{"id":552,"date":"2012-07-02T23:35:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T23:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=552"},"modified":"2016-01-10T12:53:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T12:53:33","slug":"what-made-mark-everson-an-expert-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=552","title":{"rendered":"What made Mark Everson an expert witness?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"style187\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-554\" src=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/120702Everson1.jpg\" alt=\"120702Everson1\" width=\"120\" height=\"180\" \/>July 2, 2012<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">Perhaps the prosecution\u2019s most influential expert witness during the 1992 trial of Bob Kelly was psychologist\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/psych\/directories\/faculty\/everson\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Everson<\/a>, director of the Program on Childhood Trauma and Maltreatment\u00a0in UNC Chapel Hill&#8217;s department of psychiatry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">Here\u2019s how Everson responded to a defense expert\u2019s testimony that children are suggestible and should not be repeatedly interviewed: \u201cIt\u2019s kind of na\u00efve. It\u2019s the kind of statement you really wouldn\u2019t make if you worked with these kids.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">In a Charlotte Observer interview 10 years later, Everson seemed unmoved by the continuing wave of scientific research exposing the fallacy of \u201cChildren don\u2019t lie.\u201d He said he found it hard to believe that every Little Rascals child-witness had been badly interviewed and confused: \u201cThere&#8217;s so much smoke there, it&#8217;s hard to imagine there&#8217;s no fire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\"><em>Where there&#8217;s smoke there&#8217;s fire?<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">Good lord. I wasn\u2019t surprised to hear such naivete from a juror \u2013 \u201cSomething must have happened,\u201d one told Ofra Bikel &#8212; but from a respected UNC faculty member whose opinion influenced whether Bob Kelly would be convicted and imprisoned?<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">Last week I emailed two questions to Everson at his Chapel Hill office:<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u2013 Have you changed your mind?<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u2013 How much credence do you give researchers such as Ceci and Bruck who have demonstrated the unreliability of child-witnesses?<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">I\u2019ve yet to hear back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">But it&#8217;s hard to optimistic about a possible reassessment when Everson continues to choose\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=522\">Kathleen Coulborn Faller<\/a>\u00a0as his most frequent coauthor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 2, 2012 Perhaps the prosecution\u2019s most influential expert witness during the 1992 trial of Bob Kelly was psychologist\u00a0Mark Everson, director of the Program on Childhood Trauma and Maltreatment\u00a0in UNC Chapel Hill&#8217;s department of psychiatry. Here\u2019s how Everson responded to a defense expert\u2019s testimony that children are suggestible and should not be repeatedly interviewed: \u201cIt\u2019s [&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-552","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\/552","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=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1571,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/1571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}