We all know about the Salem Witch Trials. But much more recently another, not-dissimilar-enough anti-witch craze plagued us. Remember “recovered memories”? Mass child sex abuse? Satanic rites?
Most of it was nonsense.
Frances and Daniel Kellar operated a day care business, and found themselves on the wrong end of this particular crowd madness. They were successfully prosecuted, as a fascinating Austin-American Statesman article relates, without any real evidence,
after three young children accused them of dismembering babies, torturing pets, desecrating corpses, videotaping orgies and serving blood-laced Kool-Aid in satanic rituals so ghastly, their names became synonymous with evil.
It was the early 1990s, when a cottage industry of therapists, authors and investigators argued convincingly — and, in hindsight, absurdly — that a national network of secretive cults was preying upon day care children for sex and other horrors.
Why fall for such tall tales?
Over at Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown characterizes the age in which the Kellars were railroaded as “at the height of American moral panic over just who was watching the children.”
So: guilt. Parents rightly feel a duty to care for their children. Outsourcing that job makes us uncomfortable. Those who feel guilty tend to lash out at others, imputing a far greater guilt.
It’s a theory, anyway.
The truth is that the Kellars were not guilty. Their accusers recanted; the evidence against them proved spurious or mistaken.
Released from prison last year, they now seek to be completely exonerated, declared innocent. It’s hard to get folks in government to admit they were wrong.
We, on the other hand, can honor their innocence by not allowing mass hysteria to corrupt justice under our watch, today and tomorrow.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Not Witches”
OT Sam Walton’s granddaughter getting involved in Charter Schools. Nice Forbes article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2014/12/01/sam-waltons-granddaughter-has-plans-to-fix-public-education-in-america/
Hopefuly it’s just a step toward a full voucher system which will allow the free market to kill lousy schools, lousy administrators and lousy teachers.
OT Again: I’m a white baby boomer who was very much in agreement with the Ferguson grand jury decision on the Brown death, but is very much against this decision by the Staten Island grand jury decision in the Eric Garner death:
http://rt.com/usa/211203-garner-chokehold-grand-jury-decision/
They are expecting big-time protests and i hope they get them.
RE: current article. I am ashamed I did not know that the Kellar’s were only released from Prison LAST YEAR!
RE: Vouchers, Not a good idea. Just one more government funded program. Much literature and good reasons for warning about the negatives of vouchers.Work to dissolve government schools entirely.
Grand Juries: A GJ is not a trial. Much was ignored and only selective testimony allowed.
Lynn,
I do not understand your view on vouchers. It releases parents to take their school money, which they pay for with property taxes, to a school of their choice. It does at least 3 great things: 1) it encourages and rewards good schools, it, 2) leaves bad schools to wither and die, and 3) it takes decision-making out of the hands of administrators who, year after year, prove they don’t care about kids but defend bad teachers, bad programs and run up costs WAY beyond where a private school does.
American public education is HORRIBLE now. Trust me. I was married to two public school teachers along the way. I could tell you horror stories all day about what your kids endure in most urban schools.