Dec. 30, 2015

Where things stand at year’s end in the obscure but still hopeful world of littlerascalsdaycarecase.org:

– Junior Chandler continues to wait for a decision from the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic on whether to take up his case. On April 15 he will begin serving his 30th year in prison.

– North Carolina’s most recent two governors and its current attorney general all have ignored my appeals for a “statement of innocence” for the Edenton Seven. Might the approaching election offer opportunities at least to publicly frame the question?

– Professional journals are still refusing to publish retractions for the articles they published supporting the existence of “satanic ritual abuse” in the nation’s day cares.

– The Internet remains a poisonous cornucopia of authoritatively rendered misinformation. This is from a message board exchange I happened on earlier this month:

“I have heard the rumors that there are a large number of satanists who abuse their children in satanic rituals. I have heard even more about the illuminati having orgy parties like the one in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ where they rape children on an altar and then kill them in a sacrifice to Satan and then drink their blood. But I have no idea of knowing if any of this is actually true and if it is true how common it is….”

“These stories are true, for the most part. I met a young woman through my pro-life apostolate who had had several abortions – not of her own choice. She had been a prisoner of these satanists (her parents were involved in it) who had her impregnated with the precise purpose of the ritual sacrifice of abortion…..”

The only surprise here is the qualifier “for the most part” – among SRA believers, only absolute gullibility is allowed….

–  Finally, thanks to all those who have expressed support for the wrongfully prosecuted defendants in the “satanic ritual abuse” era. Let’s hope 2016 cracks the door to the exoneration they so profoundly deserve.

April 19, 2013

“What can have spurred so many communities to such (ritual abuse) hysteria? The answer may be day care itself. The mothers who report that children never lie are simply unfamiliar with the ways of children. They may also feel guilty about putting their children in day care. A righteous rage against the day-care provider can certainly distract a parent from wondering whether she is doing an adequate job as a mother.”

– From “Believe the children?” by syndicated columnist Mona Charen (October 11, 2003)

Although Charen approaches the subject as a proselytizer for stay-at-home motherhood, less partisan observers also have speculated about the role of day-care guilt.

Oct. 5, 2012

Because today’s North Carolina Supreme Court decision on Junior Chandler’s appeal comprised three separate parts, I didn’t fully comprehend it.

“Is this good news or bad?” I emailed Mark Montgomery, Junior’s appellate lawyer.

“The worst,” he replied. “We’re out of court.”

Yes, this is the worst – the absolute, inexcusable, shameful worst.

The justices have denied Junior Chandler, probably the last still-imprisoned victim of the multiple-offender, multiple-victim ritual-abuse day-care panic, his final chance for a new trial. After 25 years behind bars – more than all the Little Rascals defendants combined! – he faces only more of the same.

If I were a lawyer, maybe I could understand how the North Carolina Supreme Court arrived at its decision.

How it was unmoved by Junior’s feeble representation early on.

How it was uninterested in the epochal progress made in limiting expert testimony.

How it was all too eager to find petty justifications for validating a prosecution rotten at the core.

But probably not.

Feb. 11, 2013

“After reading a number of these interviews (of children) in the Wee Care (Kelly Michaels) case, it is difficult to believe that adults charged with the care and protection of young children would be allowed to use the vocabulary that they used in these interviews, that they would be allowed to interact with the children in such sexually explicit ways, or that they would be allowed to bully and frighten their child witnesses in such a shocking manner. No amount of evidence that sexual abuse had actually occurred could ever justify the use of these techniques especially with three- and four-year-old children.

“Above and beyond the great stress, intimidation, and embarrassment that many of the children so obviously suffered during the interviews, we are deeply concerned about the long-lasting harmful effects of persuading children that they have been horribly sexually and physically abused, when in fact there may have been no abuse until the interviews began….”

– From an amicus curiae brief to the Appellate Court of New Jersey from Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck on behalf of the 46-member Committee of Concerned Social Scientists (1994)