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.”

June 4, 2012

“Drawing upon clinical experience and research, Faller… asserted that false allegations are quite rare and pointed out that children have little motivation for making a false accusation, but offenders have considerable motivation for persuading professionals that children are either lying, mistaken, or crazy.”

– From “Interviewing Children About Sexual Abuse: Controversies and Best Practice” by Kathleen Coulborn Faller (2007)

Yes, that Kathleen Coulborn Faller, whose stubborn belief in day-care ritual abuse was expressed four years earlier in “Understanding and Assessing Child Sexual Maltreatment.”

Although “Interviewing Children…” isn’t specific to ritual abuse cases, Dr. Faller’s casual dismissal of false allegations echoes the “Believe the Children” mantra of that era.

So much wrongheadedness she manages to pack into a single sentence:

■ “Drawing upon clinical experience and research, Faller… asserted that false allegations are quite rare… ” Here she cites not only her own anecdotal impressions, but also the profoundly misguided research conducted during the height of the abuse mania.

■ “… and pointed out that children have little motivation for making a false accusation…” In fact, children who have been coaxed, threatened and worn down have every motivation to please their interrogators.

■ “… but offenders have considerable motivation for persuading professionals that children are either lying, mistaken, or crazy.” Did it occur to Dr. Faller that offenders have not a bit more such motivation than innocent defendants?

■ ■ ■

Ritual abuse: the creationism of social science?

Feb. 28, 2014

As noted by Gary Greenberg, Richard Noll’s disappeared history of psychiatry and satanic ritual abuse “singles out two psychiatrists – Bennett Braun and Richard Kluft – who were instrumental in giving legitimacy to the SRA accounts. They helped change the DSM to make Multiple Personality Disorder (thought to be caused by the abuse) seem more common, they started the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, and they founded a journal called Dissociation….”

If the SRA era was psychiatry’s Wild West, then Braun and Kluft were… who? Butch and Sundance? Or Frank and Jesse?

In “Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory” (1995) philosopher Ian Hacking pointed out an editorial in Dissociation in which Kluft “pleaded for moderation, but…  acknowledged that powerful emotions were at work. He also raised the stakes by printing a comparison that I find rather odious. He noted that one party refers to Nazis and the Holocaust, asking, ‘Should he or she be silent, emulating the “good Germans” who did not speak out about the atrocities in their midst, and by his or her silence become a facilitator?’”

Despite such overheated comparisons, and his ludicrous estimates of an epidemic of  “multiples,” Kluft at least claimed “moderation”  – not so Braun, whose excesses in patient treatment led to suspension of his Illinois medical license, closure of his hospital MPD unit and at least four out-of-court settlements, one for $10.6 million.

Today he practices in obscurity, while Kluft concentrates on stifling publication of incriminating journal articles.

July 20, 2012

… Little Rascals parents were caught up in a frenzy of panic and misinformation.

… Ill-prepared therapists served prosecutors, not their patients.

… In their zeal for convictions, prosecutors behaved cruelly and unethically.

… 20th century North Carolina never saw a more sweeping injustice.

… Bob and Betsy Kelly, Dawn Wilson, Shelley Stone, Robin Byrum, Darlene Harris and Scott Privott deserve full and unequivocal exoneration.