Aug. 29, 2012

“Los Angeles County’s Satanic Abuse Task Force, an official sub body of the Los Angeles County Women’s Commission, concluded (in 1992) that Satanists were trying to pump diazinon poison into their office and home air vents in order to silence them. Task force members became suspicious, according to president Myra Rydell, after experiencing bouts of profound exhaustion, headaches and, perhaps most significantly, ‘the inability to think straight.’

“McMartin parent Jackie McGauley, also a task force member, told a reporter that, according to her doctor, diazinon would be ‘virtually impossible to detect’ if given in small doses over a long time period. The County’s epidemic specialist said that diazinon was easy to detect and after his own investigation called the claims ‘outrageous.’”

– From “The Dark Truth About the ‘Dark Tunnels of McMartin’” by John Earl (IPT Journal, 1995)

No single reason accounts for the country’s belated skepticism about ritual abuse, but the poison-gas episode in Los Angeles surely qualified as a “jump the shark” moment.

July 15, 2016

“When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early ’80s – the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities….”

– From “The Devil in The Nursery” by Margaret Talbot in The New York Times (Jan. 7, 2001)

Dec. 19, 2011

“In the Little Rascals case, a handful of therapists were compensated by the state for evaluating and ‘treating’ the child witnesses. But there seemed to be other motivations for these therapists to become ‘investigators’ for the district attorney’s office. According to one mother’s testimony, one therapist seemed to have a vested forensic role.

“ ‘(The therapist) evidently had been involved in this for a long time, and she was planning on flying in experts and FBI people from everywhere, because she thought this was going to be bigger than the McMartin Preschool case in California…. And she wanted to get on this one right away, wanted to get all of these expert people in here because she knew there was a lot more to to it.’ ”

– From “Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony”
by Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck (1995)

Sept. 25, 2013

“Peer group pressure… is a factor that should be considered when there is an allegation of sexual abuse involving multiple victims. Children in Edenton who never attended the day care, but who had peers who attended, claimed to have been abused at the day care.

“During her testimony for the defense, Dr. Maggie Bruck described a scientific study in which two actors went into a classroom of 28 children to give a talk. During the talk one of the actors knocked a large birthday cake off a piano. Seven children had been removed from the room and did not observe the event. Later when the children were interviewed six of the seven children who had not been present not only claimed to have been there but described the event as if they had been present.”

– From “Evidence Issues and ‘Lessons’ from State v. Kelly: Litigation of Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse” by Jeffrey L. Miller and W. Michael Spivey, presented at the 6th annual North Carolina Criminal Evidence Seminar, UNC School of Law (April 16, 1993)