Witch-hunt narrative of child sexual abuse – many cases had substantial evidence of abuse, Footballer arrested for ritual murder attempt
February 28, 2014 Comments Off on Witch-hunt narrative of child sexual abuse – many cases had substantial evidence of abuse, Footballer arrested for ritual murder attempt
“The witch-hunt narrative is a really popular story that goes like this: Lots of people were falsely convicted of child sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s. And they were all victims of a witch-hunt. It just doesn’t happen to line up with the facts when you actually look at the cases themselves in detail….many of those cases had substantial evidence of abuse. The witch-hunt narrative is that these were all gross injustices to the defendant. In fact, what it looks like in retrospect is the injustices were much more often to children.”
Undergrad work integral to prof’s new book
Ross Cheit will talk Thursday on ‘love letter’ to student researchers who helped with book By Gabrielle Dee Senior Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 26, 2014 UNIVERSITY NEWS
Ross Cheit, professor of public policy and political science, will discuss the 15-year process of compiling his new book, “The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children” in a talk Thursday at the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. Cheit sat down with The Herald to discuss the release of his book, the methods and challenges of trial court research and how the collective efforts of Brown undergraduates helped him compile his publication….
The title of the talk is “The Amazing True Story of How 81 Brown Undergraduates Helped Give ‘Extreme Research’ Its Name.” What exactly do you mean by extreme research?
What my book involves is original court trial research. So we are trying to go to trial courts and get documents, often transcripts, but a whole range of documents connected to criminal trials that were in the 1980s and early 1990s. And the cases are all highly contested child sexual abuse cases. So it turns out that because these are not in the computer era, and because they are child sexual abuse cases, in many cases protective orders and statutory protections on identity make these cases sealed. The cases were also enormous. It turns out the ability to just go find and copy the record in these cases takes enormous effort. In some instances, it’s almost heroic, what it takes to put together, this many years later, all the materials. And so at some point, we started calling it extreme research, when a student would work for six months to get a document that becomes one footnote in the book….
What do you mean by “Witch-Hunt” in the title of your book?
The witch-hunt narrative is a really popular story that goes like this: Lots of people were falsely convicted of child sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s. And they were all victims of a witch-hunt. It just doesn’t happen to line up with the facts when you actually look at the cases themselves in detail. But it’s a really popular narrative — I think it’s absolutely fair to say that’s the conventional wisdom. It’s what most people now think is the uncontested truth, and those cases had no basis in fact. And what 15 years of painstaking trial court research (says) is that that’s not a very fair description of those cases, and in fact many of those cases had substantial evidence of abuse. The witch-hunt narrative is that these were all gross injustices to the defendant. In fact, what it looks like in retrospect is the injustices were much more often to children….
http://newsle.com/article/0/126585716/
Footballer in police grips for ritual murder attempt
By Daily Guide Ghana Thu, Feb 27th, 2014
A 22-year-old division two footballer who plays for Rex Football Club, Dansoman, has been arrested by the police for attempting to murder his biological mother for a money-making ritual.
The suspect, Enoch Adjei, currently in police custody, allegedly lured his 50-year-old sick mother from Jasikan in the Volta Region to Kasoa in the Central Region for the supposed sacrifice when the police accosted him.
He also had in his hand, a bag meant for the money, a pot to collect the mother’s blood and a sharp knife, which was to be used for the killing for the sacrifice. He was heading towards the shrine of the supposed spiritualist with the mother, when the police arrested them at Tetteh Quarshie roundabout, yesterday….
The suspect had confessed to the act and added that life had been difficult for the family, which was why he wanted to sacrifice the mother who is currently sick to save the rest of the family from a biting poverty.
The suspect is currently in police custody awaiting trial.
http://www.spyghana.com/footballer-in-police-grips-for-ritual-murder-attempt/
Los Angeles bishop kept altar boy list from police probing clergy abuse, Inmates at Parramatta Girls Home subjected to ‘state-sanctioned rape’
February 26, 2014 Comments Off on Los Angeles bishop kept altar boy list from police probing clergy abuse, Inmates at Parramatta Girls Home subjected to ‘state-sanctioned rape’
Los Angeles bishop kept altar boy list from police probing clergy abuse
February 19, 2014 Associated Press
LOS ANGELES – When Los Angeles police were investigating allegations of child abuse by a Roman Catholic priest in 1988, they asked for a list of altar boys at the last parish where the priest worked.
Archbishop Roger Mahony told a subordinate not to give the list, saying he didn’t want the boys to be scarred by the investigation and that he felt the altar boys were too old to be potential victims, according to a deposition made public Wednesday.
The detectives investigating allegations against Nicolas Aguilar Rivera, a visiting Mexican priest, ultimately got the names of the boys from parish families. They determined the priest molested at least 26 boys during his 10 months in Los Angeles, according to the priest’s confidential archdiocese file and police records made public by attorneys for the victims.
Twenty-five of the alleged victims were altar boys and the 26th was training with the priest to be one, said Anthony DeMarco, a plaintiff attorney. It’s not clear what impact Mahony’s action had on the investigation, though at the time police complained that the archdiocese wasn’t fully cooperating.
Mahony’s deposition was obtained by The Associated Press and is part of the evidence included in a settlement of abuse claims against Aguilar Rivera and four other priests. The archdiocese, the nation’s largest, agreed to pay $13 million to 17 victims.
Since 2006, the archdiocese has paid more than $700 million to settle clergy abuse lawsuits by hundreds of victims. Internal church files kept on priests accused of abuse were released last year under court order. They showed that Mahony, who was elevated to cardinal and retired in 2011, maneuvered behind the scenes with his top aide Monsignor Thomas Curry to shield molester priests, provide damage control for the church and keep parishioners in the dark….
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/19/los-angeles-bishop-kept-altar-boy-list-from-police-probing-clergy-abuse/
Inmates at Parramatta Girls Home subjected to ‘state-sanctioned rape’
February 26, 2014 Catherine Armitage
Girls as young as 18 months who came into contact with the NSW child welfare authorities from the 1930s onwards were routinely tested for venereal disease and evidence of sexual activity.
If they were found, on the basis of a spurious vaginal examination, to have been sexually active, from the age of 10 upwards they could be sent to the Parramatta Girls Home where they were exposed to ”state-sanctioned rape” perpetrated by doctors, supervising staff and other inmates.
The notorious detention centre for girls, which shut down after public outcry in 1974, is the focus of hearings for the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse starting on Wednesday.
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Harrowing testimony is expected as 10 women, who were among the thousands detained in the home or at the associated Institution for Girls at Hay during the period of 1950-1974, take the stand to tell their stories.
In the 2005 book Orphans of the Living by Joanna Penglase, a NSW departmental field officer told Dr Penglase how girls picked up on vague grounds of being ”exposed to moral danger” were subjected to vaginal examinations….
http://www.smh.com.au/national/inmates-at-parramatta-girls-home-subjected-to-statesanctioned-rape-20140225-33fou.html
Germany’s Shelter for Victims of Ritual Abuse
February 23, 2014 Comments Off on Germany’s Shelter for Victims of Ritual Abuse
Germany’s Shelter for Victims of Ritual Abuse
By Antonia Oettingen
Gaby Breitenbach has seen and heard some awful things. The German psychotherapist is telling me about how sometimes, from a very young age, women are systematically tortured by people seeking to split their minds into multiple identities. The desire is to control the victims, of course, but also to leave them with an identity that seems perfectly normal to strangers. While the victim’s everyday identity will have no “memory” of the trauma they’ve experienced, Breitenbach says the abusers are able to “summon” the other identities with various triggers. This can be something as simple as a ringtone, for example.
This method of mind control is known as “ritual abuse.” Most of the time the abuse is sexual in nature. Sometimes the abusers crave power; sometimes they’re just being cruel. Sometimes they’re pseudo-religious nutjobs, sometimes they’re fascists, and oftentimes they are organized crime networks. Sometimes the abusers use their victims to gain membership to a secret society; sometimes they flick a switch in their minds to make them commit suicide. The world can be an incredibly shitty place.
Last month, Breitenbach opened a safehouse to treat victims of ritual abuse in Germany. Vielseits, which translates to versatility, is the first of its kind in Europe and offers trauma therapy to anyone who walks through its doors….
Can you tell me about the kind of women who seek help at Vielseits?
All the women who end up with us are victims of organized, sadistic, and sexual violence, who have been subjected to mind control. There are also organizations practicing ritual abuse with a kind of spiritual superstructure where certain ideologies come into play, such as neo-fascist mindsets or different pseudo-religious groups, like Scientology or satanic cults.
From an outsider’s perspective, these are women who appear to have led seemingly normal lives—their everyday persona wouldn’t have been aware of the abuse they were subjected to at night, weekends, or on school holidays. These traumatic experiences are contained in different parts of the identity, so they’re kept away from the conscious, and the person has no knowledge of the trauma they’ve experienced.
How are these personas created?
The victims are subjected to near-death situations—with the help of electric shocks, waterboarding, or other forms of torture—from an early age, and then they’re “rescued” by their tormentors. At some point the victim’s psyche will develop an automated response—it will split, in a bid to survive. As a consequence of the systematic torture, the victims can develop a range of different identities throughout their lifetimes. Offenders perpetrating the abuse hold the key to this system of split identities and have the power to evoke a specific set of behaviors using triggers—which can be hand signs or certain smells or sounds, like a ringtone….
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/ritual-abuse-sanctuary-vielseits
Global Perspectives on Dissociative Disorders Individual and Societal Oppression
February 18, 2014 Comments Off on Global Perspectives on Dissociative Disorders Individual and Societal Oppression
Global Perspectives on Dissociative Disorders
Individual and Societal Oppression
Edited by Vedat Sar, Warwick Middleton, Martin Dorahy
Routledge – 2014
Dissociative disorders are one of the psychiatric consequences of childhood psychological trauma. While oppression is an aspect of traumatic conditions, dissociation undermines resistance to oppression throughout a person’s lifespan. Neither oppression nor dissociation are restricted to particular cultures, and both can affect the individual as well as societies.
This collection engages with the universality of dissociative disorders and their close relationship to oppression. The chapters cover extreme examples such as ongoing incest in adulthood, children and adults forced to kill others, and abusive states in interrogation. Further subjects examined include the utilization of dissociation in postmodern societies to maintain oppression, the oppressive conditions of asylum seekers and the consequences of oppression as they are dealt with in psychotherapy. The final chapter considers how a paedophile pandering network employed multi-layered oppression to prevent the public becoming aware of the widespread and organised abuse of children.
This book will engender interactions between trauma investigators – those whose approach is close clinical observation, those who use instruments to survey groups of individuals, those whose research takes the form of investigative journalism, and those who examine the truth embedded or hidden in documents created for multiple, and at times, disturbing political purposes. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415718073/
The traumagenic neurodevelopmental model of psychosis revisited, Dismissal of Yeshiva University sex abuse lawsuit makes strong case for Assemblywoman Margaret Markey’s Child Victims Act, Suspect with NC ties in Craigslist killing claims 22 other slayings “as part of her involvement in a satanic cult”
February 17, 2014 Comments Off on The traumagenic neurodevelopmental model of psychosis revisited, Dismissal of Yeshiva University sex abuse lawsuit makes strong case for Assemblywoman Margaret Markey’s Child Victims Act, Suspect with NC ties in Craigslist killing claims 22 other slayings “as part of her involvement in a satanic cult”
The traumagenic neurodevelopmental model of psychosis revisited. Neuropsychiatry, 4(1), 65-79 (2014).
Read J, Fosse R, Moskowitz A, Perry B.
Evidence that childhood adversities are risk factors for psychosis has accumulated rapidly. Research into the mechanisms underlying these relationships has focused, productively, on psychological processes, including cognition, attachment and dissociation. In 2001, the traumagenic neurodevelopmental model sought to integrate biological and psychological research by highlighting the similarities between the structural and functional abnormalities in the brains of abused children and adults diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia’. No review of relevant literature has subsequently been published. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to summarize the literature on biological mechanisms underlying the relationship between childhood trauma and psychosis published since 2001. A comprehensive search for relevant papers was undertaken via Medline, PubMed and psycINFO. In total, 125 papers were identified, with a range of methodologies, and provided both indirect support for and direct confirmation of the traumagenic neurodevelopmental model. Integrating our growing understanding of the biological sequelae of early adversity with our knowledge of the psychological processes linking early adversity to psychosis is valuable both theoretically and clinically.
http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/abs/10.2217/npy.13.89
The traumagenic neurodevelopmental model of psychosis revisited full text
Practice points
Multiple studies and reviews have found a causal relationship between childhood trauma/adversity and psychosis.
The 2001 traumagenic neurodevelopmental model of psychosis identified similarities in the brains of traumatized children and adults diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Subsequently, 125 publications have provided indirect support for, or direct confirmation of, the traumagenic neurodevelopmental model.
Many studies have now demonstrated the relationship between psychosis and over-reactivity to stress of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and the dopaminergic system.
Studies of the frontal lobes and hippocampus also support the traumagenic neurodevelopmental model.
Two lines of evidence link prior stress and brain alterations to cognitive deficits in individuals diagnosed with psychotic disorders.
Clinical implications include the need to routinely take trauma/neglect/loss histories from all users of mental health services.
http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/npy.13.89
Dismissal of Yeshiva University sex abuse lawsuit makes strong case for Assemblywoman Margaret Markey’s Child Victims Act
BY Michael O’Keeffe February 13, 2014
When U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl dismissed the $680 million sexual abuse lawsuit filed by 34 former Yeshiva University prep school students two weeks ago because the alleged assaults took place after the statute of limitations expired, he inadvertently made a strong case for Assemblywoman Margaret Markey’s Child Victims Act.
Koeltl, displaying an astonishing lack of awareness about issues facing sexual abuse victims, claimed the plaintiffs should have brought their claims before they turned 21 years old. But mental health experts say – and sex abuse scandals involving football coaches at Poly Prep, Penn State and other institutions prove – that most victims are prepared to address the damage they have suffered until they are in their 40s.
Markey’s office sent us a press release earlier this month about her bill, which would eliminate the criminal and civil statute of limitations on child sexual abuse.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/iteam/2014/02/dismissal-of-yeshiva-university-sex-abuse-lawsuit-makes-strong-case-for-assemblywoman-
Suspect with NC ties in Craigslist killing claims 22 other slayings
The Associated Press February 15, 2014
SUNBURY, Pa. — A Pennsylvania woman charged with her newlywed husband with killing a man they met through Craigslist admitted to the slaying in a jailhouse interview with a newspaper and said she has killed more than 20 other people across the country, claims police said they are investigating.
In an interview with The Daily Item in Sunbury, 19-year-old Miranda Barbour, who once lived in Dunn, N.C., said she wants to plead guilty to killing Troy LaFerrara in November. She also said in the interview she has killed at least 22 other people from Alaska to North Carolina in the last six years as part of her involvement in a satanic cult….
She claims she joined a satanic cult in Alaska when she was 13 before moving to North Carolina. Online records for the woman that the newspaper identified as Barbour’s mother show her as having lived in both Alaska and North Carolina.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/02/15/3626563/pa-woman-admits-craigslist-killing.html