witch hunts

West Memphis Three, Witch Hunters, and the Cult of the Violent Femme

Leaving aside as well the predilections of, and the misinformation supplied by, local newspapers and local authorities in West Memphis, there's no doubt the crime scene was easily interpreted as suggesting a sexual component to the murders. But I would also suggest that the investigation went far afield not because of the sex-crime angle, but because of the perceived homo-sexual violence of the crimes. For the literal-minded/illiterate in West Memphis the fantasy of a consummate breed of homosexual male violence carried at least as much Biblical fear/hatred as that text's injunctions against occult arts, and was every bit as potent as the Satanic Panic among West Memphis jurors in 1993....

“Believe the Children” *

In the 1980s, "Believe the Children" was a well-intentioned but misused slogan in the struggle to raise awareness of child sexual abuse. If there were any doubts, however, whether the prosecutors behind resultant witch hunts were concerned with the protection of children, rather than political posturing, the children themselves are helping to clarify the matter.

The Cost of False Cases of Child Sexual Abuse

In 2010, one of the few nationally publicized, child-sex abuse fiascoes of the new millennium, Georgia v. Tonya Craft resulted in an acquittal for a gradeschool teacher charged with more than twenty counts of child molestation, aggravated sexual battery, and aggravated child molestation. But the acquittal came only after Craft, family, friends, and supporters raised enough money for an adequate defense--in this case, $500,000, which included an inheritance, a refinanced home, and Craft's own wedding ring. Statistically rare enough to make it one for the record books, the Craft trial is also a rare bright spot in the murky case law surrounding trials of its type.

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