Elevatorgate. Charges of sexual harassment at secular/atheist conferences. Charges of sexual assault or misogyny or just cluelessness leveled at high-profile atheists. It’s gotten so extreme that the title of a recent BuzzFeed article didn’t seem too farfetched: “Will Misogyny Bring Down The Atheist Movement?”

I’m amazed at the byzantine turns this topic has taken and the hold it has on some atheist bloggers. It would take me weeks to read all that has been written, and let me make clear that, not having done that, I don’t pretend to be well informed about the issue. But let me summarize an event that happened in my part of the country close to 20 years ago that, while much more extreme, may have parallels to today’s anxiety.

This being Halloween, it seems appropriate to bring up the Wenatchee Witch Hunt, what has been called history’s most extensive child sex abuse investigation.

Details of the case

It began in 1992, when, after much questioning, the 7-year-old daughter of poor and uneducated parents accused a family acquaintance of molesting her. After repeated encouragement by the Wenatchee police lieutenant who was acting as foster parent to the girl and her sister, the girls eventually named over a hundred abusers and many child victims.

Local Pentecostal pastor Robert Robertson tried to talk sense to the investigators. For his troubles, he and his family were sucked in as suspects, and the story was rewoven to include his church as a center for orgies with the children. Others who also tried to rein in the crazy were also charged or fired. (What explains a defense of the accused but that that person is similarly guilty?)

Child witnesses, mostly from 9 to 13 years old, were often taken from their families and placed in foster care. Many said later that they were subjected to hours of frightening grilling and if they didn’t believe they had been sexually abused, they were told they were “in denial” or had suppressed the memory of the abuse. They were also told that siblings and other children had witnessed their abuse, or that that their parents had already confessed.

Interrogators called some children who denied abuse liars. Children were told that if they agreed to accusations they wouldn’t be separated from parents or siblings. Many of them later recanted. [The police lieutenant] neither recorded nor kept notes of his interrogations.

Recantations were ignored. “It’s well known that children are telling the truth when they say they’ve been abused,” [the] Wenatchee Child Protective Services [supervisor said.] “But (they) are usually lying when they deny it.”

Aftermath

In all, “43 adults were arrested and accused of 29,726 counts of sexually abusing 60 children…. Eighteen pleaded guilty, mostly on the basis of signed confessions. Ten were convicted at trial. Three were acquitted. Eighteen went to prison.” All confessions were later recanted, all convictions related to the sex ring have been overturned, a third of the children claimed to have been abused were at one point taken from their parents and put up for adoption, and the city of Wenatchee paid lawsuits claiming millions of dollars in damages.

It was a modern-day replay of the 1692 Salem witch trial in which several girls’ accusations resulted in 19 people being hanged and one more pressed to death.

No, just because there’s smoke doesn’t mean there’s fire, and someone encouraging restraint isn’t necessarily part of the problem. As an outsider to the stories behind the accusations of misogyny and rape, I make no claim that I understand who’s right or wrong. I simply offer this Wenatchee case as an example of how well-meaning thinking can go off the rails.

In this blog, I’ve commented on social issues such as homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and abortion rights. Christianity creates problems in these areas, and I think I have something to contribute to the conversation. Atheists are pretty much of one mind on these issues.

I might have something to contribute to the conversation on feminism and misogyny as well, but unfortunately this has become a contentious, us-vs.-them issue within the atheist community, and I avoid it. I wish it weren’t so.

Once your forefathers and foremothers realized that
[the scientific method] generated results,
in a few generations your species went
from burning witches and drinking mercury
to mapping the human genome and playing golf on the moon.
— David McRaney

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/2/12.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia