Nelsons daughter and son-in-law accused of sex abuse

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I like the chronological document format because it will allow all of us to look what happened in order in time and possibly revise some of our beliefs.

But you're not doing that.

- Doc

[_Rosebud]

I like the chronological document format because it will allow all of us to look what happened in order in time and possibly revise some of our beliefs.

But you're not doing that.

- Doc

I'm not revising my beliefs or I'm not using a chronological document? ;)

Life has taught me that it works best when I'm in charge of deciding what I'm believing and doing and others are in charge of what they're believing and doing.

The thread is not about me or you; it's about the issue. I'll take charge of me; you take charge of you. Without this kind of boundary, message boards are a complete pain. Brief posts in timed and dated sequences have their value (e.g. dated documemtation) and can also be a waste.

[_Mary]

Doc,

The first newspaper article in the chronology was from the DN on the Lehi case.

"Some psychologists reported evidence of a so-called "sex-abuse" ring, involving several children and adults at the same time.

But many in Hadfield's neighborhood who believed they had been accused, in turn said that social worker Barbara Snow had "brainwashed" the children into maintaining they were sexually abused. Snow, then with the Intermountain Sex Abuse Treatment Center, counseled many of the children who had reportedly been abused.

"From the beginning of the investigation, the position of the attorney general's office has been that cases would be prosecuted only if prosecutors believed that the evidence would be sufficient to support a finding by a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the abuse occurred," Wilkinson said.

"The only case that met that high charging standard as the investigation developed was the one involving Allan B. Hadfield, which was prosecuted to a conviction last December," he said.

Dr. Paul L. Whitehead, a Salt Lake child psychiatrist who has treated many cases of child sexual abuse, agrees that the Lehi case is a very complex situation.> "But in working with children from Lehi and elsewhere in the state, I feel that the absence of prosecution doesn't necessarily mean that nothing happened. However, legally we must presume innocence until someone is proven guilty. But when they are proven guilty, we should presume they are guilty, which wasn't completely the case with Allan B. Hadfield."

Whitehead said that because these trials are so difficult to go through, as evidence by reactions by the Hadfield children (who became physically ill when testifying against their father during the trial), I am pleased that the state requires a very high standard of proof before they embark on a full-scale trial."

Prosecutors said that the troubling issue for the attorney general's office was not in determining that sexual abuse of some children had occurred, but rather in proving beyond any reasonable doubt who committed the abuse."

Parrish said the state may never know the truth of what did or didn't occur in Lehi "other than those who were there, or not there, as the case may be."


I actually found this article to be quite balanced. A lot more balanced than Cinepro or Lemmies responses on the whole.

Abuse occurred. A high standard was required for prosecution. That only occurred with Hadfield. That others were not prosecuted doesn't mean abuse didn't occur, only that there wasn't the evidence to convict.

In my estimation, Cinepro and Lemmie read Snow and Satanic Panic and therefore all claims are invalid, false, untrue. I don't think it is as easy as that.

[_Mary]

What is a mental health therapist to think if a patient recounts tales of ritual sexual abuse by candle-carrying devil-worshipers in black hooded robes?

What if the patient claims to know people who torture infants, who put mousetraps on 2-year-olds and don't take them off until they stop crying, or introduce toddlers to the taste of blood? What about charges that these same people force children to eat human flesh and excrement, drink urine and blood?And if that weren't enough, what if the patient also claims that these same people torture and kill babies and turn children into sex slaves for an organization of satanists who in their daily lives are doctors, police officers, church leaders, teachers and next-door neighbors? What if the patient identifies her own parents as the perpetrators and herself as the victim?

Such bizarre tales would be so incredible that a trained mental health expert would likely assume the patient was delusional. Many still do.

But a growing number of therapists nationwide have heard these same stories so often they believe there is another explanation: Their patients are telling the truth.

Many psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors say ritualistic sexual abuse of children not only exists, it is common. They say that at least 25 percent of those who suffer from multiple personality disorder are victims of severe, repetitive ritualistic sexual abuse during childhood.

Sometimes, the abusers are pedophiles whose perversion is extraordinarily twisted, these therapists say. And sometimes, they say, those who ritually abuse children are practicinga type of organized satanism that has been a part of their families for generations.

Religious leaders, law enforcement and governmental officials have ranged the territory between extremes in response to such charges. Some therapists have been publicly ridiculed and professionally discredited, while others have found supporters among law enforcement professionals, lawyers, ministers and media people.

Virtually unheard of prior to the early 1980s, allegations of ritual, Satanic sexual abuse have pushed professionals and governmental officials nationwide to organize committees, councils, newsletters and information networks to study the phenomenon and share information....

While some are increasingly concerned about the allegations, many people, including professionals from the same groups as those sounding the alarm, say the ritual abuse scare is just that: a scare. Or a mass delusion, or a new urban myth.

And many therapists say their colleagues who are working to alert society to the existence of ritual abuse are themselves responsible for the phenomenon, their counseling techniques tainted by their own unresolved psychological problems.

Some police say they can't find evidence - hard to come by because the witnesses are either children or adults who go into therapy and then remember what happened to them as children - to corroborate the allegations. Trained to be skeptics unless the evidence is there, investigators throw up their hands.

Other police and investigators say the evidence is there, but the abusers are extraordinarily well-organized and wily enough to outwit the criminal justice system.

Prosecutors shy away from bringing allegations of ritualism into child abuse cases. Defense attorneys, however, may want to bring up the allegations on the assumption they will sound so outlandish the witnesses will ruin their own credibility.

Depending on who you talk to, then, either an organized network of criminals is bent on gaining power by spreading evil through ritualistic, often sexual, abuse - or therapists are feeding a mass delusion by extracting tainted allegations from their patients. The legal system is expected to deal with the fallout.

Any way you look at it, the growing number of Satanic ritualistic abuse allegations means something is happening in our society. But what? And why?

The article then describes Satanism in its many forms.

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/182 ... -FOR-REAL-

Not sure how I feel about this article. The categories of Satanism is something I know little about.

[Schreech]

Snip

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Life has taught me that it works best when I'm in charge of deciding what I'm believing and doing and others are in charge of what they're believing and doing.

The thread is not about me or you; it's about the issue. I'll take charge of me; you take charge of you. Without this kind of boundary, message boards are a complete pain. Brief posts in timed and dated sequences have their value (e.g. dated documemtation) and can also be a waste.

Ok. You can't source your assertions, which amount to:

This stuff happens, the media is skeptical, and Dr. Snow is treated unfairly. And I'm too busy to source my assertions, but not too busy to bitch about being asked to do so. Reminds me of someone else who used the same excuse...

- Doc

[_Mary]

Are you saying that some of the news reports in your timeline are not accurate due to sensationalization? I just looked again and I didn't see any distinction. Which media reports in your chronology do you think contain inaccurate statements?

Did I imply that in any way? No. I'll put any and all articles up and the reader can decide on any sensationalism therein. This has already taken too much of my time.

[_Rosebud]

Doc, the document is linked in my signature line. The thread is full of links. I don't think you'll find many people who will redo work at your demand.

[_Rosebud]

Especially on a message board. Work gets lost here. Thus, the document. Follow the link and post in the other thread about sources if you'd like to contribute to improving the collection of evidence.

[Guest]

"The only case that met that high charging standard as the investigation developed was the one involving Allan B. Hadfield, which was prosecuted to a conviction last December," he said.

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Abuse occurred. A high standard was required for prosecution. That only occurred with Hadfield. That others were not prosecuted doesn't mean abuse didn't occur, only that there wasn't the evidence to convict.

If this narrative is accurate, Hadfield was almost certainly innocent.

While many Lehi citizens refused to believe the claims against the Burnhams, others joined Dr. Snow in a parent-therapy group. Alan B. Hadfield and Rex Bowers, both active Mormons in the Eight Ward, emerged as vocal supporters of Dr. Snow. At their urging, the Utah County Sheriff's Office and the Utah Attorney General Office began a lengthy investigation. In the meantime Dr. Snow continued to interview new children, and more shocking revelations came. In February 1986 the son of Rex Bowers, in an interview with Dr. Snow, recalled instances of sexual molestation by his father.

In May both a daughter and son of Alan Hadfield told Dr. Snow that they had been forced by their father to have both anal and oral sex with him. Believing the allegations, Hadfield's wife abandoned her husband, never to return. Dr. Snow, at this stage, claimed that the children had confessed -- just as in other prominent cases throughout the country-- that they had been initiated into Satanic cults, and compelled to worship Satan. They had apparently described rituals very similar to the horrible "Feast of the Beast" that Michelle Smith had remembered and described in her 1980 book. When the police concluded their investigation in 1987, Dr. Snow had accused fourty adults -- almost all of them active Mormons in Lehi's Eight Ward -- to be ritual child abusers and members of a secret Satanic cult. Although Snow was publically and vocally backed by the Intermountain Sexual Abuse Treatment Center and by Dr. Paul L. Whitehead, public-affairs representative for the Utah Psychiatric Association, prosecutors decided to file charges against only one individual, Alan Hadfield.

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At trial, it came out that both Wayne Watson, Chief Deputy Utah County Attorney, who had witnessed through a two-way mirror one of Dr. Snow's interviews, and Judy Pugh, a colleague of Dr.Snow at the Intermountain Sexual Abuse Treatment Center, thought that Dr.Snow was coaching the children into admitting sexual and Satanic abuses that they had initially denied. A ten-year old girl testified that she had tried to persuade Dr.Snow that she had never been abused, but later had cracked under the pressure of the therapist, persuaded that Dr.Snow would not have let her go unless she agreed to accuse someone of ritual abuse. Hadfield's defense attorney Dr. Stephen Golding, director of clinical psychology at the University of Utah, as an expert witness who labelled Snow's techniques as "subtly coercive and highly questionable". A nervous and confused Hadfield did not help his case when he said in Court: "If I did those things, I don't remember".

https://www.cesnur.org/2001/archive/mi_mormons.htm
(Emphasis added)

Hadfield's conviction seems to be a result of one thing: the people on the jury thought the kids were telling the truth. With what we know about false memories and coercive interview techniques (and from the timeline of the accusations and Barbara Snow's involvement), the jury was almost certainly mistaken.