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 interview with parents of 42 (of those) children….

“(In 1984 children at West Point day care) reported that the perpetrators wore masks and black robes. Pencils and fingers penetrated vaginas and rectums. Children were threatened with harm to themselves and their parents if they told that they witnessed the abuse of other children….

“After extensive investigation, the federal prosecutor declined to bring the case to trial due to the young ages of the children and the fragility of their memories….

“One lingering source of distress for the parents was that two of the criminal cases (Presidio and West Point) fell apart. It seemed to them as if reporting the abuse did not matter. This also added to the mystery of conspiracy that surrounded these two cases….”

– From “Children’s Adjustment 15 Years After Daycare Abuse” by Ann Wolbert Burgess and Carol R. Hartman (Journal of Forensic Nursing, Summer 2005)

Although Burgess’s career-making wrongheadedness isn’t news, I was still surprised to find her clinging to the ritual abuse hoax as recently as 2005. Prosecutors’ cases “fell apart”? – must be a “conspiracy”!

But it was Burgess, after all, whose conclusion that children in the West Point case had been ritually abused (with the obligatory “masks and black robes”) compelled the government to settle a civil suit by parents for $2.7 million. To acknowledge her error would require quite an “Oops!” wouldn’t it?

Footnote: I’ve got a previous commitment, but if you’re in Nashua, N.H., today, you can see Burgess honored by the American Psychiatric Nurses Association.

April 18, 2012

“One of the more surprising aspects of this (Little Rascals) case…. was that none of the parents… had observed anything that caused them to suspect their children were being abused or tortured during the period of the alleged abuses; there were no reports of unusual incidents from their children.

“Nor did the parents detect anything unusual when, without notice, they dropped in early to pick up their children from the day care (e.g., to take them to a doctor’s appointment).

“It was only after allegations began to grow that parents also began to remember events or behaviors consistent with their child being abused.”

– From “Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s
Testimony” by Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck (1995)

Prosecutor Nancy Lamb gave the Charlotte Observer her response to “Jeopardy in the Courtroom”: “It’s unfortunate that these two people who have a good reputation – or at least Ceci did – have written this. It’s garbage.”

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) clergy CSA scandal should read Ross Cheit’s 2014 book ‘Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children’….

– From “ ‘Spotlight’ Gets A Lot Right” by Colleen Friend in the Chronicle of Social Change (Nov. 15)

Whoa.

The clergy sex abuse scandal at the center of the just-released newsroom drama “Spotlight” had nothing to do with the “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic so earnestly if unpersuasively denied by Professor Cheit.

Clergy abuse was all too real, and the evidence proved undeniable; abuse in day cares was a fantasy produced by undertrained and overreaching therapists. Tragically, the children’s accounts that were “discredited” were their original denials that they had experienced abuse.

Worth noting: Dr. Friend is former director of Stuart House in Santa Monica, Calif., a child abuse treatment center opened to accommodate the tidal wave of (mostly imaginary) abuse cases spawned by McMartin.

Jan. 4, 2019

In January 1988 the Memphis Commercial Appeal published a 36-page special section recapping its recent series, “Justice Abused: A 1980s Witch Hunt” by Tom Charlier and Shirley Downing.

“Justice Abused” was the first major news coverage to link “satanic ritual abuse” cases across the country and to
characterize them as a witch hunt.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning criticism of how the news media so often mishandled cases such as McMartin Preschool, David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times credited Charlier and Downing with pointing out “among many other things, the large number of child molestation cases that had resulted in dismissals, acquittals and dropped charges and the startling number of similarities among many of the cases.

Children in both the Memphis and McMartin cases, for example, told of druggings, of animal mutilations, of trips in vans, of bloody rituals, of sacrifices of babies and of being taken on airplanes that resembled those of Federal Express.”

Until now this historically important series has not been available digitally. It is archived in two pieces here and here on our Bookshelf.