Oct. 9, 2013

“We are a society that, every 50 years or so, is afflicted by some paroxysm of virtue – an orgy of self-cleansing through which evil of one kind or another is cast out.   From the witch-hunts of  Salem to the communist hunts of the McCarthy era to the current shrill fixation on child abuse, there runs a common thread of moral hysteria.

“After the McCarthy era, people would ask: But how could it have happened?  How could the presumption of innocence have been abandoned wholesale? How did large and powerful institutions acquiesce as congressional investigators ran roughshod over civil liberties – all in the name of a war on communists?  How was it possible to believe that subversives lurked behind every library door, in every radio station, that every two-bit actor who had belonged to the wrong political organization posed a threat to the nation’s security?

“Years from now people doubtless will ask the same questions about our present era – a time when the most improbable charges of abuse find believers; when it is enough only to be accused by anonymous sources to be hauled off by investigators; a time when the hunt for child abusers has become a national pathology.”

– From “From the Mouths of Babes to a Jail Cell” by Dorothy Rabinowitz (Harper’s Magazine, May 1990)

May 4, 2018

“Only a pedophile would attempt to justify other pedophiles. If you didn’t follow the case in the news at the time or attend the trial,
how do you know they’re innocent? The fact is you don’t and are just saying they are to brush the incident under the rug.
“You should be investigated yourself.”

Sept. 24, 2012

The February 2012 special issue of the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse is devoted entirely to “Contested Issues in the Evaluation of Child Sexual Abuse Allegations.”

Ritual-abuse holdouts Kathleen Coulborn Faller and Mark D. Everson use the issue to vigorously push back against calls for greater diagnostic skepticism.

The object of their displeasure is “The Evaluation of Child Sexual Abuse Allegations: A Comprehensive Guide to Assessment and Testimony” (2009), edited by the late Kathryn Kuehnle and Mary Connell. Contributors to the Kuehnle-Connell volume advocate more reliance on forensic science and less on “unverified methods or conjecture” of the kind that enabled prosecution of the Edenton Seven. By contrast, Everson and Faller can be counted on to stretch the bounds of prosecution-worthy evidence, from finding “clinical usefulness” in anatomical dolls to granting universal credibility to child-witnesses.

From Everson’s response in the journal:

“Many critics of current forensic practice (emphasize) specificity over sensitivity…. Specificity (minimizing inclusion of false cases) and sensitivity (maximizing inclusion of true cases) are counterbalancing indices of decision accuracy. Favoring specificity over sensitivity means that overdiagnosing (child sexual abuse) is considered a more serious concern than failing to substantiate true cases of abuse….”

Yes, I’ll admit it: I consider the perils of overdiagnosis – putting innocent people in prison – much worse than those of underdiagnosis – letting a possible abuser go free, at least temporarily. However much Everson and Faller might wish otherwise, our system of justice does stipulate “reasonable doubt.”

March 24, 2014

As described in Richard Noll’s “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil,” the 7th annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, held in Chicago in November 1990, proved to be a turning point in mainline psychiatry’s attitude toward “satanic ritual abuse” and the multiple personalities it supposedly spawned.

It was also notable for the involvement of perhaps the country’s most celebrated believer in SRA.

“A large hotel ballroom (was) filled with most of the more than 700 conference attendees,” Noll recalled. “Television crews were on hand…. So was Gloria Steinem….

“(Anthropologist Sherrill) Mulhern and I were strident in our outright rejection of the veracity of SRA claims….

“Steinem approached me after my talk and suggested materials to read which she felt would help me change my opinion of SRA accounts….”

Not only had Steinem been using Ms. magazine to promote claims of ritual abuse, MPD and repressed memory, but also – just months before the Chicago conference – she had underwritten an archeological search for the imaginary “McMartin tunnels.”

I asked Noll what else he remembered about their encounter.

“She came up to me while I was still sitting up on stage and hundreds of people were still milling around.  I didn’t recognize her at first until I stared down at her name tag, then she rolled her eyes and made a face that indicated, ‘Yeah, it’s me . . . .’

“She wrote down a couple of titles that I frankly do not remember….You know, for years I saved that piece of paper she wrote on.”

As far as I can tell, Steinem has never removed her name from the very long list of unapologetic SRA believers.  But who knows – maybe it’s a position she will want to reexamine as an octogenarian.