It's a long read, but how about this for proper investigative journalism. Anna Raccoon has read through and analysed (you know, like journalists are supposed to...) the Leavitt report on an aspect of the Saville witch-hunt.
We are unable to see much of the evidence against Saville, nor can we know who is making the allegations of course, because of their nature. But why are these complainants being called 'victims' already, by the press and by the police? Why are allegations, after someones death, being called 'crimes', without challenge?
Read through the comments as well. Some of the comenters know the people involved, and frequented internet forums where the women (particularly one) discussed the issue for a year before it came out in the press. Each element of the story is examined.
Reading this was like watching the film Twelve Angry Men. A case that initially looks indisputable slowly crumbles as the evidence is actually looked at, item by item. Quite gripping.
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A further note in this sorry tale. Another blogger was a little skeptical when the Sunday Express ran a main headline screaming in big capitals: "SAVILLE WAS PART OF SATANIC RING". It turns out that the lone source for this story was a psychotherapist named Valerie Sinason who has relentlessly fed the press stories including "hair-raising accounts of diabolical rituals", she "was, indeed still is, the leading proponent of the view that SRA is widespread in Britain".
These stories tend to be quite hard to verify, and should perhaps be treated with a little caution. If you think I'm being unfair, here is a sample of Sinason's very scientific method from an interview in the Observer newspaper. Read it and weep:
'Sinason insists she doesn't use recovered-memory techniques. "I'm an analytic therapist," she says. "The idea of that is someone showing, through their behaviour, that all sorts of things might have happened to them." Signs that a patient has suffered satanically include flinching at green or purple objects, the colours of the high priest and priestess's robes. "And if someone shudders when they enter a room, you know it's not ordinary incest."
Another warning, she says, is the patient saying: "I don't know." "What they really mean is: 'I can't bear to say.'" A patient who "overpraises" their family is also suspicious. "The more insecure you are, the more you praise. 'Oh my family was wonderful! I can't remember any of it!'"'
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