now seem an almost quaint aberration, a temporary fad that seized the popular imagination, as outdated as hula-hoops or disco fever. But our anxieties about children continue to affect our judgment. When a meta-analysis of research published in Psychological Bulletin (1998) suggested that not all children under the age of 18 were traumatized by having sexual experiences before adulthood, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the association. Not surprisingly, the popular outcry that led to the Congressional resolution was sparked by talk show celebrity Laura Schlessinger.

“More recently, a book that explored whether overzealous response to fears about children and sexuality are harmful to the youth we seek to protect was published by the University of Minnesota press after trade publishers deemed it too controversial for their lists; Tim Pawlenty, then a state legislator, but who was elected governor of Minnesota in 2002, quickly moved to condemn the publication and the University for publishing it.”

– From “The Devil in the Details: Media Representation of ‘Ritual Abuse’ and Evaluation of Sources” by Barbara Fister in Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education (May 2003)