In doing research on the McMartin Preschool Sex Abuse scandal of the 1980s, I came across an article on The Suggestibility of Children. In fact, I wrote one of my papers on the systematic methods used by interviewers to get all of the children they interviewed to allege sexual abuse. Not only were the children manipulated and coerced, but the parents created a whirlwind of increasingly bizarre accusations. Granted, sexual abuse is a serious matter, but the point of this research was to examine what happens when false accusations are made. (I say false because the teachers were not convicted)

The tactics used by the (biased?) interviewers were similar to what Derren Brown says are the tactics used by popular televangelists to perform miracles and healings.

His youtube “Instant Conversion” video is worth watching.

Basically, we all know these kind of tricks:

“Everyone else has said the teacher touched them, why are lying to me?”
or
“Everyone else here is speaking in tongues, why aren’t you – what sin are you hiding?” (that was a personal story from my Bible camp days)

“Bad things were happening at the school, right”
or
“You feel bad when you don’t pray, don’t you?”

Thankfully I haven’t been involved in any interrogations, but I have been told that without believing/praying/attending/worshiping/tithing…. I was going to feel bad. Well, I have stopped doing all of those things and the sky has not caved in, I haven’t contracted a terminal illness, I’m not in a depression and my marriage isn’t failing. It has been “suggested” to me since I was in preschool that other people were right and I just needed to trust them and do what they told me to do. And there was a fear put in me that if I ever stopped following then something terrible was going to happen. I know the Church would argue that their “tactics” are based on love, but I think they use fear and suggestibility all the time.