Content area
Full Text
A dozen years ago, during that period of paranoia following the arrests at the McMartin preschool, a friend of mine answered a knock on her door one day and listened as a children's services investigator asked troubling questions about her 3-year-old daughter.
Soon this mom--dumbfounded, fearful, angry--realized that it was she who was under suspicion. A preschool teacher had noticed a faint, red mark encircling the child's wrist and the girl had no explanation. Had this tot been tied up? Perhaps afraid that she or co-workers would be blamed, the teacher called authorities.
In the end, her daughter wasn't taken away and there was no arrest. Later my friend noticed that her daughter's frilly dress had an unusually tight elastic wristband. A theory, at least.
Perhaps it's human nature, or modern American nature, but when children are the (alleged) victims, the impulse is to fear the worst. Is this why, in the first Menendez trial, several jurors believed Erik and Lyle were not murderers but victims acting out of fear? Does this help explain why, in a 20-year-old case of a murdered child, a Northern California jury convicted a man based on his daughter's "recovered memory"?
Do we overcompensate because we know that, sometimes, the most awful allegations are true?
Mike Echols is a crusader who worries that the McMartin acquittals made us breathe a sigh of relief and let our guard down....