A case of dominoes?

Within a few weeks, CII [Children's Institute International] had more than 100 families voluntarily lined up for appointments. "The phones were ringing off the hook," one staffer said. CII sometimes saw up to four families a day, a situation that lasted for several months. By mid 1984, nearly 400 children had been interviewed; of these, [Kee] MacFarlane and other CII social workers filed reports indicating their suspicions that 369 had been molested. Of those, many attended the preschool long before [Ray] Buckey even began work there - some, in fact, while he was still in high school.

What's not commonly known is that with the exception of one child, all of the former preschoolers denied being molested at the school until after they were interviewed at CII. "The case was made at CII, not at the preschool," said Danny Davis, Buckey's attorney. That child who made a claim was dropped from the case because her allegations were considered too bizarre. [...]

[Dr. Roland] Summit was author of The Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, considered by many a bible in the field. In it, Summit presented the cagey, "children don't lie" theory: If, according to Summit, a child does not disclose abuse, it's because the child is denying it, and if the child admits to being abused but later recants, it's because he's reacting to adult disapproval. "Summit's theory left no room for the possibility that abuse had never occurred," says Lee Coleman, a Berkeley child psychiatrist who often testifies in child-abuse cases. [...]

Kee MacFarlane moved to San Diego last year, when she married a prosecutor in that city's district attorney's office. She continues to work part-time at CII, developing materials and training procedures for professionals in the child-abuse field.

source: Article 'A Case of Dominoes?' by Mary A. Fischer; Los Angeles Magazine; October 1989