Elizabeth Loftus and the Hoffman Report, Jehovah’s Witnesses failed to report 1,000 alleged perpetrators, ‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen

– Elizabeth Loftus and the Hoffman Report
– Jehovah’s Witnesses failed to report 1,000 alleged perpetrators, child sex abuse royal commission hears
– Bill Cosby: 35 Women Accuse the Actor of Assault on New York Magazine Cover
– ‘‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen
– ‘Call Me Lucky’: A Documentary Of Friendship, Childhood Abuse And Survival – Barry Crimmins and Bobcat Goldthwait

Elizabeth Loftus and the Hoffman Report
July 22nd, 2015

The Hoffman Report, an independent investigation into the American Psychological Association’s involvement with government-sponsored torture programs, was released earlier this month.  As James Risen reported in the New York Times, the 542-page report concluded that the APA’s ethics office “prioritized the protection of psychologists — even those who might have engaged in unethical behavior — above the protection of the public.” The focus of the report is the involvement of the APA in sanctioning interrogation techniques that included torture. But the Report also contains an important footnote about the lax attitude towards ethics in the APA office long before the post-9/11 era:

The Ethics Office was not insulated from outside influence and the nature of the process allowed for manipulation at times. Koocher told Sidley that Raymond Fowler manipulated the adjudication process when there was a complaint filed against Elizabeth Loftus, a high-profile psychologist who did work on false memories. When Fowler found out there was an ethics complaint pending against Loftus, he reached out to her and told her she should resign her membership before a case could be formally opened against her. He later denied that he had done so and appointed one of his deputies to “investigate” how Loftus had found out about the complaint.

INDEPENDENT REVIEW RELATING TO APA ETHICS GUIDELINES, NATIONAL SECURITY INTERROGATIONS, AND TORTURE, July 2, 2015 (p. 485)

This footnote provides the only explanation that has ever made sense for why Professor Loftus resigned from the APA by fax, shortly after two ethics complaints had been filed against her. The complaints concerned Loftus misrepresenting the facts about two successful recovered-memory lawsuits. Her resignation made the complaints moot under rules that have since been changed to close that loophole….

Loftus testimony in Turner v. Honker, July 10, 1996 (p. 109)

Q: Is it your testimony that prior to your resignation you had no idea from any source that complaints had been filed?

A: I had absolutely no idea

Testimony in Seignious v. Fair, January 22, 1998 (p. 151)

Q: At the time that you resigned, Dr. Loftus, were there two ethics complaints pending against you?

A. There was no ethics investigation going on, but there were rumors two people had filed complaints.

Q. How did you learn about these rumors?

A. I read about it in a newspaper column in February or March of whenever it was, 1996.

Q. And was that the very first time that you learned that there were rumors that people had filed ethics complaints against you?

A. Yes.

Testimony in Liano v. Diocese of Phoenix, December 21, 2006 (p. 68)

Q: And I’m trying to understand. With regard to the [complaints], did you resign from that organization, the American Psychological Association, while those complaints were pending?

A. I don’t know. I resigned in January of ’96, but I didn’t know anything about any complaints.
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2015/07/22/loftus-hoffman-report/

Jehovah’s Witnesses failed to report 1,000 alleged perpetrators, child sex abuse royal commission hears

By Nicole Chettle  July 27, 2015
More than 1,000 members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been identified by the church as perpetrators of child sexual abuse since 1950 but not one was reported to police, an inquiry has heard.

The Sydney hearing was told the church adopted a scriptural response to abuse, which it abhorred, and had files relating to 1,006 alleged perpetrators, dating back to 1950.

The process required witnesses to prove abuse took place, and no allegations were ever reported to police.

A 47-year-old woman, known to the inquiry as BCB, said she was sexually assaulted as a teenager by her family friend and church elder, Bill Neill, at Narrogin, south-east of Perth in the 1980s.

The commission heard Neill is now deceased.

BCB described feeling ashamed to give evidence because she still identifies as a Jehovah’s Witness despite suffering a nervous breakdown and depression as a result of the abuse.

“I would like the Jehovah’s Witnesses to take allegations of child abuse more seriously and report them to the police,” she said.

“I also think that those victims that are brave enough to report to elders should be properly supported and protected.

“I found the experience of reporting my abuse to a room full of men, including the man who had abused me, very distressing.”….

Elder admits destroying notes from meeting

A Jehovah’s Witness elder, Max Horley, said he destroyed notes from a meeting about the assault of BCB….

Church practice not to report sexual abuse

Justice McLellan then asked him if he was aware of his obligation to tell the authorities if a serious allegation of sexual assault was reported to him.

“If we have any hesitation we contact the branch for advice on how we should proceed legally and scripturally,” Mr Horley said.

“We don’t report it to the police. I think we encourage them to do that. But we give them the assistance to do that.”….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-27/jehovahs-witnesses-child-sexual-abuse-royal-commission/6649340

Bill Cosby: 35 Women Accuse the Actor of Assault on New York Magazine Cover
Jul 27, 2015 By LESLEY MESSER via Good Morning America
Dozens of women have publicly accused Bill Cosby of assault since late last year.
In its new issue, New York magazine photographed 35 of them for a stunning cover story.
“The minute you see something from a bird’s eye view, you start to understand the scope,” explained the magazine’s director of photography, Jody Quon. “Once we organized it and put the women in chronological order based on the year of their alleged assaults, you started to see the only thing they had in common was Bill Cosby, and that’s when we thought, ‘This could be a really powerful photo essay.'”….

Through his attorneys, Cosby, 78, has denied the allegations of sexual assault and rape and has never been charged with a crime. Martin Singer, one of Bill Cosby’s attorneys, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News regarding the magazine cover.

Many of the women in the New York magazine portfolio, including model Beverly Johnson, have said over the past few months that they were drugged by the comedian in decades past. Others, including model Janice Dickinson, also alleged rape….
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/bill-cosby-35-women-accuse-actor-assault-york/story?id=32710622

‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen By Noreen Malone and Portfolio By  Amanda Demme July 26, 2015

More has changed in the past few years for women who allege rape than in all the decades since the women’s movement began. Consider the evidence of October 2014, when an audience member at a Hannibal Buress show in Philadelphia uploaded a clip of the comedian talking about Bill Cosby: “He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up, black people … I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches … I guess I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns. Dude’s image, for the most part, it’s fucking public Teflon image. I’ve done this bit onstage and people think I’m making it up … That shit is upsetting.” The bit went viral swiftly, with irreversible, calamitous consequences for Cosby’s reputation.

Perhaps the most shocking thing wasn’t that Buress had called Cosby a rapist; it was that the world had actually heard him. A decade earlier, 14 women had accused Cosby of rape. In 2005, a former basketball star named Andrea Constand, who met Cosby when she was working in the athletic department at Temple University, where he served on the board of trustees, alleged to authorities that he had drugged her to a state of semi-consciousness and then groped and digitally penetrated her. After her allegations were made public, a California lawyer named Tamara Green appeared on the Today show and said that, 30 years earlier, Cosby had drugged and assaulted her as well. Eventually, 12 Jane Does signed up to tell their own stories of being assaulted by Cosby in support of Constand’s case. Several of them eventually made their names public. But they were met, mostly, with skepticism, threats, and attacks on their character….

As Cosby allegedly told some of his victims: No one would believe you. So why speak up? But among younger women, and particularly online, there is a strong sense now that speaking up is the only thing to do, that a woman claiming her own victimhood is more powerful than any other weapon in the fight against rape….
http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/07/bill-cosbys-accusers-speak-out.html

‘Call Me Lucky’: A Documentary Of Friendship, Childhood Abuse And Survival
July 27, 2015  Barry Crimmins mentored Bobcat Goldthwait when they were up-and-coming comics in the ’80s. A film directed by Goldthwait details their relationship — and the sexual abuse Crimmins suffered as a child….

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you’re just joining us, I have two guests. Bobcat Goldthwait is a comic and a director and has made a new documentary about his good friend Barry Crimmins, who was also a comic who founded two important comedy clubs in Boston. And this documentary is about his contribution to the comedy scene, but it also is about his childhood when he was abused as a child and then later as an adult tried to out child pornographers and did a pretty successful job at getting some of them put behind bars….
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/27/426734424/call-me-lucky-a-documentary-of-friendship-childhood-abuse-and-survival

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Four arrested for ritual killing, The Witch-Hunt Narrative Untrue, Loftus Misrepresents Important Case

Four arrested for ritual killing of five-year-old in Nigeria  Africa  Saturday 26 October 2013

KANO – Four people were arrested in south-eastern Nigeria in the ritual killing of a five-year-old boy whose body was mutilated before being dumped in a water tank, police said Saturday….

Kidnappings for ritual killings are rampant in Nigeria, particularly during election campaigns….
http://www.enca.com/africa/four-arrested-ritual-killing-5-year-old-nigeria

The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children Hardcover – February 13, 2014
by Ross E. Cheit

In the 1980s, a series of child sex abuse cases rocked the United States….In the early 1990s, a new narrative with remarkable staying power emerged: the child sex abuse cases were symptomatic of a ‘moral panic’ that had produced a witch hunt. A central claim in this new witch hunt narrative was that the children who testified were not reliable and easily swayed by prosecutorial suggestion. In time, the notion that child sex abuse was a product of sensationalized over-reporting and far less endemic than originally thought became the new common sense.

But did the new witch hunt narrative accurately represent reality? As Ross Cheit demonstrates in his exhaustive account of child sex abuse cases in the past two and a half decades, purveyors of the witch hunt narrative never did the hard work of examining court records in the many cases that reached the courts throughout the nation. Instead, they treated a couple of cases as representative and concluded that the issue was blown far out of proportion. Drawing on years of research into cases in a number of states, Cheit shows that the issue had not been blown out of proportion at all. In fact, child sex abuse convictions were regular occurrences, and the crime occurred far more frequently than conventional wisdom would have us believe….
http://www.amazon.com/The-Witch-Hunt-Narrative-Politics-Psychology/dp/0199931224

Loftus Misrepresents Important Case
September 26th, 2013
In a recent TED talk about memory, psychology professor Elizabeth Loftus misrepresented the basic facts of a case study that led her to hire a private investigator and write an article that caused the subject of the case study to sue her for invasion of privacy. Loftus has mentioned the civil suit frequently in recent appearances and told audiences how terribly unfair it was that she was sued. Given the importance of these events to Professor Loftus, one wonders why she misrepresented the basic facts of the underlying case.

Loftus said the case was about a women who “accused her mother of sexual abuse based on a repressed memory” (See the 13-minute mark of this talk). That is not true. The accusation against her mother came in an evaluation when the child was 6 years old! What makes the underlying case so important is that the girl forgot the details, which had been videotaped at the time, and recalled them spontaneously at age 17….
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2013/09/26/loftus-misrepresents-important-case/

‘Satan made me’: NSW nursing home murderer, The rescue of Amanda Berry, suspected ritual murder, wants Family Court investigated by Royal Commission, DAUBERT FRYE CRITIQUE #1: LOST IN THE MALL, BY LOFTUS, ET. AL., Paedo probe at Catholic schools

– ‘Satan made me’: NSW nursing home murderer
– The rescue of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight: 30 minutes that ended a decade of nightmares
– Fear grips residents of Ahanta West over suspected ritual murder
– Child protection advocate Hetty Johnstone wants Family Court investigated by Royal Commission
– NEW ENGLAND LAW|BOSTON, JD/PHD PROJECT
DAUBERT FRYE CRITIQUE #1: LOST IN THE MALL, BY LOFTUS, ET. AL. By: Wendy Murphy, JD…
– Paedo probe at Catholic schools: 20 priests and teachers to be quizzed by detectives

‘Satan made me’: NSW nursing home murderer May 27, 2013

A registered nurse has become the worst mass murderer in New South Wales history, pleading guilty today to killing 11 elderly residents. Their nurse, Roger Dean….
On the first day of his Supreme Court trial on Monday, Dean, 37, pleaded guilty to the murders of 11 elderly residents who died as a result of the fires he lit at the home on November 18, 2011.

He also admitted to causing grievous bodily harm to a further eight residents who were injured in the blaze, described by paramedics and firefighters as one of the worst scenes they had ever come across.

According to crown documents, the registered nurse had stolen more than 200 pills from the nursing home the night before and police officers were called to the home during his November 18 night shift to investigate the theft….
He was arrested and charged later that evening, telling police, “It was Satan telling him to do it”.

As Dean stood up in court and softly said “guilty” to the 11 counts of murder, his victims’ families wept and one woman left court sobbing loudly….
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/05/27/11/55/dean-pleads-guilty-to-nursing-home-murders

The rescue of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight: 30 minutes that ended a decade of nightmares (video, slideshow)
by Henry J. Gomez, Plain Dealer Politics Writer  May 13, 2013
CLEVELAND, Ohio….

In these tense and emotional minutes of Monday, May 6 is the story of how bravery and swift action ended a decade-long nightmare. The heroes are the neighbors, the police officers and the women. Berry especially. Tonight, after 10 years, two weeks and one day of cruel incarceration inside Ariel Castro’s Seymour Avenue home, she summons her courage….

Castro had jumped into his blue sports car, leaving behind the women as he always does. Sometimes he takes the child — the 6-year-old girl who calls him Daddy. But not this evening.

Inside the house, Berry stares at the front door. Castro has left it unlocked. Is he testing her? He does that sometimes. She thinks about it some more. Will she have another opportunity? She moves toward the door, pulls it open. Another door. A storm door. Chained or bolted so it can’t open wide enough for her to escape.

Berry sees people outside on a neighbor’s porch. She cries out and reaches through the crack. “Help get me out of here!”….
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/05/30_minutes_that_ended_a_decade.html

Fear grips residents of Ahanta West over suspected ritual murder
Regional News of Monday, 27 May 2013 Source: GNA
Fear has gripped residents of Ahanta West District in the Western Region over suspected ritual murders of four innocent citizens in the area.

The victims were gruesomely murdered with parts of their body removed, and their corpses badly mutilated in what looks like a ritual murder.

The District Chief Executive (DCE) for the area, Mr. Joseph Dofoyenah, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that the strange deaths had occurred within a period of three months.
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/regional/artikel.php?ID=275146

Child protection advocate Hetty Johnstone wants Family Court investigated by Royal Commission
by: Michael Madigan From: The Courier-Mail May 27, 2013
A FATHER winning custody of a daughter despite evidence he had sexually abused the toddler was just one of the cases warranting the Family Court’s inclusion in the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, an advocacy group says.

Child sexual assault victims will suffer on in silence unless the Family Law Court is investigated by the Royal Commission, according to child protection advocate Hetty Johnston.

The founder and executive director of Bravehearts says the inquiry contains a glaring omission in its terms of reference.

The Family Law Court often hears disturbing allegations of sexual abuse.

“Every week in Australia the family courts are ordering children into contact with, and even into the custody of parents who are dangerous, toxic and abusive because Family Courts do not have the powers, expertise and resources to competently investigate allegations of child abuse,” Ms Johnston said….
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/child-protection-advocate-hetty-johnstone-wants-family-court-investigated-by-royal-commission/story-e6freoof-1226650909760

NEW ENGLAND LAW|BOSTON, JD/PHD PROJECT
DAUBERT FRYE CRITIQUE #1: LOST IN THE MALL, BY LOFTUS, ET. AL. By: Wendy Murphy, JD; Megan Mitchell, JD (expected 2013); Alexa Sardina, PhD (expected 2014)

Study Name and citation:
Loftus, E. & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The Formation of False Memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25(12), 720-725.
(Commonly known as the “Lost in the Mall” study).

Theory Advanced by the Study:
False childhood memories can be implanted into adults by repeatedly stating the false memory as true.

Conclusion: The study’s theory and methodology are not reliable under either Frye or Daubert standards.

Overarching Observation: Irrespective of scientific reliability, no study should be admitted as evidence in a court of law, whether directly or via the testimony of an expert relying on that study, unless it is relevant to an issue legitimately in dispute in a particular legal controversy.

Relevancy standards applicable to scientific and “specialized” testimony and evidence refer to this as the “fitness” factor, which means the proposed evidence “fits” the facts because it will help to elucidate the truth on a disputed issue. For example, any attempt to use the Lost in the Mall  study to prove or disprove that a person is telling the truth about sexual abuse should be unsuccessful simply because memories about getting lost in a mall have nothing to do with memories of being sexually or physically violated.

Put another way, the capacity to make a person falsely believe they were once lost in a mall does not “fit” and bears no relevance in a dispute over whether a person can be made to falsely believe they were sexually abused as a child. This argument should be made first, before addressing more complicated scientific arguments about how the “Lost in the Mall” study was designed a nd conducted. It should be made clear to the judge that if a particular study, or proposed expert testimony relying on that study, is not relevant because it does not “fit” with the facts in dispute, there is no need to undertake a burdensome analysis of whether scientific standards were satisfied during the research process. Simply put, if it isn’t relevant, it doesn’t matter that a study is
scientifically unreliable.
http://wendymurphylaw.com/LOSTINTHEMALL.pdf

Paedo probe at Catholic schools: 20 priests and teachers to be quizzed by detectives 25 May 2013

School where sitcom Bad Education is filmed is at centre of inquiry as Met police launch investigation after claims of sex abuse dating back to 1950s
Detectives are investigating allegations of widespread child sex abuse at schools run by a Catholic order in Britain, the Sunday People reveals today.
The Metropolitan Police paedophile unit will quiz around 20 priests and teachers over claims of abuse dating back to the 1950s.

Thirty former pupils from schools run by the Salesians of Don Bosco order have come forward with allegations, an investigation by Exaro, the news website, with the Sunday People found. The probe – launched in strict secrecy two months ago – will go beyond the Salesians to examine historical reports of sexual abuse at other Roman Catholic schools….. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paedo-probe-catholic-schools-20-1911825