Jan. 14, 2013

Junior Chandler’s prospects for at last walking out of Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution a free man remain bleak. After more than 25 years, he is probably the last still-imprisoned victim of the multiple-victim, multiple-offender ritual-abuse day-care panic.

When the North Carolina Supreme Court arbitrarily and tortuously rejected Junior’s appeal, it wrote finis to his options within the system.

Now, however, appellate lawyer Mark Montgomery has referred the case to North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm that represents inmates whose convictions exhibit significant flaws – a category that clearly includes Junior’s.

Mary Pollard, NCPLS executive director, has only begun to examine the file. “The problem with Mr. Chandler’s case,” she says, “is that he has already had a post-conviction review, which could severely constrain what we can do.”

 After Junior submits a formal request for consideration, she expects to make a decision within 90 days on whether to pursue the case.

June 15, 2014

“Andrew Junior Chandler has been unjustly incarcerated in a North Carolina prison for 27 years, charged with a crime that almost surely never happened….

“Let’s hope that Gov. Pat McCrory will review the mistaken judgment of his misnamed ‘clemency office’ and correct this stain on the reputation of North Carolina justice.”

–From “Mass hysteria of sexual, satanic ritual abuse and a miscarriage of NC justice” by Dr. Allen Frances in the Raleigh News & Observer (June 15) text cache

Dr. Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University, once again steps forward to take responsibility for therapy’s Dark Ages, this time in the newspaper read daily by those state officials who have refused to grant relief to Junior Chandler.

March 8, 2015

“As public debate rages about issues like immunization, Obamacare, and same-sex marriage, many people try to use science to bolster their arguments. And since it’s becoming easier to test and establish facts – whether in physics, psychology, or policy – many have wondered why bias and polarization have not been defeated. When people are confronted with facts, such as the well-established safety of immunization, why do these facts seem to have so little effect?

“Our new research, recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined a slippery way by which people get away from facts that contradict their beliefs…. (They) reframe an issue in untestable ways. This makes potential important facts and science ultimately irrelevant to the issue….

“These experiments show that when people’s beliefs are threatened, they often take flight to a land where facts do not matter. In scientific terms, their beliefs become less ‘falsifiable’ because they can no longer be tested scientifically for verification or refutation….”

– From “Why People ‘Fly from Facts’ ” by Troy Campbell and Justin Friesen in Scientific American (March 3)

 And what allegations could be more “untestable” than pure fantasy? As Junior Chandler knows too well, “….It’s extremely hard to get help to prove my innocence when there isn’t a crime committed to begin with.”

Aug. 19, 2013

A brief visual aside, courtesy of the Google books Ngram Viewer:

However much frustration I feel in pursuing exoneration for the Edenton Seven – plenty! – I do take some reassurance in watching the ritual abuse moral panic slowly lose its hold on public discourse, as shown in the Ngram above or here.