THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509280005
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
I applaud ``Retrials? No'' (editorial, Sept. 15). The defendants associated with the Little Rascals Day Care Center in Edenton, where ritual sexual abuse is said to have occurred, should not be retried.
I have studied the similar McMartin preschool case in California to which you also alluded, but some unique aspects about the Little Rascals case have also bothered me. One of these aspects is Edenton's location in the Bible Belt and the attitudes of parents there that result from this.
Fundamentalist-Christian parents will try to tell us that young children are totally innocent and so cannot lie. That is hogwash. I have witnessed 4-year-olds telling baldfaced lies to say out of trouble, and social workers have affirmed that children in crime-ridden areas often simply cannot be believed.
Those parents will also try to tell us that children would have no knowledge of the opposite sex's sexual organs unless some dirty adult showed them. Haven't they ever seen small children running around nude (often without their parents' knowledge) or playing ``doctor''? Yet both arguments were used with success in the Little Rascals trials.
Another disturbing aspect is the increasing evidence that children's testimony can be easily manipulated by asking them leading questions over and over. This is related to the current controversy over ``false memory syndrome'' that has begun to lead to lawsuits against therapists who have apparently implanted false memories of ritual childhood abuse in adults.
The final aspect is the possibility that abuse did occur, but not at the day-care center. Any social worker or police officer will tell you that children are more likely to be abused by relatives than by strangers. Kenneth Lanning of the FBI, who has studied ritual abuse cases for years, has reported, in academic Jeffrey Victor's words: ``In some cases, the traumatic fears of children in response to actual sexual abuse in their homes may produce elaborate fantasies about events in day care.''
EDWIN KRAMPITZ JR.
Drewryville, Sept. 22, 1995 by CNB