RITUAL ABUSE CASES IN
PRESCOTT, ONTARIO, CANADA

Sponsored link.

Overview, with no solid conclusion:

Although Prescott and its surrounding rural area has a sparse population density, about 120 area adults were alleged to have committed heinous crimes against children in an near that town, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Following the precedent of a similar case in Martensville, SK, we will call this the "Prescott Nightmare."

There are three obvious explanations for this group of cases. All qualify for the term Nightmare:

We have insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion about whether massive numbers of incidences of abuse actually happened at Prescott.

Prescott Nightmare may well have put a dangerous, repeat sexual predator behind bars. But we have a hunch that most or all of the other defendants are innocent. If so, then the convictions represent an horrendous miscarriages of justice. In terms of numbers of innocent people imprisoned, it might be a "world-class" failure of the justice system. Yet it has received very little attention in the media. We hope that the exposure of the MVMO hoax in nearby Cornwall will cause people to ask searching questions about the Prescott Nightmare.

Comparison of the Prescott ritual abuse case to others in North America:

There were dozens of MVMO (Multi-Victims, Multi-Offenders) cases in North America from early 1980s to the mid 1990s. They have generally fallen into one of two types:

In most of these cases, improper interview techniques caused young children to disclose abusive events that never happened. Convictions were often facilitated by defective medical examinations and lab analyses. Cooler heads eventually prevailed; almost all of the alleged perpetrators have had their cases reviewed and have been released from prison. Not so in Prescott.

There have been two apparently unrelated Canadian MVMO cases. Both happened in the county of Stormont-Dundas-Glengary in Eastern Ontario. Both followed the Wenatchee format, but with unique differences:

However, the defendants in Prescott did not have the support systems that those in Wenatchee benefited from:

The Prescott defendants did not have this type of support. Perhaps as a result, the conviction rate was over 90%.

The Prescott Nightmare:

Prescott is a small town of about 5,000 population, in eastern Ontario Canada. It lies on the north shore of the St. Lawrence river/seaway. It is directly across the river from Ogdensburg, NY, and only 44 miles/73 km south-west of Cornwall - the site of another MVMO case.

The Prescott Nightmare started in 1989-AUG. Like the other North American cases, the numbers of accusations quickly exploded. Children disclosed stories of being abused in a basement by adults who wore masks and sheets. They reported being raped, cut with knives, forced to drink blood. They were locked in a dungeon with a trap door. ₆ According to Elaine Scott, Executive Director, National Crime Prevention Council, many in the Prescott area wanted the entire matter "swept under the carpet". She is reported as saying that no consideration was shown for the victims of the abuse and it was only through the persistence of police and certain politicians that the investigation took place. ₁₃

The local police and child protection services were overwhelmed. A task force, Project Jericho was organized to handle the cases. Project Jericho was "a unique intervention model and was the first child sexual abuse investigation in Canada to have police and social workers working together as a team. It has become a model." ₇ The project name was derived from the book of Joshua in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). Joshua fought a battle in Jericho, Canaan. Joshua was the name of an infant who was allegedly the victim of a human sacrifice at Prescott. ₈ No hard evidence ever surfaced that such a murder actually happened. No birth records were ever found. When the smoke cleared, there were 162 alleged victims, and about 120 alleged perpetrators uncovered.

Staffing for the Project was greatly reduced at the end of 1992. Project personnel wrote a report "From Crisis to Coordination," in 1995. ₉ It suggested that the situation in Prescott was not unique -- that massive levels of multi-generational sexual and ritual abuse could be found in almost any similar town across Canada. Their report contained a section which attempted to prove that young children who disclose sexual abuse rarely lie. The authors did not seem to be aware of late breaking developments in the field of child interrogation. As Project Jericho was being wound down, American and Canadian researchers were beginning to publish studies that revealed that young children frequently disclose abuse that never happened, if they are subjected to direct and repeated questioning. _10,11 It is probable that the Prescott children were interviewed in this way, because it was the standard technique in the late 1980s.

At the time that the report was published, 65 adults had been charged with 376 crimes against children.

Can the truth ever be found?

One method of ferreting out the truth might be to conduct polygraph tests (aka "lie detector" exams) A number of the adults who have been found guilty and who claim that they are innocent could be tested. Although a single "lie detector" test gives an incorrect answer about 15% of the time, a test on three individuals could lower the uncertainty to less than 1% that at least one of the three was not guilty -- beyond a reasonable doubt. If most or almost all of the alleged perpetrators were found to be innocent, then one could conclude that a great injustice had been done.

A second approach might be to determine if there are in fact two populations of alleged perpetrators in Prescott:

It may be that Francois is a sexual predator who operated in total isolation from the other adults involved in Project Jericho, victimizing only teenagers. An analysis of the ages of the victims at the time of the alleged offenses might reveal whether these are two separate populations. In the "classic" MVMO hoax, the children are all young -- many of preschool age; none are in their teens.

Internet and book references: