the totally insane true story behind the 1970s film and book Sybil

Does anyone want to join my nuclear disarmament club it's really fun?!

This is what I do. I make everyone feel worse!

That is not true.

No I know, it's just one of several things I do.
Ask my parents!

...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8022/7377723998_c0ce9118e5_c.jpg

hahaha awww, ILU, LL

:)
anything to scrub my brain and yours from thinking about how doomed we all are

LL don't feel guilty, I had already seen it b/c DJP linked it from facebook. EVIL EVIL DJP who makes everyone feel bad

I make everyone feel worse!

Don't be a total loon. DJP, otoh....

plus the major active ingredient FEAR

NOW WITH 30% MORE FEAR, ABSOLUTELY FREE

PHENYLKETONURICS: This product contains Fear

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/FearTheRecord.jpg

A couple of famous UK cases here which seem in retrospect to be part of the same general climate of SRA-related hysteria prevalent at the time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/jan/12/childrensservices.uknews
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ronaldsay_child_abuse_scandal

I saw a documentary on the Orkney case a few years ago. The most shocking thing was the complete refusal of the social workers concerned to accept they could ever have been wrong, even in the face of damning evidence to the contrary.

The objects seized during the raids were later returned; they included a videotape of the TV show Blackadder, a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh, and a model aeroplane made by one of the children from two pieces of wood, which was identified by social workers as a "wooden cross". The minister was asked to sign for the return of "three masks, two hoods, one black cloak", but refused to sign until the inventory was altered to "three nativity masks, two academic hoods, one priest's robe".

Thanks, I never heard of those. The same infernal procession, again and again, so fucking sad. Gonna see if I can find that BBC docu mentioned in the wiki link.

Participants itt will be excited for this new release (I know I am):

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Clear-Scientology-Hollywood-Prison/dp/0307700666

LL have you seen the documentary Witch Hunt, about Kern County? I was just reading about it and wondered if you'd seen it

that doc is REALLY good - super sad and awful, though

I just started watching

I saw that. It was on NF streaming, at least as of last year sometime. Very depressing.

Just came across these on Amazon; how are they?

Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Routledge Classics) by Stanley Cohen
Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance by Erich Goode

Re: Kern Cty - I have not! If it is still on netflix, I most definitely will. (But if JL finds it "very" depressing, it must be pretty bad.)

Haven't read either of those books either. Sorry! I have read Charles McKay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds though -- if either of these books contain more contemporary examples, I'd add them to the reading queue.

Yeah you need to see Witch Hunt

I'm almost through it - it's just v sad hearing the families talk about their kids being taken from them. hearing their own firsthand accounts, patents & kids is really fascinating & sad & heartbreaking that it ever happened

I dunno that I found it any more depressing than any of the other reading that I've done, but it's more that it puts faces and lives to those stories, which I think is kind of good, overall.

In other news (yes I'm bored and trawling youtube) -- I found an old BBC (? I think? It seems like a BBC joint) doc called In Satan's Name about satanists and ritual abuse and mpd - it's pretty great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4hy6BIWHpo

I also just discovered that the Ritual Abuse Taskforce still exists. STILL EXISTS

maybe they've changed their focus from satan

oh but there's this (sorry I'll stop)

h t t p://ritualabuse.u s/ritualabuse/articles/mcmartin-preschool-case-what-really-happened-and-the-coverup/

^^^ that's worth a read, lemme tell ya

xxpost that is a recurring theme-- the people who made a creed out of this shit are largely still sticking to their story today.

yeah, that's for sure -- it was so deeply a part of their reason for existing professionally and they banked everything on it, so goddammit, they're sticking to it

it's just so unconscionable to me, I don't know how they lie straight in bed at night

OTM. And yet, to recant something on that level is basically like... I dunno, I'd have to go study zen for the rest of my life. Ego defense is an amazing powerful thing

OTM

Root cause of many societal ills.

And all arguments on the internet.

the saddest thing in that Witch Hunt doc was a couple of the male adult children who recanted, talking about how they couldn't bring themselves to bathe their own infant children because they were ashamed

ashamed

like that whole system fucked them up for life for making them admit to these awful things. the kinds of things that IRL fuck actual victims up. the fact that they manufactured these cases and ruined the lives of perfectly healthy children and adults is just RAAGGGGH

It's time for a breather VG -- I know the signs! Go read something funny!

Protect ya neck (from Satan)

<3

sound advice, LL

I've had to take a break from reading about stuff like this more times than I can count! After I read Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater book I seriously had to decompress. Finally maybe I am ready to read Going Clear, but with caution and hopefully this time not by myself. It's a lot easier to stomach this stuff when I have someone to talk about it with; otherwise, I'm basically just walking around with tons of horrific thoughts 24/7 and that's not a ton of fun.

I get the same way with my true-crime obsessiveness, after a while I start noting windowless vans and looking at missing persons notices online and seeing possible grave sites on my nature walks, it's a bad scene. I should have recognized the signs!

But I def want to read more when I've decompressed a little

<3

but I still love you to death for creating this thread

<3 to my bad news buddies

hey, creating this thread helped me feel like there were fewer wasps in my head
it's my pleasure!

"Recent examples?" Yeah, apparently he tries for that, and this edition is from 2011

Folk Devils And Moral Panics (Routledge Classics)
'Richly documented and convincingly presented' -- New Society

Mods and Rockers, skinheads, video nasties, designer drugs, bogus asylum seeks and hoodies. Every era has its own moral panics. It was Stanley Cohen’s classic account, first published in the early 1970s and regularly revised, that brought the term ‘moral panic’ into widespread discussion. It is an outstanding investigation of the way in which the media and often those in a position of political power define a condition, or group, as a threat to societal values and interests. Fanned by screaming media headlines, Cohen brilliantly demonstrates how this leads to such groups being marginalised and vilified in the popular imagination, inhibiting rational debate about solutions to the social problems such groups represent. Furthermore, he argues that moral panics go even further by identifying the very fault lines of power in society.

Full of sharp insight and analysis, Folk Devils and Moral Panics is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand this powerful and enduring phenomenon.

Professor Stanley Cohen is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He received the Sellin-Glueck Award of the American Society of Criminology (1985) and is on the Board of the International Council on Human Rights. He is a member of the British Academy.

Hate to pimp for Amazon, but they have the Look Inside! options for both of these, if you dare.
This one's also been updated.

Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance

Review
"This close reading of the facts behind a media story are the essence of Goode and Ben-Yehuda's work. They have taken the time and trouble to try and see what is a moral panic and what is true." (Metapsychology, March 2010)
Review
"In a thoroughly updated new edition of their very valuable book, Goode and Ben-Yehuda demonstrate the wide gulf that so often separates the real menaces facing our society from the disproportionate waves of public fear and concern that regularly surface in the mass media. Their book - intelligently written, wide-ranging and provocative - shows us once again that knowing what a society fears is essential to understanding its core values, and its highest aspirations."
–Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University

"Moral Panics is more than a classic text in social theory. In this newly updated and enlarged edition, it is an indispensable text for every twenty-first century scholar interested in the social construction and diffusion of fear."
–Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear

"Moral panics remains one of the most hotly-debated sociological ideas to have entered the public sphere, so an up-dated version of Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s pathbreaking work on this subject is very welcome. The new version is even more enlightening than its predecessor."
–Kenneth Thompson, Open University
From the Back Cover
From the Renaissance witch craze to the denunciation of horror comics and rock and roll in the 1950s and flag burning in the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century, institutions and groups of individuals have mobilized around issues where they feel threatened.

This book introduces, describes, and analyzes the collective outbreaks of scares about threats or supposed threats from deviants or “folk devils,” a category of people who, some believe, engage in evil practices and are blamed for menacing the society’s culture, way of life, and central values.

Examining what motivates fear- and concern-inspired collective behavior, the second edition of Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance comprehensively updates this popular and highly-respected text, bringing in a host of new examples, and new chapters on the media and criticisms of the moral panics concept.
About the Author
Erich Goode is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His previous books include The Marijuana Smokers (1970), Collective Behavior (1992), Deviance in Everyday Life (2002), Extreme Deviance (edited with Angus Vail, 2008), Drugs in American Society (7th edition, 2008), and Deviant Behavior (8th edition, 2008).

Nachman Ben-Yehuda is Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His publications include Deviance and Moral Boundaries (1985), The Politics and Morality of Deviance (1990), Political Assassinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice (1993), The Masada Myth (1995), Betrayals and Treason (2001), and Selective Remembrances (edited with Philip Kohl and Mara Kozelsky, 2007).
‹

There's also a textbook anthology titled The Construction of Deviance or something similar.

I was just watching Capturing the Friedmans, and was reminded of another similar documentary, and I thought this thread might be the best place to ask about it... Back in the 90s I saw a TV documentary about a case where the staff of an American day care center were accused of Satanic Ritual Abuse. I think the case in question might've been the MacMartin preschool trial, because I clearly remember the documentary referencing the children's claims that the staff members were flying in air like witches, and other ludicrous things like that. I also remember courtroom drawings were used to illustrate the doc. Now, there was a TV movie made about the case, but I can't find any info on the documentary. Does anyone remember seeing this?

The PBS series Frontline did a 2-hour report on a different case (in Edenton, North Carolina)called "Innocence Lost" in 1991. Maybe that was what you saw?

They show Frontline in Finland?! I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about either. When I have time I can look at the index of the Debbie Nathan SRA book to see if there's anything in there about it?

The PBS series Frontline did a 2-hour report on a different case (in Edenton, North Carolina)called "Innocence Lost" in 1991. Maybe that was what you saw?

Could be, though the Wikipedia page for that case doesn't mention children saying that the daycare workers were witches who would fly around, and that's a detail I clearly remember from the documentary.