Fisher

Dec. 5, 2017

“The Manson Family’s ritualistic murders in 1969 triggered the ini4al stages of na4onal cult hysteria….

“Manson made hippies scary for awhile, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that ’70s horror movies featuring hooded devil covens, witches and the occult emerged shortly after he was convicted. Manson and his apostles triggered a frenzy pertaining to cults that would reach ridiculous new heights in the ‘80s with the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ allegations, which inspired their own exploitation movies as well….”

— From “How Exploitation Movies Exploited Charles Manson and Hippie Hysteria”
by Kieran Fisher at “Film School Rejects” (Nov. 25)

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.

Oct. 17, 2011

The two largest ritual-abuse day-care cases – Little Rascals in Edenton and McMartin in California – bore many similarities but McMartin resulted in not a single conviction.

I asked Mark Montgomery, who in 1995 successfully argued Bob Kelly’s case before the North Carolina Court of Appeals, why that might have been:

“Each state has its own criminal laws, rules of procedure and evidence, etc. … Several features of the law in North Carolina gave prosecutors an advantage.

“First, the prosecution interviewed all the children attending Little Rascals Day Care. Most said they had seen no abuse. The law allowed the prosecution to withhold those interviews from the defense. And the defense was not allowed to interview the children. So all the jury heard were the stories of the 12 children who were the subject of indictments.

“Second, the law allowed the state’s expert witnesses to testify that they believed the children’s claims.

“Third, the defense was not allowed to conduct its own physical or psychological examinations of the children.

“Fourth, North Carolina had (and has) very liberal rules for the admission of hearsay by children in these cases. Almost anything a child says out of court can be used by the jury as substantive evidence of guilt. An effective prosecution strategy was to enlist the parents to elicit allegations of abuse. For months, parents, who were told their children had been abused, pleaded with their children to ‘disclose.’ Some eventually did. The prosecution then called the parents as witnesses to testify to what their children said, even if the children themselves did not testify.”

May 27, 2013

Recent revelations about billionaire David Koch’s influence on the airing of an unflattering PBS documentary bring to mind how UNC-TV showed similar deference to the accusing parents in the Little Rascals case.

Although a roundtable arranged by New York station WNET to follow the Koch-critical “Park Avenue” excluded filmmaker Alex Gibney, that discussion at least offered viewers a range of viewpoints about income inequality.

By contrast, in 1993 UNC-TV director Tom Howe said he agreed with parents that “Innocence Lost: The Verdict” was unbalanced and barred defense attorney Mike Spivey from participating in the discussion afterward. (I requested a copy of the program, but the station said it was unable to find one.)

In 1997, UNC-TV gave prosecutor Nancy Lamb and parent Susan Small time on “North Carolina NOW” to discuss the decision to drop the last charges in Little Rascals. “Both responded with long, rather unfocused answers,” Current magazine observed, “and the interview concluded without a single follow-up question….”