Ross E. Cheit is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.^[1]

Since the 1990s, Cheit has cataloged strongly-corroborated cases of recovered memories of child sexual abuse (CSA) at the Recovered Memory Archive.^[2][3]

The Witch Hunt Narrative

Cheit reappraised the evidence, proceedings, and media coverage of CSA cases widely publicized as 'witch hunts' in the book The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children.^[4]

Cheit argues that many of the initial accusations made in the day-care sex-abuse hysteria cases of the 1980s, including the Country Walk case and the McMartin preschool trial,^[5][6] were credible.^[7][8] Furthermore, Cheit argues that media portrayals of CSA cases as witch hunts have led to undue public skepticism toward well-evidenced cases of abuse.^[9][10] Portrayals critiqued include PBS Frontline's Did Daddy Do It?, the Academy Award-nominated documentary Capturing The Friedmans, and Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker's book Satan's Silence: The Making of a Modern American Witch-Hunt.

Anne Grant of The Providence Journal called The Witch-Hunt Narrative "a tour de force against the witch-hunt fabulists and those suggestible enough to believe them".^[11] Emile Whitaker of The Sociological Review praised the book's "empirical finesse" and "obsessive attention to detail", but remarked that it struggled "to situate these meticulous findings within a broader critical context".^[12]

James M. Wood, Debbie Nathan, Richard Beck, and Keith Hampton criticized that Cheit's work "has omitted or mischaracterized important facts or ignored relevant scientific information" and "is often factually inaccurate and tends to make strong assertions without integrating relevant scholarly and scientific information."^[13] KC Johnson wrote, "Even as [Cheit's] book gives every benefit of the doubt to the investigators and prosecutors ... much of Cheit’s evidence nonetheless portrays the prosecutions as massive miscarriages of justice."^[14]

Biography

Cheit graduated from Williams College (1977, political economy and a coordinate major in environmental studies) before earning a Juris Doctor degree and PhD in public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Before working for Duane, Lyman, and Seltzer, Cheit clerked for Justice Hans Linde of the Oregon Supreme Court. He joined the faculty at Brown in 1987,^[1] and retired from Brown following the 2023 academic year.^[3]

For fifteen years, Cheit was a member of the Rhode Island Ethics Commission, including eight years as chairman.^[1][15]

References