Nov. 25, 2011

“In the prototypical witch hunts in Europe and in the Massachusetts colony, the accused were often scapegoats for some calamity – disease, bad harvests, the birth of a deformed child.

“In the witch hunts of the ’80s, there was no such injury to be avenged or repaired. There was, however, a psychological need to be fulfilled. Our willingness to believe in ritual abuse was grounded in anxiety about putting children in day care at a time when mothers were entering the work force in unprecedented numbers.

“It was as though there were some dark, self-defeating relief in trading niggling everyday doubts about our children’s care for our absolute worst fears – for a story with monsters, not just human beings who didn’t always treat our kids exactly as we would like; for a fate so horrific and bizarre that no parent, no matter how vigilant, could have ever prevented it.”

– Margaret Talbot, writing in The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 7, 2001

March 2, 2012

In 1995 John Money, professor emeritus of medical psychology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, asked:

“What happens to these kids who have been programmed to believe a delusion?…. What on earth are we doing to this generation of children who are carrying the lies for us?”

For those alleged child-victims who testified in day care abuse cases, the urge to forget and to stay silent must be strong indeed. Who wants to believe he was so misused by his own parents, not to mention by therapists and prosecutors? Who wants to summon the courage to look back at the ugly truth and to take it public?

One exception was Kyle Zirpolo, who came forward in 2005 to apologize for his role in the McMartin Pre-school case.

July 13, 2015

Throughout the long unfolding of the Little Rascals Day Care prosecution, outsiders often sought to determine the “mood of Edenton.” This was a challenging task even in the early days of the case, and it became just about impossible after the first “Innocence Lost” episode cast the town in a starkly unflattering light.

The default response to anyone with a notepad: Go away.

In 1996, however, a defense attorney weighing Edenton as a site for Bob Kelly’s possible retrial had better luck. His case notes include this candid and chilling evaluation from a longtime Edentonian:

“(The resident) didn’t believe that any of the defendants, but especially Bob, had a chance of getting a fair trial in Edenton. Although the constant talk of Little Rascals has died down, he said people still wouldn’t dare mention the idea of innocence. He believes that probably half of (Chowan County) either doesn’t believe Bob did it or at least not to the extent alleged. He believes the largest group of ‘nonbelievers’ to be those of lesser means, and especially minorities.

“He said that anyone of means or in any type of business in town would be committing financial and social suicide if they voiced any belief in Bob’s innocence.

“He said that even if he knew Bob to be innocent, or less guilty than charged, he would have a hard time voting so as a juror in light of the lifelong social repercussions. If there was even one or two jurors who believed Bob was guilty, they would be able to pressure everyone else into voting with them….”

March 1, 2016

“It would be hard to imagine a more glaring judicial conflict of interest than the one the Supreme Court considered in a case out of Pennsylvania on Monday.

“In 1986, Terrance Williams was convicted of killing a man named Amos Norwood with a tire iron when he was 18. Prosecutors in the Philadelphia district attorney’s office sought the death penalty, and got it….

“A state court found that the prosecutors had lied, and vacated Mr. Williams’s sentence. But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously reversed that ruling. The court’s chief justice at the time, Ronald Castille, wrote a concurring opinion criticizing the lower court’s ruling for ‘condemning’ the prosecutors.

“The problem was that Mr. Castille himself led the district attorney’s office when it prosecuted Mr. Williams, and personally authorized seeking the death penalty in that case…. Nevertheless, he refused to recuse himself from Mr. Williams’s case….”

– From “Should a Judge Rule on His Own Case?” editorial in the New York Times (Feb. 29)

Meanwhile in North Carolina, prosecutors yet again show great interest in maintaining their conviction rate and little if any in ensuring justice has been done (text cache).