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NZ Listener
November 2-8 2002
Published October 28, 2002
Letter to the Editor
by David Shapcott, Mt Albert,
Auckland
Reading Lynley Hood's "How to stop a witch-hunt" (New Writing, October
19) and then her book A City Possessed is rather like ploughing
through a Marxist text. Once the style has been picked up, anyone could run
the subsequent examples and recommendations through her theory and rhetoric
and pour out the writings for her.
First, pepper the article with emotive cliches: "ignore at our
peril", "explosion of historic allegations", "damage the
hysteria is doing to the fabric of New Zealand
society", "winds of panic swept through Christchurch".
Next, imply that all sex abuse claims have no foundation. Portray the
claimants as "juvenile delinquents recast as tragic choirboys" and
the men accused as having "devoted their lives to the care of troubled
and needy children".
So why is it that Hood alone can see the "truth", while all those
around her are befuddled? Enter the great clincher. Just as a collective
hysteria once led Europeans to burn women, believing those women to be
witches, so too are the judiciary, police, social workers, doctors and
teachers of today possessed by the same collective hysteria. Right!
When I compare Hood's fervent, hectoring treatise with the measured,
thoughtful tones of Detective Sergeant Brian Schaab talking of the Teresa
Cormack case, it is clear that someone has been carried away by their
emotions.
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