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Juleyka Lantigua-Williams

May 31, 2016

“A consensus is building around the need to seriously rethink the role of the prosecutor in the administration of justice. Power dynamics are unbalanced, sentencing guidelines are outdated, and old-fashioned human biases persist. And prosecutors – singularly independent agents in a justice system roiling in turmoil – have been facing growing criticism and public distrust for some time, and that disapproval is about to hit a tipping point.

“It’s time to curtail the power long held by these officers of the court as they promote justice, ensure fairness, and enhance public safety.”

– From “Are Prosecutors the Key to Justice Reform?” by Juleyka Lantigua-Williams in the Atlantic (May 18)

Is the North Carolina Bar ready to take the first step toward holding prosecutors accountable?

March 7, 2013

Anthony Oberschall’s “Why False Beliefs Prevail: the Little Rascals Child Sex Abuse Prosecutions” appeared in “Essays in Honor of Raymond Boudon” (2000).

Most saliently, the UNC sociologist argues that “hysteria” and “moral panic” are inadequate to describe what happened in Edenton. Rather, he sees the town – and the Little Rascals defendants – as victims of the purveyors of “pseudoscience”:

“When child sexual abuse became a national issue, the medical profession, academic psychology and social science were just starting to study it scientifically…. The legal profession lacked experience with trial testimony of pre-schoolers and admission of hearsay testimony by parents and therapists….Meanwhile thousands of child sex abuse allegations had to be dealt with.

“In the absence of proven knowledge, a child sex abuse industry of self-appointed ‘experts’ based on pseudo-science filled the demand for training and informing child protection service workers, social workers, police investigators, prosecutors, therapists and others…. They were convinced they were saving America’s children, even though their methods and knowledge were contrary to science and to common sense. In Edenton, the prosecution and the investigators relentlessly labored to supplant common sense with false beliefs based on pseudo-science, (and) they succeeded….”

Working with UNC journalism student David Loomis on his master’s thesis detailing news coverage of the case, Oberschall “tried to survey Edenton households by mail (picked names at random from a phone book), but got less than a 10 percent return rate. It was obvious people there didn’t want anything to do with an outsider, a scholar.”

Rebuffed, Oberschall drove to Edenton himself and conducted perhaps a dozen interviews, which he made use of both in “Why False Beliefs Prevail” and in this more detailed draft working paper from 2010.

Dec. 3, 2014

“I was in graduate school in Southern California 30 years ago when the McMartin Preschool scandal erupted, featuring tales of Satanic rituals, underground tunnels, group sex with animals and children, and various acrobatic acts that would challenge Cirque du Soleil, all believed credulously by the media and California prosecutors….

“There was something so literally incredible about (such) ‘Satanic ritual abuse’ cults that serious doubts and questions should have been raised right at the outset.

“Some hard questions are starting to be asked about the latest sequel to the Salem witch trials – the college campus ‘rape culture’ hysteria…. The Rolling Stone story about an especially brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia is provoking considerable backlash– with a few critics suggesting the entire story might be a hoax ….

“It took years for the ‘Satanic child abuse crisis’ to collapse, and several months for the Duke lacrosse scandal to turn around. What is interesting about the UVa story is how quickly it is facing credible challenge….”

– From “The Spirit of Salem Lives On” by Steven Hayward at powerlineblog.com (Dec. 2)

Dec. 22, 2014

““We evangelical Christians by definition live by our own narrative of creation, fall, and redemption. We believe in good and evil. That is why, as a group, we might be vulnerable to other meta-narratives – after all, if you believe in one, it’s easier to accept a second and a third.

“One example: in the 1980s and 1990s too many of us accepted the story of widespread Satanic Ritual Abuse, despite the fact that the evidence could not be found, nor could anyone name the thousands of missing children who supposedly had been sacrificed to the devil.”

– From “ ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ has its 50th Anniversary” by Gary Shogren at Open Our Eyes, Lord!

Although “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” by Richard Hofstadter was first published in response to Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign, it continues to offer insights into the attraction of a wide range of conspiracy theories.