April 29, 2013

If you watched “The Plea,” the concluding 1997 installment of “Innocence Lost,” you might not expect that Nancy Smith Barrow, Betsy’s sister, would choose to remain in the midst of those townspeople who caused her family such brutal and unjustified pain.

But stay she has, raising a family and participating in community affairs. I talked to her recently about her life then and now.

Why she has continued to live in Edenton:

“I never considered leaving. My parents were here. This is my home. For a long time, I imagined my dad, mom, sister and I would be back here together, after it all unraveled, after people looked behind the curtain and saw the Wizard….”

What Edenton was like for her during the Little Rascals panic:

“I’d walk into a public place and scan the room to see if I would be comfortable there. I never felt any physical threat – that’s not the kind of people they are here…. But I didn’t want my children exposed to such obvious and outward hatred….”

What Edenton is like for her today:

“Once Bob’s verdict was overturned, that was the end of it. Now I go where I want and do what I want….

“Things went very badly for the indicting parents. But they still believe – because they have to believe….

“Some of them I will talk to in the grocery store or at school, but we are not welcome in each others’ homes….

“Our children went to school together, and they finished growing up together (without conflict). It was like when the adults went away, when the adults got tired of playing, the children were left to clean up the game….”

How she looks back at the case:

“My sister (who now lives in Raleigh) has a life we could never have imagined, a wonderfully normal life. Everyone I loved at Little Rascals is free. My children (now 32 and 28) are fine and healthy…. The Little Rascals case was a phenomenon of epic proportions, and we weathered it….”

Aug. 5, 2013

The little-publicized North Carolina Justice Academy describes itself as “one of six divisions of the N.C. Department of Justice under the administration of Attorney General Roy Cooper… charged with improving the professionalism and effectiveness of criminal justice personnel throughout the state, through training and support.”

Among the academy’s services: an audiovisual library (downloadable here) designed “to provide criminal justice personnel in North Carolina with training and public information materials (including) over 2,573 videotapes, CDs and DVD programs….”

And quite a varied collection it is, ranging from the practical (“Body Searches: Clothed and Unclothed,” “Dusting for Latents”) to the uplifting (“Climb the Ladder of Success and Take your Family with You!”) to the wholly unexpected (Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?”).

What caught my attention, however, were such titles and descriptions as these:

• “Devil Worship: The Rise of Satanism” (1989) Former satanists, practicing witches, and law enforcement experts explain the vastness and diversity of the movement. Parents are given clues to determine if their children are involved.
• “Treatment of the Ritually Abused Child” (1992) Sophisticated mind control techniques employed by cult members leave their young victims fearful, confused, and deeply traumatized. The special treatment needs of these children are examined in detail through both session segments and on-camera discussions with the therapists.
• “Satanic Cults and Ritual Crime” (1990) Reveals the symbols used by members of the occult world,  highlights criminal activities associated with ritual practices and ceremonies and gives important dates when these crimes are most likely to occur during the year.

Is it possible these documentaries informed the beliefs of the Little Rascals prosecutors? Could Assistant Attorney General Bill Hart have checked them out and hosted a ritual-abuse film festival for Nancy Lamb and H.P. Williams? Sounds crazy, sure – but not a bit crazier than the claims ginned up by the therapists and prosecutors.

Footnote: I had hoped to borrow these films myself – I was especially eager to watch those “on-camera discussions with the therapists” – but a library technician at the Justice Academy told me she was “only allowed to send materials to folks in law enforcement.”

Jan. 5, 2014

“Probably the main reason for the growth of false charges of (sexual) abuse has been the recent proliferation of abuse specialists and therapists, many of whom lack any knowledge of mental illness or the workings of memory. These specialists believe fervently that many of the difficulties experienced by the people who consult them are due to sexual abuse that, if it isn’t remembered, can be jogged into memory by various recovery techniques.

“For decades, therapists of various kinds have put forward one unproved theory after another to explain personal unhappiness, dissatisfaction or serious psychological dysfunction. Earlier, as (Michael) Yapko points out (in “Suggestions of Abuse: True and False Memories of Childhood Sexual Trauma”), they focused on the ‘inner child,’ the ‘dysfunctional family’ or ‘co-dependency’; now it’s sexual abuse….

“In 1992, Mr. Yapko gathered data from more than 860 therapists across the country about the roles they think suggestion and memory play in therapy, especially in the dredging up of repressed memories of sexual abuse. ‘It is not an exaggeration,’ he concludes, ‘to say that many therapists appear to practice their profession on the basis of sheer myth….’ ”

– From “The Monster In the Mists” by Walter Reich in the New York Times (May 15, 1994)

April 6, 2012

“Parent-experts made a specific kind of sense of their children’s behaviors and emotions by retrospectively interpreting them as sequelae of day care ritual abuse rather than as reactions to familial stress, the vicissitudes of growing up or, for that matter, the stress of the investigation and the interrogations. ….

“Parent-experts testified that they never had reason to worry about their children’s behavior until they disclosed ritual abuse. Then, to the parent-experts, the tantrums, fears and sleep disturbances that once had looked like nothing more than normal growing pains were retrospectively interpreted….”

– From “The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic”  by Mary De Young (2004)

Judge Marsh McLelland’s allowing parents to testify as experts about their children’s behavior was one of the key defects pointed out by the N.C. Court of Appeals in overturning the convictions of Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson.