Aug. 12, 2013

“To maintain their belief in networks of satanic ritual abuse, the people involved in (the 16th Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference, to be held in Windsor Locks, Conn.) have built up a labyrinth of contorted mental passageways….

“According to the organizers…  when people recant their belief that they were the victims of satanic ritual abuse, the recanting is itself evidence of satanic ritual abuse. They assert that satanic cults insert neurological programs into the minds of their victims. Among these programs, they say, is one that makes therapists who push their patients to talk about ‘repressed memories’ of satanic ritual abuse look stupid….

“Standard academic conferences are open to anyone interested, so that ideas can be challenged. That’s not how things work at the Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference, which excludes members of “unsympathetic organizations” or “secret organizations.”

“How exactly would a conference exclude members of secret organizations?… The instant a member of a secret organization was revealed as a member of a secret organization, the secret organization wouldn’t be a secret any longer, and the person accused of being a member would then become eligible to attend.

“Are there any members of secret organizations that would be willing to attend the Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference, and report back to me what happens there?

“Wait… don’t tell me. That would just ruin the plan. Do it in secret.”

– Adapted from “How Can A Conference Exclude Member Of Secret Organizations?” by F.G. Fitzer at Irregular Times (July 2, 2013)

Not surprisingly, the weekend conference was a project of S.M.A.R.T., and the top-billed speaker was Judy “Twenty-two Faces” Byington.

Jan. 3, 2015

“Lurid tales of children being sexually abused, of animals being ritually slaughtered and babies being bred for sacrifice, in bizarre black magic ceremonies by cults of devil-worshipping Satanists first surfaced in America in the early 1980s. The allegations of what became known as Satanic ritual abuse soon spread to Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s….

“As early as 1994 a UK government-funded investigation concluded there was no evidence Satanic ritual abuse existed. Yet despite the continuing absence of evidence, anywhere in the world, a minority of child care professionals including police officers and social workers, and adult psychotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists persist in the belief that Satanic ritual abuse exists….”

– From a synopsis of remarks by Rosie Waterhouse, a journalist and academic who has been the foremost investigator of supposed “satanic ritual abuse” in Great Britain for the past 24 years

If my Google News feed is any measure, however anecdotal, such British claims may now outnumber those from the States. I asked Dr. Waterhouse to expound:

“There is a hard core of ‘believers’ who continue to spread the myth and very alarmingly seem to have influence among authorities and the media….

“The whole culture now about allegations of child sex abuse – from Satanic to dozens of police and official investigations and inquiries into non-Satanic ‘historic’ allegations, including against high-profile people including celebs and politicians – has become hysterical….

“Setting aside the Satanic abuse allegations – which I believe to be the most spurious, because as far as I am aware there has never been produced any physical, forensic, corroborating evidence, anywhere in the world – the historic non-Satanic allegations which have gone to trial have resulted in some convictions and some acquittals. Of other allegations which have not yet come to court, some may be true. Others I sense are the product of trawls for alleged survivors and witnesses to come forward, often with the prospect of compensation, and are false….

“The tidal wave of allegations is overwhelming. I really am depressed by it all.”

July 4, 2012

“The state has done me wrong and imprisoned me for over six years,” Bob Kelly said in 1995 after his conviction was overturned and prosecutors were deciding whether to try him again.

“They want me to take a plea so they can save face. It will never happen.”

Oh, how the prosecution dreamed of at least one of the Edenton Seven rolling over, pointing a finger at a fellow defendant.

Never happened, despite their being held under vague charges for endless months – and later offered every inducement short of a trip to Disney World.

Even when Betsy Kelly and Scott Privott took pleas to reduce their prison time, they continued to insist on their innocence.

There’s painfully little to admire in the story of the Little Rascals case, but the defendants’ strength under pressure was extraordinary.

Aug. 17, 2014

“I’m not comfortable commenting on any of them at this point in time.”

– Lael Rubin, formerly the lead prosecutor in the McMartin Preschool case, declining to say whether she still thinks the defendants were guilty

 That’s not the only eyebrow-raiser in this recent 30-years-after piece by a Los Angeles TV station.

Rubin contends that “The strongest evidence, the physical evidence, the medical evidence, I think was very significant.” But Kevin Cody, who logged more hours in the courtroom than any other journalist, confirms my impression that the prosecution actually produced “zero medical evidence of abuse.”

Finally, Rubin credits the McMartin case with improvements in the interviewing of children: “The criminal justice system, interviewers and police, law enforcement are much more concerned about eliciting information from children, as opposed to giving them clues.”

This is disingenuous. Like John E. B. Myers, Kee MacFarlane  and Sylvia Gillotte – Rubin tips her hat to progress but refuses to take the logical next step: admitting the injustices issuing from those McMartin-style interrogations.