June 29, 2012

“One month after drawing national attention when she dismissed final charges involving the children at the day-care center, (Nancy Lamb) clings to her belief that Robert Kelly is a child molester….

“Still, she admits it’s not easy to explain why none of the defendants have turned against each other, even though they were offered deals by her office.

“ ‘You did have kind of a group dynamic going on where they did hang around together and support each other and encourage each other to hang tough,’ Lamb said.”

– From the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, July 2, 1997

April 26, 2014

“Given the near certainty of Junior’s innocence (his first jury could not reach a verdict), given the fact that he has already served 26 years in prison with only a single infraction (committed in his third week in prison), given the fact that many others similarly situated have been freed by the courts, Junior is a worthy candidate for a commutation of sentence.”

– Letter from Mark Montgomery, Andrew Junior Chandler’s appellate attorney, to Gov. Bev Perdue (Dec. 7, 2012)

“This letter is to inform you that your request for a commutation of sentence on behalf of Mr. Chandler has been reviewed and denied.

“If he would like to reapply, he may do so three years from the date of this letter.”

– Letter to Montgomery from Pat Hansen, Governor’s Clemency Office (March 25, 2014

So ends the latest of Andrew Junior Chandler’s repeated attempts to find a path out of Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution, where he has spent the past 27 years for a crime neither he nor anyone else committed. He may in fact be the last still-imprisoned victim of the “satanic ritual abuse” day care panic.

“I don’t know what they have against me,” Junior told me by phone this week.  I don’t know either – I don’t even know who “they” are. But I can’t imagine that those prosecutors who so persuasively argued that “Junior would drive off his route to a park by a river, strip the children of their clothes, troop them down to the river, put them in a rowboat, commit various sexual acts, put them back on the bus and take them home” are eager to see the case dusted off and reexamined.

Oct. 26, 2016

Janet Rosenzweig, executive director of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, wasted no time kissing off my request that APSAC take responsibility for the damage done by its advocacy of the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care myth:

“On behalf of the Board of Directors  of APSAC, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.  APSAC does not have a position on this issue, and has no plans to take one at this time.”

In reality, APSAC has taken a position on the issue ever since its founding.

As noted in “Advances in Social and Organizational Psychology” by Donald A. Hantula (2006):

“APSAC was founded in 1985 as a professional group of therapists concerned that some people were skeptical regarding claims in the McMartin day care satanic abuse case. At the same meeting at which APSAC was formed for professionals, ‘Believe the Children’ was formed for parents of McMartin children…. Thus, from the start, APSAC has been an advocate of the reality of satanic and sexual abuse in day care….”

As stingingly acknowledged by prosecutor Paul J. Stern, the shared history of APSAC and the day-care panic is indisputable. Only one question remains: What now? Does APSAC really want its professionalism forever compromised by clinging to its perverse origin story?

Are its members in 2016 still wedded to the discredited concepts first promoted 30 years ago by Jon Conte,  Kathleen Coulborn Faller, Kee MacFarlane, Ann Wolbert Burgess, Susan J. Kelley, Roland Summit, Mark Everson and Little Rascals prosecutor Nancy Lamb?  Would Dr. Rosenzweig dare to ask the membership at large if it shares the board’s resistance to making amends?

Jan. 2, 2012

Next to “Why are you doing this?” the question I’m most often asked about Little Rascals is, “Since the trial, what has happened with the kids?”

For those alleged child-victims who testified in day-care abuse cases, the need to forget, to deny and to stay silent must be strong indeed. Who wants to believe they were so misused by their parents, not to mention by therapists and prosecutors? Who can look unblinkingly at the grotesque truth and take it public? For many, given the well-documented power of suggestibility, it may simply be impossible.

One exception was Kyle Zirpolo, who came forward in 2005 to apologize for his role in the McMartin pre-school case.

Last week, on the chance that an Edenton child might be ready to break ranks, I took out classified ads in the daily Elizabeth City Advance and the weekly Chowan Herald with this message:

“If you were a child or parent involved in the Little Rascals Day Care case of the early 1990s, I’d like to hear from you….”

Thursday night I received a call from a woman who credibly identified herself as one of those children. She wouldn’t give her name. She is 26 now, no longer living in Edenton, and she was not happy to see the ad. I felt obliged to tell her at the outset that I considered the defendants wrongly accused. Here’s an edited version of her response:

“It’s sad that you and others believe that. Here it is almost 2012, and I’m still opening up the paper and seeing crap like this (ad). It’s either that, or another bullshit book about our ‘witch hunt.’ And I know they study us and McMartin and Fells Acres in different colleges.

“I’m haunted every single day, and I always will be, so long as those bastards are out there, getting to go about their business. I have a lot of emotions – hypervigilance, anger that I had to go through all that badgering (by the defense). My husband put away my files on the case because it bothered me so much.

“I remember vividly what happened, and I’ve told therapists. You believe a dozen little kids just got together and made up lies? There was physical evidence, things they couldn’t put on TV.  The whole situation was just crap.”

Before we hung up, she said she would consider sending me case materials that I would find persuasive. I appreciate her call and hope to hear from her again.