Jan. 4, 2012

120104Pendergrast“A few years back, I met a fellow investigative journalist in North Carolina….The subject came around to the Little Rascals case. He assured me the day care workers were guilty….

“I told him about how the McMartin case in California had been the first nationally publicized case to use interviews that practically bullied children into reporting mythical, often totally implausible abuse. Little Rascals was a textbook case of the same kind of tactics, and Ofra Bikel’s three fine documentaries left no doubt about this terrible miscarriage of justice.

“Yet my friend refused to listen to any other evidence or point of view. It transpired that his wife had recovered ‘memories’ of sexual abuse – another subject on which he would hear no other evidence….

“I tell you this just to let you know I am familiar with cases in which otherwise objective journalists develop seemingly incurable blind spots.”

–  From a 1997 letter to Columbia Journalism Review by Mark Pendergrast, author of “Victims of Memory,” challenging criticism of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation