Aug. 28, 2014

“ASHEVILLE, N.C. – After more than 20 years behind bars, Michael Alan Parker, 57, walked past the barbed wire gates of Craggy Correctional Center and looked out at the mountain skyline on Tuesday morning.

“Convicted of sexually abusing his three children in a 1994 trial charged with allegations of Satanism, Parker was freed after Superior Court Judge Marvin Pope ruled Monday that the medical evidence would no longer be interpreted as proof of sexual abuse. Pope vacated Parker’s sentence and dismissed the charges against him….

“Parker was first jailed in February 1993, when he and several codefendants were accused of abusing Parker’s three children in and near their home in Saluda, N.C.

“At trial in 1994, Parker’s children testified in graphic detail about abuse that prosecutors labeled ritualistic. The 9-year-old girl testified that she had been sexually abused in a garage behind their home. She said a fire was burning inside a circle made of rocks, and she heard people chanting in soft voices.

“In an emotion-charged atmosphere, then-Assistant District Attorney Mike Edwards called the trailer park where the family lived ‘Sodom and Saluda’ and quoted the Bible in his statements to the jury….”

– From “Henderson County man walks free after 20 years in prison“ by Renee Bindewald in the Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal

Congratulations are in order for Mr. Parker and his appellate lawyer, Sean Devereux, who had labored doggedly (and often pro bono) on his behalf since 1999.

The similarities to Andrew Junior Chandler’s case are obvious, although the “Sodom and Saluda” allegations in the Parker case were rooted in domestic turmoil rather than in the way-too-familiar day-care fantasy. Most notable is Judge Pope’s recognition that the type of medical validation of abuse presented at trial has been persuasively discredited –  see also, the physician’s recantation that set Fran and Dan Keller free.

Will Pope’s decision prove to be an aberration? Or does it presage the breakthrough Junior Chandler has for so long been denied?

Feb. 6, 2012

Michele L. Zimmerman, now associate professor emeritus of psychiatric nursing at Old Dominion University, was one of four therapists who collaborated with prosecutors in interviewing Bob Kelly’s supposed victims.

Their teamwork is obvious in this clumsily coercive set-up by Zimmerman and District Attorney H.P. Williams Jr. (cited by Dr. Moisy Shopper, a St. Louis psychiatrist who reviewed interview tapes for the defense):

Zimmerman to 4-year-old boy: “Mr. Williams needs to know what he (Kelly) did to you to keep him in jail.”

Williams: “I’m in charge of the police. I decide who goes to jail.”

Last week I asked Zimmerman two questions: Do you still believe the Little Rascals defendants were guilty? Were the children actually abused?

Her response:

“Patient confidentiality laws do not permit me to comment on this case, as the therapist-client privilege still exists. It is not my role to comment on the defendants’ guilt or innocence, as that is the charge for the finder of fact.”

In fact, Zimmerman did comment publicly at least once in the aftermath of Kelly’s conviction: “There are people in Edenton who are still mad at one another because Person A did not tell Person B about the abuse.”

A final question, Ms. Zimmerman: What if Person A simply had nothing to tell?

Jan. 25, 2017

“Why is there such a cultural bias toward stories of abuse – and especially toward grotesque and absurd tales, even when there is no reliable evidence that any crime occurred in the first place?

“The very people we count on to protect our society – prosecutors, police, social workers, jurors, even parents – are eliciting fantasies from children that express our worst collective fears. ….

“The libel that our society has imposed on child-care workers is a kind of projection of guilt for the damage that we ourselves have done, as parents and as a society. We have given our children to strangers to rear, and it makes us uneasy and fearful. Is it any wonder we have a bad conscience?…. ”

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

Aug. 31, 2012

“Children don’t just come running out of their houses screaming, ‘I’ve been molested!’”

– Assistant attorney general Bill Hart, justifying to the Associated Press (Dec. 31, 1989) why the prosecution’s serial allegations were taking so many months to come to light.

In a case typified by overstatement, Hart’s excuse for delay proved to be a most revealing understatement. Those children resisted mightily and at length before being manipulated into “screaming, ‘I’ve been molested!’”