Sept. 26, 2012<\/p>\n
\u201cThe (Little Rascals) kids stories have unerringly followed the ritual abuse plot, progressing lately to tales of witnessing babies slaughtered. Perhaps not coincidentally, their most bizarre allegations began surfacing around the time that 27 million viewers watched \u2018Do You Know the Muffin Man<\/a>?\u2019 a (Lifetime TV) movie that rehashed details from several ritual abuse cases, but included the wholly fictional climax of parents discovering day-care teachers worshipping the devil amidst piles of kiddie porn.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013 From \u201c<\/em>The Ritual Sex Abuse Hoax<\/em><\/a>\u201d by Debbie Nathan (Village Voice, January 12, 1990)<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMuffin Man\u201d aired October 22, 1989 \u2013 simultaneous with not only the ongoing arrests of Little Rascals defendants but also the\u00a0satanic-baby-kidnap rumor<\/a>\u00a0sweeping East North Carolina.<\/p>\n \u201cThese stories keep cropping up all over the country,\u201d observes the \u201cMuffin Man\u201d prosecutor. \u201cWith this many Satan ritual abuse cases, there has got to be something out there.\u201d (In the Little Rascals case, this \u201cWhere there’s smoke…\u201d rationale<\/a>\u00a0was most notoriously put forth by UNC Chapel Hill psychologist Mark Everson.)<\/p>\n In Bucks County, Pa., however, District Attorney Alan Rubenstein couldn\u2019t help noticing that complaints about ritual abuse at Breezy Point Day School went from a trickle to a torrent the day after \u201cMuffin Man\u201d aired. Unlike so many other prosecutors in Edenton and elsewhere, Rubenstein\u00a0saw through the claims<\/a>\u00a0and crushingly debunked them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sept. 26, 2012 \u201cThe (Little Rascals) kids stories have unerringly followed the ritual abuse plot, progressing lately to tales of witnessing babies slaughtered. Perhaps not coincidentally, their most bizarre allegations began surfacing around the time that 27 million viewers watched \u2018Do You Know the Muffin Man?\u2019 a (Lifetime TV) movie that rehashed details from several […]<\/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-647","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\/647","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=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2500,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/2500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}