Jesse wrote: Hers have been the most clarifying posts of this thread, and its simply ludicrous to describe as "voices of reason" those whose bias has led them repeatedly to avoid such things.
--Yoshie did a fine job responding indeed! And she's right, the panics have not only led to non-family members being attacked, jailed, reviled [and in the 80's there were substantial wings of the feminist movement that thought this was a good thing to support--it took a number of years before Katha Pollitt came out with her own concerns about Fells Acres attack on an ordinary working class family]. Furthermore, the attacks have also come against family members.
I had a friend in NYC in the 80's who told me all kinds of awful tales about babies being burned, hung, animal sacrifices in his backyard by his abusive adopted parents...in addition to all kinds of abuse. And every time he came up with a new tale, his shrink was there to describe it as a 'breakthrough'...There are plenty of cases out there of family members being subjected to such 'recovered memory' based attacks, I don't know where Jen gets the idea they were not happening, especially in the 80's and early 90's.
Stephen Philion Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology St. Cloud State University St. Cloud, MN
http://stephenphilion.efoliomn2.com/