[Hugh the Scot]

"We’re talking about multiple allegations of the abuse of children."

Tell the lie often enough, and people won't even notice...

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

"We’re talking about multiple allegations of the abuse of children.”

Abuse of minors! Abuse of minors! Abuse of minors!

Where have we heard that before??? I remember! It was back when the Ameralt family was being railroaded on phony child abuse charges, which were generated by aggressive, intimidating interviewing of vulnerable minors - and then it “would have been child abuse” to let the accused confront their accusers. Judgement first, trial later. Back then there was a craze for “recovered memories” which were also produced - not recovered, produced - by psychotherapists.

From reviews of Memory Warp by Mark Pendergrast found on Amazon:

In the 1990s, a faddish pseudoscience, repressed memory theory, destroyed millions of American families by creating false memories of childhood sexual abuse. At the time, Mark Pendergrast published his widely acclaimed book Victims of Memory, exposing the false nature of the science and counseling techniques that were alienating teenagers and grown children from their families. In Memory Warp, Pendergrast revisits that subject, updating his research and describing where it stands now, in 2017.

All notable scientific researchers in the field of memory now agree that repressed-memory theory is misguided and harmful--that the "memories" produced are false, and that those accused--mostly parents and other family members and caregivers--have suffered greatly from false allegations of horrible crimes against their own children. But does that mean that the scourge is now behind us?

Unfortunately, no. The disproven theories of repressed memory continue to resurface throughout Amercan cultural life and, although usually more subtly, in the work of therapists. In this new book, Pendergrast provides a lively social history of our recent past, documenting how this incredible juggernaut of pseudoscience, which caused so much harm, came to be. But more importantly, the book also shows how these misguided theories continue to fester. And how, if we fail to learn from the lurid history of this movement, we may face another outbreak.

I had occasion to research this subject back in the 1990s, and what I learned about the process and the results it produced was horrifying.

So what do we have in the Moore case? We have journalists who are, effectively, prosecutors of Judge Moore just as surely as the prosecutors who railroaded Senator Ted Stevens back in ’08, when the Democrats won his Alaska seat as part of their sweep to a filibuster-proof 60 vote majority that year. And those journalists did a dragnet operation, interviewing women of a particular age until they found some who had, or could be induced by interview technique to be convinced that they had, memories of “abuse” by Deputy DA Moore. From nearly four decades ago. And we’re told that no defense is possible, or even legitimate.

Like the prosecutors who abused Ted Stevens’ rights in ’08, the journalist “prosecutors” of Judge Moore did what they did in view of turning a Senate seat from Republican to Democrat. That is transparent in the fact that these “objective journalists” sprung their assault not during the primary when it would have simply affected the decision of who the Republicans would nominate but afterward when the Democrat was the only alternative to the “awful Judge Moore.”