Archive of posts on this site, by year

2021

  • Will a court pay attention? - April 13, 2021 If I had harbored even an iota of doubt about Junior Chandler's innocence, it would've been vaporized by the podcast episode below. Most dramatically, the Duke Wrongful…

2020

  • ‘I walked into FREEDOM….’ - Sept. 22, 2020 A burst of sunshine in these grim times. A note arrived today from Little Rascals Day Care case exoneree Bob Kelly: "Today, 25 years ago, because of…

2019

2018

2017

2016

  • Holdout jurors face – and often succumb to – relentless pressure - Dec. 28, 2016 “The problem of juror pressure on a dissenting juror has long been known by defense attorneys and prosecutors. “In a National Center for State Courts project on…
  • Fake news and ‘satanic ritual abuse’: Best friends forever! - Dec. 15, 2016 You probably haven’t been asking Google to provide you with daily news alerts about “satanic ritual abuse,” but if you had , the popularity of fake news would come…
  • From Trump to Pizzagate, Internet is geyser of malinformation - Dec. 7, 2016 “If you do a Google search right now for ‘McMartin preschool tunnels,’ you will be inundated with ‘studies’ and ‘reports’ that ‘prove’ the tunnels did exist, and…
  • Were tales any taller in Salem than in Edenton? - Dec, 4, 2016 “The testimony [in the Salem witch trials] is full of tall tales, unless you happen to believe – as one woman confessed, having vowed to tell the…
  • Transgender movement compared to hysterias of 1980s and ’90s - Nov. 21, 2016 “Transgenderism would refute the natural laws of biology and transmute human nature. The movement’s philosophical foundation qualifies it as a popular delusion similar to the multiple-personality craze,…
  • Prosecutors must recognize vulnerability to cognitive flaws - Nov. 17, 2016 “It’s no secret that we humans grant far too much confidence to our opinions. But when powerful people do this, the dangers compound. Zealotry replaces fair-mindedness. The…
  • Three centuries later, witch trials remain uncomfortably relevant - Oct. 31, 2016 “Historical truths emerge only with time, after which they are ours, particularly on Halloween, to mangle. “Early on, the Salem witch trials disappeared from the record; a…
  • APSAC to victims of its ‘misguided ideas’: Drop dead - Oct. 26, 2016 Janet Rosenzweig, executive director of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, wasted no time kissing off my request that APSAC take responsibility for the damage…
  • ….Is APSAC finally ready to apologize to wrongfully prosecuted victims? - Oct. 22, 2016 “At APSAC’s June Colloquium, Paul J. Stern gave a presentation that clearly acknowledged your organization’s role in fostering the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ day-care panic of  the 1980s and early ’90s. “Mr.…
  • When Betsy Kelly was released from jail, much persecution still lay ahead - Oct. 9, 2016 Five days after her bond was reduced from $1.8 million to $400,000, Betsy Kelly is released from jail. In January 1994 Kelly would accept a plea of…
  • APSAC official acknowledges ‘granddaddy of our “oops!”’ - Oct. 9, 2016 Paul J. Stern, recently retired prosecutor in Snohomish County, Wash., has long served the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children as a board member and as…
  • At long last, is APSAC cracking the door to recantation? - Oct. 5, 2016 Richard Wexler’s unequivocal recollection of how the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children promoted the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care panic made me curious about what APSAC…
  • APSAC’s child-protection record doesn’t inspire confidence - Sept. 28, 2016 “The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children [is] presenting a ‘special issue’ of one of its publications devoted to [Differential response] – or rather, devoted to…
  • Day-care panic rooted in more than sex-role changes - Sept. 23, 2016 “We Believe the Children” offers a clear explanation of how a then-novel crusade for child welfare and a murk of neo-Freudian psychological theory together drove officials to find…
  • Johnny Small freed, now deserves pardon of innocence - Sept. 14, 2016 “[Chris] Mumma said she intends to request a pardon for [Johnny] Small from Gov. Pat McCrory. In order for Small to be compensated for the years he…
  • Emissaries from Raleigh bring kneejerk resistance to exoneration - Sept. 11, 2016 “I honestly don’t understand not only how the Attorney General’s Office felt it was necessary to fight us through a full week of hearing in this case,…
  • Remember Dungeons & Dragons – and ‘satanic ritual abuse’? - Sept. 9, 2016 “Strange what we worry about when it comes to our children. A great deal of the culture-war politics of the 1980s consisted of theatrical wailing about threats…
  • Creepy clowns: today’s version of ‘satanic ritual abuse’ cults? - Sept. 5, 2016 “Police say they are doing extra patrols in a Winston-Salem neighborhood after two children reported seeing a clown trying to lure kids into the woods with treats....…
  • Burgess’s seminar paved way for Little Rascals prosecution - Aug. 23, 2016 “Connell School of Nursing Professor Ann Wolbert Burgess, a pioneer in the field of forensic nursing and an internationally recognized leader in the treatment of victims of…
  • Kelly’s jury was rife with problems not visible at beginning - Aug. 19, 2016 The jury is empaneled in Farmville, N.C., where Bob Kelly’s trial has been moved because of pretrial publicity in Edenton. Dennis T. Ray would turn out to…
  • California taking seriously the misconduct of its prosecutors - Aug. 13, 2016 “A bill to increase criminal penalties for prosecutors who intentionally withhold or falsify evidence is headed to the [California] state Senate after being approved in committee. “The…
  • Assistant attorney general complains: ‘Innocence is in vogue now’ - Aug. 11, 2016 “[North Carolina] Assistant Attorney General Jess Mekeel said [Johnny] Small's motion should be dismissed. “ ‘Innocence is in vogue now,’ he told the judge, the Associated Press reported.…
  • Perhaps N.Y. Times needs some new experts - Aug. 6, 2016 It’s appalling to see the New York Times, in its Aug. 5 obituary on Chris Costner Sizemore, “the real patient behind ‘The Three Faces of Eve’, quote…
  • Text cache - hhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/us/chris-costner-sizemore-the-real-patient-behind-the-three-faces-of-eve-dies-at-89.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0 Chris Costner Sizemore, the Real Patient Behind ‘The Three Faces of Eve,’ Dies at 89 By BRUCE WEBER AUG. 5, 2016 At the start of the 1957 movie “The…
  • Skepticism, accountability strengthen criminal justice system - Aug. 5, 2016 “Perhaps the virtue of these true-crime stories isn’t how they affect specific cases (indeed, without new and objective evidence that calls into question criminal convictions, it’s important…
  • View from inmate: DAs build ‘careers on the backs of us innocent prisoners’ - July 29, 2016 “Sometimes prosecutors withhold exculpatory evidence of a defendant’s innocence, and don’t turn it over until they are forced to. Take a look at the exonerations reported in recent…
  • ‘What may be the largest child sexual abuse trial this country has ever seen’ - July 22, 2016 “FARMVILLE, N.C. – Farmville's only courtroom has never played host to a felony trial. This week, the town's 4,000 residents will watch a parade of jurors, lawyers,…
  • He stood up to Trump mania – how will he fare with Prosecutors Club? - July 20, 2016 “Orr, a former state Supreme Court justice... angered party officials when he told a WRAL TV reporter that the nominee was ‘singularly unqualified to lead this country.’…
  • ‘Tremendous … discretion’ has changed little since 1940 - July 19, 2016 “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if…
  • Why we want to forget the panic ever happened…. - July 15, 2016 “When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that…
  • The chilling body count of ‘personality-driven’ prosecutors - July 11, 2016 “This week Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project issued a report detailing the legacies of five of the nation’s deadliest prosecutors, and (Joe Freeman) Britt was among them. The…
  • A lack of reporters ‘sufficiently passionate to get at this story’?   - July 8, 2016 “As for an ‘investigative’ piece about the Kelly case that would get to the ‘truth,’ we will have to see if we have any staff members who are…
  • Ever so slowly, progress made toward DAs’ accountability - July 1, 2016 “Prosecutors should have to disclose evidence of innocence obtained after a person is convicted, a North Carolina State Bar panel agreed Wednesday. “The ethics subcommittee voted 3-2…
  • Exoneree sees through prosecutors’ excuses: ‘I call BS’ - June 30, 2016 “North Carolina’s district attorneys say a proposed rule that would require them to turn over evidence of innocence after a person is convicted is....” Anyone familiar with…
  • Immunity of office allows zeal, recklessness to go unchecked   - June 29, 2016 “Compensation is intended in part as a deterrent: a municipality that has to pay heavily for police or prosecutorial misconduct ought to be less likely to allow…
  • Three jurors blamed stresses for verdict they regretted - June 24, 2016 “I was a juror on the Edenton Little Rascals sex abuse case, and I heard all the facts. “During eight months of testimony I heard no evidence…
  • What is ‘appropriate indemnity’ for wrongful prosecution? - June 21, 2016 “One of the earliest arguments for financial compensation for the wrongly incarcerated came in 1932, from the Yale law professor Edwin Borchard. In an influential book called…
  • He’s still ‘helping survivors’ of imaginary trauma - June 16, 2016   “We thought “satanic ritual abuse” was a wholly debunked artifact of the 1980s, but apparently there are still a few ‘therapists’ out there dedicated to ‘helping…
  • Yet another cousin to ‘satanic ritual abuse’: unverified ‘gang-stalking’   - June 13, 2016 “...A large community of like-minded people on the internet who call themselves ‘targeted individuals,’ or T.I.s.... is organized around the conviction that they are victims of a…
  • High school students introduced to ‘Innocence Lost’ - June 10, 2016 It’s heartening to see that, 25 years later, “Innocence Lost” is still shining light on the wrongful prosecution of the Edenton Seven –  and for a younger…
  • British child abuse investigators too quick on trigger - June 5, 2016 “One in five of all children born in a single year in England was referred to social services before they reached age 5.... Up to 150,000 pre-school…
  • Disapproval of prosecutors ‘about to hit a tipping point’ - May 31, 2016 “A consensus is building around the need to seriously rethink the role of the prosecutor in the administration of justice. Power dynamics are unbalanced, sentencing guidelines are…
  • McCrory fosters NC’s own costly moral panic - May 29, 2016 “It’s easy to whip people into a frenzy over a moral panic (such as 'satanic ritual abuse’ in the 1980s). All you do is tell people there’s…
  • When adversarial system doesn’t lead to justice - May 26, 2016 “I would like to see more cooperation between prosecutors and defense attorneys in their efforts to achieve justice, particularly when there is a credible post-conviction claim of…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article78669477.html MAY 19, 2016 4:27 PM NC Gov. McCrory pardons Scotland County man Edward McInnis spent 27 years in prison Retesting of DNA evidence freed him in 2015 McInnis was…
  • ‘We cannot give him back those years….’ - May 29, 2016 “ ‘On behalf of the State of North Carolina, I apologize to Mr. (Edward Charles) McInnis for the 27 years he had to spend behind bars for…
  • Better not to be wrongfully convicted in the first place - May 18, 2016 Even where (wrongful imprisonment) compensation laws exist, they can be badly flawed. Most states, like Louisiana, place the burden on people who were wrongly convicted to prove…
  • For Edenton, ‘Little Rascals is unfinished business’ - May 16, 2016 The aftereffects of Little Rascals on Edenton have long interested me. With few exceptions the town’s residents, now fewer than 5,000 for the first time since 1970,  seem…
  • ‘The prosecution failed at everything but….’ - May 10, 2016 “Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lamb once said, ‘The goal of the prosecution is to seek justice.’ “If the defendants were guilty, the prosecution failed. “If the defendants…
  • 25 years ago: ‘Innocence Lost’ debuts - May 7, 2016 Twenty-five years ago today, “Frontline” aired Ofra Bikel's landmark two-hour documentary on the Little Rascals Day Care case. It turned out to be the first of three…
  • View from 1908: ‘The lawyer alone is obdurate’ - May 5, 2016 “Psychologists have long recognized that human memory is highly fallible. Hugo Münsterberg taught in one of the first American psychology departments, at Harvard. In a 1908 book called…
  • HB2 isn’t legislature’s first hysterical reaction - April 29, 2016 The damage was minimal compared with that caused by HB2, but the N.C. General Assembly in 1992 produced its own ludicrous overresponse to a nonexistent problem. It…
  • ‘There are no profiles in courage out there’ - April 25, 2016 “Prosecutors wield extraordinary, unparalleled, and unchecked power. ‘They alone decide who to prosecute for criminal offenses, what charges to bring against them, and what punishments to seek,’…
  • This time, will NC Bar tell DAs to play fair? - April 20, 2016 “‘If prosecutors have an ethical duty to avoid wrongful convictions, then they should have some sort of ethical duty to remedy wrongful convictions,’ said attorney Brad Bannon…
  • Embarrassed prosecutors, where are you? - April 16, 2016 “To many in the criminal justice system, it is now a source of embarrassment that there was ever a time when police and prosecutors were convinced that…
  • From father of bus rider, a dissenting view - April 13, 2016 This week our recently installed Facebook page received a response from the father of one of Junior Chandler’s bus riders. He believes Junior was appropriately convicted and explains…
  • Beware of jurors wearing deerstalker caps - April 10, 2016 “(Daniel Green’s) Durham-based defense team says it has new evidence that challenges major parts of the prosecution’s case, while bolstering their request for a new trial. They…
  • Text cache - http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article70914697.html April 9, 2016 1:00 PM New questions raised in slaying case of Michael Jordan’s father Attorneys: Wrong man convicted as gunman Juror confirms she did her own investigation during…
  • Text cache - http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20160324/NEWS/160329883?p=1&tc=pg Questions Of Innocence NAACP: Attorney general should review wrongful convictions MARTHA WAGGONER, Associated Press Published: Thursday, March 24, 2016 at 3:35 p.m. RALEIGH — North Carolina's attorney general should…
  • Which candidate cares about wrongful convictions? - April 8, 2016 “North Carolina's attorney general (Roy Cooper) should set up a group to investigate claims of wrongful convictions to prevent more innocent people from being in prison, the head…
  • ‘Most people thought I had lost my damn mind’ - April 5, 2016 At a time when the Little Rascals claims were exposing widespread gullibility, a gritty band of doubters – e.g., Raymond Lawrence, Glenn Lancaster, Jane Duffield, Doug Wiik, Susan Corbett and Dee Swain…
  • Junior Chandler faces 30th year in prison - April 4, 2016 Junior Chandler may be the last still-imprisoned victim of the "satanic ritual abuse" day-care panic. Chandler was a driver for a Madison County, N.C., day care. The…
  • In search of justified public panics…. - March 28, 2016 “I was thinking about recent public panics and started listing a few of them in my mind. This is just off the top of my head: Crack…
  • Latest site of ‘ritual abuse’ claims: Scotland - March 21, 2016 “Once again advocates of the much discredited Satanic Abuse Panic are making claims of widespread child abuse across Britain. “Scotland appears to have become caught up in…
  • The last trial of Darryl Hunt - March 17, 2016 The award-winning documentary “The Trials of Darryl Hunt” was released in 2006, but of course Hunt’s world-famous exoneration only freed him to face new trials on the outside –…
  • How ‘Innocence Lost’ changed one viewer’s life - March 16, 2016 “Thank you for providing a site to keep this tragedy alive....  I was a daycare/preschool owner/administrator for 20 years ending in 1995. The primary reason I retired early…
  • Exoneree ‘eventually got the death penalty’ - March 14, 2016 Darryl Hunt, imprisoned for more than 19 years for a murder he did not commit, was found dead in a car in Winston-Salem early Sunday. “In 1984…
  • Tortured by timidity in Texas - March 13, 2016 “Fran and Dan Keller have been released from a Texas prison after 21 years, yet still have little freedom of movement or circumstance, or even quality of…
  • Text cache - http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-03-11/learning-from-our-mistakes/ Learning From Our Mistakes Fran and Dan Keller were prosecuted wrongly and unjustly. It's long past time for their complete exoneration. BY MICHAEL KING, FRI., MARCH 11, 2016 "Sometimes,…
  • Prosecutors still digging in their heels? - March 7, 2016 “Have any public officials apologized to Dudley? “No.” – From “Howard Dudley’s new life: restaurants, cellphones and a cemetery visit” (cached)  by Joseph Neff in the News…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article64064432.html MARCH 4, 2016 3:59 PM Howard Dudley’s new life: restaurants, cellphones and a cemetery visit ‘Awesome, awesome, awesome’ Dudley was freed by a judge Wednesday Awaiting a prosecutor’s decision…
  • Who remembers wrongful conviction was overturned? - “…not one ‘satanic abuse’ network in the modern context has ever been proven to exist.”
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article63564927.html MARCH 2, 2016 12:05 PM After 23 years in NC prison, Howard Dudley embraces his freedom The Kinston man had turned down earlier offers that required guilty plea Dudley:…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article63342732.html MARCH 1, 2016 1:58 PM Howard Dudley’s daughter says she lied about sexual assault Amy Moore says she was raped ‘By two different guys. Not my daddy.’ Dudley, 59,…
  • Prosecutorial arrogance – it’s forever! - March 1, 2016 “It would be hard to imagine a more glaring judicial conflict of interest than the one the Supreme Court considered in a case out of Pennsylvania on…
  • Retirement looms for Rubenstein, who detected scam - Feb. 26, 2016 “What a waste it would be to force Bucks County (Pa.) Judge Alan Rubenstein from the bench. At 70, he remains sharp and vibrant, a jurist of…
  • Text cache - http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/opinion/editorial/sound-judgment-too-soon-to-retire/article_73ee2774-0bbd-57b6-811f-79698e5a6ad2.html Sound judgment: Too soon to retire An editorial in the Bucks County Courier Times Posted: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 12:15 am | Updated: 1:14 am, Tue Feb 23, 2016.…
  • Antonin Scalia no sucker for children’s testimony - Feb. 15, 2016 “(NYU law professor Rachel) Barkow points to Scalia’s (1990) dissent in Maryland v. Craig, where he railed against the court for permitting ‘a child witness to testify via…
  • ‘A good day for justice’ in Texas – why not in NC? - Feb. 13, 2016 “The disciplinary board of the Texas State Bar on Monday affirmed the agency’s decision to disbar Charles Sebesta, the former prosecutor who oversaw the wrongful death sentence…
  • NC GOP’s one weird trick for justice reform - Feb. 11, 2016 “Significant criminal justice reforms (are needed) to minimize the chances of wrongful prosecution in the future. “Some might dismiss such goals as a liberal utopian ideal, but…
  • Former justice calls for investigation of state bar - Feb. 8, 2016 “Bob Orr, a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice, says it’s time for a comprehensive outside review of the state agency that oversees lawyers. “Orr... is part…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article58916553.html FEBRUARY 6, 2016 7:46 PM NC State Bar dismisses complaints against prosecutors in racially divisive case Duke law professor says prosecutors used ‘false’ affidavit to discredit his client Records…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article58916823.html FEBRUARY 6, 2016 7:47 PM Former NC Supreme Court justice calls for review of state bar Bob Orr says outside evaluation of the state agency is needed Bar has…
  • Is Finkelhor now less panicked by day cares? - Feb. 3, 2016 “A new survey finds that adults at school, day care and organizations such as churches and scouting groups are less likely than relatives to abuse or mistreat…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article54328220.html#storylink=cpy JANUARY 12, 2016 4:39 PM ‘Making a Murderer’ about justice, not truth Searing images of law enforcement abuses in Chicago, Cleveland and elsewhere have eroded the public’s trust in…
  • The truth about justice – as seen on TV! - Jan. 29, 2016 “The release last month of ‘Making a Murderer’ capped a year in which popular culture’s portrayal of the criminal justice system seems to have shifted. Out with…
  • Separate disciplinary panel needed for prosecutorial excesses - Jan. 20, 2016 “The Jan. 15 editorial ‘The limits of zeal’ contrasted the penalty given Christine Mumma with the absence of rebuke to prosecutors for the ‘massive failure’ that kept her…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article55483655.html LETTERS TO THE EDITOR JANUARY 19, 2016 5:07 PM Lew Powell: A panel for prosecutors The Jan. 15 editorial “The limits of zeal” contrasted the penalty given Christine Mumma…
  • Mumma victimized by prosecutor’s perverse priorities - Jan. 16, 2016 “Joseph Sledge spent 37 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. At his trial, the state paid a lying snitch to testify against him. While he…
  • Will Edenton, too, ever be ‘honest about what took place’? - Jan. 14, 2016 "Researchers announced this week they have confirmed the plot (in Salem, Mass.) where 19 people accused of witchcraft were hanged in a wave of hysteria that swept…
  • ‘Motive behind these sexual acts is never revealed….’ - Jan. 12, 2016 “There are strong similarities between the confessions taken from accused witches in early modern Europe, the testimony of Satanic ritual abuse taken by modern therapists, and accounts…
  • Obama can’t pardon Chandler – but McCrory could - Jan. 6, 2016 “Many fans of (the hit Netflix documentary) Making a Murderer, which sheds light on questionable conduct by prosecutors and police involved in (Steven) Avery’s conviction, view the 53-year-old’s imprisonment…
  • How Edenton resembled Guantanamo Bay - Jan. 2, 2016 “The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence... and on several occasions produced inaccurate information.... “Despite declaring the program…

2015

  • 2015: Train for justice stayed stuck at station - Dec. 30, 2015 Where things stand at year’s end in the obscure but still hopeful world of littlerascalsdaycarecase.org: – Junior Chandler continues to wait for a decision from the Duke…
  • One argument for ‘satanic ritual abuse’ pardons - Dec. 28, 2015 “One problem with pardons is that Presidents have considered them in secret, springing the decisions on the public only after they have been made. In high-profile cases,…
  • DA acknowledges junk science in arson conviction - Dec. 17, 2015 “Three men convicted of murder by arson for a 1980 fire in Brooklyn (were) exonerated on Wednesday.... “What carried the three men into prison was not reliable…
  • Defendants’ bond lowered to ‘only’ $200,000 - 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…
  • Another century, another generation of fake victims - Dec. 8, 2015 “It is over 20 years since the rash of allegation that rituals of devil worship, including the sexual abuse of children, the sacrifice, and (sometimes) eating, of…
  • Throw symptoms against the wall, see if any stick…. - Dec. 4, 2015 “Hertford, N.C. – Three children who attended Little Rascals Day Care Center behaved strangely in kindergarten, a teacher testified Wednesday in the sex abuse trial of Dawn Wilson.…
  • In Guilford County, a DA who paid attention - 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…
  • Catholic clergy abuse scandal unrelated to day-care cases - Nov. 18, 2015 “Readers who want a deeper look at how young children’s accounts of CSA (child sexual abuse) were discredited in the same time frame of the (Roman Catholic)…
  • ‘Michelle Remembers’ spread its myth widely - Nov. 15, 2015 “In 1977 the Canadian psychotherapist Lawrence Pazder published a memoir of one of his patients, ‘Michelle Remembers.’... “Michelle’s memoir had been preceded by a number of other books by…
  • Chandler’s sentence designed to lock him up forever - Nov. 8, 2015 “The latest obstacle to Gerald Amirault's freedom came without fanfare. A three-member panel of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections has now decided that, since the prisoner has refused participation…
  • Just what McMartin case needed: More hysteria! - Nov. 4, 2015 “(Psychiatrist Roland) Summit praised the hysteria-induced news media hype and community gossip (about the McMartin Preschool case) as a public service: Without that type and extent of…
  • Salem profits from its historic shame – so why shouldn’t Edenton? - Oct. 29, 2015 “You have to be ... inventive to brand yourself as a Halloween capital – extending a one-night affair into a monthlong celebration and inviting hundreds of thousands…
  • Will Mass. governor show McCrory (or Cooper) the way? - Oct. 22, 2015 North Carolina isn’t the only state that has failed to mitigate – however little and late – the injustices it inflicted during the “satanic ritual abuse” era. In Massachusetts,…
  • ‘A hard core of evil in the soul of humankind?’ - Oct. 20, 2015 “(Richard Beck’s “We Believe the Children”) addresses only the question of why those events unfolded in the particular way that they did, at one particular moment –…
  • Lacrosse case wasn’t state’s only imaginary crime - Oct. 14, 2015 “(Attorney General Roy Cooper) took over a tangled and controversial investigation of alleged gang rape by Duke University athletes, eventually in 2007 making the extraordinary determination that…
  • Shame links Edenton with other ‘ritual abuse’ sites - Oct. 11, 2015 “Satanism lacks a (Jim) Jones or (David) Koresh. Satanism has no Jonestown, no Waco, no Kool-Aid, no casual point of reference. “This is because Satanic cults, as…
  • ‘Satanic ritual abuse’ in Sodom? Of course! - Oct. 7, 2015 “Sodom Laurel was first named Revere, and is still Revere on topographical maps, but I seldom hear anyone call it anything but Sodom. (Madison County native Dellie Norton said) she…
  • Sweden examines its mistakes – why doesn’t N.C.? - Sept. 29, 2015 “Thomas Quick was the name adopted by Swedish petty criminal and drug addict Sture Bergwall, who under ‘recovered memory’ therapy, confessed to raping, killing and even eating more…
  • Innocent defendants are poor candidates for recidivism - Sept. 22, 2015 “Pedophilia, the sexual attraction to children who have not yet reached puberty, remains a vexing challenge for clinicians and public officials.... Researchers have found no effective treatment.…
  • ‘Ritual abuse’ claims exempt from retraction? - Sept. 14, 2015 “Rising retraction rates reflect (in part) the fact that scientists, journalists and amateur watchdogs have begun scrutinizing research more closely.... “This heightened scrutiny – the very scrutiny…
  • Another child-witness, now grown, spills the beans - Sept. 8, 2015 “Jennifer (a pseudonym) reached out to me after seeing an interview I gave about the McMartin Preschool trial.... She said she had been involved in a similar…
  • It wasn’t just Edenton where lips were zipped - Sept. 5, 2015 “An 1895 reporter found (Salem) town residents reluctant to talk about the past. “When they did, it was to impress upon him that they had not burned…
  • Steinem made case for believing the unbelievable - Sept. 1, 2015  “(As witnesses) children are even less likely to be believed when their stories involve extremes of sadism, collusion among families and communities (sometimes extending over several generations)…
  • Dog bites man: ‘Paper will not be retracted’ - Aug. 26, 2015 In November 2012 the journal Nursing Research declined my request to retract Susan J. Kelley’s 1990 article based on the existence of “satanic ritual abuse” in day…
  • ‘Antifeminism’ to blame? Not so fast, Mr. Beck - Aug. 24, 2015 “(Richard) Beck is generally restrained in his narrative, letting the details pile up to a well-deserved indictment of the many players in the ‘moral panic.’ But in…
  • When imaginary crime leads to real punishment - Aug. 20, 2015 “In the mid-1980s, a friend of mine testified on behalf of an elementary-school teacher who had been accused of being a pedophile. “A child had told his…
  • Prosecutors misused bail to squeeze defendants - Aug. 16, 2015 “In 1689, the English Bill of Rights outlawed the widespread practice of keeping defendants in jail by setting deliberately unaffordable bail, declaring that ‘excessive bail shall not…
  • At last, book lays bare ‘satanic ritual abuse’ era - Aug. 10, 2015 Since I undertook this blog in 2011, I’ve been waiting for a mass-market book that recalls the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care era with authority, insight and thoroughness.…
  • Immunity lets off miscreant prosecutors scot-free - Aug. 9, 2015 “Suppressing evidence, coddling informants, even outright lying are some of the instances of prosecutorial misconduct that sent away nearly half the 1,621 people convicted for crimes they didn’t commit…
  • Injustice without amends: ‘We should be ashamed’ - Aug. 4, 2015 “Some have drawn parallels between the Salem witch trials of 1692 and the false accusations of sexual abuse that sweptc America in the 1980s. The difference is…
  • Wikipedia stifles ‘ritual abuse’ disinformation campaign - July 31, 2015 “Since February, 2008, on Wikipedia’s page on ‘Satanic Ritual Abuse,’ Wikipedia’s staff has been suppressing and deleting credible posts from credible sources (including my posts – I…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article28770190.html JULY 26, 2015 5:47 PM NC Senate to take up execution protocol changes Bill hides lethal injection details Legal challenges expected No executions in NC since 2006 BY ANNE…
  • This just in: La. theater killings rooted in ‘ritual abuse’! - July 26, 2015 "A look at America’s underbelly indicates more than a 'random' killing (at a Lafayette, La., movie theater). Eight signs point to John Russell Houser possibly being subjected to programmed…
  • Excuses for denying exoneration (Salem version) - July 21, 2015 “When Massachusetts exonerated the Salem victims in 1710 it overlooked six women. They remained missing through the 1940s and 1950s as the commonwealth considered pardons but could…
  • Kelly defenders risked ‘financial and social suicide’ - July 13, 2015 Throughout the long unfolding of the Little Rascals Day Care prosecution, outsiders often sought to determine the “mood of Edenton.” This was a challenging task even in…
  • Rare words of prosecutorial remorse - July 5, 2015 “In March, A. M. Stroud III, lead prosecutor at trial, wrote a remorseful article in The Shreveport Times, declaring, ‘Glenn Ford was an innocent man,’ taking responsibility for a…
  • British lawyers see payday in ritual abuse claims - July 2, 2015 “The notion of satanic ritual abuse was dismissed as ‘utter nonsense’ by Mrs. Justice Pauffley in care proceedings in the family court at (London’s) Royal Courts of Justice in…
  • Betsy Kelly barred from reunion (but still got T-shirt!) - June 28, 2015 “Today in Edenton members of John A. Holmes High School's Class of ’73 will walk across a stage in caps and gowns, receive diplomas and turn tassels…
  • In 1993, predicting a historic marker – and more - June 18, 2015 Given my thoroughly unsuccessful attempt to persuade the State of North Carolina to erect a historic marker recalling the Little Rascals Day Care case, I had to laugh at…
  • ‘A personal mission to have Bob put behind bars’ - June 14, 2015 Long after Bob Kelly reclaimed his freedom, he continued to fear that prosecutor Nancy Lamb was searching for yet another excuse to send him back to prison.…
  • What movie may doubt, book surely doesn’t - June 11, 2015 “In (the upcoming movie) Regression, Ethan Hawke plays a detective investigating accusations by a woman against her father. There’s a twist: The father has admitted wrongdoing, though he…
  • McCrory tires of Sherlock Holmes impersonation - June 4, 2015 “Gov. Pat McCrory on Thursday pardoned two half-brothers who were exonerated of murder after spending three decades in prison. “The governor took nine months to make the…
  • When rationalizing is mistaken for reasoning - June 2, 2015 “Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia says that the most common and problematic bias in science is ‘motivated reasoning’: We interpret observations to fit a particular idea.…
  • What might’ve been: Nancy Lamb at the multiplex - May 30, 2015 Ofra Bikel’s eight hours of “Innocence Lost” were surely powerful, but the narrowness of PBS’s audience limited their impact. What if the Little Rascals Day Care case…
  • The imaginations run amok were not the children’s - 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…
  • Prosecution’s doctors ‘medicalized Satan’ - May 25, 2015 “Investigative journalist Susan Goldsmith has spent years examining the medical and legal industry that has arisen to promote its belief that vicious baby-shaking by enraged adults has…
  • Investigation without end, injustice without end? - May 8, 2015 “A new investigation by the governor into ‘culpability’ has some concerned that he may be caving to the political pressure inherent in the pardon process – particularly…
  • How could anyone doubt ‘shoes made of baby skin’? - May 5, 2015 “Its members are, it’s claimed, drawn mainly from a school and church in Hampstead (a North London suburb). They are said to wear shoes made of baby…
  • ‘So, Paula, do YOU think I should pardon them?’ - April 29, 2015 “Wednesday marks the 230th day that Governor Pat McCrory has refused to grant a pardon of innocence to Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, the two Robeson County…
  • Kids say the darndest things… eventually - April 24, 2015 “As was made clear repeatedly upon testimony by experts, the very first reports of the children were the ones that would be most critical in determining whether…
  • Lack of DNA evidence opens way for injustice - April 18, 2015 “DNA testing has been used 329 times now to prove the innocence of people wrongly convicted of a crime. But what happens when there is no DNA…
  • Death noted: Little Rascals judge Marsh McLelland - April 13, 2015 D. Marsh McLelland, judge in the trials of Little Rascals defendants Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson, died last month in Burlington. He was 94. This laudatory obituary in the…
  • Prosecutors claimed WHAT happened here? - April 6, 2015 A team from the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic recently traveled to Buncombe and Madison counties to collect documents from court clerks’ offices, to interview witnesses and to…
  • System that wronged Betsy Kelly rewarded Nancy Lamb - April 5, 2015 William L. Anderson, professor of economics at Frostburg (Md.) State University, writes widely in opposition to big government. He has a particular aversion to overreaching prosecutors such…
  • Not everyone was moved by HBO’s McMartin drama - March 31, 2015 “...The watershed event marking the shift in public opinion on these (“satanic ritual abuse” day care) cases was the HBO airing of ‘Indictment: The McMartin Trial’ (watchable here on…
  • Text cache - http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article16529624.html MARCH 27, 2015 7:14 PM NC lawyers face bar complaints for Racial Justice Act work BY ANNE BLYTHE [email protected] Two defense attorneys face accusations of professional misconduct for a…
  • It’s a long way from Duke to Avery-Mitchell Correctional - March 21, 2015 I spent several hours Friday at Duke University Law School listening to experts detail “Evolving Trends in Forensic Science.” Fascinating. Topics ranged from the effects of sleep…
  • It wasn’t only defendants who suffered wrongfully - 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…
  • ‘Ritual abuse’ therapists to scientists: Drop dead - March 13, 2015 “In this this arena of Recovered Memory Therapy and treatment of DID, therapists will simply imitate what sounds exciting or innovative without assessing the scientific value of…
  • How to make ‘facts and science ultimately irrelevant’ - 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…
  • ‘Black helicopters’ over Edenton? Sure, why not? - Feb. 27, 2015 “.... A social worker from North Carolina informed the group (the Society for the Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse) that in the day-care…
  • Can we cope with seeing wrongful convictions? - Feb. 20, 2015 “Exonerations, which were once exceedingly rare, have become regular features of the American justice system. The National Registry of Exonerations records 1,535 exonerations nationwide (including Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson) since…
  • The shocking ease of installing ‘lost memories’ - Feb. 13, 2015 “Psychologists terminated a study (of 70 students at a Canadian university) that showed the ease of implanting false memories of committing terrible, violent crimes in the recent…
  • Salem to Edenton was a road heavily traveled - Feb. 9, 2015 The Little Rascals Day Care case has often been likened to the Salem Witch Trials, but this lengthy list from “Understanding The Crucible: A Student Casebook to…
  • McMartin therapy victim: ‘I lived in fabricated fear’ - Feb. 5, 2015 “I was involved in this (McMartin Preschool) case. I remember getting dropped off at court-ordered therapy. I don’t remember the sessions, but I have seen the macabre…
  • Are mistaken prosecutors silenced by shame? - Jan. 31, 2015 “ ‘You need to try to rectify whatever error you made,’ says Santa Clara County, California, Special Assistant District Attorney David Angel. ‘But it needs to really…
  • Did jurors really believe ‘poop in the spaghetti’? - Jan. 25, 2015 Q:  You said that Mr. Bob made spaghetti at the day care.... Now, when did Mr. Bob say that there was poop in the spaghetti? A:  After…
  • Day-care cases rooted in ‘sense of powerlessness’? - Jan. 17, 2015 Q: Do you have a better understanding of why people act the way they do in certain situations? A:   ....Whenever the safety of children is perceived to…
  • District attorney to reexamine Little Rascals – or not? - Jan. 11, 2015 Before he turned back a challenge from Little Rascals prosecutor Nancy Lamb, incumbent District Attorney Andrew Womble had given me an inkling of hope he might consider…
  • View from UK: ‘Whole culture … has become hysterical’ - Jan. 3, 2015 “Lurid tales of children being sexually abused, of animals being ritually slaughtered and babies being bred for sacrifice, in bizarre black magic ceremonies by cults of devil-worshipping…

2014

  • Edenton Seven won’t be snapping selfies at marker ceremony - Dec. 31, 2014 “Dear Mr. Powell: “At their meeting on December 16, the members of the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee... voted unanimously not to approve a marker…
  • Why evangelicals fall prey to ritual abuse tales - Dec. 22, 2014 ““We evangelical Christians by definition live by our own narrative of creation, fall, and redemption. We believe in good and evil. That is why, as a group,…
  • Seeking corroboration isn’t disrespectful – it’s useful - Dec. 10, 2014 “More than a decade ago, I wrote about the McMartin preschool case, and other satanic ritual child abuse accusations that turned out to be false. Back then, the…
  • News media newly skeptical about sex allegations? - 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…
  • Can Edenton squeeze in one more historical marker? - Nov. 27, 2014 “Of the dozen or so historical markers clustered in the town of Edenton, only one – recognizing novelist Inglis Fletcher – postdates the 1800s. “The North Carolina Highway…
  • Lessons of ‘ritual abuse’ era still relevant today - Nov. 19, 2014 “While (‘The Witch-Hunt Narrative’ author Ross) Cheit... admits that there was some ‘overreaction’ and injustice to innocent people – including ‘five, possibly six, of the seven defendants’…
  • How one young reporter changed his mind - Nov. 8, 2014 “In the summer of 1989, I accepted my first job at a daily paper when The Daily Advance hired me to cover a two-county beat – Chowan…
  • Nancy Lamb loses bid for district attorney - Nov. 5, 2014 Andrew Womble: 24,357 votes (53 percent) Nancy Lamb: 21,411 votes (47 percent)  I'd like to attribute Nancy Lamb's defeat to her misbegotten role in the prosecution of…
  • Little Rascals? Doesn’t ring a bell, says local daily - Nov. 2, 2014 “For District Attorney – Nancy Lamb: Two equally motivated and capable candidates, Democrat Nancy Lamb and Republican Andrew Womble, have mounted compelling political campaigns to claim the…
  • Lamb not only unrepentant prosecutor facing voters - Oct. 24, 2014 “As Middlesex County (Mass.) district attorney, (Martha) Coakley defended the convictions of Fells Acres day-care center operator Violet Amirault and her two children, Gerald Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave.…
  • A familiar story of day-care sex abuse – too familiar? - Oct. 16, 2014 “A 38-year-old man from Statesville has been accused of molesting children as young as 3 years old at the day care where he worked in the 1990s....…
  • What white people believed that black people doubted - Oct. 14, 2014 “(Bob) Kelly’s father-in-law, Warren Twiddy, says that blacks are the only people in Edenton who still treat him like a human being. “One black woman, calling the…
  • Veteran journalist bought into Believe the Children - Oct. 4, 2014 Among those journalists who fell for the “satanic ritual abuse” storyline, none fell harder than Civia Tamarkin. She not only stage-managed an embarrassingly credulous episode of “Nightline,”…
  • Junior Chandler’s homefolks updated on his case - Sept. 29, 2014 “Duke law professor Theresa Newman has three boxes full of files about Andrew Chandler Jr.’s case: details about the bizarre allegations, the expert testimony that would not…
  • Duke Law project examining Chandler’s case - Sept. 23, 2014 The Duke Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic was a crucial ally of defense attorney Sean Devereux in the recent exoneration of Michael Alan Parker, whose “satanic ritual abuse” conviction bears…
  • Evidence of new day in Edenton? We can hope - Sept. 17, 2014 I’m doubly intrigued by this recent letter to the editor of the Elizabeth City Advance. First, that an electioneering party official – in Edenton! – would cite…
  • What? No Little Rascals on Edenton’s Wiki page? - Sept. 12, 2014 Edenton has been the scene of many historic events – the Edenton Tea Party, the escape of Harriet Jacobs, etc. – but surely nothing happened there in the entire…
  • Isn’t half of Junior’s life enough, North Carolina? - Sept. 8, 2014 “The aging prison population represents a national human-made epidemic decades in the making. ... “Our current trajectory is economically infeasible and morally untenable.... “Although there is no…
  • ‘What have you got? Exoneration? I don’t think so….’ - Sept. 4, 2014 “The evidence you heard today in my opinion negates the evidence presented at trial.... Based upon this new evidence, the state does not have a case to…
  • Edenton Seven can’t wait forever for exoneration - Sept. 1, 2014 The recent deaths of Little Rascals figures Patricia Kephart Hart (obituary cached here) and C. Harvey Williams remind me that the clock is ticking on the defendants as well. (Patricia Kephart, mother…
  • N.C. judge throws out ‘ritual abuse’ conviction - Aug. 28, 2014 “ASHEVILLE, N.C. – After more than 20 years behind bars, Michael Alan Parker, 57, walked past the barbed wire gates of Craggy Correctional Center and looked out…
  • Building a better mousetrap? Not exactly…. - Aug. 24, 2014 “The following dialogue is from Daniel Goleman’s article ‘Studies Reflect Suggestibility of Very Young as Witnesses,’ in the New York Times (June 11, 1993). It is an excerpt from…
  • Second thoughts from a ‘ritual abuse’ prosecutor? - Aug. 17, 2014 “I’m not comfortable commenting on any of them at this point in time.” – Lael Rubin, formerly the lead prosecutor in the McMartin Preschool case, declining to say…
  • A dispatch from the ‘comfort zone’ of rationality - Aug. 10, 2014 A final (perhaps) thought on Professor Sylvia Gillotte, after rereading this passage from our exchange of emails about her belief in “satanic ritual abuse”: “The thing is, Mr. Powell,…
  • A call to ‘look within the bowels of the human psyche’ - Aug. 5, 2014 Following up on Sunday’s post about Professor Sylvia Gillotte,  I’ve strung together excerpts from our lengthy email exchange about her belief in “satanic ritual abuse.” My comments are in…
  • In this classroom, only certainty about ‘ritual abuse’ - Aug. 3, 2014 “Over the last 12 years, there have been hundreds of day care cases across the United States which involved allegations of ritual child abuse. The discovery and…
  • Text cache - Text cache http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/newsobserver/patricia-a-hart-condolences/171953767?cid=full#sthash.XxuOrT20.dpbs Obituary Patricia A. Hart Garner Patricia Ann Ashley Hart, 48, of 313 Whithorne Drive, peacefully passed away on Friday, August 1, 2014 at her home, surrounded by…
  • ‘That sorry judge should have done something’ - July 15, 2014 “I realize I’m a little flip when I say 80 percent of the evidence is trash, but it is. “I thought sooner or later some editorialist was…
  • Echoes of Little Rascals in 2014 race for DA - July 15, 2014 Here’s the big picture from the latest campaign finance reports filed with the State Board of Elections: Individual contributions to Nancy Lamb are almost double those to incumbent Andrew Womble ($29,821.54…
  • ‘I was aware of the possibility of childish fantasy….’ - July 11, 2014 “....  As you might imagine, I had not had reason to think about the Little Rascals case until your email arrived.  Yes, I was very interested in…
  • Alarmed ‘Frontline’ viewers turned to governor - July 10, 2014 “Thank you for your letter expressing your concerns about the prosecution of the Little Rascals Day Care Center personnel in Chowan County. Although this matter is outside…
  • Convictions overturned, judge angrily exited - July 5, 2014 “The Burlington judge who has presided over the the Little Rascals Day Care Center case since 1990 resigned in disgust the day after the state Supreme Court…
  • Portrait of a town haunted by hindsight - June 29, 2014 “(The Little Rascals Day Care center) is red brick, with plate glass windows on the front. The two-story structure is located on East Eden Street, amid mostly…
  • It’s not just politics that make strange bedfellows - June 23, 2014 “The emphasis has got to be on the crime. Once you start using labels like satanic, sadistic or ritualistic, then you’re immediately raising a red flag.... Law…
  • Cable head Wendy Murphy strikes (out) again… - June 18, 2014 “I was disappointed to see that one of the most celebrated cases of this time was mentioned in (Ross Cheit’s) book but not analyzed. The Little Rascals case from…
  • Dr. Frances makes case for Chandler’s release - 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…
  • Text cache - Text cache Originally at http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/06/14/3935038/mass-hysteria-of-sexual-satanic.html?sp=/99/108/ Point of View Mass hysteria of sexual, satanic ritual abuse and a miscarriage of NC justice BY ALLEN FRANCES June 14, 2014 Andrew Junior Chandler…
  • What is so sad as a debunker with no bunk? - June 12, 2014 “He thinks the continued treatment of these cases as a modern-day episode of mass hysteria does disservice to children and even puts them in danger. “ ‘We…
  • Nancy Lamb: ‘Would you want someone like me?’ - June 3, 2014 “I want all of you to ask yourselves: If you were to find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of being the victim of a crime, who would…
  • Courts reluctantly turn to Little Rascals DA - May 27, 2014 “The state court system says it hired a local defense attorney to prosecute three murder suspects because the current district attorney had conflicts of interest in all…
  • Text cache - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/586606/posts Summer 2001 Sex, Lies, and Audiotapes Rael Jean Isaac explains why we've been so willing to believe fantastic tales of sexual abuse There is a widespread belief that sexual abuse…
  • Day-care panic had roots in incest movement - May 23, 2014 “....The widespread belief that sexual abuse of children is endemic to society is a relatively new notion. In fact, it can be traced to a particular moment…
  • The unenlightened self-interest of prosecutors - May 16, 2014 Exhibit A: “Last year at a state solicitors’ convention in Myrtle Beach, (South Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty) cautioned that prosecutors in the state have…
  • Text cache - http://www.salon.com/2014/04/18/eyewitness_testimony_no_longer_a_gold_standard/ Eyewitness testimony no longer a gold standard NIGEL DUARA, ASSOCIATED PRESS PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The American legal system offers few moments as dramatic as an eyewitness to a…
  • Supposed debunking of moral panic is itself spurious - May 10, 2014 “The failure to obtain convictions (in the McMartin Preschool case) combined with massive press coverage during and after, which ‘taught’ the American public various ‘lessons’ about child…
  • The reign of fantasy as therapy, recalled in a single chart - May 3, 2014  As I’ve noted before, the Google Ngram Viewer mines a database of more than 5 million books to track word and phrase frequencies over time. Too bad it abruptly…
  • Chandler’s imprisonment: cruel and unusual - April 28, 2014 Average number of months served by inmates in state prisons... ■ for sexual assault: 35 ■ for homicide: 71 ■ for rape: 65 Number of months served by…
  • Governor’s Clemency Office: ‘Reviewed and denied’ - April 26, 2014 “Given the near certainty of Junior’s innocence (his first jury could not reach a verdict), given the fact that he has already served 26 years in prison…
  • Prosecutors Book Club, please take note - April 19, 2014 “Is it possible to so modify child forensic interviewing that the sorts of errors described by Ceci and Bruck are minimized?... “The primary problem is that most prosecutors and…
  • After 20 years, plea to parents still unanswered - April 11, 2014 “It may be hard for you to own the fact that you were duped by therapists and prosecutors, as well as misled by your own naivete about…
  • Did replay of Salem prove human progress is ‘myth’? - April 5, 2014 “Outside of science, progress is simply a myth.… In science the growth of knowledge is cumulative. But human life as a whole is not a cumulative activity;…
  • Where ‘thousands of cult abusers infiltrated respectable society’? - March 30, 2014 A welcome contribution to the unraveling of the “satanic ritual abuse” case against Fran and Danny Keller was this letter from Chicago psychology professor Evan Harrington dismantling the testimony of prosecution…
  • Psychiatry, the devil and Gloria Steinem - March 24, 2014 As described in Richard Noll's "When Psychiatry Battled the Devil," the 7th annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, held…
  • SRA apologists flushed from their diploma-papered caves - March 22, 2014 “Editorial Note: In light of the responses we have received regarding this article by Richard Noll, PhD, that was posted on our website on December 6, 2013,…
  • Too bad ‘True Detective’ chose to mislead, not to enlighten - March 15, 2014 “In an interview with Entertainment Weekly (True Detective creator Nic) Pizzolato responded to a question about the inspiration for the show: ‘You can Google “Satanism” “preschool” and “Louisiana”…
  • New York Times remembers McMartin case - March 12, 2014 “Really now, teachers chopped up animals, clubbed a horse to death with a baseball bat, sacrificed a baby in a church and made children drink the blood,…
  • Why SRA authors might’ve passed on responding - March 8, 2014 Last of three posts As I recounted earlier, Dr. Jon Conte expressed a willingness to consider my expanded letter seeking a retraction of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence’s…
  • A funny thing happened on the way to publication - March 7, 2014 Second of three posts After our lengthy email exchange I took up editor Jon Conte on his offer to consider an expanded letter challenging the Journal of Interpersonal Violence’s…
  • What? A journal willing to retract? - March 6, 2014 First of three posts Psychiatric Times isn’t the only professional journal to avoid reexamining the “satanic ritual abuse” era. Other examples include Nursing Research, Child Abuse & Neglect and Relational Child and Youth…
  • Richard Kluft, ‘advocate of moderation’? - Feb. 28, 2014 As noted by Gary Greenberg, Richard Noll’s disappeared history of psychiatry and satanic ritual abuse “singles out two psychiatrists – Bennett Braun and Richard Kluft – who were instrumental in…
  • C’mon, Dr. Kluft, aren’t you proud of your role? - Feb. 24, 2014 Why would Dr. Richard Kluft “take exception to” and “(raise) the issue of legal liability” over “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil”? It’s not as if the record…
  • In search of a ‘frank and unblinking appraisal’ - Feb. 20, 2014 Following up on the curious case of Richard Noll v. Psychiatric Times, I wrote editor-in-chief James L. Knoll IV to ask about the removal of Dr. Noll’s “satanic ritual abuse” essay from…
  • Psychiatric Times clings to embarrassing position - Feb. 14, 2014 Thanks to Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch for spotlighting Psychiatric Times’ remarkably inept retraction of Richard Noll’s “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil.” Don’t miss the update appended by Dr. Noll: “On 16 January 2014…
  • ‘Where is psychotherapists’ mea culpa?’ - Feb. 7, 2014 A sampling of responses to the recent reporting and comments of Richard Noll and Allen Frances about psychiatry’s costly failure to reject the cult of “satanic ritual abuse”: ■  ■  ■…
  • Is psychiatry ready to face up to its denial? - Feb. 1, 2014 “As our medical schools and graduate programs fill with students who were born after 1989, we meet young mental health professionals-in-training who have no knowledge or living…
  • Responses to N&O op-ed vary dramatically - Jan. 24, 2014 “Powell is right (in this News & Observer column). The state should exonerate those wrongly convicted members of the Edenton Seven and the wrongly accused who were…
  • It’s not too late to exonerate, Mr. Attorney General - Jan. 20, 2014 “Eighteen months ago I petitioned Attorney General Roy Cooper to issue a statement of innocence for the Edenton Seven. “ ‘In 2001 Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift signed…
  • Text cache - Text cache  Originally at http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/18/3541972/like-salem-witches-edenton-seven.html Point of View Like Salem’s ‘witches,’ it’s time for NC to exonerate the Edenton Seven BY LEW POWELL January 18, 2014 Twenty-five years ago Sunday, a…
  • Texas physician, DA show how to admit injustice - Jan. 8, 2014 “Among the atrocities that Frances and Dan Keller were supposed to have committed while running a day care center out of their Texas home: drowning and dismembering…
  • Practicing therapy ‘on the basis of sheer myth’ - Jan. 5, 2014 “Probably the main reason for the growth of false charges of (sexual) abuse has been the recent proliferation of abuse specialists and therapists, many of whom lack…

2013

  • Could we resolve to better next year? - Dec. 28, 2013 End-of-year grab bag from the wide world of justice delayed: ● Thanks to Professor P. S. Ruckman Jr. at Pardon Power for posting my comments on Andrew Junior Chandler. ●…
  • Dennis Rogers: Who has the courage to make amends? - Dec. 21, 2013 As noted here and here, News & Observer columnist Dennis Rogers was among the too-few voices of skepticism about the Little Rascals case. Today Rogers is mostly retired, but he continues…
  • ‘Ritual abuse’ prosecution as stepping stone? - Dec. 15, 2013 “....Rumor has it that people are urging former District Attorney Nancy Lamb to run against Republican (State) Rep. Bob Steinberg in Northeastern North Carolina.... “In Steinberg’s district,…
  • Clemency now rare; is it fear of blowback? - Dec. 8, 2013 “Obviously, there’s a modern trend towards more limited use of executive clemency that extends beyond the current president. I speculate that the increased media scrutiny given to…
  • Three ‘built-in biases’ with tragic consequences - Dec. 2, 2013 “Of the many built-in biases in human thought, three have perhaps the greatest consequences for our own history and that of nations: the belief that we see…
  • Lamb exit leaves district at risk of satanic ritual abuse - Nov. 22, 2013 “Gov. Pat McCrory has appointed the Albemarle’s chief public defender – and a member of the governor’s political party – to complete the term of the late…
  • Texas ex-DA pays price, however little and late - Nov. 20, 2013 “GEORGETOWN, Texas – A former Texas prosecutor who won a conviction that sent an innocent man to prison for nearly 25 years agreed Friday to serve 10…
  • For Junior Chandler, one door opens – will another open? - Nov. 16, 2013 An update from Mark Montgomery, Junior Chandler’s appellate attorney: “[The N.C. Center on Actual Innocence] reviewed Junior's case but could not find anything that would help him.  The ‘kids’…
  • Whatever happened to Kelly’s ex-lawyer? This…. - Nov. 8, 2013 While we await Gov. McCrory’s decision on whether to promote Nancy Lamb to district attorney, another key figure in the Little Rascals prosecution is stepping aside. From the…
  • ‘Lack of rigor’ is nothing new in the social sciences - Nov. 4, 2013 “It’s not a great time for psychology. Diederik A. Stapel, a Dutch social psychologist, has recently confessed to serial fraud. That he gamed the peer review process of…
  • 50 students now know the facts - Oct. 28, 2013 “What was surprising was that in a class of 50 students, none had heard of the day care allegations of the 1980s.” – From a note from…
  • Nancy Lamb, DA? It’s up to Gov. McCrory - Oct. 18, 2013 Because the Elizabeth City Daily Advance rejected my letter to the editor questioning its support of Nancy Lamb for district attorney, I’ve been posting comments in the online Advance,…
  • Focus on Lamb’s politics is off the mark - Oct. 14, 2013 “Whether Nancy Lamb should be promoted to district attorney is not simply a question of Democrats vs. Republicans. (Lamb is a Democrat; the decision on whether to…
  • Holocaust denial shows vulnerability of real memory - Oct. 11, 2013 “Holocaust deniers have managed to receive, in recent years, a respectful hearing on college campuses and elsewhere, despite the existence of mountains of firsthand and corroborated traumatic…
  • ‘Hunt for child abusers has become national pathology’ - Oct. 9, 2013 “We are a society that, every 50 years or so, is afflicted by some paroxysm of virtue – an orgy of self-cleansing through which evil of one…
  • ‘And believes to this day she was molested….’ - Oct. 7, 2013 “Today (in 2001), few contend that the interview techniques used at the outset of the Fells Acres child abuse investigation, in 1984, were proper and reliable. Middlesex County (Mass.)…
  • Text cache - Text cache http://www.dailyadvance.com/opinion/our-views/our-view-mccrory-should-set-politics-aside-appoint-lamb-da-2183745#comments Our View: McCrory should set politics aside, appoint Lamb DA The Daily Advance Saturday, October 5, 2013 Gov. Pat McCrory will soon get a second chance to…
  • Satanic ritual abuse exemplified ‘counterknowledge’ - Oct. 4, 2013 “The essence of counterknowledge is that it purports to be knowledge but is not knowledge. Its claims can be shown to be untrue, either because there are…
  • Newspaper saw Kelly conviction as ‘breakthrough’ - Oct. 2, 2013 “...It's understandable that this week’s conviction of former day-care center owner Robert Fulton Kelly Jr. in Farmville, N.C., is being hailed as a breakthrough.... The conviction  increases…
  • What better credential than Little Rascals debacle? - Sept. 30, 2013 Death noted: District Attorney Frank Parrish, 64, who succeeded H. P. Williams Jr. in prosecuting the Edenton Seven. By the time Parrish took office in 1994, Little Rascals…
  • Children ‘defend veracity of implanted memories’ - Sept. 27, 2013 “The children are the big victims (in unfounded sex abuse cases) and are sacrificed....  Can you imagine being a child and being interrogated, being sent to the…
  • You had to have been there (or did you?) - Sept. 25, 2013 “Peer group pressure... is a factor that should be considered when there is an allegation of sexual abuse involving multiple victims. Children in Edenton who never attended…
  • When will wheels of justice turn for Junior? - Sept. 23, 2013 There’s a bit of an update out of Raleigh on Junior Chandler’s prospects for clemency. Billy Chandler, Junior’s brother, received this email last week from Pat Hansen in…
  • Day-care ritual-abuse claims vs. ‘The Cosby Show’ - Sept. 20, 2013 “In 1984 in particular we see a turning point in the media representation of American motherhood. Two major media events exemplified the cultural contradictions in which working…
  • Defending Betsy Kelly? Prepare to be stalked - Sept. 18, 2013 “Joseph B. Cheshire V, Betsy Kelly’s attorney, says the believers in town remain so hostile to the heretics who profess any disbelief over the charges that he…
  • ‘The truth is not a smorgasbord….’ - Sept. 16, 2013 “The prosecution-minded are careful to say that they do not believe everything a child says. For example, they do not believe 3-year-old Virginia’s statement that ‘Karen was…
  • Board couldn’t see Betsy Kelly ‘minus her publicity’ - Sept. 13, 2013 “I am urging you to treat Elizabeth Kelly as you would treat anyone else with the same case file.  I am asking you to demonstrate that we…
  • ‘Too many therapists with too little expertise’ - Sept. 11, 2013 “Why did the epidemic of day care hysteria happen just when and where it did? Why in 1982? Why in the United States?.... You can’t have a…
  • Judith Abbott’s fantasies of Charles Manson - Sept. 9, 2013 “According to court records, one of the state-recommended therapists, Judith Abbott, showed a five-year-old girl drawings of satanic symbols (a horned mask, inverted crosses and a peace symbol…
  • Still waiting for that ‘huge mea culpa’ - Sept. 6, 2013 “The day-care trials couldn’t have happened without the active participation of social workers and therapists.  Police authorities relied on the therapists to interpret what the child witnesses…
  • ‘Question mark in so many minds’ about McMartin’ - Sept. 4, 2013 In her appreciative review of “The Hunt,” the new Danish movie about a kindergarten teacher wrongfully accused of child sexual abuse, Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles…
  • Clemency for Junior Chandler is long overdue - Sept. 2, 2013 “That power (of clemency), which the Constitution explicitly grants to the president, has always served as an indispensable check on the injustices of the legal system and…
  • A national epidemic of supposed ‘remembering’ - Aug. 30, 2013 “The Edenton case is not just a horrifying aberration. Adults across the country are suddenly ‘remembering’ that they were abused as children, and filing civil lawsuits and…
  • Day-care teachers ‘as helpless as a clay pigeon’ - Aug. 28, 2013 “It’s not by chance that day care centers are the sites of magical molestation, and not public schools with their powerful lobbies and unions.... Those primary and…
  • ‘Cooper stopped far short of apologizing….’ - Aug. 26, 2013 “Attorney General Roy Cooper stopped far short of apologizing to (Greg Taylor and Floyd Brown). He said that the SBI had better investigative practices now and that…
  • Faulty ‘mental tuning forks’ betrayed therapists - Aug. 23, 2013 “Developing a mental tuning fork for the credibility of a claim, gaining an instinct for when to trust and when to doubt a source – these are…
  • Child sex trafficking: 21st century’s moral panic? - Aug. 21, 2013 “Some advocates have suggested secure facilities for America’s child sex trafficking victims.... Such facilities force troubled children into a system of care that may be just as…
  • Remember when ‘ritual abuse’ was a hot topic? - 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…
  • Anxieties about children still make us crazy - 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…
  • That was Dennis T. Ray’s story, and he was sticking to it - Aug. 14, 2013 “FARMVILLE – A juror in the trial of Robert F. Kelly Jr. testified Wednesday that it was an ‘amazing coincidence’ that information from a magazine article appeared…
  • Calling all members of ‘secretive organizations’…. - Aug. 12, 2013 “To maintain their belief in networks of satanic ritual abuse, the people involved in (the 16th Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference, to be…
  • X-factor in child-witnesses’ accounts: TV - Aug. 9, 2013 “(One) area of uncertainty is the extent to which sexual knowledge is learned by young children through exposure to either explicit or sexually suggestive materials on television,…
  • ‘Will Edenton be able to heal from this?’ - Aug. 7, 2013 “After (the first episode of “Innocence Lost” aired in 1991), letters and phone calls poured into the mayor’s office. “ ‘Dear Mayor: Thank God I don’t live…
  • Did prosecutors check out AG’s horror movies? - Aug. 5, 2013 The little-publicized North Carolina Justice Academy describes itself as “one of six divisions of the N.C. Department of Justice under the administration of Attorney General Roy Cooper... charged with…
  • How to make Nancy Lamb very, very unhappy - Aug. 2, 2013 “The attorney for Dawn Wilson was the late Kirk Osborn, who also represented Reade Seligmann in the Duke Lacrosse Case. “Osborn told me that after Wilson's conviction…
  • ‘Have you ever stopped to consider…?’ - July 31, 2013 “Have you ever stopped to consider what the statistical odds must be against the following allegations made by the prosecution? How could the following all be true?…
  • Of mice and memory and the moral panic - July 29, 2013 “Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed the ability to implant mice with false memories. The memories can be easily induced and are just as…
  • For Betsy Kelly’s sister, a chillingly close call - July 26, 2013 Rereading appellate defender Mark Montgomery’s thunderously compelling brief on behalf of Bob Kelly always delivers something I had either passed over earlier or forgotten. This time it was that…
  • Officer Toppin sure had an eye for ‘red flags’ - July 24, 2013 “(Edenton police officer Brenda) Toppin, who conducted the first interviews of children allegedly abused at the center, testified that ‘In the early interviews, I had very few…
  • Claims were extraordinary, but evidence wasn’t - July 22, 2013 “Precisely because of human fallibility, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Now, I know that (alien-abduction theorist) Budd Hopkins responds that extraordinary claims require extraordinary investigations. And I…
  • What was learned from Little Rascals debacle? - July 19, 2013 “...There should be lessons here, lessons about the risks in cases so emotional that they take on a life of their own; lessons for prosecutors who need…
  • The toxic legacy of phony scholarship - July 17, 2013 “Some reports of day care abuse suggest threats and verbal coercion to be particularly severe. (David) Finkelhor et al. (1988), for example, reported that in day care abuse, perpetrators…
  • Ritual-abuse theorist played ‘concentration camp’ card - July 12, 2013 “Some professionals take the charges (of satanic ritual abuse) seriously. ‘It's hard to believe, but so were the reports about Nazi atrocities,’ says Bennett Braun, director of…
  • For maximum notoriety, avoid Chowan County - July 10, 2013 Although some consider Little Rascals the East Coast version of the McMartin case, according to Google’s nGram Viewer it comes in a distant second in prominence. Not even eight hours of…
  • Prosecutor reneged on promise to Betsy Kelly - July 8, 2013 “As the parents made their case to the (North Carolina Parole Commission), prosecutors and defense attorneys continued sparring over whether the state had reneged on the plea…
  • ‘The most fundamental questions of fairness’ - July 5, 2013 “RALEIGH – During a hearing at the state Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Gerald Arnold repeatedly asked a state prosecutor about the fairness of testimony by (Bob)…
  • Nancy Lamb rejected reason in favor of fantasy - July 3, 2013 “(Nancy Lamb) is aware of the naysayers, those who say she ran a witch hunt, gleaning hundreds of charges against (Bob) Kelly and his staff from the…
  • 9/11, Sandy Hook and the McMartin ‘tunnels’ - July 1, 2013 I noted last week the continuing unwillingness of law professor John E.B. Myers, widely published authority on child sex abuse, to express an opinion “regarding the guilt…
  • Professor yet to decide about McMartin case - June 28, 2013 “Children can lie, but research shows that they do not fabricate detailed descriptions of adult sexual acts unless they have experienced or witnessed them. Studies also show…
  • ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ didn’t capture the Kellys - June 26, 2013 The suburban New York child sex abuse case documented in the Oscar-nominated “Capturing the Friedmans” (2003) returned to the spotlight Monday, this time because of a review…
  • ‘Started as a rumor – not about molestation, not at first….’ - June 24, 2013 “(I) followed the Little Rascals case closely in the Norfolk and other papers.... Moved by (its) strangeness and patent senselessness, as well as by reports nationwide at…
  • ‘For historians… a taste of what it was like to live in Salem’ - June 21, 2013 From blog commenter Mike: “I'd seen the ‘Frontline’ episodes long ago, before I moved to North Carolina. I was surprised to learn, when I recently revisited the case, that…
  • ‘We knew we had a secret’ (so we put Brenda on the case) - June 19, 2013 The Little Rascals parents insisted their children had “disclosed” mostly on their own, rather than a result of persistent interrogation. But this live interview, in the giddy…
  • What, no applause from Attorney General Easley? - June 17, 2013 “I don’t know if Bob Kelly and the staff of that now-infamous Edenton day care center abused those children... But I do know, beyond any reasonable doubt,…
  • All those bizarre sex crimes – yet not a single witness? - June 14, 2013 Among visitors to Edenton during the Little Rascals prosecution was Margaret Leong, a Chapel Hill poet who worked with preschool children. In her book “Magical Child Molestation…
  • Move along, ‘Frontline,’ nothing to see here - June 12, 2013 “We received only one call, from a gentleman in Massachusetts, and he said he felt sorry for the whole community and wished us well. It was business…
  • When ‘overwhelming community sentiment’ wins - June 10, 2013 “The danger posed by courts and prosecutors who abdicate their responsibilities to uphold the Constitution in favor of overwhelming community sentiment was recently illustrated in State v.…
  • Retraction won’t kill you, journal editors - June 7, 2013 “One hundred and fifty-five years after it snubbed Dr. John Snow in his obituary, The Lancet is taking it back. “The British medical journal noted that its…
  • Parents gave thumbs down to first ‘Innocence Lost’ - June 5, 2013 “More than 50 parents of alleged child victims in the Edenton day care sex abuse case issued a statement Tuesday criticizing ‘Innocence Lost’ (after) reviewers in the…
  • Two historic sites, two wildly different outcomes - June 3, 2013 In the aftermath of the McMartin Preschool case in California, the building was razed and the site probed for secret tunnels. In the aftermath of the Little Rascals Day Care…
  • MPD renamed DID – but it’s still bunk - May 31, 2013 “After the DSM-III, often called the 'Bible' of psychiatric diagnosis, included (Multiple Personality Disorder) in 1980, thousands of spurious cases emerged in the next two decades, and…
  • ‘Very sick…. very troubling…. very sad!’ - May 29, 2013 “Very sick! There is clear evidence (the Edenton Seven) are guilty... Very troubling to know someone wastes their time writing about this every day. He’s just as…
  • UNC-TV counterprogrammed ‘Innocence Lost’ - May 27, 2013 Recent revelations about billionaire David Koch’s influence on the airing of an unflattering PBS documentary bring to mind how UNC-TV showed similar deference to the accusing parents in the Little Rascals…
  • The unbearable emptiness of ‘n=’ - May 24, 2013 “The research described is a study of a clinical sample of 72 women who allegedly sexually abused 332 children. The Sample is examined from a variety of…
  • Sheriff, mayor escaped prosecutors’ dragnet - May 22, 2013 “One of the biggest strengths for the prosecution was that these children would go home every night to a parent or parents fully aligned with the prosecution…
  • A rare chance to watch the story unfold - May 20, 2013 The day-care ritual-abuse era generated a wealth of words, many of which have been cited here. Aside from the epic “Innocence Lost,” however, little video evidence remains.…
  • What? ‘A hotel that doesn’t take American Express?’ - May 17, 2013 From Betsy Kelly’s comments at the ceremony awarding Ofra Bikel the 2007 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism: “I stand before you tonight because of Ofra Bikel. She…
  • Unaccountable prosecutors: A familiar story - May 15, 2013 “As one of the lead prosecutors, (Elizabeth Lederer) helped lock up five young people (the Central Park Five) based on false confessions, no DNA evidence and media…
  • Investigator still believes Kelly was guilty - May 13, 2013 “On January 20, (1989, Audrey) Stever met with (social workers) David McCall and Grenda Costin, who told Ms. Stever that there was going to be an investigation…
  • Prosecutors’ bag held one last trick - May 10, 2013 “Evidence at the trial of Robert F. Kelly Jr. consisted mainly of the fantasy-laced testimony of children and no physical proof. His conviction was overturned by an…
  • ‘Child Sex Scandals: Modern-Day Witch Hunts?’ - May 9, 2013 CBS Correspondent Mike Wallace narrated this 1999 production that covers a number of the ritual abuse court cases, including Little Rascals. A window below may not open.…
  • A rare chance to watch the story unfold - May 9, 2013 CBS Correspondent Mike Wallace narrated this 1999 production that covers a number of the ritual abuse court cases, including Little Rascals. (A more modern version of this…
  • ‘Right much training but nothing like she needed’ - May 8, 2013 “We just had all kinds of rumors. Everybody in town was involved in it, with this one pointing fingers, that one pointing fingers. My telephone was ringing…
  • Chandler’s hopes rest with innocence project - May 6, 2013 When last we left Junior Chandler, his former appellate defender, Mark Montgomery, had asked North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services to look into the case. But NCPLS requires the…
  • A deal for Betsy? Then why not for Bob and Dawn? - May 3, 2013 “In the quaint village of Edenton, where residents have suffered either a sadistic witch hunt of historical proportions or a rampage by a despicable gang of ritualistic…
  • ‘Parents too trusting’? No, magazine too gullible - May 1, 2013 “For several years... during which innocent people, many of whom were themselves the parents of young children, were sent to prison, the press by and large went…
  • View from Edenton: ‘I never considered leaving’ - April 29, 2013 If you watched “The Plea,” the concluding 1997 installment of “Innocence Lost,” you might not expect that Nancy Smith Barrow, Betsy’s sister, would choose to remain in…
  • ‘Satanic ritual abuse’ loses its place in textbook - April 26, 2013 By 1997, when the college textbook "Family Violence Across the Lifespan" was first published, the most grievous excesses of the day-care ritual-abuse panic had passed (although it…
  • The night Koppel redefined ‘objective and reliable’ - April 24, 2013 “Ted Koppel said the idea for (a “Nightline” episode criticizing juries’ growing skepticism toward child-witnesses) had been brought to him by Civia Tamarkin, who although she ‘served…
  • Why the panic ‘needs to be remembered’ - April 22, 2013 “Lecturing recently, I mentioned the American witch-hunts of the 1980s and 1990s. When the audience looked puzzled, I explained that I was referring to the Satanic Panic…
  • Was there nothing to fear but ‘day care itself’? - April 19, 2013 “What can have spurred so many communities to such (ritual abuse) hysteria? The answer may be day care itself. The mothers who report that children never lie…
  • Parent said God knew better than ‘Frontline’ - April 17, 2013 “One day you will stand before almighty God and be accountable for that which you have done here on Earth, and no amount of lies and manipulation,…
  • Excerpts: ‘Family Violence Across the LIfespan: An Introdution’ - April 15, 2013 Excerpts from "Family Violence Across the Lifespan: An Introduction," by Cindy L. Miller-Perrin, Ola W. Barnett, Robin D. Perrin. SAGE, Dec 21, 2010, 896 pp. The PDF…
  • Prosecutors went out of way to inflame public - April 15, 2013 This from Detroit reader P. Karr: “Raised by a mom who survived the Blitz of London, I was taught that fascism often appears at the hands of…
  • ‘If somebody killed a rabbit at my day care…’ - April 12, 2013 In January 1993, supporters of the Edenton Seven held a press conference in Hertford to demand that North Carolina authorities bring to an end – in the…
  • Therapists were naïve in use of dolls - April 10, 2013 “Consider the use of anatomically detailed dolls to prompt shy or frightened children to reveal abuse. This was an innovation of the 1970s, and at first it…
  • Panics fade, ‘leaving in their wake bewilderment’ - April 8, 2013 “The panic over satanic ritual abuse in the United States... subsided rather abruptly, as panics usually do, whether they are individual or social. They are like an…
  • Prosecutors staged revival of ‘spectral evidence’ - April 5, 2013 “In the Little Rascals Day Care case testimony was given about children being attacked by sharks kept in a pool by the accused. No prosecutor believed this…
  • Oh, those spoilsports, voicing ‘disbelief and skepticism’ - April 3, 2013 In my fruitless attempt to extract a retraction from the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, I quoted only the abstract of “Sexual Abuse of Children in Day Care Centers”…
  • The limits of ‘unequivocal and undeniable evidence’ - April 1, 2013 “Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of…
  • For Little Rascals DA, mum was always the word - March 29, 2013 “ELIZABETH CITY – Attorneys for the seven defendants in the Edenton child abuse case want to know what techniques were used to elicit accusations from the children....…
  • Authorities misled parents by cherry-picking evidence - March 27, 2013 “Authorities fed... parents and public (in Edenton) a biased reading of the evidence, but few realized it was biased. “Consider the following: John and David, two friends…
  • A DA unafraid ‘to go where the truth leads….’ - March 25, 2013 “I really see us as sharing the goal of making sure this conviction rests on credible and substantial evidence. I’m going to go where the truth leads…
  • Prosecutor believed he had closed the deal early on - March 22, 2013 “'There are some people who said we could have stopped after the first child testified.” – District Attorney H.P. Williams Jr., expressing confidence that the jury was being…
  • Potent weapon for N.C. DAs: court calendar - March 20, 2013 “Unlike their counterparts in every other state, North Carolina prosecutors have control over criminal court calendars. “In the Little Rascals case, prosecutors used their trial-scheduling authority to…
  • Could N&O have thwarted ‘prosecutor gone wild’? - March 18, 2013 “When I look back, I think my greatest mistake (was) my failure as editor of the News & Observer to make sure we had a top-notch investigative…
  • ‘No innocent person should have to endure….’ - March 15, 2013 “To the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime, I am deeply…
  • Edenton newspaper shed little light on case - March 13, 2013 In researching his master’s thesis, “Modern Witch Hunts: How Media Have Mishandled Ritual Child-Sex-Abuse Cases,” UNC Chapel Hill journalism student David O. Loomis focused on the inadequate…
  • The unsinkable Ann Wolbert Burgess - March 8, 2013 “Over 15 years ago, a number of children were sexually abused while attending three different day care centers sponsored by military services... “This is the fourth follow-up…
  • An expertise ‘contrary to science and common sense’ - March 7, 2013 Anthony Oberschall’s “Why False Beliefs Prevail: the Little Rascals Child Sex Abuse Prosecutions” appeared in “Essays in Honor of Raymond Boudon” (2000). Most saliently, the UNC sociologist argues…
  • UNC sociologist sought to deflate moral panic - March 6, 2013 Anthony “Tony” Oberschall, professor (now emeritus) of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill, wrote extensively – if not prominently – about the insanity of the Little Rascals case.…
  • UNC experts failed to bring rationality to case - March 4, 2013 “What did Mark Everson, Dr. (Jean C.) Smith, Dr. (Desmond K.) Runyan, Dr. (Doren D.) Fredrickson... all say about behaviors of children who are sexually abused?”  –…
  • Weighing the evidence vs. ‘betraying the children’ - March 1, 2013 “Now, you can ask yourself why did the jury believe these things? How could the jury believe that, as in the Amirault (day-care ritual-abuse) case, old Mrs. Amirault,…
  • ‘Make up any old nonsense’ and watch it spread - Feb. 27, 2013 “The difficulties in debunking blatant antireality are legion. You can make up any old nonsense and state it in a few seconds, but it takes much longer…
  • ‘Give child’s testimony same weight’ as adult’s? - Feb. 25, 2013 “The 99 guilty verdicts against (Bob) Kelly appear to have set a benchmark for such cases: that youthful witnesses can have enough credibility to win convictions on…
  • Double-decker graves, portable crematoriums… and so on - Feb. 22, 2013 “The argument for an organized network of satanists is virtually irrefutable. Ritual abuse survivors’ reports contain many fantastic elements. Rather than regard the implausible  features of these…
  • DA Williams to jury: Don’t consider the source - Feb. 20, 2013 “Don’t focus on the question, focus on the answer.” – District Attorney H. P. Williams, urging jurors to ignore the leading questions that therapists asked child-witnesses to elicit accusations…
  • Advising parents ‘one of the damnedest things I ever did’ - Feb. 18, 2013 Gov. Jim Hunt was serving his fourth term (1997-2001) when prosecutors dropped the last Little Rascals charges. Although Gary Pearce, Hunt’s longtime adviser and later biographer, doesn’t remember…
  • Police chief deputized McMartin parents - Feb. 15, 2013 From a letter that the police chief in Manhattan Beach, Calif., sent to parents of children attending McMartin Preschool after the arrest of Ray Buckey on Sept. 7, 1983:…
  • Ritual-abuse therapists, meet UFO debriefers - Feb. 13, 2013 “Can we say beyond a shadow of a doubt that any day-care operators in the country are innocent? No. Can we say that those who claim they…
  • ‘No abuse until the interviews began….’ - Feb. 11, 2013 “After reading a number of these interviews (of children) in the Wee Care (Kelly Michaels) case, it is difficult to believe that adults charged with the care and protection…
  • McMartin’s prosecutor’s pitch was certainly graphic - Feb. 8, 2013 “Your honor, ladies and gentlemen, this is a case about trust and betrayal of trust... trust placed in the hands of Ray Buckey and Peggy Buckey.  Parents…
  • ‘Long history of panic’ extended to day-care cases - Feb. 6, 2013 “Panic provides a rationale for action, sometimes overreaction or even manipulation. As such, it is the subject of heated accusation and denial that can create a swirl…
  • Junior Chandler wasn’t asking for much, but got nothing - Feb. 4, 2013 Junior Chandler, writing from Avery-Mitchell Correctional Center, January 23, 2013: “All of the high profile and high publicity cases in the last 20 years –  nearly every…
  • Beware of parents in search of ‘truth’ - Feb. 1, 2013 “The Little Rascals case serves as a good reminder that parents also are part of the child-savers interest group and have as much, in fact probably more,…
  • By time to testify, children knew their lines - Jan. 30, 2013 “They have been through more dress rehearsals than the cast of ‘Cats.’” – Joe Cheshire, lawyer for Betsy Kelly, protesting the latitude given the prosecution in preparing Little…
  • Edenton’s history was no defense against panic - Jan. 28, 2013 Manhattan Beach, California; Malden, Massachusetts; Christchurch, New Zealand; Maplewood, New Jersey; Sao Paulo, Brazil.... For more than a decade, unfounded allegations of day-care ritual abuse were breaking…
  • When millions believe in alien abduction…. - Jan. 25, 2013 “With regard to recovered memories, ritual abuse charges and multiple personalities, the tide seems to have turned. Courts are continuing to reverse decisions...The Edenton Seven have been…
  • ‘Burying the memory’: Misconception that won’t die - Jan. 23, 2013 “Ritual sex abuse is back. Recently (in 2003) I heard that a conference on the topic was being held for psychotherapists. “It was planned not to critique…
  • Less bonding, less crying, more thinking – why not? - Jan. 21, 2013 “According to advocates (of victim impact statements), they allow victims to personalize the crime and elevate the status of the victim by describing the effect the crime…
  • Grandmother blames ‘Kelly magic’ for outlandish tales - Jan. 18, 2013 ““I am the grandmother of a Little Rascals Day Care victim, and I am greatly disturbed by many responses to ‘Innocence Lost: The Verdict.’ “Wake up out…
  • ‘Subculture’ of therapists blamed ritual abuse - Jan. 16, 2013 “Therapists diagnosing Satanic Ritual Abuse as the cause of their patients’ troubles... often belonged to a subculture within the therapeutic community, where focus on dissociation and multiple…
  • For Junior Chandler, yet another long shot - 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…
  • Oh, to see ourselves as other see us – ouch! - Jan. 11, 2013 “Chris Bean (Bob Kelly’s lawyer until becoming involved as a child-witness parent) told me that when the townspeople first saw the documentary, they thought it was OK…
  • If only reality had offered such vivid details…. - Jan. 9, 2013 “One question that arises from studies on children’s suggestibility is whether they document false memories or merely false reports. Do children really believe that the fictional events…
  • Betsy Kelly: Still innocent, but no longer believing - Jan. 7, 2013 ““When I began this journey almost five years ago, I was a very strong, very optimistic, very believing and very innocent person. As I stand here today,…
  • Piaget experienced reality of false memory - Jan. 4, 2013 “Psychologist Jean Piaget reported that his earliest memory was of his nurse defending him against a potential kidnapper at age two. He distinctly recalled sitting frightened in…
  • Perdue removes one stain, leaves another - Jan. 2, 2013 What a bittersweet moment, reading Gov. Bev Perdue’s statement announcing her pardon of innocence for the Wilmington 10. Surely, for the six surviving defendants, the pardon represents…

2012

2011

  • Nifong had sympathizer in H.P. Williams - Dec. 30, 2011 “As the May 2 (2006) Democratic primary nears, (Duke lacrosse prosecutor Mike) Nifong has gotten an earful from his two opponents.... “ ‘I feel for him; no…
  • Prosecution kept its eye on the (wrong) target - Dec. 28, 2011 “Throughout the trial, prosecuting attorneys (in the Little Rascals case) repeatedly pursued their hunches without an apparent desire to test an alternate theory. This resulted in a…
  • ‘Keep telling the defendants’ story’ - Dec. 26, 2011 “When I saw ‘Innocence Lost’ on PBS, I was outraged. The defendants received a bad deal from the state of North Carolina.... “Thank you for building and…
  • ‘Overwhelming power’ in the worst possible hands - Dec. 23, 2011 “Many appalling results of the recovered-memory movement of the 1970s and ’80s arose from ... unexamined views of memory – occurrences like the false accusations of employees…
  • ‘Is it not plain that people had frightened their children?’ - Dec. 21, 2011 “Is it not plain that the people had frightened their children with so many tales that they could not sleep without dreaming of the devil, and then…
  • Case was boon to DA’s team of therapists - Dec. 19, 2011 “In the Little Rascals case, a handful of therapists were compensated by the state for evaluating and ‘treating’ the child witnesses. But there seemed to be other…
  • ‘Facts in direct conflict with charges by parents’ - Dec. 16, 2011 Alan Rubenstein, who as district attorney refused to prosecute the Breezy Point case, is now a Bucks County Court judge. Unlike H.P. Williams Jr., who was D.A.…
  • For witch hunts, it’s location location location - Dec. 14, 2011 Among the leaders of the Committee for Support of the Edenton Seven was Doug Wiik, whose own Breezy Point Day School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, had just…
  • How one DA refused to yield to madness - Dec. 12, 2011 “(In 1989) when the Breezy Point Day School in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, was subjected to an elaborate skein of charges of satanic and ritualistic sex abuse (District Attorney…
  • Imagining my part of a chat with H.P. Williams Jr. - Dec. 9, 2011 Had former district attorney H.P. Williams Jr. let our conversation drag on beyond 30 seconds on Wednesday, here are some questions I might have asked: – In all the…
  • Ex-D.A. ‘not in a position to talk about it’ - Dec. 7, 2011 H. P. Williams Jr. was district attorney during the Little Rascals trial. He now practices criminal defense law in Elizabeth City. I called to ask whether he had…
  • Professional child abuse: Creating false memories - Dec. 5, 2011 In this (Nov. 29) New York Times analysis of science’s ever-growing skepticism about eyewitness testimony I noticed a familiar name: “One of the earliest and more famous experiments to…
  • How Bill Hart got better at playing dirty - Dec. 2, 2011 “Videotaped interviews made during the early cases (alleging day care ritual sex abuse) show that when children were allowed to speak freely, either they had nothing to…
  • How were defendants so skillful at dressing kids? - Nov. 30, 2011 “You have to start with the matter of probability. What every one of these (day care sex abuse) cases has in common is that no adult observer…
  • Parents ill-prepared to practice psychology - Nov. 28, 2011 “The Little Rascals case offers a trove of testimony illustrating how immersion into the popular psychology of sexual abuse gave parent-experts the terms and concepts to retrospectively…
  • Parents’ gullibility ‘grounded in anxiety’ - Nov. 25, 2011 “In the prototypical witch hunts in Europe and in the Massachusetts colony, the accused were often scapegoats for some calamity – disease, bad harvests, the birth of…
  • Imprisonment ‘without having to prove a thing’ - Nov. 23, 2011 “Finally, after eight years, the Little Rascals case is over. We can consign to history what has to be the most bizarre and disturbing episode in the…
  • Chaplain writes memoir about supporting defendants - Nov. 21, 2011 Raymond Lawrence, the New York City chaplain who founded the Committee for Support of the Edenton Seven, was an attentive and often appalled observer at Bob Kelly’s trial.…
  • Good sense proved no match for gossip - Nov. 18, 2011 “Gossip serves to fill up the vacuum of many people's lives. It adds spice and excitement .... “ ʻI would never have imagined it,ʼ say the neighborhood…
  • Prosecutors couldn’t buy off ‘depraved’ defendants - Nov. 16, 2011 “The Little Rascals defendants never wavered in their contention that the allegations were untrue. Not one testified against the other, even though prosecutors commonly offer leniency to…
  • Anonymous sympathizer gave $750,000 - Nov. 14, 2011 Raymond Lawrence, then director of chaplains for Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, attended Bob Kelly’s trial on several occasions and founded the Committee for Support of…
  • In the beginning, there was a paranoid schizophrenic - Nov. 11, 2011 “The first case to raise alarms about predators in nursery schools was that involving the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California.... In 1983, a woman named Judy…
  • Parents stake claim on ‘years of trauma and persecution’ - Nov. 9, 2011 “Fear recaptured the 9-year-old, much as it had six years ago when last he left Bob Kelly's day care. Lingering fears gripped many of Kelly's victims when…
  • Brent Adams & Associates begins to clean up its act - Nov. 7, 2011 Last week I mentioned a misleading characterization on the website of the Raleigh personal-injury law firm Brent Adams & Associates: “A highly publicized case occurred in coastal North…
  • Prosecutors followed playbook from 16th century - Nov. 4, 2011 “A mere suspicion of witchcraft justifies the immediate arrest and torture of the suspected person.... “A prisoner may be promised immunity or reduced punishment if he accuses…
  • Chapel Hill therapist was nothing if not certain - Nov. 2, 2011 Post on hidden mysteries.org (1995): “Aside from the children and their parents, others are deeply disappointed by the N.C. Supreme Court’s decision not to (overturn) the reversals by the…
  • Brent Adams & Associates, clean up your act - Oct. 31, 2011 “A highly publicized case occurred in coastal North Carolina almost 30 years ago. Making national headlines, the Little Rascals Day Care Center was run by a husband-and-wife…
  • The prosecution’s failures - Oct. 28, 2011 “If the defendants were guilty, the prosecution failed. “If the defendants were innocent, the prosecution failed. “The prosecution failed at everything but taking years from people's lives,…
  • A theory on ‘the seeds of this case’ - Oct. 26, 2011 “Many of the investigators in the Little Rascals case (seem to have been) poised to find allegations of sexual abuse. “The seeds of this case may have…
  • Other victims of the ‘decade of moral panic’ - Oct. 24, 2011 It’s almost obscene to consider the Edenton Seven as lucky, but at least they eventually went free. Mark Montgomery, the Durham appellate lawyer who represented Bob Kelly,…
  • Kelly used hard work to survive hard time - Oct. 21, 2011 How would you handle six years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted? Here’s how Bob Kelly did it: “In jail (in Chowan County before being found guilty) there was nothing…
  • Children showed courage not to ‘remember’ abuse - Oct. 19, 2011 Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2003, social psychologist Carol Tavris noted that: “One mother (in the Little Rascals case) told reporters that it took…
  • N.C. law stacked deck against defendants - Oct. 17, 2011 The two largest ritual-abuse day-care cases – Little Rascals in Edenton and McMartin in California – bore many similarities but McMartin resulted in not a single conviction.…
  • Why we could see another Little Rascals case - Oct. 12, 2011 In the digital age more than ever before, no bad idea ever dies. Consider (neo)Nazism, creationism and vaccine-caused autism. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, ritual sex abuse…
  • Bob Kelly: ‘I had nothing to be ashamed of’ - Oct. 11, 2011 In 1989 Bob Kelly was charged with 100 counts of child molestation. In 1992 he was convicted and sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences. In 1995 his…
  • The John Chancellor Award, 2007 - Nov. 13, 2007 Below are two excerpts from a video made of the 2007 John Chancellor awards ceremony. It was on Nov. 13, 2007 that the award named for longtime…
  • ‘Innocence Lost: The Plea’ - "Innocence Lost: The Plea" was first aired May 27, 1997. In most browsers, the video will load for several seconds, or more depending on download speeds, before being ready to…
  • ‘Innocence Lost: The Verdict, Part Two’ - "Innocence Lost: The Verdict Part Two" was first aired July 21, 1997. In most browsers, the video will load for several seconds, or more depending on download speeds, before being…
  • ‘Innocence Lost: The Verdict, Part One’ - "Innocence Lost: The Verdict, Part One" was first aired July 20, 1993. In most browsers, the video will load for several seconds, or more depending on download speeds, before being…
  • ‘Innocence Lost’ - "Innocence Lost" was first aired May 7, 1991. In most browsers, the video will load for several seconds, or more depending on download speeds, before being ready to play.