Sept. 26, 2012

“The (Little Rascals) kids stories have unerringly followed the ritual abuse plot, progressing lately to tales of witnessing babies slaughtered. Perhaps not coincidentally, their most bizarre allegations began surfacing around the time that 27 million viewers watched ‘Do You Know the Muffin Man?’ a (Lifetime TV) movie that rehashed details from several ritual abuse cases, but included the wholly fictional climax of parents discovering day-care teachers worshipping the devil amidst piles of kiddie porn.”

– From “The Ritual Sex Abuse Hoax” by Debbie Nathan (Village Voice, January 12, 1990)

“Muffin Man” aired October 22, 1989 – simultaneous with not only the ongoing arrests of Little Rascals defendants but also the satanic-baby-kidnap rumor sweeping East North Carolina.

“These stories keep cropping up all over the country,” observes the “Muffin Man” prosecutor. “With this many Satan ritual abuse cases, there has got to be something out there.” (In the Little Rascals case, this “Where there’s smoke…” rationale was most notoriously put forth by UNC Chapel Hill psychologist Mark Everson.)

In Bucks County, Pa., however, District Attorney Alan Rubenstein couldn’t help noticing that complaints about ritual abuse at Breezy Point Day School went from a trickle to a torrent the day after “Muffin Man” aired. Unlike so many other prosecutors in Edenton and elsewhere, Rubenstein saw through the claims and crushingly debunked them.

Dec. 23, 2011

“Many appalling results of the recovered-memory movement of the 1970s and ’80s arose from … unexamined views of memory – occurrences like the false accusations of employees of children’s care centers… Such fantasies have often been encouraged as reliable memories by doctrinaire therapists and have sometimes resulted in prison sentences and ruined lives for innocent fathers, mothers, kin, teachers and devoted caretakers.

“The documentary films made by Ofra Bikel … are meticulous and frightening accounts of such fantasies and their overwhelming power in the hands of the cruelest, most self-deluded and most easily panicked among us.”

– From “Ardent Spirits” by the late Reynolds Price (2009)

June 15, 2014

“Andrew Junior Chandler has been unjustly incarcerated in a North Carolina prison for 27 years, charged with a crime that almost surely never happened….

“Let’s hope that Gov. Pat McCrory will review the mistaken judgment of his misnamed ‘clemency office’ and correct this stain on the reputation of North Carolina justice.”

–From “Mass hysteria of sexual, satanic ritual abuse and a miscarriage of NC justice” by Dr. Allen Frances in the Raleigh News & Observer (June 15) text cache

Dr. Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University, once again steps forward to take responsibility for therapy’s Dark Ages, this time in the newspaper read daily by those state officials who have refused to grant relief to Junior Chandler.

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?