Dec. 3, 2014

“I was in graduate school in Southern California 30 years ago when the McMartin Preschool scandal erupted, featuring tales of Satanic rituals, underground tunnels, group sex with animals and children, and various acrobatic acts that would challenge Cirque du Soleil, all believed credulously by the media and California prosecutors….

“There was something so literally incredible about (such) ‘Satanic ritual abuse’ cults that serious doubts and questions should have been raised right at the outset.

“Some hard questions are starting to be asked about the latest sequel to the Salem witch trials – the college campus ‘rape culture’ hysteria…. The Rolling Stone story about an especially brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia is provoking considerable backlash– with a few critics suggesting the entire story might be a hoax ….

“It took years for the ‘Satanic child abuse crisis’ to collapse, and several months for the Duke lacrosse scandal to turn around. What is interesting about the UVa story is how quickly it is facing credible challenge….”

– From “The Spirit of Salem Lives On” by Steven Hayward at powerlineblog.com (Dec. 2)

Dec. 9, 2011

Had former district attorney H.P. Williams Jr. let our conversation drag on beyond 30 seconds on Wednesday, here are some questions I might have asked:

– In all the day care cases of the ʼ80s and early ʼ90s – Little Rascals, McMartin, Fells Acres, Wee Care, ad nauseam – why was not one instance of sexual abuse ever witnessed by an adult?

– Why was not one piece of physical or medical evidence ever presented?

– Would you still argue at Bob Kellyʼs sentencing hearing that “There is no reason he should be restored to the community at any time”?

– Have you been surprised that, since being freed, not one of the defendants has returned to a life of serial child sexual abuse?

– What would it take for you to admit the Edenton Seven were innocent?

● ● ●

If H.P. Williams Jr. – or any other reader – would like to respond, he is always welcome to do so here.

Sept. 6, 2013

“The day-care trials couldn’t have happened without the active participation of social workers and therapists.  Police authorities relied on the therapists to interpret what the child witnesses were saying, to interview the children and to counsel them about their alleged experiences. One might suppose that the realization that:

• People have been sent to prison for years for crimes that never happened;
• Children had been abused, not by the accused, but by misguided therapists who implanted false memories;

would have created a huge mea culpa among the professionals involved.  This hasn’t happened.

“Some have defended their actions, if not the results, on the basis that their hearts were in the right place.  Some have excused themselves on the basis that nobody knew any better – that, by golly, nobody could have guessed that rewarding children for making accusations, and questioning them until they did make accusations, might just lead to false accusations.

“And they speak, in self-pitying tones, about the ‘backlash’ – the (presumably) undeserved and irrational criticism that is flung their way.”

– From  “The ‘Ritual Abuse’ Panic” at Imaginary Crimes

Mum’s still the word from the prosecution therapists in the Little Rascals case, except for Judy Abbott’s resentful response to the “backlash.”

April 10, 2013

“Consider the use of anatomically detailed dolls to prompt shy or frightened children to reveal abuse. This was an innovation of the 1970s, and at first it certainly seemed like an effective and compassionate one.

“But more recent studies have cast doubt on whether these dolls prompt more accurate recall, especially for the pre-schoolage children for whom they are usually deployed.

“The doll is supposed to be a body double for the child him- or herself; but since the vast majority of children this age lack the symbolic thinking required to make such a connection– most two- and three-year-olds, for example, cannot see the relation between a room and a scale model of it – this proposition turns out to be rather dubious.

“More to the point, it seems that some children who have not been sexually abused will also play with an anatomically detailed doll in sexually suggestive ways – promptly removing its clothes, touching or grabbing its ‘genitals,’ sticking their fingers into various orifices. As the authors of one study judiciously put it, the ‘average amount of sexualized doll play by presumably non-abused children is not alarming, but there is enough of it to be potentially problematic in clinical or forensic situations.’

“In other words, if you are prepared to see signs of abuse, you may see them even in behavior that, in other contexts or at other times, would be attributed to normal sexual curiosity.

“And this is precisely the issue: At a time when there was comparatively little data available on what constituted normal sexuality in children, this vacuum was filled by people with a very narrow view of the possibilities.”

– From “Against Innocence: The truth about child abuse and the truth about children” by Margaret Talbot in The New Republic (March 15, 1999)

Prosecution therapists in the Little Rascals case made extensive use of anatomically correct dolls. During Bob Kelly’s trial, therapist Janet Hadler of Chapel Hill showed a video clip of a 5-year-old girl pressing together the pelvises of a male and a female doll. “Children who are demonstrating explicit sexual contact,” Hadler testified confidently, “are doing that because they have some knowledge of adult sexual behavior.”