Oct. 29, 2012

“For at least eight years American law enforcement has been aggressively investigating the allegations of victims of ritualistic abuse. There is little or no evidence for the portion of their allegations that deals with large-scale baby breeding, human sacrifice and organized satanic conspiracies.”

– Kenneth V. Lanning, supervisory special agent at the behavioral science unit, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, FBI Academy, Quantico, Va. (Aug. 19, 1991)

Two decades later, what’s most striking about agent Lanning’s statement isn’t the content – what could’ve been more predictable? – but the context: The moral panic held such sway that the FBI was forced to devote no less than eight years to discrediting it.

Lanning’s 1992 analysis (i.e., debunking) of all aspects of satanic ritual abuse has been called “perhaps the most important and influential document ever written on the topic.”

Here’s what Lanning said about day care allegations:

“Children currently or formerly attending a day care center gradually describe their victimization at the center and at other locations to which they were taken by the day care staff. The cases include multiple victims and offenders, fear, and bizarre or ritualistic activity, with a particularly high number of female offenders. Descriptions of strange games, insertion of foreign objects, killing of animals, photographing of activities, and wearing of costumes are common. The accounts of the young children, however, do not seem to be quite as ‘bizarre‘ as those of the adult survivors, with fewer accounts of human sacrifice….”

Angered by the report, some therapists accused Lanning of being a satanist who had infiltrated the FBI to advance the cause.

April 10, 2013

“Consider the use of anatomically detailed dolls to prompt shy or frightened children to reveal abuse. This was an innovation of the 1970s, and at first it certainly seemed like an effective and compassionate one.

“But more recent studies have cast doubt on whether these dolls prompt more accurate recall, especially for the pre-schoolage children for whom they are usually deployed.

“The doll is supposed to be a body double for the child him- or herself; but since the vast majority of children this age lack the symbolic thinking required to make such a connection– most two- and three-year-olds, for example, cannot see the relation between a room and a scale model of it – this proposition turns out to be rather dubious.

“More to the point, it seems that some children who have not been sexually abused will also play with an anatomically detailed doll in sexually suggestive ways – promptly removing its clothes, touching or grabbing its ‘genitals,’ sticking their fingers into various orifices. As the authors of one study judiciously put it, the ‘average amount of sexualized doll play by presumably non-abused children is not alarming, but there is enough of it to be potentially problematic in clinical or forensic situations.’

“In other words, if you are prepared to see signs of abuse, you may see them even in behavior that, in other contexts or at other times, would be attributed to normal sexual curiosity.

“And this is precisely the issue: At a time when there was comparatively little data available on what constituted normal sexuality in children, this vacuum was filled by people with a very narrow view of the possibilities.”

– From “Against Innocence: The truth about child abuse and the truth about children” by Margaret Talbot in The New Republic (March 15, 1999)

Prosecution therapists in the Little Rascals case made extensive use of anatomically correct dolls. During Bob Kelly’s trial, therapist Janet Hadler of Chapel Hill showed a video clip of a 5-year-old girl pressing together the pelvises of a male and a female doll. “Children who are demonstrating explicit sexual contact,” Hadler testified confidently, “are doing that because they have some knowledge of adult sexual behavior.”

Feb. 20, 2012

Cynthia Brown, medical director of the Mountain Child Medical Evaluation Program at Mission Children’s Hospital in Asheville, was among the first pediatricians credentialed in the subspecialty of child abuse. I asked her to summarize current medical opinion on ritual-abuse day-care cases. Here are excerpts of her response:

“One criticism common to the day-care cases in the ’80s was the inadequate interviewing process used for those children. Some interviewers reportedly made assumptions that abuse had occurred and used leading questions. As a result of these cases, major changes have been made in interviewing protocols. Interviewers go through extensive training and are expected to participate in peer review to assure they are using the protocols correctly.

“In our clinic we meet with the investigators (DSS and law enforcement) and review the child’s initial disclosure….

“We discuss alternative hypotheses….: Could the child have witnessed adult sexual activity accidentally, or through videos or computers? Could the child have been coached? Has the child been inadvertently contaminated by questions asked by a panicked parent?….

“The interview is videorecorded for review by the investigators. It also allows us to evaluate the
caliber of the disclosure and the questioning….

“Several years ago, I spoke with someone involved in one of the day-care cases who now believes there was a kernel of truth in the allegation but that it was obscured by contamination and leading interviews.

“One last thing: The FBI has looked into cases where ritualistic satanic abuse was alleged (not all were in day cares) and has never been able to validate these claims.”

Oct. 15, 2012

“German television and the press (especially the tabloids) dwelled on McMartin with almost the same intensity as did the U.S. media….The impact was predictable: an immediate, steep increase in the number of abuse claims by children and their parents….

“In the city of Muenster…. children (at a Montessori school) accused persons totally removed from the setting, including taxi drivers, and talked about coffins, mortuaries, trap doors, chaining and secret subterranean vaults. The panic spread to other schools.

“Finally, the (Montessori) investigation, which lasted from 1990 to 1993, resulted in dismissal for lack of evidence. A key role was played by a level-headed psychologist who submitted an analysis of the children and their parents forming a ‘group mind’ that had evolved through mutually reinforcing suggestion.

“A warning for the modern world: When analyzing children’s allegations, we also must analyze the role of the modern mass media, not only within national boundaries….”

– From “Witch-Children: From Salem Witch-Hunts to Modern Courtrooms”  by Hans Sebald (1995)