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 in Edenton. It’s full of witches…..’

“ ‘Dear Mayor: I suppose since lynching Negroes is verboten, the next best thing is for Southerners to cannibalize each other….’

“John Dowd, Edenton’s mayor at the time, is trying to correct some of the damage done to the town’s reputation….

“Many reporters have wanted to know: ‘Will Edenton be able to heal from this?’ The question is a little too touchy-feely for some residents, too intimate and much too insincere. Dowd replies, ‘Hell, we’ve recovered from the Civil War, from World War II.’ Then, dryly: ‘Yeah, I think we’ll recover from this.’ ”

– From “Little Town of Horrors” by Kathy Dobie in McCall’s (June 1992)

The Civil War, World War II and the Little Rascals Day Care case? The mayor’s resolve was apparent, if not his logic – but that was true for the whole case, wasn’t it?

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 Andrew Junior Chandler for an imaginary crime: 324.

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 the Edenton Seven.

This passage is excerpted from a memoir I asked him to write for littlerascalsdaycare.org:

“One Monday morning on arriving at my office I noted a special delivery overnight package in my mail pile. Just as I walked in, my secretary buzzed me to say I had a long distance call asking whether I had opened the package. I told her to get the number and I would call back.

“Instead, the caller said he would call back. I assumed it was the kind of crank call which often comes to chaplains.

“When I finally turned to the special delivery package, I found inside cashier’s checks made out to various defendants in an amount of about $450,000.

“Finally the donor called back, but he didn’t want his name disclosed to the secretary or anyone else. He felt the case was a witch hunt, and he was in solidarity with the accused. He was a businessman who had made a fortune in the emerging computer industry. A year later he gave another $300,000.

“When I flew to Ohio to meet him, he told me he had a terminal illness, and some years later he died. He was a humble, unassuming man. I was in awe of his sensitivity and generosity.”

Nov. 30, 2012

In 1993 (January-February issue), the journal Child Abuse & Neglect published “Sexual Abuse of Children in Day Care Centers” by Susan J. Kelley, Renee Brant and Jill Waterman. This is from the article’s abstract:

“Sexual abuse of children in day care center settings has received considerable attention in the past decade. The nature and extent of allegations of sexual abuse in day care poses unique challenges to clinicians. Cases of sexual abuse in day care typically involve multiple victims and multiple perpetrators, and use of extreme threats to prevent disclosure….”

The article’s misinformation has spread far beyond its original readership. Google Scholar shows “Sexual Abuse of Children in Day Care Centers” to have been cited in other publications no fewer than 36 times, as recently as this year.

I asked Child Abuse & Neglect to publish a retraction.

I received this response from editor-in-chief David A. Wolfe, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Toronto:

“The journal only retracts papers if there are significant errors or other problems, such as plagiarism, health risks etc. Otherwise, it is up to the scientific community to decide when new knowledge or findings would usurp those previously published. This is the case in many areas of research, whereby older (sometimes well-accepted) findings are no longer given credence due to newer findings. It is not feasible or appropriate to remove the previous findings, as that is how science progresses.

“Unless you are aware of specific errors in the 1993 data, rather than drawing different conclusions, the journal would not take any further action.

“I trust this resolves your concerns.”

Well, no, actually it doesn’t. This is what I wrote back to Dr. Wolfe:

“The problem with ‘Sexual Abuse of Children in Day Care Centers’ is not a matter of ‘different conclusions’ being drawn from the data. The entire concept of the article is false: There was never any ‘multiple victim, multiple offender’ sexual abuse in day cares, any more than there was witchcraft in Salem. As has been thoroughly documented by social scientists such as Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck, and eventually validated in the legal system, all these ritual-abuse cases resulted from a moral panic.

“This passage is from the Retraction Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics: ‘Retraction is a mechanism for correcting the literature and alerting readers to publications that contain such seriously flawed or erroneous data that their findings and conclusions cannot be relied upon. Unreliable data may result from honest error or from research misconduct.’

“And this is from Tom Reller (vice president of global public relations at publisher Elsevier): ‘Our journals, and academia overall, do better when shining a light on bad actors and bad science.’ ”….

“This is my concern, not yours, but ‘bad science’ fostered numerous convictions in Little Rascals, McMartin and other day care prosecutions of the 1980s and early 1990s. A retraction in a journal such as yours would be a significant step toward obtaining true exoneration for these defendants.”

No response from Dr. Wolfe. Maybe he’s reconsidering?