Cynthia Brown<\/a>, medical director of the Mountain Child Medical Evaluation Program at Mission Children\u2019s Hospital in Asheville, was among the first pediatricians credentialed in the subspecialty of child abuse. I asked her to summarize current medical opinion on ritual-abuse day-care cases. Here are excerpts of her response:<\/p>\n\u201cOne criticism common to the day-care cases in the \u201980s was the inadequate interviewing process used for those children. Some interviewers reportedly made assumptions that abuse had occurred and used leading questions. As a result of these cases, major changes have been made in interviewing protocols. Interviewers go through extensive training and are expected to participate in peer review to assure they are using the protocols correctly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our clinic we meet with the investigators (DSS and law enforcement) and review the child\u2019s initial disclosure….<\/p>\n
\u201cWe discuss alternative hypotheses….: Could the child have witnessed adult sexual activity accidentally, or through videos or computers? Could the child have been coached? Has the child been inadvertently contaminated by questions asked by a panicked parent?….<\/p>\n
\u201cThe interview is videorecorded for review by the investigators. It also allows us to evaluate the
\ncaliber of the disclosure and the questioning….<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral years ago, I spoke with someone involved in one of the day-care cases who now believes there was a kernel of truth in the allegation but that it was obscured by contamination and leading interviews.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne last thing: The FBI has looked into cases where ritualistic satanic abuse was alleged (not all were in day cares) and has never been able to validate these claims.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Feb. 20, 2012 Cynthia Brown, medical director of the Mountain Child Medical Evaluation Program at Mission Children\u2019s Hospital in Asheville, was among the first pediatricians credentialed in the subspecialty of child abuse. I asked her to summarize current medical opinion on ritual-abuse day-care cases. Here are excerpts of her response: \u201cOne criticism common to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1585,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/1585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"120220Brown\"](\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/120220Brown.jpg\")
Feb. 20, 2012<\/p>\n