I think there was some recent attempts to revisit/appeal this case. Is that why this is linked?
I'm not super familiar with the case but some of the language used here is super sketchy and sounds more like excuses and victim blaming than an attempt to look at the evidence clearly.
Denouncing recovered memories is precisely how the Baltimore Archdiocese covered up years of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Only utter dirtbags like Paul McHugh [1], who astoundingly still has an ~emeritus position at Hopkins after helping the Archdiocese continue their cover-up, denounce the suppression and later recovery of memories. Such dirtbags are outliers, and there is no legitimate debate about this as far as I'm aware.
Sadly, I can give a personal example of this phenomenon. My brother and I were both subject, from different rooms, to something utterly abhorrent when we were young. For reasons beyond me, other than maybe our age disparity, and the fact he also saw what I only heard, he suppressed what happened and I did not. It was horrible enough that it was only ever discussed once or twice over the intervening decades before, in his 40s, he called me crying, indicating he remembered. Having not seen it myself, there wasn't any detail for me to add or fill in for him in the scant discussions we had, yet he remembered in detail what he had seen. Yes, this is anecdotal, but there are many other similar cases.
This sort of unscientific spew has no place on HN, except maybe to incur a pile-on to shine a light upon it.
Agreed, absolute garbage. In the opening paragraphs the author claims:
> I’m not that familiar with the trial itself, so I will say nothing beyond noting that if Crews, Predergrast (and Elizabeth Loftus, the recovered-memory expert who endorsed Prendergrast’s book) are right, we have to at least revisit the Sandusky matter.
But then proceeds to write an entire blog about the trial, claiming the victims were coerced by lawyers for financial gain? And that claim is made after reading a medium blog post about a book about concepts related to the trial?
This is a silly post. But to be fair, the author looks like they write thousands of train of thought words on random topics (national chocolate day shares a blog post with Mitch McConnells seizure) where they spew their thoughts, so bad logic is inevitable. I like to polish my blog posts, others don’t - each has pros and cons. This Sandusky post is clearly a con.
There are way too many people why think they are smarter than everyone else just because they take an unpopular/contrarian position, I’ve come to believe it’s just human nature.
We have a Justice system which isn’t perfect, but Sandusky was able to afford the best lawyers, they made their case, they lost. Given the verdict, the stories and the behavior pattern (he did the same thing the other monsters do preying on a specific type), it’s pretty self evident that he’s guilty, attempts to “prove” otherwise rely on peoples inability/laziness to go back to primary sources or experts.
This reminded me of the movie The Hunt from 2012 [1] in which the words of a child gets twisted by social workers and therapists into child molestation accusation.
5 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 26.0 ms ] threadI think there was some recent attempts to revisit/appeal this case. Is that why this is linked?
I'm not super familiar with the case but some of the language used here is super sketchy and sounds more like excuses and victim blaming than an attempt to look at the evidence clearly.
Denouncing recovered memories is precisely how the Baltimore Archdiocese covered up years of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Only utter dirtbags like Paul McHugh [1], who astoundingly still has an ~emeritus position at Hopkins after helping the Archdiocese continue their cover-up, denounce the suppression and later recovery of memories. Such dirtbags are outliers, and there is no legitimate debate about this as far as I'm aware.
Sadly, I can give a personal example of this phenomenon. My brother and I were both subject, from different rooms, to something utterly abhorrent when we were young. For reasons beyond me, other than maybe our age disparity, and the fact he also saw what I only heard, he suppressed what happened and I did not. It was horrible enough that it was only ever discussed once or twice over the intervening decades before, in his 40s, he called me crying, indicating he remembered. Having not seen it myself, there wasn't any detail for me to add or fill in for him in the scant discussions we had, yet he remembered in detail what he had seen. Yes, this is anecdotal, but there are many other similar cases.
This sort of unscientific spew has no place on HN, except maybe to incur a pile-on to shine a light upon it.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._McHugh
> I’m not that familiar with the trial itself, so I will say nothing beyond noting that if Crews, Predergrast (and Elizabeth Loftus, the recovered-memory expert who endorsed Prendergrast’s book) are right, we have to at least revisit the Sandusky matter.
But then proceeds to write an entire blog about the trial, claiming the victims were coerced by lawyers for financial gain? And that claim is made after reading a medium blog post about a book about concepts related to the trial?
This is a silly post. But to be fair, the author looks like they write thousands of train of thought words on random topics (national chocolate day shares a blog post with Mitch McConnells seizure) where they spew their thoughts, so bad logic is inevitable. I like to polish my blog posts, others don’t - each has pros and cons. This Sandusky post is clearly a con.
We have a Justice system which isn’t perfect, but Sandusky was able to afford the best lawyers, they made their case, they lost. Given the verdict, the stories and the behavior pattern (he did the same thing the other monsters do preying on a specific type), it’s pretty self evident that he’s guilty, attempts to “prove” otherwise rely on peoples inability/laziness to go back to primary sources or experts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_(2012_film)