UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast
Jason Berry
Innocent people persecuted by a legal system out of control? In The Witch-Hunt Narrative, Ross E. Cheit argues the media and courts have gone too far in dismissing evidence of abuse.
In 1993, a young man dying of AIDS gave a tearful interview on CNN after filing a lawsuit alleging that Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin had sexually abused him many years before. Bernardin defended himself eloquently at a press conference. Several months later, when reporters unearthed information about plaintiff Steven Cook that cast doubt on his veracity, he withdrew the suit, saying he could not trust his memory.
Newsrooms turned on a dime. Time’s cover pictured Freud as a disassembling picture puzzle. National coverage shifted from a focus on bishops concealing predators to “false memory,” hysteria fueled by the suggestibility of young victims, faulty investigators, quack therapists, and a court system hard-pressed to safeguard presumption of innocence.
In 1996, Philip Jenkins, then a history professor at Pennsylvania State University, argued in Pedophiles and Priests that the earlier coverage of clergy abuse was a “putative” crisis, one “constructed” by the media and church critics.
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