I'm ALL ABOUT exposing cults and manipulative, authoritarian organizations. But THAT is all just a smaller segment of the issue of coercive persuasion and mind-hacking (TM) . I'm also ALL ABOUT being a skeptic when it comes to believing one of your own kind. We are far more apt to believe myth when it comes from one of our own, rather than from our opposition. Make sure you apply the same objective, double-blind tests to both sides if you want to be fair. Or attack the questioner if you can't get your head around it.
I'm hoping that this is not some sensational nonsense with charismatic scare stories. Demons are always center stage! Was certainly the rage in Salem. I watched shamelessly wealthy Manhattan Beach parents who worship their kids go MILITANT in insisting this was all real. There were no tunnels, no magic bunnies, no evidence of silver bullets or secret covens. But HEY! I do the news, and this is sensational, and I have put this link on my main page, and I hope it goes well. If not, you will surely get feedback.
from the McMartin wiki: (LOVE them underground tunnels!)
Several hundred children were then interviewed by the Children's Institute International (CII), a Los Angeles abuse therapy clinic. The interviewing techniques used during investigations of the allegations were highly suggestive and invited children to pretend or speculate about supposed events. [ 13 ] [ 14 ] By spring of 1984, it was claimed that 360 children had been abused. [ 15 ] [ 5 ] [ 16 ]Astrid Heppenstall Heger performed medical examinations and took photos of what she believed to be minute scarring which she stated was caused by anal penetration. Critics have alleged that the questioners asked the children leading questions, repetitively, which, it is said, [ 17 ] always yields positive responses from young children, making it impossible to know what the child actually experienced. Others believe that the questioning itself may have led to false memory syndrome among the children who were questioned. [ 1 ] [ 3 ] Ultimately only 41 of the original 360 children testified during the grand jury and pre-trial hearings, and less than a dozen testified during the actual trial. [ 18 ]
Videotapes of the interviews with children were reviewed by Dr. Michael Maloney, a British clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry, as an expert witness regarding the interviewing of children. Maloney was highly critical of the interviewing techniques used, referring to them as improper, coercive, directive, problematic, adult-directed in a way that forced the children to follow a rigid script and that "many of the kids' statements in the interviews were generated by the examiner." [ 19 ] Transcripts and recordings of the interviews contained far more speech from adults than children, and demonstrated that despite the highly coercive interviewing techniques used, initially the children were resistant to interviewers' attempts to elicit disclosures. Recordings of these interviews were instrumental in the jury's refusal to convict by demonstrating how children could create their vivid and dramatic testimonies without having experienced the abuse. [ 20 ] The techniques used were contrary to the existing guidelines in California for the investigation of cases involving children and child witnesses. [ 21 ]
Bizarre allegations
Some of the accusations were described as "bizarre", [ 6 ] overlapping with accusations that mirrored the just-starting satanic ritual abuse moral panic. [ 3 ] It was alleged that, in addition to having been sexually abused, they saw witches fly, traveled in a hot-air balloon, and were taken through underground tunnels. [ 3 ] When shown a series of photographs by Danny Davis, the McMartins' lawyer, one child identified actor Chuck Norris as one of the abusers. [ 1 ] Some of the abuse was alleged to have occurred in secret tunnels beneath the school. Several investigations turned up evidence of old buildings on the site and other debris from before the school was built, but no evidence of any rooms was found. [ 3 ] There were claims of orgies at car washes and airports, and of children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and presented back to their unsuspecting parents. Some children said they were made to play a game called "Naked Movie Star" in which they were photographed nude. [ 5 ] [ 22 ] [ 3 ] During the trial, testimony from the children stated that the naked movie star game was actually a rhyming taunt used to tease other children, and had nothing to do with having naked pictures taken. [ 3 ]
Johnson, who made the initial allegations, made bizarre and impossible statements about Raymond Buckey, including that he could fly. [ 5 ] Though the prosecution asserted Johnson's mental illness was caused by the events of the trial, Johnson had admitted to them that she was mentally ill beforehand. Evidence of Johnson's mental illness was withheld from the defense for three years, and when provided were in the form of sanitized reports that excluded Johnson's statements, at the order of the prosecution. [ 23 ] One of the original prosecutors, Glenn Stevens, left the case and stated that other prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense, including the information that Johnson's son was unable to identify Ray Buckey in a series of photographs. Stevens also accused the deputy district attorney on the case of lying and withholding evidence from the court and defense lawyers in order to keep the Buckey's in jail and prevent access to exonerating evidence. [ 24 ]
