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.”

Oct. 22, 2016

“At APSAC’s June Colloquium, Paul J. Stern gave a presentation that clearly acknowledged your organization’s role in fostering the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ day-care panic of  the 1980s and early ’90s.

“Mr. Stern, a prosecutor and longtime APSAC official, was only illuminating from the inside a reality long recognized among virtually all respected professionals and academics.

“I am writing today to request that the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children formally renounce its advocacy of the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ myth and apologize to its victims.  The ‘misguided ideas’ cited by Mr. Stern not only supported wrongful prosecutions and incarcerations, but also profoundly misled children, parents and the public.

“The reputation of APSAC will remain tainted as long as it fails to make amends for this seminal part of its history.  If the International Association of Chiefs of Police can apologize for  ‘the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in society’s historical mistreatment of communities of color,’ then surely APSAC can similarly mitigate the damages caused by its own actions.”

– From a letter I sent to Dr. Janet Rosenzweig, executive director, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children

Nov. 30, 2012

In 1993 (January-February issue), the journal Child Abuse & Neglect published “Sexual Abuse of Children in Day Care Centers” by Susan J. Kelley, Renee Brant and Jill Waterman. This is from the article’s abstract:

“Sexual abuse of children in day care center settings has received considerable attention in the past decade. The nature and extent of allegations of sexual abuse in day care poses unique challenges to clinicians. Cases of sexual abuse in day care typically involve multiple victims and multiple perpetrators, and use of extreme threats to prevent disclosure….”

The article’s misinformation has spread far beyond its original readership. Google Scholar shows “Sexual Abuse of Children in Day Care Centers” to have been cited in other publications no fewer than 36 times, as recently as this year.

I asked Child Abuse & Neglect to publish a retraction.

I received this response from editor-in-chief David A. Wolfe, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Toronto:

“The journal only retracts papers if there are significant errors or other problems, such as plagiarism, health risks etc. Otherwise, it is up to the scientific community to decide when new knowledge or findings would usurp those previously published. This is the case in many areas of research, whereby older (sometimes well-accepted) findings are no longer given credence due to newer findings. It is not feasible or appropriate to remove the previous findings, as that is how science progresses.

“Unless you are aware of specific errors in the 1993 data, rather than drawing different conclusions, the journal would not take any further action.

“I trust this resolves your concerns.”

Well, no, actually it doesn’t. This is what I wrote back to Dr. Wolfe:

“The problem with ‘Sexual Abuse of Children in Day Care Centers’ is not a matter of ‘different conclusions’ being drawn from the data. The entire concept of the article is false: There was never any ‘multiple victim, multiple offender’ sexual abuse in day cares, any more than there was witchcraft in Salem. As has been thoroughly documented by social scientists such as Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck, and eventually validated in the legal system, all these ritual-abuse cases resulted from a moral panic.

“This passage is from the Retraction Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics: ‘Retraction is a mechanism for correcting the literature and alerting readers to publications that contain such seriously flawed or erroneous data that their findings and conclusions cannot be relied upon. Unreliable data may result from honest error or from research misconduct.’

“And this is from Tom Reller (vice president of global public relations at publisher Elsevier): ‘Our journals, and academia overall, do better when shining a light on bad actors and bad science.’ ”….

“This is my concern, not yours, but ‘bad science’ fostered numerous convictions in Little Rascals, McMartin and other day care prosecutions of the 1980s and early 1990s. A retraction in a journal such as yours would be a significant step toward obtaining true exoneration for these defendants.”

No response from Dr. Wolfe. Maybe he’s reconsidering?

Nov. 18, 2015

“Readers who want a deeper look at how young children’s accounts of CSA (child sexual abuse) were discredited in the same time frame of the (Roman Catholic) clergy CSA scandal should read Ross Cheit’s 2014 book ‘Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children’….

– From “ ‘Spotlight’ Gets A Lot Right” by Colleen Friend in the Chronicle of Social Change (Nov. 15)

Whoa.

The clergy sex abuse scandal at the center of the just-released newsroom drama “Spotlight” had nothing to do with the “satanic ritual abuse” moral panic so earnestly if unpersuasively denied by Professor Cheit.

Clergy abuse was all too real, and the evidence proved undeniable; abuse in day cares was a fantasy produced by undertrained and overreaching therapists. Tragically, the children’s accounts that were “discredited” were their original denials that they had experienced abuse.

Worth noting: Dr. Friend is former director of Stuart House in Santa Monica, Calif., a child abuse treatment center opened to accommodate the tidal wave of (mostly imaginary) abuse cases spawned by McMartin.