Dorothy Rabinowitz

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Dorothy Rabinowitz is a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist and commentator.

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She was born in New York City, and attained a bachelor's degree at Queens College. She worked toward a doctorate at New York University from 1957 to 1960, but did not graduate. [1] She has worked as editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal since June 1990 and has been a member of their editorial board since May 1996. [2] She is a regular panelist on the Journal Editorial Report . [3]

Pulitzer Prize

Rabinowitz was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for a series of articles published in 2000 covering aspects of U.S. social and cultural trends. [4] Previously, she had been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times, [5] but in 2001 "she was not a finalist [but]... the Pulitzer board, which makes the final decisions, reviewed the jury's original three finalists and decided it wanted 'a broader choice.' The jury offered Ms. Rabinowitz as an alternate selection.". [6] "[A]mong the ten articles cited by the board were five articles challenging questionable allegations of sexual abuse. Four of the cited articles commented on the 2000 U.S. presidential election and the remaining article discussed Rudolph Giuliani's recommending a pardon for Michael Milken." [7]

She was previously nominated in 1996 for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "For her columns effectively challenging key cases of alleged child abuse" [8] and had been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995 "For her writing about television", and in 1998 for "her tough-minded, critical columns on television and its place in politics and culture." [9]

No Crueler Tyrannies
AuthorDorothy Rabinowitz
Original titleNo Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times
Publisher Free Press, NY
Publication date
2003
ISBN 0-7432-2834-0
OCLC 51275066
LC Class HV8079.C48 R33 2003

No Crueler Tyrannies

External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Booknotes interview with Rabinowitz on No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times, May 4, 2003, C-SPAN

Rabinowitz wrote exposés of the dubious sexual abuse charges filed against the operators of day care centers and other individuals, notably that of a family named Amirault in Malden, Massachusetts [10] and those in Wenatchee, Washington. [11] These exposés earned her a 1996 Pulitzer nomination, [8] formed half of the articles cited for her 2001 Pulitzer win, [7] and were the basis of her book No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times. [12] [13]

Her work on these cases began with the Wee Care Nursery School case, [14] Rabinowitz told C-SPAN:

I was working as a television commentator. I was at WWOR-TV in New Jersey, doing three times a week some sort of media criticism. And ... I saw this woman in her 20s ... accused of something like 2,800 charges of child sex abuse. Oh, I thought, well, that's very odd ... I thought, How can one woman, one young, lone woman in an absolutely open place like the child care center of the church in New Jersey that she worked for—how could she have committed these enormous crimes against 20 children, dressed and undressed them and sent—you know what it is to dress and undress even one child every day without getting their socks lost?—20 children in a perfectly public place, torture them for two years, frighten and terrorize them, and they never went home and told their parents anything? ... This did seem strange. [15]

Her work on this story led The Wall Street Journal to hire her. [5] [15]

Political issues

In 1999, Rabinowitz wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about Juanita Broaddrick, an Arkansas woman who alleged that then President Bill Clinton had raped her when he was attorney general of Arkansas. [16] Rabinowitz wrote "To encounter this woman, to hear the details of her story and the statements of the corroborating witnesses, was to understand that this was in fact an event that took place." [17] She also wrote approvingly of Republican presidential candidate John McCain in both the 2000 [18] and 2008 U.S. presidential elections. [19] [20]

On May 31, 2013, Rabinowitz claimed the Citi Bike bicycle sharing program in New York City was "dreadful" and "totalitarian": when an interviewer asked if she understood the rationale for this program, she responded, "Do not ask me to enter the minds of the totalitarians running this government of the city." She described Mayor Michael Bloomberg as "autocratic" and "a practiced denier" and City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan as "ideology-maddened". She also warned that "the bike lobby is an all-powerful enterprise." [21]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an American business and economic-focused international daily newspaper based in New York City. The Journal is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp. The newspaper is published in broadsheet format and online. The Journal has been printed continuously since its inception on July 8, 1889, and is regarded as a newspaper of record, particularly in terms of business and financial news. The newspaper has won 39 Pulitzer Prizes, the most recent in 2023.

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Gerald A. "Tooky" Amirault is an American convicted in 1986 of child sexual abuse of eight children at the Fells Acres Day School in Malden, Massachusetts, run by his family. He and his family deny the charges, which supporters regard as a conspicuous example of day-care sex-abuse hysteria. Amirault was released from prison on parole on April 30, 2004.

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Wee Care Nursery School, located in Maplewood, New Jersey, was the subject of a day care child abuse case that was tried during the 1980s. Although Margaret Kelly Michaels was prosecuted and convicted, the decision was reversed after she spent five years in prison. An appellate court ruled that several features of the original trial had produced an unjust ruling and the conviction was reversed. The case was studied by several psychologists who were concerned about the interrogation methods used and the quality of the children's testimony in the case. This resulted in research concerning the topic of children's memory and suggestibility, resulting in new recommendations for performing interviews with child victims and witnesses.

The Fells Acres day care sexual abuse trial took place in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts following charges initially lodged in the mid-1980s against family members who operated a day care center, Fells Acres Day School, in Malden, Massachusetts. The facility had been opened in 1966 by Violet Amirault (1923–1997). She and her two children—son Gerald Amirault and daughter Cheryl Amirault LeFave —were tried for sexually abusing children at their facility. Gerald was tried in 1986 while his sister and mother were tried in 1987. All three were convicted and sentenced to prison. The Amiraults deny the charges, which supporters regard as a conspicuous example of day-care sex-abuse hysteria.

Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.

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The Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions in Wenatchee, Washington, US, of 1994 and 1995, were the last "large scale Multi-Victim / Multi-Offender case" during the hysteria over child molestation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many poor and intellectually disabled suspects pled guilty, while those who hired private lawyers were acquitted. Eventually all those accused in these cases were released, and the authorities paid damages to some of those originally accused.

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The Country Walk case is a Florida 1985 "Multi-Victim, Multi-Offender" child sex abuse case that occurred during the day-care sex-abuse hysteria. Frank Fuster remains imprisoned. His wife Ileana Flores Fuster initially denied any wrongdoing, but following months of interrogations, she testified against Frank and confessed to the alleged crimes, later recanting her confession, then recanting her recantation, and finally recanting that. This case became known because it seemed to have better evidence than other ritual abuse cases, but scientific findings since Fuster's conviction have challenged the evidence. The case, prosecuted by Janet Reno, was profiled in the 2002 Frontline episode "Did Daddy Do It?"

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References

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  11. "Wall Street Journal articles on Wenatchee cases". Archived from the original on 2004-12-08.
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  13. Rabinowitz, Dorothy (March 27, 2003). "Epilogue to a Hysteria: Did prosecutors really believe their phony child-abuse charges?". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2004-12-17.
  14. Rabinowitz, Dorothy (April 28, 2003). "The Sacrosanct Accusation: No questions, they told me about phony sex-abuse charges. I asked anyway". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2004-12-17.
  15. 1 2 "Dorothy Rabinowitz: interview with journalist who broke the Kelly Michaels case". Booknotes.org. Injusticebusters.com. May 4, 2003. Archived from the original on November 15, 2011. Retrieved December 31, 2011.
  16. "The Folly of Dorothy Rabinowitz – and the Pulitzer Board".[ permanent dead link ]
  17. Alterman, Eric (February 25, 1999). "Tilting at Rumor Mills" via www.thenation.com.{{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  18. "The Pulitzer Prizes | New Hampshire Primary". Pulitzer.org. 2000-02-03. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
  19. "McCain's Promise: It is cruel to compare the senator to most of his Republican competitors". The Wall Street Journal Online. 2008-01-07. Archived from the original on 2009-03-02. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
  20. Rabinowitz, Dorothy (2008-10-09). "News Flash: The Media Back Obama". Online.wsj.com. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
  21. Rabinowitz, Dorothy (31 May 2013). "Opinion: Death by Bicycle". Wall Street Journal . Retrieved 3 June 2013.