Subject: Witch Hunts Revisited

From: [email-masked] (aaron.l.hoffmeyer)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 00:00:34 GMT

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
(c) 1993 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1993

Modern Witch Hunt -- Child Abuse Charges
By  Richard A. Gardner, Ph.D.

   Janet Reno, Bill Clinton's nominee for attorney general, has made her
name largely in cases involving the defense of children. She may well
continue this focus if she is confirmed in her new job. For all those in the
new administration, though, a task awaits. It is the modification of the
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.

   The 1974 act -- sometimes known as the Mondale Act, after one of its
sponsors -- was implemented to fight a genuine problem. Up to that year,
child abuse was rarely reported and frequently covered up. It was
Congress's intent to rectify this deplorable situation by providing
incentives for states to set up programs for child abuse research,
identification, prosecution and treatment. Federal funding was made
available to match state spending, and this served as an incentive for
states to create such programs.

   The law, however, has had results that its authors did not intend. In
America today, child sex-abuse accusations are burgeoning. In many
cases, it is probable that the charges are valid. But when the charges
arise from vicious child custody disputes, where the vengeance element
and the opportunity for exclusion of a hated spouse is operative, or in
venues such as day-care centers, where the potential pedophile has little
opportunity for contact with the child alone, the prevalence of child abuse
is in reality quite low.

   Nevertheless, the number of charges in these areas escalate. The
primary reason: The Mondale Act has strengthened the "child abuse
establishment" -- a network of social workers, psychiatrists,
psychologists and law enforcement officials -- that through its very
existence frequently validates an individual's charges. In other words,
this establishment, unintentionally or intentionally, encourages charges
of child abuse whether they are reasonable or not.

   Some examples from cases in which I have personally evaluated the
accused as well as other parties:

   On March 5, Raymond and Shirley Souza (both 61) of Lowell, Mass.,
will be sent to prison, possibly for the rest of their lives. They are
accused of having performed a series of perverted sexual acts on three
of their grandchildren. The accusations began when one of the Souzas'
daughters had a dream in which she envisioned her parents and her
brother sexually abusing her when she was a child. In the dream her
mother had a penis. She concluded that the dream indicated that she
had actually been sexually abused as a child by her parents and that the
Souza grandchildren had probably been abused as well. She suggested
that her siblings question the grandchildren. Thus began the wave of
hysteria that ultimately resulted in the Souzas being found guilty of these
alleged crimes. (Dorothy Rabinowitz writes about this on the Leisure &
Arts page of this paper today.)

   (See related article: "Leisure & Arts -- Deception: In the Movies, on the
News" -- WSJ Feb 22, 1993) [BELOW]

   On the basis of my examinations of the Souzas, I was convinced that
there wasn't a scintilla of evidence that they committed these crimes
or even exhibited pedophilic tendencies. Furthermore, I carefully
reviewed many of the documents in this case, especially videotapes of
the interviews with the grandchildren conducted by the prosecutor's
overzealous examiners. I found the interviews to be coercive, with the
use of many leading questions and the selective ignoring of comments by
the children that would have led any unbiased examiner to question
whether these allegations had any merit whatsoever.

   Another example: Kelly Michaels, a New Jersey nursery school
teacher, was sentenced to 47 years for allegedly sexually abusing 20
children under her care. After examining the alleged victims, the
accusing parents, and Ms. Michaels, I was convinced that she did not
engage in the variety of abominable acts attributed to her. Yet the
parents' hysteria was fueled by overzealous "validators" and law
enforcement officials, leading to Ms. Michaels's conviction.

   Part of the problem is that since 1974, the Mondale Act has been
expanded several times, progressively increasing the federal funds
allocated to the states. Certain provisions of the original law and its
successors worked to encourage people to bring child abuse charges
that were frivolous, and sometimes malicious, fabrications.

   To qualify for federal money, states had to pass legislation that
provided immunity from prosecution for all those reporting child
abuse.  With the advantage of the screen of immunity, many people in
legitimate cases gained the confidence to come forward. However, the
same immunity protected people making frivolous and even fabricated
accusations.

   To get federal funds, states were also required to pass laws
requiring specific people (such as health-care professionals,
law-enforcement officials, teachers and school administrators) to
report suspected child abuse to the appropriate child protection
agency. Such mandated reporting, of necessity, had to be backed up by
penalties (usually fines and/or prison sentences) for failure to
report. In effect, this provision has made it a criminal offense for
such people not to report suspected abuse.  As a result, these
professionals are put on the defensive -- if they don't report, they
might be deemed criminals. The result has been overreporting of even
the most absurd and impossible accusations.

   During the few years following the Mondale Act's passage, all 50
states and the District of Columbia passed legislation providing for
the establishment and funding of the appropriate programs.

   The basic problem is that the system is biased. State and federal
money is available for the treatment of children who are found to have
been abused, but no funds have been specifically allocated for the
protection and treatment of those who have been falsely accused. Nor
has money been available for another special and growing group --
children who have suffered psychiatric disturbances because they have
been used as vehicles for the promulgation of a false accusation.
Evaluators who conclude there has been abuse set in motion events that
bring their offices both state and federal funds. If they conclude
there was no abuse, their facilities receive no funding for further
evaluation of treatment.

   The "child abuse establishment" also furthers itself. Mental health
facilities, child protection services, and investigatory agencies
(including police, detectives and prosecutors) all depend on each
other. It behooves them to work together, because the greater the
number of referrals, the greater the justification for the requisite
funding. The current system generates an endless stream of referrals
for investigators and "validators." All this predictably fuels
sex-abuse hysteria, hysteria in which an accused individual's
constitutional due process protections are commonly ignored.

   Here are some changes at the federal level that could help:

   -- Drop the federal immunity clause. Immunity from prosecution is
      generally available only to specific groups essential to the
      functioning of the legal systeme.g., judges and prosecutors. It
      is incompatible with the basic philosophy of our legal system.
      Such immunity encourages frivolous and fabricated accusations. I
      would go further and recommend that states that include the
      immunity provision should not be entitled to federal funding.

   -- Drop the clause mandating the reporting of child abuse. In
      practice, it has resulted in the reporting of the most frivolous
      and absurd accusations by two- and three-year-olds, vengeful
      former spouses, hysterical mothers of nursery school children,
      and severely disturbed women against their elderly fathers.
      Highly skilled examiners, professionals who are extremely
      knowledgeable about sex abuse, examiners who know quite well that
      the accusation is false, are required by law to report the abuse
      to individuals who they often know to be overzealous,
      inexperienced and even incompetent. Yet they face criminal
      charges if they do not report these accusations.

   -- End federal funding to states in which suspected individuals are
      deprived of due process protections. Prosecutors typically use
      their own experts to evaluate the children but are allowed to
      prevent defense experts from evaluating them. The accused, then,
      is deprived of a fair trial, a right guaranteed to him by the
      U.S. Constitution.

   -- Provide funding for programs to assist those who are falsely
      accused, as well as children who have been victimized by being
      used as vehicles for a false accusation. Such programs could be
      combined with existing child abuse and child neglect programs.

   -- Require investigatory agencies at all levels to routinely notify
      and invite for voluntary interviews every individual accused of
      child abuse or neglect. (These suspects, of course, must first be
      informed of their legal rights.) The failure to routinely extend
      such invitations should deprive the agency of funding.

   -- Require legal representation for children who may be victims of
      embroilment in false accusations.

   These recommendations sound strong. But from my perspective, the
U.S. appears to be witnessing its third great wave of hysteria. The
first, the Salem Witch Trials, in 1692, lasted only a few months.
Nineteen people were hanged before it became apparent that the
accusations were suspect. In the 1950s, at the time of the McCarthy
hearings, hysteria over the communist threat resulted in the
destruction of many careers. Our current hysteria, which began in the
early 1980s, is by far the worst with regard to the number of lives
that have been destroyed and families that have disintegrated. There is
no question that most efforts at rectification will prove futile unless
the Mondale Act modifications described here are implemented.

   ---

   Dr. Gardner, a clinical professor of child psychiatry at Columbia
University, is an expert on the sexual abuse of children.

========================================================================

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
(c) 1993 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
--------------------------------------------------
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1993

LEISURE & ARTS -- Television: Deception: In the Movies, on the News

   Now that we have all seen the latest docudrama from a network news
division -- NBC's staged film of a General Motors truck crash --
deceptions perpetrated by made-for-TV movies may seem comparatively
trifling. And they are. That doesn't mean their efforts to capitalize
on the very latest trends in hysteria are harmless. That which is
pounded home via television has, it hardly needs saying, the power to
shape views and fan fears, as surely as the incendiary devices
"Dateline NBC" secretly attached to the GM pickup could make it burn.

   What comes to mind specifically is the latest fever stage in the
national delirium over child sex abuse: those "buried" memories of
incest that adults in their late 20s, 30s and 40s are all now being
told they can remember, if only they try hard enough. The
quintessential expression of this new delirium airs Sunday in "Not in
My Family" (9-11 p.m. EST, on ABC).

   There are two hard and fast rules to which all TV films about child
sex abuse adhere. The accused is, for one, always guilty as charged. In
the minds of network movie makers, there is no such thing as a false
molestation charge. The second rule is that the abuser must never be
less than a well-to-do pillar of the community.  In the world of the TV
movie, no one from the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder ever
rapes and sodomizes his children.

   Sunday's movie adds a new and fashionable dimension -- i.e., the
"repressed" incest theme. To view this picture, indeed, is to get the
complete guide to the innumerable dizzying premises of the current
bible for neurotics, "The Courage to Heal." Its main premise seems to
be that we should look to early incestuous abuse as the reason for the
difficulties that psychologically troubled people have with their
lives. This theory apparently appeals to a growing number of people
looking for ways to explain loveless lives, divorces, career problems,
bulimia, whatnot.

   The beauty of the repressed incest explanation is that, to enjoy its
victim benefits, and the distinction of being associated with a
survivor group, it isn't even necessary to have any recollection that
such abuse took place.

   It is one thing to see this craze played out in a TV movie -- and
quite another to witness its effects on real people. A little over a
week ago, Shirley and Raymond Souza, a 61-year-old couple from Lowell,
Mass., were found guilty of multiple unproven charges that they had
sexually molested their small grandchildren. As is usually the case
with children's accusations extracted by eager therapists and
prosecutors, the allegations had all the earmarks of the fantastic. One
six-year-old grandchild said she was molested by a machine as big as a
room. Another told of having to wear a gold crown and costume, another
said she was put in a giant cage, and was made to drink a green
potion.  No physical evidence of sex abuse -- no cage, no costumes --
was ever produced by way of evidence.

   How had all this come to pass, then? The Souzas, parents of five
grown children, had a 27-year-old daughter, Shirley Ann, who had read
"The Courage to Heal." In 1990, Shirley Ann commenced to have a dream,
in which she was sexually assaulted by her mother, who had a penis, by
her brother, who presumably had one too, and by her father, who raped
her with a crucifix. On awakening, Shirley Ann ran to call her married
sisters and sister-in-law, to warn them to keep their children away
from their grandparents. By the time the adult Souza children had
finished seeing counselors and passing the book around, Ray Souza, a
retired telephone company supervisor, and his wife, Shirley, a nurse,
were indicted. Offered a chance to walk away, if they would plead
guilty, they refused, went to trial and were convicted. At their
sentencing on March 5, the Souzas, who have never spent a day apart
from one another, each face a possible life sentence.

   ABC's movie faithfully reflects all those theories -- and the
mindset -- that persuaded a judge to convict the couple on the basis of
charges originating entirely in their troubled daughter's dream. In the
movie, a pregnant, happily married (so she thinks) Veronica (Joanna
Kerns) begins eating compulsively. (Yes. People who can't stop gorging
may now consider themselves likely incest survivors.) Veronica's sister
Becky has trouble with "relationships." When Veronica's baby is born,
the child refuses to nurse. In due time Veronica and Becky are
summoning buried memories of their molestation by their father (George
Grizzard) -- a banker and pillar of the community. This dark family
saga ends, movie style, on a note of triumph, with the pillar of the
community disgraced. This comes only after the two sisters have
exchanged endless data from their respective flashbacks and trances. We
leave this happy family of yuppie siblings to go on with their newly
promising lives, now possible, just as the book says, because they have
uncovered their repressed memories. All is now magically well with the
baby too, who, as we are shown, can now happily suckle his mother's
breast.

   In the world of fiction all is well. Not so in the real world of
Massachusetts, where the justice system is about to send two people to
jail because their daughter had a dream.

   ---

   Sycophancy Unlimited Award: This citation is presented to
journalists who have contributed significantly to broadcast
journalism's already brimming levels of boot-licking, flattery, cant
and balderdash. The distinguished winner of our award this month is the
Washington Post's Bob Woodward, who appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press"
on Feb. 14 to discuss investigative journalism and NBC's rigged crash
scene. Mr. Woodward let it be known that NBC had in his view emerged
from this affair with its honor intact -- and, indeed, with a certain
heroic stature. Not only had this first documented case of
journalism-as-arson provided, as Mr.  Woodward earnestly opined, a
wonderful "opportunity." NBC, he went on to marvel, had "confronted its
mistake rather than covering it up." Undaunted, apparently, by the fact
that NBC News President Michael Gartner and a team of lawyers and
assorted flunkies had done nothing but cover up and stonewall to the
last hour, till they were confronted with unanswerable -- to say
nothing of highly public -- proofs of their deception, Mr. Woodward
pressed on with his tribute to the network's probity and
forthrightness. This singular testimonial ended with Mr. Woodward's
ringing assertion that "NBC is to be saluted."

   As are you, Bob, for a performance future contenders for this award
won't find it easy to equal.

* * * END OF DOCUMENT * * *