Police 'confident' slain neighbor didn't molest tot

[madmusic]

POSTED: 2:13 p.m. EDT, October 19, 2006

FAIRFIELD, Connecticut (AP) -- Police have concluded that a 2-year-old girl was not molested by a neighbor whom the girl's father is accused of stabbing to death in rage, a police official said Thursday.

Jonathon Edington, a 29-year-old attorney from Fairfield, is charged with killing Barry James on August 28 after his wife told him their daughter had indicated James touched her inappropriately "in the starry night," police said.

Edington pleaded not guilty last week. (Full story)

"We're confident this 2-year-old was not molested," said Capt. Gary MacNamara. "We are confident in our investigation that Mr. Edington did in fact kill Mr. James. We are as confident in our investigation that Mr. James did not molest the Edingtons' daughter."

MacNamara confirmed that investigators interviewed the girl but declined to release further details.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/10/19/neighbor.stabbed.ap/index.html

So, did his wife set him up or misunderstand their daughter? Was there some other reason for the murder?

[notadmblnd]

1. How do you interview a two year old?

My great neice will be two in a couple of months. She's just starting to talk. Ma, is for grandma, Ca is for cat, ha is for hot. She hasn't learned yes or no yet, but she can gesture with her head for yes and no. But other than that, she's not speaking. And the parents of this 2 yr old, where were they while this alledged molestaion was taking place?

[madmusic]

2. It varies.

Some can speak fairly well, and she is older now. But you have a good point. How did the mother "interview" the 2-year-old before the murder and come to that conclusion?

[happyslug]

7. First you get them to look at dolls.

And see what happens when they see an anatomical correct doll. Most two years old will not say a thing, most abused children will got to the male anatomical Correct doll and mention something that is what X has under his pants (Some children will go to the anatomical correct doll just because it is different, but rarely mentions the difference as it relate to men in their lives). The questioner have to be careful NOT to imply anything to the child (And these have to be taped to make sure no implication was made that the child picked up). For example if a child picked up a male anatomically correct doll and says that is how "Daddy" is built and then is ask how she knows. If she says something to do with her, further questions are asked, if she says she once saw him go to bathroom in the woods, the questions go in a different direction.

After a couple of hours a trained professional can see if the child had been abused. It takes a while for the questioner has to be careful. Anyway that is how my county CYS do such questioning (Through when I was involved with Defense Against CYS, they did not tape the interviews, but that has changed since the early 1990s based on cases where the Judges could NOT determine if the Child had been "coached" for the only record they had of the interview was the testimony of the Questioners).

[notadmblnd]

8. well, our little two year old is into taking things apart.

its' what she does. If you hand her a jar, she'll take the lid off, if you hand her a bucket full of chalk, it all has to come out, if you hand her a doll she'll take the cloths off. Hand her a full box of kleenex and she'll empty it, course she'll pretend to blow her nose to justify it. And for gosh sakes don't even hand her a sticker book or anything with decals on it (I pity the poor Barbie car). She absolutely hates stickers, even items with price tags on them in the stores, they just have to come off. I wonder what all those stickers have done to the poor child?

[woo me with science]

24. Exactly. See my post below. nt

[woo me with science]

23. Actually

there is great controvery and caution now about using anatomically correct dolls, precisely because most children, abused or not, will be fascinated by them (they are so different from the dolls most children have) and experiment with the features and even how they fit together.

I think the newer anatomically correct dolls are less blatant and extreme in their anatomical correctness, but there is still a great deal of controversy about using them at all, based on science suggesting that their use may yield a lot of false positives.

Your statement, "After a couple hours a trained professional can see if the child has been abused" is NOT true. There is never certainty in these things, although techniques are improving. Law enforcement (with exceptions, of course) tends to be ahead of the therapy profession in these matters, because they have made more of an effort to standardize techniques and have usually attempted to do so through contact with university departments that have actually done research in these matters.

People who take their children to a therapist to determine possible abuse are much more likely to run into poorly trained therapists who are still operating on the flawed information they learned during the height of the 1980's-90's sexual abuse hysteria (i.e., with the McMartin trials and repressed memory/satanic ritual abuse garbage). The abuse of anatomically correct dolls and leading questions in interviewing hit a peak then. So did the naive belief that children never misremember or even lie about such things, or that interviewers have a magic way to tell *for certain* in these cases whether the charges are true, based only on such interviews. It took the horrendous and rampant false accusations during the 80's and 90's for professionals to start to become aware of how suggestible children really are, and how malleable memory really is. It is still very much a developing science.

Interviews are one component of a range of evidence used in these cases. Anatomically correct dolls and interviewing techniques used with children are absolutely NOT definitive tools in the way that, say, DNA evidence is. Such evidence must always be viewed with caution and in the context of other available evidence. It is a sad truth, but there are still a lot of therapists, and probably some police departments, that are still operating on the fallacious information they were taught about sexual abuse, memory, and evidence in the 1980's and 90's.

[AlCzervik]

13. they didn't release further details so my guess is that she examined

i would think they could tell if something happened, i don't want to graphic here but i think you know what i mean.

[struggle4progress]

17. Cases are often made from physical evidence, which can be ..

.. unequivocal.

[madmusic]

20. Most often, no physical evidence, I think.

And this alleged happening that didn't happen allegedly happened long before.

In the worst cases there can be permanent damage, I guess.

Most amazing, most who posted about this case here said they would have done or been tempted to do the same thing if their wife told them their daughter said something similar.

Guess that was 3 or 4 weeks ago.

[struggle4progress]

25. Maybe. But I have doubts about how a two-year old toddler's testimony

could be reliably taken as evidence. Symptoms such as bruising or infection, on the other hand, are clear indicators. Aside from physical evidence, or catching a perpetrator in the act, it's unclear to me how anyone could be certain in general.

[greccogirl]

3. Don't they tell us

all the time that kids don't lie about this?

[madmusic]

4. Maybe the mother interpreted it through her moral panic lens.

Who knows where the little girl got it from. TV? Conversation over a news item?

On the other hand, the whole story could be a lie and the little girl didn't say any of it.

[greccogirl]

10. Who knows? But I think

this is a good reason to always not be so stringent on stuff like this. Remember that famous day care center molestation that turned out to be nothing?

[JoFerret]

15. even better reason to outlaw guns

.

[madmusic]

19. He didn't use a gun.

[mitchum]

27. Uh, you might want to advocate outlawing knives BECAUSE HE...

DIDN'T USE A GUN

[benEzra]

34. Yes, confiscating the guns in our family's gun safe...

would surely have prevented this stabbing... :eyes:

[Richard Steele]

21. As if there were only one...

When, in fact, it eventually turned out
that EVERY "infamous day care molestation"
was NOTHING.

[LostinVA]

32. Bingo n/t

[LostinVA]

31. I think your last line nails it

I'm really wondering if the mom made it up for some reason...

[Ken Burch]

35. Like in "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle"?

nt.

[Evergreen Emerald]

6. a 2 year old?

How would a two-year old have the world knowledge to lie about something like that?

[greccogirl]

11. Not necessarily a lie,

but repeating something they heard?

[LostinVA]

33. Right -- or just making stuff up thinking it's a game, or answering

leading questions.

And, kids DO lie about stuff: if they think they may be in trouble, or to please an adult. Even kids that young. Lying doesn't have to be malicious.

[LostinVA]

30. It's been proven kids do "lie" about this all the time

Especially when certain questioning techniques are used.

McMartin, Little Rascals, etc. The Little Rascals case is especially interesting, because ZERO kids that were taken outside the area to a therapist in Greensboro reported sexual abuse. Every child taken to a local therapist with questionable techniques reported abuse. The therapist in Greensboro also realized that being told a kid had been taken on a plane and thrown into a tank of sharks had to do with imagination and leading questions, not truth.

Alot of lives have been ruined by people flying off the handle about this issue -- and in this case, some died.

[Anakin Skywalker]

5. Vigilante Justice Seems to Be On the Rise.

[razors edge]

9. good thing he didn't have a gun.

somebody could get hurt.

:sarcasm:

[anotherdrew]

12. yeah, the bullet might have gone through the walls and hit his wife

good thing indeed.

[razors edge]

14. Funny, the report said nothing

of the deceased having a wife.

[anotherdrew]

16. thats not it

I mean the theoretical gunman's wife. Another way: maybe they argue, she tries to take the gun from him, "it just goes off" and then...?

[razors edge]

18. thats not it either

I mean the dead man theoretically using a gun to kill a deranged man bursting into his house to kill him with a butcher knife in front of his helpless, elderly parents. And surviving an unwarranted attack.

That would be a bad thing?

Or maybe not theoretically since he is actually dead.

[anotherdrew]

22. yeah a holstered gun at all times around the house is safe

he probably wouldn't have had time to go for it, load it, etc. unless it was on his person ready to go.

Still I agree it's too bad he didn't have a chance to successfully defend himself.

what a terrible event, so much awfully bad news these days

[razors edge]

29. mine

is loaded, in the headboard, I don't own a holster, and an unloaded gun is like owning a car with an empty gas tank. safety is an issue with anything, but like the victim I have no children in the house and I restrict access to the room with locks when I am not there.

Using a gun to defend myself is the last thing i want to do, well, maybe next to the last.

[mitchum]

26. The wife should be tried for accessory to murder

[madmusic]

28. Or murder

When this first happened and everyone was jumping for joy, I speculated that it was possible the wife was getting them both out of the way.

No, didn't really believe it and was only making the point that we didn't know the facts yet. Turns out it is very possible now.