McMartin Pre-School Revisited

[dr_mabeuse]

Anyone remember the McMartin Pre-School scandal? That California pre-school where kids were supposedly abused by a secret satanic cult? People went to jail, lives were ruined, and as I recall there was a suicide, and it all turned out to be false

One of the main child witnesses has now come forwarad with his version of how things happened. As suspected, there was no abuse, no satanic cults, no child murders. It was all made up with the children's allegatiuons being coached and guided by adults--adults who were genuinely concerned, but who only succeeded in projecting their own fears and hysteria onto the children.

Some of the things the guy says:
---------------

"I think I got the satanic details by picturing our church. We went to American Martyrs, which was a huge Catholic church. Every Sunday we had to go, and Mass would last an hour, hour and a half. None of us wanted to go: It was kicking and screaming all the way there. Sitting, standing, sitting, standing. What I would do was picture the altar, pews and stained-glass windows, and if [investigators] said, "Describe an altar," I would describe the one in our church. Or instead of, "There was a priest in a green suit"—someone who was real—I would say, "A man dressed in red as a cult member." From going to church you know that God is good, and the devil is bad and has horns and is about evil and red and blood. I'd just throw a twist in there with Satan and devil-worshipping."

...

"But the lying really bothered me. One particular night stands out in my mind. I was maybe 10 years old and I tried to tell my mom that nothing had happened. I lay on the bed crying hysterically—I wanted to get it off my chest, to tell her the truth. My mother kept asking me to please tell her what was the matter. I said she would never believe me. She persisted: "I promise I'll believe you! I love you so much! Tell me what's bothering you!" This went on for a long time: I told her she wouldn't believe me, and she kept assuring me she would. I remember finally telling her, "Nothing happened! Nothing ever happened to me at that school."

She didn't believe me.

We had a highly dysfunctional family. We argued and fought all the time. My mother has always blamed anything negative on the idea that we went to that preschool and were molested. To this day, she believes these things went on. Because if they didn't, how can she explain all the family's problems? To this day, I can't open up with her about my personal problems. She's always asking me why I never do. That one night skewed our relationship."
--------------------

The whole article is here:

http://www.latimes.com/travel/desti...n44oct30,0,285518.story?coll=la-home-magazine

The parallels to the Salem Witch trials are rather astonishing. Hard to believe it can still happen in this day and age.

I find it pretty funny that he took his description of satan directly from his experience of church.

McMartin happened just at a confluence of several strains of particularly American hysteria: The abducted child phenomenon, the discovery of "Recovered Memories", and the supposed upsurge in Satanism. All of these things turned out to be bullshit, but before that was discovered they all came together to make the nightmare that was McMartin Pre-School.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I will never forget that time, and my sense of anger and helplessness at the witch hunting fervor that grabbed our society. Families- and men especially- were destroyed.
I had a three-year-old daughter, and a new baby, and we were living in a small town outsied Philly. I had a half-shaven haircut, and my baby ina bellypack. Some redneck- at an art store! turned to me and said; "wah is yore hay-ud shaved lahk thay-ut? are yew a satan worshipper?"
I turned to my shuband ans said "We are SOOO out of here!" and we moved to Chicago.
They would take your children FIRST, then investigate to see if the satan-worshipping allegations were true or not.

 

[SeaCat]

I will never forget that time, and my sense of anger and helplessness at the witch hunting fervor that grabbed our society. Families- and men especially- were destroyed.
I had a three-year-old daughter, and a new baby, and we were living in a small town outsied Philly. I had a half-shaven haircut, and my baby ina bellypack. Some redneck- at an art store! turned to me and said; "wah is yore hay-ud shaved lahk thay-ut? are yew a satan worshipper?"
I turned to my shuband ans said "We are SOOO out of here!" and we moved to Chicago.
They would take your children FIRST, then investigate to see if the satan-worshipping allegations were true or not.

Hate to tell you but they still do that. (Take the kids first and ask questions later.) The worst part about that is when they take the kids it is no longer the states duty to prove you guilty, but your duty to prove your inocence, as well as prove that you are a good parent. (Prey that you have no record of any kind, and that your neighbors like you.)

Cat

 

[Stella_Omega]

Hate to tell you but they still do that. (Take the kids first and ask questions later.) The worst part about that is when they take the kids it is no longer the states duty to prove you guilty, but your duty to prove your inocence, as well as prove that you are a good parent. (Prey that you have no record of any kind, and that your neighbors like you.)

Cat

Which is another reason why I am willing to pay the price to live in a big city.

A few years back, DFHC got an anonymous call that myhusband was abusing our fourteen year old daughter. the case worker showed up at the kid's school to interview them- not only my girl, but her little brother too. And she did not mince words very much.
My daughter asked a few very penetrating questions about the accuser- and told teh case worker that it was a man who had been evicted from our building- in part, because other neighbors in the building had noticed the way he stared at my daughter, but even more because he'd set a fire on the back porch... slightly disturbed? yep...

Anyway, we were very active in the school, and the administration told the case worker that the whole idea was ludicrous, and the CW, after five minutes with each kid, agreed. She told me later, that my kids were the most refreshingly intelligent and confident children she had met in quite a while, given the parameters of her job! She said she'd had to remove two girls that morning- from their father, who was assauliting them both and had impregnated one of them. It had taken her a week to get the paperwork in place.

So, no they don't automatically remove kids. At least, not in big cities.

 

[CharleyH]

Anyone remember the McMartin Pre-School scandal? That California pre-school where kids were supposedly abused by a secret satanic cult? People went to jail, lives were ruined, and as I recall there was a suicide, and it all turned out to be false

I am not familiar, yet I bet we all had sexual experiences befoer the age of 7? I also bet it defines us sexually to date

 

[Stella_Omega]

I am not familiar, yet I bet we all had sexual experiences befor the age of 7? I also bet it defines us sexually

This destroyed adults, Charley. It had nothing at all to do with children's sexual experiences.
It was one mentally ill woman accusing an entire daycare staff of satanic abuse- because her sone was having bowel problems. This turned into wild accusations against a whole bunch of dayschools- church schools, some of them.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/mcmartin_daycare/1.html
Here's the article DR mabeuse is referencing, about the kid recanting;
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1931362.html

 

[Boxlicker101]

There were similar cases about that same time and I remember that one of the worst offenders, one of those trampling the most rights, one of those most dedicated to locking people up, guilty or not, was Janet Reno. This was before she became Clinton's AG.

 

[R. Richard]

Anyone remember the McMartin Pre-School scandal? That California pre-school where kids were supposedly abused by a secret satanic cult? People went to jail, lives were ruined, and as I recall there was a suicide, and it all turned out to be false

One of the main child witnesses has now come forwarad with his version of how things happened. As suspected, there was no abuse, no satanic cults, no child murders. It was all made up with the children's allegatiuons being coached and guided by adults--adults who were genuinely concerned, but who only succeeded in projecting their own fears and hysteria onto the children.

I remember the "scandal" very well. I was the subject of another such scandal, not involving children. A guy accused me of mishandling a classified document. His arguments were sound, all sound. He continued to scream that I was guilty while the management of the company urged me to confess to something I did not do. Unfortunately for howler boy, the charge was sufficient that the FBI came in. I brought my own lawyer to the hearing. After management sold me out, my lawyer got the clerk who issued the classified document to testify. The clerk called my name, but pointed to howler boy as the one who checked out the document in my name. I still lost my job, but the company had to pay for the loss. I now run my own company, initially funded with the settlement money.

When you get people in a "feeding frenzy," they do things that cannot be justified later on. If you have a good lawyer you can then feed. If not, you will be destroyed.

JMHO.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I remember that period in the '80's quite well. Everywhere you looked, it seemed like children were being abducted by strangers, poisoned on Halloween, tortured by Satanic cults, murdered. It was just unbelievable, but you didn't want to say anything, because what if there was some truth to some of it?

Children are abused, and they are sometimes abducted, but it was mass hysteria for awhile, and on top of all that were the "recovered memory" specialists who would hypnotize you and dig around until they came up with some horrible "memory", the more outrageous, the better. It seemed like half of all parents were torturing their kids.

I knew a a girl on the West Coast who had a bunch of problems, and her therapist "recovered" a memory of her being sexually abused by her father, who'd been about 40 when she was born and was near 70 now. She was enraged by what she "remembered" and went public with her acusation, and the old man died of shock and heartbreak. The memory was all bullshit, of course. I don't know what happened to her, but what a thing to have on your conscience.

In all the halloween candy that's been looked at, not one case of tampering has been found. Of kids who are abducted, most by far have been taken by an estranged parent.

You have to wonder about a society that expects its children to be murdered and slaughtered. Where do we get this stuff?

 

[Boxlicker101]

I remember that period in the '80's quite well. Everywhere you looked, it seemed like children were being abducted by strangers, poisoned on Halloween, tortured by Satanic cults, murdered. It was just unbelievable, but you didn't want to say anything, because what if there was some truth to some of it?

Children are abused, and they are sometimes abducted, but it was mass hysteria for awhile, and on top of all that were the "recovered memory" specialists who would hypnotize you and dig around until they came up with some horrible "memory", the more outrageous, the better. It seemed like half of all parents were torturing their kids.

I knew a a girl on the West Coast who had a bunch of problems, and her therapist "recovered" a memory of her being sexually abused by her father, who'd been about 40 when she was born and was near 70 now. She was enraged by what she "remembered" and went public with her acusation, and the old man died of shock and heartbreak. The memory was all bullshit, of course. I don't know what happened to her, but what a thing to have on your conscience.

In all the halloween candy that's been looked at, not one case of tampering has been found. Of kids who are abducted, most by far have been taken by an estranged parent.

You have to wonder about a society that expects its children to be murdered and slaughtered. Where do we get this stuff?

Where we get "this stuff" is from the various news media who grab and run with it when it actually happens. It does happen sometimes, you know. There was Jessica, who was tortured and raped and buried alive in Florida and Polly Klaas in California and Megan and others. Such cases are terrible, of course, and arouse righteous hatred against the perpetrators in almost everybody, including me. They are actually rare but the media see it as a chance to sell newspapers or get viewers so they are banner headlines, making it look much worse.

Additionally, there are prosecutors and judges and mayors and other politicians who see it as a chance to gain publicity and advance their careers. They are strictly cynical but what do you expect from politicians?

As for "Satanic rites", I doubt that anybody in the US has ever been abducted and abused as part of such things. Such rites do happen, of course, just as Jewish or Muslim or Christisn rites happen, as part of valid worship, but I doubt if a person has ever taken part against his or her will.

 

[Kassiana]

I believed in all that crap before I read the book Satanic Panic by sociologist Jeffrey Victor. He laid out all the reasons why those false beliefs endured, and about more than McMartin. All the stupid D&D scares, rock music is evil, and so on he debunks.

FYI, most prosecutors are elected, so even if they think something is bunk they may investigate it, on the off chance that it's real (no one wants kids hurt, of course) and because it makes them look re-electable.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I believed in all that crap before I read the book Satanic Panic by sociologist Jeffrey Victor. He laid out all the reasons why those false beliefs endured, and about more than McMartin. All the stupid D&D scares, rock music is evil, and so on he debunks.

FYI, most prosecutors are elected, so even if they think something is bunk they may investigate it, on the off chance that it's real (no one wants kids hurt, of course) and because it makes them look re-electable.

You can't really blame them for investigating any halfway credible report, even if they don't believe it. Strange things DO happen and almost nothing is impossible and it's better to investigate and find no basis than not investigate and find the reports are true. The problem is when somebody prosecutes the innocent when there is no evidence and the news media try to convict the accused before the trial. I don't trust politicians at all and I trust the news media very little.

 

[Stella_Omega]

You can't really blame them for investigating any halfway credible report, even if they don't believe it. Strange things DO happen and almost nothing is impossible and it's better to investigate and find no basis than not investigate and find the reports are true. The problem is when somebody prosecutes the innocent when there is no evidence and the news media try to convict the accused before the trial. I don't trust politicians at all and I trust the news media very little.

The problem is not with investigation per se, but- investigation through the lens of one's beliefs and convictions, AS you pointed out, Janet Reno was responsible for a lot of the hysteria- she BELIEVED that children must be protected even if it menat that innocent adults were harmed in the process. What they were being protected from was a figment of the imagination, so the harm done was for naught.
The media and the prosecutors, the "recovered memory" quacks,.. a lot of people made hay out of the whole thing. Recovered memory was a thriving little cottage industry. :

 

[Boxlicker101]

I have read and heard of the McMartin scare and others like it compared to the Salem witch hunts. A better comparison would be McCarthyism from the fifties. The witches were totally a fabrication of some children who thought it would be fun. Nobody really benefitted from the witch scare and there were victims, who were put to death and/or who had property confiscated.

In the fifties, the USSR really was bent on world domination, and this had been known for decades and proven by their actions. There really were Soviet spies operating in the US. The USSR really did cloak their activities in an unworkable econonic system. McCarthy and his ilk exploited the real dangers and problems and blew them out of proportion for personal and political gain., and there were victims of those activities.

There really are those who would abduct and rape or otherwise abuse children. Janet Reno and other ambitious politicians and owners of news media exploited the real problems and dangers for economic and political gain. The victims were the innocent accused who were imprisoned without cause and ruined financially.

Hopefully, neither will happen again.

 

[oggbashan]

Social workers can't win...

In the UK, Social Workers have an impossible task.

They are expected to protect children from abuse by their parents and relations knowing that breaking a family up by taking the children away damages the child.

If they leave the child with the parents and that child is injured or killed 'It's the Social Worker's fault'. Is it? Who injured the child?

Society and the media expect parents to be believed unless there is proof of guilt that could be presented to a court yet when a child is harmed the Social Workers are pilloried in hindsight.

Every case like the one that started this thread makes every Social Worker's task more difficult because people become more reluctant to raise concerns about possibly abused children. Children are abused, injured and killed in this supposedly civilised country. Every time one is, the Social Worker(s) are blamed for not preventing the crime.

Most Social Workers, Teachers, and Police people are trying their best to protect children but the systems are loaded against them. Some make mistakes, some are overloaded beyond endurance, and most know exactly who is doing what to which child but until they can 'prove' it they cannot act. The authorities' failure to act is seen by the media as criminal negligence yet acting prematurely is also criticised severely.

Mistakes are made. People get hurt as a result of those mistakes. If Social Workers don't act, children get hurt. It's a no-win game for Social Workers. The best they can do is prevent abuse and something that HASN'T HAPPENED isn't news and isn't a statistic of success.

Og

 

[rgraham666]

It's a matter of perspective, and the media is partially to blame.

The horror stories don't happen often and the media plays them big. It sells newspapers and gathers eyeballs.

And because they are rare, and so horrible, people react to them.

But about one hundred people die in traffic accidents and eighty are murdered in the United States everyday.

And these facts we are inured to. It's no longer very horrifying. We realise we aren't going to change that much, nor do we particularly wish to. And such events are too common to be news.

 

[Boxlicker101]

In the UK, Social Workers have an impossible task.

They are expected to protect children from abuse by their parents and relations knowing that breaking a family up by taking the children away damages the child.

If they leave the child with the parents and that child is injured or killed 'It's the Social Worker's fault'. Is it? Who injured the child?

Society and the media expect parents to be believed unless there is proof of guilt that could be presented to a court yet when a child is harmed the Social Workers are pilloried in hindsight.

Every case like the one that started this thread makes every Social Worker's task more difficult because people become more reluctant to raise concerns about possibly abused children. Children are abused, injured and killed in this supposedly civilised country. Every time one is, the Social Worker(s) are blamed for not preventing the crime.

Most Social Workers, Teachers, and Police people are trying their best to protect children but the systems are loaded against them. Some make mistakes, some are overloaded beyond endurance, and most know exactly who is doing what to which child but until they can 'prove' it they cannot act. The authorities' failure to act is seen by the media as criminal negligence yet acting prematurely is also criticised severely.

Mistakes are made. People get hurt as a result of those mistakes. If Social Workers don't act, children get hurt. It's a no-win game for Social Workers. The best they can do is prevent abuse and something that HASN'T HAPPENED isn't news and isn't a statistic of success.

Og

In the US, I will concede that most social workers try to do what's right but they are driven by their own predjudices, such as against interracial marriage, against men, (most social workers are women) against anybody who is different from them, etc. Personally, I think the bad ones do more harm than the good ones do good.

 

[cloudy]

In this backwater I live in, it is currently in vogue to call Child Protective Services when a friend has pissed you off, regardless of how well they actually take care of their children.

I have a friend who had this done to her by someone that she had considered a friend. They got into a disagreement of some sort, and the next thing she knew, CPS was knocking on her door.

I understand that they have to investigate every allegation, but there should be something in place that punishes those that use it as their own persoanl revenge service.

 

[CharleyH]

This destroyed adults, Charley. It had nothing at all to do with children's sexual experiences.
It was one mentally ill woman accusing an entire daycare staff of satanic abuse- because her sone was having bowel problems. This turned into wild accusations against a whole bunch of dayschools- church schools, some of them.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/mcmartin_daycare/1.html
Here's the article DR mabeuse is referencing, about the kid recanting;
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1931362.html

but intriguing.

 

[Stella_Omega]

In this backwater I live in, it is currently in vogue to call Child Protective Services when a friend has pissed you off, regardless of how well they actually take care of their children.

I have a friend who had this done to her by someone that she had considered a friend. They got into a disagreement of some sort, and the next thing she knew, CPS was knocking on her door.

I understand that they have to investigate every allegation, but there should be something in place that punishes those that use it as their own persoanl revenge service.

I agree. CPS thinks so too- they hate having their time wasted like that.

 

[H Dean]

MCMartin

A short time after the McMArtin pre-school case ended I happened to take a course in criminal justice. My teacher was a retired LAPD officer and he had a few interesting things to say about the case.

As I recall, the accusation was originally leveled by a woman who had diagnosed with a fairly severe mental disorder. Originally, she had been rejected when she attempted to have the school take in her child - a daughter, as I recall.

Not satisfied with the rejection, she came to the school and dropped her kid off. The administrators, not wanting to let the child wander about, took her in. It was shortly after this that the woman made the accusation.

Immediately afterwards, the PD (Santa Monica, I believe) sent fliers to the homes of the children who attended the school. Immediately, the parents went into a bit of a hysteria, asking their children if they had been "touched" etc in certain "priate" places. The children, as youngsters are wont to do, said that they had been touched in these places.

An immediate investigation led to persons who were not trained in this area, to asking the children certain leading questions. They were encouraged to react affirmatively to the questions. Charges followed soon after.

Of the interesting charges regarding the MCMartin pre-school case, the two most odd were the charges that they they had underground caverns, took the children on daily plane trips to play "naked games" and that every teacher in the school had molested every child in the school - many of the teachers had only worked there a short time.

There were not underground caverns found, not was there any evidence of such ever existing. There was no recording of, nor could anyone recall, large groups of children in the airport or boarding planes on a daily, or near daily, basis. Finally, child molesters do not go after such a huge amount of victims, preferring one or two (generally), nor would it make sense that teachers, new to the school, would be a part of such a thing.

This was a case of overzealous police, parents and investigators wanting to find guilt at the expense of the personal lives of the MC MArtins and their employees. It was also the case of shoddy investigation. Had the police bothered to investigate the person making the charges they would have found staggering reasons not to believe her.

The McMartins, unfortunately, are now reduced to people who cannot be trusted around children by any reasonable parent with love in their heart for their child. After all, the possibility that it was true still exists, despite their acquital.

It's a real shame and the city of Santa Monica should have been held financially responsible for this situation, as should the woman who brought the charges and the "investigators" who led children to their answers. I don't think they were though.

Finally, I recall a reporter asking Peggy McMartin, as she drove off from the court ont he day of her acquital if she would ever open another pre-school. What an asshole!

 

[BlackShanglan]

The difficulty of dealing with children levelling accusations of abuse is staggering, and I am only grateful never to have been in the position to need to judge. The repercussions of judging wrongly are so awful - whether the accusations are true or false - and the problems in getting clear testimony from small children are so great, that I have sincere empathy for anyone in the position of needing to do so. I image that most of us are familiar with the ways in which children will gradually change their memories of reality and their interpretation of events to fit repeated questions or suggestions; the worst of it is that by the time the chief witness reaches any trial, she or he is almost certainly repeating what's been settled in his or her mind after the fact and not a precise and perfect memory of what really occurred. Nor are all children thoroughly without malice; we'd like to believe that no child would make a false accusation of that nature, but I don't doubt that they can. It must be painfully difficult to know what is right.

I remember watching a couple try to learn from their four-year-old what she'd done with her mother's wedding ring, which for some reason her mother had let her play with for a moment when unobserved. The mother thought that the child must have dropped or flushed it down the toilet; the father thought it was in the drain of the sink. Each one was asking her whether she'd done what that parent suspected; she gravely answered "yes" to each of them several times over without seeming to notice that there was a contradiction involved. She could imagine doing either, I suppose, and had lost all sense of whether she really had or could have.

Shanglan

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Yeah, young kids just don't understand the concept of "reality" and aren't set up to do so, but the ineptitude of the McMartin investigators (conducted by an outfit called IIC, as I recall--some kind of children's advocacy group) was really shocking.

They would hand kids naked, "anatomically correct" dolls, dolls with pubic hair. The kids would immediately touch the pubic hair or stare at it in curiosity, which the investigators then took as proof of abuse.

They would get together in teams of two with the kids, alone in a room, and one would say, "Now, Johnny and Susie told us such-and-such and this-and-that. Do you know anything about that?" And they repeat the question over and over till they got the response they were looking for. In their attempts to make the kids feel safe, they would tell them how policemen were watching their teachers so that they couldn't hurt the kids "again," which would implant in the kids' minds that their teachers were bad people. They would take the kids to physicians who would examine them in ways that frightened and terrified the kids, who would use the examinations as the basis for their stories of being fondled and abused, just like that guy used his experiences in church as the basis for his stories of devil-worship.

And these interrogators were supposed to be experts. Their ignorance and ineptitude was just mind-boggling.

I'm always shocked that adults can't remembr what it was lke to be a child,and how the world looked to them, that they have to bring in "experts" to tell them. I mean, we were all children once. Doesn't anyone else remember what it was like? It's still very clear to me.

 

[cantdog]

McMartin

A short time after the McMArtin pre-school case ended I happened to take a course in criminal justice. My teacher was a retired LAPD officer and he had a few interesting things to say about the case.

As I recall, the accusation was originally leveled by a woman who had diagnosed with a fairly severe mental disorder. Originally, she had been rejected when she attempted to have the school take in her child - a daughter, as I recall.

Not satisfied with the rejection, she came to the school and dropped her kid off. The administrators, not wanting to let the child wander about, took her in. It was shortly after this that the woman made the accusation.

Immediately afterwards, the PD (Santa Monica, I believe) sent fliers to the homes of the children who attended the school. Immediately, the parents went into a bit of a hysteria, asking their children if they had been "touched" etc in certain "priate" places. The children, as youngsters are wont to do, said that they had been touched in these places.

An immediate investigation led to persons who were not trained in this area, to asking the children certain leading questions. They were encouraged to react affirmatively to the questions. Charges followed soon after.

Of the interesting charges regarding the MCMartin pre-school case, the two most odd were the charges that they they had underground caverns, took the children on daily plane trips to play "naked games" and that every teacher in the school had molested every child in the school - many of the teachers had only worked there a short time.

There were not underground caverns found, not was there any evidence of such ever existing. There was no recording of, nor could anyone recall, large groups of children in the airport or boarding planes on a daily, or near daily, basis. Finally, child molesters do not go after such a huge amount of victims, preferring one or two (generally), nor would it make sense that teachers, new to the school, would be a part of such a thing.

This was a case of overzealous police, parents and investigators wanting to find guilt at the expense of the personal lives of the MC MArtins and their employees. It was also the case of shoddy investigation. Had the police bothered to investigate the person making the charges they would have found staggering reasons not to believe her.

The McMartins, unfortunately, are now reduced to people who cannot be trusted around children by any reasonable parent with love in their heart for their child. After all, the possibility that it was true still exists, despite their acquital.

It's a real shame and the city of Santa Monica should have been held financially responsible for this situation, as should the woman who brought the charges and the "investigators" who led children to their answers. I don't think they were though.

Finally, I recall a reporter asking Peggy McMartin, as she drove off from the court ont he day of her acquital if she would ever open another pre-school. What an asshole!

People made loads of money off the case. Someone who had been a deputy in the county visited my town in Maine. He acted as though he were on a holy mission to Warn Us All about the threat of Satanic Cults. He had slides, for instance, of black candles "seized as evidence," which evidently went to prove (as did white candles!) that the parties who had these things were cultists. He went on at length about the D&D things, too.

There was a lecture circuit. He made thousands for these appearances.

 

[rgraham666]

People made loads of money off the case. Someone who had been a deputy in the county visited my town in Maine. He acted as though he were on a holy mission to Warn Us All about the threat of Satanic Cults. He had slides, for instance, of black candles "seized as evidence," which evidently went to prove (as did white candles!) that the parties who had these things were cultists. He went on at length about the D&D things, too.

There was a lecture circuit. He made thousands for these appearances.

Isn't capitalism a wonderful thing?