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Joel Michael, "How the Senate Lost its Stagger: The Story of an Attorney General's Opinion that Changed the Legislature" (2019).
Ramsey County Bar Memorials -- 2003.
Ramsey County Bar Memorials -- 2010.
Ramsey County Bar Memorials -- 2011.
Ramsey County Bar Memorials -- 2013.
Ramsey County Bar Memorials -- 2014.
Ramsey County Bar Memorials -- 2015.
"Results of Elections of Justices to the Minnesota Supreme Court, 1857-2018" (Revised edition, 2019).
Thomas L. Olson, "Sex Ring: Revisiting the Jordan, Minnesota Child Abuse Cases of 1983-84" and a review of Richard Beck, "We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980's" (2015).
Dr. Zabelle Stodola, A Review and Reconsideration of Edward Eggleston, "The Mystery of Metropolisville" (1873).
Edward Eggleston, "The Mystery of Metropolisville" (1873).
Articles of Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, the Answer of the President, and the Replication of the House of Representatives (1868).
































Viewing Thomas L. Olson, "Sex Ring: Revisiting the Jordan, Minnesota Child Abuse Cases of 1983-84" and a review of Richard Beck, "We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980's" (2015).


Thomas L. Olson, "Sex Ring: Revisiting the Jordan, Minnesota Child Abuse Cases of 1983-84" and a review of Richard Beck, "We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980's" (2015).

In 1983-1984 a criminal investigation into a sordid case of child abuse in Jordan, a small town in south central Minnesota, burgeoned from an indictment of one perpetrator to prosecutions of over twenty local residents in what was billed as the "biggest sex ring in state history." The child-victims themselves were the key witnesses for the prosecution. They described acts of cruelty that stunned the public. As the cases unfolded outside and inside a courtroom they attracted the attention of the media that abetted a climate of panic in the community. Although the court cases spectacularly imploded in 1984, their aftershocks reverberate today.

At the same time, other child sex abuse cases eerily similar to those in Jordan were being prosecuted around the country. The phenomenon is analyzed on many levels by Richard Beck in "We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980's" (2015), which is reviewed here by Thomas L. Olson. While Beck focuses on the McMartin pre-school case in California, the most notorious of the lot, he does not overlook events in Jordan.

Olson delves deeply into the Jordan cases. They were, he contends, products of place and time--that is, there were factors unique to Jordan as well as larger intellectual currents of that particular period that lead to the way they were viewed, investigated and prosecuted.

The author of this essay-review, Thomas L. Olson, now retired, has a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of "Sheldon's Gift: Music, Movies and Melodrama in the Desirable City" (2009), which centers on Red Wing's Sheldon Theater. His article "Blockbusters: Minnesota's Movie Men Slug it out with Studio Moguls, 1938-1948" and several book reviews are posted on this website.

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