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Post by roverpup on Sept 16, 2020 12:31:55 GMT
There have been some pretty good films made about this 1980s/1990s phenomenon of those trials surrounding the sexual abuse/satanic ritual accusations against people.
One was the 1995 HBO TV movie "Indictment: The McMartin Trial".
Here's a brief description of it.
"Based on a real-life court case, the film finds members of the McMartin family on trial for alleged sexual molestation and abuse of children at their well-regarded preschool. Publicity-seeking attorney Danny Davis (James Woods) initially defends the McMartins for selfish reasons, but he slowly begins to believe that they are innocent. Davis has his work cut out for him, however, since the media have demonized the family, and prosecuting lawyer Lael Rubin (Mercedes Ruehl) is a tough opponent."
It was nominated and won a number of awards including Emmys, Golden Globes and DGA award for Mick Jackson.
Here's a brief summation of one review -
John J. O'Connor, writing for The New York Times:
This is a portrait of mass hysteria, fueled by panic-stricken parents, overzealous prosecutors, irresponsible talk shows and an out-of-control tabloid press ... Is "Indictment" balanced? Is it fair to the other side? No. As Mr. [Abby] Mann puts it, "What other side?" Watch it and shudder."
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Post by mllemass on Sept 16, 2020 12:35:39 GMT
If you’ve ever spent time around young children, you know that they are very unreliable witnesses. And, as has been mentioned, they can be easily manipulated. If those children had truly been part of satanic child abuse cult, it would have been obvious in their play. Children act out what they experience in the world, and yet none of those children had acted out anything unusual at home.
My cousin’s little boy once told us in great detail about going to the airport the day before to pick up his uncle. He described the drive there, the planes he saw and all the commotion of the airport. When we asked my cousin about it later, she was very puzzled because it had actually happened the year before. And I remember reading about the trial of a man charged with sexually abusing a little girl. He said he knew that it was wrong, but insisted that it was all the girl’s idea. When the male judge interviewed the little girl, she went over to him and tried to unzip his pants, so he believed the man’s story. I remember at the time my cousin, who’s a psychiatrist, saying the girl’s behaviour was typical of children who have been sexually abused. They learn what to do to please their abusers and aren’t even aware they’re being abused. The girl should have been interviewed by a psychiatrist and not some idiot judge.
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Post by MagdaFR on Sept 16, 2020 14:17:38 GMT
Re: Cuties and Trump - His wife defended the movie and he said something against Trump and his supporters.
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Post by roverpup on Sept 16, 2020 14:49:41 GMT
I worked around a LOT of little children as a primary school teacher for 20 years. And I have to say children are perfectly capable of outright lying. As well they are very susceptible to manipulation in the hands of adults with agendas during interviews (be they psychiatrists, judges, attorneys or anyone for that matter). They aren't, on the whole, reliable witnesses.
There is still great controversy about some of the psychiatric practices of eliciting "testimony" from supposed SRA "witnesses".
In the case of the McMartin trial a lot of people were relying on methods to interview children based almost entirely on a now completely discredited book written in 1980 called "Michelle Remembers" (however, there are some diehards that STILL believe that the book is real!).
Added to that there was a psychiatrist named Roland Summit who in 1983 put forth a "theory" to explain the questionable reactions some child witnesses had during SRA trials - CSAAS or Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome.
CSAAS was invoked often during the day-care sex-abuse hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s, because it purports to explain both delayed disclosures and withdrawals of false allegation of child sexual abuse.
CSAAS is used to justify any statement made by a child as an indication that sexual abuse had occurred, because immediate disclosure could be an indication of abuse, but delayed disclosure, withdrawal and sustained denial is also explain by this theory.
There is an article in Slate (titled "Stupid-Syndrome Syndrome" by David Feige April 6/05) detailing some of the massive problems surrounding the use of a "syndrome" as an accurate diagnosis, especially in legal circumstances. And certainly CSAAS falls into many of those pitfalls.
In fact, neither the American Psychiatric Association nor the American Psychological Association has recognized CSAAS. And yet it is still looked upon as credible by the general public.
When you read the details of the trials surrounding the SRA cases it's easy to see how this whole bullshit about Qanon is swallowed hook line and sinker by masses of people. The scary thing is it took decades for some of the people accused, tried, convicted and jailed to finally see true justice come about with release and belated partial redemption.
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Post by sgev1977 on Sept 17, 2020 2:16:31 GMT
Have someone watched Capturing the Friedmans? I don't even know if I could recommend it! I mean it's a good documentary but it's also the most disturbing film I have ever watched. That and probably The Act of Killing (also a documentary).
It's about this real life family in the 80s that used to make home videos of everything that happened to them and I mean everything! Including the entire process of the father and one son accused of raping multiple children. The case it's actually mentioned in We Believe The Children because it seems there were a lot of irregularities and a few of the "victims" recanted their accusations but it's an extremely complex case. For starters, the father was indeed a pedophile. The FBI discovered he was receiving and sending child porn to other men and arrested him. Then they found he was a computer teacher and regularly had contact with kids so they interrogated the children using questionable methods and they obtained some over the top stories about bizarre orgies during the classes that implicated the youngest son because he helped his father with the classes.
Anyway, it wasn't just the father. All the family members seemed completely mad and behaved in the most bizarre way . Probably the mother was the only one that looked as something close to a normal human being and she was hated by the sons! The boys completely sided with the father even knowing he was in possession of those awful magazines. On the videos, they openly discussed the case meanwhile are playful and fight each other. It's extremely uncomfortable to see! Anyway, the mother and the lawyer pressured the father to admit he abused the kids in a try to save the son but the son also later "confessed" (again because his lawyer told him to do it). The very young man made a big fuss during and after the trial because in what it seemed a happy mood (always smiling and playing) told disturbing details about how he was himself abused by his father (supposedly to win some sympathy) and then he also abused the other kids. He even went to TV shows to tell the story! The father killed himself after writing a letter absolving his son of his supposedly crimes as a last intent to save him but nothing worked, and the young man went to jail. He later recanted and a few of his "victims" went public saying that actually nothing happened during those classes and that they were forced to lie by interrogators. Nothing of that convinced the judges anyway, he finished his sentence and I understand he is still fighting today to clean his name because he is registered as a sexual offender.
Again, it's extremely hard and complex because it seems they both were innocent of the sexual abuse charges but they weren't nice people at all! The biggest tragedy is of course the son who was barely older than the supposedly victims and whose life was completely ruined by the sins of his father and an unfair investigation. This case it's not something like the McCartins in which you can actually imagine yourself in the place of, for example, the old lady who build a nice family business, gained a good reputation and took care of other's people children for years and then one day a paranoid schizophrenic woman falsely accuse her grandson of abusing her kid and the police manage the whole thing in the most wrong possible way and then you lost everything, including a peaceful state of mind during your last years on earth!
No, the Friedmans case it's not about normal decent people falsely accused of a hideous crime, it's about a sexual criminal and his disturbed son falsely implicated in a crime they didn't commit. And I thinks that's why this case it's important even when the story is not something easy to digest.
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Post by mllemass on Sept 17, 2020 3:12:02 GMT
That sounds like the plot of an episode of Law & Order SVU that I remember seeing. Apparently they do get their stories from real-life events. Unfortunately, they seem to have a lot of material available. They even did episodes based on Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein while the real stories were still in the news.
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Post by mllemass on Apr 11, 2023 12:23:20 GMT
I don’t remember ever seeing this behind-the-scenes clip before!
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