Jan. 12, 2016

“There are strong similarities between the confessions taken from accused witches in early modern Europe, the testimony of Satanic ritual abuse taken by modern therapists, and accounts of alien abduction given under hypnosis.

“In each of these narratives, a subject describes horrible sexual transgressions performed on them at the hand of a mysterious other: the thorny penis of the Devil, the bizarre anal insertions of Satanists, and the mysterious probing of aliens.

“The motive behind these sexual acts is never revealed and the existence of the perpetrators is usually in doubt….”

– From “Carnal Knowledge: The Epistemology of Sexual Trauma in Witches’ Sabbaths, Satanic Ritual Abuse, and Alien Abduction Narratives” (abstract) by Joseph Laycock in Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural (2012)

Did prosecutors and therapists even attempt to ascribe any cause or context to the “bizarre anal insertions” common to the day-care allegations? Candles, Magic Markers, burning flower stems?

Did they think such shocking behavior had appeared full blown out of nowhere? On the list of known sexual perversions exactly which box – or boxes! – would they check?

May 16, 2014

Exhibit A:

“Last year at a state solicitors’ convention in Myrtle Beach, (South Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty) cautioned that prosecutors in the state have been ‘getting away with too much for too long.’ He added, ‘The court will no longer overlook unethical conduct, such as witness tampering, selective and retaliatory prosecutions, perjury and suppression of evidence. You better follow the rules or we are coming after you and will make an example. The pendulum has been swinging in the wrong direction for too long and now it’s going in the other direction. Your bar licenses will be in jeopardy. We will take your license’….

“If most prosecutors are following the rules, you’d think they’d have little to fear, and in fact would want their rogue colleagues identified and sanctioned….The state’s prosecutors didn’t see it that way….

“At least 13 of the head prosecutors in the state’s 16 judicial districts, along with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, are asking for Beatty to be recused from criminal cases. This would presumably end his career as a state supreme court justice….”

– From “Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.” by Radley Balko in the Washington Post (March 7)

Exhibit B:

“….Decades of studies show eyewitness testimony is only right about half the time – a reality that has prompted a small vanguard of police chiefs, courts and lawmakers to toughen laws governing the handling of eyewitnesses and their accounts of crimes….

“Prosecutors, however, have opposed the efforts, arguing that the changes erode their powers, even as studies have shown that eyewitnesses are about half as likely to choose the correct suspect out of a lineup as they are to choose some combination of the innocent fillers or no suspect at all when the correct one is present. The reexamination of eyewitness testimony comes at a time when technology and other forensic analysis are being given greater weight….”

– From “Eyewitness Testimony No Longer A Gold Standard” by Nigel Duara of the Associated Press (April 19, 2014)

TV prosecutor Jack McCoy suffered his own ethical dark nights of the soul, but I can’t imagine him finding much in common with such miscreants as these.

July 10, 2013

Although some consider Little Rascals the East Coast version of the McMartin case, according to Google’s nGram Viewer it comes in a distant second in prominence.

Not even eight hours of “Innocence Lost” could make up for McMartin’s having been tried first and for its having been situated in Southern California rather than in Eastern North Carolina.

April 25, 2012

“Many questions were repeated (by interviewers in the McMartin Preschool case) even when the children had previously given unambiguous answers.

“For example, after a child responded that he/she did not remember any pictures of naked bodies, the interviewer repeated the question saying, ‘Can’t remember that part?’

“Even after the child again responded ‘no,’ the interviewer persisted, saying ‘Why don’t you think about that for awhile…. Your memory might come back to you.’ ”

 – From “Tell Me What Happened: Structured Investigative Interviews
of Child Victims and Witnesses” by Michael E. Lamb, et al. (2008)

There is every reason to believe this approach typified interviews in the Little Rascals case, but of course prosecutors ensured almost no record of those interviews survived.