Four arrested for ritual killing, The Witch-Hunt Narrative Untrue, Loftus Misrepresents Important Case
October 27, 2013 Comments Off on Four arrested for ritual killing, The Witch-Hunt Narrative Untrue, Loftus Misrepresents Important Case
Four arrested for ritual killing of five-year-old in Nigeria Africa Saturday 26 October 2013
KANO – Four people were arrested in south-eastern Nigeria in the ritual killing of a five-year-old boy whose body was mutilated before being dumped in a water tank, police said Saturday….
Kidnappings for ritual killings are rampant in Nigeria, particularly during election campaigns….
http://www.enca.com/africa/four-arrested-ritual-killing-5-year-old-nigeria
The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children Hardcover – February 13, 2014
by Ross E. Cheit
In the 1980s, a series of child sex abuse cases rocked the United States….In the early 1990s, a new narrative with remarkable staying power emerged: the child sex abuse cases were symptomatic of a ‘moral panic’ that had produced a witch hunt. A central claim in this new witch hunt narrative was that the children who testified were not reliable and easily swayed by prosecutorial suggestion. In time, the notion that child sex abuse was a product of sensationalized over-reporting and far less endemic than originally thought became the new common sense.
But did the new witch hunt narrative accurately represent reality? As Ross Cheit demonstrates in his exhaustive account of child sex abuse cases in the past two and a half decades, purveyors of the witch hunt narrative never did the hard work of examining court records in the many cases that reached the courts throughout the nation. Instead, they treated a couple of cases as representative and concluded that the issue was blown far out of proportion. Drawing on years of research into cases in a number of states, Cheit shows that the issue had not been blown out of proportion at all. In fact, child sex abuse convictions were regular occurrences, and the crime occurred far more frequently than conventional wisdom would have us believe….
http://www.amazon.com/The-Witch-Hunt-Narrative-Politics-Psychology/dp/0199931224
Loftus Misrepresents Important Case
September 26th, 2013
In a recent TED talk about memory, psychology professor Elizabeth Loftus misrepresented the basic facts of a case study that led her to hire a private investigator and write an article that caused the subject of the case study to sue her for invasion of privacy. Loftus has mentioned the civil suit frequently in recent appearances and told audiences how terribly unfair it was that she was sued. Given the importance of these events to Professor Loftus, one wonders why she misrepresented the basic facts of the underlying case.
Loftus said the case was about a women who “accused her mother of sexual abuse based on a repressed memory” (See the 13-minute mark of this talk). That is not true. The accusation against her mother came in an evaluation when the child was 6 years old! What makes the underlying case so important is that the girl forgot the details, which had been videotaped at the time, and recalled them spontaneously at age 17….
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2013/09/26/loftus-misrepresents-important-case/
‘Satan made me’: NSW nursing home murderer, The rescue of Amanda Berry, suspected ritual murder, wants Family Court investigated by Royal Commission, DAUBERT FRYE CRITIQUE #1: LOST IN THE MALL, BY LOFTUS, ET. AL., Paedo probe at Catholic schools
May 27, 2013 Comments Off on ‘Satan made me’: NSW nursing home murderer, The rescue of Amanda Berry, suspected ritual murder, wants Family Court investigated by Royal Commission, DAUBERT FRYE CRITIQUE #1: LOST IN THE MALL, BY LOFTUS, ET. AL., Paedo probe at Catholic schools
– ‘Satan made me’: NSW nursing home murderer
– The rescue of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight: 30 minutes that ended a decade of nightmares
– Fear grips residents of Ahanta West over suspected ritual murder
– Child protection advocate Hetty Johnstone wants Family Court investigated by Royal Commission
– NEW ENGLAND LAW|BOSTON, JD/PHD PROJECT
DAUBERT FRYE CRITIQUE #1: LOST IN THE MALL, BY LOFTUS, ET. AL. By: Wendy Murphy, JD…
– Paedo probe at Catholic schools: 20 priests and teachers to be quizzed by detectives
‘Satan made me’: NSW nursing home murderer May 27, 2013
A registered nurse has become the worst mass murderer in New South Wales history, pleading guilty today to killing 11 elderly residents. Their nurse, Roger Dean….
On the first day of his Supreme Court trial on Monday, Dean, 37, pleaded guilty to the murders of 11 elderly residents who died as a result of the fires he lit at the home on November 18, 2011.
He also admitted to causing grievous bodily harm to a further eight residents who were injured in the blaze, described by paramedics and firefighters as one of the worst scenes they had ever come across.
According to crown documents, the registered nurse had stolen more than 200 pills from the nursing home the night before and police officers were called to the home during his November 18 night shift to investigate the theft….
He was arrested and charged later that evening, telling police, “It was Satan telling him to do it”.
As Dean stood up in court and softly said “guilty” to the 11 counts of murder, his victims’ families wept and one woman left court sobbing loudly….
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/05/27/11/55/dean-pleads-guilty-to-nursing-home-murders
The rescue of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight: 30 minutes that ended a decade of nightmares (video, slideshow)
by Henry J. Gomez, Plain Dealer Politics Writer May 13, 2013
CLEVELAND, Ohio….
In these tense and emotional minutes of Monday, May 6 is the story of how bravery and swift action ended a decade-long nightmare. The heroes are the neighbors, the police officers and the women. Berry especially. Tonight, after 10 years, two weeks and one day of cruel incarceration inside Ariel Castro’s Seymour Avenue home, she summons her courage….
Castro had jumped into his blue sports car, leaving behind the women as he always does. Sometimes he takes the child — the 6-year-old girl who calls him Daddy. But not this evening.
Inside the house, Berry stares at the front door. Castro has left it unlocked. Is he testing her? He does that sometimes. She thinks about it some more. Will she have another opportunity? She moves toward the door, pulls it open. Another door. A storm door. Chained or bolted so it can’t open wide enough for her to escape.
Berry sees people outside on a neighbor’s porch. She cries out and reaches through the crack. “Help get me out of here!”….
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/05/30_minutes_that_ended_a_decade.html
Fear grips residents of Ahanta West over suspected ritual murder
Regional News of Monday, 27 May 2013 Source: GNA
Fear has gripped residents of Ahanta West District in the Western Region over suspected ritual murders of four innocent citizens in the area.
The victims were gruesomely murdered with parts of their body removed, and their corpses badly mutilated in what looks like a ritual murder.
The District Chief Executive (DCE) for the area, Mr. Joseph Dofoyenah, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that the strange deaths had occurred within a period of three months.
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/regional/artikel.php?ID=275146
Child protection advocate Hetty Johnstone wants Family Court investigated by Royal Commission
by: Michael Madigan From: The Courier-Mail May 27, 2013
A FATHER winning custody of a daughter despite evidence he had sexually abused the toddler was just one of the cases warranting the Family Court’s inclusion in the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, an advocacy group says.
Child sexual assault victims will suffer on in silence unless the Family Law Court is investigated by the Royal Commission, according to child protection advocate Hetty Johnston.
The founder and executive director of Bravehearts says the inquiry contains a glaring omission in its terms of reference.
The Family Law Court often hears disturbing allegations of sexual abuse.
“Every week in Australia the family courts are ordering children into contact with, and even into the custody of parents who are dangerous, toxic and abusive because Family Courts do not have the powers, expertise and resources to competently investigate allegations of child abuse,” Ms Johnston said….
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/child-protection-advocate-hetty-johnstone-wants-family-court-investigated-by-royal-commission/story-e6freoof-1226650909760
NEW ENGLAND LAW|BOSTON, JD/PHD PROJECT
DAUBERT FRYE CRITIQUE #1: LOST IN THE MALL, BY LOFTUS, ET. AL. By: Wendy Murphy, JD; Megan Mitchell, JD (expected 2013); Alexa Sardina, PhD (expected 2014)
Study Name and citation:
Loftus, E. & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The Formation of False Memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25(12), 720-725.
(Commonly known as the “Lost in the Mall” study).
Theory Advanced by the Study:
False childhood memories can be implanted into adults by repeatedly stating the false memory as true.
Conclusion: The study’s theory and methodology are not reliable under either Frye or Daubert standards.
Overarching Observation: Irrespective of scientific reliability, no study should be admitted as evidence in a court of law, whether directly or via the testimony of an expert relying on that study, unless it is relevant to an issue legitimately in dispute in a particular legal controversy.
Relevancy standards applicable to scientific and “specialized” testimony and evidence refer to this as the “fitness” factor, which means the proposed evidence “fits” the facts because it will help to elucidate the truth on a disputed issue. For example, any attempt to use the Lost in the Mall study to prove or disprove that a person is telling the truth about sexual abuse should be unsuccessful simply because memories about getting lost in a mall have nothing to do with memories of being sexually or physically violated.
Put another way, the capacity to make a person falsely believe they were once lost in a mall does not “fit” and bears no relevance in a dispute over whether a person can be made to falsely believe they were sexually abused as a child. This argument should be made first, before addressing more complicated scientific arguments about how the “Lost in the Mall” study was designed a nd conducted. It should be made clear to the judge that if a particular study, or proposed expert testimony relying on that study, is not relevant because it does not “fit” with the facts in dispute, there is no need to undertake a burdensome analysis of whether scientific standards were satisfied during the research process. Simply put, if it isn’t relevant, it doesn’t matter that a study is
scientifically unreliable.
http://wendymurphylaw.com/LOSTINTHEMALL.pdf
Paedo probe at Catholic schools: 20 priests and teachers to be quizzed by detectives 25 May 2013
School where sitcom Bad Education is filmed is at centre of inquiry as Met police launch investigation after claims of sex abuse dating back to 1950s
Detectives are investigating allegations of widespread child sex abuse at schools run by a Catholic order in Britain, the Sunday People reveals today.
The Metropolitan Police paedophile unit will quiz around 20 priests and teachers over claims of abuse dating back to the 1950s.
Thirty former pupils from schools run by the Salesians of Don Bosco order have come forward with allegations, an investigation by Exaro, the news website, with the Sunday People found. The probe – launched in strict secrecy two months ago – will go beyond the Salesians to examine historical reports of sexual abuse at other Roman Catholic schools….. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paedo-probe-catholic-schools-20-1911825