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

Trauma: How We’ve Created a Nation Addicted, FMS Misrepresentation, CIA

articles:
Trauma: How We’ve Created a Nation Addicted to Shopping, Work, Drugs and Sex -
“The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. And the commonality is childhood abuse.”

The Misrepresentation of the Case of Billy Banks
Cryptome Exposes CIA Hypnosis Programs

Democracy Now! By Amy Goodman
Trauma: How We’ve Created a Nation Addicted to Shopping, Work, Drugs and Sex – Post-industrial capitalism has completely destroyed the conditions required for healthy childhood development. December 26, 2010

AMY GOODMAN: From disease to addiction, parenting to attention deficit disorder, Canadian physician and bestselling author Gabor Maté’s work focuses on the centrality of early childhood experiences to the development of the brain, and how those experiences can impact everything from behavioral patterns to physical and mental illness. While the relationship between emotional stress and disease, and mental and physical health more broadly, is often considered controversial within medical orthodoxy, Dr. Maté argues too many doctors seem to have forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption, that emotions are deeply implicated in both the development of illness, addictions and disorders, and in their healing….

DR. GABOR MATÉ: The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. And the commonality is childhood abuse. In other words, these people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development, they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don’t have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside who wasn’t sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men, or abused, neglected and abandoned serially, over and over again.
And that’s what sets up the brain biology of addiction. In other words, the addiction is related both psychologically, in terms of emotional pain relief, and neurobiological development to early adversity….

And what I mean by that is, is that most people who try most drugs never become addicted to them. And so, there has to be susceptibility there. And the susceptible people are the ones with these impaired brain circuits, and the impairment is caused by early adversity, rather than by genetics….

DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, the first point to get there is that if people who become severe addicts, as shown by all the studies, were for the most part abused children, then we realize that the war on drugs is actually waged against people that were abused from the moment they were born, or from an early age on. In other words, we’re punishing people for having been abused.
http://www.alternet.org/story/149325/

Featured Post: The Misrepresentation of the Case of Billy Banks
October 31, 2010 The False Memory Syndrome Foundation claims to condemn the sexual abuse of children. In their words, “Child sexual abuse is a reprehensible crime….Every effort should be made to help victims of sexual abuse and to create a social climate in which such mistreatment does not continue to take place.” So why did they sympathize with Billy Banks, a serial child molester?

This is the first in a series of occasional posts that will highlight and document cases in which the FMSF has taken the side of someone charged with child sexual abuse without apparent regard for the evidence of guilt.

The Case against Billy Banks – Billy Banks was convicted in 2005 on 10 counts of sexual battery on a child under 12 years of age. (Three counts were overturned on appeal—two on double jeopardy, and one was outside the statute.) The charges included acts of rape, forced oral sex, and fondling of his daughter and his adoptive niece from 1965 to 1970. Banks was also facing two charges of lewd, lascivious or indecent acts on a child under 16 for sexually abusing his two granddaughters 20 years later, in 1990-1. After being convicted on the first counts, Banks pled no contest to one of these later counts. He was sentenced to life on the sexual battery charges and three and a half years for the charge to which he pled no contest.

http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2010/10/31/the-misrepresentation-of-the-case-of-billy-banks/

Cryptome Exposes CIA Hypnosis Programs
By Adam Weinstein Dec. 28, 2010….here’s a pair of memos, posted to the intelligence-secrets website, that show the CIA was all up in that Inception-type business in the Cold War: using deep hypnosis to create unwitting double agents and implant secret communications in their brains, where they can’t be intercepted….No surprises here to those who are well-acquainted both with science fiction and the CIA’s fondness for far-out mind experiments. Ackerman reminds us about Project MKULTRA and the crazy acid tests that comprised America’s war on commies until the ’70s, when Congress’ Church Commission put the kibosh on all that cloak-and-doctor intrigue. Even so, these two docs, dated from 1954 and 1955, are worth a good read.
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/12/cryptome-exposes-cia-hypnosis-programs

CIA Hypnotism 1954 document
http://www.scribd.com/doc/45949511/CIA-Hypnotism-1954

ritual abuse evidence, false memory syndrome debunked

Journal of Psychology and Theology – Satanic Ritual Abuse: The Current State of Knowledge
https://wisdom.biola.edu/jpt
Adults who report childhood ritualistic abuse. By: Cozolino, L.J.; Shaffer, R.E. Volume 20, Issue 3 Fall 1992 Therapists are finding an increasing number of patients uncovering memories of ritualistic forms of abuse from childhood. To gain a fuller understanding of this phenomenon, twenty outpatients reporting memories of ritualistic abuse were interviewed. Questions focused on the nature of the abuse and its perceived impact on interpersonal, occupational, and spiritual development. Reasons for entering psychotherapy as well as the nature and course of treatment were also discussed. Subjects entered therapy with similar psychological complaints. Reported psychiatric sequelae included dissociative, affective, somatization, and eating disorders. Abuse experiences were reported to have affected every aspect of their adult functioning. Subjects began therapy with little or no knowledge of the phenomenon of ritualistic abuse, and only one patient reported vague memories of ritualistic abuse before entering therapy. Reports from this sample reflect striking convergence among subjects and with data from previous research and clinical reports. A composite clinical case study is presented based on these data.
excerpts from the article:
“Skeptics question the legitimacy of these reports,but many factors point to the reality of the phenomenon of ritualistic abuse. First of all, the degree of consistency between reports of individuals from different parts of the country is very high. The fact that children as young as 2 and 3 report ritualistic abuse experiences that mirror those reported by adult victims is especially striking in light of the fact that young children do not have access to the kind of printed information that might conceivably allow an older person to fabricate such experiences (Gould, 1987). Second, experiences of ritualistic abuse reported by victims of all ages are virtually identical to written historical accounts of Satan worship and the like (Hill & Goodwin, 1989; Russell, 1972), findings that substantiate our present-day understanding of Satanism and ritualistic abuse as intragenerational phenomenon. Third, the symptoms from which individuals reporting histories of ritualistic abuse tend to suffer are consistent with our current understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder and the dissociative disorders. The progression in which ritualistic abuse survivors respond to psychotherapy places these victims squarely within the category of individual who have suffered real-not imagined-trauma.
That is, when memories of the dissociated traumatic event have been fully surfaced into conscious awareness and re-associated in all their aspects, the often extremely debilitating symptoms from which the individual has suffered abate dramatically and over the course of treatment frequently disappear altogether (Ray & Reagor, 1991).
Comments on study: Shaffer and Cozolino (1992) interviewed 19 women and one man who reported types and aftereffects of ritualistic abuse consistent with those reported by Young et al. All subjects reported witnessing the murder of animals, infants, children and/or adults. All reported suicidal ideation and half reported suicide attempts. The majority reported severe and sadistic forms of abuse by multiple perpetrators. Some reported continued recontact/revictimization into their adult years.

describes crimes
Journal of Psychology and Theology – Satanic Ritual Abuse: The Current State of Knowledge
Gould, C., & Cozolino, L. (1992). Ritual abuse, multiplicity, and mind control. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 20, 194-196.
As a result of the psychologically intolerable nature of their early childhood experiences, victims of ritual abuse frequently develop multiple personality disorder (MPD). Therapists who treat these victims often assume that all MPD stems from a system of spontaneously created defenses against overwhelming trauma. As a result, these therapists tend to focus on treating the post-traumatic stress elements of the disorder and on integrating alter personalities. Recent experience with victims of ritual abuse suggests the presence of “cult-created” multiplicity, in which the cult deliberately creates alter personalities to serve its purposes, often outside of the awareness of the victim’s host personality. Each cult-created alter is programmed to serve a particular cult function such as maintaining contact with the cult, reporting information to the cult, self-injuring if cult injunctions are broken, and disrupting the therapeutic process that could lead to the individual breaking free of the cult. A majority of ritual abuse victims in psychotherapy may maintain cult contact unbeknownst to either the host personality or the treating therapist.
Selected quotes:
“Ritual abuse is conducted on behalf of a cult whose purpose is to establish mind control over the victims. Thus, these perpetrators have a conscious motive for the abuse beyond compulsively repeating their own childhood abuse in an effort to gain mastery over the original trauma. Most victims state that they were ritually abused as part of satanic worship, for the purpose of indoctrinating them into satanic beliefs (Los Angeles County Commission for Women, 1989). Mind control is originally established when the victim is a child under 6 years old. During this formative stage of development, perpetrating cult members systematically combine dissociation enhancing drugs, pain, sexual assault, terror, and other forms of psychological abuse in such a way that the child dissociates the intolerable traumatic experience. The part of the child that has been split off to handle the overwhelming trauma is maximally open to suggestion as the abuse is occurring. The cult perpetrators exploit the vulnerability of the child who is being tortured by directing the child to create a new personality who is to answer to a particular name as well as to other specific cues. During the abuse, the newly formed alter personality is imbued with particular qualities and functions by the cult programmer. Alter personalities which are structured by the ritually abusing cult in this fashion are created to serve particular cult functions. These functions usually lie outside of the awareness of the core (or host) personality.
Such cult functions typically include, but are not limited to, maintaining contact with the cult, reporting information to the cult, self-injuring if the cult injunctions are broken, and disrupting the therapeutic process that could lead to the individual breaking free of the cult (Neswald, 1991). https://wisdom.biola.edu/jpt

Ritualistic child abuse, psychopathology, and evil. By: Cozolino, L.J. – Journal of Psychology and Theology Volume 18, Issue 3 Fall 1990 p.218
Ritualistic abuse is an extreme form of psychological, physical, and sexual maltreatment of children in the context of “religious” ceremony. The clinical presentation of the victims of such abuse is complex and raises many issues related in the diagnosis and treatment of psychopathology as well as the importance of spiritual counseling. The acknowledgment of belief systems so repugnant to the Judeo-Christian world view and the addressing of our own negative emotional reactions to the reality of ritualistic abuse are important first steps in responding to these issues. The phenomenon of ritualistic child abuse forces us to consider the relationship between theological notions of evil and psychological concepts of psychopathology. This article addresses the phenomenon of ritualistic child abuse, the psychological sequelae of victimization, and possible motivations for this form of abuse. https://wisdom.biola.edu/jpt

Psychological sequelae in adult females reporting childhood ritualistic abuse Kathy J. Lawrence, Louis Cozolino and David W. Foy – Child Abuse & Neglect Volume 19, Issue 8, August 1995, Pages 975-984 doi:10.1016/0145-2134(95)00059-H
Abstract: The present study sought to increase current scientific knowledge about the controversial issue of subjectively reported childhood ritualistic abuse by addressing several key unresolved issues. In particular, the possibility that those reporting ritualistic abuse may be characterized primarily by the severity of their abuse histories or the severity of their present psychological symptoms, rather than the veridicality of the ritualistic events, was explored. Adult female outpatients reporting childhood sexual abuse with ritualistic features were compared with a second group of women who reported childhood sexual abuse without ritualism. Measures included characteristics of childhood sexual and physical abuse, current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnostic status and symptom severity, and severity of current dissociative experiences. Women reporting ritualistic features scored significantly higher on measures of childhood sexual and physical abuse. Neither PTSD diagnostic status nor severity for PTSD nor dissociative experiences were significantly different between the groups. While preliminary in nature, these results suggest that it may be helpful to conceptualize reported childhood ritualistic abuse as indicative of the need to assess carefully for severe abuse and its predictable sequelae within existing traumatic victimization conceptual frameworks.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V7N-3YB56DX-1X&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b9a75a7e349d4efe5a11ed205f736cf5

–

Whitfield, C. L. (2001). The “false memory” defense: Using disinformation and junk science in and out of court. In Whitfield, C. L., Silberg, J. Fink, P. J. Eds. (2001). Misinformation Concerning Child Sexual Abuse and Adult Survivors New York: Hawthorn Press, Inc. (pp. 53 – 78)
“Attorneys for accused, convicted or found-responsible child molesters tend to use a superficially sophisticated argument, which can be described as the “false memory defense.” This defense is fraught with disinformation, smoke screens, and other untruths that are a distortion of what the available science of the psychology of trauma and memory shows. In this article, this seemingly sophisticated, but actually mostly contrived and often erroneous defense, is described and it is compared in a brief review to what the science says about the effect of trauma on memory.” http://childabuse.georgiacenter.uga.edu/both/whitfield/whitfield2.phtml
Also in Haworth Press, Special Issue on Disinformation, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 9(3 & 4)” Abstract: This article describes a seemingly sophisticated, but mostly contrived and often erroneous “false memory” defense, and compares it in a brief review to what the science says about the effect of trauma on memory. Child sexual abuse is widespread and dissociative/traumatic amnesia for it is common. Accused, convicted and self-confessed child molesters and their advocates have crafted a strategy that tries to negate their abusive, criminal behavior, which we can call a “false memory” defense. Each of 22 of the more commonly used components of this defense is described and discussed with respect to what the science says about them. Armed with this knowledge, survivors, their clinicians, and their attorneys will be better able to refute this defense of disinformation.
http://childabuse.georgiacenter.uga.edu/both/whitfield/whitfield1.phtml

False Memory Syndrome From Child Abuse Wiki
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=False_Memory_Syndrome
The term False Memory Syndrome was created in 1992 by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). It has been called “a pseudoscientific syndrome that was developed to defend against claims of child abuse.” The FMSF was created by parents who claimed to be falsely accused of child sexual abuse. The False Memory Syndrome was described as “a widespread social phenomenon where misguided therapists cause patients to invent memories of sexual abuse.” Research has shown that most delayed memories of childhood abuse are true. In general, it has been shown that false allegations of childhood sexual abuse are rare, with some studies showing rates as low as one percent and some studies showing slightly higher rates. It has been found that children tend to understate rather than overstate the extent of any abuse experienced. It has been stated that misinformation on the topic of child sexual abuse is widespread and that the media have contributed to this problem by reporting favorably on unproven and controversial claims like the False Memory Syndrome.

media manipulation and harassment – the cover up of child abuse crimes

“The argument between the field of child sexual abuse and the backlash against survivors is not an academic debate between two well meaning groups equally invested in ascertaining truth.  It is not an academic debate at all; it is a political fight.” P. 121 “What wins political fights is organization and stamina and a refusal to be intimidated.” P. 122 – Anna Salter (Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned)

harassment:

Calof, D.L. (1998).  Notes from a practice under siege: Harassment, defamation, and  intimidation in the name of science, Ethics and Behavior, 8(2) pp. 161-187. Abstract: I have practiced psychotherapy, family therapy, and hypnotherapy for over 25 years without a single board complaint or law suit by a client.  For over three years, however, a group of proponents of the false memory syndrome (FMS) hypothesis, including members, officials, and supporters of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, Inc., have waged a multi-modal campaign of harassment and defamation directed against me, my clinical clients, my staff, my family, and others connected to me.  I have neither treated these harassers or their families, nor had any professional or personal dealings with any of them; I am not related in any way to the disclosures of memories of sexual abuse in these families.  Nonetheless, this group disrupts my professional and personal life and threatens to drive me out of business.  In this article, I describe practicing psychotherapy under a state of siege and places the campaign against me in the context of a much broader effort in the FMS movement to denigrate, defame, and harass clinicians, lecturers, writers, and researchers identified with the abuse and trauma treatment communities. http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/notes-from-a-practice-under-siege/

Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter  DOI: 10.1207/s15327019eb0802_2   Published in:  Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 , pages 115 – 124  Abstract – In 1988 I began a report on the accuracy of expert testimony in child sexual abuse cases utilizing Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield as a case study (Wakefield & Underwager, 1988). In response, Underwager and Wakefield began a campaign of harassment and intimidation, which included multiple lawsuits; an ethics charge; phony (and secretly taped) phone calls; and ad hominem attacks, including one that I was laundering federal grant monies. The harassment and intimidation failed as the author refused demands to retract. In addition, the lawsuits and ethics charges were dismissed. Lessons learned from the experience are discussed.
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/confessions-of-a-whistle-blower-lessons-learned/

http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-data/

Media Manipulation:

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://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? 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’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 biologically 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

Paul McHugh

Information on Paul McHugh Bishops Select Lay Board On Sexual Abuse Review By Laurie Goodstein 6/25/02  “Dr. McHugh, who was a founder and board member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.”  http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DEFD91038F936A15754C0A9649C8B63

Brown, D; Frischholz E, Scheflin A. (1999). “Iatrogenic dissociative identity disorder – an evaluation of the scientific evidence”. The Journal of Psychiatry and Law XXVII No. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 1999):549–637. p. 604 – 605 “The problem with McHugh’s publications on MPD/DID, like those of Mersky, is that they are mere speculation. From deposition testimony in several cases, McHugh has made it clear that other than an occasional consultation, he has very little actual clinical experience with the ongoing treatment of MPD/DID patients and is generally unfamiliar with both the clinical features of MPD/DID and with what usually occurs in their treatment. This McHugh’s opinion is informed neither by actual in-depth clinical experience with contemporary MPD/DID patients nor by any scientific research on MPD. Furthermore, with regard to McHugh’s main hypothesis that hysterical behavior is implicated in DID iatrogenesis, Gleaves has shown that such phenomena are no more prevalent in DID than in any other psychiatric condition.” (Gleaves, D. July 1996 The sociocognitive model of dissociative identity disorder: a reexamination of the evidence, Psychological Bulletin 120, 1  p.42-59 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8711016?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus) “ No reason exists to doubt the connection between DID and childhood trauma.” http://ritualabuse.us/research/did/basic-information-on-didmpd/

Morrison threatens to sue witness – Expert witness Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist, could face disciplinary action for revealing information in Wichita abortion records. By Dion Leflert 6/13/07 Wichita Eagle – Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison on Tuesday threatened to sue a psychiatric expert hired by his predecessor if he doesn’t stop making public statements about medical records from an investigation of Wichita abortion provider George Tiller. In a letter, Morrison told psychiatrist Paul McHugh that if he persists, the attorney general’s office will “pursue all available remedies.” That could include legal action to get a refund of $5,000 the state has paid McHugh and possible disciplinary action against him in his home state of Maryland. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-31256521_ITM

Dubious choice for resolving church scandal by Mara J. Math 9/21/02 “McHugh’s actions…pose the deepest threat to the council’s credibility. McHugh is the only therapist on the lay council. This makes his participation especially significant, because other members may rely on his presumed expertise. Because he frequently testifies on behalf of accused molesters, doubts may be raised about the council’s desire to truly solve the problem. McHugh…is the man whose report to the court in one case stated that a defendant’s harassing phone calls were not obscene – including the call that detailed a fantasy of a 4-year-old sex slave locked in a dog cage and fed human waste. At least eight men have been convicted of sexually abusing Maryland children while under treatment at the “sex disorders” clinic McHugh runs at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine – abuse the doctors did not report, citing client confidentiality. When Maryland law was changed to require that doctors report child molestation, the clinic fought it and advised patients on how to get around the law. The memo to patients suggested that molesters report their pedophilic activities to their lawyers, who could in turn tell staff; attorney-client privilege would then protect the molesters from being reported. This memo was fully approved by the boss – Dr. Paul McHugh…” http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/20/ED175849.DTL

Paul McHugh on transsexualism - From an article by Elizabeth Gilbert: McHugh has always reserved special scorn for the practice of sex-change surgery on adult transsexuals. Classifying transsexualism as merely one symptom in a larger complex of personality disorders, McHugh had long believed that psychiatrists should treat such patients with the talking cure, not radical, irreversible surgeries. In a 1992 article in the American Scholar, McHugh lambasted transsexual surgery as ‘the most radical therapy ever encouraged by twentieth century psychiatrists’ and likened its popularity to the once widespread practice of frontal lobotomy.  http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/paul-mchugh.html

Ralph Underwager

Information on Ralph Underwager:

Interview in Amsterdam in June 1991 by “Paidika,” Editor-in-Chief, Joseph Geraci.

PAIDIKA: Is choosing paedophilia for you a responsible choice for the individuals?

RALPH UNDERWAGER: Certainly it is responsible. What I have been struck by as I have come to know more about and understand people who choose paedophilia is that they let themselves be too much defined by other people. That is usually an essentially negative definition. Paedophiles spend a lot of time and energy defending their choice. I don’t think that a paedophile needs to do that. Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose. They can say that what they want is to find the best way to love. I am also a theologian and as a theologian, I believe it is God’s will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of the flesh, between people. A paedophile can say: “This closeness is possible for me within the choices that I’ve made.”

Paedophiles are too defensive. They go around saying, “You people out there are saying that what I choose is bad, that it’s no good. You’re putting me in prison, you’re doing all these terrible things to me. I have to define my love as being in some way or other illicit.” What I think is that paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, “I believe this is in fact part of God’s will.” They have the right to make these statements for themselves as personal choices. Now whether or not they can persuade other people they are right is another matter (laughs).
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/NudistHallofShame/Underwager2.html

WITNESS FOR MR. BUBBLES Transcribed from “Australia 60 Minutes,” Channel Nine Network  (Aired on August 5, 1990 in Australia) Produced by Anthony McClellan; Reported by Mike Munro….

(describes crimes)
Reporter: Six weeks ago (17 June 1990) we brought you a story that a number of people, including some in high places, wanted to keep secret: the case against Mr. Bubbles. In that report, parents named Tony Deren as the man who had sexually assaulted their children. Deren’s wife ran the kindergarten they attended. Tonight we investigate another crucial aspect of this disturbing case. You remember, police listed seventeen young victims, and more than fifty (54) criminal charges were eventually laid. But when the Mr. Bubbles case went to court, not one of the children was called to give evidence. The charges were thrown out, and Tony Deren was set free.

One of the key Deren witnesses was a hired gun from the United States, a psychologist named Ralph Underwager, who says he’s an expert in child sexual abuse. He testified that the children’s evidence had been contaminated, and they were too young to know what the truth was.

“Reporter: This is Ralph Underwager. Psychologist. He was paid $25,000, and gave crucial evidence in favor of Tony Deren. Evidence which helped Deren walk free….

Reporter: Always the same story. Three and four year olds being lured into bubble baths with a man who sexually abused them.

Professor Kim Oates: Having examined them, and talked with them, I’m absolutely convinced the children were sexually abused.

Reporter: There’s absolutely no doubt?

Oates: No doubt at all

(Voice over)
Reporter: That’s the evidence Professor Kim Oates wanted to give in court. But he was never asked. As head of the Child Protection Unit at the Camperdown Children’s Hospital in Sydney, he’s known around the world as an expert in detecting child sexual abuse.

(Back to what is being said with the Professor)
Reporter: So we have eighteen children who were examined, five of whom your staff say were definitely sexually abused, and all of them from the same preschool. What’s your reaction to that?

Oates: Well, I think if you look at the incidence of significant child sexual abuse in the community, significant enough to lay physical findings in the preschool age group, I think it’s extraordinary….

Reporter: This is Debbie’s medical report. Once again, it was positive; there was sexual abuse.

(Switch to interview with Debbie’s mother)
Debbie’s mother: I was entirely spun out on that because I, at that point, had been trying to tell myself that, no, this wasn’t happening, it wasn’t true, who would interfere with my child.

Another child (wasn’t identified): I put some things in his body, and he put some things in my body, but I didn’t want him to.

Reporter: Cindy’s medical report confirms she was abused. The doctor found signs consistent with traumatic dilatation of the anus….

Reporter: This is Boroko Court House, Port Moresby, New Guinea. In 1972, Deren was brought here, charged with the aggravated assault of two young girls. He’d interfered with them in a swimming pool. Something Deren admits. And both charges were proven….

Reporter: There’s no doubt scores of questions remain unanswered in the Mr. Bubbles case, and some of them relate to Ralph Underwager, the expert witness Tony Deren paid to testify on his behalf. Ralph Underwager was imperative to Tony Deren’s defense. As a supposed independent expert, he testified that the evidence of the Bubbles children had become contaminated. And, they were too young to understand their duty to tell the truth. But, here in America, we’ve certainly discovered Underwager’s reputation and credentials aren’t all they’re cracked up to be….

Dr. Anna Salter: Well, he is someone who makes his living going around the country and testifying against children in child sexual abuse cases. He says the same thing in essentially every case. Which is every . . .

(Voice over)
Reporter: And Anna Salter knows what she’s talking about. A Ph.D. from Harvard, and a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood. She says young children can be believed.

(Back to Salter)
Anna Salter: This is consistent with the literature. If you look at what is the best legal textbook in the country today on children as witnesses, “Child Witness: Theory and Practice”, John Meyers says clearly children as young as three can comprehend the duty to tell the truth.

Reporter: And this man is a highly respected legal scholar in America?

Anna Salter: I think he’s fairly clearly the chief leading scholar on child sexual abuse in the country.

Reporter: Six American states have given Dr. Salter a grant to check Underwager’s methods in court. And what did she find?

Anna Salter: That he isn’t accurate. That what he says in court does not necessarily fairly represent the literature.

Reporter: He distorts the facts?

Anna Salter: Uh, frequently. Sometimes he quotes specific studies, and he’s frequently wrong about what the studies say.

Reporter: So we thought we’d get Dr. Salter to analyze the evidence Underwager gave under oath at the Mr. Bubbles hearing, where he testified his qualifications had never been questioned. But in an American case, the Swann case, this is what the courts said about Mr. Underwager.

Anna Salter: The court remains convinced the psychologist did not have the qualifications to testify as a doctor. The trial court ruled that the psychologist’s proposed testimony was not proper because there was no indication that the results of the doctor’s work had been accepted in the scientific community.

Reporter: In the Mr. Bubbles case, he said his qualifications were never in question….

Reporter: Now, the second incident, in the Mr. Bubbles case, was where Underwager said that 90 percent of accusations against child molesters are wrong. Now, is that backed up scientifically?

Anna Salter: No, that’s gobbledegook. I don’t know of any study that would support that….

Reporter: Ralph Underwager was hired to defend Polly’s father. And as usual, he testified that nothing had happened. It was all a delusion, and Polly had simply made the whole story up. But then, Underwager was cross-examined by Polly’s lawyer, Charles Vaughan.

(Scene switch to Vaughan’s office)
Vaughan: He used the theory that it was a delusion of the child that she was doing a favor for the mother by saying this happened when it really didn’t happen, to gain the favor and to be the apple of the eye of the mother.

Reporter: A delusion that she was continually raped over four days.

Vaughan: That’s right….

Reporter: The jury took only an hour to decide Polly Barnes was telling the truth. And that Ralph Underwager’s testimony that nothing had happened, could be ignored. In fact, Underwager’s evidence was rejected so much, the jury awarded Polly three and a quarter million dollars.

(Scene switch to Underwager’s house)(Voice over)
Reporter: So while Underwager was being rejected here in America, he had no such trouble at the Mr. Bubbles hearing in Australia where he testified that the children were too young to tell the truth….

Reporter: Ralph Underwager has testified for the defendants in about four hundred child abuse cases.  http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/NudistHallofShame/MrBubbles.html

State of Minnesota v. Deloch, 1990 WL 48536 (Minn.App.), April 24, 1990 “After the state rested its case, it brought a motion in limine regarding Dr. Ralph Underwager, a psychologist the defense planned to call as a witness. Dr. Underwager’s testimony was directed to two issues: (1) the techniques used by Dr. Carolyn Levit in examining alleged child sexual abuse victims, and their impact on the child; and (2) characteristics of the memory process, especially learned memory versus acual recall of a real event. The trial court excluded Dr. Underwager’s testimony.
Appellant’s argument that the trial court erred in excluding Dr. Underwager’s testimony about Dr. Levitt’s examination procedures lacks merit. Before testimony by an expert witness may be admitted, the expert must be qualified by way of education or experience. Because Dr.Underwager is not a medical doctor, he does not have the expertise or qualifications to either evaluate Dr. Levitt’s examination technique for child abuse victims, or assess its acceptance or reputation in the scientific community.
The trial court did not err in excluding Dr. Underwager’s testimony about learned memory. The record does not establish that the scientific basis for his theory is reliable and broadly accepted in its field. Furthermore, the basic rule is that expert testimony, to be admissible, must be helpful to the jury, and we conclude that Dr. Underwager’s testimony….. would not necessarily be helpful. Dr. Underwager’s testimony would tend to inappropriately interfere with the role of the jury in assessing credibility. No evidence exists that Dr. Underwager’s testimony would add precision or depth to the jury’s conclusions.… Dr. Underwager’s testimony was excluded precisely because its helpfulness to the jury was seriously questioned. The trial court correctly excluded Dr. Underwager’s testimony. The evidence is sufficient to support the convictions.”

State v. Swan, 114 Wash.2d 613, 790 P.2d 610, May 3, 1990 At the trial of this case, the defense sought to qualify Dr. Ralph Underwager, a licensed psychologist, as an expert witness. The trial court ruled that the psychologist’s proposed testimony was not proper because there was no indication that the results of the doctor’s work had been accepted in the scientific community and because the testimony went directly to the credibility of the victims and invaded the province of the jury.
The court remains convinced [the psychologist] did not have the qualifications to testify as a doctor, and that the offered testimony, in any event, was within the common experience of all of us. The psychologist [w]as a researcher who did not have bona fide qualifications in the view of the Court. He was not involved in an independent research undertaking, but rather was approached to undertake research by an interested party with no interest [in] the outcome of the research. It is the Court’s memory [the psychologist's] research was undertaken at the behest of the insurance industry relative to civil claims for child sexual abuse.
It was not shown at trial that the psychologist’s position on child interviewing was accepted by the scientific community. The psychologist’s proposed testimony did not satisfy the test for admissibility set forth in ER 702 and was properly refused. http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/NudistHallofShame/Underwager4.html

STATE OF MINNESOTA IN COURT OF APPEALS C0-97-55 In Re: Investigation of Dr. Ralph Underwager, Ph.D., L.P. by the Minnesota Board of Psychology. Filed July 8, 1997  Affirmed – Kalitowski, Judge Ramsey County District Court File No. C59612185….Appellant Dr. Ralph Underwager challenges the district court’s denial of his motion to quash a subpoena issued by the Minnesota Board of Psychology (Board) in connection with an investigation by the Board. We affirm….Further, the investigation is being conducted to determine whether Underwager violated the rule of conduct that requires the informed consent of a client before a diagnostic interview can be electronically recorded. The Board is requesting that Underwager produce the written informed consent of S.K.H. from her psychological sessions with him. This document is clearly relevant to the determination of whether Underwager violated the rules of conduct.

Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Anna Salter, Et Al., Defendants-Appellees., 22 F.3d 730 (7th Cir. 1994)  Federal Circuits, 7th Cir. (April 25, 1994) Docket number: 93-2422

Psychologists Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield have written two books: Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse (1988), and The Real World of Child Interrogations (1990). They conclude that most accusations of child sexual abuse stem from memories implanted by faulty clinical techniques rather than from sexual contact between children and adults. The books have not been well received in the medical and scientific press. A review of the first in the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that the authors took a one-sided approach: “it may be that the adversarial system has so influenced this discussion [about child abuse] that objectivity no longer has value. The book contains almost 420 text pages and the authors cite over 700 references, but they do not really review this body of literature, they cross-examine it. When a given reference fails to support their viewpoint they simply misstate the conclusion. When they cannot use a quotation out of context from an article, they make unsupported statements, some of which are palpably untrue and others simply unprovable.” David L. Chadwick, Book Review, in 261 JAMA 3035 (May 26, 1989)….

Salter had for some years doubted that Underwager’s books and testimony accurately reflected the clinical literature. After receiving a grant from the New England Association of Child Welfare Commissioners and Directors to finance an annotated bibliography of studies on child abuse interviews, Salter decided to concentrate on the papers Underwager and Wakefield had cited in their 1988 book. Over the course of 18 months Salter read the original works Underwager and Wakefield had discussed. In January 1990 she delivered to the New England Association a monograph titled: “Accuracy of Expert Testimony in Child Sexual Abuse Cases: A Case Study of Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield.” This unpublished monograph has been widely circulated; Salter sent a copy to the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse, which has made it available to prosecutors and other interested persons. The monograph is highly critical of the 1988 book and of Underwager’s testimony. Like Dr. Chadwick’s book review, the monograph states that the book misrepresents the studies, rips quotations from their context (and misleadingly redacts them), attributes to scholars positions they once held but have repudiated in light of more recent research, and ignores evidence contradicting its thesis. While Chadwick’s indictment of the book advances conclusions but not the supporting evidence, Salter’s is packed with details. For her interview with 60 Minutes Australia, however, Salter compressed her conclusions into popular language, telling Munro that Underwager “distorts the facts” and that his testimony in the Mr Bubbles case that 90% of all accusations of child molestation are wrong is “gobbledygook” unsupported by any scientific evidence….

What, then, does the record show about actual malice? Did Salter or Toth know that the statements were false? Did either one harbor doubts about the statements’ truth yet plunge recklessly ahead? The record allows no doubt about the answer to either question, for either defendant.

Salter testified by deposition that she read every one of the more than 500 papers her monograph discusses, and that she believes that her interpretation of these studies (and her condemnation of the Underwager and Wakefield interpretation) is correct. Salter’s view of the scholarly literature is congruent with Dr. Chadwick’s, and all of the other reviews we could find take Salter’s side rather than plaintiffs’. Sandra Shrimpton, Book Review (of Accusations …), 14 Child Abuse & Neglect 601-02 (1990); David L. Chadwick, Book Review (of Real World …), 15 Child Abuse & Neglect 602-03 (1991); Lenore Olson, Book Review (of Real World …), 37 Social Work 276 (1992); John E.B. Myers, The Child Sexual Abuse Literature: A Call for Greater Objectivity, 88 Mich.L.Rev. 1709, 1711-17 (1990) (discussing Accusations … and two books by other authors). Some judges have reached a similar conclusion. For example, the Supreme Court of Washington held that Underwager’s analysis and conclusions are not accepted by the scientific community, making it appropriate for a trial judge to preclude him from testifying. State v. Swan, 114 Wash.2d 613, 655-56, 790 P.2d 610, 632 (1990). See also Timmons v. Indiana, 584 N.E.2d 1108 (Ind.1992) (sustaining a decision to limit Underwager’s testimony severely). Cf. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., — U.S. —-, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993). It may be that Salter, the judges, and the book reviewers all err in evaluating the Underwager-Wakefield work. Scientific truth is elusive. Nothing in this record suggests, however, that Salter either knew that she was writing falsehoods or feared that she might be doing so but barged ahead without checking….

Both Salter and Toth came to believe that Underwager is a hired gun who makes a living by deceiving judges about the state of medical knowledge and thus assisting child molesters to evade punishment. Persons who hold such opinions cannot be expected to look kindly on their subjects, and the law certainly does not insist that they shut up as soon as they are challenged. Van Straten, 151 Wis.2d at 917-18, 447 N.W.2d at 110-11 (repeated publication did not establish actual malice when the speakers believed their statements to be true). Underwager and Wakefield cannot, simply by filing suit and crying “character assassination!”, silence those who hold divergent views, no matter how adverse those views may be to plaintiffs’ interests. Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation. Cf. Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, No. 89-2441 (7th Cir. Apr. 6, 1994), slip op. 8-11 & n. 1, 20 F.3d 789, 796-97. More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models–not larger awards of damages–mark the path toward superior understanding of the world around us.  http://vlex.com/vid/36092881

Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter  DOI: 10.1207/s15327019eb0802_2   Published in:  Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 , pages 115 – 124  Abstract – In 1988 I began a report on the accuracy of expert testimony in child sexual abuse cases utilizing Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield as a case study (Wakefield & Underwager, 1988). In response, Underwager and Wakefield began a campaign of harassment and intimidation, which included multiple lawsuits; an ethics charge; phony (and secretly taped) phone calls; and ad hominem attacks, including one that I was laundering federal grant monies. The harassment and intimidation failed as the author refused demands to retract. In addition, the lawsuits and ethics charges were dismissed. Lessons learned from the experience are discussed.    http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a784402311~db=all

ANNA SALTER, PH.D., is a psychologist in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1988, she began a study of the accuracy of expert testimony in child sexual abuse cases utilizing psychologist Ralph Underwager and his wife and practice partner, Hollida Wakefield, as a case study….Salter writes:  “The people who support and defend those accused of child sexual abuse indiscriminately, those who join organizations dedicated to defending people who are accused of child sexual abuse with no screening whatsoever to keep out those who are guilty as charged, are…not necessarily people engaged in an objective search for the truth. Some of them can and do use deceit, trickery, misstated research, harassment, intimidation, and charges of laundering federal money to silence their opponents.” — Confessions of a Whistle Blower: Lessons Learned, p. 122. http://fmsf.com/ethics.shtml

Napolis case

http://diananapolis.wordpress.com/
Beginning in the 1980’s, there were serious efforts made to misinform the  public about the satanic ritual abuse of children by those affiliated with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation [FMSF]. I began to track this activity while employed as a Child Protective Services Court Investigator in San Diego County, and placed the results of my research within the public domain. As a result, I was harassed by a cult organization, and was ultimately victimized by “nonlethal” technology in efforts to psychologically and physically incapacitate me.

http://diananapolis.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/satanic-ritual-abuse-investigatorresearcher-sues-dr-michael-aquino-dr-elizabeth-loftus-et-al/

60 Day continuance of Napolis case
http://members.cox.net/wordpress/exparte.pdf

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