INTRODUCTION

    This is either about a patient-screwing shrink who was soft on child molesters and tampered with witnesses and evidence, or a psychologist who said prosecutors routinely hustled bogus cases of sex abuse because, given the hysteria over the issue, they were easy wins.  And how they hit back by helping a lawyer file a bogus sex malpractice case against him and framing him on trumped up charges of tampering with a witness and evidence.

    I practiced in Newport, Oregon in the 1980's when sound concern about child sex abuse went bananas.  Salem, 1692.  In spades.  Honest people became irrational and dishonest opportunists had a heyday.

    Self-anointed experts hooked goofy claims to batty myths: Children don’t lie about sex abuse; they can’t make up stories about it; if you can imagine it, it happened.  It was a kook magnet.  Everybody got into the act.

    Child abuse became an industry.  Dishonest prosecutors parlayed the role of Avenging Angel into judgeships as they hawked blatantly wacko stories to gullible juries.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

    They rammed peanut butter and teddy bears up six year olds’ behinds!  And knives and forks and spoons and burning candles!  Chucked them in a hot air balloon and said they’d lob them out if they told.

    They forced children to join them in a naked dance around the room and watch as they cut off the head of the class bunny!  They shot and killed the family dog in the living room.

    They pooped and peed on them!  And on the flag.  They made them eat chocolate frosted poop and pee sandwiches and drink blood.  They made them poop and pee on each other.

    They threatened to toss them to the sharks in the farm pond if they told.  And took them in a submarine to the bottom of a pond out in the desert.  They chopped up babies and made children reach in to grab their beating hearts.  They made them pray to the devil and have sex with animals, and dance around a fire, and witness animal sacrifices in a secret room under the floor of a polka dotted silo.  The teacher made them watch as he shot 20 deer, 20 horses, 30 chickens, and assorted rabbits.  And he hung a cowhide with a still beating heart on the fence.  The 63-year-old lady threw a letter opener and killed a pony 20 feet away.

    They took them to a graveyard and made them open coffins and watch as they cut a bleeding arm off a corpse!  They hung them naked upside down in a refrigerator.  They made one have sex with a dog and deliver a half-man half-dog baby!  They made them watch people murdered and put in a meat grinder!  Day after day after day! ¹

    Instant experts popped up faster than flies on a dead fish.  Caseworkers, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists who knew zip about kids spouted pap for big bucks and fifteen minutes of fame.

    Prosecutors wanted easy wins, mental health types wanted a piece of the action.  They often lied about or distorted what they claimed kids said in interviews they didn’t record.  Or recorded and "lost" or destroyed when kids didn’t stick to the script.  Psychologists anxious for state contracts wrote phony personality evaluations geared to what prosecutors wanted.  They relied on "clinical intuition" and junk science (i.e., anatomically correct dolls, penile peter meters, ink blots, drawings, sand play, and polygraphs, to name a few diagnostic techniques).

    The clincher, when these scam artists couldn’t find clear signs of abuse, or anything they could twist into a sign of abuse, was “findings consistent with.”  As in “The child wet the bed: this is consistent with abuse.”  This incantation was (and is) used to tie in everything from nail biting, shyness, thumb sucking, doll play, aggressiveness, silliness, nightmares, temper tantrums, anxiety, masturbation, confusion, saying “naughty” words, decreased (or increased) appetite, affectionate (or unaffectionate) behavior and curiosity about sex, to child sexual abuse.

    I was one of a handful of psychologists in the U.S. who testified for the defense in cases of alleged child sex abuse in 1984-87.  I claimed most charges were contrived, judges routinely let prosecutors suborn perjury, and most (over 90% of 600-plus I've examined) personality evaluations done for the state were bogus.

    I consulted in over 20 day care center and over 350 divorce or custody cases where sex abuse, satanic rituals, etc., were charged, and I audio- or videotaped interviews with over 200 children.  Many of these interviews were done in a room with a one-way mirror, with parents and prosecutors on the other side.  In all but two cases, the kids denied statements mental health workers and prosecutors claimed they made in unrecorded interviews.  Juries which heard or saw the tapes acquitted.

    Typical example: an 8-year-old towhead: "No way, Jose!  Richard didn't kill the horse, poop on the floor, pour chocolate on it and make me eat it.  Those things never happened.  The fat lady with the thick glasses kept trying to make me say they did."  Like many sex-abuse "experts" who won't tape their interviews, the lady (who found every one of the 65 kids she examined in this day care center case was sexually abused) lied about what the child said.  The Michigan day care center owner sentenced to 50 years on the basis of this lady’s testimony was released when the case was overturned on appeal.

    I made no friends when I said caseworkers and psychologists in these cases often lied about interview and personality test results.  Or, that prosecutors routinely took advantage of the hysteria to file bogus charges to jack themselves up the professional ladder.  I wrote an article accusing local prosecutors of doing this.

    A few days later, they gave a former secretary who couldn’t account for over $30,000 missing from the office immunity from charges of theft in exchange for information about my patients.  They also gave immunity to another secretary who’d embezzled money from the office in exchange for information about patients, and for stealing patients' files for them and an Oregon lawyer.  Unknown to me, she’d also listed relatives as bogus patients and deposited the insurance payments in her personal account.

    Prosecutors coordinated efforts to impeach me, to make me look bad to the jury (routine with expert witnesses).  The National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse sent a "Mclver file" throughout the country.  They tracked my speaking engagements.  They pressured the local school district and one college to cancel presentations I was scheduled to give.  Ken Morrow, a distinguished Oregon lawyer, told me Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmeyer threatened to dismiss a lawyer and part-time hearing officer if she used me as an expert witness in a trial.

    A private investigator told me two FBI agents had broken into my office to steal files.  Two agents sat in a car in front of my home for two weeks, questioned my neighbors, and made them understandably goosy by suggesting I was running a child porno ring.  They questioned former patients, even their distant relatives in other states, about me.  An electronics technician found two bugging devices planted in my office.  The Post Office Department opened and copied my mail each night for several months.  They did this without subpoenas.  Prosecutors also got my bank records without subpoenas, and insurance company information with counterfeit subpoenas.  They threatened, and tried to bribe, several former patients to complain about me (none did).

    They helped a lawyer cook up a bogus sex malpractice case and concocted charges of tampering with a witness and evidence against me.

    The malpractice charges gave psychologists whose work I’d called phony an excuse to announce, prior to any hearing, they were going to yank my license.  An assistant AG suggested I "relinquish" my license, or there would be unspecified "problems."  I didn’t.  There were.

    They faked phony criminal charges of tampering with evidence and a witness against me.  They claimed I had a secretary erase a name written at 5:00 PM in an appointment book they said was evidence in a civil trial and rewrite it at 1:00 PM, after first erasing the name there.  Writing and erasing change paper fibers, but none were changed in this case.  That’s it, the whole enchilada!  In spite of this, a daisy chain of lawyers, judges, prosecutors, psychologists, and TV personalities got a lot of mileage out of claiming I was guilty.

    The criminal charges instantly knocked me off the witness chair.  Which is what it was all about.

    I spent the better part of a year in the Oregon State Pen (with over 25 fellow campers who I’d examined on the outside who weren’t too pleased I hadn’t said they were misunderstood and crazy).  At that time, the average stay for non-violent offenders was 32 days.  This troubled the judge in my case, Hugh C. Downer ², so he tacked on another 3 months in county jail because he thought I’d get out of the pen in a month.  He tried to tack on a polygraph exam, but gave up on that when he realized I wouldn’t go along because it was junk science.

    Each time prison officials started to release me, prosecutor Josh Marquis called to argue against it.  Several friendly guards later told me he claimed I liked little boys.  After I was released and on parole, he told my parole officer I owed the county thousands of dollars and was dangerous.

    I didn't have the appointment book at trial.  I'd shown it to my lawyer, who saw the name wasn't erased, and told me to hold onto it so he wouldn't be in the evidence chain.  But come trial time we couldn't find it.  I knew someone had been stealing my office records so I’d asked my wife to hide it along with other patient files I didn’t want the DA to get his hands on.  When the trial came along she’d forgotten where she’d put it.  No fault of hers, it was a confusing time.  By the time she found it (at the bottom of her locker at the local swimming pool) I was a reluctant resident psychologist in cell #169.

    I got a post-conviction trial on the assumption the judge, seeing physical proof the name hadn’t been erased, would realize the “crime” never happened.  He’d step down from the dais, paste a gold star in the middle of my forehead and zap prosecutors for framing me.  I was as naïve as a virgin at a bimbo convention.

    Background: The district attorney (Stapleton) knew law enforcement professionals and lawyers had consulted with me.  He also knew I’d done research which showed the "anatomical dolls" caseworkers and prosecutors used when interviewing children were absolutely worthless as diagnostic tools.  Once, at a Rotary meeting, he asked about one of my patients to no avail.  I knew he wanted a peek at their files; with a search warrant they can take your underwear.  So I destroyed some and hid others.  Doctors have an absolute duty to protect patients’ confidential information.  Besides, I didn’t want to give the jerk the satisfaction.

    During a deposition for the post conviction trial the state witness admitted the alleged erasure wasn't there.  Prosecutrix Bernice Barnett immediately asked for a break.  She went into a huddle with her witness, who then had an epiphany and changed the time of the phantom erasure.  But neither my expert, nor the state's, could find signs of alteration at either time.  (Which, when you come to think about it, is happily unusual.  Appointment books abound in erasures; people cancel, forget, and change appointments all the time.)

    Barnett saw the page and heard her expert say he couldn't find any sign of alteration, but she claimed it was there.  Judge Bob Huckleberry saw the page (he, too, couldn't see an alteration that experts with scientific paraphernalia couldn't see) but said it was there anyway, and upheld the conviction.  State Appellate and Supreme Courts upheld it.  The US Supremes wouldn't review.  They never explain.

    One of the top labs in the world used sophisticated tests and photomicrographic techniques and said it's physically impossible the alterations could have happened (no torn fibers, indentations, traces of carbon).  But no dice.  Once you're locked in by a legal decision, that's it.

    I don't mean this facetiously, but it’s clear even rock hard, tangible proof of judicial dishonesty doesn't qualify as a violation of the constitutional right to a fair trial.

    But there's more than obvious personal concern involved here.  If a reasonably articulate white man with no criminal record, lucky to have been given an education, can't trump judicial dishonesty with palpable, confirmable, in-your-face evidence, what about inarticulate blacks, browns, and po' whites without it?  And, believe me, these are the guys who fuel the prison industry.

    In the best of all possible worlds, I’d get a chance to air their antics in a courtroom.  In the real world, though, I’d be hard pressed to find a judge who’d let me sue an Oregon Supreme Court justice, a District Court judge, and sundry prosecutors.

    The closest I can come to holding them publicly accountable is to lay out their misdeeds in affidavit form.  Individually, and as a group, they broke a number of laws to put me out of business, and violated the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act.  RICO.

    "Racketeer" conjures up images of mumbling Mafia Dons, loan sharks, and hit men.  The Sopranos.  They break the law outright to accomplish their purpose.  But not all racketeers are in organized crime families.  Others might be part of a loosely knit organization of people who don’t necessarily know one another, joined by a common purpose.  They use the law dishonestly to break it.  The Falsettos.

    With a touch of legalese, to prove a RICO violation, evidence has to show:

    The people charged in this document took part in an enterprise which broke a number of laws to put me out of business.  As I testified in various states, they interfered with interstate commerce.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  If one person in the enterprise broke a law in violation of the RICO act, it’s as if they all did it.

    Example: A few years ago some nuts circulated, as revealed truth, a rumor the president of Proctor and Gamble worshiped the devil and gave company profits to The Church of Satan.  These canny Christians based their claims on the P & G logo of a man in the moon with 13 stars.  They saw horns coming out of his head and an array of 6's in the curlicues of his beard and "connected the dots" between the stars to reveal three more 6's.  Devil’s digits.  Which scripture disclosed was the "mark of the Beast."

    They warned followers about the evils of buying P & G soap, diapers and toothpaste lest they give Lucifer a boost.  Although individuals didn’t necessarily know each other, they were an enterprise with a fatwah to put P & G out of business.

    As a hypothetical, let’s say they filed a bogus product liability suit against the company.  Then, they assured a secretary who’d embezzled money from the company she wouldn’t be prosecuted if she stole company files for them.  On top of that, they got the company’s bank records without any legal subpoenas.  And they mailed bogus subpoenas to all the stores that bought P & G products to request copies of their records for an investigation into company ties to the devil.  Say further, that several other believers intercepted and copied P & G mail before it was delivered.

    Imagine they denounced the company on Pat Robertson’s national TV show.  They bribed people to testify that Satan’s soap turned their skin green and gave them post traumatic stress disorder.  Additionally, imagine the group involved True Believer prosecutors and judges who took advantage of their positions to sock it to Satan and put P&G out of business.

    Which is what the folks you’re going to meet in these pages did.  Not a gang of Sopranos as much as a Daisy Chain of Falsettos. ³

¹  These charges are all from actual cases.  We know there are sadistic bastards out there who prey on children.  They deserve every punishment imaginable.  Fortunately, they are a horrible minority.  But most of the charges that arise out of acrimonious divorce and custody cases are false.  And none of the charges of satanic rituals in day care centers are corroborated with solid proof; no missing babies, no underground tunnels, or any other physical evidence.  Even though some people are locked away for life because a prosecutor sold gullible jury members on the notion there was.  [Back]

²  During the course of this trial he grimaced, slapped his hands on the desk, seemed to sleep and yelled.  Once we went into office to confer.  He hollered “OK, get on with it!”   My lawyer (an ex-DA with over 30 years experience) pointed out the court reporter hadn’t yet arrived.  Downer kept yelling as the lawyer explained it was necessary to have everything transcribed.  She came, the lawyer made his statement, and we started to walk back into the courtroom.  Downer swung up out of his chair and around the desk so fast his robe swished several pencils and some paper onto the floor.  He slammed the door behind us and against my shoulder.  On my lawyer’s advice, I filed a complaint with the judicial committee.  Downer denied everything and they dropped it.  At one point in this wacky trial 7 people volunteered affidavits they saw Downer repeatedly signal the prosecutor to object.  Several people approached me on a break to say “Bill, you’re the shrink, what’s the matter with this guy?”  A few months later prosecutors in his district thought his behavior so disturbing they refused to present cases in front of him.  [Back]

³  All the charges in the affidavit are supported by documents and testimony.  The exhibits are in a 196 page book with, for the most part, four reduced documents on each exhibit page.  Far too much to include in this website.  Interested parties can obtain a copy by sending a request and postal money order for $50.00 to cover copying, handling and postage to Black Deeds, PO Box 49 , Dundas, MN 55019.  [Back]