![\"120420Finkelhor\"](\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/120420Finkelhor.jpg\")
April 20, 2012<\/p>\nApril 20, 2012<\/p>\n
David Finkelhor\u2019s \u201cNursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care\u201d (1988) helped lay the foundation for the moral panic that would soon engulf Edenton and so many other ill-starred towns.<\/p>\n
Finkelhor, a respected and widely published sociologist at the University of New Hampshire, built a Potemkin village of statistical tables \u2013 \u201cVictim Characteristics by Type of Perpetrator,\u201d etc. \u2013 that concealed the utter worthlessness of his data. He was wrong from the first chapter, accepting unsubstantiated claims of ritual abuse as reality, to the last, recommending that \u201cparents, licensing and law-enforcement officials be educated to view females as potential sex-abusers.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is from a recent exchange Finkelhor and I had via email:<\/p>\n
Q:<\/strong>\u00a0In \u201cNursery Crimes\u201d you accept that ritual sexual abuse did in fact occur at Little Rascals, McMartin, Wee Care, etc., and give little credence to the \u201cbacklash\u201d against such prosecutions.\u00a0Has your position changed?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong>\u00a0This was a while ago and I have not revisited the case. Our research did not conduct any independent review of the evidence, but simply coded the conclusion of the investigator we interviewed. So I was neither an authority about the validity of claims at the time or at the present.<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, I understand that your research and analysis relied entirely on \u201clocal investigating agencies (that) had decided that abuse had occurred\u201d (p. 13).<\/p>\n But I\u2019m not finding in \u201cNursery Crimes\u201d any skepticism about these prosecutorial allegations. In fact, the book seems only to reinforce the belief that satanic ritual abuse was a frequent occurrence in the nation\u2019s day cares. Am I misjudging it?<\/p>\n Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck are but two of the researchers who have detailed the contaminated interview techniques that supported each of these cases. And of course almost all the defendants eventually went free, either when charges were dropped or their guilty verdicts overturned.<\/p>\n Would you consider returning to this subject and, if you so chose, changing your public position? I know the defendants \u2013 innocent citizens who saw their lives crushed by unfounded charges \u2013 would appreciate it.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n No response yet to my second question. If I receive one, I\u2019ll post it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" April 20, 2012 David Finkelhor\u2019s \u201cNursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care\u201d (1988) helped lay the foundation for the moral panic that would soon engulf Edenton and so many other ill-starred towns. Finkelhor, a respected and widely published sociologist at the University of New Hampshire, built a Potemkin village of statistical tables \u2013 \u201cVictim Characteristics […]<\/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-476","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\/476","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=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2523,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/2523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}