Jan. 12, 2018

“[Bob Kelly’s] defense contended that the children’s allegations were just the responses of suggestible youngsters eager to please the interrogators who were urging them to disclose abuse. [Interviewed in “Innocence Lost: The Verdict”,] one mother whose child did not disclose abuse is seen heaping scorn on the police and social services interrogation of her child:

” ‘They constantly asked him the same thing over and over again, and they would rephrase it…. They talked to him, it had to be an hour and a half or so before we interrupted and they wanted to continue talking to him. I would guess the same questions were asked five or six times.’

“This mother’s recollection is one of the few clues to the police methods in this case. Police and prosecutors declined to cooperate with ‘Frontline.’ All of the investigative notes and tapes were destroyed, and the only source material available at trial was after-the-fact summaries….”

– From “Justice Abuse? ‘Frontline’ Documentary Takes Hard Look At A Small-town Scandal” by Bart Mills in the Chicago Tribune (July 20, 1993)

Aug. 1, 2012

“Congress’s well-intentioned but misguided Mondale Act (the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, CAPTA), signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1974, provided impetus to prosecute alleged crimes against children.

“First, it provided immunity to reporters of abuse, thereby unleashing an unlimited supply of unsubstantiated charges.

“Second, it provided funds to permit so-called victims to receive state-financed therapy immediately, even prior to any adjudication.

“Thus, the victims in Edenton received extensive counseling, at government expense, for ‘abuse’ that never occurred. Four ‘sex therapists’ got all that business and received many thousands of dollars in reimbursement. They had no motivation to suppose those charges might be bogus.”

– From “Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom” by Raymond J. Lawrence (2007)

Feb. 22, 2017

“[When Rich Rosen, Theresa Newman and Jim Coleman began planning the state’s first innocence project], not everyone agreed their work was worth doing. To many… colleagues, in North Carolina and across the country, the letters they were reading were no more than acts of desperation: There was zero chance these inmates were innocent, only that they had nothing to lose by filing paperwork. The American criminal-justice system had always trivialized its own chances at convicting anyone wrongly, feeling certain – as lawyer Christine Mumma no longer could – that protections at trial made that outcome impossible….”

– From “A Justice Startup” by Benjamin Rachlin in “Innocent: The Fight Against Wrongful Convictions,” a Time special edition

Rachlin’s piece is excerpted from “Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption,” to be published in August.

March 12, 2014

“Really now, teachers chopped up animals, clubbed a horse to death with a baseball bat, sacrificed a baby in a church and made children drink the blood, dressed up as witches and flew in the air – and all this had been going on unnoticed for a good long while until a disturbed mother spoke up?”

– From “The Trial That Unleashed Hysteria Over Child Abuse” by Clyde Haberman in the New York Times (March 9, 2014)

Big thanks to Retro Report for its eye-reopening essay and 13-minute video recalling the seminal McMartin Preschool case. Also mentioned are Little Rascals and other “criminal cases of dubious provenance” from the moral panic.

Although the road to public exoneration for the Edenton Seven remains long and uncertain, this attention from the Times is welcome indeed.