Right off the bat, there were HUNDREDS, not dozens of children abused at McMartin. Of the roughly 400 kids who said they were abused, 80 percent had physical symptoms including blunt force trauma, rectal bleeding and STDs.
Gee, those "400 kids" would be in their 30s by now. You'd think that some of them would be outraged enough at the continual debunking of their claims to go public with some kind of reaffirmation. But nope. Not a thing. Only unsourced crap from folk like Constantine. Did you ever notice how Constantine never includes an index in his books, making them all but useless for research?
Wait, maybe they're much too traumatized to talk, eh? Funny, those poor kids in Ireland suffered horrible abuses for years & years & years, yet they haven't buried any memories or refused to talk about any of it.
Kind of makes one wonder, doesn't it?
Oh wait, there was Kyle Zirpolo who said,
"'I felt everyone knew I was lying. But my parents said, "You're doing fine. Don't worry." And everyone was saying how proud they were of me."
[snip]
I think I got the satanic details by picturing our church. We went to American Martyrs, which was a huge Catholic church. Every Sunday we had to go, and Mass would last an hour, hour and a half. None of us wanted to go: It was kicking and screaming all the way there. Sitting, standing, sitting, standing. What I would do was picture the altar, pews and stained-glass windows, and if [investigators] said, "Describe an altar," I would describe the one in our church. Or instead of, "There was a priest in a green suit"�someone who was real�I would say, "A man dressed in red as a cult member." From going to church you know that God is good, and the devil is bad and has horns and is about evil and red and blood. I'd just throw a twist in there with Satan and devil-worshipping.
I remember going in our van with all my brothers and sisters and driving to airports and houses and being asked if we had been [abused in] these places. I remember telling people [that the McMartin teachers] took us to Harry's Meat Market, and describing what I thought the market was like. I had never been in there before, and I was fairly certain I was going to get in trouble for what I was saying because it probably was not accurate. I imagined someone would say, "They don't have that kind of freezer there." And they did say that. But then someone said, "Well, they could have changed it." It was like anything and everything I said would be believed.
The lawyers had all my stories written down and knew exactly what I had said before. So I knew I would have to say those exact things again and not have anything be different, otherwise they would know I was lying. I put a lot of pressure on myself. At night in bed, I would think hard about things I had said in the past and try to repeat only the things I knew I'd said before.
[snip]
We had a highly dysfunctional family. We argued and fought all the time. My mother has always blamed anything negative on the idea that we went to that preschool and were molested. To this day, she believes these things went on. Because if they didn't, how can she explain all the family's problems? To this day, I can't open up with her about my personal problems. She's always asking me why I never do. That one night skewed our relationship.
Once the case was over, it was just over, in the past. The defendants were set free and that was it. The kids' parents never asked, "Why were they innocent? Why were they unable to find evidence to convict these people?"
My family has not seen the movies or read the books questioning the prosecution. It's like skeletons in a closet that you just don't want to take back out. I'm the only one who ever brings the topic up and who admits nothing ever happened to me. I've said I lied about everything, but I've never gotten a real response from my mother and stepfather. It seems really strange, seeing their reaction to the fact that nothing happened to me. If I had gone my whole life thinking my child was molested, I would be elated to find out that he or she wasn't. I'd like to think learning that your child was not molested would supersede anything. After all, all you have is your next day. It would be a shame to live the rest of your life thinking molestation had happened when you could think it didn't.
McMartin is something negative in my life and I'm trying to make it a positive. I've got two little kids I love dearly, they've changed the priorities in my life. My goal is to raise them as best as I can and try to lead by example. I want to be totally honest with them, to say, "This is something that happened to me. I did something dishonest, then at some point I was able to be honest about it." I want my children to be able to come to me like I wish I could have with my parents.
I wonder how many more like Kyle are out there. I also wonder if Constantine ever actually interviewed any of the folk involved before he made his wild sourceless allegations.
Oh yeah, good luck finding a credible source for his " blunt force trauma, rectal bleeding & STDs" claim.
Personally, I don't think it exists.
Since everyone here seems to think McMartin was legit, why not do a collective debunking of the debunkers?
That would quite interesting &, I think, highly amusing.
Of course, the "facts" might put a crimp in the RI belief system, then everyone here would have to find something else to be afraid of, wouldn't they?
