In the 80s America awoke to the menace of sexual abuse of children, and the watchword was “Believe the children.” One of the first journalists to question that watchword, freelance reporter Debbie Nathan, studied notorious prosecutions such as the McMartin case in Manhattan Beach, California, and concluded that America hadn’t just opened its eyes but lost its bearings.
Some 25 years earlier, when he was four years old, he’d been one of the children allegedly abused at the McMartin preschool. Nathan told Zirpolo’s story in the Los Angeles Times on October 30. She introduced him as someone the police had considered an “exceptional witness” back when he was eight and former McMartin kids began telling stories about nude sex games and satanic rituals. But Kyle was making his up.
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Marquis identified Nathan to his friend as the “house ‘expert’” in Capturing the Friedmans–a “stunning bit of revisionist propaganda which claims that two people who confessed and pled guilty maybe weren’t really guilty. These people just don’t want to believe child abuse happens and have done enormous damage to the justice system by planting the idea that most kids probably make up these stories. If so, why the hell should we believe what this 30-year-old says today now that there is no down side to his ‘confession’? I’d love to have the tapes of his conversation with Nathan.”
In other words, the piano lessons were a perfect opportunity for pedophilia. “The cops put out a call to the Great Neck community: ‘Piano students, if you were molested by Mr. Friedman, please call us.’ Not a single child stepped forward.”
Nathan commented, “All research now regarding trauma and memory indicates that trauma like what supposedly happened to these kids is remembered intensely, not forgotten. The theory of traumatic dissociation that informed investigations like McMartin and Friedman has been virtually completely discredited.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Charles Eshelman.
