July 5, 2015

“In March, A. M. Stroud III, lead prosecutor at trial, wrote a remorseful article in The Shreveport Times, declaring, ‘Glenn Ford was an innocent man,’ taking responsibility for a rush to judgment and arguing for the abolition of the death penalty.

“ ‘I apologize to Glenn Ford for all the misery I have caused him and his family,’ Mr. Stroud wrote. ‘I apologize to the family of (the murder victim) for giving them the false hope of some closure. I apologize to the members of the jury for not having all of the story that should have been disclosed to them. I apologize to the court in not having been more diligent in my duty to ensure that proper disclosures of any exculpatory evidence had been provided to the defense.’

“He concluded: ‘I end with the hope that providence will have more mercy for me than I showed Glenn Ford. But I am also sobered by the realization that I certainly am not deserving of it.’ ”

– From “Glenn Ford, Spared Death Row, Dies at 65” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times (July 2)

By the time Mr. Ford was exonerated and released in 2014, he had served 29 years in Louisiana’s Angola prison. His freedom was short-lived: In less than 16 months he would be dead from lung cancer.

Prosecutor Stroud deserves credit for his humble and agonized apology, however late. His words could just as truthfully have come from the mouths of H.P. Williams, Bill Hart and Nancy Lamb – but of course they haven’t.

July 27, 2012

“It has always intrigued me that, in a culture that is relentlessly self-critical… the pre-school hysteria and witch-hunts of the 1980s and ’90s (have) attracted little, if any, notice among historians and social analysts.

“Which is odd: We moderns like to think that we are exempt from some of the baser instincts of human nature, but hysteria, mob rule, and spectral fears are still very much with us.

“Moreover, in this instance, the American judicial system failed systematically, blighting hundreds of lives: Many more genuinely innocent people went to prison, and for longer terms, than any Communist during the McCarthy era.”

– From “Remember McMartin” by Philip Terzian in the Weekly Standard (Nov. 11, 2011)

Nov. 19, 2012

Crucial to the moral panic was a wave of ill-conceived academic and professional literature.
I asked Molly C. Dougherty, editor of Nursing Research, whether her journal had ever published a retraction of “Parental Stress Response to Sexual Abuse and Ritualistic Abuse of Children in Day-Care Centers” (January/February 1990). As is obvious in the title, Susan J. Kelley’s article embraces and promotes the existence of ritual abuse in day cares.

Dr. Dougherty told me that no retraction had appeared in the past or would appear in the future: “The authors of the article were careful to provide a thorough sample description without including information that linked participants to any specific location or case. Conditions that would lead to a retraction are not present.”

This is from my reply to her:

“Of course you are correct that Susan J. Kelley didn’t say which day-care cases were the basis for ‘Parental Stress Response to Sexual Abuse and Ritualistic Abuse of Children in Day-Care Centers.’ (Fells Acres seems a likely candidate, since it was Kelley’s own improper interviewing of child-witnesses that led to the overturning of convictions in that case.)

“But the problem here is not specific to Fells Acres, McMartin or Little Rascals. The entire article was founded on a false belief: that satanic ritual abuse occurred at even one day care. No such ‘multiple victim, multiple offender’ allegations were ever validated. In case after bizarre case, charges were eventually dropped and guilty verdicts overturned.

“The decade-long moral panic finally collapsed in the early 1990s. Today you will not find a single respected academic or professional willing to give credence to the claims of the ritual abuse era.

“By contrast, this excerpt from Kelley’s abstract demonstrated her unquestioning advocacy:

“ ‘The purpose of this study was to examine the stress responses of parents to the sexual and ritualistic abuse of their children in day-care centers…. Parents of sexually abused children reported significantly more psychological distress than parents of nonabused children, with parents of ritually abused children displaying the most severe psychological distress.’

“Plainly, this article was guilty of what you lament in your (unrelated) September 11 blog post:
“failure to address legitimate alternative views and evidence.” And what better example of the “pseudo-science in the guise of science” criticized by Eileen Gambrill?

“I will leave you with a final question: Does Nursing Research really want to leave this article as its last word on the subject?”

So far, Dr. Dougherty’s answer seems to be yes.

Dec. 16, 2015

On this day 25 years ago: Bonds for Little Rascals employees Robin Byrum and Dawn Wilson are reduced to a still excessive $200,000 – Byrum’s from $500,000, Wilson’s from $880,000.

Byrum will be released four days later, Wilson not for eight weeks.

Because she went to trial and the jury returned a guilty verdict (eventually overturned), Wilson’s story is much better known.

But Byrum suffered her own coercive torture at the hands of prosecutors before charges were dropped in 1996.

Nineteen years old when she was arrested in January 1990, she spent almost a year in jail, leaving her 7-month-old baby in the care of her husband. Had she agreed to testify against Bob Kelly, she could have walked out a free woman – and mother.

In “Innocence Lost: The Plea” (1997), Byrum explained why she had been tempted by but repeatedly refused the prosecutors’ deal:

“…. I would not ever have to be separated from my child again. But then I’d have to live with the rest of my life that I (said I) did something when I didn’t do it.”