NYTIMES
BATES CITY, Mo. — On a dead-end dirt road, through frosted crops and bales of hay in this sleepy town about a half-hour east of Kansas City, state investigators spent much of last week excavating the yard around a farmhouse, looking for decades-old evidence of sex crimes against children.
Their search was prompted, law enforcement officials say, by a 26-year-old woman who went to the police in nearby Independence, Mo., in August and accused her grandfather, father and three uncles of sexually abusing her and her siblings as children, beginning in the winter of 1988 and continuing for seven years.
According to criminal complaints and other court papers, the woman said she had recovered suppressed memories of mock weddings, sexual acts involving children, rape and a sex act involving an animal that took place in and around the secluded old Bates City farmhouse, a wooded 55-acre property formerly owned by her grandfather, Burrell E. Mohler Sr. [...]
BATES CITY, Mo. — On a dead-end dirt road, through frosted crops and bales of hay in this sleepy town about a half-hour east of Kansas City, state investigators spent much of last week excavating the yard around a farmhouse, looking for decades-old evidence of sex crimes against children.
Their search was prompted, law enforcement officials say, by a 26-year-old woman who went to the police in nearby Independence, Mo., in August and accused her grandfather, father and three uncles of sexually abusing her and her siblings as children, beginning in the winter of 1988 and continuing for seven years.
According to criminal complaints and other court papers, the woman said she had recovered suppressed memories of mock weddings, sexual acts involving children, rape and a sex act involving an animal that took place in and around the secluded old Bates City farmhouse, a wooded 55-acre property formerly owned by her grandfather, Burrell E. Mohler Sr. [...]
Rabbi Eidenson,
ReplyDeleteI am assuming your posting of this item had a motive. Could you clarify if you think that this has a bearing on the major developments in complaints about molesting in the world of Orthodox Jewry?
If so, I think you should clarify if think this is pertinent to any specific accusations. Alternatively if you are posing it as a hypothetical it would be helpful if you could clarify if you think this is common or rare? For example, do you think YK or AM or R. W of Satmar accused of misconduct with his daughter were falsely charged?
I am assuming your posting of this item had a motive. Could you clarify if you think that this has a bearing on the major developments in complaints about molesting in the world of Orthodox Jewry?
ReplyDelete===============
I am trying to present the complex reality of child abuse accusations. It was not directed at any specific case.
In this case, it seems that a victim's recovered memories prompted authorities to begin an investigation to find evidence that corroborates the accusations. I'm not at all familiar with the criminal justice system, but I am going to assume that the prosecution of the accused individuals will primarily depend on the strength of evidence turned up by the investigation, and not as much on the trustworthiness of the recovered memories themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe article states that authorities have found some corroborating physical evidence, and also that some of the woman's siblings have come forward with testimonies that corroborate the accuracy of the woman's recovered memories. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I would assume that the authorities would never have arrested the alleged perpetrators if such corroborating evidence did not exist.
In other words, I fail to see anything necessarily troubling or worrisome about the case as described in the article.
R' Eidensohn, are there any cases of this type that you know of in which a child abuser/rapist was successfully convicted primarily on the basis of the suppressed memories recovered by the victim many years after the act(s) took place, even in the absence of corroborating evidence?