<p>At first it appeared to be the biggest child abuse scandal in American history, setting off a nation-wide panic. After three separate trials it seemed like a hoax. But could it have been both?</p>

At first it appeared to be the biggest child abuse scandal in American history, setting off a nation-wide panic. After three separate trials it seemed like a hoax. But could it have been both?

THE MCMARTIN FAMILY TRIALS

However, the question still hovers: how, at that time, was it possible to provoke people, presenting them sexual games with pre-school children as something appealing, while today, the same “provocation” would immediately give rise to an outburst of moral disgust? After all, child sexual harassment is one of THE notions of Evil today. Without directly taking sides in this debate, one should read it as a sign of the change in our mores from the utopian energies of the 60s and early 70s to the contemporary stale Political Correctness, in which every authentic encounter with another human being is denounced as a victimizing experience. What we are unable even to conjecture today is the idea of REVOLUTION, be it sexual or social. Perhaps, in today’s stale times of the proliferating pleas for tolerance, one should take the risk of recalling the liberating dimension of such “excesses.”

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THE MCMARTIN FAMILY TRIALS

THE MCMARTIN FAMILY TRIALS