Editorial Ethical standards, truths, and lies

Editorial   Ethical standards, truths, and lies
Bethany L. Brand Ph & Linda McEwen MA
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation Volume 17, Issue 3, 2016 pages 259-266
DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2016.1114357

This is an editorial about recent social and professional ethical developments that may signal attempts to arrive at truth about critical aspects of trauma after decades of lies and cover-ups. The first development came with the release of the Hoffman Report (Hoffman et al., 2015a), an investigation of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) complicity in abusive, traumatizing interrogations of political detainees, with one particular reference of note to this discussion. Another development was the publication of The Witch-Hunt Narrative by Ross Cheit (2014), which challenges widely held misconceptions about victims of child abuse and their credibility perpetuated since the preschool child abuse trials of the 1980s.

The ethical standards for International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) members are derived from the ethical guidelines of national and professional groups (ISSTD, 2015). For psychologists who are members of the ISSTD, the APA provides ethical principles (APA, 2010), including general principles and ethical standards. Not only did some powerful people within the APA fail to follow its principles and standards, but, as noted in the Hoffman Report, it was the APA ethics director who was among those complicit in this failure.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2016.1114357

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http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15299732.2016.1114357

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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

US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 ‘collusion’

US torture doctors could face charges after report alleges post-9/11 ‘collusion’
Leading group of psychologists faces a reckoning following repeated denials that its members were complicit in Bush administration-era torture
Spencer Ackerman  Saturday 11 July 2015

The largest association of psychologists in the United States is on the brink of a crisis, the Guardian has learned, after an independent review revealed that medical professionals lied and covered up their extensive involvement in post-9/11 torture. The revelation, puncturing years of denials, has already led to at least one leadership firing and creates the potential for loss of licenses and even prosecutions.

For more than a decade, the American Psychological Association (APA) has maintained that a strict code of ethics prohibits its more than 130,000 members to aid in the torture of detainees while simultaneously permitting involvement in military and intelligence interrogations. The group has rejected media reporting on psychologists’ complicity in torture; suppressed internal dissent from anti-torture doctors; cleared members of wrongdoing; and portrayed itself as a consistent ally against abuse.

Now, a voluminous independent review conducted by a former assistant US attorney, David Hoffman, undermines the APA’s denials in full – and vindicates the dissenters.

Sources with knowledge of the report and its consequences, who requested anonymity to discuss the findings before public release, expected a wave of firings and resignations across the leadership of an organization that Hoffman finds used its extensive institutional links to the CIA and US military to facilitate abusive interrogations….
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/jul/10/us-torture-doctors-psychologists-apa-prosecution

PSYCHOLOGISTS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
PsySR Responds to Hoffman Report about APA Collusion
http://www.psysr.org/about/statements/PsySR_Statement-Hoffman_Report.pdf

A national hero’: psychologist who warned of torture collusion gets her due
Jean Maria Arrigo was largely ignored and the subject of a smear campaign for sounding alarms about psychologists’ post-9/11 torture complicity but has emerged from the damning report as the story’s hero – and martyr
Spencer Ackerman in New York

Monday 13 July 2015

Jean Maria Arrigo’s inbox is filling up with apologies.

For a decade, colleagues of the 71-year-old psychologist ignored, derided and in some cases attacked Arrigo for sounding alarms that the American Psychological Association was implicated in US torture. But now that a devastating report has exposed deep APA complicity with brutal CIA and US military interrogations – and a smear campaign against Arrigo herself – her colleagues are expressing contrition.

Arrigo estimates she has received perhaps a dozen such emails since David Hoffman, a former federal prosecutor, confirmed what she has crusaded against for a decade: the APA’s institutional involvement with torture led to a concerted effort to quash dissent, lie to the public, and silence people like her. In a story full of villains, Arrigo emerges from Hoffman’s report as a hero – and a martyr….
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/jul/13/psychologist-torture-doctors-collusion-jean-maria-arrigo