July 22, 2016

“FARMVILLE, N.C. – Farmville’s only courtroom has never played host to a felony trial. This week, the town’s 4,000 residents will watch a parade of jurors, lawyers, psychologists, parents and children converge on that courtroom. There, they will unfold what may be the largest child sexual abuse trial this country has ever seen: the trial of Robert F. Kelly Jr. of Edenton.

“The trial was moved to this one-blink community in Pitt County, 65 miles west of Edenton in Eastern North Carolina, because of pretrial publicity.

“But the spotlight will find Farmville, if not for the unprecedented number of sexual abuse indictments, then for the sordid nature of the charges. And if not for that, then for the impact the trial – expected to last three to four months – could have on future large-scale child-abuse prosecutions.

“Jury selection is scheduled to start today….”

– From “Witnesses, jurors, lawyers mass for sexual-abuse trial” by Knight-Ridder News Service in the Baltimore Sun (July 22, 1991)

In fact, the trial would last nine months, not three or four.  Although prosecutors won initial convictions of both Kelly and Dawn Wilson, for whatever reasons – surely including the eye-opening effects of Ofra Bikel’s “Innocence Lost” trilogy – the nation was spared “future large-scale child-abuse prosecutions.”

Aug. 1, 2012

“Congress’s well-intentioned but misguided Mondale Act (the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, CAPTA), signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1974, provided impetus to prosecute alleged crimes against children.

“First, it provided immunity to reporters of abuse, thereby unleashing an unlimited supply of unsubstantiated charges.

“Second, it provided funds to permit so-called victims to receive state-financed therapy immediately, even prior to any adjudication.

“Thus, the victims in Edenton received extensive counseling, at government expense, for ‘abuse’ that never occurred. Four ‘sex therapists’ got all that business and received many thousands of dollars in reimbursement. They had no motivation to suppose those charges might be bogus.”

– From “Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom” by Raymond J. Lawrence (2007)

Feb. 7, 2014

A sampling of responses to the recent reporting and comments of Richard Noll and Allen Frances about psychiatry’s costly failure to reject the cult of “satanic ritual abuse”:

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“Kudos to Dr. Frances….  Fortunately, repressed memory therapy is much rarer nowadays (though I still hear of new cases, to my amazement and chagrin), but where are the psychotherapists saying ‘mea culpa’? I know of precisely two therapists who have had the ethics and courage to go public and apologize for their misguided belief in repressed memories and the harm they did to their clients.

“The bad interviewing technique and rush to judgment that caused the day care sex abuse hysteria has simply morphed into individual cases of false allegations, often related to divorce/custody battles or teenagers seeking revenge, and other reasons. Whenever anyone is accused of sexual abuse, they are assumed guilty until proven innocent. See www.ncrj.org for examples.

“I am also very glad that Dr. Frances has called attention to the outrageous case of Junior Chandler. I hope pressure mounts to secure his release, finally.”

– Mark Pendergrast

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“Thanks for sending (Dr. Frances’s post).  Really good for my grad class with clinical students.“

– Catherine Caldwell-Harris

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“I’m glad Dr. Frances is speaking out – he has credentials that can’t be easily dismissed…

“How do we push for the total exoneration of those so needlessly prosecuted? I would join in that venture.”

– Moisy Shopper

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“How unfortunate that journal editors refuse to get their hands dirty, even though their journals are already saddled with something dirty in their pasts.”

– W. Joseph Wyatt here and here

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“It is hard to stir up interest in moral panics that have faded from view. Only a small number of individuals continue to take note. While most incarcerated individuals have some champions and have escaped continued imprisonment, there are always tragic cases of individuals who essentially become nonpersons.

“The good news is that the moral entrepreneurs are on the run at this point, but there are still some out there and the potential for trouble remains.”

– David G. Bromley

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“Is there any hope of starting a online petition to urge (Attorney General Roy) Cooper to do the right thing?

“Of course, now that he is running for governor he probably doesn’t want the Tea Party to say that he is a pedophile-lover.”

– Debbie Crane

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“If only Cooper could see doing the right thing as an asset to his gubernatorial campaign….”

– Ed Cone

July 3, 2013

“(Nancy Lamb) is aware of the naysayers, those who say she ran a witch hunt, gleaning hundreds of charges against (Bob) Kelly and his staff from the children’s accounts, which included trips aboard spaceships.

“ ‘You have to look at the big picture,’ she said. ‘You have to know that there are fantastic elements in children’s accounts of abuse, while they also say things that are quite believable.’ ”

“And believe she did….”

– From “How hard it is to say, ‘Enough’ ” by columnist Nicole Brodeur in the News & Observer (May 28, 1997)

What self-serving speciousness. Could there be a better example of failing “to look at the big picture” than Lamb’s focusing on only those fragments of the children’s manipulated testimony that supported her case?