Oct. 17, 2012

“Little Rascals is a most important case, because it demonstrates how the mind set of interviewers can be transmitted to the children and persuade them to disclose events that never happened. A San Diego grand jury which investigated child abuse observed:

Of particular interest is the information received about the Little Rascals case in North Carolina. Eighty-five percent of the children received therapy with three therapists in the town; all of these children eventually reported satanic abuse. Fifteen percent of the children were treated by different therapists in a neighboring city; none of (these) children reported abuse of any kind after the same period of time in therapy.

“In effect, the Edenton (multiple victim, multiple offender) case was a real-life replication of the type of laboratory experiment that could never be done for ethical reasons:

• Select a town or city in any area of the U.S. or Canada.
• Take 90 children, and divide them into two equally sized test and control groups.
• Have the test group interrogated by therapists who believe in ritual abuse, using direct and repeated questions.
• Have the control group independently interrogated by therapists who are skeptical of ritual abuse using general questioning.
• Compare rates of disclosures of ritual abuse from the two groups. “

The probable result would be that close to 100% of the test group and about 0% of the control group would reveal ritual abuse.”

– From “Ritual abuse cases in day care centers” on ReligiousTolerance.org, (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance)

June 2, 2015

“Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia says that the most common and problematic bias in science is ‘motivated reasoning’: We interpret observations to fit a particular idea.

“Psychologists have shown that ‘most of our reasoning is in fact rationalization,’ he says. In other words, we have already made the decision about what to do or to think, and our ‘explanation’ of our reasoning is really a justification for doing what we wanted to do – or to believe – anyway.”

– From “The Trouble With Scientists: How one psychologist is tackling human biases in science” by Philip Ball at Nautilus (May 14)

“Motivated reasoning” ran amok during the “satanic ritual abuse” day-care panic, resulting in journal articles such as “Stress Responses of Children to Sexual Abuse and Ritualistic Abuse in Day Care Centers” and “Satanic Ritual Abuse: A Cause of Multiple Personality Disorder” – and legitimizing testimony by the prosecution’s expert witnesses.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Nosek has found examples of “motivated reasoning” in claims of recovered memory.

“In my intro psych course,” he told me, “I have one lecture that is centered around Lawrence Wright’s fascinating ‘Remembering Satan’….” (about a 1988 case in Olympia, Wash., involving not only SRA allegations but also false confession).

Oct. 4, 2014

Among those journalists who fell for the “satanic ritual abuse” storyline, none fell harder than Civia Tamarkin.

She not only stage-managed an embarrassingly credulous episode of “Nightline,” but also testified earnestly at a Believe the Children convention alongside Little Rascals prosecutor H. P. Williams Jr. and supposed ritual-abuse survivor Laura Buchanan (““ was told that a surveillance device would be inserted into my brain….”).

In 1993 Tamarkin delivered a lengthy address on “Investigative Issues in Ritual Abuse Cases” to the Fifth Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality in Alexandria, Va.

Like Ross Cheit two decades later, she had no trouble detailing numerous flaws in the prosecution of McMartin and other ritual abuse cases but inevitably came up frustrated in her search for a smoking gun or two.  Most striking, after recounting all her journalistic fault-finding, was her unquestioning gratitude to SRA snake-oil theoreticians Roland Summit and Bennett Braun for “(taking) the time to teach me what they could.”

Prior to her affiliation with Believe the Children, Tamarkin had reported commendably for Time, People and the Chicago Sun-Times and had coauthored a book with Chicago educator Marva Collins.

More recently, she has directed a documentary on the aftermath of a soldier’s death in Iraq….

So what happened in the 1990s? How did an experienced reporter lose her skepticism in the face of “ritual abuse” claims?

I’ve asked Tamarkin what she was thinking then – and what she believes today – but haven’t received a response.

Nov. 2, 2011

Post on hidden mysteries.org (1995):

“Aside from the children and their parents, others are deeply disappointed by the N.C. Supreme Court’s decision not to (overturn) the reversals by the Court of Appeals.

“Superior Court Judge Marsh McLelland, who heard the Little Rascals case the first time, wrote in a letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: ‘Your refusal to review the Kelly and Wilson reversals by the Court of Appeals is legally and morally reprehensible.’

“Once more, the Edenton children find themselves as much on trial as their alleged perpetrators, if not more so.”

ANN EARLE

Letter to the editor of the News & Observer of Raleigh (May 16, 1996):

“As a psychotherapist who treats many child victims and adult survivors of sexual and ritual abuse… I am incredulous that so many people support Robert F. Kelly….

“There is ample historical and anthropological evidence that ritual abuse has existed for centuries…. Unfortunately, day care centers are optimal settings for such perpetrators.

“If there is indeed a ‘witch hunt’ going on, it’s actually aimed at abused children and those who advocate for them.”

ANN EARLE, C.C.S.W., B.C.D.

Chapel Hill

Letter to the editor of the News & Observer of Raleigh (June 4, 1997):

“Investigators should not ask leading questions, of course, but even if they did it is difficult to imagine how a young child could come up with graphic details of sexual activity if nothing happened. Child sexual abusers and pornographers routinely incorporate fantasy to entice children to cooperate and render them less believable if the child ever tells.

“Why are journalists so quick to believe alleged abusers and discount sexual abuse allegations by children?”

ANN S. EARLE

Chapel Hill

Letter to the editor of the News & Observer of Raleigh (January 15, 1999):

“In reality, false allegations of sexual abuse by preschool children are rare.

“I have spent three years researching and editing a book on ritual abuse allegations. Ample evidence supports the existence of such abuse in day care centers, in spite of how bizarre it may sound.

“Robert Kelly was found guilty by a jury of his peers in a lengthy trial. This verdict was overturned only on a technicality.

“Finally, there is obviously significant evidence to charge Kelly in a case unrelated to Little Rascals (charges dropped eight months later). We should consider these facts before concluding that the alleged abuses at Little Rascals were due to a ‘hysteria’ fueled by a ‘rumor mill.’ ”

ANN EARLE, C.C.S.W., B.C.D.

Chapel Hill

As these comments suggest, certainty in the pervasiveness of ritual abuse extended well beyond those therapists directly involved in the Little Rascals case.

Did Ann Earle, a board member of the International Council on Cultism and Ritual Trauma, ever change her mind? If so, she seems not to have shared the news.