June 13, 2012

“Actually, making a false memory is pretty easy.

“(Psychologist Elizabeth) Loftus describes a father convincing his daughter she’d gotten lost in a mall when she was five years old. At first, the daughter denied any memory of the event, but as the father provided more fake details – ‘Don’t you remember that I told you we would meet at the Tug Boat?’ – the daughter began to ‘remember’ and even provide details of her own. Eventually when her father said, ‘I was so scared,’ she responded, ‘Not as scared as I was!’…

“You can probably imagine the implications of false memory in the courtroom or on the therapist’s couch (which famously leads to the courtroom)….”

– From “How You Remember, How You Decide: Memory Part II”
by Garth Sundem in Psychology Today (October 6, 2010)

Jan. 25, 2015

Q:  You said that Mr. Bob made spaghetti at the day care…. Now, when did Mr. Bob say that there was poop in the spaghetti?

A:  After we, um, ate it.

Q:  All right. Did – did you ever have to eat poop at the day care?

A:  No.

Q:  Okay. Did anybody try and make you eat poop at the day care?

A:  Yes.

Q: Who?

A:  Mr. Bob.

Q:  Tell me about it.

A:  I don’t remember it.

Q:  You don’t remember it?

A:  No.

Q:  Well, how do you know Mr. Bob tried to do it?

A:  What?

Q:  Did somebody tell you about it?

A:  No.

Q:  Okay. Well, then tell me how Mr. Bob tried to make you eat poop.

A:  Um, he told me, um, to eat it.

Q:  Okay. Where was it?

A:  I forgot.

Q:  You forgot. Well, was it in Ms. Shelly’s room?

A:  No.

Q:  Was it in the kitchen?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Okay. Well, did he make other kids eat poop while you were there?

A:  Yes.

Q:  Okay. Well, um, what happened when they ate it?

A:  I don’t know.

– From defense attorney Jeffrey Miller’s cross-examination of a child witness in the trial of Bob Kelly

This exchange represents only a tiny fraction of the 7-year-old girl’s testimony, which stretched over two days and included similarly incoherent references to Kelly and other defendants having raped her, urinated in her mouth, threatened to kill her parents, sodomized her with pencils and sewing needles, taken her on boat and truck rides, forced her to witness the killing and burial of babies and small animals…..

How funny and trivial such childish imaginings would seem, if only the jury’s gullibility hadn’t sent Kelly to prison for six years. “The children were convincing,” insisted rogue juror Dennis T. Ray.

Jan. 8, 2014

“Among the atrocities that Frances and Dan Keller were supposed to have committed while running a day care center out of their Texas home: drowning and dismembering babies in front of the children; killing dogs and cats in front of the children; transporting the children to Mexico to be sexually abused by soldiers in the Mexican army; dressing as pumpkins and shooting children in the arms and legs; putting the children into a pool with sharks that ate babies; putting blood in the children’s Kool-Aid; cutting the arm or a finger off a gorilla at a local park; and exhuming bodies at a cemetery, forcing children to carry the bones.

“It was frankly unbelievable – except that people, most importantly, a Texas jury, did believe the Kellers had committed at least some of these acts. In 1992, the Kellers were convicted of aggravated sexual assault on a child and each sentenced to 48 years in prison….

“(Today) after multiple appeal efforts and 21 years in prison, the Kellers are finally free….

“The doctor who provided the only physical evidence that any sexual assault had taken place recanted his testimony. Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg agreed that their conviction should be overturned, allowing the Kellers to be released while their appeals move through the courts….

“Their release may also finally mark the end to one of the strangest, widest-reaching, and most damaging moral panics in America’s history.”

– From “The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse” by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie at Slate.com

What a day-brightener – spotting McRobbie’s thorough tracking of the Fran and Dan case atop Slate magazine’s home page.

Yes, miracles do happen – a Texas doctor recanting his testimony, and a DA agreeing the convictions should be overturned.

But as long as Junior Chandler remains imprisoned in North Carolina, it’s way too soon to “finally mark the end” to the ritual abuse panic.

Nov. 15, 2015

“In 1977 the Canadian psychotherapist Lawrence Pazder published a memoir of one of his patients, ‘Michelle Remembers.’…

“Michelle’s memoir had been preceded by a number of other books by survivors of child abuse, such as ‘The Three Faces of Eve’ (1952) and ‘Sybil’ (1973)…. What Michelle remembered, though, set her book apart. The narrative included lurid details of years of sexual abuse, satanic ritual, animal sacrifice, serial rape, baby killing and a climactic final battle between the devil (complete with horns and tail) and the Virgin Mary…

“Michelle had apparently repressed the memory of these events for something like 20 years. Only after sessions with her therapist (whom she later married) did the memories reemerge, from the couch to the printed page.

“‘Michelle Remembers’ was the first to really discover satan, and many of its narrative moments would recur, endlessly, in the following decade in a series of expanding claims of a secret satanic conspiracy for world domination. As one law enforcement official put it, ‘Before “Michelle Remembers,” there were no Satanic child prosecutions. Now the myth is everywhere.’ ”

– From “From History to Theory” by Kerwin Lee Klein (2011)