1.7 MIL AWARDED TO KELLERS BY D.A. RUBBERSTAMPED EXONERATION; MEDIA PUSHES "WITCH-HUNT" NARRATIVE, SRA/CHILD TRAFFICKING/PEDOGATE DENIAL

Whether you are on the side of the prosecution or the defense, the Fran and Dan Keller case may very well be the greatest miscarriage of justice we have seen in child sexual assault cases so far this century. If their exoneration is unjust, the $1.7 million in taxpayer money the Kellers will soon receive only adds a monstrous insult to the victims, their parents and the public. This result was obtained by a relentless high profile defense lawyer who worked for free and also ran the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Numerous appeals over many years whittled down the prosecution's case without retrial, and the defense finally hit pay dirt with the installation of a brand new D.A. who acted to exonerate the Kellers before her bottom had barely warmed the seat of her brand new office chair.

Is overturning cold cases and media pumping the Satanic Panic narrative going to be the establishment's favored method of pushback against the public's growing awareness of child sex trafficking rings embedded in elite circles? 

The term "Satanic Panic" has been curated much like the term "conspiracy theorist" to immediately cause denial, disbelief and mocking of those who seriously discuss both Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) and non-SRA child assault and trafficking. It's all supposedly just the unfortunate fever-dreams of crackpots and gullible kooks. With the high profile Keller case, I find the media passing along wildly inaccurate but widely accepted omissions, misinformation and outright deceptions, in what amounts to a very insidious form of propaganda.  

When you read the police report of the Keller case, the investigation reveals what actually looks the opposite of a "panic." Instead you find numerous busy working parents stoically accepting their kids back from day care with "anal/vaginal" rashes and yeast infections, strange and sexualised acting out behaviours, fears of Fran Keller and her "hate care" and two reports of kids who seemed drugged, or unable to be woken when taken home. The door at Fran's Day Care was locked when parents came by and children were usually brought out to the curb to waiting parents. You also find out Fran had a brother serving time in a nearby jail for child sexual assault. Dan wasn't the designated care taker, but children and babies were often left alone with him. Most alarming, most of the parents interviewed noticed their children came back to them wearing different panties, underwear and outerwear than their own. "Children’s parents had been noting that children returned home from day-care wearing their under clothing inside out or wearing other children’s underwear and sometimes having wet hair. Reasonable explanations were always given and at first it was not enough to create alarm."   In fact, as you read these parents recollections in the police report, you may start to wonder if perhaps a little more panic on behalf of those kids might have been in order. 

But most parents in 1991 could not remotely imagine anything like the ghastly array of acts that Satanic Ritual Abuse can include, certainly not in their community and certainly not happening to their child. Nevertheless we are told today that somehow their young children could imagine it all, dream it all up, and could somehow describe hideous blood drenched deeds and the kind of lurid sex acts usually found in specialist pornography - all because deluded cops, narcissist parents and corrupt therapists wanted them to. 

Yes, you are to believe that organized traumatic mind control abuse is a "fever dream" of confused kids, and the idea that they may be preyed upon where they are usually found - day care, school, orphanages like Laura Silsby's, and charitable organizations like Sandusky's "The Second Mile" is a fantastical and unfair assumption that only targets innocent people. Usually a reporter dismissively admits "of course reports of abuse turn out to be valid sometimes, but..." This breed of reporter is an internet hero, determined to bring the message to a new generation that believing the testimony of children is a sort of exercise in madness. Worse, good people can be targeted like this again, so - fingers in ears please! - never listen to that kind of talk! 

"LURID CRIMES THAT NEVER HAPPENED"

And so it has come to pass that on the last summer solstice, June 21, 2017 The Intercept trumpeted a headline with total conviction - the Kellers had been convicted and exonerated of "...LURID CRIMES THAT NEVER HAPPENED".  This article was by Jordan Smith, who had been cheerleading for Fran and Dan with no significant press rebuttal for years. The couple was released from prison in 2013, and recast as elderly "victims" of their child accusers. Now in 2017 they have been fully exonerated and declared "actually innocent" in the opinion of new Travis County D.A. Margaret Moore.  The Kellers were now to be millionaires supported by Texas taxpayers, and the press would make them their darlings. 

The same press outlets that assured the masses H Clinton had already won the Presidency according to their super-accurate polling, are now serving up juicy tales of the terrible "witch-hunt" years in the olden days of the 80s and early 90s. Popular online websites as well as mainstream print and TV news like Fox chorus in unison with the Daily Mail, UK Guardian and of course Snopes. Their message - The sensational sounding Satanic Panic was a phenomenon of the Pre-Internet Dark Ages! We are now far too wise to entertain such follies as The Franklin Scandal or The McMartin Pre-School Case ever again! We can all shake our heads, have a laugh and agree - "Ritual Abuse? Satanic? Right under our noses? "How preposterously retro!" 

Here is a typical example: notice the biased language from the Dallas News (emphasis mine) - "The Kellers were some of the most cruelly maligned victims of a now-forgotten front-page panic of the 1980s and '90s: a tidal wave of bizarre accusations that a secret network of day care owners and workers across the country engaged in "Satanic ritual abuse" of young children in their care. Viewed in retrospect, it seems that otherwise sensible people quite simply lost their minds. Social workers, therapists, prosecutors and cops joined a fruitcake crusade that ruined people's lives, based on the coerced claims of vulnerable little kids."  

Were the Kellers indeed "cruelly maligned"? Was the jury nuts? The children coerced by shady therapists? Did a parallel of the Salem witch trials grip and twist everyday folks in the days of yesteryear when "The Simpson's" debuted and REM's "Shiny Happy People" was a hit? 

It appears as if the slightly wacky "Satanic Panic" label is being peddled to the public in a synchronized push against investigations into child trafficking rings and SRA trauma based mind control, meant to create an automatic negative response and denial of those topics in Joe Q Public today. It also handily works to discredit Pizza/Pedogate interest, investigation, witnesses, prosecution, convictions, survivors and their advocates. For those of us that have witnessed media pushback on Pizzagate and Pedogate such as the closure of the pizzagate Reddit forum, 4-chan censorship, MSM mis- and dis-information, and YouTube, Twitter and Pay Pal account harassment, it is no surprise to see the media once again moving in lockstep, as they did when Megyn Kelly lobbed Pizzagate fuzzballs at James Alefantis. Let's face it - it's a lot easier to sell the "actual innocence" of old coots like the Kellers than trying slip an "innocent business owner" masque over Alefantis' eerie grin and grim eyes.

"The Witch-Hunt Narrative" has been identified and discussed in depth by Ross E. Cheit, Professor of Political Science and International & Public Affairs at Brown University. He has a PhD and law degree from the University of California Berkeley. It is definitely worth reading more about him, his work and speaking schedule at the link above.

I sincerely hope this little Voat submission will not prove to be a lone voice attempting to critically review Jordan Smith's Intercept article which apparently leads the media pushback, widely picked up and referenced in a host of other, more lazily written glosses. This uncritical echo chamber treatment is concerning, as Smith's article is itself a gloss, a superficial treatment, and more accurately, simply a tissue of omissions and untruths which other so called "reporters" carry forward like a game of telephone, until the facts of the original investigation are lost or wildly distorted in favour of the Kellers. Of course internet commentors pick up on distorted tidbits and repeat them as though delivering unassailable truths - anyone is who knows better than a D.A. or suspects there is anything to the Keller case besides a tragic cautionary tale is surely CRAZEE!!!!

In this criticism of Smith's article, the evidence I have used is primarily sourced from articles written over the years to promote the witch-hunt narrative by supporting the Kellers, because that's all I could find. No media has sceptically treated the claims of the Keller's defenders. It is ironic that in articles meant to defend the Kellers there is a great deal of information that actually supports the jury's guilty verdict. You can try to bury the truth, but "The Truth Will Out" as the old saying goes, and there are some very, very inconvenient aspects of the Keller case which taxpayers should not allow to go unnoticed as they begin supporting the couple's retirement. Case materials such as the police report reveal a lot of strange artifacts lurking outside of the media's white spotlight on the Keller's "actual innocence." There are glimpses of a chilling case that all the "Satanic Panic" rhetoric in the world can't quite bury, including another co-defendant in the trial and other named abusers that worked in law enforcement, two confessions, an attempt to flee, and a Doctor who recanted his testimony over a decade later and states ruefully, "I wouldn't touch that [case] with a 10-foot pole now."

The "Gorilla Arm" and "The Shark Pool" stories are reflexively quoted and waved like red flags of proof of how silly children's ritual abuse testimony could be - and why look further than that? It is worth noting that Smith and other reporters never fact checked or contacted the SRA expert witness for the prosecution, although many have mocked him. The single exception was Gary Cartwright who, in the words of Noblitt, "did me the courtesy of a call to “fact check” his story, particularly ideas attributed to me, except that it was only after the issue had been published." This in itself is evidence of editorial bias in favor of defending the Keller's defense, or perhaps more accurately, a bias against the very idea of SRA. It's almost as if these writers and editors don't want survivors, including parents, to have any voice at all. 

This is how Jordan Smith is described by The Intercept - "She has covered criminal justice for nearly 20 years and during that time has developed a reputation as a resourceful and dogged reporter with a talent for analysing complex social and legal issues, and is regarded as one of the best investigative reporters in Texas."  Maybe so, but to make her "lipstick on a pig" defense of the Kellers, Jordan Smith must commit glaring acts of omission, misrepresentation and spin as outlined below. The Intercept should publish an apology for Smith's article, which slants the Keller case in a manner that dangerously misleads the public regarding child sex trafficking rings and the ritual abuse of children. 

OMISSIONS/MISREPRESENTATIONS/ UNTRUTHS IN JORDAN SMITH'S KELLER PIECE, THE INTERCEPT

In reporting, "you can only call a statement a lie if you know for a fact that the person who said it knew it was false—and that they did so in a deliberate attempt to deceive or mislead their audience." I will leave it to you decide - is a sin of omission a lie? Did one of Texas' finest journalists speak the whole truth in her widely quoted June 21, 2017 article on the "actually innocent" Kellers?

OMISSION 1 - A LOCAL DEPUTY CONFESSED TO ASSAULTING CHILDREN WITH THE KELLERS AND OTHERS AT THEIR DAY CARE, AND PLEADED GUILTY

Sheriff's Department Deputy Doug Perry was considered a co-defendant in the Keller case and confessed to sexually abusing children with the Kellers at their behest in the living room of their private home/day-care center.  Perry implicated the Kellers and others including his wife and her partner, both in law enforcement. Perry is a registered sex offender who violated his 10 year probation and is now imprisoned in Texas. 

"Texas Rangers questioned Perry at the DPS offices. After four hours of questioning, he signed a confession, saying he had participated in a "beer and sex party" (as it was described in news reports) with the Kellers, White, and Quintero, where the adults took turns abusing Christina and Brendan, whom Perry identified only after the Rangers showed him video of the two children. White supposedly took pictures of the incident, which Perry said he'd seen."  Perry recanted his testimony the following day on the advice of his lawyer when he learned that others he had named had not, in fact, confessed.  

Later, a civil court case was taken by the victims over the sex and beer parties Dan Keller allegedly entertained his law enforcement and other friends with.

It should be noted that prior to his confession, Perry failed two polygraph tests. "A polygraph expert testified that Perry was lying when he said he didn’t know what went on at Fran’s Day Care." (CW)

But...wasn't Perry also an innocent victim swept up in children's witch hunt histrionics? Wasn't co-defendant Deputy Perry also "cruelly maligned"? Where is Smith's outcry on Deputy Perry's behalf? In fact she is entirely silent about this co-defendant who plead guilty and now sits in a Texas prison on charges of violating his easy sentence of 10 years probation. If you only read Smith's 2017 article and those that parrot it, you would know nothing about Deputy Perry's confession or guilty plea because these facts don't fit the "witch-hunt" narrative. 

OMISSION 2   FRAN KELLER CONFESSED  

Also left out of Jordan Smith's "dogged" reporting - In 2007 while serving her sentence, Fran Keller confessed. In the update of Cartwright's Texas Monthly article, he bends over backwards to rationalize why she did so, but nevertheless states that she wrote "a letter to a parole board, confessing the guilt that she had always denied. “I cried myself to sleep that night,” she told me, tears in her eyes..." (CW)

It is absolutely incredible to me the amount of sympathy reporters like Cartwright muster for a red-eyed woman who confesses to sexually abusing a child so young she can barely talk. As for sympathy for tearful children? Not so much. 

Fran's confession is now part of her and Dan’s record. I have trouble believing that Smith's vaunted investigation skills failed to overturn this fact, but it is never discussed in any of her reports of the "actually innocent" Kellers. It certainly does not support the witch-hunt narrative.  I wonder if the new D.A. even considered or knew about Fran's confession when she exonerated her. As part of her parole board proceedings, it would not have been part of the trial and post-conviction transcripts and subsequent (defense appeals) transcripts that Moore stated she reviewed.

OMISSION 3 THE KELLER'S TRIED TO FLEE IN DISGUISE

If the Kellers were truly innocent, the outrageous claims could be cleared up with an investigation, right? Maybe that is why the Kellers responded the way innocent people usually do- reaffirming that they knew the truth would put false and strange accusations to rest. 

Uh, sorry, no. 

The Kellers apparently had no confidence in their innocence themselves. They responded to the warrant for their arrest by fleeing the state in disguise, obtaining false identifications in their new personas, and attempting to leave the country via Las Vegas. They were tracked, captured and brought back to Texas in handcuffs in January 28, 1998 to face trial. 

To my mind, Dan's response when informed of the accusations against him was odd and very telling. "(He) denied he'd done anything and continued to say that he did not abuse any kids and that anyone who would should be shot and put out of their misery."  

Perhaps the Kellers knew that their local sheriff's department friends who they had entertained at their home (with child sex according to Perry's signed confession) were of no further use to them, perhaps even a danger to them.  Or perhaps the three month wait between the time he was informed of the charges and when the warrant was issued were simply too much for Dan's frayed, but "actually innocent" nerves.

OMISSION 4 - THE KELLERS NEVER FACED "LURID" CHARGES OF SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE - SRA WAS INTRODUCED INTO THE TRIAL BY THE KELLERS DEFENSE 

In her 2009 article Smith writes "Moreover, the sensational nature of the charges themselves, in a period of hysterical national rumours about supposed "satanic ritual abuse" at day care centers, made it virtually impossible for the Kellers to receive a fair or even rational trial." 

Smith's 2017 headline also misstates that the couple were "CONVICTED OF LURID CRIMES" Both are instances of blatantly misrepresenting how the Kellers were charged. Smith is well aware that the Kellers were never charged with satanic acts. In fact they were charged with one count of sexual assault on a 3 year old girl. It was the Kellers defense attorneys, and not the prosecution, that introduced the topic of Satanic Ritual Abuse claims into the trial proceedings in 1991, in a cynical move to discredit the sexual abuse charge. Once brought up by the defense, the testimony must be addressed by the prosecution - that is why the expert witness Norblitt was ever called to the stand. The prosecution then has some burden to "prove" absolutely unspeakable acts, even though that is not the case they or investigators prepared. 

Afterwards, using the defense's introduction of SRA into the trial, the entire trial was painted by apologists and the media as having been a trial of "lurid charges" of SRA - the witch-hunt in full swing in a court of law, as if America had just plunged into the Dark Ages because of unhinged state prosecutors. This is all simply propaganda, and untruth.

If the Kellers had instructed their defense differently, the trial could have very well simply been the sober assessment of the aggravated sexual assault charge. It was the defense that actually went wild and ran amok, with what amounts to an extreme form of victim shaming. 

It has taken us decades to stop victim shaming in cases of straightforward rape, incest, and paedophilia. Acceptance of SRA victim testimony without shaming is a cultural milestone we have yet to achieve. If the media has it's way, we'll never get there. The shame belongs to Jordan Smith, and those who pass on her reporting unchecked.

OMISSION 5 - THE DAY CARE WAS LOCKED, ADULTS NOT ABLE TO ENTER

In her 2009 article, Smith asserts, "All of these elaborate abuses, the children said, happened at the Kellers' day care – a place where parents (and often neighbours) dropped by at all different times of the day."  

What an easy, breezy place Fran ran, right? Smith's reporting omits that in the same police report she fought to obtain, parents of 40 children are interviewed - Most of these parents, many parents, confirm that whenever they showed up the day-care door would be locked, and Fran would almost always bring their child out to them. There is more than one instance of a parent showing up unexpectedly, only to find the door firmly locked. Read through the entire report.

Another untruth - Smith asserts in the same article that "All of these elaborate abuses...happened at the Keller's day care". In fact there is significant testimony in the police report obtained by Smith that abuse happened at and in several other locations, both indoors and out. Some examples named are a local gym, graveyards and another house that was set up for pornographic filming, according to the testimony of one boy.

Why would Smith misreport something so blatantly easy to prove incorrect? Because making the superficial argument that children can't be abused at a place that is supposed to be open and transparent makes the testimony sound even more fantastical. It's what people want to believe, and it feeds the witch hunt narrative.

OMISSION 6 - FRAN KELLER'S BROTHER WAS JAILED NEARBY FOR CHILD SEX ABUSE  

Fran Keller's brother at the time of the accusations and her arrest was in inmate at a nearby Texas prison, incarcerated for child sexual assault with a crime that looked remarkably similar to what the Kellers were accused of doing. You have to read the police report to find this out. Presumably ace reporter Jordan Smith has studied SRA somewhere along the path of debunking it. If so, she would know that SRA runs in families, and she would know that this fact lends credence to the possibility that Fran Keller may have been a product of serial abuse. She would also be aware that this fact takes away from the witch-hunt narrative. No reporter ever mentions Fran's brother, why would they? I believe this is more evidence of media bias.  Anyone who understands the mechanics of SRA would find the information relevant.

OMISSION 7 - MISSING 28 PAGES OF THE POLICE REPORT SMITH FOUGHT FOR

In The Intercept Smith says that she and the Austin Chronicle waged a court battle to obtain and publish "full and unredacted access" to the police report, and Smith claims the police fought hard "to keep it a secret". In the name of transparency, Smith is a hero, right? So why decline to share the first 28 pages of the police report with the public?  Are we to follow Smith's example and accuse her of wanting "to keep it a secret"?  Because the part we do get to see contains a whole lot of eye openers - Fran's convicted paedophile brother, reports of parents finding the day care locked, with Fran off premises and Dan frequently alone with the children. Parents stating their children came in other children's clothes and underwear which should be highlighted as a very strange and telling violation - any day-care should be very critically scrutinized on that charge alone. These details are not "fever dream" material I'm sorry to say, but the realistic and nitty-gritty case reporting that accompanies child sexual assault. I suggest everyone interested read the report. It may be the only way the voices of some of these children and their parents will ever be acknowledged.

MISREPRESENTATION 1 - THE SPANKING

Jordan Smith gives the impression in The Intercept article that the whole thing started when "The child initially accused Dan of spanking her “like daddy" - this is a truncating of the original statement by the child into two words, which is not how she initially reported, and which serves to minimize what she actually first reported into something common - most children have been or used to be spanked. Smith performs this misrepresentation deliberately in my opinion, because in her own 2009 Austin Chronicle article it's reported this way - "Christina initially volunteered that she didn't like Danny. "I asked her why," Guinne (her mother) testified in November 1992. "She said that he hurt her – he had hurt her and pulled her panties down and spanked her and he pooed and peed on her head." Guinne said she decided not to ask too many questions, but let the therapist handle it." 

Cartwright reports it this way: "In her notes from that session, David wrote that the child had told her mother, “[Danny Keller] spanked her like her daddy used to and it hurt. . ..’He hit me with a belt.’ When asked where, in front or back, she said, ‘Front.’ She continued saying that Danny pulled down her pants down and played with her and that ‘he pooped and peed on my head,’ and when asked if someone washed her hair, she said, ‘Fran did,’"

But for The Intercept, Smith truncates Christina's testimony to make Dan look innocent - just a spanking. This has been quoted far and wide and picked up by disgusted commentors who role their eyes at how a spanking can get a man thrown in jail these days. Simply an untruth, but look at the narrative it creates in the public mind. 

MISREPRESENTATION 2 - SMEARING THE POLICE INVESTIGATION AND REPORT

This entire paragraph by Jordan Smith is a mastery of misdirection. "After reading the report, it was not hard to understand why the department had fought to keep it secret. It was an ALL-CAPS, run-on-sentence fever dream full of breathless accusations and absent any actual investigation that could prove or disprove the claims. On multiple occasions, the lead investigator took the girl who accused the Kellers to lunch at McDonald’s before setting out for drives in the neighborhood where she would point out locations: Yes, she had been abused there; yes, she recognized the cemetery where the Kellers had killed and buried babies; yes, many of the residents of the quiet neighborhood were in on the hi-jinx. Not once did investigators question the child’s statements."

Let's parse these assertions. 

"fought hard to keep it a secret" - this is an assumption of intent. I could as easily assume the department had legal reasons to protect those named in the report and did not release police reports that were material evidence in controversial trials lightly. Notic again that Smith fought to get "full and unredacted access" that she DOES NOT share with readers. The part of the police report they make available starts on page 28 of 72 - what is missing and why?

"It was an ALL-CAPS run-on sentence fever dream full of breathless accusations absent of any investigation" Is this misdirection? an outright lie? ALL-CAPS are standard practice for police reports, which I'd be willing to bet investigative reporter Smith is quite aware of. The terms "fever dream" and "breathless" imply a feeling of hysterical ranting, not by children, but by the officer writing the report. But the report is nothing like that. It is fully punctuated, written in normal language and sentence structure.  In an investigation you gather testimony and yes, the testimony of children includes gory ritual abuse details, but it also includes things like "Fran told Dan to do bad stuff" and "Here is where bones were dug up", etc. NOTHING in the report indicates breathlessness or fevers or dreams. 

On the contrary, the report shows that officers tackled a difficult case with a methodical investigation over almost 50 pages with many interviews of both adults and children. 

"...McDonald’s before setting out for drives in the neighborhood where she would point out locations" implies that this is the only real investigating done by this officer - certainly a misrepresentation of the truth. In fact the report details multiple office interviews, polygraphs and field interviews with several children and adults.

Smith states,"Not once did investigators question the child’s statements." This is an untrue assertion, a favorite lie parroted by many other media outlets. Police reports are not where questions and answers are necessarily written out in detail, they are an outline of an investigation. Smith's statement implies the police blithely accepted what Christine said as truth themselves and without further investigation - not true.

Keep in mind -

1. It was the therapist's primary responsibility to question the children in depth.

2. The police report is not evidence of whether Christine was questioned or not. It is the outline of an investigation. Nevertheless, on Page 72 there is an example of questions asked of several children. Many parents were also interviewed. The police never accepted anything that was said to them without question - a flagrant misrepresentation by Smith of how the investigation was conducted. Honestly, shame on you Jordan Smith.

3. The case was not built around Christine's ritual abuse or graveyard allegations, but only on the sexual assault case which relied on the testimony of an examining doctor along with Perry's confession. Even so, "Police conducted inquiries at nearby airfields, took the children to a cemetery and examined graves from a helicopter using an infrared camera that they said could detect "hot-spots" on decomposing corpses.

MISREPRESENTATION 3 - THE GORILLA ARM, THE SHARK POOL and GRAVEYARD STORIES

These stories are compelling to the media who need their click bait along with their debunking in order to get hits on their articles. This testimony is also the playground of apologists and trolls. It's the focus of anyone who wants to echo the proof of how "actually innocent" the Kellers surely are.  In Smith's Intercept gloss she says - " ...they put blood in the children’s Kool-Aid; Fran cut off the arm of a gorilla in a local park; they flew the children to Mexico to be sexually assaulted by military officials." Everyone reads that and thinks "A gorilla's arm? What an odd object to even think of.  How ridiculous! What nutballs live among us that believe kid's lies?!" 

Case closed right? And notice how the gorilla arm is sandwiched between putting blood in Kool-Aid and flying children to have sex parties. The last two are technically possible to accomplish, but next to something like cutting a gorilla's arm off, they take on the sense of being just as surreal and absurdist. 

However it turns out Jordan Smith has grossly exaggerated the testimony, making it something it was not at all.  The Guardian references the Cartwright article that states, "the Kellers were said to have stolen a baby gorilla from a park and Frances cut off one of its fingers." The Austin Chronicle reports it as "that Fran cut off the finger of a gorilla at Zilker Park"

So Smith's "gorilla arm" is actually not what was reported - it is a baby gorilla's finger. At the very least, Smith's ability to accurately discuss this case's testimony is called into question. Did the children confabulate stories, or is Smith confabulating their stories?

Next is the Shark Pool Story which other reporters picked up from Smith's 2009 article. "...one of the allegations Christina made was that the Kellers had threatened to throw her to the sharks. "Well, we didn't know where that came from" until the end of the trial, when a witness mentioned that the Kellers had small blow-up sharks in the backyard pool. "So you could see how somebody says, 'You [tell], and we're going to throw you in with the sharks,'" she said. "Because she's real young." Case agrees: "That's pretty common. And sometimes the threats are strange. ... That wouldn't make sense to an adult, because an adult would say, well, a person could never do that," he said. "But nevertheless, that could intimidate a child." Overall, the prosecutors say, the children's allegations were believable."

So in the case of the Shark stories, Smith does not bring them up in The Intercept - her own reporting makes the statement understandable. But that doesn't stop other media from picking up the Shark story from her linked article and calling it an allegation, a wild tale typical of unbelievable witch hunts.

As one example, the recent Daily Mail video reporting states at 2:01 "even stories of putting children in a pool with sharks" as evidence of how wild and ridiculous the old Satanic Panic really was. What better demonstration is there really of bias against the testimony of these children - a reporter regurgitating sensational aspects of a case without knowing anything about them. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4622098/Texas-prosecutor-finds-ex-day-care-owners-innocent-abuse.html (scroll to video at bottom of article.)

Regarding the graveyard testimony - This subject actually requires it's own seperate treatment. Various children had a significant amount of testimony regarding ritual abuse taking place in graveyards, something that Smith dismisses as "hi-jinks". Although the defense mustered testimony that relatives of the deceased claim to have been adding dirt to sinking grave sites, this testimony was given anonymously, is not part of the court records and was never cross examined, rather it was asserted in print articles and accepted uncritically. Cartwright addresses the subject - "Sergeant Oliver noted in his report that the surfaces of several of the older graves appeared “disturbed,” that the dirt was suspiciously soft rather than hard-packed as one would expect. Twice during the summer of 1992, the task force conducted land air searches of a cemetery, using a Department of Public Safety helicopter equipped with an infrared camera. Nothing was detected the first time, but during the second search, the camera picked up “hot spots,” which might indicate recent burials. However, only one of the hot spots was a place the children had pointed out." I must interject - only one place corroborated? I think even one is significant. Imagine having to retrace a place you were taken to and traumatized - and you are 3 or 7 years old. A lot of grownups can't even find their own car in a parking lot.

Cartwright continues - "(Officer) Oliver wanted to get a court order to dig up the grave, but he was overruled. “I still think a crime was committed there,” Oliver told me eighteen months later. “There should have been more of an investigation, but that was a decision I had to live with.”

SPIN 1 - SMITH'S 2009 "REINVESTIGATION" GETS IT WRONG ABOUT WITHOLDING EVIDENCE

Smith is agile - she spins and juggles facts at the same time. In The Intercept article Smith links to her 2009 article, where she makes quite a noise about a certain man named Trigg who was "fingered" during the investigation by a boy who reported having been filmed at a home Trigg occupied (and other places). Actually the boy never called out Trigg from a line-up, or ever mentioned him, or accused him. Trigg was simply a person who was traced to the house that was pointed out, questioned and found to be not implicated. A dead lead.

But the man's attorney complains, "Agnew says the police investigated and cleared Trigg before the Kellers ever went to trial. That information should have been in the police report, and prosecutors certainly should have given it to Whitworth. But it never was, Whitworth said, and it could've been extremely valuable for the defense to know that the children had fingered other suspects who were cleared by police of being involved in any abuse. "They knew stuff they did not provide to us," Whitworth says."

Out of this, Smith spins her tale that the police "withheld information". But did they really? Or is this conflating a very small part of the investigation, one of many dead leads, into something it really isn't - a major oversight or deliberate crippling of the defense.  I don't think so. The entire episode was part of the police report - did the Keller defense attorney fail to read the police report? There is a lot of data on how the police tracked the house's ownership, tracked down who lived there at the time period indicated and then questioned them.  Since they didn't find anything of immediate interest, this was a dead lead. This does not mean the boy was wrong, that Trigg or his roommate were innocent or guilty, it just means that tracking and tracing these crimes is extremely difficult, takes a lot of leg work, and there may be multiple dead leads before one pans out.

This shouldn't have to be explained in detail, but it has to be, because of how Smith juggles and spins the investigation. Just because nothing was turned up on this lead does not mean the children were "fingering" random people or that anything was withheld. And to argue that this non-lead would somehow be material proof of the Kellers innocence is a fantasy. If every lead police followed that went nowhere somehow meant that criminals were innocent, the police would have a hard time investigating anything at all.  

SPIN 2 THE STRUGGLING KELLERS AND THEIR DONATION PAGE  

In her role as the Keller's champion, Smith reports in The Intercept that it was "nearly impossible" for Fran Keller to find a place to live.  Actually Fran immediately had a home to go to, according to Smith's own 2013 article and was looking forward to a nice Thanksgiving dinner when she was released. Later, she moved into a rental home with Dan, presumably paid for by their go-fund-me page where Keller supporters can send money, prayers, and tearful sympathy messages to the couple, wringing their hands over society's collective guilt over the Keller's jury conviction.

The "nearly homeless" representation may be a more minor bud in Smith's bouquet of untruths, or is it? If it turns out that Perry's and Fran's confessions were real, that children or even one child was abused at Fran's Day Care, that Fran and Dan attempted to run from the law for good reason, then advocacy pieces like Jordan Smith's and media outlets like The Intercept are guilty of continuing the Keller's victimization of the innocent - this time it is a hoodwinked and soft-hearted public willing to uncritically embrace the "actually innocent" ruling and expiate their collective guilt by sacrificing their expendable income to the couple, even though Fran and Dan are soon to be on millionaire row. 

NOT EVERYONE BELIEVES THERE WAS NO ABUSE

In Cartwright's article, Assistant District Attorney Bryan Case states that "Fran and Dan may have faked the ritual part to conceal and confuse their true intentions, but he also believes that the children were abused. His belief is supported in part by the children’s bizarre “acting out” behavior in the summer and fall of 1991. Although the Chaviers girl (Christina) and the Staelin boy had previously demonstrated behavioral problems, the problems appeared to have greatly intensified after the children started at Fran’s Day Care." In her 2009 article, Smith is "stunned to learn" that Additionally even the police officer (Wade) that was initially overwhelmed and sceptical of the Satanic abuse aspect of the children's reports "believed that some abuse had taken place."

"One of the other children involved in the case, Vijay Staelin, now 21, declined to be interviewed, except to briefly reiterate that Fran and Danny Keller had abused him." (AC 09)

What can definitively be said is that reports of being forced to drink blood, to abuse animals and sacrifice infants, participate in sex acts and coprophilia, to be buried in the ground and traumatized and tortured, even to be flown to elites to have sex parties and filmed for pornography are not unusual claims anymore. Not only that, with the passage of time we have learned, sadly, to not be stunned when law enforcement, coaches, priests, pastors, bishops, senators, teachers or other pillars of the community are complicit.

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY

One can presume that after her last article, Jordan Smith feels she can finally rest from her labors of massaging public opinion on the Kellers behalf. But if justice is truly on your side Ms. Smith, why write an article that contains enough holes and half-truths "to fill the Albert Hall" as the Beatles said, and why would The Intercept, the home of Glen Greenwald and Barrett Brown, allow such an article to disgrace their reputation?  If backing up the D.A.'s finding of "actually innocent" in print means committing such major sins of omission and misrepresentation that readers become compelled to seek out the real story, then Smith, The Intercept and their gaggle of echoing media outlets do the Kellers no service, while doing the public a great disservice.

Perhaps Smith committed to proving the innocence of the Kellers long ago, steadfastly refusing to consider any other possibility, and simply steamrolls every editor and fact checker in her path. Perhaps it's simply what she and others want us to believe - even if it is not in fact the truth. 

It is time to challenge Jordan Smith to find one case of Satanic Ritual Abuse that she believes did happen, and to write about that, advocating on behalf of a survivor the way she has for the Kellers. 

 PART 2

The upcoming Part 2 provides a timeline of the Keller's case, along with a look at the D.A.'s decision and an in depth look at the testimony of Dr. Mouw's make or break testimony, which helped the Kellers get convicted and which he recanted, paving the way for the Kellers' celebrated release.  Also a discussion of the ongoing media campaign to instill fear of a new Satanic Panic in the minds of the public.  

I would also like to note that my previous two Voat posts on the Keller case https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1957669 and https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1956145 completely disappeared from browsing after falling off just the front page of the HOT section. Whether it is some form of "shadowbanning" suppression, or a glitch - it had the positive effect of focusing my attention much more intently on this topic.  

Let's observe whether this submission disappears after falling off page 1 of the v/pizzagate HOT section just like the last two have.

THE SOURCES

Police Report - https://www.austinchronicle.com/media/content/759211/apdkellerreport.pdf  

AC https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2009-03-27/believing-the-children/

AC 13 https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2013-12-06/freedom-for-the-kellers/

Cheit 1 https://blogs.brown.edu/rcheit/2015/06/03/more-misinformation-about-the-keller-case/

Cheit 2 https://blogs.brown.edu/rcheit/2017/06/12/special-issue-on-the-witch-hunt-narrative/

Cartwright, CW http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-innocent-and-the-damned/ 

Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4622098/Texas-prosecutor-finds-ex-day-care-owners-innocent-abuse.html (scroll to video at bottom of article.)

Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/05/texas-couple-kellers-released-prison-satanic-abuse  

The Intercept, INT https://theintercept.com/2017/06/20/texas-couple-exonerated-25-years-after-being-convicted-of-lurid-crimes-that-never-happened/

Ritual Abuse https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/