Jan. 4, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

Sept. 10, 2012

“You saw those initial documentaries, you make a choice: Am I going to watch the thing and go ‘Wow, that’s really horrible,’ and go out and get a milkshake?”

– Johnny Depp, tracing the roots of his advocacy for the West Memphis Three

That could be me talking – except that the eye-opening documentaries for me were “Innocence Lost” rather than “Paradise Lost,” that I’m a retired newspaperman rather than a Hollywood actor and – most crucial – that I went out for a figurative two-decade milkshake run rather than responding immediately to the outrage I was seeing on screen. Hats off to WM3 advocates such as Depp, who moved quickly to challenge prosecutors every bit as recalcitrant as those in North Carolina.

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 March. Two children were coerced by their mother and her boyfriend into alleging horrendous sexual abuse and murder of babies by their father and others in a secret satanic cult…. ‘There was no satanic or other cult at which babies were murdered and children sexually abused,’ the judge said. The claims were ‘fabricated’ and ‘baseless.’

“But the total lack of physical evidence does not deter the compensation chasers. At a child abuse training day in London last week run by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, delegates were told that satanic abuse was a reality. Barrister Lee Moore – a self-proclaimed satanic abuse survivor – and solicitor Peter Garsden, who are respectively the past and current president of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers, ‘kept going on about satanic ritual abuse,’ according to a barrister who was present.

“She went on: ‘Peter Garsden told the assembled band of lawyers that SRA was prevalent and would be accepted as such, “given time.” The point is that at a conference of ‘cutting-edge’ personal injury lawyers specialising in child abuse, only one delegate was prepared to challenge these SRA proponents.’ ”

– From “Satanic Panic Ritual Defence” by Rosie Waterhouse in Private Eye (June 26) – hat tip, British False Memory Society

One difference on our side of the pond: The “compensation chasers” in American ritual abuse cases were much less likely to be lawyers than therapists.

April 30, 2012

“Prosecutors are reviewing pornographic videotapes seized in Montana…. A man identified as Willard Scott Privott appears wearing a pirate costume in a boat full of children, according to affidavits….

“Several children have testified (during Bob Kelly’s trial) that they were taken on boat trips. One 6-year-old boy testified that the boat was driven by a pirate….

“Bill Hart, an assistant attorney general prosecuting the case, said State Bureau of Investigation agents and Edenton Police Officer Brenda Toppin are reviewing the confiscated material….”

– From an Associated Press dispatch, Nov. 30, 1991

Needless to say, the Montana tape seizure was quickly revealed as a fool’s errand.

But how excited the prosecutors must have been by the prospect of finally finding actual evidence to support their multiplicity of charges!

I e-mailed the Montana stories to Scott Privott, who said that until now he had only heard word-of-mouth accounts.

He remembered Dorene Anna Stearns and David Lee Etheridge as no more than acquaintances in Edenton. “As far as her tales of seeing me in a movie, I wonder how even the state could believe that…. If a movie did exist and she saw it in ’87, why didn’t she report it to authorities back then?”