lawrencewright.com
Lawrence Wright
Jan. 25, 2017
“Why is there such a cultural bias toward stories of abuse – and especially toward grotesque and absurd tales, even when there is no reliable evidence that any crime occurred in the first place?
“The very people we count on to protect our society – prosecutors, police, social workers, jurors, even parents – are eliciting fantasies from children that express our worst collective fears. ….
“The libel that our society has imposed on child-care workers is a kind of projection of guilt for the damage that we ourselves have done, as parents and as a society. We have given our children to strangers to rear, and it makes us uneasy and fearful. Is it any wonder we have a bad conscience?…. ”
– From “Child-care Demons” by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker (Oct. 3, 1994)
