Mythical Numbers and Satanic Ritual Abuse
Ross Cheit Professor at Brown University 07/11/2014
There's no evidence of hundreds of cases of false convictions of child sexual abuse in this era. In my new book, The Witch-Hunt Narrative, I examine dozens of specific cases from the 1980s and early 90s that are said to be wrongful prosecutions or wrongful convictions. Aided by dozens of research assistants, I spent fifteen years doing the painstaking work of original trial court research to figure out what kind of evidence actually existed in these cases....
In many of the cases proclaimed to be witch hunts, looking closely at the record revealed substantial evidence of abuse and compelling reasons that jurors voted to convict. It's true that I also found cases where people were charged who shouldn't have been. Yet even in some of those cases, there was strong evidence of abuse. A crime was committed and a child was assaulted by someone who was never apprehended, but only the false accusation story lives on.....
on the day that the 3-year-old complained to her mother about Dan Keller pulling down her pants and spanking her at day-care, she later screamed while she was urinating, "It hurts, it hurts." That prompted her mother to take the preschooler to the emergency room.
The emergency room doctor found what he believed were two physical indications of sexual abuse: "what appeared to be lacerations of the hymen" and "a tear of the posterior fourchette," a fold of skin on the vagina. It might surprise readers to learn that a year after the 1991 added emergency room visit, the doctor "didn't have any independent recollection" of the exam and testified entirely from the medical records.
....omits that fact in reporting that, when contacted by a newspaper in 2009, the doctor described a revelation that supposedly happened "years after" the trial. We don't know what year. But according to Dr. Mouw, while attending a professional training seminar, he saw a slide about normal variations in hymens and realized that what he thought had been lacerations in the Keller case were probably innocuous. In 2013, Dr. Mouw filed an affidavit to this effect. Notably, the affidavit does not withdraw his finding of a vaginal tear, which had been the more certain of his original findings....
Douglas Perry, a friend of the Kellers, confessed to being at a beer-and-sex party where adults sexually abused a boy and a girl who were under the Kellers' care. He said that, "Fran had a pen and was sticking it in and out of the little girl's vagina." He identified the 3-year-old girl from the trial in a videotape. Perry later recanted his confession, but he also pleaded guilty to "indecency with a child by contact." ....
The Fuster case originated with a child spontaneously talking about being abused. That clear statement caused two families to withdraw their children from Fuster's home daycare, which they did without informing anyone else. Months later, a spontaneous statement from a different child, started an investigation by law enforcement. An articulate 5-year-old boy was soon located, who gave several detailed statements that were later corroborated in various ways. The case was tagged by some as "satanic ritual abuse" because children made statements about Fuster wearing masks, killing a bird and playing with feces. Those allegations quietly disappeared from the witch-hunt narrative when adult testimony and photographic evidence corroborated these statements....
When the charges emerged in the home daycare case, Frank Fuster was on parole for sexually assaulting a 9-year-old two years earlier. The jury that convicted Fuster in 1985 was unaware of this prior conviction....But the fact is that Fuster admitted in his parole violation hearing on the 1984 charges that, in the course of driving the girl home, he made her sit on his lap and he touched "her chest area" and "her vagina area."....
But what did Judy Johnson do to set off the "witch-hunt?" She saw a spot of blood on her son's anus and called the police, who told her to take him to a doctor, which she did. She was then referred to a pediatric specialist, who reported to the Manhattan Beach Police Department that "the victim's anus was forcibly entered several days ago." That's why the original defendant, Ray Buckey, was arrested....
even the defense lawyer, Danny Davis, allowed that the genital injuries on one girl were "serious and convincing." (His main argument to the jury was that much of the time that this girl attended McMartin was outside the statute of limitations.) They don't mention that vaginal injuries on another girl, one of the three involved in both McMartin trials, were described by a pediatrician as proving sexual abuse "to a medical certainty."....
many jurors believed the original defendant Ray Buckey was guilty and voted to convict him. Within an hour after the first trial ended in a hung jury, seven jurors held a press conference to announce that they thought children had been sexually abused. They spoke about the difficulty in proving such claims "beyond a reasonable doubt."....
Now, while the media publicizes sexual abuse stories about celebrities and cover-ups of abuse in the past, and repeats the mythical numbers from the witch-hunt narrative, they overlook a real number that concerns real victims -- the number of children being sexually abused today. It's a major public health problem that gets almost no attention at all.
While this type of crime is, not surprisingly, difficult to quantify, studies over many years have found that 20 percent of women and 5 to 10 percent of men report having been sexually abused as children. Just last month, a study in the American Journal of Public Health showed much higher rates of male victimization than previously thought. There's every reason to believe that child sexual abuse is still widespread. Yet how often do the media delve into that real problem? How often do they examine the enormous gap between the number of children -- judging from studies -- being abused today and the number of their abusers who end up in court, much less in prison? ....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ross-cheit/mythical-numbers-and-sata_b_5578078.html
Evidence in the Keller Case
July 10, 2014
This post elaborates on some of the evidence in the Keller case, discussed in an article that was just published on Huffington Post. The article, which is about the witch-hunt narrative writ large, argues that the evidence of abuse in the Keller case has been minimized or denied, while the “satanic” aspects of the case, which were never part of the charges, have been exaggerated.
Dr. Mouw’s Testimony
The Keller case began the day that a mother took her daughter to the Emergency Room, after the little girl screamed “It hurts, it hurts” while urinating. The Emergency Room doctor, Dr. Michael Mouw, found two different signs of sexual abuse. Seventeen years later, the doctor told a reporter that his diagnosis was likely incorrect.
Dr. Mouw’s claim has been accepted at face value, without any apparent skepticism or scrutiny by those advancing the witch-hunt narrative. Yet, on close examination, there are two reasons to discount Dr. Mouw’s current claim. First and foremost, it is flatly contradicted by his testimony in 1992, when he said repeatedly that he had “no independent recollection” of the exam....
Second, even accepting what Dr. Mouw now says at face value, his current position, contained in this affidavit filed in 2013, contradicts only one of the two findings in his 1992 report. Dr. Mouw claims that the “lacerations” he reported seeing in two places in the girl’s vagina were probably normal hymenal variations. But his affidavit did not withdraw his finding of a “tear in the posterior fourchette.”....
A civil complaint filed by the parents of one of the children who attended the Keller’s home daycare contains the allegation that a “longtime friend and confident” of Francis Keller was told about “Daniel Keller’s abusive habit toward children” (p. 2). If this allegation is true, it provides additional support, beyond the word of the children, for the allegation against the Kellers. But this evidence was never heard in court because the defendants were ultimately successful in an appeal that argued that such causes of action should not be allowed in Texas.
http://blogs.brown.edu/rcheit/2014/07/10/keller/
Westminster 'chumocracy' has protected itself from paedophile revelations, claims Cameron's advisor on child abuse
Claire Perry says politicians have 'out of touch sense of entitlement'
Tory junior minister launched blistering attack on establishment cover up
Comes after Theresa May this week launched two probes into historic abuse
By Tom Mctague, Mail Online Deputy Political Editor 11 July 2014
David Cameron's advisor on child abuse has lashed out at the Westminster 'chumocracy' that has protected itself from allegations of paedophilia.
Tory junior minister Claire Perry said Parliament was full of 'too many people with the same interests and the same out-of-touch sense of entitlement coming together to protect their own'.
Her damning remarks come amid allegations that a paedophile network was operating in Westminster and was being protected by senior politicians....
Miss Perry added: 'The other, and more worrying part of the problem is the way that the voices of victims were ignored for so long – children told to keep quiet, ridiculed, or threatened – with tragically the most vulnerable of all being more likely to be targeted for abuse.
'That, to me, is the real scandal and we must do all we can to make sure that when victims speak out they are heard and action is taken.”....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2688622/Westminster-chumocracy-protected-paedophile-revelations-claims-Cameron-s-advisor-child-abuse.html
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