Feb. 3, 2012

Glenn Lancaster, a Raleigh pay-phone executive, played a key part in facilitating life-after-incarceration for both Bob Kelly and Scott Privott.

I asked Glenn to recall how he became involved in the Little Rascals case:

“I had lived in Windsor, about 20 miles west of Edenton. I knew some of the Little Rascals parents but none of the Edenton Seven.

“I hadn’t paid that much attention to the case, but the truth seemed pretty clear, especially when the prosecution couldn’t persuade even one of the seven to turn state’s evidence.

“After I moved to Cary, I saw a story about Scott in the News & Observer (in 1993). He had been in (the Chowan County) jail for more than three years with no trial in sight and a $1 million bond.

“I wrote Scott offering to send him magazines and to cover some gas money for his wife to visit, as she had moved to the Outer Banks. He put me in touch with a lady in Edenton, who told me about other supporters.

“I called Scott’s attorney and asked why he hadn’t tried to lower the bail. I told him we could cover $50,000 and I would give Scott a job and a place to live.

“When the attorney asked the judge to reduce the bond to $50,000, he agreed on the spot! Over the next few days, several people came to the Clerk of Courts office in Edenton and posted land and cash. One man from Washington, N.C., brought a $25,000 check. When it was all counted, they were still a few hundred dollars short. I was told the Clerk of Court reached into his own pocket and posted the difference.

“Everyone in the jail knew Scott was innocent, and as he left jail the staff shook his hand. Scott’s wife showed up to tell him she was now living with a UPS driver and he could not come to her home. A supporter loaded up a cardboard box of Scott’s jail property – 6 or 8 paperback books, a radio and the stack of clothes his wife had brought him – and delivered him to a hotel in Cary around 5 p.m. There I met and spoke to Scott for the first time.

“When we returned to the hotel two hours later to take him to dinner, he told me he had spent most of that time standing in the shower. It was the first time in over three  years he could set his own temperature and shower as long as he chose.”

Oct. 22, 2016

“At APSAC’s June Colloquium, Paul J. Stern gave a presentation that clearly acknowledged your organization’s role in fostering the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ day-care panic of  the 1980s and early ’90s.

“Mr. Stern, a prosecutor and longtime APSAC official, was only illuminating from the inside a reality long recognized among virtually all respected professionals and academics.

“I am writing today to request that the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children formally renounce its advocacy of the ‘satanic ritual abuse’ myth and apologize to its victims.  The ‘misguided ideas’ cited by Mr. Stern not only supported wrongful prosecutions and incarcerations, but also profoundly misled children, parents and the public.

“The reputation of APSAC will remain tainted as long as it fails to make amends for this seminal part of its history.  If the International Association of Chiefs of Police can apologize for  ‘the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in society’s historical mistreatment of communities of color,’ then surely APSAC can similarly mitigate the damages caused by its own actions.”

– From a letter I sent to Dr. Janet Rosenzweig, executive director, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children

Sept. 19, 2012

“The rumor has traveled like a Halloween ghost – from Wilson to Coats to Apex to Raleigh.

“Perplexed law enforcement agencies statewide have been fielding inquiries for weeks about stubborn – but unfounded – rumors of a plan by unidentified Satan worshipers to kidnap and sacrifice children.

“The most common variation is that a satanic cult plans to abduct one or more blond-haired, blue-eyed children between the ages of 2 and 5 for a human sacrifice on Halloween.

“‘All these parents of blond-haired, blue-eyed children are frantic,’ said Detective R.C. Couick of Garner. ‘I’ll bet I’ve received 500 phone calls from mothers saying they were going to dye their children’s hair.’

“Sheriff Freddy W. Narron of Johnston County said rumors seem to have started after a local newspaper printed articles about Satanic cults.”

– From “Rumors of satanists kidnapping children are tough to snuff out” (News & Observer of Raleigh, October 28, 1989)

What fertile ground North Carolina, circa 1989, provided for hysteria about 2- to 5-year-olds. The sheriff of Johnston County seems to have summoned considerably more skepticism about farfetched rumors than the Little Rascals prosecutors. Within three months of the Halloween panic all of the Edenton Seven had been arrested.

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)