Re: Sandusky/Penn State scandal
Oh horse hockey, kids intentionally lie all the freaking time. Anyone who says "children don't lie" is either lying themselves or a naive idiot. If anything, children are probably more likely to lie than adults, frankly. Adults are better at telling half-truths, lies of omission, and steering conversations in ways so they don't have to tell a lie. Children will respond to a direct question with a bold faced lie.
That said, they usually have a reason for doing so, and more often than not it's either due to pressure from others or to prevent themselves from getting in trouble. I guess when we're talking about people who were 10-15 at the time and are now in their late teens or 20's (or older)...I'm not seeing the parental persuasion part. And outside of the financial motive which is present in any case like this, I'm not seeing the self-motive; none of these people would've been in personal trouble
Well, which is it? Did the McMartin kids lie or not? And how do you define lie? The McMartin children were much younger, this was a pre-school. Much has been learned since that and similar episodes. I recall seeing a McMartin "victim" on the tube. He was by then 17 or 18. Nice looking kid. Articulate. And he spun a horrific yarn about what had happened to him. But he had not been called at the criminal trials. Why? Because his narrative also included flights in black jets, satanic rituals in tunnels underneath the school, blood sacrifices and on and on. And that's the pattern in these day care cases: the stories told by the kids tend to become more elaborate and impossible to believe. Prosecutors claim THIS part of the story is true, THAT part doesn't matter.
One of these hysterical prosecutions was in MA involving the Fells Acres day care. Among the allegations: that a "victim" had had a butcher's knife inserted in his rectum (which mysteriously left no scars) and another had been tied to a tree and sexually assaulted outside the day care in broad daylight. These kinds of allegations and worse, were quite common in these cases.
The phenomenon I described earlier, where kids initially deny they were abused, then come around to "admitting" it while providing lurid, impossible details is (now) well understood. And has been discussed in articles, books and movies. Child advocates explain away "victims" denying they've been abused by claiming an abused kid naturally would deny such horrific abuse. Trouble is, a kid who HADN'T been abused would similarly deny it. So we have an absence of evidence situation.
Another of these big cases occurred at the Little Rascals day care in Edenton, North Carolina. Local therapists found dozens of kids had been "abused," applying the customary coercive techniques (kids quickly learn the "correct" responses and will provide them in order to get the h*ll out of the room). Many of the kids and their families had moved out of town. And after local authorities notified them their kids had been "abused," their parents naturally took them to shrinks in their new communities. Funniest thing, the out of town therapists determined none of these kids had been "abused." Therapists, who presumably came to those diagnoses with no prejudices. Hmmmm, but the local shrinks found plenty of abuse.
In a Front Line documentary on Little Rascals I recall an interview with a woman who worked there (who was not accused) and whose son was allegedly abused. She looked at the camera and said: "I don't understand how all of that abuse could have happened, I was there every day." Exactly. Perhaps a timely application of Occam's Razor was called for.
As to your "reason" for kids providing untrue recollections of alleged abuse, part of it is the coercive, repeatitive interviews by "social workers" and other amateurs. In the case of kids questioned by their parents, I believe the experts will now say parents are the worst possible people to question a kid about these matters. These kids have their memories altered. They actually think the bizarre stories they're telling are true. All of it: the abuse, the sacrifices, the tunnels, the black jets, abuse in places of business and churches, all of it. Parents especially will make it clear to kids what the desired answers are (perhaps unintentionally) and the kids, over time, begin to provide those answers after initially denying anything had happened. There's nothing a kid wants to do more than please his parents.
We had a genuine moral panic in this country that lasted for years and ruined the lives of dozens of people who had committed no crimes. Think about the basic premise of these cases: you had "nests" of peodphiles infesting day care centers, abusing numerous kids, day after day, for years--and nobody saw anything. Parents coming and going, dropping off and picking up kids, prospective customers dropping by to take a tour, state and city inspectors occasionally showing up unannounced, plus normal delivery people stopping by. And yet, nobody saw anything. Is that even a little credible?
In Wenatchee, WA a cop by the name of Bob Perez rotated into sex crimes (they didn't have SVU types) and shortly thereafter his troubled foster daughter began to make lurid allegations about sexual abuse. She took her father on what came to be known as the "Sexual Abuse Tour of Homes," during which she literallly pointed to homes where she claimed she and others had been abused. Prosecutions were brought against totally innocent people, who were eventually found to have done nothing at all.
Nobody (including me) wants a pedophile to get away with his crimes. However, none of us should be supportive of ignorant, fearful, superstitious, headline grabbing, voter impressing, moral panic prosecutions either. Interestingly, after dozens of these prosecutions in the 80's and 90's we don't see them anymore. I wonder why.
