The Volokh Conspiracy - Janet Reno and Ritual Abuse:

I knew, vaguely, that Janet Reno had prosecuted a couple of absurd ritual sex abuse cases when she was a Miami prosecutor, most notoriously the Country Walk case. I also knew that as Attorney General Reno was responsible for the gross mishandling (at best) of the Waco situation, resulting in dozens of deaths, and that at one point the FBI had supposedly (incorrectly) reported to her that the Branch Dividians had engaged in systematic abuse. I never put two and two together, but others have. For example, in Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (highly recommended, btw), the authors note: "Amid the national soul searching and congressional probes that followed [Waco], there was only the barest mention of Reno's history of seeming obsession with child sex abuse--an obsession that, in Miami as in Waco, ended with children themselves being severely damaged and even destroyed in the name of protecting them."

UPDATE: I should note that I don't know what effect the allegations of abuse at Waco had on Janet Reno's decisionmaking. Rather, I've been reading up on the ritual sex abuse cases of the 80s, and have noticed that several authors who have studied Reno's work as a prosecutor have drawn the connection.

	[David Bernstein, June 18, 2007 at 4:35pm] Trackbacks Janet Reno and Ritual Abuse: I knew, vaguely, that Janet Reno had prosecuted a couple of absurd ritual sex abuse cases when she was a Miami prosecutor, most notoriously the Country Walk case. I also knew that as Attorney General Reno was responsible for the gross mishandling (at best) of the Waco situation, resulting in dozens of deaths, and that at one point the FBI had supposedly (incorrectly) reported to her that the Branch Dividians had engaged in systematic abuse. I never put two and two together, but others have. For example, in Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (highly recommended, btw), the authors note: "Amid the national soul searching and congressional probes that followed [Waco], there was only the barest mention of Reno's history of seeming obsession with child sex abuse--an obsession that, in Miami as in Waco, ended with children themselves being severely damaged and even destroyed in the name of protecting them." UPDATE: I should note that I don't know what effect the allegations of abuse at Waco had on Janet Reno's decisionmaking. Rather, I've been reading up on the ritual sex abuse cases of the 80s, and have noticed that several authors who have studied Reno's work as a prosecutor have drawn the connection.