Witch Hunt

You will have read other comments, obviously this was a travesty on every front for each family and everyone affected.

I was disappointed that it did not go in to any detail as to WHY the police just knocked on their doors with warrants and took their children away.

Who made the decision to just arrest these people and on what grounds - I think that's a question anyone would ask after watching it. People somewhere should have been bought to justice, surely!? You would certainly hope so.

Regardless this takes nothing away from a very interesting and shocking insight in to so called justice - replicated all around the world of course.

I would highly recommend watching Witch Hunt. I can only hope these poor people were given millions in compensation and can find some forgiveness.

Bless your souls!

This film chronicles the events which transpired in Kern County (Bakersfield) California, and the dozens of people who were falsely charged with child sexual abuse as part of massive "sex rings". Specifically, the film tells the story of John Stoll, Scott and Brenda Kniffen, Alvin and Debbie McCuan, Jeff Modahl, Jack and Jackie Cummings, Rick and Marcella Pitts.

This film is filled with heroes.

The film makers themselves: for tackling such a difficult, and generally unpopular subject matter, and for their fortitude to stick with the project over more than four years determined to see these stories of injustice told.

Those who were falsely imprisoned, bared down, stood strong, and fought the good fight, no matter how long it took, to see the truth about their innocence told.

Those who were involved as with the police, social services, and the District Attorney's office as children, who now as young adults have been brave enough to come forward with the truth about how those in authority were acting in true "criminal" behavior, and not those accused of sexual abuse.

However, hearing these particular young adults speak of their pain, guilt, trauma, confusion, and remorse over allowing social service workers to convince them to lie when they were children was the most powerful aspect of this film for me.

I have heard many, many stories of false arrest. There is no doubt that the stories of struggle and survival from those falsely accused are moving beyond words. However, hearing the pain and perspective from the different side of those wronged by the justice system; hearing how much these false arrests harmed the children involved, is the most powerful aspect of this new film.

A must see!

Although this film is a powerful indictment of legal injustice, and the criminal destruction of families and lives, much of the ground it covers already was examined by a "Dateline" episode in 2004, where the horrendous persecution of John Stoll and the other Bakersfield unfortunates finally was exposed.

It would be better to look back at the genesis of this vast "moral panic" that so gripped us from the 1980s to early '90s - since the Bakersfield case was but one of many. The most famous, at the time, was the McMartin Day School case in Southern California, in which toddler caregivers were accused of satanism and child sexual abuse on "evidence" that was nothing more than fairy tales spun from thin air. In all, other cases wrecked dozens if not hundreds of persons, mostly one or two people at a time, far from media attention, hauled up on the most outrageous of allegations. As noted in the movie, scars and devastation this nonsense left behind is unhealed today.

There is a reason, I think, why the background of this hysteria is so deliberately obscured: The idea of widespread child abuse, which mutated into fantastic, lurid accusations of "satanism" and ritual murder, was fabricated and popularized by radical feminists in the 1970s as a means of attacking "the patriarchy" that dominated Western society from "our house" to Bauhaus to the White House. Broadcast via indulgent, even solicitous media and academia, most of the country and the world believed adult males committed child sexual abuse as commonly as they wore shoes. In a reversal of how this trendy bit of ugly slander gained traction through incessant publicity and repetition, its progenitors are protected today. The subject merely has been dropped into the memory hole; as relentlessly presented the crazy charge was then, so energetically ignored the entire episode is today. Gloria Steinem and Ms. magazine? Not a subject for discussion. Robin Morgan? Mustn't be interviewed. You want to hold responsible the counterintuitive authors of this toxic blueprint? What are you - reactionary?

For the victims of this genuine witch hunt in Bakersfield, there is another reason this tragic subject isn't the subject of documentaries, films and television miniseries - and rarely mentioned at all except in courageous films like this one, and that's because the working-class people who spoke in drawls and drove pickup trucks were the victims, not the villains.

There isn't enough money in the world to pay back the men and women who were (and were not) featured in this film as the victims of false accusations and imprisonment.

That being said, I do wish the documentary had at least asked some obvious questions. The DA's motive for arrests and convictions was clearly enough stated; get convictions seeming to clear the county of "bad guys" thereby furthering political careers.

But who was doing the arresting? Who was handing down orders to do so? Who decided which people would get arrested and charged? Who was coming up with the elaborate details of these false charges? These questions leave a lot to wonder about. And in a film where you (or at least I) believe what is being put forth, which is the truth of the accused, you want there to be no stone unturned. You don't want there to be any question for the doubter that if the "right" people had been asked the "right" questions, we might have a different result.

Ask the damn questions. Get answers from the people who still may even profit from the long ago verdicts. And if you can't, say so. At least say something about having tried.

Make no mistake - I think this movie does a fantastic job on shedding light on a very dark side of humanity. And It left me wanting to give the most heartfelt hug to ALL the victims (both the charged and the then-children).

Still, other questions include; What of the neighbors and surrounding community? What about family? What about friends or former friends? Why weren't any of them interviewed? What did they think originally? What do they think now in lieu of the reversals of convictions? The first person approach is powerful and poignant. But those prone to the sort of hysteria which prompted this sort of thing to gain ground in the first place will ask, with sword in hand, "why?"

Sean Penn is an accomplished actor, but this documentary in which he is not seen, is unquestionably the most important film of his distinguished career. In the 1980s, a Satanic abuse panic spread throughout the United States, the most notable examples of which were McMartin and Bakersfield. The latter started as allegations of regular child sexual abuse, but grew into lurid tales of Satanism. One man was accused of murdering his son; the fact that the boy was very much alive did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the witchfinders.

Any claim of sexual abuse that includes women should automatically be suspect; one woman is passable, but a group of them? They just don't do that sort of thing, yet the fantasies persist to this day. These poor people were sentenced to dozens and in some cases hundreds of years in prison after being convicted on hundreds of charges on no evidence worthy of the name.

Jeff Modahl spent 15 years behind bars; he was freed only after a tape came to light of a therapist, (so-called) and law enforcement coaching one of the young non-victims. John Stoll served 20 years, being freed on his 61st birthday. Even more sadly, two of those accused died in prison without clearing their names.

"Witch Hunt" includes much archive footage, interviews with parents, children (some now with children of their own), and some comments from the unrepetent persecutors who claim there was no actual witch hunt.

This documentary is more relevant than ever at the time of review in light of the ongoing persecution and wilful miscarriages of justice being enacted here in the UK.