My False Confessions

As I watched arguments in the Brendan Dassey trial, I was struck by prosecution claims that the innocent don’t confess.

That claim is simply untrue, but most people don’t understand how easy many people confess. The recent spate of death penalty exonerations demonstrate the common nature of false confession. Twenty-five percent of the wrongful convictions were the result of a false confession.

Now on to my false confession. It was not for a crime and did not have the potential terrible consequences of criminal conviction. Some might even argue that the false confession was good for me.

I was twelve, growing up in the small town Pembine, Wisconsin. And like many children of that time and place I was receiving indoctrination in the church that my parents frequented. My sister, older by four years, was active in church activities.

It came to pass that an itinerant evangelist came to town and had the same church affiliation as I did.

As part of his program, he gathered several of us for a little preaching session. Up to this point, I attended Sunday School. I didn’t question the need or even consider that be a need for a change, I was like many people who lived in my little town. I even absorbed some of the prejudgments that are peculiar to Protestantism.

Anyway, this guy started his spiel with a prayer and we all assumed the position. I found myself detached from the group; before this evangelist; on my knees. There was an older girl beside me. She was seventeen.

There, we were professing our sins and accepting Jesus Christ. At that moment, our souls became pelts for this hunter. I don’t remember what he did to draw two of us out of the group. My suspicion is that he targeted us, perhaps from his experience. I can’t speak to whether this was his deliberate behavior. But, success breeds repetition. I am certain we were not the first to be manipulated.

I told my sister that I had no idea how I did what I did. She said the girl had also said the same thing. Our interpretation of these conversions was that they were bogus. If we were practicing Christians, there was no need to convert to Christianity.

I’ll agree that this false confession had a benefit. I learned not to trust proselytizers. First, this was only religious types. Later, my distrust was extended to all types of proselytizers, including for computers, for cars, and for toothpaste. These people are similar. They have arrogant beliefs that they can dictate what others must practice.

I still don’t understand what happened that first false confession. I know that it did happen. And, I am careful to avoid this type of situation.

It has taken a while to turn the distrust to skepticism. It is a daily struggle to keep the skepticism healthy and not slip into distrust, disgust, and dismay.

I have learned that, for me, other traps are out there. For example, with repetitive questioning, I’ll zone out and start answering, usually incorrectly.

A former wife would enter ceaseless rounds of questions about my activities. She was incapable of stopping until she obtained an answer that she wanted. And I learned that this was sometime directed toward justifying her own behaviors.

On one occasion, I was in bed falling asleep when she decided I had a girlfriend somewhere. My wife woke me. She was very upset since she had finally obtained the answer she had pursued so diligently.

She went through the answers for me. There was a name, but first name only. There was an address that turned out to the berthing of the ship I was assigned to. I finally realized that I had used a cardboard model that someone had placed in the electronics shop for the answers. And, I had given answers while I was asleep.

I have finally accepted the fact that I zone out at times. This has been a fact for most of my life. When I was in denial about that part of my being, I would pretend that the zone out had not happened, often filling in blanks by guessing. It took a long time before I was willing to accept those departures from attending to the here and now.

Returning to false confessions for the dubious, I point to the Salem trials 1962. Many accused confessed and named names. They were allowed to reenter the community.

Other accused refused to confess to witchcraft. They were executed.