Feb. 25, 2013

“The 99 guilty verdicts against (Bob) Kelly appear to have set a benchmark for such cases: that youthful witnesses can have enough credibility to win convictions on their word alone.

“‘This validated child witness testimony,’ said Carolyn McAllaster, who teaches a child advocacy clinic at Duke University’s law school and trial practice at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

“‘I think the reason a lot of prosecutors hesitate to take these cases is they fear these children won’t be believed by juries,’ she said. ‘They should give a child’s testimony the same weight they would give an adult’s testimony. I think that children are very believable and that their testimony can be judged on its own merits.’ ”

– From “Rascals verdict affirms children’s credibility” in the Raleigh News & Observer (April 26, 1992)

McAllaster has gone on to become director of the AIDS Legal Project and a clinical professor of law at Duke.

Has she changed her mind about the credibility of child witnesses?

I asked her.

She hasn’t responded.

July 26, 2015

“A look at America’s underbelly indicates more than a ‘random’ killing (at a Lafayette, La., movie theater). Eight signs point to John Russell Houser possibly being subjected to programmed satanic ritual abuse (SRA) mind control…..”

– From “Eight Louisiana Shooter Satanic Ritual Abuse Links” by Deborah Dupré at Before It’s News (July 24)

Among those “eight signs”:

• “Houser’s Thursday night (July 23) shooting coincides with the (July 20) three-year anniversary of James Holmes opening fire at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado.
• “Many SRA survivors experience a difference in their normal day-to-day life one to two weeks before any major ritual celebration. These are marked on SRA calendars….. Between July 20-27, SRA-mind-controlled individuals prepare for… a blood sacrifice.”
• “Houser moved to Lafayette in early July, officials say. July 1 on the SRA calendar is designated as ‘Demon Revels Blood (Druids sexual association with demons. Any age. Female).’ The two people Houser murdered were each females…. In SRA, males dominate….”

Hard to believe, isn’t it, that the mainstream media have failed to pursue such an obvious explanation….

Dec. 10, 2017

“Controversy over the credibility of children’s testimony has congealed into a debate between those who demand that we ‘believe the children’ no matter how outlandish their allegations and those who maintain that children are inherently so suggestible that their testimony can never be relied on upon. An interesting question that remains is why children are not believed when, as often happens, they specifically deny charges at the time they first arise….

“Why isn’t the child allowed to say no? A widening body of research shows that repeated questioning of children, especially by authoritative adults with a specific bias, will often lead to answers that conform to the interviewers’ expectations….

“Divorce, neglect, unsafe neighborhoods, bad schools – these primary social problems are not the fault of the people to whom we have entrusted our children. Forcing children to invent stories of abuse is abuse….”

– From “Child-care Demons” by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker (Oct. 3, 1994)

Jan. 4, 2013

“Psychologist Jean Piaget reported that his earliest memory was of his nurse defending him against a potential kidnapper at age two. He distinctly recalled sitting frightened in the baby carriage while the nurse fought off the man (incurring a scratch on her face in the process), and the police officer chasing away the kidnapper with his short white baton. Piaget was even able to describe the officer’s uniform in detail. His family, relieved that the nurse had prevented his kidnapping, rewarded her with a gold watch.

“Thirteen years later, the nurse returned the gold watch to the family accompanied by a letter confessing that she had made up the story because she wanted to raise the family’s opinion of her.

“Piaget used this false memory to emphasize the role of others’ influences on one’s memories. He noted that the nurse frequently had recounted the story in his presence, and others then had repeated the story in his hearing, thus creating the memories he had adopted as his own.

“Piaget noted that even in his old age those memories persisted as clear events, even though he knew them to be false.”

– From “The Encyclopedia of the Brain and Brain Disorders” by Carol Turkington and Joseph Harris (2009)

Given this phenomenon of memory, it’s hardly surprising that no child-witness against the Edenton Seven has stepped forward to publicly recant.