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.

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)

Nov. 2, 2014

“For District Attorney – Nancy Lamb: Two equally motivated and capable candidates, Democrat Nancy Lamb and Republican Andrew Womble, have mounted compelling political campaigns to claim the job of district attorney of the 1st Prosecutorial District.

“While both have strong credentials for practicing law and for public service, they are nevertheless significantly divided by experience. Lamb’s three decades as a practicing prosecutor is an overwhelming advantage for ensuring that the office of district attorney is guided with seasoned wisdom and trade knowledge.

“Additionally, Lamb’s long trial experience and prosecutorial insight is critically important to lead an office of assistant DAs….”

– From “Our View: TDA endorses Lamb….” in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance (Nov. 1, paywalled)

Although The Daily Advance gushes over Nancy Lamb’s “long trial experience and prosecutorial insight” and her “seasoned wisdom and trade knowledge,” the paper somehow neglects to offer even a single example.

How about the Little Rascals Day Care case?

But TDA apparently doesn’t consider Lamb’s nationally-notorious  courtroom star turn worthy of even a mention, either in its endorsement or – this belongs in journalism’s “Believe It or Not!” – in the 17 news stories it wrote about her campaign.

April 20, 2012

David Finkelhor’s “Nursery Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care” (1988) helped lay the foundation for the moral panic that would soon engulf Edenton and so many other ill-starred towns.

Finkelhor, a respected and widely published sociologist at the University of New Hampshire, built a Potemkin village of statistical tables – “Victim Characteristics by Type of Perpetrator,” etc. – that concealed the utter worthlessness of his data. He was wrong from the first chapter, accepting unsubstantiated claims of ritual abuse as reality, to the last, recommending that “parents, licensing and law-enforcement officials be educated to view females as potential sex-abusers.”

This is from a recent exchange Finkelhor and I had via email:

Q: In “Nursery Crimes” you accept that ritual sexual abuse did in fact occur at Little Rascals, McMartin, Wee Care, etc., and give little credence to the “backlash” against such prosecutions. Has your position changed?

A: This was a while ago and I have not revisited the case. Our research did not conduct any independent review of the evidence, but simply coded the conclusion of the investigator we interviewed. So I was neither an authority about the validity of claims at the time or at the present.

Q: Yes, I understand that your research and analysis relied entirely on “local investigating agencies (that) had decided that abuse had occurred” (p. 13).

But I’m not finding in “Nursery Crimes” any skepticism about these prosecutorial allegations. In fact, the book seems only to reinforce the belief that satanic ritual abuse was a frequent occurrence in the nation’s day cares. Am I misjudging it?

Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck are but two of the researchers who have detailed the contaminated interview techniques that supported each of these cases. And of course almost all the defendants eventually went free, either when charges were dropped or their guilty verdicts overturned.

Would you consider returning to this subject and, if you so chose, changing your public position? I know the defendants – innocent citizens who saw their lives crushed by unfounded charges – would appreciate it.

—

No response yet to my second question. If I receive one, I’ll post it.