Oct. 14, 2015

“(Attorney General Roy Cooper) took over a tangled and controversial investigation of alleged gang rape by Duke University athletes, eventually in 2007 making the extraordinary determination that the crime never happened….”

– From “Cooper formally declares campaign to unseat McCrory” by Craig Jarvis in the News & Observer of Raleigh (Oct. 12)

So far, Attorney General Cooper’s willingness to address crimes that never happened hasn’t extended to the Little Rascals Day Care case.

April 28, 2017

“There is this idea that people of the 1980s were just not very bright or really superstitious or something like that. Back then, the people who questioned it were treated with suspicion. People would say, ‘Of course this is happening, what’s wrong with you?’ And it’s not like this is an anomaly in American history. In the ’50s, Commies were crawling out of the basement. This stuff goes back to Salem witch trials…

“The ritual abuse thing also became part of psychological culture. This idea that children don’t lie about these things became really entrenched for a while….

“It was a way to talk about actual abuse, I think. At the time, the idea that childhood abuse was mostly perpetrated by family members was too outrageous, too awful. People would rather believe that it was evil, Satan-worshipping strangers.”

– Dan Chaon, author of “Ill Will,” quoted by Joe Gross in the Austin American-Statesman

Early on, Chaon’s interest in writing a novel centered on “satanic ritual abuse” was piqued by the West Memphis Three.

June 11, 2015

“In (the upcoming movie) Regression, Ethan Hawke plays a detective investigating accusations by a woman against her father. There’s a twist: The father has admitted wrongdoing, though he has no recollection of what happened – and a psychologist is summoned to help him recover his memories….

“The trailer is opaque in its rendering of what crime the father may have committed, but it’s probably meant to echo the Satanic witch hunts that gripped parts of America in the 1980s and early ’90s….  The daughter’s haunting memories include ‘chanting,’ ‘robes’ and a ‘black mask’….

“So it’ll be interesting to see (director Alejandro) Amenábar’s take in Regression: Does he present the case as a real, Satanic experience that actually occurs within the world of the story, or will the film be a larger commentary on the horrific fallout of unfounded hysteria?

“Here’s hoping it’s the latter…. We’ll find out when Regression opens in August.”

– From “Ethan Hawke and Emma Watson Battle Satan (Maybe) in the Trailer for Regression”
by Aisha Harris at Slate (June 10)

Also arriving in August – but much less ambiguously: “We Believe The Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s” by Richard Beck. According to a starred review in Publishers Weekly, “Beck marshals extensive research into an absorbing dissection of a panic whose tremors still affect us today.”

May 2, 2012

“Ironically, the children are indeed being sexually and emotionally abused by the therapists, officials and medical personnel who are supposed to be protecting them, and they often develop long-term symptoms as a result, including anxiety, insecurity, insomnia, nightmares, fear of strangers, depression, rages, obsession with death and suicidal impulses.

“These, of course, are then taken as proof that the original suspected abuse did, indeed, take place.”

– From “Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse Accusations and
Shattered Lives” by Mark Pendergrast (1996)