May 29, 2013

“Very sick! There is clear evidence (the Edenton Seven) are guilty… Very troubling to know someone wastes their time writing about this every day. He’s just as sick as they were. Will pray for (him) and the others. Very sad! Think about the real victims here, they were the children (who) never can escape what they went through. Let it go.”

– Comment from “Believer” in response to “Retired Charlotte Observer Columnist Lew Powell Pursuing State’s Admission of Guilt in Witch Hunt of Wrongly Accused” at NewspaperAlum.com (Aug. 9, 2012)

Was Ben Franklin (or Ambrose Bierce?) correct that “You cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into”? If so, he could hardly have imagined a better example than continued belief in day-care ritual abuse.

Oct. 9, 2016

Paul J. Stern, recently retired prosecutor in Snohomish County, Wash., has long served the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children as a board member and as an instructor on forensic interviewing.

At the least his June presentation to a large audience of APSAC conventioneers promised to be provocative: “What Practices Are We Engaging in Now That 15 Years From Now We’re Going to Look Back on and Think ‘What in the World Were We Thinking?’ ”

But the title paled in comparison with what Stern went on to say about the rap sheet of this ostensibly professional organization – its serial gullibility about “satanic ritual abuse,” “multiple personality disorder” and various other “misguided ideas.”

Click below to watch a video of Paul J. Stern’s entire talk.

He rambles, and the video suffers from not showing his accompanying PowerPoint. But the case he makes is powerful, unmistakable and surely discomfiting to audience members such as President Emeritus for Life Jon Conte and Board Member at Large Kathleen Coulborn Faller.

“I may irritate a few of you from time to time,” he noted as he began.

Some excerpts, edited for clarity:

• “I want to start by going back to the ’60s, the ’80s, the things we cared about then…. Some of the things we’ve grown up from in this field…. What were we thinking back then?… Oy! (clutches head, steps away from lectern)….What the hell were we thinking?….”
• “Let’s get the granddaddy of our ‘Oops!’ out of the way: ‘satanic ritual abuse.’ Individuals and agencies that weren’t skeptical failed to recognize that all of the iceberg that existed was the tip….And that melted pretty quickly…”
• “This matters [because] prosecutors sentenced people to prison based on good, scientific evidence that turned out not to be accurate.”
• “Why does all this happen? Child abuse is both an advocacy field and a political field. We’ve got to energize the base, energize the policymakers, get their attention…. Easy answers manage anxiety, and they get attention. ‘Kids never lie!’ ‘Believe the children!’ Great slogans, great bumper stickers,  but it’s a little more complicated than that….”

Prosecutor Stern continued with a call for APSAC to focus on “evidence-based decision-making,” but I remained stunned by his acknowledgement of decades of APSAC’s cocky, costly wrongheadedness. Yes, innocent defendants such as Bob Kelly did indeed go to prison based on unfounded theories and corrupt interview practices.

Thank you, Mr. Stern, for your candor. Will this moment turn out to be an aberration – or is APSAC finally ready to make amends to the real victims of its “satanic ritual abuse” mythology?

March 4, 2013

“What did Mark Everson, Dr. (Jean C.) Smith, Dr. (Desmond K.) Runyan, Dr. (Doren D.) Fredrickson… all say about behaviors of children who are sexually abused?”

 – From Nancy Lamb’s closing argument in the trial of Bob Kelly (March 23, 1992)

Although Lamb was understandably pleased with her parade of expert witnesses, their testimony brought only discredit to themselves, to their professions and to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, especially its School of Medicine.

The prosecution called on psychologist Mark “Where there’s smoke….” Everson to explain away the child-witnesses’ wild inconsistencies and on pediatricians Smith, Runyan and Fredrickson to serve as “educators of the jury” about the case’s dubious physical evidence. (As detailed in this article in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, the pediatricians overreached but at least testified with less enthusiasm and more caution than Everson.)

One Chapel Hill faculty member, however, wasn’t fooled by the funhouse mirrors. I’ll be writing about sociologist Anthony Oberschall in Wednesday’s post.

June 28, 2015

“Today in Edenton members of John A. Holmes High School’s Class of ’73 will walk across a stage in caps and gowns, receive diplomas and turn tassels on their mortar boards  – 20 years late.

“Their graduation ceremony was cancelled abruptly in 1973. A decision not to renew the contract of a black band leader had caused racial unrest, and school officials feared a disruption…. Diplomas were mailed to the 142 graduates….

“One member who doesn’t plan to attend is Elizabeth Twiddy Kelly…. A condition of her ($400,000) bond prohibits her from going to her hometown.

“ ‘There are a lot of them I would love to just touch base with, but that will have to happen another year,’ Mrs. Kelly said.

“The class committee plans to send her a class T-shirt and a letter.”

– From “Class of ’73” by the Associated Press (June 12, 1993) 

Seven months later Betsy Kelly pleaded no contest to charges of child sex abuse, while maintaining her innocence, and accepted a sentence of seven years in prison. She was paroled in November 1994.