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?

Nov. 27, 2014

“Of the dozen or so historical markers clustered in the town of Edenton, only one – recognizing novelist Inglis Fletcher – postdates the 1800s.

“The North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Committee now has the opportunity, 25 years after the first arrest in the Little Rascals case, to add to that number a 20th Century event inarguably significant in the legal and social history of not just North Carolina but also the nation.”

– From my application proposing “history on a stick” recognition for the Little Rascals Day Care case

The marker committee, composed of historians from four-year colleges across the state, will meet in December to decide which pending applications meet its criteria.

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.

Feb. 13, 2016

“The disciplinary board of the Texas State Bar on Monday affirmed the agency’s decision to disbar Charles Sebesta, the former prosecutor who oversaw the wrongful death sentence of Anthony Graves.

“Graves, who spent 18 years in prison, including 12 on death row, for a fiery multiple murder he did not commit… had asked the Bar to hold Sebesta accountable for withholding critical evidence of his innocence.

“ ‘The bar stepped in to say that’s not the way our criminal justice system should work,’ Graves said. ‘This is a good day for justice.’ ”

– From “State Bar board affirms disbarment of prosecutor who sent innocent man to death row” by Brandi Grissom in the Dallas Morning News (Feb. 8)

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley notes that “Sebesta’s conduct was shocking but remains a relatively rare example of prosecutors being held accountable in such cases of prosecutorial abuse.”

Although the Texas Bar displayed little eagerness to bring a prosecutor to justice – and disbarment is a petty consequence indeed for the enormity of Sebesta’s malfeasance – its response seems darn near heroic compared with the shameful vindictiveness we have come to expect from the North Carolina Bar.