Misrepresentation of the Interview
Beginning with two articles (Lawrence, 1993a, 1993b) in an incest survivors network newsletter, there have been subsequent articles around the world claiming that in the interview given to Paidika we say that adult-child sexual contacts are good, that they are good for children, that pedophilia is God's will, that pedophilia should be decriminalized, and that we approve of pedophilia. Some have said that we are known pedophiles. Recently we have been told that the survivor's network says we advertise regularly in publications of NAMBLA and that we speak every year at the NAMBLA conventions saying that pedophilia is desirable. Our suggestion that the people in the Netherlands who believe adult-child sexual relationships can be positive ought to do longitudinal research has been interpreted as us advocating sexually abusing children for research.
People have written and called us from around the world to threaten, inquire, dump venom and anger on us, and label us the most reprehensible of villains. Articles that we know of have been in several survivors' network newsletters, in the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Bulletin, and in newspapers and magazines including the London Sunday Times, Dublin Irish Times, Toronto Now Magazine, Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and Christians and Society Today. Every trial that we appear in now includes an attempt at impeachment by the adversary attorney using the Paidika interview and implying to the jury or judge that we approve of child molestation and guilt by association by linking us with those vile, reprehensible pedophiles.
How could this happen?
We were first publicly identified as the #1 enemy experts of the prosecutors in November, 1986, at a training conference in New Orleans put on by the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse (NCPCA) (Gordon, 1986, Personal Communication). We are perceived by the prosecutors and their supporting professionals as responsible for turning the country around and beginning the backlash against the noble effort to protect children (Summit, 1993). Subsequently, the staff of the NCPCA has engaged in a systematic effort to destroy us by attacking our reputation with slander, libel, and defamatory falsehoods. This goal was clearly articulated by Ms. Patricia Toth, director of the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse, at a conference in Madison, Wisconsin in November, 1990 when she stated that her goal in making a presentation about Ralph Underwager was to destroy his reputation.
We have sued in Federal Court in six states. In Wisconsin, Judge Shabaz, has ruled that what they have done, as a fact and under the law, is defamatory. However, he also ruled that since they maintained they believed what they said was true, their behavior did not constitute malice under the law and therefore was not actionable. That judgment was upheld by the Seventh Circuit and we are now appealing the issue to the U. S. Supreme Court.
In one of the documents submitted to the court as part of the litigation Toth and her attorneys describe the purpose of the NCPCA efforts. "Likewise, the more prepared prosecutors are for expert witnesses who make their living testifying only on behalf of child molesters (and essentially adopting theories attendant to their source of income) the less effective, and less commercially desirable, the expert will be for future alleged child molester defendants."
In March of 1991 we helped organize what later became the FMS Foundation by encouraging and supporting Pamela Freyd and others to begin a group to respond to the increasing claims by adults of recovered memories of childhood abuse. The FMSF was started in spring of 1992. The National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse had an article dealing with the FMSF in their newsletter, Update (1992). In the article the NCPCA sees the FMSF as the real danger, allies itself with the incest survivors' network and Bass and Davis, co-authors of The Courage to Heal (Paperback)(Audio Cassette), and says "Professionals who intervene in child sex abuse cases can expect to be subjected to the 'backlash' suggesting that children and now adults have been brainwashed into claiming abuse by parents and caretakers" (1992, p. 1).
I personally don't care for satanists, wouldn't want any of my children marrying one and all that.
