Ashe Schow: "Wir haben noch nicht mal die letzte große Sexual-Hysterie überstanden"

Die aktuelle Hysterie wegen amerikanischer Universitäten als vermeintlicher Schauplatz abertausender Vergewaltigungen erinnert die Journalistin Ashe schow an die letzte Hysterie dieser Art, über die ich 2001 ausführlich in meinem Buch "Sind Frauen bessere Menschen?" berichtet hatte: die Hysterie wegen angeblich allgegenwärtigen sexuellen Missbrauchs in Kindergärten und Familien. Das Leiden der Opfer dieser auch damals von Feministinnen entscheidend aufgeheizten Hysterie reicht bis in die Gegenwart:

America is in the midst of another media-hyped moral panic. Sexual assault on college campuses, we're told, is rampant, with women being targeted at every turn by the very men they call their friends. To stop this epidemic, we're further told, colleges and universities must create their own justice systems and hold more accused students accountable. This, naturally, results in witch hunts based not on facts, but on feelings.

This moral panic comes nearly 30 years after the last one, in which men and women were accused of sexually abusing children after those children were coached into "remembering" the abuse by child therapists using now-discredited techniques. Among the more bizarre claims were that children were sexually abused in underground tunnels and that they were forced to watch ritual animal sacrifice and drink blood-laced Kool-Aid.

And the media of the era uncritically bought in to the accusations.

Last week I learned that Dan and Fran Keller, a couple who had been convicted of some of these ludicrously depraved acts in the early 1990s, just had their case dismissed. They were released from prison in 2013 after serving nearly 23 years of their sentences. This despite the fact that the reasoning behind the hysteria was disproved nearly 20 years earlier.

I quickly learned that there are more people who are either in prison or were only recently released based on accusations made during this panic.

Patrick Figured was accused of sodomizing children at a babysitting service run by his girlfriend's mother. He and his girlfriend, Sonja Hill, were accused of engaging in satanic rituals, having sex in front of the children and drugging them. All the accusations came from children coached by therapists. Figured entered an "Alford" plea — stating that he is innocent but believes the prosecution has enough evidence to convict — in exchange for charges being dropped against Hill. They weren't, so Figured changed his plea to "not guilty." He was convicted and given three life sentences. Hill pleaded guilty to lesser charges for fear of a similar sentence. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Figured is still in prison in North Carolina, despite the fact that witnesses said during the trial that they had never seen him at the home when children were present (he worked an hour away and often worked late).

James Toward was also sentenced for a crime that never happened. Meredith Maran wrote in her book, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, that Toward was accused of satanic ritual abuse. He plea-bargained to keep his colleagues and wife out of prison. Toward spent more than 20 years in prison until 2010, when he was released and told to leave the country.

If you only read the article about his release, you would come away thinking he was guilty of sexually abusing children and threatening to kill their parents if they said anything. You wouldn't know that he was caught up in the hysteria of the era and that the testimony of his "victims" has been largely discredited.

And then there's Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen, who had never met but were accused of working together to sexually abuse children. Smith was a bus driver who allegedly drove a bus full of children to Allen to be abused. Except Smith wasn't even driving at the time the incident was said to have occurred, and the children — who allegedly missed school to be abused — were all in attendance on that day.

Still Smith and Allen were convicted. Smith was released in 2013. She, like the Kellers from last week, was not officially exonerated but is at least free. Allen is still in prison in Ohio.

We still haven't cleaned up the mess from the last moral panic over sexual assault, yet we're rushing full steam ahead to brand a whole new class of citizens as sexual predators.

Hier findet man den Artikel im Original.

Die Fanatikerin Gloria Steinem, massiv an der damaligen Hysterie beteiligt, die bis hin zu Grabungen nach von Satanisten angelegten "Missbrauchs-Tunneln" unter amerikanischen Kinderhorten reichte, ist heute noch eine einflussreiche Feministin in den USA.