Synopses & Reviews
During the 1980s in California, New Jersey, and New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, daycare workers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of committing horrible sexual crimes against the children they cared for. These crimes, social workers and prosecutors said, had gone undetected for years, and they consisted of a brutality and sadism that defied all imagining. Children across the country painted a nightmarish picture of their abuse, some claiming they had been taken to graveyards, sometimes to kill animals, and sometimes to dig up bodies, which were removed from their coffins and stabbed. In some cases, investigators said that the abusers were filming the crimes on behalf of international child pornography rings. The dangers of babysitting services and day care centers became a national news media fixation, and legislatures took action to fend off the new threats facing the countryand#8217;s children. Of the many hundreds of people who were investigated in connection with day care and ritual abuse cases around the country, some 190 were formally charged with crimes, leading to more than 80 convictions.
But, none of it happened. It was a decade-long outbreak of collective hysteria and#150; on a par with the Salem witch trials.
Using extensive archival research conducted in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Minneapolis, and elsewhere, and drawing on dozens of interviews conducted with the hysteriaand#8217;s major figures, n+1 editor Richard Beck shows how a group of legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parents, most working with the best of intentions, set the stage for a cultural disaster. Psychiatrists and talk therapists turned dubious theories of trauma and recovered memory into a destructive new kind of psychotherapy. Social workers and detectives employed coercive interviewing techniques that led children to tell them what they wanted to hear. Local and national journalists fanned the flames by promoting the storyand#8217;s salacious aspects, while aggressive prosecutors sought to make their careers by unearthing an unspeakable evil where parents feared it most. Beck tracks the panic all the way to its decline at the end of the decade, as parents and prosecutors were finally forced to reckon with the total lack of physical evidence underpinning the story. Yet at the heart of We Believe the Children is the idea that the conditions that made this frenzy of accusations possible were very specific to their moment in American history. The climate of fear that surrounded these cases influenced a whole series of arguments about women, children, and sex that had been intensifying for some twenty years. At the root of these accusations were competing visions of society and what it was that threatened it most.
Review
"The symbol of the innocent child drove domestic politics in 1980s America, and nowhere more so than in the unwavering conviction that day-care centers, places meant to nourish and protect our young, were actually sites of unfathomably terrible abuse. In
We Believe the Children Richard Beck gives us an account that is both riveting and judicious. Most importantly, he deftly situates this terrifying witch-hunt within its timesand#151;a period not just of antifeminist backlash, but also of unprecedented ambivalence about the nuclear family."
and#151;Alice Echols, Professor of History and Gender Studies at USC and author of Hot Stuff, Shaky Ground and Scars of Sweet Paradise"Richard Beck frames his fascinating account of moral panic in the 1980s as history, but I advise reading it as a diagnosis of our own moment as well. The trope of the endangered child lurks just beneath the surface in a whole series of current arguments about women, vulnerability, trauma, sex, and power, especially on college campuses. We're not repeating history, we're regressing to it.and#8221; and#151;Laura Kipnis, author of Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation
Review
and#147;Intellectually nimbleand#133; [Beckand#8217;s] argument should prove far more enduring than all the lies and self-deceptions, so credulously believed in the 1980s, that this book does a devil of a job correcting.and#8221;
and#151;New York Timesand#147;Understanding a moral panic requires perspectiveand#151;distance from the emotional heat of anger and anxiety. Sometimes it is precisely those who didnand#8217;t live through it who are best suited to providing that perspective. In We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s, Richard Beck accomplishes this difficult feat, and he does so calmly, detail by meticulous detailand#133;. A thorough account... His important book gives readers who donand#8217;t know the storyand#151;or who think it is over, so 20th centuryand#151;an understanding of its lingering, pernicious effects on our livesand#133;. Mr. Beckand#8217;s book is valuable because it is timely and comprehensive. He not only tells the story of a moral panic with a fresh eye but provides context, identifying the forces that preceded it as well as those that fed it and have kept it going today.and#8221; and#151;Wall Street Journal
and#147;[Thirty] years ago America was described as experiencing an and#145;epidemicand#8217; of sexual abuse in day care. Richard Beck, an editor at N+1, does a herculean job of investigating why this happened in his absorbing book We Believe The Children.and#8221; and#151;Washington Post
and#147;In this sharp, sensitive debut [Beck] deftly examines all the forces that came together in this strange moment in our history.and#8221; and#151;Boston Globe
and#147;Beck argues, convincingly, that the sexual revolution of the and#8217;60s and and#8217;70s provoked a conservative backlash in the and#8217;80s, fueling parental paranoia. The social and political conditions at the time set the stage for the most destructive moral panic since the Salem witch trials.and#8221; and#151;The Daily Beast
and#147;Ambitious and meticulously researchedand#133; Beck, an editor of the avant-garde literary journal n+1, is an able historian and a clear writer. His thorough analysis of media reports, police records and court transcripts successfully brings this nightmarish cultural episode to life. The book is a devastating indictment of the earnest but irresponsible detectives and psychologists who effectively projected their own fantasies into young childrenand#8217;s imaginations over the course of extended interrogations, and of overzealous prosecutorsand#151;including such high-profile figures as Janet Reno and Martha Coakleyand#151;who put innocent people in prison.and#8221; and#151;American Interest
and#147;Remarkableand#133; Painstakingly researched.and#8221; and#151;The Sunday Times [UK]
and#147;A very lucid piece of historical analysis that shows how easily the wildest gossip and accusations are believed by the legal system and the public.and#8221; and#151;Connecticut News
and#147;N+1 editor Beck surveys the wild allegations, surreal trials, and sensational atmosphere of a child abuse panic that gripped the United States during the 1980s, while lucidly analyzing the intellectual and political climate that made it possibleand#133; An absorbing dissection of a panic whose tremors still affect us today.and#8221; and#151;Publishers Weekly
and#147;Compelling, eye-openingand#133;. In Beck's well-researched, fascinating work, he begins with the McMartin trial, the longest trial in US history and one which was launched on the fevered imaginations of a divorced mother with severe emotional issues. Many remember the name McMartin and Beck covers it with scrupulous care.and#8221; and#151;BookFilter
and#147;Richard Beckand#8217;s We Believe the Children is a superb reconstruction of a dark chapter in our recent history, and an engaging introduction to complicated mysteries of the psyche. It must be read.and#8221; and#151;Mark Greif, author of The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973
and#147;We Believe the Children is a brilliant, steely portrait of a country in the midst of a counter-revolution. Not only a dramatic narrative of the child abuse scandals that dominated headlines in the 1980s, it's also an incredibly smart history of the strange alliances that fueled modern and#145;family valuesand#8217; conservatism. There is something to surprise and startle on every page.and#8221; and#151;Nikil Saval, author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace
and#147;Richard Beck's fascinating book is written with an incredible lucidity of thought and prose. His witnessing seems at an ideal distance, and his voice is an appealing synthesis of the questing mind, and the mind that already knows how frighteningly and unfortunately easy it is for us to deceive others and ourselves.and#8221; and#151;Sheila Heti, author of How Should A Person Be?: A Novel from Life
and#147;We've had other books on the culture of fear and panic that seized this country in the 1980s and 1990s, but none like this. Through diligent reportage, an informed sense of history, and plainspoken prose, Richard Beck narrates a terrifying story of how the US reacted against the liberation of women and the transformation of the family after the Sixties: by conjuring an army of pedophiles, daycare workers, and Satanic abusers, all bent on doing harm to and#145;our kids.and#8217; If there is any saving grace to this story, it is the calm and patience of its teller, whose dedication to reason, fact, and truth serves as a beacon across a fog of unreason and ill will.and#8221; and#151;Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
"The symbol of the innocent child drove domestic politics in 1980s America, and nowhere more so than in the unwavering conviction that day-care centers, places meant to nourish and protect our young, were actually sites of unfathomably terrible abuse. In We Believe the Children Richard Beck gives us an account that is both riveting and judicious. Most importantly, he deftly situates this terrifying witch-hunt within its timesand#151;a period not just of antifeminist backlash, but also of unprecedented ambivalence about the nuclear family." and#151;Alice Echols, Professor of History and Gender Studies at USC and author of Hot Stuff, Shaky Ground and Scars of Sweet Paradise
"Richard Beck frames his fascinating account of moral panic in the 1980s as history, but I advise reading it as a diagnosis of our own moment as well. The trope of the endangered child lurks just beneath the surface in a whole series of current arguments about women, vulnerability, trauma, sex, and power, especially on college campuses. We're not repeating history, we're regressing to it.and#8221; and#151;Laura Kipnis, author of Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation
Synopsis
A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2015
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2015
A brilliant, disturbing portrait of the dawn of the culture wars, when America started to tear itself apart with doubts, wild allegations, and an unfounded fear for the safety of children.
During the 1980s in California, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, day care workers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of committing horrible sexual crimes against the children they cared for. These crimes, social workers and prosecutors said, had gone undetected for years, and they consisted of a brutality and sadism that defied all imagining. The dangers of babysitting services and day care centers became a national news media fixation. Of the many hundreds of people who were investigated in connection with day care and ritual abuse cases around the country, some 190 were formally charged with crimes, leading to more than 80 convictions.
It would take years for people to realize what the defendants had said all along--that these prosecutions were the product of a decade-long outbreak of collective hysteria on par with the Salem witch trials. Social workers and detectives employed coercive interviewing techniques that led children to tell them what they wanted to hear. Local and national journalists fanned the flames by promoting the stories' salacious aspects, while aggressive prosecutors sought to make their careers by unearthing an unspeakable evil where parents feared it most.
Using extensive archival research and drawing on dozens of interviews conducted with the hysteria's major figures, n+1 editor Richard Beck shows how a group of legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parents--most working with the best of intentions--set the stage for a cultural disaster. The climate of fear that surrounded these cases influenced a whole series of arguments about women, children, and sex. It also drove a right-wing cultural resurgence that, in many respects, continues to this day.
Synopsis
In the 1980s in California, New Jersey, and New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, daycare workers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of committing horrible sexual crimes against the children they cared for. These crimes, prosecutors said, had gone undetected for years, and their brutality and sadism defied all imagining. Whatand#8217;s more, the abusers had photographed and videotaped their victims, distributing the images through a sophisticated international network of child pornographers. More often than not, violent satanic cult worship had also played a central role, with children made to watch forced abortions in cemeteries and then eat hacked-off bits of the little corpses. In just over a decade, thousands of people in every part of the country were investigated as child sex abusers, and some one-hundred and fifty of them were sent to prison.
But, none of it happened. It was an epic decade-long outbreak of collective hysteria and#150; on a par with the Salem witch trials or the red scares of the 1950s.
Using extensive archival research conducted in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and elsewhere, and drawing on dozens of interviews conducted with the hysteriaand#8217;s major figures, Richard Beck shows how a group of legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parents, all working with the best of intentions, set the stage for a judicial disaster. A number of opportunistic journalists helped to carry the story from state to state, and the silence of their colleagues, who should have known better, allowed it to keep spreading long after it became clear that the story was simply unsupported by evidence. Beck reveals how a small group of skeptics finally began working to slow the runaway train in the last half of the decade, and he explores the fates of those accused and convicted of these unbelievable crimes, the casualties of a culture war. It is this culture war that is the books pervasive subtext and#150; the conditions that made possible the demented frenzy of accusations were very specific, and at the root of them were competing visions of society and the things that threatened it most.
Synopsis
A brilliant, disturbing portrait of the dawn of the culture wars, when America started to tear itself apart with doubts, wild allegations, and an unfounded fear for the safety of children.During the 1980s in California, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, day care workers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of committing horrible sexual crimes against the children they cared for. These crimes, social workers and prosecutors said, had gone undetected for years, and they consisted of a brutality and sadism that defied all imagining. The dangers of babysitting services and day care centers became a national news media fixation. Of the many hundreds of people who were investigated in connection with day care and ritual abuse cases around the country, some 190 were formally charged with crimes, leading to more than 80 convictions.
It would take years for people to realize what the defendants had said all alongand#151;that these prosecutions were the product of a decade-long outbreak of collective hysteria on par with the Salem witch trials. Social workers and detectives employed coercive interviewing techniques that led children to tell them what they wanted to hear. Local and national journalists fanned the flames by promoting the storiesand#8217; salacious aspects, while aggressive prosecutors sought to make their careers by unearthing an unspeakable evil where parents feared it most.
Using extensive archival research and drawing on dozens of interviews conducted with the hysteriaand#8217;s major figures, n+1 editor Richard Beck shows how a group of legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parentsand#151;most working with the best of intentionsand#151;set the stage for a cultural disaster. The climate of fear that surrounded these cases influenced a whole series of arguments about women, children, and sex. It also drove a right-wing cultural resurgence that, in many respects, continues to this day.
About the Author
Richard Beck is an editor at
n+1 magazine and lives in Brooklyn, NY.