It’s very well possible for an entire society to be wholly unaware of its own follies. That eternal cliché came to mind while reading Dorothy Rabinowitz’ ‘No Crueler Tyrannies’. As we’re surrounded with never-abating collective hysteria over supposed right-wing white bogeymen continuously preying on innocent black kids, climate change threatening to wipe out the entire planet unless we completely throw our carbon-based economy overboard, and more of this kind of juvenile hyperbole, it’s good to step back a little and look at these phenomena from a larger cultural perspective.
This book shows us that we’ve been here before. It chronicles several well-known sex crime cases whipped up during the day care sex abuse frenzy in the 1980s and 90s. These were the days moms started working full-time jobs en masse, and the cultural anxiety resulting from this trend led to an irrational fear that our little ones might become the next victims of sexual predators lurking inside well-nigh every day care facility. One case gets the ball rolling, and before you know it, mass orgies involving a dozen teachers dressed up as clowns in ‘magical rooms’ are happening all around you.
I didn’t make up the example above; It comes straight out of one of the cases highlighted by Rabinowitz. The charges were generally so outlandish and incredible as to warrant ridicule. But, because of the mass hysteria surrounding these cases, prosecutors were able to get away with nearly everything. And anyone protesting their neighbors or colleagues being thrown in the slammer on bogus charges risked being next in line themselves, as many found out the hard way.
None of the children involved initially confessed to much, but two years of pre-trial prep was often sufficient to get them to say just enough to put the defendants in a serious pickle. And if they didn’t, there would always be an army of ‘expert witnesses’ ready to explain that, when a supposedly-sexually-abused 5-year-old insists nothing happened, it’s actually a sign that something DID happen. It’s that reversed psychology getting the better of those little buggers, you see?
The trial juries were often gullible enough to buy into the shenanigans. After all, a bunch of experts with expensive educations explained it all to them under oath, and they were unaware of the testimony boot camp the children underwent before the trials even started. However, that the judges should go along with it, wiping their eyes as they’d tell the defense attorney cross-examination was out of the question lest the little kiddies’ poor feelings be hurt, is a testament to how deeply we have fallen as a society.
The real victims in these cases were put behind bars, in some cases for decades. Entire lives were destroyed by shoddy police work and overzealous DAs, abetted by equally overzealous Child Protective Services departments. Even if justice eventually took its turn and the defendants got out of prison, it would be almost impossible for them to pick up a normal life, tainted as their names had become. The prosecutors, however, faced no consequences whatsoever for their gross misconduct, as Rabinowitz aptly remarks in her epilogue. One of them, Martha Coakley, almost made it into the U.S. Senate in 2010. Such is life.
If there’s one negative thing to be said about this book, it’s that one shouldn’t go look for cultural and philosophical explanations here. Don’t expect data about the larger phenomenon as it played out in the final two decades of the last century, or analysis on the role of mass media in the modern age. Rabinowitz is a story-teller. She invokes details about the lives of the defendants, and anecdotes about their first nights in prison, to name but one example. The bigger picture is somewhat missing.
The life-stories chronicled by Rabinowitz are as well-written as they are distressing, though, and I had trouble putting the book away at night. (In fact, I finished this book within 72 hours, an achievement in its own right, what with my busy work and family life.) To anybody assuming they’ll be able to stay out of trouble as long as they don’t go looking for it, I would heartily recommend they read ‘No Crueler Tyrannies’ to open their eyes. It’s a testament to the follies, tunnel vision and hysteria that can inform our decisions, individually, but also collectively as a society. That is a rather disturbing thought.
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