Aug. 14, 2013

“FARMVILLE – A juror in the trial of Robert F. Kelly Jr. testified Wednesday that it was an ‘amazing coincidence’ that information from a magazine article appeared in his notes about jury deliberations.

“Dennis T. Ray insisted during a hearing on Kelly’s bid for a new trial that he did not use information from a Redbook article about child molestation to evaluate Kelly’s guilt. Ray denied that he compared Kelly to characteristics of a molester listed in the article.

“But defense attorney David Rudolf vigorously attacked Ray’s credibility by referring to notes Ray made during the deliberations. Rudolf cited numerous phrases from the magazine article, such as ‘vast amount of child pornography’ and ‘sex fiend’ which were identical to phrases in Ray’s notes.

“Rudolf, his voice rising, asked Ray whether it was just coincidence that so many phrases from the magazine appeared word-for-word in his notes. Ray replied that ‘it must be’ because jurors did not have the article in the jury room. ‘The only explanation you have for this is that it is an amazing coincidence?’ Rudolf asked. ‘Yes, sir,’ Ray said.

“In another sharp exchange, Rudolf questioned Ray’s contention that he did not describe the article in an interview with a producer for (“Innocence Lost”). Ray said he told her (only) that there were books in the jury room. Rudolf: ‘You are under oath, sir.’ Ray: ‘I do not remember saying that to her. No, sir.’ Rudolf: ‘Did you say it or not? You are under oath.’ Ray: ‘I do not believe that I did.’

“Rudolf then played video tapes of the program that showed Ray describing the article. Ray said after viewing the video that he did not remember it.”

– From “Kelly lawyer attacks juror’s credibility” in the News & Observer (Jan. 20, 1994)

Dennis T. Ray seems to have been quite a loose cannon in the jury room. In addition to the “amazing coincidence” of the Redbook article, Ray also (according to other jurors cited in Bob Kelly’s appellate brief) “made visits to Edenton despite instructions by the trial court not to.

Mr. Ray also claimed to have talked with an inmate at Eastern Correctional Institution. According to Mr. Ray, the inmate, a convicted child molester, claimed to know Bob Kelly, and to have personal knowledge of Mr. Kelly’s guilt. The jurors said that Mr. Ray also displayed some sort of object that he claimed to be a ‘magic key’ referred to by several children.”

Unpersuaded that any of this mischief might have contaminated the jury’s decision-making, Judge Marsh McLelland rejected Bob Kelly’s motion for a new trial.

March 8, 2014

Last of three posts

As I recounted earlier, Dr. Jon Conte expressed a willingness to consider my expanded letter seeking a retraction of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence’s past support of the “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic. So what might have happened after I submitted that October 25 letter that resulted in Conte’s cutting off contact by email or phone?

I suspect the crucial clue lies in his specifying that “We are probably going to invite the authors to respond, and if they choose to do so I will share their responses before we publish your letter or their responses.” Those authors would include Susan J. Kelley (“Stress Responses of Children to Sexual Abuse and Ritualistic Abuse in Day Care Centers,” December 1989) and Barbara Snow (“Ritualistic Child Abuse in a Neighborhood Setting,” December 1990).

Kelley has been oft-recognized at littlerascalsdaycarecase.org, not only for her enthusiastically wrongheaded academic work, but also for her prosecutorial interviewing techniques in the Fells Acres case.

Unlike Kelley, Snow eventually suffered consequences, however small. From the Salt Lake Tribune (February 22, 2008):

“A therapist accused of unprofessional conduct – including imposing false memories on her relatives – entered into an agreement Tuesday with (Utah’s) Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing.

“Barbara Snow is voluntarily being placed on probation, according to a statement from her attorney….

“The disciplinary notice alleged Snow convinced a male relative he was sexually abused by his father. It also contended Snow convinced a female relative she was the victim of satanic abuse and military testing. When state investigators questioned Snow, she allegedly provided made-up notes about those sessions.

“In the agreement, Snow admitted destroying a relative’s computer equipment (with a baseball bat!) and adding two incorrect dates to her psychotherapy notes….

“Snow was involved in the prosecutions of a string of child sex abuse cases in the 1980s. One man she testified against was granted a new hearing after the Utah Supreme Court questioned her credibility….”

Should it surprise anyone that Kelley and Snow – or Dr. Richard Kluft – would be less than eager to look back at the toxic misconceptions they spread?

July 8, 2013

“As the parents made their case to the (North Carolina Parole Commission), prosecutors and defense attorneys continued sparring over whether the state had reneged on the plea bargain by trying to block (Betsy) Kelly’s parole.

“Kelly’s attorney, Joe Cheshire V, says prosecutor William Hart promised not to contest her parole if she agreed to the no-contest plea. Hart says the state never made such a pledge.

“Hart and assistant prosecutor Nancy Lamb attended the hearing to support the parents. They say it would be inappropriate for Kelly to be released, because she continues to publicly proclaim her innocence.

“ ‘The parents know she is guilty,’ Lamb told reporters before the hearing. ‘They know what their children have gone through.’

“Cheshire, continuing to maintain his client’s innocence, said Hart should have tried Kelly in court if he wanted to show she was guilty.

“ ‘He was afraid to do that,’ Cheshire said. ‘And now he’s running around saying that since she won’t admit her guilt, she should not get paroled. I think that’s pretty pathetic.’ ”

– From “Parents oppose parole for Little Rascals operator” in the News & Observer (April 12, 1994)

Pandering, bullying, grandstanding, double-crossing – in thwarting Betsy Kelly’s parole, the Little Rascals prosecutors scored a grand slam of misfeasance.

Here’s what Joe Cheshire recalls about that brutal day:

“Simply taking that plea was distasteful to me, but when the awesome power of government meshes with the awesome power of the judiciary and neither want to find the truth, but instead to consummate a decided outcome, the individual gets ground up in the process.

“Betsy was desperate to come home and did not trust anyone, nor should she have.  I am not a fool; I would not have agreed to such a plea if it did not insure her freedom.  The only (apparent) risk was the Parole Board.  The prosecutor had agreed to not oppose her parole, but then he reneged.  He knew that our only alternative was to move that the plea be set aside and that we would not be in a position to do that.

“Yes, in retrospect I should not have trusted him….  But he was not willing to put it in writing, and (insisting on that) would have ended the negotiations….”

Little Rascals prosecutors seemed perversely unable to let any defendant go home without administering a final cheap shot. When Scott Privott was released under a no-contest plea deal in 1994, they added a last-minute stipulation that he undergo psychiatric evaluation as part of his five-year probation.

“I saw them weekly for about two months,” Privott recalls, “and then they reported that I was normal. My probation officer told me (Bill) Hart was pissed… and that was that.”

June 22, 2012

“Teen-age Holocaust victims had no trouble looking their abusers straight in the face and saying, ‘You did this to me, you monster.’ None of them, when they were younger, had to have any of their memories elicited. Nor were there embellishments of clowns throwing fire around the room.

“The author of a book on Holocaust survivors, ‘New Lives,’ had this to say: ‘I interviewed hundreds of Holocaust survivors. Would that they could forget anything. At age 4, at age 5 they remembered everything on the SS officers’ uniforms.’ ”

“The author is the Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz, the first journalist to provide the same in-depth reportage about Fells Acres that ‘Frontline’ provided about Little Rascals and Abby Mann did for the McMartin trial in an HBO movie.”

– From “Abusing Justice, in the Name of Children” by Ed Siegel in the Boston Globe (September 8, 1995)