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

April 28, 2017

“There is this idea that people of the 1980s were just not very bright or really superstitious or something like that. Back then, the people who questioned it were treated with suspicion. People would say, ‘Of course this is happening, what’s wrong with you?’ And it’s not like this is an anomaly in American history. In the ’50s, Commies were crawling out of the basement. This stuff goes back to Salem witch trials…

“The ritual abuse thing also became part of psychological culture. This idea that children don’t lie about these things became really entrenched for a while….

“It was a way to talk about actual abuse, I think. At the time, the idea that childhood abuse was mostly perpetrated by family members was too outrageous, too awful. People would rather believe that it was evil, Satan-worshipping strangers.”

– Dan Chaon, author of “Ill Will,” quoted by Joe Gross in the Austin American-Statesman

Early on, Chaon’s interest in writing a novel centered on “satanic ritual abuse” was piqued by the West Memphis Three.

Aug. 8, 2012

Five reasons the Little Rascals Day Care case has never attracted the attention it deserves:

■ Overshadowed by McMartin case.

■ No racial angle.

■ Remote location.

■ No death penalty.

■ No DNA.

One reason the case has attracted as much attention as it has:

■ “Innocence Lost” on “Frontline.” Thanks again, Ofra Bikel.

March 17, 2015

“Warren Twiddy, 68, father of defendant Betsy Kelly, said he’s been ‘shunned, blocked out’ by some residents and nearly run out of his church.”

– From “Trial rips fabric of community” by Mark Mayfield in USA Today (March 20, 1992)

“Twiddy sold his insurance business and exhausted his retirement savings to pay his daughter’s legal fees. Old friends, he says, won’t even say hello on the street. Clients canceled policies after his daughter was indicted.”

– From  “Town’s pain is revived by TV film” by Andrea Stone in USA Today (July 22, 1993)

“Twiddy admits… some bitterness toward his neighbors, who ignored him at church and at the country club.

“ ‘Before, the bulletin board was full with places we were supposed to be up ’til Christmas,’ he said. ‘After this, nothing, buddy.’ ”

– From “Talk of new trial makes Edenton shudder” by Carol D. Leonnig in the Charlotte Observer (Sept. 10, 1995)

“Our need to matter and our need to belong are as fundamental as our need to eat and breathe. Therefore ostracism – rejection, silence, exclusion – is one of the most powerful punishments that one person can inflict on another.

“Brain scans have shown that this rejection is actually experienced as physical pain, and that this pain is experienced whether those that reject us are close friends or family or total strangers, and whether the act is overt exclusion or merely looking away….”

– From a delanceyplace.com summary of “The Pain of Exclusion” by Kipling D. Williams in Scientific American (January/February 2011)

The misery caused by wrongful prosecution of the Little Rascals case extended far beyond courtrooms and jail cells. Defendants’ family members such as Betsy Kelly’s father endured many years in a hell of ostracism.

Warren Twiddy died in 2012. He was 89.