March 27, 2013

“Authorities fed… parents and public (in Edenton) a biased reading of the evidence, but few realized it was biased.

“Consider the following: John and David, two friends in the day care, are both questioned. John says he and David were both molested, but David says it didn’t happen. Thus the evidence is 50/50 on John and 50/50 on David. They can’t be both right.

“What now? If David keeps denying, he is dropped from the investigation, and the negative evidence on John exits with David. Meanwhile, John’s parents are not told that David denies, and John’s case goes ahead. From 50/50, the allegation has become 100 percent true.

“For this investigation to inevitably produce more victims of abuse, three things are necessary:

“1. Parents are told that their child was named by others as abused, but not told that their child was not abused according to still other children.

“2. Parents are told that denial by their child is a sign of abuse and that therefore the child should be questioned by therapists until he admits.

“3. In some therapy sessions, the children do disclose even if they were not abused.

“Did the prosecution in the Little Rascals investigate in such a manner? The (North Carolina) Appeals Court certainly was of that opinion. It was the principal reason the convictions of Robert Kelly and Dawn Wilson were overturned.”

– From “Why False Beliefs Prevail: the Little Rascals Child Sex Abuse Prosecutions” by Anthony Oberschall in “Essays in Honor of Raymond Boudon” (2000)

Oberschall doesn’t use the term, but I’m reminded of the widespread and pernicious “file drawer effect” – that is, “the practice of scientific researchers to file away studies with negative outcomes.”

June 8, 2012

“The duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict.”

– American Bar Association

“The primary responsibility of prosecution is to see that justice is accomplished.”

– National District Attorneys Association

“If you were playing poker, would you be playing with your full hand
showing?”

– Bill Hart, special deputy attorney general, defending his unwillingness
to share evidence with the Little Rascals defense

July 24, 2013

“(Edenton police officer Brenda) Toppin, who conducted the first interviews of children allegedly abused at the center, testified that ‘In the early interviews, I had very few children disclosing to me…. Most of the children were not telling me specifically about Mr. Bob.’

“ ‘Red flags,’ however, caused her to continue her questioning. The ‘red flags’ included children being tense when the subject of the day-care center was mentioned, she said, and not talking to her as normal children would.”

– From the Associated Press (December 4, 1991)

It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see Brenda Toppin’s persistence in the face of “very few children disclosing to me” or her overreaction to those absurdly vague “red flags.”

A surviving fragment of tape laid out even more saliently her abusive interview technique. Read for yourself a transcript of one of Toppin’s interviews with a child. The transcript entered the court record during the appeals process.

Sept. 10, 2017

“With no conclusive DNA evidence, medical evidence of penetration or an eyewitness to the alleged assault, both prosecution and defense relied on expert witnesses to speak to the reliability of a young child’s testimony and whether it had been tainted by outside factors, such as how her mother had pressed her about whether she was touched… and how child advocacy center staff had interviewed her….

“ ‘Did [the 6-year-old girl] lie? I don’t know, and the problem is, neither does anyone else,’ [Marine Col. Daniel] Wilson’s civilian attorney Phil Stackhouse said in a closing argument…. Stackhouse pointed out that she had twice denied to her mother being touched by Wilson before she said he had.

“A government witness, Dr. Mark Everson, an expert on childhood trauma at the University of North Carolina, had testified that 6-year-olds are remarkably resilient to suggestion, or the planting of false memories….”

– From “Jury Deliberates Over Colonel Accused of Child Sex Assault” by Hope Hodge Seck at military.com (Sept. 9)

Yes, that’s the same Mark Everson who helped persuade a jury that Bob Kelly was guilty of 99 counts of child sexual abuse.

Everson, a UNC psychologist, disputed well-accepted research that children are suggestible and should not be repeatedly interrogated by therapists. Even 10 years later, he found it hard to believe that every Little Rascals child-witness had been badly interviewed and confused: “There’s so much smoke there, it’s hard to imagine there’s no fire.”

Update: A military court at Camp Lejeune found Col. Wilson guilty of child molestation.