The case of Martha Coakley gets stranger and stranger. I am grateful to Chas Clifton for bringing this to my attention. I did some Googling about, and in the process found a post discussing the issue over at Wild Hunt. Here is what appears to be a good discussion of Coakley and the ritual abuse issue, along with her disgusting role in it. An exhaustive compilation of sources can be found here.
The recovered memory issue, which sits at the core of this “ritual abuse” allegation, is a very tricky one. Its potential for abuse is huge, but there might be a little something to it. Once I had an experience with a psychologist that could be termed the recovery of a long denied memory. I was about 50 and the event, if it happened, must have been in the first few years of my life.
What is intriguing to me is not only my surprising response to a question the psychologist asked in a moment of extreme stress (a single word about a single person) but also that nothing else ever emerged. Not even enough to tell who the person was out of a possible two, nor what happened. Yet the so-called recovered memories used in trials are remarkably detailed. That fits the argument that the “recalled memories” were manipulated.
Perhaps most revealing with respect to Coakley was the conditions she imposed on people she allowed to be released after years of confinement. They could not talk to the press nor could their lawyer be used to help another family member. These conditions have nothing to do with guilt or innocence and a great deal to do with covering up abuses of power. What was Coakley hiding? We have seen a lot of such abuses and we do not need another Democrat inclined to do the same. There already are more than enough Democrats and Republicans of that ilk.
Read Previous Post