Pope updates Vatican law, criminalizing sex abuse, leaks, The case of Fran and Dan Keller – Fran’s Day Care, PTSD treatments

Pope updates Vatican law, criminalizing sex abuse, leaks
New laws apply to clergy, others in the city-state
By Nicole Winfield   Associated Press
July 12, 2013 VATICAN CITY

Pope Francis overhauled the laws that govern the Vatican city-state on Thursday, criminalizing leaks of Vatican information and specifically listing sexual violence, prostitution, and possession of child pornography as crimes against children that can be punished by up to 12 years in prison.

The legislation covers clergy and laypeople who live and work in Vatican City and is different from the canon law which covers the universal Catholic Church.

It was issued at a critical time, as the Vatican prepares for a grilling by a UN committee on its efforts to protect children under a key UN convention and prevent priests from sexually abusing children. The Vatican signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 yet only now — 23 years later — has it updated its legislation to reflect some of the treaty’s core provisions….
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2013/07/11/pope-updates-vatican-law-crminalizing-sex-abuse-leaks/URHItA5fuIxJNruXaGO2jI/story.html

Fran’s Day Care Case – Randy Noblitt, PhD
The case of Fran and Dan Keller

excerpts:
“Some of the parents whose children attended the preschool became suspicious when their children returned home wearing underwear not their own, or with their clothes inside out or with their hair wet. There were always reasonable explanations: the child had an accident and was changed into clothes on hand for that purpose; or the child splashed water on herself when the children were cleaning up; and so forth. However, when one of the children made an outcry, the parents more closely scrutinized the strange behaviors some of the children had started engaging in and the aforementioned episodes, and they took their concerns to the police. The police took the concerns seriously and collected statements and evidence. The grand jury found a basis for indictment. The Kellers responded to the warrant for their arrest by fleeing the state in disguise, obtaining false identifications in their new personas, and attempting to leave the country. They were apprehended in Las Vegas, Nevada and extradited back to Travis County.”

“The case ended with the conviction of the Kellers and their sentencing to 48 years in prison each. They are in prison still, any efforts for appeal having failed to date.”

“the perspective was one of advocacy for falsely accused, persecuted, prosecuted, and convicted victims of a malicious or inept legal system that places too much trust in the stories children tell. A particular flaw in this story was the story. It was certainly not founded on anything I witnessed during my participation in the case. Evidence was not withheld from the prosecution to my knowledge. The defense was left flat-footed by their own conviction that the children would not be believed. And the advice I offered may have helped to prevent influence or contamination of the children’s testimony. The children’s stories were credible – Fran and Dan Keller’s defense was not.”

“One of the child victims, Veejay Staelin, a now 21-year old…re-asserted that he had been abused by Fran and Dan Keller.”
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/

Meta-analysis of the efficacy of treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder. Authors Watts BV, et al

Journal
J Clin Psychiatry. 2013 Jun;74(6):e541-50. doi: 10.4088/JCP.12r08225.

Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an important mental health issue in terms of the number of people affected and the morbidity and functional impairment associated with the disorder. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of all treatments for PTSD….

RESULTS: Effective psychotherapies included cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (g = 1.63, 1.08, and 1.01, respectively). Effective pharmacotherapies included paroxetine, sertraline, fluoxetine, risperidone, topiramate, and venlafaxine (g = 0.74, 0.41, 0.43, 0.41, 1.20, and 0.48, respectively)….

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that patients and providers have a variety of options for choosing an effective treatment for PTSD. Substantial differences in study design and study participant characteristics make identification of a single best treatment difficult. Not all medications or psychotherapies are effective.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23842024/

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Online child abuse network smashed, Organizational Infidelity Amplifies Sexual Trauma, Pursuit of Truth Film

– Online child abuse network smashed
“hundreds of thousands of child abuse images”

– Organizational Infidelity Amplifies Sexual Trauma

– Pursuit of Truth Film
Adult Survivors Of Child Sex Abuse Seeking Justice
“a court system weighted in favor of perpetrators combine to make it extremely difficult for survivors to successfully assert their legal rights and far too easy for perpetrators to walk free and continue to abuse other children”

Online child abuse network smashed
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 15/03/2013
Reporter: Ben Worsley

Federal police have smashed what they allege is one of the largest online child abuse networks they’ve seen, arresting twenty one people, confiscating hundreds of thousands of child abuse images and reportedly rescuing a young victim of the network….

BEN WORSLEY, REPORTER: This scene was repeated in 40 homes across Australia in every state and territory, the AFP swooped en masse….
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3717028.htm

Organizational Infidelity Amplifies Sexual Trauma
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on March 11, 2013

Organizational Infidelity Amplifies Sexual Trauma

A dispiriting sign of the times is human fallibility associated with hitherto “safe” environments. Previously sacrosanct institutions – universities, the military, the church, scouts — are now headline news for the wrong reason.

Researchers are now learning that recovery from sexual trauma is more challenging when an individual has been betrayed by a perpetrator within a conceptually secure setting.

In a study of 345 female university students, University of Oregon researchers found that 233 of them had experienced at least one unwanted sexual experience in their lifetime, and 46 percent of those victims also experienced betrayal by the institution where incidents occurred.

In the final analysis, researchers found, those who experienced institutional betrayal suffered the most in four post-trauma measurement categories, including anxiety and dissociation.

In the study which appears in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, investigators used a 10-item analysis tool — the Institutional Betrayal Questionnaire — to assess institutional betrayal and involvement.

“Our work on institutional betrayal has coincided with increased public awareness of the harm inflicted by unresponsive institutions surrounding traumatic events,” said researcher Jennifer J. Freyd, Ph.D….

Those reporting a sense of institutional betrayal were found to have more severe post-traumatic symptoms of sexual abuse trauma, anxiety, sexual dysfunction and dissociation.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/03/11/organizational-infidelity-amplifies-sexual-trauma/52465.html

Pursuit of Truth Film

Adult Survivors Of Child Sex Abuse Seeking Justice
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a crime that is committed behind closed doors without witnesses and remains in the dark because children typically are unable to speak about their abuse.  This inability to come forward frequently continues into adulthood.  Regrettably, close to 90% of cases go unreported.  Thus, despite its epidemic proportions in this country – at least 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 5 boys likely to be abused before age 18 – CSA remains in the shadows, hidden from the wheels of our justice system.

The legal system itself must share responsibility for such tragic underreporting.  As presently constituted, the legal process constructs unfair barriers for survivors to overcome to achieve justice against their abusers.  Unjust laws– including arbitrary statutes of limitations (SOL’s) that effectively bar 60%-70% of survivors’ cases from even being filed, erratic police/prosecution practices, and a court system weighted in favor of perpetrators combine to make it extremely difficult for survivors to successfully assert their legal rights and far too easy for perpetrators to walk free and continue to abuse other children.

But winds of change are stirring.  There is a growing movement to change the justice’s system fundamental approach to survivors’ cases.  Reformers in a number of states have either eliminated SOL’s or expanded the filing deadlines substantially.  Activists are shining the light on the need to transform the handling of survivors’ cases by police, prosecutors, and courts so that justice can become a reality for survivors.
http://www.pursuitoftruthfilm.com/

Embattled Childhoods May Be the Real Trauma for Soldiers With PTSD

Embattled Childhoods May Be the Real Trauma for Soldiers With PTSD

ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2012) — New research on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers challenges popular assumptions about the origins and trajectory of PTSD, providing evidence that traumatic experiences in childhood — not combat — may predict which soldiers develop the disorder….

“Most studies on PTSD in soldiers following service in war zones do not include measures of PTSD symptoms prior to deployment and thus suffer from a baseline problem. Only a few studies have examined pre- to post-deployment changes in PTSD symptoms, and most only use a single before-and-after measure,” says Berntsen….

Rather than following some sort of “typical” pattern in which symptoms emerge soon after a particularly traumatic event and persist over time, Berntsen and colleagues found wide variation in the development of PTSD among the soldiers.

The vast majority of the soldiers (84%) were resilient, showing no PTSD symptoms at all or recovering quickly from mild symptoms.

The rest of the soldiers showed distinct and unexpected patterns of symptoms. About 4% showed evidence of “new-onset” trajectory, with symptoms starting low and showing a marked increase across the five timepoints. Their symptoms did not appear to follow any specific traumatic event.

Most notably, about 13% of the soldiers in the study actually showed temporary improvement in symptoms during deployment. These soldiers reported significant symptoms of stress prior to leaving for Afghanistan that seemed to ease in the first months of deployment only to increase again upon their return home.

What could account for this unexpected pattern of symptoms?

Compared to the resilient soldiers, the soldiers who developed PTSD were much more likely to have suffered emotional problems and traumatic events prior to deployment. Childhood experiences of violence, especially punishment severe enough to cause bruises, cuts, burns, and broken bones actually predicted the onset of PTSD in these soldiers. Those who showed symptoms of PTSD were more likely to have witnessed family violence, and to have experienced physical attacks, stalking or death threats by a spouse. They were also more likely to have past experiences that they could not, or would not, talk about. And they were less educated than the resilient soldiers….

The findings challenge the notion that exposure to combat and other war atrocities is the main cause of PTSD.

“We were surprised that stressful experiences during childhood seemed to play such a central role in discriminating the resilient versus non-resilient groups,” says Berntsen. “These results should make psychologists question prevailing assumptions about PTSD and its development.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121119140625.htm

Peace and War Trajectories of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms Before, During, and After Military Deployment in Afghanistan

Dorthe Berntsen, Kim B. Johannessen, Yvonne D. Thomsen, Mette Bertelsen, Rick H. Hoyle and David C. Rubin

Abstract
In the study reported here, we examined posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in 746 Danish soldiers measured on five occasions before, during, and after deployment to Afghanistan. Using latent class growth analysis, we identified six trajectories of change in PTSD symptoms. Two resilient trajectories had low levels across all five times, and a new-onset trajectory started low and showed a marked increase of PTSD symptoms. Three temporary-benefit trajectories, not previously described in the literature, showed decreases in PTSD symptoms during (or immediately after) deployment, followed by increases after return from deployment. Predeployment emotional problems and predeployment traumas, especially childhood adversities, were predictors for inclusion in the nonresilient trajectories, whereas deployment-related stress was not.

These findings challenge standard views of PTSD in two ways. First, they show that factors other than immediately preceding stressors are critical for PTSD development, with childhood adversities being central. Second, they demonstrate that the development of PTSD symptoms shows heterogeneity, which indicates the need for multiple measurements to understand PTSD and identify people in need of treatment.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/11/02/0956797612457389

Keyon Dooling, Australia church sex abuse – alleged pedophile ring

Keyon Dooling stayed in a psychiatric hospital this summer, talks with Katie Couric about his history of abuse (VIDEO)
By Eric Freeman | Ball Don’t Lie – 11/12/12

In late September, veteran Boston Celtics guard Keyon Dooling surprised the NBA world when he announced his retirement less than two months after signing a new contract. However, it turned out that Dooling had an excellent reason for his decision. After years of suppressing a history of sexual abuse, Dooling understood that he had to open up about his experiences, that he needed a change in his life, and that he had to spend more time with his family. It was a brave choice for a man who had earned the respect of teammates, opponents, coaches, and employers over the course of 12 seasons in the league.

Until now, though, we haven’t heard much about the experiences this summer that led Dooling to step away from basketball. As detailed by David Aldridge of NBA.com, Dooling dealt with hallucinations and related issues brought on by a form of post-traumatic stress disorder and had to spend a significant amount of time in a psychiatric hospital….

Dooling was exhibiting behaviors familiar to soldiers returning from war zones. But Post Traumatic Stress Disorders aren’t limited to those who fight in wars. Police officers, firefighters, anyone subject to a severe emotional episode can suffer from PTSD.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/keyon-dooling-stayed-psychiatric-hospital-summer-talks-katie-225458656–nba.html

Policeman says inquiry should spur church to change 11/13/12

The senior policeman who blew the whistle on an alleged police cover-up of church sex abuse in New South Wales has called on the Catholic Church to make radical changes to fix problems plaguing the church.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox spoke to Lateline just hours after Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the creation of a royal commission into institutional responses to instances of child sexual abuse.

Pressure had been building on the Government to react to growing social and political outrage at the latest series of revelations of paedophilia in society.

Most are centred on the Catholic Church, but Ms Gillard says that it is not the only focus of the inquiry, which will look into claims across the breadth of society.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/4368086

Gillard launches royal commission into child abuse
By Simon Cullen and staff Mon Nov 12, 2012

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced the creation of a national royal commission into institutional responses to instances of child sexual abuse.

The decision was taken at a meeting of federal cabinet this afternoon.

Ms Gillard had been under pressure to act following growing calls for a national inquiry into explosive allegations by a senior New South Wales police investigator that the Catholic Church covered up evidence involving paedophile priests.

A number of senior Labor MPs, as well as key independents, had already voiced their support for action on a national scale.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also declared his support for a “wide-ranging” royal commission into child sex abuse but said it should not just focus on claims involving the Catholic Church….

http://www.abc.net.au/news/4367364

Ex-teacher, Catholic brother face assault charges
Lateline By Matthew Carney and staff  11/13/12

Sydney police have arrested a former teacher and a Catholic brother over alleged assaults against children dating back more than two decades.

Detectives from the Sex Crimes Squad arrested the 58-year-old former teacher in Blacktown in the city’s west late on Monday afternoon. A 59-year-old Catholic brother was arrested an hour later at The Entrance on the NSW central coast….

Police allege the offences involved two 13-year-old boys in 1987 and an eight-year-old girl in 1985, with some of the incidents taking place at a Catholic college in Blacktown and a primary school at Lalor Park.

ABC TV’s Lateline program reported the arrests are linked to an alleged paedophile ring, and it understands more arrests are to follow….

http://www.abc.net.au/news/4367886

How to fight child abuse by R. A. Dickey, Twenty-Two Faces – Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities Judy Byington

Column: How to fight child abuse By R.A. Dickey and Grier Weeks

If there is one image from the Penn State scandal that should haunt our American memory, it’s not Joe Paterno’s fall, Jerry Sandusky’s grinning face or the specter of what former assistant football coach Mike McQueary saw.

….For centuries, adults who preyed on children hid in the shadows. For every sexual predator witnessed in the act by an outsider such as McQueary, there were thousands who walked among us unsuspected and untouched.

Then the advent of the Internet dramatically changed this. Individuals with a sexual attraction to children began surfacing en masse, as they went online to do what millions of their fellow Americans were doing: accessing sexual content. But the content these individuals accessed — video and photos of children being raped, tortured and sexually displayed (child pornography) — was illegal.

By 2006, congressional hearings revealed hundreds of thousands of these criminals in the U.S. alone. Law enforcement officers at the helm of a national online nerve center told Congress that they identified 300,000 suspects in 2008. Each day, thousands of suspects were being logged and plotted on maps. More alarming, an estimated one in three was a hands-on offender, with local child victims.

Yet, the vast majority were not being investigated at all because of the lack of law enforcement funding. Children who could be rescued were instead ignored. The heroes on the front lines of this battle went home every night with the screams of children in their heads, knowing they simply didn’t have the manpower to go get them.

….The 2006 Barton hearings led to a bipartisan bill, the Protect Our Children Act of 2008, sponsored by then Democratic Sens. Joe Biden, D-Del., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., as well as Republicans John McCain, R-Ariz., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Oprah Winfrey endorsed the legislation in a one-hour show, launching more than 500,000 angry viewers at the Senate and helping ensure passage.

The act authorized major increases in spending for combating child sexual exploitation and child rescue. For a few years, progress was dramatic. By 2010, law enforcement agencies were reporting they had identified and rescued 2,182 children in a single year, though the actual number was likely 10 times higher.

….This year, the Obama administration asked Congress to cut Protect Act spending by 27%. The House and Senate have proposed spending at below 2010 levels.

….There’s no greater feeling, on or off the field, than protecting a child. Please join us in demanding that Congress and the Obama administration properly fund a war against those who prey on our children.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-08-27/child-pornography-penn-state-abuse/57354658/1

Twenty-Two Faces – Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities Judy Byington MSW, LCSW, ret.

Twenty-Two Faces documents how the only known survivor-intended-victim of a modern-day human sacrifice ceremony six year-old Jenny Hill, overcomes multiplicity resulting from brainwashing, her perpetrators having subjected the child to insidious mind-control techniques culled from Nazi Germany. As is the case for thousands of children across the globe unfortunate enough to be born into families still practicing these aberrant religious rites. Using a lone resource: faith in God, Jenny tries to make sense of a life where she jumps from one day to the next. Eventually with help of a psychologist: she takes charge of her divided mind by facing alter personalities and their traumatic repressed memories, overcomes family-society rejection, confronts and forgives abusers, showing an ability of the human spirit to overcome against all odds, profound emotional shock and miraculously healing from severe childhood trauma. Tate Publishing May, 2012 ISBN-13: 978-1620240328  http://22faces.com/

A Brief History of Trauma as it Relates to Multiple Personalities and Ritual Abuse Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret.

Multiple Personalities generally result from child abuse, where Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is more commonly found in adults who have undergone extreme stress. The underlying problem in both adults and children subjected to prolonged trauma is Dissociation, a disconnect from life events that ranges from excessive daydreaming to Post Traumatic Stress to Multiple Personalities.

Mind-control is a process of subjecting one to torture on a prolonged basis so as to develop nervous disorders, the most common in children being multiple personalities – a  system of brainwashing that was developed by Adolf Hitler during World War II.
http://22faces.com/a-brief-history-of-trauma-as-it-relates-to-multiple-personalities-and-satanic-ritual-abuse-judy-byington-msw-lcsw-ret-3/

Guest Post by Judy Byington, author of “22 Faces”
Tracee Gleichner June 21, 2012
Judy Byington, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., ret, has dedicated her life to humanizing and raising public awareness about the little known effects of ritual abuse and mind-control programming that tragically cause formation of multiple personalities in children….

A Utah woman claims she underwent mind-control, survived a human sacrifice ceremony, witnessed another child’s homicide and was not alone in her allegations of ritual abuse according to her newly released biography, Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities (Tate Publishing, Oklahoma).

Hill states that on June 21, 1965 she was taken to a “Black Temple” rite in Garden Grove, California where the six year-old was strapped to an alter, tortured and forced to watch the murder of another six year-old….

Twenty-Two Faces author Judy Byington, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., ret., secured an exclusive interview with Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints General Authority Elder Glen Pace. In 1990 Pace sent a memo to President Ezra Taft Benson summarizing a church committee’s year of interviews with what was to be over a hundred ritual abuse survivors in the U.S. and Mexico, exposing, “45 members witnessed human sacrifice.”

These shocking disclosures were further verified by the Utah Governor’s Task Force on Ritual Abuse co-chaired by Noemi Mattis, J.D., Ph.D. During the same time as the LDS report, community leaders surveyed therapists and legal entities throughout the state. These two evaluations resulted in hiring of Satanic Ritual Abuse Investigators at the Utah Attorney General’s office headed by Lieutenant Mike King. King later transferred to Homeland Security to do ritual abuse investigation training across the nation….
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/printFriendly/281191

Ritual Abuse Conference Podcasts, EMDR for DID RA/MC clients

Smart-Talks Podcast Blog

This is a collection of talks given at the annual SMART conference in Connecticut. Speakers present to tell their stories of their experiences with ritual abuse and/or mind control, their experiences treating patients with such backgrounds, or to raise awareness of the various issues surrounding recovery from ritual abuse/mind control of efforts made to raise awareness with the general public of this issue.
http://smart-talkspodcastblog.blogspot.com/

The 2012 EMDRIA Conference “EMDR & Attachment: Healing Developmental Trauma” October 4th – 7th in Washington, D.C., at the Crystal Gateway Marriott.

Session 434 – Treating Dissociation, Ritual Abuse and Mind Control from an Attachment Perspective  Carolyn Settle, MSW, LCSW; Soozi Bolte, LPC, LISAC

Using EMDR as an integrative therapeutic approach from an attachment and developmental trauma lens, this presentation will give practical strategies for treating clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) symptoms who have experienced Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (RA/MC).  Infant disorganized attachment is an important precursor to adult dissociation and perhaps even more of a predictor of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than severe trauma alone (van der Kolk). RA/MC programming will be explained so the clinician understands the layers of complexity in treating these dissociative symptoms and ego states. http://www.emdriaconference.com/