Oct. 24, 2014

“As Middlesex County (Mass.) district attorney, (Martha) Coakley defended the convictions of Fells Acres day-care center operator Violet Amirault and her two children, Gerald Amirault and Cheryl Amirault LeFave. The Amiraults are now widely recognized as victims of the mass national hysteria in the 1980s over supposed child sexual abuse in day care centers….

“In 2000, as the case against the Amiraults had all but collapsed, Coakley opposed the 5-0 decision by the Massachusetts Governor’s Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Gerald Amirault’s sentence. To this day, Gerald lives with an ankle bracelet and strict probationary conditions, despite a growing number of people who recognize not only that he committed no crime, but that no crime was committed….”

– From “When Prosecutors Seek Higher Office, Questions Often Remain” by defense attorney Harvey Silverglate at Forbes (Oct. 22)

“Coakley… refuses to acknowledge what any rational person should know, that once again (after the Salem witch trials) Massachusetts had indulged in irrational hysteria. Just what we need, a governor who can’t admit she made a mistake….”

– From “Struggling to find the truth behind all the political rhetoric” by Barbara Anderson  in the Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, Mass. (Oct. 19)

At the same time voters in Massachusetts will be be deciding whether to elect Martha Coakley governor, those in the First Judicial District of North Carolina will be deciding whether to elect fellow “satanic ritual abuse” prosecutor Nancy Lamb district attorney. Lamb may share with Coakley not only the inability to “admit she made a mistake,” but also the appetite for higher office.

Nov. 23, 2011

“Finally, after eight years, the Little Rascals case is over. We can consign to history what has to be the most bizarre and disturbing episode in the annals of North Carolina law…..

“Never has the state devoted such resources to wrecking lives with such flimsy evidence and unconscionable delays.

“As a case history of mass hysteria, the Edenton story will enrich textbooks for generations. As a cautionary tale of what can happen when otherwise sensible people come under the spell of self-styled victim advocates, one can only hope the memory of Little Rascals will help others stop the next case before it gets out of hand.

“The state’s most effective weapon… was not evidence, but time. By holding (defendants) behind bars month after month, the state managed to inflict enormous punishment… without having to prove a thing.

“As fiction, the Little Rascals story would have strained the combined imaginations of Charles Dickens and Stephen King. As news, it is a chilling example of a judicial system that was unchecked by common sense or common decency.”

– Editorial in the Greensboro News & Record, May 28, 1997

When Gladstone (or whoever) first posited that “Justice delayed is justice denied,” could he have envisioned such a calculated demonstration?

March 9, 2012

“This (Breezy Point Day School) case sounds like the Windshield Pitting Epidemic….

“In the early 1950s, people in the Tacoma-Seattle area began to notice little pits in the windshields of their cars. Rumors started – Martians were landing, it was from nuclear fallout.

“Well, it turns out those pits were always there – they are in every windshield – but no one noticed them until there was anxiety about nuclear testing. For the first time, they were looking at their windshields instead of through them….

“Anxiety makes things take on a different meaning.”

– Mass hysteria specialist Gary Small, psychiatrist at UCLA School of
Medicine, quoted in Philadelphia magazine (April 1991)

June 4, 2012

“Drawing upon clinical experience and research, Faller… asserted that false allegations are quite rare and pointed out that children have little motivation for making a false accusation, but offenders have considerable motivation for persuading professionals that children are either lying, mistaken, or crazy.”

– From “Interviewing Children About Sexual Abuse: Controversies and Best Practice” by Kathleen Coulborn Faller (2007)

Yes, that Kathleen Coulborn Faller, whose stubborn belief in day-care ritual abuse was expressed four years earlier in “Understanding and Assessing Child Sexual Maltreatment.”

Although “Interviewing Children…” isn’t specific to ritual abuse cases, Dr. Faller’s casual dismissal of false allegations echoes the “Believe the Children” mantra of that era.

So much wrongheadedness she manages to pack into a single sentence:

■ “Drawing upon clinical experience and research, Faller… asserted that false allegations are quite rare… ” Here she cites not only her own anecdotal impressions, but also the profoundly misguided research conducted during the height of the abuse mania.

■ “… and pointed out that children have little motivation for making a false accusation…” In fact, children who have been coaxed, threatened and worn down have every motivation to please their interrogators.

■ “… but offenders have considerable motivation for persuading professionals that children are either lying, mistaken, or crazy.” Did it occur to Dr. Faller that offenders have not a bit more such motivation than innocent defendants?

■ ■ ■

Ritual abuse: the creationism of social science?