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Something Everyone Should Read
If you think witch hunts died out with Salem, you need only read this book to realize they continue on. We no longer call them witches or burn people at the stake. However, the singleminded pursuit by so-called experts easily creates the same type of mass hysteria found in witch hunts.
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In the mid '80s, I was a new mother living in my home state of Massachusetts when the nursery school sexual abuse epidemics began. One of the worst cases took place at Fells Acres Day School in Malden, Massachusetts. Being local, we were besieged with news of this scandal. I remember thinking how absurd the whole thing sounded. Now, reading the details we weren't given back then, I find it not only absurd but horrifying. This was a modern day witch hunt at its best.
This book takes on that case and several more. In no way does the author trivialize child abuse or make claims that child sex abuse never happens. But these sensationalized cases not only trivialized the truth, they destroyed the lives of innocent adults and the children these experts were supposed to protect. -
Anonymous
Posted December 15, 2003
Selective presentation of the facts
Rabinowitz writes for the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which tells you right off the bat that she is prepared to omit facts that complicate her argument. She's the same person who wrote an article accusing the President of the United States of rape on evidence that was not even one-tenth as strong as that of any of the cases discussed in this book. Similarly, although she repetitively deplores prosecutorial abuses in this book, she also wrote a column defending the Patriot Act, which grants prosecutors arbitrary powers far broader than anything described here. The explanation for these inconsistencies? It's simple, if you're Dorothy Rabinowitz: first you decide if you like someone or something; then you marshal all the facts that support your point of view and suppress any contrary facts. Her evident goal was to assemble anecdotes to support a preconceived conclusion -- and it must be admitted that she does so with a good deal of literary flair. She's an excellent writer. But anyone reading this book needs to know that it is far from a full or even honest account.
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Anonymous
Posted May 11, 2003
No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times
I've admired Ms. Rabinowitz for years for her pursuit of justice for those such as Gerald Amirault unfairly convicted of child abuse. Maybe someday there will be investigations of those who were responsible for the gross miscarriages of justice that the author describes in her book. In the book 'Fooled by Randomness', author Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes 'After listening to statements during the O.J. trial (and their effect) I was scared, truly scared of the possible outcome; my being arrested for some reason that made no sense probabilistically, and having to fight some glib lawyer in front of a randomness illiterate jury'. He could just have easily been talking about some of the trials described in this book. Except here he would have reason to fear the apparently biased judges, 'expert witnesses', and ambitious prosecutors as well, few of whom seemed to have any interest in the truth. Truly scary!!
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Anonymous
Posted May 24, 2003
No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times
This is an important book that describes modern-day miscarriages of justice in prosecuting alleged child abuse. The author deserves high praise for her work in ferreting out the truth. One of the scariest books I have read.
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