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 who will testify will tell you… they didn’t ask about activities that were going on at the preschool. They didn’t piece together the clues they were getting from their children. These parents will tell you they now understand the importance of listening. The case contains 100 felony counts of Section 288-A and B, and one count of conspiracy….

“Betrayal! These innocent children placed their trust in these two teachers and the teachers betrayed them…. One mother observed her two daughters performing oral copulation on each other. Another mother saw a sore rectum in her child. She will tell you she did not want to go to school, did not want to sit on her father’s lap and that she ran through the house singing, ‘What you see is what you are/ You’re a naked movie star.’

“One mother will tell you that she saw her daughter masturbating with a wooden pole. One mother will tell you that her children had nightmares.  One mother will tell you that her child had a rectal fissure. Another mother will tell you she saw bloody stools when her child went to the bathroom.  Then, the people will ask you to bring back verdicts on all 100 counts….”

– From Deputy District Attorney Lael Rubin’s opening statement in the McMartin Preschool ritual-abuse case

After the jury acquitted the Buckeys on 52 counts and deadlocked on 13 counts, Rubin complained that “They were lucky. I just hope to God that years from now we don’t hear about Ray Buckey molesting children…. I don’t think I would do anything different.”

Rubin seems to have been almost as graceless a loser as Nancy Lamb, doesn’t she? Almost.

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 skin, to dance with the skulls of dead babies and to sexually abuse young children. But the (satanic ritual) cult doesn’t exist. The claims are, according to a High Court Judge, ‘baseless’ and those who have sought to perpetrate them are ‘evil’….

“Why, after a police inquiry and a family court judgment which unequivocally rubbished the notion of satanic abuse in Hampstead, are the allegations still proliferating on the Internet and being spread all over the world? We hear from the supposed cult members who have had their personal details and photographs published online and received death threats. And we ask about the welfare of the two children at the centre of it all who were coerced into fabricating the fantastical story….”

– From “The Satanic Cult That Wasn’t” by Melanie Abbott on BBC Radio (April 23)

This half hour of BBC coverage skillfully demolishes every iota of the Hampstead claims, but of course facts aren’t what engage the eagerly gullible. Since video of the 8- and 9-year-old siblings telling their concocted horror stories was uploaded onto YouTube, it has been watched more than 4 million times.

April 16, 2012

“At the beginning of each ritual-abuse case, the children had been eminently reliable, but what they communicated was that they had not been molested by satanists. Indeed, it was only after an investigation started, after intense and relentless insistence by adults, that youngsters produced criminal charges.

“By then, their utterances had nothing to do with their own feelings or experiences. Rather, what came from the mouths of babes were juvenile renderings of grownups’ anxieties.”

– From “Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a  Modern American
Witch Hunt” by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker (1995)

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, these two most recently:

Oct. 2: “It was no ‘technicality’ that led the North Carolina Court of Appeals to overturn the conviction of Bob Kelly (and of Dawn Wilson). The court focused on three glaring reversible errors in Kelly’s trial and implied it could have cited many more had that been needed. You can read the decision here.

“Little Rascals was only one of a wave of ‘ritual abuse’ day-care prosecutions during the ’80s and ’90s – virtually all of them based on hysteria rather than facts. You can read more here.

“Thank God, ‘Frontline’ put a national spotlight on the shameful abuse H.P. Williams, Bill Hart and Nancy Lamb – and their team of ill-trained therapists – were inflicting on the Edenton Seven, but the miscarriage of justice was clear even without it.”

Oct. 12: “Unfortunately, the most salient example of Nancy Lamb’s ‘ability to think for herself’ was her irrational, hysterical, unprofessional prosecution of the Little Rascals Day Care case. It would be easier to forgive her role in perpetuating the myth of ‘satanic ritual abuse’ in day cares were she finally able to admit her mistake and to apologize for crushing the lives of seven innocent defendants.”

After the death of District Attorney Frank Parrish, Gov. McCrory gave Lamb a 60-day appointment as interim DA. He is now deciding who should complete Parrish’s term. Next election for DA will be in November 2014.