THE WITCH-HUNT NARRATIVE: POLITICS, PSYCHOLOGY, AND THE SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN - ROSS CHEIT

      This one was quite a slog. Another example of the kindle obscuring the length of the book so to the point that I’m not sure I would have picked it up had I known exactly how long and specific it would be. This is not to say I’m not interested in the topic. False Memory stuff, Satanic Panic, institutional corruption, moral panics, the McMartin scandal, group-think, all of that’s very interesting to me. Additionally, I used to work with foster care kids, many of whom had been victims of horrific child abuse so I’m pretty personally familiar that not only is this sort of stuff more common than we’d like to think, but that sometimes to more fantastical elements of a child’s abuse story can be true. This book is extremely in-depth. I thought Cheit would present a sort of bird’s eye view of people who’ve tried to “deboonk” the various child abuse scandals of the late 20th century. He does do that, in part, though large sections of the book deal with individual cases, such as McMartin, on a quite granular level. He creates charts and graphs explaining which kids accused who of what at what time and in what order. He discusses the exact wording of police questions and judicial instructions and generally gets very, very deep into the weeds. It is strange how reluctant folks are to acknowledge that “good people” could abuse and abuse over time, and how little they trust children, yet at the same time how punitive we are towards convicted pedophiles. Cheit does address these contradictions and has some smart things to say about them. I was less interested in the incredibly detailed and gruesome autopsies of individual cases and more in this higher-minded discussions of “what it all means.” Since the book has been released we’ve had the Penn State thing (which he address as this is a second addition), more Catholic church revelations and the Epstien thing (which is slightly different but of a piece for sure). This dynamic is still at play. You still have serious people doubting that such things are possible and calling any investigations witch-hunts. It’s all quite depressing. As a quick and insane aside, a few years ago, 2018 I believe, the FBI released a ton of documents about all sorts of matters, including The Finders, a bizarre cult that are at the center of lots of conspiracy theories (most of which I’m not very sold on) but in these reports, on pages 48 and 49 of part one (https://vault.fbi.gov/the-finders/the-finders-part-01-of-03/view) the report that there were, in fact, tunnels under the McMartin preschool complete with pentagrams. This isn’t mentioned in the book but it’s very strange and bears repeating. Either way, this books is quite thorough and sheds some real light on a difficult but important subject. When a crowd is yelling witch-hunt, it’s important to not get swept up in the masses. 1984 secret tunnels.