- Pope Benedict ‘complicit in child sex abuse scandals’, say victims’ groups
- UK’s top cardinal accused of ‘inappropriate acts’ by priests
- Lessons not learned on abuse therapy
- Republic accused of sex abuse ‘cover-up’
- Sybil in her own words: The untold story of Shirley Mason, her multiple personalities and paintings “The story of Sybil is true, not fictional or fraudulent.”
- A New Model of Dissociative Identity Disorder “They also refute the sociocognitive model of DID.”
- Delhi High Court commutes death penalty of man who killed father
Pope Benedict ‘complicit in child sex abuse scandals’, say victims’ groups
Pope Benedict XVI ‘knew more about clergy sex crimes than anyone else in church yet did little to protect children’, say critics
Ian Traynor in Brussels, Karen McVeigh in New York and Henry McDonald in Dublin
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 February 2013
For the legions of people whose childhoods and adult lives were wrecked by sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the Roman Catholic clergy, Pope Benedict XVI is an unloved pontiff who will not be missed.
Victims of the epidemic of sex- and child-abuse scandals that erupted under Benedict’s papacy reacted bitterly to his resignation, either charging the outgoing pontiff with being directly complicit in a criminal conspiracy to cover up the thousands of paedophilia cases that have come to light over the past three years, or with failing to stand up to reactionary elements in the church resolved to keep the scandals under wraps.
From Benedict’s native Germany to the USA, abuse victims and campaigners criticised an eight-year papacy that struggled to cope with the flood of disclosures of crimes and abuse rampant for decades within the church….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/11/pope-complicit-child-abuse-say-victims
UK’s top cardinal accused of ‘inappropriate acts’ by priests
Three priests and former priest report Cardinal Keith O’Brien to Vatican over claims stretching back 33 years
Catherine Deveney
The Observer, Saturday 23 February 2013
Three priests and a former priest in Scotland have reported the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, to the Vatican over allegations of inappropriate behaviour stretching back 30 years.
The four, from the diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, have complained to nuncio Antonio Mennini, the Vatican’s ambassador to Britain, and demanded O’Brien’s immediate resignation. A spokesman for the cardinal said that the claims were contested.
O’Brien, who is due to retire next month, has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights, condemning homosexuality as immoral, opposing gay adoption, and most recently arguing that same-sex marriages would be “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of those involved”….
One of the complainants, it is understood, alleges that the cardinal developed an inappropriate relationship with him, resulting in a need for long-term psychological counselling….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/23/cardinal-keith-o-brien-accused-inappropriate
Letters
Lessons not learned on abuse therapy
The Guardian, Monday 11 February 2013
In 1995 a 13-year-old boy committed suicide having been told he could not have counselling in the long run-up to his abuser’s trial. His mother said: “He was desperate to talk to someone. But social workers said there was no possibility of discussing the abuse before the trial. They did not want to contaminate the evidence.” His abuser was later jailed for four years for offences against other boys….
Malign attacks in the 1990s on psychotherapists by those accused of abuse in an effort to discredit their adult children’s stories have left a false impression. The purpose of therapy is to provide a container for patients’ often unbearable feelings and help them to move on. It leads to a more not less coherent witnessing of the past. Perhaps that is why it arouses such hostility in those who are desperate to bury what happened – accused abusers and their defence teams….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/11/lesssons-not-learned-abuse-therapy
Republic accused of sex abuse ‘cover-up’
11/09/2001
The Irish Government and judicial system conducted a ‘‘hideous cover-up’’ after a young girl was subjected to years of sexual abuse, it was claimed today.
Ian Paisley Jr (DUP, North Antrim) told the Stormont Assembly that 24-year-old Sarah Bland and her mother have spent the last two decades battling in vain to secure justice.
They had come to him in a desperate bid to right a terrible wrong, he said.
He declared: ‘‘For as long as this gross injustice, known as the Bland case, remains unresolved, anything the Irish authorities may say about rights, about equality, about honour, about truth, should be treated with contempt.’’
Mr Paisley’s motion expressing concern at the failure of the Irish judiciary to resolve the case of Sarah Bland, the daughter of a British citizen, was passed unanimously. He said the student and her mother, Trish, had given him a huge dossier on the abuse which began in 1980 when she was aged four and living in a stately home in the Irish midlands….
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/republic-accused-of-sex-abuse-cover-up-23261.html
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation
Sybil in her own words: The untold story of Shirley Mason, her multiple personalities and paintings
DOI:10.1080/15299732.2013.724611 Philip M. Coons MD
10 Oct 2012
Abstract
Suraci’s Sybil in Her Own Words is almost as fascinating as the original book Sybil(Schreiber, 19732. Schreiber, F.R. 1973. Sybil, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company). The story of Sybil is true, not fictional or fraudulent. One early commentator actually suggested that Sybil and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her treating psychiatrist, were a case of folie à deux, or shared psychosis (Victor, 19753. Victor, G. 1975. Sybil: Grand hysteria or folie a deux? [Letter]. American Journal of Psychiatry, 132: 202). Having met Dr. Wilbur, listened to her presentations on multiple personality (now known as dissociative identity disorder or DID), and read the many critiques and reviews of Sybil, I have concluded that Sybil was not iatrogenically created by Dr. Wilbur. Documenting this, however, is beyond the purview of this book review.
Shortly after the death of Sybil in 1998, her identity as Shirley Ardell Mason was revealed. She had been living in Lexington, Kentucky close to the residence of her former therapist and had been running her art business out of her home. Patrick Suraci, Ph.D., had discovered Sybil’s identity from a painting that he had inherited from a colleague at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. This colleague, Flora Rheta Schreiber, the author of Sybil, had died in 1988. Waiting until after the death of Dr. Wilbur in 1993, Suraci finally telephoned Shirley Mason and began a five-year telephone relationship with her until she died in 1998. This book grew from those telephone conversations and other research that Dr. Suraci conducted….
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2013.724611
A New Model of Dissociative Identity Disorder Paul F. Dell, PhD Psychiatr Clin N Am 29 (2006) 1–26
Summary
Data from 220 persons who had DID were used to compare three models of DID: the DSM-IV’s classic model of DID (ie, multiple personalities, switching, amnesia), the subjective/phenomenological model of DID (Box 1), and the sociocognitive model of DID. The DSM-IV narrowly portrays DID as an alter disorder; the subjective/phenomenological model portrays DID as a far more complex dissociative disorder. The data indicate that the subjective/phenomenological model of DID is a superior predictor of the dissociative phenomena of DID. The three studies [14,70] that corroborate the subjective/phenomenological model of DID are important. They show that the subjective/phenomenological model of DID is more comprehensive and more accurate than the DSM-IV’s classic model of DID. They also refute the sociocognitive model of DID. The subjective/phenomenological model of DID was deduced from a novel, empirically supported model of pathological dissociation [4] ; that model fully explains the empirical literature on DID, whereas the DSM-IV model of DID can account for little of that literature.
http://www.copingwithdissociation.com/Dell_2006_ANewModelofDID1.pdf
describes crimes
Delhi High Court commutes death penalty of man who killed father
Press Trust of India February 24, 2013
New Delhi: The death sentence of a man, who had killed his father as sacrifice to a deity in 2008, has been reduced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court….
According to prosecution, Jitender believed that if he offered a human sacrifice for the deity, his problem with his wife would be resolved.
The convict, however, had argued before the trial court that once in his dream, deity asked Jitender for a human sacrifice to ward off his problems with his wife….
http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/delhi-high-court-commutes-death-penalty-of-man-who-killed-father-334832
