Oct. 9, 2016

Five days after her bond was reduced from $1.8 million to $400,000, Betsy Kelly is released from jail.

In January 1994 Kelly would accept a plea of “no contest” and a sentence of seven years in prison. Since she had already served two years and two weeks in jail, she became eligible for parole almost immediately. But Assistant Attorney General Bill Hart, angry over her unwavering insistence that she was innocent, reneged on a plea agreement not to contest her release, and the Parole Commission kept her imprisoned another 10 months.

The prosecution used excessive bail as a sledgehammer on the lives and freedom of Betsy Kelly and the other Little Rascals defendants:

• Bob Kelly, $1.5 million (later reduced to $200,000 – after his conviction was overturned – then $50,000 )
• Scott Privott, $1 million (reduced to $50,000)
• Shelley Stone, $375,000
• Dawn Wilson, $880,000 (reduced to $200,000)
• Robin Byrum, $500,000 (reduced to $200,000)
• Darlene Harris, $350,000

What outrageous conditions! Did Hart, H. P. Williams Jr. and Nancy Lamb fear that the defendants would flee to Argentina? That they would prowl the town’s playgrounds in search of new victims? No, these obviously out-of-reach amounts surely had no purpose but to coerce confessions. How shocked and disappointed prosecutors must have been that not one of the defendants, though crushed financially, succumbed.

jamaica-gleaner.com

Glenn Tucker

March 31, 2017

“A few months ago, I started receiving photographs of young men on my phone. They were accompanied by frantic messages identifying these men as being responsible for some of the current sex crimes and pleading for the widest possible circulation of the information.

“I immediately became suspicious and pressed the ‘delete’ button. Subsequent events proved me correct. The authors were just scorned lovers seeking revenge. This was when the society was becoming excited by a high-profile case of paedophilia and some of the most horrible prescriptions were being proposed to ‘correct’ the problem. It occurred to me that the society was not in the mood for rational reasoning on this matter. Not that Jamaica was reacting differently from any other society. While the public screamings were taking place, I was reminded of the McMartin preschool case in the US….“

“In the US, the National Registry of Exonerations list sex crimes way and above other offences for exonerations. Between 1989 and 2012, sexual abuse accounted for 80 per cent of exonerations and the main reason given was ‘mistaken eyewitness identification.’ For child sex abuse, the percentage [of exonerations] was 74 and the main reasons were perjury and false accusation.

“I would never attempt to minimise the issue of violence against women and children. There is, however, an abundance of evidence that should encourage crusaders to temper their emotions with a little logic before picking up the sword….”

– From “Sex-abuse crusaders, temper your emotions” by Glenn Tucker in The Gleaner, Jamaica, West Indies (March 27)

July 3, 2013

“(Nancy Lamb) is aware of the naysayers, those who say she ran a witch hunt, gleaning hundreds of charges against (Bob) Kelly and his staff from the children’s accounts, which included trips aboard spaceships.

“ ‘You have to look at the big picture,’ she said. ‘You have to know that there are fantastic elements in children’s accounts of abuse, while they also say things that are quite believable.’ ”

“And believe she did….”

– From “How hard it is to say, ‘Enough’ ” by columnist Nicole Brodeur in the News & Observer (May 28, 1997)

What self-serving speciousness. Could there be a better example of failing “to look at the big picture” than Lamb’s focusing on only those fragments of the children’s manipulated testimony that supported her case?

Nov. 15, 2015

“In 1977 the Canadian psychotherapist Lawrence Pazder published a memoir of one of his patients, ‘Michelle Remembers.’…

“Michelle’s memoir had been preceded by a number of other books by survivors of child abuse, such as ‘The Three Faces of Eve’ (1952) and ‘Sybil’ (1973)…. What Michelle remembered, though, set her book apart. The narrative included lurid details of years of sexual abuse, satanic ritual, animal sacrifice, serial rape, baby killing and a climactic final battle between the devil (complete with horns and tail) and the Virgin Mary…

“Michelle had apparently repressed the memory of these events for something like 20 years. Only after sessions with her therapist (whom she later married) did the memories reemerge, from the couch to the printed page.

“‘Michelle Remembers’ was the first to really discover satan, and many of its narrative moments would recur, endlessly, in the following decade in a series of expanding claims of a secret satanic conspiracy for world domination. As one law enforcement official put it, ‘Before “Michelle Remembers,” there were no Satanic child prosecutions. Now the myth is everywhere.’ ”

– From “From History to Theory” by Kerwin Lee Klein (2011)