unh.edu

David Finkelhor

Feb. 3, 2016

“A new survey finds that adults at school, day care and organizations such as churches and scouting groups are less likely than relatives to abuse or mistreat children.

“In general, organizations that serve young people ‘do not look like particularly risky environments,’ said study co-author David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. This contradicts perceptions by some people who ‘think these are magnets for molesters,’ he said.”

– From “Child Abuse at Daycare, Youth Groups Rarer Than Thought: Survey” by Randy Dotinga in the Northwest Indiana Times (Feb. 2)

Surprising to see Dr. Finkelhor dismiss the notion of day cares as “magnets for molesters,” given that his own overwrought “Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care” (1988) was an influential text in spreading the moral panic.

How did he determine back then whether sexual abuse had actually occurred? “If at least one of the local investigating agencies had decided that abuse had occurred and that it had happened while the child was at a day-care facility….then we considered the case substantiated.” In other words, one supposed “red flag” sighting from Brenda Toppin was certification enough.

As recently as 2012, when I queried Dr. Finkelhor about his beliefs past and present,  he denied being “an authority on the validity of claims” that he had laid out with such credulity in “Nursery Crimes.”

May 31, 2013

“After the DSM-III, often called the ‘Bible’ of psychiatric diagnosis, included (Multiple Personality Disorder) in 1980, thousands of spurious cases emerged in the next two decades, and special psychiatric clinics arose to treat them. Yet faced with evidence of this disastrous epidemic, the DSM-IV did not delete the diagnosis. Instead, the manual renamed it Dissociative Identity Disorder.

“ ‘MPD presented a dilemma for me,’ says (psychiatrist Allen Frances, who oversaw DSM-IV). ‘We took scrupulous pains to present both sides of the controversy as fairly and effectively as possible – even though I believed one side was complete bunk.’ How do you ‘fairly’ argue for a diagnosis you think is complete bunk? Where’s the methodological rigor? Why did it take malpractice suits to close the psychiatric MPD clinics and not the presumed voice of scientific authority, the DSM? Dissociative Identity Disorder remains in the DSM-5.”

– From “How Psychiatry Went Crazy” by Carol Tavris in the Wall Street Journal (May 17, 2013)

“Another disturbing by-product of the MPD diagnosis is the prevalence of alleged repressed memories of satanic ritual abuse. The association of satanic ritual abuse in MPD diagnoses has been attributed to the belief by numerous MPD adherents in the existence of an intergenerational satanic cult conspiracy that has murdered thousands without leaving a trace of evidence.”

– From “Repressed Memory, Multiple Personality Disorder and Satanic Ritual Abuse,” an amicus brief filed in Supreme Court of Georgia, Kahout v. Charter Peachford Behavioral Health System (September 1998)

May 7, 2012

From an exchange with Stephen Ceci, author (with Maggie Bruck) of the landmark “Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony” (1995):

Q: What may have happened to the child-witnesses as a result of being so profoundly misdiagnosed? One Little Rascals child-witness who responded anonymously to an advertisement I placed in the Edenton paper continues to say she was abused by Bob Kelly, although she admits to doubts about the female defendants.

A: We lack good scientific data on the long-term beliefs of individuals who as children were suggestively interviewed. A handful of studies, none of which resemble allegations of sexual abuse, seem to indicate that they grow up with the belief that they were abused, replete with the same psychological sequelae of true abuse survivors.

But you’ll note I use phrases such as “seem to indicate,” because the data are not uniform or consistent and the scenarios are not sex abuse ones. I think many, perhaps most, memory researchers would expect someone who was convinced as a child that he or she was victimized to grow into an adult with the same problems seen in actual victims, e.g., distrust of authority figures, insecurity, etc..

–

What extreme caution Dr. Ceci, an unsurpassed authority on child abuse, uses not to present theory and speculation as fact…. If only the therapists and theoreticians behind the day-care-abuse mania had shown half the professional uncertainty….

Nov. 21, 2011

Raymond Lawrence, the New York City chaplain who founded the Committee for Support of the Edenton Seven, was an attentive and often appalled observer at Bob Kelly’s trial. This passage is excerpted from a memoir now posted in its entirety on the Bookshelf:

“Among the more obscene performances I witnessed by the prosecution was a long argument that Robert Kelly had had vaginal intercourse with a five-year-old girl.

“On a screen about four feet square the prosecutor displayed a color slide the girl’s genitalia, with two adult thumbs shown pulling back the labia to display the hymen and vaginal opening. The hymen appeared fully intact, covering most of the vaginal opening. The prosecutor thus spent what I recall as hours arguing that the stretch marks in the hymen were evidence of adult penile penetration.

“I wondered why the defense attorney did not rise up and ask if this were Alice in Wonderland…. It was as if I had entered an alternate universe.”