Lawsuit Re: Sex Abuse Allegations Against Daughter of Pres. Nelson and Her Husband

[Abulafia]

20 minutes ago, smac97 said:

And if you report it 30 years later, you need to limit your expectations as to what can be done about it.  Statute of limitations, witnesses gone, witnesses' recollections faded, forensic evidence gone, corroborative evidence lost, etc.

The same is true of any allegation of wrongdoing.  If you wait to report misconduct, you risk the loss/deterioration of evidence pertaining to that misconduct.

Thanks,

-Smac

But adults who were abused as children often do not come forward until many years later... that's the saddest part Smac. 

[Abulafia]

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865623973/Bill-removing-statute-of-limitations-in-child-sexual-abuse-cases-passes-Legislature.html

[smac97]

So...yeah.  This is apt:

 

[Stargazer]

On 10/3/2018 at 3:19 PM, Scott Lloyd said:

I remember that hysteria. Didn't it coincide with the "repressed memory" fad?

Here's something I ran into about the memory thing.  Not necessarily the "repressed memory" thing, but memory in general.

 

 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Abulafia said:

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865623973/Bill-removing-statute-of-limitations-in-child-sexual-abuse-cases-passes-Legislature.html

It does not appear a full removal:

Quote

The bill gives victims a four-year window from the time of discovery or remembrance of the child abuse experience to file civil action, Osmond said, allowing them to overcome emotional obstacles that often bar them from taking action.

 

[Abulafia]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

It does not appear a full removal:

 

That's sad.

[cinepro]

This seems to be a relevant study to this discussion:

How Long Will a Lie Last? New Study Finds That False Memories Linger for Years

Quote

We seem to think that misinformation is somehow “weaker” than the truth, that it does not last as long or pierce as deep. The research disagrees. Misinformation can be just as enduring, and even increase in strength over time. This has real world consequences. Consider how critically we must view eyewitness testimony (even more so than usual) when there is conflicting video and verbal accounts. Maybe a policeman has a witness watch a burglary caught on tape, pausing the video to ask what happens next. Distinguishing between a true and a false memory based on strength of recall then seems a futile exercise.

(Emphasis added)

 

Also this one:

The Most Dangerous Idea in Mental Health

Quote

A significant portion of the mental health community—by one estimate, in the mid-1990s, more than 50,000 U.S. therapists—appeared to accept repressed memories uncritically. A subset of them also promoted the notion that murderous satanic cults were common, and responsible for their clients’ forgotten pasts. Seminars in which practicing therapists offered advice on how best to retrieve memories of cult abuse from their clients were held around the country. (A typical example of the memories that therapists said they were uncovering could be seen in the 1980 autobiography Michelle Remembers, written by Lawrence Pazder, a Canadian psychiatrist, and his patient—and eventual wife—Michelle Smith. Smith described a satanic organization that, she claimed, tortured her for months, feeding her soup laced with worms and forcing her to witness animal sacrifices.) Even when they did not extend to the demonic, the sessions of now-specialized trauma experts almost always centered on recollections of incest and sexual abuse.

America was captivated by the phenomenon, weaving it into popular culture: Daytime talk shows like Geraldo held regular interviews with victims who claimed to have recovered memories, and celebrities like Roseanne Barr disclosed their own experiences of repressed trauma. Books like The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Secret Survivor: Uncovering Incest and Its Aftereffects in Women, which listed hundreds of symptoms that were supposed proof of having repressed memories, became bestsellers. “If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, then you were,” wrote the authors in the first edition of The Courage to Heal. Activists like Gloria Steinem championed the tales emerging from therapy offices through their publications (a Ms. magazine cover proclaimed, “Believe It! Cult Ritual Abuse Exists”). As the panic peaked, many states changed their statutes of limitation to allow for newly discovered memories to become the basis of civil lawsuits and, sometimes, criminal prosecution.

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By the end of the 1990s, many of the trauma clinics that had specialized in recovered memory therapy had shut down. The daytime talk shows about satanic abuse and multiple personalities became less frequent, and the courts became wary of testimony based on recovered memories. Richard McNally, the director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology at Harvard and author of the book Remembering Trauma, put it bluntly in a friend-of-court brief: “The notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry.”

(emphasis added)

 

Edited October 14, 2018 by cinepro

[cinepro]

And this article is especially depressing.  In the mid-1980s, there was a panic in Bakersfield, and a man named John Stoll and several other parents (including moms) were rounded up and sent to prison based solely on the childrens' testimony.  Stoll was accused by his son and several others of molestation. 

Kids Don't Lie

Here's what the accusers said as adults in 2003:

 

Quote

None remember any abuse at Stoll's hands. The sixth, Stoll's son, won't speak to the attorneys.

Victims say they were manipulated, bullied and even threatened into telling anatomically impossible tales of abuse that reflected the imaginations of investigators obsessed with exposing a vast child-abuse underground for which no hard evidence was ever found. These grown child victims tell of lives tormented, not by molestation, but by the legal system's efforts to wring stories of victimization out of small children.

"It screwed me up; the guilt of thinking I put my mom in prison for the worst offense possible," Donald Grafton says in an interview. He claims he was forced to falsely testify that his own mother had sex with him as a child. His mother, Margie, endured hellish treatment from other inmates. "Mom got black widow bites and they pushed her hands into machinery and busted them up because she was a child molester. It was directly on me because I lied and put her there."

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"I have had to live with this terrible thing most of my life," Edward Sampley said in a recent statement to Stoll's lawyers. "I have always known it didn't happen. . . . I am bothered constantly by the thought that I was responsible for putting John Stoll in prison. I wish I could get all those people together today and ask them what gave them the right to do that to me when I was 8."

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The truth is that children are as fallible as any human, and because of their vulnerability, far more susceptible to the blandishments of adults, particularly those with the status of police officers and welfare workers. In the past decade, study after study has shown that children can be manipulated to lie and even to create false memories they then energetically defend as truth.

Stoll got out of prison shortly after that article was published.

Edited October 15, 2018 by cinepro

[Abulafia]

Well ok, Cinepro. Still, in the scheme of things, children lying *as children* about the sexual abuse of parents is rare. Children tend to not tell in the main. They don't tell at all. They keep it in because they love their parents and don't want to see them suffer.

In the specific case under discussion here, one still has to take on board the fact that Jane Doe 1,2,5, and John Doe 1 were medically assessed as having been sexually abused by Dr at the PC hospital.

They were sexually abused. The issue is then who sexually abused them, and why, if it was only the father, that the police nor the church were interested in disciplining him.

It's a baffling case, and there is more to come so I have been told.

 

[Gray]

On 10/13/2018 at 5:14 PM, smac97 said:

So...yeah.  This is apt:

 

The old red herring Watusi.

[cinepro]

9 hours ago, Abulafia said:

Well ok, Cinepro. Still, in the scheme of things, children lying *as children* about the sexual abuse of parents is rare. Children tend to not tell in the main. They don't tell at all. They keep it in because they love their parents and don't want to see them suffer.

In the specific case under discussion here, one still has to take on board the fact that Jane Doe 1,2,5, and John Doe 1 were medically assessed as having been sexually abused by Dr at the PC hospital.

They were sexually abused. The issue is then who sexually abused them, and why, if it was only the father, that the police nor the church were interested in disciplining him.

It's a baffling case, and there is more to come so I have been told.

 

Right.  But I'm just pointing out that much of this discussion (and the accusations against the Miles) is based on two premises.  First, that "kids don't lie."  And second, that there might be some validity to "recovered memories." 

Neither of those premises are true.  Especially in the context of the abuse panic of the 1980s. 

I would also add that people confess to crimes they didn't commit much more than we might think, so even a confession on the part of the abuser isn't solid evidence that they did it!  For example, if someone can be convinced that "repressed memories" are real, they could be convinced that they did it but then blocked it from their memory.

That being the case, my standard of evidence for any claim from that era is much higher.  Unless there is something more than accusations made against the Miles by children, I'm considering them to be 100% innocent.  Any attempt to dredge this up to try and embarrass the Church is an appalling show of bad judgement from critics of the Church (who, ironically, tend to fashion themselves as being paragons of logic and sound reasoning). 

Edited October 15, 2018 by cinepro

[Danzo]

6 minutes ago, cinepro said:

Right.  But I'm just pointing out that much of this discussion (and the accusations against the Miles) is based on two premises.  First, that "kids don't lie."  And second, that there might be some validity to "recovered memories." 

Neither of those premises are true.  Especially in the context of the abuse panic of the 1980s. 

I would also add that people confess to crimes they didn't commit much more than we might think, so even a confession on the part of the abuser isn't solid evidence that they did it!

That being the case, my standard of evidence for any claim from that era is much higher.  Unless there is something more than accusations made against the Miles by children, I'm considering them to be 100% innocent.  Any attempt to dredge this up to try and embarrass the Church is an appalling show of bad judgement from critics of the Church (who, ironically, tend to fashion themselves as being paragons of logic and sound reasoning). 

I think that this attorney is just doing this to advertise himself to disaffected Mormons.

No such thing as bad publicity.

Edited October 15, 2018 by Danzo

[Abulafia]

2 hours ago, Danzo said:

I think that this attorney is just doing this to advertise himself to disaffected Mormons.

No such thing as bad publicity.

Utterly insulting to the legal teams  to assume bad faith, but also to the alleged victims.  And again, from what I have seen, this isn't a Mormon/ex Mormon issue. 

Besides, should you be using the term Mormon?!😉😎

Edited October 15, 2018 by Abulafia

[smac97]

8 minutes ago, Abulafia said:

Utterly insulting to the legal teams  to assume bad faith, but also to the alleged victims. 

No need to assume.  I think misusing and disrupting the religious observances of a private (and, in many quarters, unpopular) religious group, and planning to do so beforehand, and recording it, is per se bad faith.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Danzo]

41 minutes ago, Abulafia said:

Utterly insulting to the legal teams  to assume bad faith, but also to the alleged victims.  And again, from what I have seen, this isn't a Mormon/ex Mormon issue. 

Besides, should you be using the term Mormon?!😉😎

You seem to get insulted for others quite easily.

[cinepro]

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

No need to assume.  I think misusing and disrupting the religious observances of a private (and, in many quarters, unpopular) religious group, and planning to do so beforehand, and recording it, is per se bad faith.

Thanks,

-Smac

Is this in the right thread?

[changed]

10 hours ago, cinepro said:

That being the case, my standard of evidence for any claim from that era is much higher.  

Two people kill themselves (baby sitter, and father) because they felt so bad about the situation

Kids have medical records showing they were abused (horribly mutilated with a pencil in one case)

Diary entries.

Trips - mom trying to escape abusive situation (Hawaii), divorced over it

Multiple medical doctors and therapists...

... there is quite a bit of evidence in this case.

[Tacenda]

23 minutes ago, changed said:

Two people kill themselves (baby sitter, and father) because they felt so bad about the situation

Kids have medical records showing they were abused (horribly mutilated with a pencil in one case)

Diary entries.

Trips - mom trying to escape abusive situation (Hawaii), divorced over it

Multiple medical doctors and therapists...

... there is quite a bit of evidence in this case.

I've been trying to follow this thread, but may have missed it. Is there any evidence that the Miles were involved, it doesn't appear to be the case. But it's bad enough these poor children were abused so horrifically. 

[Abulafia]

3 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I've been trying to follow this thread, but may have missed it. Is there any evidence that the Miles were involved, it doesn't appear to be the case. But it's bad enough these poor children were abused so horrifically. 

The testimony of the  children,  now adults, is the evidence. 

The failure of police and church officials  in this case, to follow up with prosecution and discipline, suggests to me that something unusual was going on.  Hadfield and Bullock were convicted on less concrete evidence imho.

[Abulafia]

Remember that Marion Smith was told by the perp in a taped confession that he and the Miles were involved.  I would want that tape recording and not just the transcript.

[Abulafia]

If the taped confession was given to.the police  and has also gone missing, that would be problematic.

[Abulafia]

Aargh.. alleged tape confession (hat tip to Calm)

Edited October 16, 2018 by Abulafia

[provoman]

5 hours ago, Abulafia said:

The testimony of the  children,  now adults, is the evidence. 

The failure of police and church officials  in this case, to follow up with prosecution and discipline, suggests to me that something unusual was going on.  Hadfield and Bullock were convicted on less concrete evidence imho.

Could you explain what Church discipline has to do with anything?

[SeekingUnderstanding]

13 hours ago, cinepro said:

Is this in the right thread?

Yes. Every thread is the right thread to assume bad faith on the part of The Restored Church’s critics. 

[Calm]

17 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Yes. Every thread is the right thread to assume bad faith on the part of The Restored Church’s critics. 

Do you think it appropriate for Catholics, including those who self identify as such, to interrupt/hijack others' Catholic worship services to protest past abuses?  Orthodox?  Any form of Judaism or Islam?  Any form of Baptist?  Etc. etc.?