Junk Science about Anal Scarring
Boys of the boys in this
case had anal scarring. Ms. Manning dismisses this evidence with this remarkable
statement: "But subsequent research into the appearance of normal, non-abused
children's genitals cases doubt on this testimony." Ms. Manning offers
no source. That is because, quite frankly, it is pure junk science. McCann’s
famous research on "normals" had nothing to do with anal scarring.
As the pediatric specialist testified in this case, both boys have multiple
lacerations inside their anuses (tr.7: 1161-70). In both cases, the lesions
were in a pattern considered by the American Academy of Pediatrics to be "diagnostic
of penetration by a foreign object into the anus." (tr. 7:1171-2). Ms.
Manning's suggestion that anal scarring occurs in "normal, non-abused
children" is unsupported, junk science.
Ms. Manning also claims that "a wound that size would leave a child screaming
in pain and bleeding profusely." But Ms. Manning provides no citation
or authority for this assertion. The claim that such abuse would necessarily
maim or severely injure a child is utterly fantastic. It belongs in the annals
of folklore, not science. The scientific literature supports the conclusion
that Ms, Manning avoids: one study, which found a greater frequency of anorectal
injuries in boys than in girls, nevertheless concluded that 45.5% of male
sex-abuse victims do not sustain such injuries. Another study summarized in
the same article found: "two-thirds of children under 6 year of age [in
Rimza and Neggerman’s report] had normal physical exams" despite
the abuse.
Finally, Ms. Manning tries to raise doubt by scornfully asking whether "such painful wounds [could] go unnoticed" by the mother. But Ms. Manning's snide question is resoundingly repudiated by testimony that she never mentions. What Ms. Manning leaves out entirely is the evidence introduced at trial concerning two other incidents in the boys’ medical history while Mr. Halsey was their bus driver. Once, their mother was so worried that both twins had itchy and irritated anuses that she discussed the matter with their pediatrician. The doctor told her it was either pinworms or sexual abuse (tr. 1147, lines 1-13). The mother considered the possibility of sexual abuse and eliminated it because she not imagine the possibility at school or at home. Understandably, she apparently didn't even consider "en route" to be a possibility.) As a result, the boys took medicine for pin worms. There was also a time that year that one of the boys came home badly bruised on the legs. He said he had been bruised on the playground. He later told the police that Mr. Halsey had hit him with the baseball bat. His medical chart documents the bruises (tr. 1119).
In short, Ms. Manning provides no substantive response to the fact that these boys sustained the kind of anal injuries that they described Halsey inflicting. Instead, she offers the epitome of junk science: the unsupported assertion that anal lacerations are "normal" based on a study that involved genital skin tags and flesh colors and nothing about anal scarring. All she can then muster to impugn findings "diagnostic of anal lacerations" is that the insurance defense lawyers quibbled with the doctor's terminology and technique-not with his overall conclusions. If they did, Ms. Manning would cite those statements chapter and verse. Instead, she cites defense legal papers in the vaguest way possible ("inter alia"), apparently hoping that nobody will ask why the defense settled the case and why the same defense lawyer who drew a line in the sand in the Baran case, agreed to a substantial settlement in this case. Perhaps the insurance defense lawyer is also part of the grand conspiracy required to entertain Ms. Manning's explanation of this case--a conspiracy so grand it extended to the police in Florida, to a family who lived in Maine, to the doctors hired by the defense who agreed that the boys had been abused, and to three sets of parents and a host of other professionals.