Aug. 10, 2015

Since I undertook this blog in 2011, I’ve been waiting for a mass-market book that recalls the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care era with authority, insight and thoroughness.

“We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s” comes pretty darn close to meeting that standard. (I do wish author Richard Beck had addressed the significant post-panic contributions of Richard Noll and Allen Frances.)

I’ll be posting excerpts from the book and later an interview with Beck.

Meanwhile, I’ve been pleased to see the reviews in the news media – so far, all largely appreciative.

 “…This book does a devil of a job correcting… all the lies and self-deceptions, so credulously believed in the 1980s….”

– From “Child Abuse Cases Endure as Lessons in Hysteria” by Mark Oppenheimer in The New York Times (Aug. 6)

“ ‘We Believe the Children’ should serve to remind us of the dangers of the ‘we must believe the victim’ mindset in the case of any criminal offense. A faith-based pursuit of justice can lead to a miscarriage of justice.”

 – From  “What Fueled the Child Sex Abuse Scandal That Never Was?” by Lizzie Crocker at the Daily Beast (Aug. 3)

“ ‘We Believe the Children’ reveals the various combinations of ignorance, venality, arrogance and zealotry that characterized the major players who fueled the moral panic.”

– From “A Very Model Moral Panic” by Carol Tavris in the Wall Street Journal  (Aug. 7)

Here also is a radio interview with Beck and – inevitably – a response from witch-hunt denier Ross Cheit.

Nov. 7, 2012

“Mass hysteria always makes perfect sense when we are trapped in it. It can take decades – or even longer – before the crazed irrationality of a particular episode shows itself for what it was.”

– From “When Mass Hysteria Convicted 5 Teenagers” in The New York Times (October 27)

Thanks to a new documentary by Ken Burns, the Central Park Five – all convicted of a widely publicized 1989 rape and beating – will soon return to the spotlight. According to the Times,
Burns depicts “the forces that led citizens, politicians, the media and the criminal justice system to brush past yawning gaps in the evidence in the case.”

Beyond a shared year on the timeline of wrongful prosecutions, these urban teenagers, black and Hispanic, seem to have borne few similarities to the Edenton Seven. But I could never read  the  words “yawning gaps in evidence” without thinking of a Little Rascals prosecution built almost entirely on the resolutely manipulated, deceitfully paraphrased testimony of children.

Jan. 12, 2016

“There are strong similarities between the confessions taken from accused witches in early modern Europe, the testimony of Satanic ritual abuse taken by modern therapists, and accounts of alien abduction given under hypnosis.

“In each of these narratives, a subject describes horrible sexual transgressions performed on them at the hand of a mysterious other: the thorny penis of the Devil, the bizarre anal insertions of Satanists, and the mysterious probing of aliens.

“The motive behind these sexual acts is never revealed and the existence of the perpetrators is usually in doubt….”

– From “Carnal Knowledge: The Epistemology of Sexual Trauma in Witches’ Sabbaths, Satanic Ritual Abuse, and Alien Abduction Narratives” (abstract) by Joseph Laycock in Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural (2012)

Did prosecutors and therapists even attempt to ascribe any cause or context to the “bizarre anal insertions” common to the day-care allegations? Candles, Magic Markers, burning flower stems?

Did they think such shocking behavior had appeared full blown out of nowhere? On the list of known sexual perversions exactly which box – or boxes! – would they check?

Dec. 28, 2012

Let’s not leave behind “Ritual Abuse: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to Help” without considering Appendix B, “Similarities in the Lives of Ritual Abuse Survivors.”

Author Margaret Smith “asked survivors to note any clues or indicators in their lives that may have suggested they were ritually abused as a child.” She then “organize(d) these responses into meaningful categories.”

Like the symptom charts of psychologist Catherine Gould, these “meaningful categories” strain to make the wildly anecdotal seem scientific.

“Reactions to Objects That Trigger Memories,” for instance, includes not only “Preference for red meat,” but also “Hated read meat. I have been a vegetarians since I was a child.”

“Indicators from Childhood or Adult Behavior” covers both “Threw up a lot” and “Would never allow myself to vomit.”

And just what manner of abuse might be revealed by “clues” such as – I wish I were kidding – “Addicted to book reading”?