A Matter of F.A.C.T – Witch Hunts Old and New Part 2
In my last piece I tried to set out something of the origins and psychology of the original “witch hunt” in early modern Europe, and tried to identify the aspects of the psychology. May I thank the readers for the many insightful comments.
Let us then jump forward and look at a modern-day “witch hunt”. I could pick many, but I am particularly interested in the current frenzy which surrounds allegations of so-called “historic” sexual abuse.
I think it is important to be aware that from the 1970’s certain new theories began to gain currency in academia and social science worlds, to do with the amount of “hidden” but endemic child abuse and incest as part of a patriarchal society. Very broadly one could analyse these as growing out of a radical “feminist” agenda. I do not have time to set out the whole story here, and I am not sure I am qualified to do justice to it at the moment, but I think it is significant that such theories were, in the ghastly modern parlance, “gaining traction”.
With that in mind, two immediately spring to mind concerning alleged sexual abuse on a grand scale.
Between February and July of 1987 121 children on Teesside were taken from their families and placed in care. Dr Marietta Higgs and her colleague Dr Geoffrey Wyatt believed a controversial diagnostic practice called RAD – reflex anal dilatation – indicated abuse had taken place. Briefly, this involves gently parting the buttocks and observing the anus for half a minute. Usually, the sphincter on the outside of the anus will contract and then dilate, as pressure is maintained. Sometimes the inside sphincter will then also relax giving a view right into the rectum. It is this response that has been named RAD. Pausing there, I have to say that if someone started messing about with me like that not only would I probably exhibit the symptoms of “abuse”, but very shortly afterwards I would deploy my fists and any nearby object such as a chair which could be used as a weapon with extreme ferocity.
Drs Hobbs and Wynne reported that RAD was present in 42% of anally abused children they examined, and claimed that it was an important indicator of abuse. They stated that they had not witnessed RAD in non-abused children. They also claimed that splits or fissures around the anus are very rare in the non-abused child.
In just five months Dr Higgs had diagnosed 78 children as having been the victims of sexual abuse. Many had come to hospital for complaints such as asthma and there was no other evidence of abuse.
On July 9, 1987 the Secretary of State for Social Services ordered that a public inquiry be held into the scandal. It was 12 months later when Elizabeth Butler-Sloss – the chair of the inquiry – published her report.
In her final conclusions Baroness Butler-Sloss stated that the problems of child sexual abuse had become more recognised in the early 1980s which caused “particularly difficult problems for the agencies concerned in child protection”.
Baroness Butler-Sloss went on to state: “In Cleveland an honest attempt was made to address these problems by the agencies. In Spring 1987 it went wrong.”
I should add, by the way, that whilst I might perhaps rather disagree with the content of “The Hammer of the Witches”, or even the sanity of its author, I have no grounds to impugn the honesty of his attempts to address a perceived problem. No doubt he made an honest attempt to address his concerns too.
The public inquiry found most of the allegations of sexual abuse were unfounded and all but 27 children were returned to their families. The two doctors were criticised for “over-confidence” in their methods. I should imagine Rebbeka Kemp’s husband would have said the same about the town council in Nördlingen.
Whilst researching this piece I found a fabulous article in the Institute for Psychological Studies Journal by (now) Professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith, whom I understand to be a doctor, author and academic hailing from New Zealand. It is interesting that my brief research has revealed that both she has written criticising techniques such as RAD and on the topic of false memory syndrome, and also that she appears to have received a great deal of nasty allegations on the web. The full piece can be found here.
Since it is on the web anyway I hope the good Professor won’t mind too much if I set out a little bit of it as an example. Here she was dealing with allegations based on a theory to do with hymenal damage rather than “RAD”:
“Unfortunately, the belief that hymenal diameters greater than 4mm indicate sexual abuse has permeated the field. I have examined a number of medical reports of vaginal examinations where hymenal sizes less than 10mm have been reported by the examining physician as indicating probable abuse.
In one particular case, a woman doctor in Christchurch, New Zealand, examined three sisters and gave the opinion that they had all probably been molested. She claimed that her examination of the 5-year-old revealed “a transverse vaginal diameter of 5mm, and no evidence of a hymen” which she found “highly suggestive of penetration.”
The 9-year-old had a transverse vaginal opening of 3.5mm, with hymenal remnants, which she concluded was “suggestive of some interference to the vagina,” and the 10-year-old had a transverse opening of 6mm, with no definite hymen, which she believed was “strongly indicative of vaginal penetration.”
The three girls were then subjected to a number of sexual abuse assessments. In her first interview session, the eldest girl was told that the doctor’s examination showed that she had been the victim of “bad touching” and had a “hurt between her legs.” Despite being repeatedly questioned about who had caused the “hurt,” she continued to deny any molestation. Even after two counsellors performed a role play with her about a “father who hurts kids between their legs” she was adamant that nothing like that had happened to her. Sadly she was not believed and all three children were placed in a foster home. Their father was charged with sexual violation of all his daughters, especially the eldest. It was a year and a half before his case was heard in court, where he was acquitted on all charges.
Now I can’t verify the details of the case, but assuming that this account is correct then it displays all the classic elements of the witch hunt – especially a fixed belief in pseudo science and questioning designed to reach the pre-ordained result – bar, fortunately, the penalty of the accused. On a personal note, I used to date a woman who worked for a particular medical centre for vulnerable people. She told me that she would never let her children go there; it was regular practice to separate children from their mothers and apply probing inquisitorial techniques, often observed in secret via a two-way mirror, seeking out “signs” of abuse.
But I digress. Another scandal followed. In the late 80s there were stories of abuse which broke first in Rochdale and the Orkneys and in a TV documentary claiming to have evidence of “satanic” abuse. This resulted in children being seized in dawn raids and taken forcibly into care. It was, of course, utter nonsense.
Four years later an official inquiry by Jean La Fontaine, emeritus professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, concluded there was no corroborating evidence that satanic ritual sexual abuse existed. And anyone who knows anything about real satanic ritual would have known that anyway.
And then on a slightly different but related tack there was the work of Professor Roy Meadow. He rose to initial fame for his 1977 academic paper on the now controversial Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. He was knighted for this work. He endorsed the dictum that “one sudden infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder, until proved otherwise” in his book ABC of Child Abuse and this became known as “Meadow’s Law” and at one time was widely adopted by social workers and child protection agencies (such as the NSPCC) in Britain. He came up with a mathematical theory to add weight to this evidence, namely that the chances of three children dying of unidentified natural causes were 1 in 73 million.
He appeared as an expert witness for the prosecution in several trials, in at least one of which his testimony played a crucial part in a wrongful conviction for murder. The British General Medical Council (GMC) struck off Meadow from the British Medical Register after he was found to have offered “erroneous” and “misleading” evidence in the Sally Clark case, although later re-instated. Clark was a lawyer wrongly convicted in 1999 of the murder of her two baby sons, largely on the basis of Meadow’s evidence; her conviction was quashed in 2003 after she had spent three years in jail. Sally Clark never recovered from the experience, developed a number of serious psychiatric problems including serious alcohol dependency and died in 2007 from alcohol poisoning.
In offering statistical evidence of this type Meadow had stepped well out of his field of expertise. As I understand or recall it, it was finally trashed when the enterprising defence counsel wheeled out an eminent professor of maths and statistics who explained exactly why. They should have just called Dr FJ.
Dr FJ is friend of mine from college days, formerly a research fellow at one of the most eminent Cambridge Colleges, and is now Head of Science for one of the world’s leading science and technology companies, based in the USA. I told him about “Meadow’s Law” and his statistic, and he just rolled his eyes in instant disdain. As for the statistics, he had a lot to say about random theory, and the actual probability of the results of the toss of a coin or roll of a dice. He put it this way:
If you roll, a dice the probability that you will get a “6” is 1 in 6.
If you roll the dice a second time, the probability that you will get a “6” is…the same. 1 in 6.
But if you roll the dice several times and keep getting a 6, the reasonable indications are that the there is some anomalous force which is excluding the other numbers. But you can’t say how it has been fixed; it could be a magnet, a weight or sleight of hand, the decree of the Sky Pixie or an alien ray, or anything else.
Now in terms of Meadow’s law, it was just rank wrong maths and bad science, he said. The best that you could say was that there could be some external extra feature operating, but without more it would be impossible to say what it was; it could be anything from genetics, to environment or smoking, or yes, even murder. In fact on the basis of two or even three events it could even be a random aberration but not statistically conclusive of anything. But of itself, Meadow’s calculation and conclusions were simply, in scientific terms, balderdash. He used another word, actually.
Well, that was that sorted then. But there were a number of convictions that had to be quashed and lives wrecked.
I do not think I can identify the psychological factor of concerns about taboo sexuality in Meadow’s work, but one can see moral panic and the demonisation of a vulnerable group: bereaved mothers alleged to have committed a social taboo, namely infanticide. Again we see a strongly motivated “expert” or power figure, one might also say with an agenda, and advancing a seemingly iron cast theory as fact. That theory was then accepted as sound without question by a legal profession which, away from the TCC and Patents Court, often flounders with scientific method.
Meanwhile, in 1991 stories began to be published saying that Bryn Estyn, a home for adolescent boys on the outskirts of Wrexham, was the hub of a network of a paedophile ring. Many allegations were levelled, including that senior members of the Police were involved and covering up the abuse….
Gildas the Monk
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June 1, 2014 at 6:56 am -
Actually the argument for statistics can be understood further by looking at the lottery.
The chance of getting one number right isn’t too bad, nor is two or three. Four is remote, Five is unlikely. Six is impossible. Unlike Meadow’s law, the chances of getting a number right are unaffected by getting one of the others right (except very slightly, it reduces the numbers available by 1)
But these only apply when you are looking at one person. If you have a large number of people doing the lottery, then the chances change somewhat.
You could make a similar argument for lottery winners.
If you compare, personally to them, the chances of them winning the lottery by luck, and the chances that they might have done so by (say) faking a ticket and hacking the terminal, you’d say, on the balance of probability, that they’d cheated.
DNA is much the same. It’s just dishonest statistics. You will see claims from Plod like ‘there is only a one in a hundred million chance that it isn’t him/her’. But it’s wrong. For example, the chance of the copper being bent is only about 1 in 200,000 or something if there is only one bent cop in the whole of the country.
It’s best to assume any statistical argument used in a law court is wrong.
Most obviously in these cases, similar fact evidence, which is the legal equivalent of “no smoke without fire”. This is why in the Roache case (most notably but others as well) pathetically weak evidence was brought in. It’s legalised mudslinging.
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June 1, 2014 at 10:34 am -
Exactly right – good analysis
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June 1, 2014 at 2:40 pm -
I like the comparisons here…
At the moment I cannot work out just what the Yewtree batting average is, but it isn’t great, given the propensity to do harm that false accusations against well known person will undoubtedly follow them the rest of their days.I remember the whole RAD fiasco and the incredible harm that was done to whole families who were falsely accused of such wickedness. It defied common sense at the time, and seems even more bizarre, with the passage of time.
Interesting article, Gildas!
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June 1, 2014 at 11:13 am -
“The chance of getting one number right isn’t too bad, ……… Six is impossible.”
Demonstrably wrong statement – there have been winners.
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June 1, 2014 at 11:54 am -
“But these only apply when you are looking at one person. If you have a large number of people doing the lottery, then the chances change somewhat.”
You missed it.
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June 1, 2014 at 1:26 pm -
June 1, 2014 at 8:23 pm -
No, Joe Public is right. Eric is wrong in his first statement as there is, IIRC, a 1 in 14 million chance of matching 6 balls. This is patently true as it is won more or less every other week by 1 of the 14 million people who play it (yes, I know!). It’s improbable not impossible.
Eric’s second statement, that you re-post, is almost correct. The chance doesn’t change for each individual as other individuals have no relationship to the 6 numbers chosen by each entrant. Whether one person enters or 30 million each individual still has a 1 in 14 million chance of landing 6 balls. The chance does change for Camelot however. The more people play the greater the chance Camelot will have to pay out big money.
With genetics those odds are shortened as there is a relationship between each sibling in that they share parents. The presence of genetic ‘flaws’ which cause illness are more likely to occur within a group of siblings than without. The same logic does not apply to having a murderous mother which is the same for each sibling.
What worries me about cases like Sally Clarks is that the evidence of the ‘experts’ was not properly challenged until after Mrs Clark had been convicted. Was Meadow a fraud or a well meaning but wrong scientist? Who knows? Unfortunately for Mrs Clark it the State’s answer to that question came too late, as usual.
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June 2, 2014 at 6:03 am -
The 1 in 73m can be found in
Sudden Unexpected Deaths in Infancy, The CESDI SUDI Studies 1993-1996
Ed. P.Fleming et al. London. The Stationery Office, 2000
(1p+2.80p&p from Amazon)
a draft of which was sent to Meadow that he might write a foreword,and with which he went to court to testify.
People amuse themselves with statistical calculations without considering the quality of the datum.
I do so wish someone would make an effort to look into it. Garbage in,garbage out. -
June 2, 2014 at 6:11 pm -
Joe is indeed right. It is not ‘impossible’.
What I’m doing is parodying the approach of Plod to this. “Oh, wow, that is soooooo unlikely, therefore it must be bent”. The chance of any one named person winning the lottery (6 balls) is as close to zero as you can reasonably get, but because so many people play it, the chance of getting a winner is much closer to 1.
You can magic up all kinds of improbable possibilities simply by magically multiplying numbers together, and conveniently ignoring numbers.
For example, if you take 100 grains of rice and place them randomly on a chessboard, this will produce some pattern. The chance of of one grain being in one square is 1 in 64, so the chance of getting all 100 grains in a specific square is that to the power of 100 (e.g. 1/64 times itself 100 times) near enough, which is absolutely astronomical. But there *is* a pattern – it’s just that the pattern in spectacularly unlikely. But so is any other.
The problem is, Plod uses this enormous number to ‘prove’ that x or y didn’t happen. And you can’t.
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June 3, 2014 at 9:43 am -
Just to add. The Police, quite knowingly IMO, abuse the misunderstanding of statistics.
A classic example is playing Whist or Bridge. A Hand is dealt, and one person is found to have all the 13 Spades, 2 through to Ace.
Cue much, wow, that’s amazing ! Most people would consider this occurrence freakish, and assume the hand was dealt by a card sharp or something.
But it’s not. It is exactly as likely as any other hand you choose to nominate.
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June 1, 2014 at 7:59 am -
A Roundhead puritan, is a Roundhead puritan; and a Cavalier is a Cavalier. The thing that gets me is how people have forgotten that Socialists, in all their guises, have advocated both sexual promiscuity as a virtue, by cocking-a-snook at the so called ‘Patriarchy’, and sexual puritanism, via ultra-paternal protection of women, exposed to the ‘perversion’ of heterosexuality!
When any philosophy, or cult, tries to run with the hare and run with the hounds, we can safely conclude that it is bent. Thus Socialism in the UK, as advanced by the Fabian society, is both political subversion, and a death cult.
There’s only about 7,000 Fabians, according to their website, so it shouldn’t be to expensive to round them all up, place them in safe custody, and disabuse them of their mental disorders; before safely returning them to the open prison of Islington.
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June 1, 2014 at 9:22 am -
Unfortunately, though, the Fabian (and Marxist-Leninist) subversion has permeated all through society and millions have bought into it. As you probably know, the Fabians use the tortoise as their symbol because they knew they would have to move very slowly to make these outlandish changes to society to achieve their ultimate aims.
The whole population needs their brains returned to factory settings.
Arrests, trials and life sentences for the biggest traitors/subverters would suit me.
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June 1, 2014 at 8:44 am -
Outstanding article, bravo!
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June 1, 2014 at 10:24 am -
Thank you, Julia
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June 1, 2014 at 2:35 pm -
Pardon my presumption, good sir; but would you by any chance be our esteemed contributor Gildas the Monk ‘in civvies’ as it were? If so, what have you done with Sister Eva Longoria and Randy Hack? Have they eloped together?
PS – Julia’s dead right about the article – superb research and presentation.
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June 1, 2014 at 2:47 pm -
Well he is a mate of mine, Engineer. As for Randy and Sister Eva, they have both been a bit down in the dumps. However, both are looking forward to the World Cup and can be expected to consume vast quantities of “tinnies” and wine whilst watching on a new wide screen TV. Perhaps this will supply some material….
And thanks!
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June 1, 2014 at 9:08 am -
Good stuff, Monk-Man!
And, if I may, I will take this opportunity to wish our esteemed landlady Joyeux Anniversaire!
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June 1, 2014 at 9:24 am -
Ooooh, not sure what the anniversary is but never being too fussed about what the party’s for – happy anniversary, Anna
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June 1, 2014 at 10:02 am -
She’s 66 today, she’s 66 today, hoorah, hoorah, zippedee dodah dey…….
Considering 64 was in doubt not so long ago, I AM celebrating!!!!!!!
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June 1, 2014 at 10:26 am -
Geez lass, it’s been a bit of a marathon, or rather a few marathons chucked together in sequence – absolutely massive and hearty congrats. Hippy hoppy happy birthday, you!
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June 1, 2014 at 11:14 am -
Happy day! May there be many more of them.
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June 1, 2014 at 2:17 pm -
Congrats – 2/3 of the way to the ‘sign of the Beast’ Auspicious indeed!
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June 1, 2014 at 2:31 pm -
Hippy Yardbath (anag.) and many more of ’em!
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June 1, 2014 at 5:15 pm -
Happy birthday Anna. Well done.
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June 1, 2014 at 5:24 pm -
Thank you Tom, appreciated from you. Now I have 67 in my sights….!
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June 1, 2014 at 5:34 pm -
At the risk of lowering the tone, 69 would be quicker.
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June 2, 2014 at 5:49 am -
Belated many happy returns!
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June 2, 2014 at 8:56 am -
Happy Birthday Anna, may there be many, many more : )
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June 1, 2014 at 9:23 am -
Cheers Gildas. It does seem that the agenda of the ‘expert’ is one of the most tediously predictable facets of all these cases. I have it in mind, though am too lazy to ask Mr Google, that one of these experts was watching TV when he made he formed his groundbreaking conclusin that some kid there shown was being tampered with. It is the progress of the little man who wants to be big – dash all vriables, all unknowns – heed my word for I have a degree in social work or psychology from the Central University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and thou shalt yield before me. Get a few books published, throw a few invites to international conferences on ‘how to circle jerk your way to tenure’ and they’re good to go.
The girl mentioned in your piece who was interrogated with role play and 2 way mirrors and, having failed to give the right answers, was subsequently disbelieved is totally ghastly – why even bother with the whole exercise? That really is the action of a malevolent inquiry – give us the answers we’re looking for so as to expedite our attacks or simpy don’t and it’ll take a little longer! It’s too early on a Sunday morning and hardly befitting of this blog to dismiss such activity with a few choice Anglo Saxon words but it would surely not have been too much for their bosses to quietly, with dignity, throw them out of the 2nd floor window with their desks behind them. Cheers again, Sir, disgracefully fascinating.
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June 1, 2014 at 6:12 pm -
@Dtp Get a few books published, throw a few invites to international conferences on ‘how to circle jerk your way to tenure’ and they’re good to go.—-a priceless assessment of the key to success in just about any profession
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June 2, 2014 at 1:51 am -
I believe the “crime-solving by TV” incident was something like one of these witch hunters seeing the husband in a family being interviewed and then contacted the police and convinced them of the father’s guilt. Can’t remember the details either I’m afraid.
On the “expert” front there have been serious questions raised recently about almost all the forensic tests routinely used for years such as fingerprints, ballistics, bite marks etc. They are far less reliable than the experts contend and many have never been subjected to objective rigorous examination as to their accuracy. The experts who invented and used them simply asserted their effectiveness with extravagant but made up statistics and we’ve all been believing them for decades.
I remember years ago reading the memoirs of one of the UKs most eminent forensic pathologists. He was at pains throughout to stress how objective he was and how he wasn’t supposed to favour the prosecution or the defence. Strangely though in every single case where he went to enormous extra lengths to obtain evidence (to the extent of inventing new techniques such as the speed of insect development in a corpse to give a time of death) it was ALWAYS to help the police convict their man, never once to help a potentially innocent one.
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June 3, 2014 at 9:47 am -
That’s because if they don’t do that they don’t get the work any more.
You should see how bad IT people are. I was reading an article by Mark Newby (I think it was him, the name will be familiar to many) in which he said when he was consulting ‘experts’ over Child Porn cases they said there was no way a picture could appear without being viewed or even requested.
This is quite terrifying, as I can think of 2 or 3 without even trying.
– Set the picture’s height and width to 1,1, so it’s there but it looks like a dot or a bit of muck on the screen
– Set the picture’s alpha to zero.
– Load it in in javascript.
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June 1, 2014 at 10:04 am -
Thanks Gildas, that was an excellent article. The witch-finders are out in force, they believe they are right and they are not prepared to allow anything like facts to get in the way of prosecuting the witches.
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June 1, 2014 at 10:47 am -
Thank you Gildas, a succinct and precise exposure of one of the major flaws in our legal system. Bravo indeed!
And bravo too to that hot young chick celebrating 66 years. Well done – have a good one – and let’s have many more!-
June 1, 2014 at 10:59 am -
Who’d a thunk I’d end up celebrating my birthday with Master Bates. Who indeed. Life turns some strange corners….
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June 1, 2014 at 11:19 am -
A candidate for Julia M’s next ‘Comment of the Month’?
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June 1, 2014 at 2:05 pm -
I object most strongly to being classified as a ‘strange corner’.
OK Mr. Raccoon, I should get her home immediately – she sounds about ready.-
June 1, 2014 at 2:43 pm -
Mr Raccoon presented me with a glass of champagne for lunch – my apologies sir!
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June 2, 2014 at 1:19 am -
No apology necessary – but only ONE glass?
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June 1, 2014 at 11:09 am -
Great stuff – I take it there will be a part 3 ?
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June 1, 2014 at 11:13 am -
Just a little question, do any other of the western European countries suffer from the same problem?
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June 1, 2014 at 12:09 pm -
@eddy – Sweden and Denmark have been similarly afflictedin terms of zealous child abuse professionals – these are connected through similar ideologies and professionals networks. Netherlands is also in the fore. Germany had some faux daycare ring cases. Norway had at least one. Portugal had a mass children’s home with celebrity case. Richard Webster analysed this and the book – which was an excellent thumbnail anatomy of a modern witchhunt was about to be published at the time of his untimely death in 2012. for some reason the estate decided not to go ahead with the publication which was to be in English and Portuguese.
Felicity Goodyear Smith wrote an excellent book on the early cases First Do no Harm. NewZealand author Lynley Hood wrote a magnificent book comparable to The Secret Of Bryn Estyn about the Christchurch daycare case A City Possessed which is very well researched on the background of witchhunts and ‘crimen exceptum’. I have seen reports of daycare types cases in Italy, and there have been some hysterical type affairs in France – but I’m not aware of their being ideological grip on the welfare and criminal justice systems in these countries. All european countries have limitation period of retro sexual allegations and I think compensation is not a significant feature . The anglo american cultures are those most afflicted.
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June 1, 2014 at 2:31 pm -
Thanks for the info Margaret.
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June 1, 2014 at 12:14 pm -
Thanks for all the great comments. And Happy Birthday, Boss!
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June 1, 2014 at 12:34 pm -
Thank you Gildas , the Cleveland case was very important in that it was the first time errors were identified an masse. But the public enquiry did not determine that the cases were unsubstantiated. Butler-Sloss declined to make any findings because the terms of reference were about procedure. It was the courts that sent the children home. What came to light though was that the paediatricians were working in tandem with social workers and psychologists using presumptive ‘disclosure’ methods. So RAD was a tool of referral of those and related children to Sue Richardson and Heather Bacon who were using the US methods pioneered in the UK by the NSPCC and Great Ormand St Hospital through their practice and training network – the same methods which would lead to the satanic abuse presumptions. The enquiry was triggered by the fact that there was an impasse between the police and social services and the paediatricians. The police were suspicious and did not accept the RAD or the disclosure methods. While Butler Sloss made may cogent observations about the dangers of the methods used, she prefaced the report with adult histories gathered by MP Frank Cook and the professional and rape crisis network and said that sexual abuse was a major problem. We do not know how many of these histories were founded. But the upshot was that Butler Sloss set in train a ‘working together’ protocol where police were required to work and train together with social workers and other professionals. This led the police being trained in the same presumptions as the social workers and hence the underlying flaws were never properly addressed. In particular the prosecution of historical domestic cases (which have never been addressed by an enquiry) became commonplace, with the rules of evidence being adapted to ease prosecution. The Yewtree cases are really an extension of this ‘business as usual’ as it has been for 25 years . For some background to Cleveland and beyond see http://www.factuk.org/resources/briefing-paper/the-road-to-shieldfield/
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June 1, 2014 at 12:51 pm -
” This led the police being trained in the same presumptions as the social workers”
That statement is borne witness to by the fact that Spindler of the Yard was taking Met Police on Satanic Abuse courses by 2004. Thos courses were being run by
… barrister Lee Moore, who runs the awareness course, said: “I do believe SRA exists because as a lawyer you have to look at the evidence and ask why psychologists, psychiatrists, police, lawyers up and down the country, and abroad, are receiving similar accounts from people who have never met each other… Mr Spindler defended the decision to go on the course, saying: “If survivors of abuse are telling us that this is the type of thing they have experienced in the past, then we need to be open minded.”
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/getting-on-my-wicker-man.html-
June 1, 2014 at 1:00 pm -
thank you Moor – as a coda Lee Moore was the chair of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers and claimed to be a ‘satanic survivor’ herself post therapy. ACAL was set up by Moore,Sue Richardson (who became an MPD therapist ) and Peter Garsden drawing in the PI lawyers and setting the scene for the civil claims which completely changed the law tort as interpreted in the courts. All three were SRA believers and the first chair of NAPAC Gill Thomas was a’Satanic survivor’ therapised by….Sue Richardson. Moore is no longer chair of ACAL and I don’t know Richardson’s role of late. Richardson ran ‘secondary victimisation’ seminars for lawyers – which was really a form of spreading the virus.
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June 1, 2014 at 1:19 pm -
Super and important insight – thanks
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June 1, 2014 at 12:39 pm -
Remarkably enough…………
“The vile Anal Dilation Theory practised by Higgs was not her idea however, she just became the most infamous practioner. Imagine my amazement when I realised where she had learned to believe in it…
The hospital has a busy child protection team, overseen by the respected paediatric consultant Dr Christopher Hobbs. Significantly, he is an original pioneer of the RAD technique in this country. In June 1986, just a year before the Cleveland controversy broke, Dr Hobbs and his colleague Jane Wynne introduced young Marietta Higgs to this new way of diagnosing child molestation during a Leeds’ medical conference.
How could the very city that Jimmy Savile lived in, and the very hospitals he had worked in as a volunteer for over forty years, be at the very epicentre of the British Child Abuse “Industry”, without Jimmy Savile’s existence as the worst sexual predator in the history of Britain ever having being discovered long, long ago – if it were true. I read Sarah Nelson’s research paper moor carefully. There was Leeds again !!
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/origin-of-species.htmlAs to the happy 66 news…… well….. the landlady only needs to live another 600 years and the prophecy will be complete….
While we wait, the next round can be on me. Cheers m’dears.-
June 1, 2014 at 2:02 pm -
Hobbs and Wynne had imported the RAD technique through a conference in California I believe in the early 80 and applied it in spades in Leeds without the militant opposition that developed in the mass Cleveland cases . They too had their social worker feeders. As the time Astrid Heger was an ardent promoter of this an miniscule hymenal ‘signs’ viewed magnified through a colposcope. John McCann conducted studies which refuted these precepts. REmarkably, Astrid Heger the paediatrician who promoted satanic abuse in conferences in the UK completely reversed her opinions and became a leading antagonist in the courts against the likes of Hobbs and others in recent years. She is now super-sceptical about misinterpreting hymenal ‘signs’ I don’t know of any comparable professional recanting and retracting in this way – other than perhaps Peter Dale who was at the NSPCC and became a sceptic on the munchhausens and ‘recovered memory’ and DID cases when he left, becoming an advocate for wrongly accused parents. So you see, change is not impossible….
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June 1, 2014 at 12:57 pm -
Excellent article! Incidentally, there was a follow-up documentary on the Orkney case a few years ago, in which the children- now adults and able to speak for themselves- described the psychologically abusive pressure put on them by social workers to try and get them to accuse their own parents. The most appalling bit was where they interviewed the senior social worker in this case- despite everything her now-grown-up victims had said, she still maintained that she was right all along and that abuse had happened!
This brings me to the most important background factor in these cases, which is the training of social workers. As a mental health nurse I worked with many social workers and was never very impressed. Later, when I was doing my psychology degree I took the opportunity to look at some social work textbooks. I was very struck by the contrast between these and the psychology textbooks and journals I was studying on my own course. Briefly, the social work textbooks were entirely non-scientific. They had no basis in actual quantitative research, relying instead on “arguements from authority” (so-and-so says it so it’s true) and “accepted practice” (we all know it so it’s true), illustrated with selective anecdotal evidence. In other words, social work training resembles that of a religious priesthood, not a science-based professional like a doctor or engineer.
BTW, the specific issue I looked up in these books was transracial adoption. I had worked in Inner London where hundreds of black kids spent years in foster care or children’s homes because no black adoptive parents could be found for them. I had naively supposed that this transracial adoption ban was based on some sort of long term research comparing the outcomes for black adoptees brought up in different circumstances. Not a bit of it! The whole chapter was based on dogmatic pronouncements, illustrated by unchallenged anecdotal testimony from one or two individuals complaining that their white adoptive parents hadn’t known how to use an afro-comb!
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June 1, 2014 at 1:23 pm -
@Pete the transracial adoption issue was ideologically motivated employing the same shock troop diktat training methods in ‘anti-racism’ seminars in the 80s as happened with sexual abuse. The two themes were hand-in-glove with the white underclass being differentially targeted re alleged sexual abuse (as in Cleveland)I wrote a number of articles critiqueing both issues in Social Work Today at the time. I went to my local library and got a copy of the Be My Parent adoption catalogue where children were ‘advertised’ for adoption. Without fail all children with any black of minority racial genetic tincture were only available to black families. There was a dearth of white children for adoption, a surfeit of black and mixed-race children, a dearth of black parents wanting to adopt and a surfeit of white would-be adopters. I spoke to a number of families who had gone abroad to adopt, they had faced horrendous problems with social workers in the Uk and were viewed as part of ‘trafficking networks’. there were all sorts of rumours about third world children being used for ‘organ- harvesting’ at the time. None of these issues were examined rationally or evidentially but implicitly believed by the social work hierarchy. I was told that social workers as recently as around 2000 were being trained with books by the likes of Diane Core (an early SRA evangelical SRAist). The entire system is contaminated – and of course there are many clinical psychologists who are similarly afflicted.
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June 1, 2014 at 1:02 pm -
I might add, BTW, that I’m aware from personal contacts in my local University that it’s possible to get more than half way through their social work training without EVER having read a book on this or any other subject.
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June 1, 2014 at 2:00 pm -
Here is a different perspective on the Cleveland case, which I post for interest:
http://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2014/03/09/ralph-underwager-and-the-cleveland-child-abuse-inquiry/
http://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/cleveland-unspeakable-truths/This is an interesting article I found about Reflex Anal Dilation:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/1467-9566.00078/asset/1467-9566.00078.pdf?v=1&t=hvwej7ma&s=a47ba092edb1ef4487a48e41b7eba4a0466ab342The authors note that RAD was used to ‘diagnose’ homosexuals when it was illegal.
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June 1, 2014 at 6:44 pm -
@Duncan – The spotlight article was part of a syndicated smear campaign that was circulated to discredit sceptics. Underwager did give an ill-advised interview to that magazine in the Netherland and the extracts were edited to make him appear ‘pro-paedo’ – he wasn’t . He was a Lutheran minister who had clear views about the evil of child sexual abuse which can be read in The Return of the Furies. which he wrote with his wife psychologist Hollida Wakefield. Underwager was hated by the sexual abuse zealots because he took an early stand against the ‘witchhunt’ disclosure methods and subsequent research by Ceci and Bruck and others proved him right. He was also right about ‘recovered memory’.
I couldn’t open the RAD link but it was originally used to diagnose homosexuals and then became adopted by the abuse zealots. The method was used to incriminate McGrath in Kincora back in 1980 – as being homosexual when he denied this. This was before the child abuse craze.
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September 8, 2014 at 12:57 pm -
Why on earth would anyone be giving an interview with a paedo mag if they weren’t paedo-friendly? Why on earth would anyone want to present this as ‘innocent’?
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June 1, 2014 at 3:35 pm -
The end result of these witch hunts – lives ruined !
It’s NOT too late to talk to the DAME and the NHS and others !
http://rabbitaway.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/talk-to-dame-before-its-too-late.html -
June 1, 2014 at 5:19 pm -
Sorry to be off topic here…fabulous article by the way and looking forward to the next one…..but I am just so cureious as to the origins of “anna Raccoon” and why this seems to have changed to “Gildas The Monk”….is it just to keep anonymity or do the names have a meaning?
Please tell us if you feel you can….
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June 1, 2014 at 5:23 pm -
Anna Raccoon is a nickname I was given when I worked for Anorak….Anorak, Anna Raccoon, say it quickly enough and you will get it. My real name is well known on the internet, it is Susanne Cameron-Blackie. It was never my intention to be anonymous – Anna Raccoon was just the name of the blog, but since everyone calls me ‘Anna’, I now answer to that…..
Gildas the Monk is an entirely different person – male, and Anna is definitely female! He writes brilliant posts every Sunday to give me a day off.
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June 1, 2014 at 8:45 pm -
Thank you for the compliments, which are most kind. I can conform that “the Boss” (as her occasional stable of writers refer to her in tremulous terms) is imperiously female, and has given the origin of her nickname above. I, by contrast, am resolutely male. The nickname came about by accident. I was very alone and at a low ebb in life, and joined a history related web site where people discussed and wrote articles about Roman, Dark Age and Medieval Britain. It was considered de rigeur to have an ancient character name, like “Erik the Blood Axe” and so forth. However, I knew of the works of the6th Century writer Gildas, and I felt a certain affinity for what he had to say, and I was living like a monk, so I borrowed the name. You can research him on line, if you like.
When “the Boss” dragged me out of the lonely pond in which I was drowning and dusted me down a bit (thus probably saving my life) I kept the tag. It seemed to fit a rather lonely and world weary view.
Of course, the other explanation is that the Boss is a Raccoon and I am 1500 years old and still going strong: it is perhaps less improbable..
G the M
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June 1, 2014 at 7:52 pm -
Many thanks to the monk, and the BTL contributors, for a very informative piece
Many Happy Returns to the Landlady. 66 not out is much better than most English players seem to aspire to…
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June 2, 2014 at 12:04 am -
Interesting.
The witch-hunt theory expounded applies just as much to politics. But there is a huge difference. If courts can be led astray by ‘experts’, think how much more easily politicians can be led astray. At least, in criminal cases, the evidence is supposed to indicate, “Beyond reasonable doubt”. Even when courts get it wrong, at least they have examined the evidence with some intellectual rigour. What we see with politicians, and their decisions, requires and receives, no such rigorous attention. In that situation, ‘experts’ are in their element. They can manipulate politicians any way they wish to. That is especially true when the experts have gained control of all avenues of advice which politicians rely upon.
But we need to be more specific. It is not politicians as a social class that we should worry about. It is more about THE CABINET. The Prime Minister is not KING. He chairs the cabinet meetings. It is the cabinet which decides. But here is the catch 22. The cabinet is not intellectually vigorous. It cannot be, since the people who are ministers do not have expertise of their own in the subject matter of their departments, never mind expertise in other department matters. Thus we have Lansley (ex-health minister) voting against the smoking ban when in opposition but stating that tobacco companies should have no business in the UK when in government.I do not know what the answer is, but I have no doubt that our political system stinks.
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June 2, 2014 at 5:35 am -
Yes Minister.
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June 2, 2014 at 10:19 am -
“If courts can be led astray by ‘experts’, think how much more easily politicians can be led astray. ”
And ‘the experts’ often depend upon ‘research grants’, which are frequently allocated on the basis of political agenda. And the ‘peer review’ evaluation of their academic work carried out by others working in the same field in some cases is little more than ‘pal review’. ‘Cos next time the tables might be turned.
A bit like much of what is called climate change ‘science’.
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June 2, 2014 at 7:37 am -
There’s another installment this evening:
BBC One, Monday 2 June at 2030 BST
The NSPCC woman has been having a conversation on R4 Today about 500 incidents rather than “reports” ….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27621777
(Hi Anna)
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June 2, 2014 at 7:51 am -
June 2, 2014 at 8:09 am -
@BBC weblink:
Confidential government documents obtained by the BBC reveal that civil servants referred to Jimmy Savile as “Dr Savile”That would be the confidential Hansard on the internet perhaps?
“I should like briefly to refer again to Broadmoor, about which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has spoken. The activities of the Broadmoor Hospital Board were suspended during August and the operational management of the hospital is in the hands of a specially formulated task force whose best known member is Dr. Jimmy Savile. Dr. Savile has been involved with the work of Broadmoor Hospital for many years and is now devoting his considerable talents to ensuring that the hospital functions smoothly during this difficult interim period before the new special health authority comes into being.”
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/nov/07/mentally-ill-offenders-treatment-1#S5LV0501P0_19881107_HOL_188What a bunch of jokers these journos are……
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June 2, 2014 at 1:12 pm -
I can remember a lot of the dates on which certain events happened in my life. The more meaningful the event the more embedded in memory the date appears to be. So I can remember the exact date and time I got married and the birthdates and times of my children. I can remember the year I in which got my degree, but not the exact date. I could however find that out. Yet I have trouble remembering what I went to the shops for.
So some questions to those in the know. How come it is possible to get the year one was sexually assaulted wrong? Surely the date time and place would be etched firmly in the mind. Often we hear evidence from victims that has no exact date, or if a year is given it is provably wrong. Are they all lying or are such memory lapses forgivable?
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June 2, 2014 at 5:01 pm -
Happy Birthday for yesterday Anna – mine is tomorrow – Geminis to the core!
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