Feb. 13, 2015

“Psychologists terminated a study (of 70 students at a Canadian university) that showed the ease of implanting false memories of committing terrible, violent crimes in the recent past – because some subjects couldn’t be convinced that they hadn’t committed the crime after they were told the truth.”

– From “Police interrogation techniques generate false memories of committing crimes” by Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing (Feb. 9)

More on this recent study from Sarah Barmak at the Toronto Star:

“If subjects said they couldn’t remember the false event, questioners reassured them they would be able to retrieve their ‘lost memories’ if they tried hard enough. If they began to ‘remember,’ experimenters asked for more detail. Do you recall any images? How did you feel? Visualize what it might have been like, they said, and the memory will come back to you….”

“Lost memories,” of course, were the fool’s gold mined so relentlessly by the prosecution therapists in the Little Rascals Day Care case. Remarkably, it took only three 40-minute sessions for the Canadian researchers to corrupt the memories of fully 70 percent of their college-age subjects – the Little Rascals children required months of implantation!

Oct. 14, 2014

“(Bob) Kelly’s father-in-law, Warren Twiddy, says that blacks are the only people in Edenton who still treat him like a human being.

“One black woman, calling the whole episode a Salem witch hunt, told me she was so ashamed she had removed the Edenton license plates from her car.”

– From “Nursery witch hunt” by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Sunday Telegraph of London (Aug. 3, 1993)

March 16, 2012

“The appeals court called a maneuver (in Dawn Wilson’s trial) by the chief special prosecutor, Bill Hart, ‘grossly improper.’

“The judges found that Hart had tried to impugn the reputation of Wilson by placing in the courtroom audience two people whose presence was likely to intimidate Wilson.

“Hart never called the pair as witnesses, but… by his actions had implied to Wilson that he intended to use the two people against her in a way that might result in self-incrimination.”

– From the (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot, May 3, 1995

In 1995 the N.C. Court of Appeals overturned her conviction. And then of course the prosecutors rushed to apologize to Dawn Wilson for their disgraceful vilification.

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.