Dr. Roland Summit’s Testimony
At the time of trial, Dr. Roland Summit was a community
psychiatrist for Los Angeles County, California. His credentials as an expert in child sex
abuse were questionable, although he did have an impressive record as a consultant for
television networks, interested in doing episodes of situation comedies on the subject of
child sexual abuse. (9/10/85, 204)
Dr. Summit testified about a syndrome that he had
"discovered" and written about several years earlier called the Child Sexual
Abuse Accommodation Syndrome or CSAAS. Dr. Summit posited, based on no underlying support,
that children who are sexually abused typically share the following characteristics: 1)
they do not spontaneously report the abuse and, in fact, often deny it when asked about
it; 2) they reveal the abuse only if they are questioned about it intensively and in a
highly supportive atmosphere with no one expressing any doubt or disbelief; 3) they
exhibit one or more of a constellation of "accommodating" behaviors; 4) they
frequently recant their accusations out of a perceived need to protect their loved ones
from pain. See n. 11, supra. The constellation of accommodation behaviors includes:
bedwetting, having nightmares, acting out behavior, aggression, passivity, regressive
behavior, mature behavior, shrinking from adults, great affection towards adults.
Dr. Summit told the jury, based again on no empirical evidence
whatsoever, that people often do not believe children’s reports of abuse because the
reported events seem too hideous to be true. Dr. Summit explained, however, that, though
seemingly incredible, these descriptions only seemed unbelievable because the average
person was incapable of thinking the way a child sex abuser thought. Child sex abusers
loved to humiliate as well as rape children and would stop at nothing -- urinating and
defecating on children were just part of the physical aspect of the conduct that gratified
sex abusers. (9/10/85, 211-218)
Dr. Summit also told the jury, again based on no empirical
evidence at all, that child sex abuse, including the use of satanic rituals, was rampant
in the United States. Adults refused to notice signs of it and expressed disbelief when
told of it, and actively guarded themselves against believing that such things could
happen because to do so would invade upon the safe world they imagined they were raising
their children in. It was simply too scary for adults to accept the fact that their most
trusted friends and family members might very well be violating society’s most
important rules by molesting children. Nonetheless, adults who could not accept this fact
were in denial. (Id., 212-215).
It was in this atmosphere and upon this evidence, so much of
which was later shown scientifically to be unsupportable, unreliable, and inadmissible,
that Francisco Fuster-Escalona was convicted.
| Back to Mainpage
| Back to Top |
