Feb. 20, 2012

Cynthia Brown, medical director of the Mountain Child Medical Evaluation Program at Mission Children’s Hospital in Asheville, was among the first pediatricians credentialed in the subspecialty of child abuse. I asked her to summarize current medical opinion on ritual-abuse day-care cases. Here are excerpts of her response:

“One criticism common to the day-care cases in the ’80s was the inadequate interviewing process used for those children. Some interviewers reportedly made assumptions that abuse had occurred and used leading questions. As a result of these cases, major changes have been made in interviewing protocols. Interviewers go through extensive training and are expected to participate in peer review to assure they are using the protocols correctly.

“In our clinic we meet with the investigators (DSS and law enforcement) and review the child’s initial disclosure….

“We discuss alternative hypotheses….: Could the child have witnessed adult sexual activity accidentally, or through videos or computers? Could the child have been coached? Has the child been inadvertently contaminated by questions asked by a panicked parent?….

“The interview is videorecorded for review by the investigators. It also allows us to evaluate the
caliber of the disclosure and the questioning….

“Several years ago, I spoke with someone involved in one of the day-care cases who now believes there was a kernel of truth in the allegation but that it was obscured by contamination and leading interviews.

“One last thing: The FBI has looked into cases where ritualistic satanic abuse was alleged (not all were in day cares) and has never been able to validate these claims.”

pbs.org/wgbh/frontline

Dennis T. Ray

Aug. 19, 2016

The jury is empaneled in Farmville, N.C., where Bob Kelly’s trial has been moved because of pretrial publicity in Edenton.

Dennis T. Ray would turn out to be a major mischief-maker both inside and outside the jury room. Ray read aloud from a contraband Redbook article on how to identify child molesters,  disobeyed the court’s instruction not to visit the alleged crime scenes, reported that a jailhouse snitch had shared personal knowledge of Kelly’s guilt and displayed a supposed “magic key” referred to by several child witnesses.

Unfortunately, Judge Marsh McLelland told defense attorneys he didn’t consider Ray’s rogue behavior – or that of a second juror, who dramatically revealed during deliberations that he himself had been abused as a child – to be a “tremendous problem.”

At least three jurors would later express deep doubts about the guilty verdict.

Roswell Streeter, at 28 the youngest juror, would write:

“I’ll say this to the last day of my life, that the evidence that came through the courtroom did not prove that Bob Kelly committed any kind of sex abuse.” He told “Frontline” he had felt intimidated and confused.

Mary Nichols was suffering from advanced leukemia,  and Marvin Shackelford had suffered two heart attacks. Both acknowledged afterward that worries about their health had moved them to vote guilty simply to cut short deliberations and go home. It had been nine months since the trial began.

uclan.ac.uk

Prof. Andy Bilson

June 5, 2016

“One in five of all children born in a single year in England was referred to social services before they reached age 5…. Up to 150,000 pre-school children were reported over fears of abuse or neglect, most unnecessarily….

“Researchers (at the University of Central Lancashire) said while public and professional vigilance was welcome, the number of alerts received by social services meant staff were wasting their time on innocent families, and making it harder to find the children who are at risk.

“After a series of high profile cases where serious abuse was missed, social workers are under intense pressure… and end up checking up more of the warnings they receive than is necessary, the research suggests.

Lead researcher Professor Andy Bilson said, ‘We have this mantra that says it’s everybody’s job to safeguard children, but what we are doing doesn’t actually safeguard children.”

–  From  “One in five children referred over suspected abuse” at BBC News (May 25)

Not mentioned in the Central Lancashire report is the subcategory of “satanic ritual abuse” – about which the British are similarly prone to false alarm.

March 22, 2014

“Editorial Note: In light of the responses we have received regarding this article by Richard Noll, PhD, that was posted on our website on December 6, 2013, the article has been reposted with a modification. Additionally, we are posting responses from certain of the individuals mentioned in the article and from Dr. Noll in order to leave analysis of the article up to our readers.”

– From “Speak, Memory,” Psychiatric Times’ reposted version of Noll’s “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil.”

As pointed out at 1 boring old man, PT’s belated reposting omits this passage:

“New (American Psychiatric Association) work groups for the preparation of DSM-IV were formed. Not surprisingly, none of the former members of the DSM-III-R Advisory Committee on Dissociate Disorders was invited to be on the work group for the dissociative disorders.”

Prominent among those uninvitees, of course, were Dr. Richard Kluft and Dr. Bennett Braun, both of whom broke their silence to accept PT’s offer of space to swat back at Noll. Also responding: Dr. David Spiegel, recently described as “the most influential man responsible” for the inclusion of DID/MPD in DSM-V.

And now Noll has gently rebutted – for the most part, refuted – the SRA apologists’ noisy rebuttals.

It’s been 25 years since the fever-breaking Chicago conference – plus another three months while Psychiatric Times searched its soul and its appetite for litigation. Does the vigorous exchange on the PT site mark the beginning of psychiatry’s overdue reexamination of its SRA era?

If so, that discussion must address not only the causes of the moral panic but also its effects: that is, the wrongful and brutal prosecution of hundreds of innocent defendants such as the Edenton Seven – a subject Kluft, Braun and Spiegel managed to mention not at all in their responses. Are they really so oblivious?