Blind to Betrayal The Book, How often do Child Molesters go on to Reoffend?

- Blind to Betrayal Preface
- Blind to Betrayal – Chapter 1
- Speaking Our Truth Chapter Discusses Jennifer Freyd’s presentation at a professional conference “Personal and Theoretical Perspectives on the Delayed Memory Debate.”
- Recidivism: How often do Child Molesters go on to Reoffend?

Blind to Betrayal The Book  

Betrayal is fundamental to the human condition.  Betrayal is everywhere and yet because of betrayal blindness often not seen. Drawing on empirical research, clinical thought, and real stories, we will explore with the reader central questions about betrayal and betrayal blindness: What is betrayal? What is its scope? Why are we often blind to it? What are the mental mechanisms that underlie betrayal blindness? What are the effects of betrayal blindness? How should we overcome the effects of betrayal and our blindness to it? How do we become aware of it and heal from its effects? We can create a better world together by facing betrayal and learning to trust ourselves and each other.   https://sites.google.com/site/betrayalbook/the-book

Blind to Betrayal Preface
“Betrayal violates us. It can destroy relationships and the very trust we need to be intimate in our relationships. It can and does damage the social fabric that creates the bonds for a healthy society.

In the case of children, the effects can last a lifetime. Betrayed children may grow into adults who fail to trust the trustworthy or who too readily trust people who further betray them. Whether being too willing or too unwilling to trust, difficulty with trust not only interferes with relationships, but also eats away at a strong sense of self. Those who were betrayed as children often suffer severe self esteem problems, as well as depression, anxiety, and even psychosis.”
http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/blindtobetrayalpreface.pdf

Blind to Betrayal – Chapter 1
“betrayal occurs in many domains besides infidelity. People can be betrayed at work, in the family, and in society. Betrayal can occur at the individual and at the societal level. Betrayal can be the act of a terrorist or the act of a friend. Parents can betray by abandoning or abusing their children. Treason is betrayal. Social injustice and oppression often entail betrayal and betrayal blindness, as will be illustrated in the next chapter by the case of Kevin, who remained blind to being a victim of racial discrimination for so many years. Although not all betrayal involves blindness, ongoing or repeated betrayal is intrinsically linked with unawareness.
Ongoing betrayal can occur only when there is some deception that is not fully detected.”
http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/09/04706044/0470604409-124.pdf

Speaking Our Truth – Chapter 13 Discusses Jennifer Freyd’s presentation at a professional conference “Personal and Theoretical Perspectives on the Delayed Memory Debate.”  She discusses her personal relationship with her parents, their false memory organization and her accounts of privacy violations and inappropriate relationships.

Blind to Betrayal  March 11th, 2013
Professor Jennifer Freyd has a new book with Pamela Birrell called Blind to Betrayal. The book, officially published today, explores various case studies involving betrayal, its effects and how victims come to grips with it.  Most relevant to the Recovered Memory Project is the chapter about the False Memory Syndrome….
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2013/03/11/blind-to-betrayal/

Recidivism: How often do Child Molesters go on to Reoffend?

Some people claim that child abusers can’t be cured and invariably reoffend. Others suggest that recidivism rates are low and that sex offenders are less likely to reoffend than those who commit other types of crimes. What is the truth?

Overall, follow-up studies typically find sexual recidivism rates of 10%-15% after five years, 20% after 10 years, and 30%-40% after 20 years (see, Hanson, Morton, & Harris, 2003).

However, these numbers are conservative because not all offences are detected….

The vast majority of sex offenses are never reported. For instance, the National Women’s Study surveyed a representative sample of over 4,000 adult women in the United States . Three hundred forty-one (8.5%) of these women were victims of at least one rape prior to the age of 18; however, only 11.9% of these women reported the rape to authorities (Hanson et al., 1990). And it must be remembered, of the few offenses reported, an even smaller number result in convictions.
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/rcd.html

FMSF Origins, torso of ritual sacrifice identified, police dismiss rape case because of low IQs, sex slave cult, cult leader jailed for sex abuse

- Theoretical and Personal Perspectives on the Delayed Memory Debate By Jennifer J. Freyd
- 15-Year-Old Girl Raped, Police Dismiss the Case Because Victim and Attackers Have “Low IQs”
- Torso of African boy detectives believe was killed in a ritual sacrifice before being tossed into the Thames is ‘identified’ by key witness
- Sister’s persistence leads to murder charges
- Smashed: The sex-slave cult where women were ‘forced to sleep with men claiming to be reincarnation of Christ’ on Mexico-US border
- Konstantin Rudnev: Russian cult leader jailed for sex abuse

Theoretical and Personal Perspectives on the Delayed Memory Debate By Jennifer J. Freyd, PhD University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403

A Presentation For: The Center for Mental Health at Foote Hospital’s Continuing Education Conference:
Controversies around recovered memories of incest and ritual abuse Saturday, August 7 1993 Ann Arbor, Michigan

….As many of you know, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) was founded and is now directed by, my mother, Pamela Freyd.

It is widely known that my parents claim to be “falsely accused” of the sexual abuse by their daughter.  Numerous newspaper stories about the FMSF have presented my parents’ status as falsely accused.

Just last month, on the NPR evening radio news show “All Things Considered” the reporter, Wendy Schmelzer, said “For the last year, Dr. Freyd has criss-crossed the country attending similar meetings; each time with the same message for her audience –– ‘you are not alone.  My husband and I were also falsely accused.’”   I am the daughter they claim has falsely accused them.

Not only is it widely known that my parents were accused of sexual abuse, and not only is it widely assumed that the accusations was “false”, but the details of their story are also –– most strangely –– widely known.  My mother published her version of being falsely accused under the name “Jane Doe” and this published story has been circulated widely.  Many people learn the story without knowing the identity of the characters, but believing the details to be accurate.  I find the latter situation unnerving; I find the former situation –– where people get exposed to Jane Doe thinking it is about me –– horribly invasive and violating.  As one clinician said at a national meeting recently about the FMSF: “there is persuasive evidence that this organization grew out of one family’s feud that’s overgrown its boundaries and come into the popular culture.”

In speaking about personal matters today, I would like to offer my truth in hopes that it will inform you of aspects of the context out of which FMSF grew.  I would never have chosen to be here today speaking about my personal life, were circumstances not what they are.  I make this decision partly because I have already lost so much of my privacy, and in such an unclear and distorted way, that I have come to desire clarity and public truth as the lesser of two undesirable situations.  I also speak about these matters today because I hope what I have to share will help, directly or indirectly, other abused children and adult survivors of abuse.  I hope that speaking my truth is, in the end, healing for myself and for others.

The truth I wish to speak about today pertains to patterns of behaviors.  I will speak about a pattern of behavior my parents have exhibited towards me in my childhood and continuing into the present:  A pattern of boundary violations, a pattern of invasion and control, a pattern of inappropriate and unwanted sexualization, a pattern of family and relationship dysfunction, and a pattern of intimidation and manipulation….
http://theawarenesscenter.blogspot.com/1993/08/theoretical-and-personal-perspectives.html

15-Year-Old Girl Raped, Police Dismiss the Case Because Victim and Attackers Have “Low IQs”
How police treat rape in America.    News & Politics   AlterNet  By Laura Gottesdiener February 13, 2013

In some of the most disturbing and sickening news of the day, New York state police have decided that a 15-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by three boys was in fact not sexually assaulted because both she and the boys are mentally handicapped.

In May of last year, three boys attacked a 15-year-old mentally challenged student at Martin De Porres Academy, a school for students with special needs in Long Island. According to the police report, one of the boys repeatedly banged her head against the table while the other two forced her to give them oral sex and then tried to have forcible anal sex with her. In interviews with the police, the girl explained how she repeatedly said “no” and “stop” but that the boys continued to assault her. When she came home from school that day, her mother noticed that she had blood on her underwear.

But the Nassau County Police Department recently decided to drop the case after learning that the boys also had learning disabilities and mental handicaps, which apparently made the situation far too complicated for the police department.

The department’s spokesperson told the New York Daily News , “It was more of a consensual situation with their mental capabilities.”

Of course, head-banging, blood and repeated pleas to “stop” are never consensual situations–regardless of the IQ level of the attackers. But, in this case, the police department is even further off target. As the family’s lawyer explained, the girl has an IQ of about 50 points, which puts her below the cognitive functioning level to consent to sex at all….
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/15-year-old-girl-raped-police-dismiss-case-because-victim-and-attackers-have-low

Torso of African boy detectives believe was killed in a ritual sacrifice before being tossed into the Thames is ‘identified’ by key witness  Torso named Adam by detectives has been ‘revealed’ as Nigerian-born Patrick Erhabor
John Hall Thursday 07 February 2013

A torso found in the Thames, which detectives believe belongs to an African boy murdered in a ritual sacrifice, has reportedly been identified by a key witness.

Speaking to BBC News, Joyce Osagiede said the child was Nigerian-born Patrick Erhabor – a child she claims to have looked after in Germany before he was trafficked to the UK.

Ms Osagiede went on to say she had handed the boy over to a bogus asylum seeker and convicted people smuggler called Kingsley Ojo, who was deported back to Nigeria despite having offered to help with the inquiry.

The BBC said there is no evidence to suggest Ojo was involved in the murder or knew what would happen to the boy, however, and Ojo has always denied having anything to do with the killing.

The torso, which was found close to London’s Tower Bridge in September 2001, was named Adam by detectives. Forensic tests revealed he had come from Benin City in Nigeria….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/torso-of-african-boy-detectives-believe-was-killed-in-a-ritual-sacrifice-before-being-tossed-into-the-thames-is-identified-by-key-witness-8485955.html

Sister’s persistence leads to murder charges
Fullerton detectives question a convicted murderer, who confesses to killing 3 men in 1981-82 and disposing of the bodies in what he called a Tibetan sky burial ritual. Feb. 13, 2013

By LARRY WELBORN / ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Kathy Tessanne never let it go.

Every so often for more than 30 years, Tessanne contacted Fullerton police and asked if there was any new information on a 1982 missing person case….

Last week, Fullerton police detectives gave Tessanne and her siblings grim but not unexpected news.

DNA tests conducted by the Orange County crime lab revealed that a partial skull found by hikers in 1985 near Big Bear has been identified as belonging to Frank Bartlett Marshall, Tessanne’s long-missing foster brother.

The detectives weren’t finished: the skull, they explained, had a bullet hole in it, confirming her worst fears. Marshall, who was last seen when he drove his motorcycle away from her family’s Fullerton home on Jan. 2, 1982, had been murdered.

The detectives had more.

New evidence led them to question a convicted killer serving two life terms for two murders of young men who had disappeared in very similar circumstances from Fullerton in late 1981.

And the detectives told Tessanne that inmate – David Richard Campbell, 67 – confessed to killing Marshall and spreading his remains in rugged terrain near Big Bear in what he called a Tibetan sky burial, according to Hughes….
http://www.ocregister.com/news/marshall-495651-fullerton-case.html

Smashed: The sex-slave cult where women were ‘forced to sleep with men claiming to be reincarnation of Christ’ on Mexico-US border
Cult was called the ‘Defensores de Cristo’ or ‘Defenders of Christ’
It allegedly recruited women to have sex with a Spanish man
Authorities raided house across the border from Laredo, Texas
By Leon Watson  30 January 2013
Mexican officials broke up a bizarre cult that allegedly ran a sex-slavery ring among its followers on the U.S. border, Mexican immigration authorities revealed today.

The ‘Defensores de Cristo’ or ‘Defenders of Christ’ allegedly recruited women to have sex with a Spanish man who claimed he was the reincarnation of Christ, according to an official of a victims’ advocacy group.

Followers were subjected to forced labor or sexual services, including prostitution, according to the National Immigration Institute that said it filed a complaint more than a year ago about the cult.

Federal police, agents of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute and prosecutors raided a house earlier this week near Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, and found cult members, including children, living in filthy conditions, according to the institute official….

But according to the cult’s website, the leader was Spaniard Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba. He set up shop in Mexico about three years ago, after a stint in Brazil and other parts of South America, said Myrna Garcia, an activist with the Support Network for Cult Victims who has worked with victims of the Defenders of Christ cult.

He became involved in offering courses on ‘bio-programming,’ an esoteric practice that claims to allow practicants to ‘reprogram’ their brains to eliminate pain, suffering and anxiety, according to institute….

The Interior Department said the Defenders of Christ had not registered as a religious group, as required under Mexican law. Garcia said cells of the cult might still be active in Peru and Argentina
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270550/Sex-slave-cult-Mexico-US-border-women-forced-sleep-reincarnations-Christ.html

Konstantin Rudnev: Russian cult leader jailed for sex abuse
A Russian cult leader who described himself as an “extra-terrestrial from Sirius” has been jailed for 11 years for sexually abusing his followers.
By Tom Parfitt, Moscow 08 Feb 2013

Konstantin Rudnev, 45, was convicted in a closed trial in Siberia of rape, drug trafficking, sexual assault and “creating an organisation that infringes on people’s personality and rights”.

It was the end of an extraordinary and bizarre journey for the self-proclaimed prophet, who also went under the moniker Great Shaman Shri Dzhnan Avatar Muni.

The former steelworker founded his strict, hierarchical cult called Ashram Shambala in the city of Novosibirsk in the late 1980s, cheating converts out of their belongings in exchange for a potpourri of esoteric and occultist teachings and the chance to “clean their energy channels” in mystical rituals.

The cult grew rapidly, acquiring up to 20,000 followers at ashrams across Russia….

Followers of the cult were persuaded to sell their apartments and cars and hand over the cash, while breaking links with their relatives.

“Psychological pressure was put on the adherents,” said Irina Zebrova, a Federal Security Service (FSB) spokesperson. “They were forced to unquestioningly follow the commands of the leader of the sect. People were punished with lack of food and sleep.”

Rudnev was originally arrested in 1999, but he escaped from a psychiatric hospital after being sent for checks. He was detained again in 2005 but his followers refused to give evidence against him.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9857871/Konstantin-Rudnev-Russian-cult-leader-jailed-for-sex-abuse.html

Jerry Sandusky, Msrg. William Lynn and the Horace Mann School, Jury affirms recovered memory, rejects FMS defense, Pinching, purification and finding The Bridge to Total Freedom: Induction at the Scientology HQ

“When the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from victims of sexual abuse in 1994, there was one witness who testified in opposition: Pamela Freyd, Executive Director of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.  Mrs. Freyd expressed the concern that extending the statute of limitations “may create more tarnished reputations” (Testimony of Pamela Freyd, Senate Judiciary Committee, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; May 24, 1994, p. 5).”

Jerry Sandusky, Msrg. William Lynn and the Horace Mann School

July 7th, 2012

Child sexual abuse has recently been the focus of three high-profile stories. Most prominently, former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of sexually assaulting 10 different boys since 1998. Most dramatically, Msrg. William Lynn became the highest ranking official in the Catholic Church to be convicted of a crime connected to covering-up the sexual abuse of children by priests. Most controversially, the New York Times published a long story about sexual abuse by teachers, none of whom had been charged in court, at the Horace Mann School….

The New York legislature needs to do what the Pennsylvania legislature did years ago: extend the statute of limitations well into adulthood. Had that not occurred in Pennsylvania, the Sandusky case would not have gone forward. Neither would the case against Mrsg. Lynn. The state would have been as powerless to act as prosecutors in New York are now that a former Horace Mann teacher has admitted to sexually abusing students, adding weight to a story that some criticized for focusing only on teachers who are deceased.

We would all do well to remember who lobbied against extending the statute of limitations in Pennsylvania.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from victims of sexual abuse in 1994, there was one witness who testified in opposition: Pamela Freyd, Executive Director of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Mrs. Freyd expressed the concern that extending the statute of limitations “may create more tarnished reputations” (Testimony of Pamela Freyd, Senate Judiciary Committee, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; May 24, 1994, p. 5). She urged the committee to amend the bill to “encourage and emphasize alternative means of resolving these matters other than courts” (Id., p. 7)…. http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2012/07/07/sandusky-horace-mann-and-msrg-william-lynn/

Jury affirms recovered memory, rejects FMS defense April 19th, 2012

A jury in Stockton, California unanimously found that Rev. Michael Kelly should be held liable for damages related to three counts of child molestation. The plaintiff, a former U.S. Air force major currently on medical leave from his job as a commercial pilot, testified that he was molested by Rev. Kelly in the 1980s and only recently recalled the abuse. The abuse was apparently corroborated by a second victim whose testimony was kept from the jury. The defense relied on Dr. J. Alexander Bodkin, an associate professor of psychology at Harvard, who argued, in a rather circular fashion, that the plaintiff’s recollections must be false because the recovered memory has not been broadly accepted in the field. The jury rejected this defense and the church, which defended Kelly, has since allowed that there were no grounds for appeal. The Church settled the case for $3.75 million. Kelly, as reported in the LA Times, fled the country, while the  investigation of other claims is still pending. http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2012/04/19/jury-affirms-recovered-memory-rejects-fms-defense/

Pinching, purification and finding The Bridge to Total Freedom: Inside a very sinister induction at the Scientology HQ

Members are checked if they are ‘Clear’ – which costs £82,000 to achieve
Cameras and audio monitor Clearwater site to keep a check on followers
Newcomers must undergo ‘purification of toxins’ which involves sweating out in a sauna

By Kerry Hiatt 7 July 2012

I’d been pinched – hard – in some kind of strange lie-detector test and seen rooms where people went to be ‘purified’.  I’d spent an hour subjected to a gruelling and invasive ‘personality’ test and revealed my deepest inner thoughts as if hypnotised. I’d also been invited to cross the Bridge To Total Freedom – but, in a panic, instead I found myself running away from Scientology as fast as I could – after just a day as a guest of the controversial religion.

I look back on my visit last week to Scientology’s Florida headquarters  to celebrate July 4 as one of the most unsettling experiences of my life, and yet it all started so innocently…

The invitation from the Scientologists had suggested we celebrate Independence Day at ‘the Friendliest Place in the Whole World’. Why should I refuse? The event sounded fun. There would be a barbecue, pool games, live music, a petting zoo and fireworks – just like other celebrations across America.

However, there was a hint that this party would be different. The invitation also said: ‘Get briefed on Scientology’s exponential expansion across the globe, our penetrating 4th Dynamic Dissemination Campaigns and a full view to our future.’

It had been sent to a close relative of mine who had briefly worked for Scientology almost a decade ago, inviting him to the Florida town of Clearwater, Scientology’s spiritual headquarters – where Scientologists own more than 200 shops, restaurants, hotels, banks and small businesses….

Scientology symbols are everywhere in Clearwater; on plaques, in paving stones, and engraved into the architecture. Security cameras are on all Scientology properties and even hidden in the shrubbery. Every move and, no doubt conversation, can be monitored. It feels incredibly sinister.

The town is dominated by the Church’s £57 million Super Power Building which will, eventually, be a centre for learning. Construction paper covers doors and windows so I couldn’t see what was inside and no one could tell me when it would open….http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2170232/Scientology-Pinching-purification-finding-The-Bridge-Total-Freedom-My-sinister-induction-Scientology-HQ–just-days-ago-July-4.html

Media Manipulation of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation

U-Turn on Memory Lane by Mike Stanton – Columbia Journalism Review – July/August 1997

The FMSF builds much of its case against recovered memory by attacking a generally discredited Freudian concept of repression that proponents of recovered memory don’t buy, either. In so doing, the foundation ignores the fifty-year-old literature on traumatic, or psychogenic amnesia, which is an accepted diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association. In his 1996 book “Searching for Memory,” the Harvard psychologist and brain researcher Daniel L. Schachter — who believes that both true and false memories exist — says there is no conclusive scientific evidence that false memories can be created….The foundation and its backers “remind me of a high school debate team,” says the Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel, an authority on traumatic amnesia. “They go to the library, surgically extract the information convenient to them and throw out the rest.”….Many therapists, like their patients, hesitate to speak out. Recently, though, they have begun to make a more concerted effort to mobilize a response.

One of the most outspoken critics of the false-memory movement is a Seattle therapist, David Calof, editor until last year of Treating Abuse Today, a newsletter for therapists. He has identified what he calls the movement’s political agenda — lobbying for more restrictive laws governing therapy and promoting the harassment of therapists through lawsuits and even picketing of their offices and homes. Calof himself has been the target of picketing so fierce that he has been in and out of Seattle courtrooms over the last two years, obtaining restraining orders. He was spending so much time and money fighting the FMSF supporters’ campaign against him, he says, that he was forced to stop publishing the newsletter last year. He recently donated the publication to a victims’ rights group in Pennsylvania, which has resurrected it as Trauma. The new publisher says that views part of its mission as reporting on FMSF, since the mainstream media don’t.

Among journalists, perhaps the most relentless critic of the foundation is Michele Landsberg, a Toronto Star columnist. In 1993, she says, an Ontario couple, claiming to have been falsely accused, contacted her and asked her to write about their case. Unconvinced, she declined, and eventually started writing instead about the foundation.She attacked its scientific claims and criticized the sensational media coverage. She described how a foundation scientific adviser, Harold Merskey, had testified that a woman accusing a doctor of sexual abuse in a civil case might in fact have been suffering from false memory syndrome. But the accused doctor himself had previously confessed to criminal charges of abusing her. Landsberg also challenged the credentials of other foundation advisers. She noted that one founding adviser, Ralph Underwager, was forced to resign from the foundation’s board after he and his wife, Hollida Wakefield, who remains an adviser, gave an interview to a Dutch pedophilia magazine in which he was quoted as describing pedophilia as”an acceptable expression of God’s will for love.” Landsberg also wrote that another adviser, James Randi, a magician known as “The Amazing Randi,” had been involved in a lawsuit in which his opponent introduced a tape of sexually explicit telephone conversations Randi had with teenage boys. (Randi has claimed at various times, she said, that the tape was a hoax and that the police asked him to make it.) “Why haven’t reporters investigated the False Memory Syndrome Foundation?” she asks. “It’s legitimate to examine their backgrounds –here are people who really do have powerful motivation to deny the truth.” http://web.archive.org/web/20090124212304/http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/97/4/memory.asp

Battle Tactics of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation – Noel Packard – New School for Social Research, N.Y. History Matters Conference April 23-24, 2004

Censorship is also a tactic that FMS Foundation adherents use to silence voices they don’t agree with. Katy Butler, published a critical review of Ofshe’s and Watter’s book, Making Monsters (1994) in the Los Angeles Times. Later the newspaper’s book review editor received a vague threat of a lawsuit from Ofshe’s representative (K. Butler personal communication with Lynn Crook January 28, 2000). Later Butler was asked to write a story for Newsweek examining the uncritical acceptance of Foundation claims and to provide documented cases of recovered memory and traumatic amnesia. Upon learning of this assignment Foundation Advisory Board members Richard Ofshe and Fredrick Crews, as well as Peter and Pamela Freyd, wrote strongly worded letters of complaint to Newsweek which effectively canceled Butler’s assignment (Stanton 1997). Although these censorship activities were reported in Mike Stanton’s article “U-Turn on Memory Lane” (1997) Nevertheless, Newsweek editors confirmed that the FMS Foundation letters helped kill Butler’s article. Butler said at a national conference of investigative reporters and editors in Rhode Island in 1996: “I’ve worked hard very hard to tell both sides of the story. What’s interesting to me about all of this that telling both sides has started to seem like a risky act.” (Stanton 1997: 49)….

In 1994 the editor of the Journal of Psychohistory Lloyd DeMause wrote to many professional subscribers to inform them that he feared a lawsuit by the FMS Foundation for publishing a special issue of his journal on cult abuse. Dr. Jean Goodwin a psychiatrist at University of Texas Medical Branch responded with a letter that conveys the overall feeling among the mental health community in the early 1990s. Goodwin: From a Psychohistorical viewpoint it is fascinating to watch this organization systematically limit freedom of speech in this area. Their suits of publishers have driven many books out of print. Board members have prevented publication of many articles. As far as I know you are the first journal editor they have targeted. The slander suit stopped the audio-tapping of many presentations in this area. The licensing attacks and the malpractice suits threaten freedom of speech in the psychotherapy consulting room, which is where it is supposed to be most free. Silence still is the priority for the perpetrator (Goodwin 1994) Goodwin’s letter captures the effect that Foundations’ tactics had on the therapy community in the early 1990s. Today the overall effect of the Foundation’s court cases and tactics is more muted. One newly graduated MFT told me that as far as she knows the Foundation has had no impact on the practices of MFTs at all. A social worker who teaches a certification class on mandated reporting includes the Foundation topic in her lectures, saying that the Foundation “made us clean up our act.” I’ve also heard a seasoned MFT who teaches a class titled, “Counseling as a Career Option” lament that practicing psychotherapy is becoming a profession only for the rich (both as practitioners and clients). Perhaps this is due to recent constrictions and costs associated with lawsuits, training programs, licensing and insurance policies? I

It appears that the Foundations’ efforts to drive non-cognitive therapy beyond the grasp of un-wealthy clients are having some success. Kondora’s and Beckett’s studies indicate that the Foundation has been successful in many of its efforts to manage public perception of child abuse victims, therapists and the people accused of child abuse. Kondora and Beckett show that not only has public perception of victimized children become skeptical, but in fact, the press often goes beyond the Victorian custom of neutrality on all fronts of the issue, to out-right sympathy for accused molesters. What began in the 1960s and 1970s as a child welfare movement has arrived today as an accused sex-offender welfare movement (Goldsmith 2003); and right in time for an era when people are having more babies, less birth control and have easier ways to create home based child pornography than ever before. The Foundation has won many expensive malpractice lawsuits that have made news headlines. Such cases have probably put a chill into more than one therapy session, which is what they are intended to do.

The Foundation’s efforts in and out of the court room have provided reasons for health insurance companies to reduce insurance payments for mental health care and have tied those payments generally to mental health diagnoses. Training programs for clinical therapists have become more like the clinical training programs of the cold-war years, more science oriented, more stringent, more bio-logically and drug oriented, and less theory and talked based. Many of the support groups, networks, newsletters, journals, and even significant names in the child welfare movement of the 1980′s and 1990′s have faded, vanished or been displaced by on-line and other services of the FMS Foundation. Kondora, Lori L. 1997. A Textual Analysis of the Construction of the False Memory Syndrome: Representations in Popular Magazines; 1990-1995. Ph.D. diss. University of Wisconsin, Madison. – Beckett, Katherine. 1996. Culture and the Politics of Signification: The Case of Child Sexual Abuse. SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 43, No. 1, February: 57-76. http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/historymatters/papers/NoelPackard.pdf