![\"130426Perrin2\"](\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/130426Perrin2.jpg\")
April 26, 2013<\/p>\nApril 26, 2013<\/p>\n
By 1997, when the college textbook “Family Violence Across the Lifespan” was first published, the most grievous excesses of the day-care ritual-abuse panic had passed (although it would be two more years before Little Rascals prosecutors dropped a final, unrelated charge against Bob Kelly).<\/p>\n
The authors, social scientists at Pepperdine University, devoted entire sections to \u201cDo Children Fabricate Reports of Child Sexual Abuse?\u201d and \u201cThe Satanic Ritual Abuse Controversy.\u201d More on those issues\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Their approach is thoughtfully skeptical, but they can\u2019t quite bring themselves to call baloney on those peers whose ill-conceived claims ginned up the \u201ccontroversy\u201d or whose gullibility prolonged it. For example:<\/p>\n \u201cIf there is so little evidence confirming the existence of SRA, why do so many perceive the SRA threat to be real? One reason is that… therapists, police officers and child protection authorities, who are often required to attend seminars on current developments in their field, are exposed to SRA \u2018experts\u2019…. These seminars tend to employ proselytizing techniques characteristic of organizations seeking recruits. Many well-meaning helping professionals, who are generally motivated by the desire to help abused clients, become convinced of the existence of SRA through these seminars (such as the one at\u00a0Kill Devil Hills<\/a>)….\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFamily Violence…\u201d has proved popular enough to justify a\u00a0third edition<\/a>\u00a0(2011), in which all mention of ritual abuse has been removed.<\/p>\n