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 any knowledge of mental illness or the workings of memory. These specialists believe fervently that many of the difficulties experienced by the people who consult them are due to sexual abuse that, if it isn’t remembered, can be jogged into memory by various recovery techniques.

“For decades, therapists of various kinds have put forward one unproved theory after another to explain personal unhappiness, dissatisfaction or serious psychological dysfunction. Earlier, as (Michael) Yapko points out (in “Suggestions of Abuse: True and False Memories of Childhood Sexual Trauma”), they focused on the ‘inner child,’ the ‘dysfunctional family’ or ‘co-dependency’; now it’s sexual abuse….

“In 1992, Mr. Yapko gathered data from more than 860 therapists across the country about the roles they think suggestion and memory play in therapy, especially in the dredging up of repressed memories of sexual abuse. ‘It is not an exaggeration,’ he concludes, ‘to say that many therapists appear to practice their profession on the basis of sheer myth….’ ”

– From “The Monster In the Mists” by Walter Reich in the New York Times (May 15, 1994)

March 20, 2017

“America saw another record year for the number of prisoners being exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science & Society, University of Michigan Law School, and Michigan State University College of Law.

“For 2016, 166 people were exonerated of crimes and released from prison, 52 of them for murder. Of all the exonerations, 70 cases involved official misconduct of some sort, and in 74 of the cases, convictions came from guilty pleas. And in 94 cases (also a record) it turned out that no actual crime occurred at all. These were mostly drug cases but also some child sex abuse cases. Most famously, the San Antonio Four, four women convicted in 1998 in a fabricated satanic child sex abuse ring scandal, were released in 2016 after it finally became clear the crimes never occurred.”

– From “Decades of exoneration stats show blacks more likely to wrongfully convicted” by Scott Shackford at reason.com (March 7)

Of the Edenton Seven, only Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson, whose convictions were overturned, qualify for the National Registry of Exonerations. As spokesman Ted Koehler told me five years ago, “The Edenton case was a terrible witch hunt. Regretfully, though, [Betsy] Kelly’s and [Scott] Privott’s guilty pleas and the dropped charges against [Robin] Byrum, [Shelley] Stone, and [Darlene] Harris do not fit our definition of an exoneration….”

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 Rascals children to testify (New York Times, Aug. 19, 1991)

Jan. 23, 2012

Last week I visited Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution in Spruce Pine to talk to Junior Chandler, who soon will have served 25 years on charges strikingly similar to those in the Little Rascals case.

Junior, now 54, may well be the last still-imprisoned victim of the ritual-abuse contagion that swept the nation’s day cares in the ’80s and early ’90s.

I’ll be updating his case soon.

In Junior’s former life in the mountain town of Revere, he told me, he was close to his parents, his wife and two boys, his two brothers.

Early on, he and his brothers helped their uncle grow tobacco and corn. Before driving a van for the Madison County Day Care Center, he had worked for the Forest Service, the Department of Transportation and Southern Railroad. At least one job he gave up because it interfered with his softball tournaments and night fishing.

In prison, visits from his family became less frequent, and eventually his wife filed for divorce. “Two life sentences,” Junior says. “She couldn’t wait, you know.” And his sons couldn’t keep watching him aging away in his prison grays.

When his father died in 1997, he attended the funeral in handcuffs. He worries about his mother, who recently suffered a stroke.

He sleeps in a bunk bed in a dorm with 33 other inmates. His assigned janitorial job is cleaning meal trays. For relaxation he plays volleyball and horseshoes, watches Westerns on TV, reads a little. His only write-up was a scuffle not long after he arrived. “It’s learning to walk away and how to carry yourself,” he says.

Of course I was touched by Junior’s deep sadness and resignation. Sometimes I find it too easy to minimize the emotional havoc wrought by incarceration of the guilty – just imagine what it must be like for the innocent.