A pull-no-punches expose of the forces behind a nationwide wave of false charges of ritual child abuse. In the 1970s and 1980s popular culture was rife with rumors that America's children were threatened by occultists, pornographers, child molesters, and kidnappers - stories that, according to Nathan and Snedeker, were promoted and spread by the media, politicians, feminists, psychotherapists, and child-protection professionals. At the same time, right-wing Christian fundamentalists were raising fears about bizarre satanic cults. Journalist Nathan, whose articles on ritual abuse in the Village Voice won her the Free Press Association's H.L. Mencken Award, and criminal defense lawyer Snedeker examine in detail three California cases of alleged child abuse: two in Kern County and the famous McMartin Preschool case in Los Angeles County, showing how the psychotic delusions of a few people fed existing social fears. They carefully document what happened when mental-health workers, untrained in forensics and committed to the belief that children never lie about sexual abuse, took over the investigation of child-abuse allegations, and they liken the surge of ritual abuse cases that followed those in California to the Salem witch trials. Nathan and Snedeker give a compelling and disturbing picture of an America in which seemingly responsible and respectable individuals, organizations, and institutions were caught up in an appalling hysteria that sent many innocent people to prison while civil libertarians and political progressives were shamefully silent. The authors call for reforms in the judicial system and the child-protection system, but see larger economic and social changes as essential to preventing sexual abuse of children. Satanic rituals make striking headlines, but incest, they point out, is the real problem. A powerful document that names names, ranges wide, and probes deep. (Kirkus Reviews)
In response to many high-profile cases of sexual assault, federal and state governments have placed a number of unique criminal sanctions on sex offenders. These include residency restrictions, exclusionary zones, electronic monitoring, and chemical castration. However, the majority of sex offender policies are not based on empirical evidence, nor have they demonstrated any significant reductions in offender recidivism. In fact, some of these policies have unintended consequences, which actually increase the likelihood of sexual offenses.
In this book, Wright critically analyzes existing policies, and assesses the most effective approaches in preventing sex offender recidivism. This provocative and timely book draws from the fields of criminal justice, law, forensic psychology, and social work to examine how current laws and policies are enacted and what to-date is known about their efficacy. In response to the failed policies of sex offender laws, this book presents alternative models and approaches to sex offense laws and policies. Wright also explores critical, cutting-edge topics, such as internet sexual solicitation, the death penalty, and community responses to sex offense.
Stan Cohen's `Folk Devils and Moral Panics' was a brilliant and subtle exercise in grounded theory. It has proved consistently fertile for a great deal of new work in sociological analysis the thirty years since its first publication and its critical idea of moral panics proved to be generative for a wide variety of scholars and research fields. In the new introduction to the third edition, an original piece of reflection on the vicarious pathways of its appropriation, and a wonderful reprise of its uses and abuses, Stan Cohen gently but steadily guides us back to its original illuminating intellectual core. Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor, The Open University.
Product Description:
This third edition will publish on the 30th anniversary of its original publication. Stanley Cohen's study of Mods and Rockers in the 1960's was a foundational text both in terms of investigating the workings of subcultural groups and identifying the concept of a "moral panic" generated by the media, which lead to groups being vilified in the popular imagination, and inhibits rational debate about solutions to the social problems such groups represent. Cohen's classic study of "deviant" subcultures and the "moral panic" they generate is reissued with a new author's introduction commenting on the demonization of asylum seekers (refugees) and on the recent "name and shame" campaign against pedophiles.
Americans are afraid of many things that shouldn't frighten them, writes Barry Glassner in this book devoted to exploding conventional wisdom. Thanks to opportunistic politicians, single-minded advocacy groups, and unscrupulous TV "newsmagazines," people must unlearn their many misperceptions about the world around them. The youth homicide rate, for instance, has dropped by as much as 30 percent in recent years, says Glassner--and up to three times as many people are struck dead by lightening than die by violence in schools. "False and overdrawn fears only cause hardship," he writes. In fact, one study shows that daughters of women with breast cancer are actually less likely to conduct self-examinations--probably because the campaign to increase awareness of the ailment also inadvertently heightens fears.
Although some sections are stronger than others, The Culture of Fear's examination of many nonproblems--such as "road rage," "Internet addiction," and airline safety--is very good. Glassner also has a sharp eye for what causes unnecessary goose bumps: "The use of poignant anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, the christening of isolated incidents as trends, depictions of entire categories of people as innately dangerous," and unknown scholars who masquerade as "experts." Although Glassner rejects the notion that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, he certainly shows we have much less to fear than we think. And isn't that sort of scary? --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In a provocative report, Glassner (Career Crash, etc.) contends that Americans' worries about crime, drugs, child abuse and other issues have been blown out of proportion by a mass media that thrives on scares. Exposing fear-mongering in many quarters, this University of Southern California sociology professor argues that trendy issues like road rage, workplace violence, teenage suicide, "granny dumping" (abandonment of the elderly by callous relatives) and sex crimes via the Internet are "false crises" manufactured by inflated statistics and hype. Lambasting liberals as well as conservatives who allegedly blame teen moms for the nation's social ills, Glassner contends that teenage pregnancy is largely a response to the nation's economic and educational decline. He also believes that America's expensive campaign against illegal drugs like cocaine, heroin and marijuana diverts attention from the far more serious problem of deaths from the abuse of legal drugs and physicians' gross negligence in prescribing them. The good news, he reports, is that airplane travel is safer than ever and that the incidence of child kidnapping has been wildly exaggerated. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has his own axes to grind: he calls Gulf War Syndrome a "metaphoric illness," tweaks the hypocrisy of "those who single out rap singers as specially sexist or violent" and labels the FDA's 1992 ban on silicone breast implants "a grand victory of anecdote over science." Some of his arguments are fresher than others; in any case, this antidote to paranoia is a guaranteed argument-starter. Agent, Geri Thoma.
Here are some of Accuracy in Media’s finest critiques of the media’s misreported stories. Find out how today’s anti-American journalists threaten our freedoms by manipulating public opinion, and stubbornly refusing to correct their mistakes – even when they’ve become public knowledge. After you read about the epidemic of misreporting on subjects ranging from the War on Terror to global warming, you’ll never think of the media in the same way again.
Description:In this sequel to the acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics, which the Boston Globe said "deserves a place next to the dictionary on every school, media, and home-office desk," Joel Best continues his straightforward, lively, and humorous account of how statistics are produced, used, and misused by everyone from researchers to journalists. Underlining the importance of critical thinking in all matters numerical, Best illustrates his points with examples of good and bad statistics about such contemporary concerns as school shootings, fatal hospital errors, bullying, teen suicides, deaths at the World Trade Center, college ratings, the risks of divorce, racial profiling, and fatalities caused by falling coconuts. More Damned Lies and Statistics encourages all of us to think in a more sophisticated and skeptical manner about how statistics are used to promote causes, create fear, and advance particular points of view. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues: missing numbers are relevant but overlooked; confusing numbers bewilder when they should inform; scary numbers play to our fears about the present and the future; authoritative numbers demand respect they don't deserve; magical numbers promise unrealistic, simple solutions to complex problems; and contentious numbers become the focus of data duels and stat wars. The author's use of pertinent, socially important examples documents the life-altering consequences of understanding or misunderstanding statistical information. He demystifies statistical measures by explaining in straightforward prose how decisions are made about what to count and what not to count, what assumptions get made, and which figures are brought to our attention. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues. Entertaining, enlightening, and very timely, this book offers a basis for critical thinking about the numbers we encounter and a reminder that when it comes to the news, people count--in more ways than one.
It started in 1955 with a missing eight-year-old boy, Jimmy Bremmers, later found murdered, and the arrest and conviction of Ernest Triplett, a simpleminded Sioux City, Iowa, salesman, for the crime. But within months public hysteria caused the police to arrest 20 middle-class gay men who were charged with being "sexual psychopaths," although none had anything to do with the murder, and who were incarcerated for prolonged periods of time in a state mental hospital. Miller (Out in the Worlds: Gay and Lesbian Life from Buenos Aires to Bankok) has produced a cross between a fast-paced true-crime shocker and a biting expos‚ of 1950s sexual hysteria. While there are still plenty of missing details (many of those involved who are still living were reluctant to talk or had only vague memories), Miller's story has enough chilling facts to pack a wallop: while under arrest, Triplett was given huge amounts of "experimental" drugs (LSD and amphetamine) to help him remember the murder, and his enjoyment of Liberace was used against him in court. Although he supplies a cohesive social context how McCarthyism linked communism and homosexuality as twin "enemies within" along with a similar, but far larger, homosexual scandal that occurred simultaneously in Boise, Idaho the stories of Triplett and of the 20 others arrested never quite come together. Still, Miller, a Tufts University professor and Lambda award winner, paints a disturbing picture of what it meant to be gay in mid-century America. (Jan.)Forecast: Miller's careful archival and interview work here makes the book suitable for courses in history and sociology, an angle Alyson intends to take up with course adoption mailings. The title should find the gay history readership, and the faux lurid title, heightened by a tabloid-like cover, may draw in browsers.
From Library Journal
Residents of Sioux City, IA, were stunned and shaken by two brutal child molestations and murders in 1954 and 1955. The shock and outrage that followed led to the roundup of 20 gay men, who were then committed to a psychiatric hospital as criminal sexual psychopaths. Journalist Miller (In Search of Gay America) has written a taut and engrossing account of this sad chapter in Sioux City's history. Miller covers the brutal crimes, the politics set against the backdrop of McCarthy-era paranoia, the difficulties of being gay in Sioux City, life in the sexual psychopath ward, and the long-term effects this sex-crime hysteria had on all involved. Miller then comes full circle, discussing the adoption of some form of "Megan's Law" in all 50 states in the 1990s. ("Megan's Law" requires convicted sex offenders to register with their local police departments.) Today, as in the 1950s, criminal sexual acts set off panic and hysteria. The challenge is how to protect citizens without trampling civil rights. Highly recommended for history collections and especially for those specializing in gay and legal history. Karen Sandlin Silverman, Ctr. for Applied Research, Philadelphia
Product Description:Most crimes of sexual violence are committed by people known to the victim-acquaintances and family members. Yet politicians and the media overemphasize predatory strangers when legislating against and reporting on sexual violence. In this book, Eric S. Janus goes far beyond sensational headlines to expose the reality of the laws designed to prevent sexual crimes. He shows that "sexual predator" laws, which have intense public and political support, are counterproductive. Janus contends that aggressive measures such as civil commitment and Megan's law, which are designed to restrain sex offenders before they can commit another crime, are bad policy and do little to actually reduce sexual violence. Further, these new laws make use of approaches such as preventive detention and actuarial profiling that violate important principles of liberty.
Janus argues that to prevent sexual violence, policymakers must address the deep-seated societal problems that allow it to flourish. In addition to criminal sanctions, he endorses the specific efforts of some advocates, organizations, and social scientists to stop sexual violence by, for example, taking steps to change the attitudes and behaviors of school-age children and adolescents, improving public education, and promoting community treatment and supervision of previous offenders.
Janus also warns that the principles underlying the predator laws may be the early harbingers of a "preventive state" in which the government casts wide nets of surveillance and intervenes to curtail liberty before crimes of any type occur. More than a critique of the status quo, this book discusses serious alternatives and how best to overcome the political obstacles to achieving rational policy. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From the Back Cover:
"Eric S. Janus explores sexual predator laws from three perspectives: public safety, civil liberties, and effective government. He moves beyond the quick and easy arguments used both to defend and attack these laws, seeking policy solutions that can reduce sexual violence without scarring our constitutional values."--Roxanne Lieb, Director, Washington State Institute for Public Policy
"Failure to Protect is a vitally important book that demonstrates how we have drastically undermined the protections of our Constitution by creating a class of citizens for whom these protections no longer apply. The book raises this question: if one class of citizens can be excluded from the Bill of Rights, what other classes can also be excluded later on? This book should be essential reading for lawyers, law students, and those who care about preserving our liberties."--Charles Reich, Yale Law School, author of The Greening of America
From Library JournalIn response to an apparent epidemic of child sexual abuse, psychiatrist Gardner has written a passionate and perceptive analysis of the prevalence of false accusations, especially those made in the context of day care centers and custody disputes. While noting that the majority of allegations are probably valid, Gardner exposes the ways in which suggestible and immature children are manipulated by coercive, biased interviews. His severest criticism is for the incompetent evaluators whose zealous determination to uncover sexual abuse causes them to use a variety of objectionable techniques to elicit the responses they seek. A final chapter focuses on the similarities between this current phenomena and the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. An insightful and thought-provoking study for both specialists and lay readers. Highly recommended.
- Ilse Heidman Ali, Motlow State Community Coll., Tullahoma, Tenn.
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