KEY POINTS:
In 1983, a teacher at a preschool in California, a school founded by his grandmother, was arrested and charged with sexually abusing a 2-year-old boy. Although he was released through lack of evidence, more children came forward and accused Ray Buckey, his sister, his mother, his grandmother, three
other teachers and a school administrator of sexual abuse, and of conducting satanic rituals including the mutilation of animals.
Charges were dropped against everybody except Buckey and his mother through lack of evidence. Peggy, the mum, was later acquitted and the jury, in two trials, was deadlocked when it came to Buckey but not before he had spent five years in jail and Peggy two.
In Massachusetts a year later, children at a daycare centre - again run by a family of teachers - told investigators that they'd been abused by a clown or a robot in a magic room at the centre; that they were forced to watch animals being ritually killed; that they'd had their private parts penetrated with knives and that they'd been abused.
A man, his sister and mother were all convicted and sent to prison. The following year, in another state and another daycare centre, a 23-year-old childcare worker was sent to prison for 47 years after children in her care testified that she'd forced them to lick peanut butter off her genitals and that she'd penetrated them with knives and forks. After serving five years in prison, Kelly Michaels was freed on appeal, when the court decided that the questioning of the children had been highly improper and counsellors had used coercive and unduly suggestive methods.
The fact that the children bore no evidence of physical injury despite the alleged kitchen utensil penetration may also have played a part. Michaels has filed a malicious prosecution lawsuit against New Jersey prosecutors and state officials, although she says she'd settle for an apology.
And in 1989, the husband and wife owners of the Little Rascals Daycare centre were charged, along with five other people, of child sexual abuse. In the trial of Bob Kelly, 12 children testified not only to the abuse but also said babies had been killed at the daycare centre, that children had been taken out on boats and thrown overboard and that some children had been taken to outer space in a hot air balloon. In the face of that compelling testimony and despite the fact that if babies were being murdered, somebody might have reported them missing, Kelly was sentenced to 12 consecutive life terms in prison.
Is anyone seeing a pattern here? Anyone thinking that maybe it's the questions the children are being asked, rather than the answers that are being given?
It is extraordinary just how far this mass hysteria spread, and how long it has been sustained. We have our own Christchurch Civic Creche case; there have been similar cases in the UK, in Germany, Canada, and just last week, three grandmothers who taught at a nursery school in a little town an hour from Rome have been charged with running a child sex ring. They're accused of driving the children to nearby houses where the children were drugged and made to have sex with adults before being driven back to school. Oh, and let's not forget the satanic rituals.
The teachers are charged with conducting those as well. In every case, the children's complaints are almost the same and in every case, there is little evidence other than the testimony of the children produced after coaching and interrogation by parents and counsellors.
Hundreds of lives have been ruined, not just those charged, but many of the children suffer for years because they either believe they were abused or find it hard to deal with the fact that they helped convict innocent people.
We look back 400 years at the witch burnings in Europe and shake our heads with bemused condescension and wonder how it could have happened. How will future generations judge our modern-day version of putting people to the stake?