We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980sA brilliant, disturbing portrait of the dawn of the culture wars, when America started to tear itself apart with doubts, wild allegations, and an unfounded fear for the safety of children. During the 1980s in California, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, day care workers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of committing horrible sexual crimes against the children they cared for. These crimes, social workers and prosecutors said, had gone undetected for years, and they consisted of a brutality and sadism that defied all imagining. The dangers of babysitting services and day care centers became a national news media fixation. Of the many hundreds of people who were investigated in connection with day care and ritual abuse cases around the country, some 190 were formally charged with crimes, leading to more than 80 convictions. It would take years for people to realize what the defendants had said all along -- that these prosecutions were the product of a decade-long outbreak of collective hysteria on par with the Salem witch trials. Social workers and detectives employed coercive interviewing techniques that led children to tell them what they wanted to hear. Local and national journalists fanned the flames by promoting the stories' salacious aspects, while aggressive prosecutors sought to make their careers by unearthing an unspeakable evil where parents feared it most. Using extensive archival research and drawing on dozens of interviews conducted with the hysteria's major figures, n+1 editor Richard Beck shows how a group of legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parents -- most working with the best of intentions -- set the stage for a cultural disaster. The climate of fear that surrounded these cases influenced a whole series of arguments about women, children, and sex. It also drove a right-wing cultural resurgence that, in many respects, continues to this day. |
Contents
| 1 | |
McMartinAllegations | 31 |
Prosecutors | 65 |
McMartinThe Preliminary Hearing | 93 |
FBI DSM XXX | 115 |
McMartinThe Trial | 147 |
Two Families | 169 |
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Common terms and phrases
accused adult allegations American Angeles arrested asked attorney began believed Buckey Buckey’s called Capturing the Friedmans child abuse Child Sexual Abuse childhood convicted country’s court courtroom crimes criminal Danny Davis Debbie Nathan defendants described detectives district attorney’s office Easy Reader Ericka eventually father feminist Freud Friedman girl Glenn Stevens happened hysteria Ibid Ileana Ingram interview investigation Jennifer Jordan Judy Johnson jurors jury Kee MacFarlane Kern County Kevin Cody kids Lael Rubin Lanning Manhattan Beach Mason McMartin Preschool Michelle Michelle Remembers molested mother Multiple Personality Notes to Chapter Ofshe patients Paul Pazder Peggy McMartin Buckey police political pornography prison prosecutors psychological Ray Buckey recovered memory remember repressed ritual abuse satanic satanic ritual abuse Scott County sex ring Sigmund Freud social workers Stevens stories talk teachers testify testimony therapists therapy told took trauma trial victims wanted Wilbur witnesses women wrote
Bibliographic information
| Title | We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s |
| Author | Richard Beck |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | PublicAffairs, 2015 |
| ISBN | 1610392884, 9781610392884 |
| Length | 352 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / Social History History / United States / 20th Century Psychology / Social Psychology |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |