June 23, 2014

“The emphasis has got to be on the crime. Once you start using labels like satanic, sadistic or ritualistic, then you’re immediately raising a red flag…. Law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, mental health professionals and especially the general public begin to back off, because it’s so hard to believe these things happen…. We emphasized rape, sex offense, indecent liberties, crimes against nature…Those were the crimes that Bob Kelly was convicted of, those are what the jury heard evidence of….

“We let the defense attorneys bring out the sadistic and ritualistic….”

– From District Attorney H. P. Williams Jr.’s address to “From Heartbreak Through Healing: Facing the Reality of Sexual and Ritual Abuse of Children,” the first national convention of Believe the Children (April 2-4, 1993, in Arlington Heights, Ill.)

I transcribed Williams’ cautionary prosecutorial advice from audiotapes, so I can only imagine the scene on the speakers’ dais he shared with not only one of the Little Rascals mothers, but also Laura Buchanan, author of “Satan’s Child: A Survivor’s Story That Can Help Others Heal from Cultic Ritual Abuse.”

What must have Williams been thinking as Buchanan earnestly recalled that:

“We stood poised with knives in an incomprehensible world where children killed children….  Permitted to live until age four (my sister) was sacrificed by my parents…. My final programming, as a teenager, occurred on an autopsy table in the coroner’s office. A surgical procedure was staged and through a small incision in my scalp I was told that a surveillance device would be inserted into my brain. The supposed implant would be used at national headquarters to continuously monitor my thoughts. For decades the programming was extremely effective. Until the age of 44, I had no idea that my parents practiced satanism….”

With Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson locked away, and the overturning of their convictions still two years away, DA Williams was riding high. But surely he must have experienced the slightest frisson of doubt when he saw Buchanan’s patent insanity being swallowed whole by the same audience that so enthusiastically applauded his case against the Edenton Seven.

Oct. 2, 2013

“…It’s understandable that this week’s conviction of former day-care center owner Robert Fulton Kelly Jr. in Farmville, N.C., is being hailed as a breakthrough…. The conviction  increases public awareness of child abuse, serves notice that children should be taken seriously when they show signs of abuse, and calls attention to improved methods of handling such prosecutions.

“Since another long and costly child abuse case at a California day-care center nearly a decade ago that ended less conclusively than the one in North Carolina, prosecutors have learned much. They have learned how to question children without prompting them, have developed better investigative methods, and have improved the coordination between different agencies.

“But that’s not enough. Parents need to be more alert to detecting possible child abuse and more careful about picking safe, responsible day care centers. Despite this week’s conviction… it would be wrong and unfair to conclude that many day-care workers are degenerates.”

– From “How to Guard Against Child Abuse” in the Deseret News of Salt Lake City (April 25 1992)

During the era of day-care ritual-abuse allegations, most newspaper editorials managed to maintain at least a modicum of skepticism. Not this one – unless you count the Deseret News’ acknowledging a modicum of doubt “that many day-care workers are degenerates.”

Feb. 13, 2015

“Psychologists terminated a study (of 70 students at a Canadian university) that showed the ease of implanting false memories of committing terrible, violent crimes in the recent past – because some subjects couldn’t be convinced that they hadn’t committed the crime after they were told the truth.”

– From “Police interrogation techniques generate false memories of committing crimes” by Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing (Feb. 9)

More on this recent study from Sarah Barmak at the Toronto Star:

“If subjects said they couldn’t remember the false event, questioners reassured them they would be able to retrieve their ‘lost memories’ if they tried hard enough. If they began to ‘remember,’ experimenters asked for more detail. Do you recall any images? How did you feel? Visualize what it might have been like, they said, and the memory will come back to you….”

“Lost memories,” of course, were the fool’s gold mined so relentlessly by the prosecution therapists in the Little Rascals Day Care case. Remarkably, it took only three 40-minute sessions for the Canadian researchers to corrupt the memories of fully 70 percent of their college-age subjects – the Little Rascals children required months of implantation!

Feb. 22, 2013

“The argument for an organized network of satanists is virtually irrefutable. Ritual abuse survivors’ reports contain many fantastic elements. Rather than regard the implausible  features of these accounts as grounds for skepticism, however, proponents of the satanic conspiracy theory insist that it is precisely these elements than mean the stories must be true. No one, they insist, would or could make up such bizarre, macabre stories.

“Sometimes proponents retreat to the position that satanists commit bizarre activities precisely so that victims will not be believed when they recount their experiences. This latter tack illustrates the problem of infinite regress (a sequence of reasoning or justification that can never come to an end).

“When confronted with the difficulty of concealing so many homicides, proponents explain that satanists dispose of bodies… in double-decker graves. Challenges to this argument lead to assertions that bodies are burned. The observation that bodies cannot be burned in ordinary fires leads to the assertion that they are cremated. The problems of gaining access to crematoriums lead to contentions that satanists use special portable crematoriums. Further protestation may yield the argument that child-witnesses may be mistaken about some deaths because satanists sometimes use life-like dolls rather than live humans to terrorize children into silence.

“The continual retreat from the lack of confirming evidence shifts the burden of proof from those seeking to demonstrate a satanist network to those questioning such assertions.”

– From “The Satanism Scare,” edited by David G. Bromley (1991)