Aug. 28, 2013

“It’s not by chance that day care centers are the sites of magical molestation, and not public schools with their powerful lobbies and unions…. Those primary and secondary school teachers’ organizations provide protection and security for their members, much as the AMA protects doctors and the ABA protects lawyers.

“It’s only you – a day care teacher – who has no protection at all. If hysterical parents gang up and attack you, you are as helpless as a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery.”

– From “Magical Child Molestation Trials: Edenton’s Children Accuse” by Margaret Leong (1993)

March 31, 2015

“…The watershed event marking the shift in public opinion on these (“satanic ritual abuse” day care) cases was the HBO airing of ‘Indictment: The McMartin Trial’ (watchable here on YouTube) in May 1995, wherein Ray Buckey, the child-molesting villain of the McMartin trial, was recast as the victim of a hysterical conspiracy theory.

“Five years earlier, no major television network would have dared question the infallibility of the testimony of ravished, innocent babes. A network like HBO is closely attuned to shifts in the public mood.

“Such TV dramas and feature films are generally more likely to respond to existing trends in public opinion on controversial issues than to break new ground, and so this docudrama marked a sort of closure on the issue in the public imagination, though the judicial system cannot shift direction so quickly.”

– From “The Metanarrative of Suspicion in Late Twentieth-Century America” by Sandra Baringer (2004)

Eighteen days before HBO broadcast “Indictment,” the North Carolina Court of Appeals had overturned the convictions of Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson, but Kelly’s torture at the hands of the state was far from over: A year later he would be charged with raping a young girl outside the day care in 1987. Was prosecutor Nancy Lamb unable to “shift direction so quickly” – or simply unwilling?

Nov. 26, 2012

Although no mention of the notorious Report of the Ritual Abuse Task Force is to be found on the Los Angeles County Commission for Women web site, I was curious whether an original booklet might still be available.

Sure enough, a few weeks after I mailed my request to the commission a pristine copy arrived. The text is widely available online, but somehow the experience of holding and reading it is even… creepier.

“Ritual abuse is a serious and growing problem in our community and in our nation…,” it begins. “Society is only just beginning to recognize the gravity and scope…. Parents need to be educated about the hallmarks of this abuse occurring in preschools and day care centers….

“The ritual abuse in such an institutional setting is not incidental to its operation, but is in fact intrinsic, the very reason for the institution’s existence….

“To victimize and indoctrinate as many young children as possible, (ritual abusers) frequently function together in groups in the operation of preschools, day-care services and baby-sitting services, providing themselves access to children outside of their own families.”

Even now, when the case for ritual abuse no longer draws a crowd, the Report of the Ritual Abuse Task Force continues to be cited respectfully, as in “Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control” (2011), “If the West Falls: Globalization, the End of America and Biblical Prophecy” (2011) and “Healing the Soul after Religious Abuse: The Dark Heaven of Recovery” (2009).

What must it take to slay the ritual-abuse dragon – a stake through the heart?

Oct. 29, 2015

“You have to be … inventive to brand yourself as a Halloween capital – extending a one-night affair into a monthlong celebration and inviting hundreds of thousands of visitors into your streets – when for centuries you were known as the community that put innocents to death for witchcraft. How did Salem, Mass., repackage a tragedy as a holiday, appointing itself ‘Witch City’ in the process?…

“About 200 years after the trials, a Salem silversmith issued a souvenir spoon, featuring a witch holding a broomstick. Other mementos followed. It was difficult to hit the right note: The Salem-based Parker Brothers company issued, then quickly discontinued, a witchcraft card game…. When Arthur Miller visited Salem in 1952, he discovered the subject was taboo….

“Meanwhile the city fell on hard times…. As if by magic, a different kind of enchantment arrived in the form of the ABC sitcom, ‘Bewitched.’ It seemed that an ancestor of Samantha, the main character, had been convicted of witchcraft during the trials….

“In Samantha’s wake, Salem recast its inglorious past, or at least some version of it…. The city transmuted its secret shame into its saving grace. In 1982 it introduced ‘Haunted Happenings,’ later extending the holiday into a four-week festival. ‘Salem owns Halloween like the North Pole owns Christmas,’ The Boston Globe declared….  Halloween is to some extent year-round in Salem, where you might well bump into a goblin in a sandwich shop in July.

“Three hundred years after the trials, Salem unveiled an elegant, understated memorial to the victims. Three hundred and thirteen years after the trials, it unveiled a gleaming statue of the ‘Bewitched’ star, Elizabeth Montgomery, on a broom. Not everyone liked the idea: A former historic district commissioner clucked that one might as well plant a likeness of Colonel Klink at Auschwitz. But the 1992 memorial was arguably not itself possible without ‘Bewitched.’ It isn’t easy to commemorate an atrocity. ABC’s domestic goddess had both laundered and folded the history….”

 – From “First, Kill the Witches. Then, Celebrate Them.” by Stacy Schiff in the New York Times (Oct. 24)

Edenton may lack the springboard of a popular sitcom, but this 1993 letter writer foresaw the tourism potential of remembering the Little Rascals case.  Proposals for a statue – or a spoon – anyone?