{"id":516,"date":"2012-05-28T16:48:21","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T16:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=516"},"modified":"2016-01-10T12:08:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T12:08:00","slug":"understanding-and-assessing-ritual-abuse-mythology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=516","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Understanding and Assessing&#8217; ritual-abuse mythology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"style187\" style=\"text-align: right;\">May 28, 2012<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">How would Bruce A. Robinson, founder of the comprehensive and widely respected\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.religioustolerance.org\/credentials.htm\" target=\"_blank\">ReligiousTolerance.org<\/a>, describe the credibility now given ritual abuse?<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u201cI am unaware of any child psychologist or similar specialist who still believes ritual abuse happened in child care facilities. I think there is a consensus that repeated direct questioning of young children will get them to reveal stories about events that never happened. Over time, these stories often become \u2018memories.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">Mr. Robinson, meet Kathleen Coulborn Faller, professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">As previously noted, Dr. Faller in \u201cUnderstanding and Assessing Child Sexual Maltreatment\u201d (second edition, 2003)\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=499\">identifies herself as a true believer<\/a>. Here\u2019s how she makes her case:<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u25a0 \u201cResponses to allegations of ritual abuse have undergone a transformation in the last 10 years, so that any case&#8230; elicits great skepticism. In fact, it is no longer\u00a0<em>au courant<\/em>\u00a0to believe in the existence of ritual abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\"><em>Au courant?<\/em>\u00a0Does she really consider scientific research into children&#8217;s testimony to be some kind of fad, like pet rocks?<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u25a0 \u201cThe vigor of the attack against ritual abuse&#8230; reinforces the belief of some professionals, myself included, that there is substance to ritual abuse&#8230;.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">What!? And where are these other professionals?<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u25a0 \u201cUltimately the backlash&#8230; resulted in the reversal of some criminal convictions involving ritual abuse (New Jersey v. Michaels, 1994; North Carolina v. Kelly, 1995)&#8230; \u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">In fact, these convictions were overthrown not because public and professional opinion had begun to shift, but because their many legal defects were obvious to appeals courts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style238\">\u25cf \u25cf \u25cf<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">I\u2019ve again asked Dr. Faller to respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 28, 2012 How would Bruce A. Robinson, founder of the comprehensive and widely respected\u00a0ReligiousTolerance.org, describe the credibility now given ritual abuse? \u201cI am unaware of any child psychologist or similar specialist who still believes ritual abuse happened in child care facilities. I think there is a consensus that repeated direct questioning of young children [&hellip;]<\/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-516","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\/516","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=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1569,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/1569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}