Oct. 7, 2013

“Today (in 2001), few contend that the interview techniques used at the outset of the Fells Acres child abuse investigation, in 1984, were proper and reliable. Middlesex County (Mass.) prosecutors admitted to appellate judges in the 1990s that those techniques – characterized by repeated suggestive questioning about molestation despite initial avowals by the children that nothing of that kind occurred – would not be employed today.

“In 1998, Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein ruled that under current Massachusetts law, the manner in which the Fells Acres children were first interrogated would have constituted grounds to have the case dismissed.

“That questioning included hundreds of taped episodes such as this:

• Pediatric interviewer (Susan J. Kelley): “Did the clown touch you?”
• Child witness: “No. …”
• Interviewer: “You said the clown took your clothes off. …”
• Child: “Yeah. …”
• Interviewer: “What happened?”
• Child: “Well, nothing really.”
• Interviewer: “Did the clown touch … Will you show me if the clown touched any part of you?”
• Child: “No, he didn’t touch me.”

“The child interviewed in the above example testified against Gerald Amirault at his 1986 trial, and believes to this day that she was molested by an ‘evil clown.’ ”

– From “Memories questioned, but victim still certain of ‘evil’…. Studies say kids can be easily led” by Tom Mashberg in the Boston Herald (July 8, 2001)

So what happens to the professional prospects of a “pediatric interviewer” whose ludicrously biased questioning led to the conviction of not only Gerald Amirault, but also his mother and sister?  In the short term, Susan J. Kelley had to endure even her prosecutorial allies disavowing her “suggestive techniques.”

Soon, however, Kelley’s career was back on track,  unimpeded by the tragedy wrought by her blindered incompetence. She has never apologized…. although her lengthy current resume does omit mention of her role in the day-care ritual-abuse hoax, either as a prosecutorial interviewer or as an academic apologist.

Dec. 8, 2013

“Obviously, there’s a modern trend towards more limited use of executive clemency that extends beyond the current president. I speculate that the increased media scrutiny given to pardons and commutations has made presidents reluctant to exercise clemency…..

“The same trend… may be present in North Carolina as well…. Most of Governor Easley’s pardons were in cases in which DNA evidence exonerated the defendant, while almost all of Governor Perdue’s pardons concerned the racially tainted Wilmington 10 cases…. It is too early to tell how much, or how little, Governor McCrory will exercise executive clemency.”

– From “Do Only Turkeys Get Pardons?” by Jeff Welty at the North Carolina Criminal Law blog (Dec. 5)

The chart above, compiled by Welty, a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Government, depicts poignantly the odds faced by Junior Chandler and others pursuing clemency from recent North Carolina governors.

Since Jim Hunt left office in 2001, pardons have become historically scarce, paralleling the drop-off at the presidential level.  But that smattering of clemency, as Welty points out, is most like to occur in December, under cover of the Christmas spirit.

May 11, 2012

“One of the attorneys preparing the appeal brief for Mr. Kelly found a tape of an interview with a child that had been taped over with another interview, but retained the last five minutes. The attorney (described Brenda Toppin’s approach as) ‘not only suggestive, but coercive to the point of brutality. The child’s crying and pleas to stop are met only by Ms. Toppin’s promise to stop when the child said what she wanted to hear’….

“(This discovery) is especially shocking because Officer Toppin denied under oath that she was coercive, suggestive or leading in her interviews.”

– From “What I learned from the Edenton Little Rascals sex abuse trial” by
Moisy Shopper, M.D. (in the peer-reviewed journal Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2009)

May 16, 2012

“The researcher-therapist gap came to public attention because of three psychological epidemics, which spread like wildfire during the 1980s and ’90s: recovered memory, multiple-personality disorder and sex-abuse allegations at day-care centers. Each phenomenon was supported by clinical opinion; each has been discredited by empirical research.

“Of course, research never provides ‘the’ answer in a case; and, of course, clinical opinion is sometimes correct. But research does provide ways of correcting biases and testing assumptions. For example, the day-care scandals, from the McMartin case in California to Margaret Kelly Michaels in New Jersey to the Amiraults in Massachusetts, were perpetuated by therapists who testified that children never lie about sexual abuse and aren’t curious about sex unless they have been molested, that masturbation is a sign of sexual abuse and that abuse can be diagnosed by observing how children play with anatomically correct dolls. But each claim has been disproved by research on the cognitive abilities of children, on factors that increase suggestibility, on the normalcy of masturbation and sex play among children and on the way nonabused children play with the dolls….

“The researcher-therapist gap has been institutionalized by the rapid rise of free-standing schools of therapy not connected to university psychology departments. Graduates of these schools typically learn only to do therapy and seldom learn about other areas of psychology relevant to their work – like the limitations of hypnosis, the fallibility of memory or the normal process of suggestion in therapy.”

– From “A Widening Gulf Splits Lab and Couch” by Carol Tavris
in the New York Times (June 21, 1998)