Aug. 21, 2017

“It’s impossible to say what might have happened had Jane Mabry’s child not been slapped, or if Brenda Toppin had not just been to the sexual abuse class. I certainly don’t think Jane ever foresaw where it all led. Who could? I think all she wanted was to close Little Rascals.”

– Ofra Bikel, quoted in “A ‘Frontline’ documentary on child abuse hysteria shows how good TV can be” by Brian Lambert in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press (May 27, 1997)

Sept. 21, 2012

“Los Angeles psychiatrist Roland Summit’s ‘child sexual abuse syndrome,’ a theory about incest… argues that if there is evidence of sex abuse and a child denies it, this is only further proof that it happened and a therapist should use any means necessary to help the child talk…. If they later recant, that means they are under family pressure to protect the father and their turnabout is further proof of the crime.

“So no matter how much coercion was used to get an accusation and no matter if a child later retracted it, once Summit’s incest theory was applied, a charge of abuse became irrefutable. Child protection workers ignored the fact that this logic had little to do with day care. After all, why would children staunchly defend abuse to protect an adult who wasn’t part of the family? And if they had been so brutally attacked at school, why wouldn’t they tell their parents?

“Therapists and investigators came up with all sorts of rationales. One was the teachers threatened them by slaughtering animals and warning that the same thing would happen to their parents if they told….”

– From “The Ritual Sex Abuse Hoax” by Debbie Nathan (Village Voice, January 12, 1990)

The “threatened parents” claim reared its head in this 1995 letter from Little Rascals parents:

“…Many (children are now) old enough to realize that Bob Kelly can’t work his threatened evil to kill their families.”

July 1, 2013

I noted last week the continuing unwillingness of law professor John E.B. Myers, widely published authority on child sex abuse, to express an opinion “regarding the guilt or innocence of any of the McMartin defendants.”

In this passage in “Child Protection in America” (2006), which Professor Myers graciously forwarded to me, he justifies his indecision on the case by pointing to claims of secret underground tunnels supposedly discovered (too late!) beneath the McMartin Preschool:

“Several McMartin parents, especially the indefatigable Jackie McGauley, hired an archeologist to excavate under the abandoned preschool. The archeologist conducted an excavation and issued an exhaustive report concluding there probably were tunnels. The tunnels had been backfilled with dirt, but McGauley pointed out that the Buckeys had months to fill in the tunnels after the preschool closed. I read the archeologist’s report and came away convinced. Yet, I shared the report with a colleague who was just as firmly convinced the report proves nothing.”

At the very least, this approach constitutes feckless “research.” To see the tunnel report thoroughly vaporized, Myers needed only to click on “The Dark Truth About the ‘Dark Tunnels of McMartin’ ” by John Earl (1995) or “What Was Under the McMartin Preschool?” by Joseph Wyatt (2002).

When the McMartin parents went digging for nonexistent tunnels, the term “truther” hadn’t yet entered the lexicon. Too bad.

July 17, 2013

“Some reports of day care abuse suggest threats and verbal coercion to be particularly severe. (David) Finkelhor et al. (1988), for example, reported that in day care abuse, perpetrators threatened harm to the child in 41% of cases, harm to the child’s family in 22% of cases and threatened to kill a child’s pet in 12%. (Susan J.) Kelley, Brant and Waterman (1993) added that threats in these cases were most likely to involve harm to the victim or their family. (Kathleen Coulborn) Faller (1990) notes that in addition to death threats against the victim or their family, a further frequent threat was to implicate the victim.”

– From “Women Who Sexually Abuse Children” by Hannah Ford (2006)

So much so wrong in so few words!

Finkelhor, Kelley and Faller – among their era’s most prolific researchers in child sexual abuse – have never retracted their false claims. And despite epochal advances in social science, author Ford in 2006 cites their work without qualification, thus extending its influence to another generation.

Notable also: As does fellow fantasist Susan J. Kelley, Finkelhor uses statistics to lend authority to his alternate universe. How many “perpetrators… threatened to kill a child’s pet”? Not 10 percent, not 11 percent, but “12 percent” – who could doubt such exactitude?