Trauma and Memory – The Science and the Silenced

Trauma and Memory – The Science and the Silenced

  Recently a new book was published about the False Memory Movement. Over the years, this movement has been extremely damaging for trauma, rape, child abuse and ritual abuse survivors and their helpers. This movement has used propaganda, bullying, harassment, disinformation and pseudoscientific research to bolster its claims. The False Memory Movement has been used to defend accused and convicted pedophiles, rapists and murderers.

Fortunately there have been many brave therapists, researchers and survivors that have spent years fighting the false memory movement’s pseudoscience, including inaccurate statements denying traumatic amnesia and denying the traumagenic origins of dissociative identity disorder.

This new book “Trauma and Memory – The Science and the Silence” is an excellent resource for those who continue the fight against false memory disinformation. The book consolidates older historic information from  Freud’s era and the 1980’s and 1990’s as well as newer research about more recent events.
We highly recommend this book. There is a hard copy and e-book available at the website below. “The abuse of science to silence the abused” by the false memory movement has been exposed once again. https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-and-Memory-The-Science-and-the-Silenced/Sinason-Conway/p/book/9781032044293

Trauma and Memory
The Science and the Silenced
https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-and-Memory-The-Science-and-the-Silenced/Sinason-Conway/p/book/9781032044293

Trauma and Memory will assist mental health experts and professionals, as well as the interested public, in understanding the scientific issues around trauma memory, and how this differs from other areas of memory.
This book provides accounts of the damage caused to psychology and survivors internationally by false memory groups and ideas. It is unequivocally passionate about the truth of trauma memory and exposing the damaging disinformation that can seep into the field. Contributors to this book include leading professionals from the field of criminology, law, psychology and psychotherapy in the UK and USA, along with survivor-professionals who understand only too well the damage such disinformation can cause.
This book is a valuable resource for mental health professionals of all disciplines including those involved with relevant law and public health policy. It will also help survivors and survivor-professionals in gaining insight into the forces resisting disclosure.

Editors
Biography

Valerie Sinason, PhD, is a widely published Writer and Psychoanalyst. She has pioneered disability and trauma-informed therapy for over 30 years, is President of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, Founder and Patron of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and on the Board of the ISSTD.

Ashley Conway, PhD, AFBPsS, is a Counselling Psychologist. He has worked in a wide range of fields of trauma, ranging through severe critical incidents to long term abuse, and has published widely in these areas. He is currently the Chair of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, UK.

ISBN: 978-1-032-04432-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-04429-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19315-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003193159  

Chapters include:
1 In conversation with Ross Cheit ASHLEY CONWAY
2 False memory syndrome movement: The origins and the promoters MARJORIE ORR
3 The rocky road to false memories: Stories the media missed LYNN CROOK
4 Re-examining the “Lost in the Mall”: study Were “false memories” created to promote a false defence? In conversation with Ruth Blizard VALERIE SINASON
5 Evaluating false memory research WINJA BUSS
6 The abuse of science to silence the abused ASHLEY CONWAY
7 False memory syndrome SUSIE ORBACH
8 Trauma, skin: memory, speech ANN SCOTT
9 Sigmund Freud’s concept of repression: Historical and empirical perspectives BRETT KAHR
10 Terror in the consulting room – memory, trauma and dissociation PHIL MOLLON
11 How can we remember but be unable to recall? The complex functions of multi-modular memory MARY SUE MOORE
12 What if I should die? JENNIFER JOHNS
13 Finding a new narrative: Meaningful responses to “false memory” disinformation MICHAEL SALTER
14 “Do no harm”? KHADIJA ROUF AND DANNY TAGGART   Excerpts:   page 1 The FMS model provided an explanation for the beginning of the exposure of the scale of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) worldwide, and it enabled the awful truth to be displaced. The multitude of stories of abuse that were beginning to be made public could be explained away – they could be blamed on the therapists who were hearing their clients’ histories.
As long as truth struggles with power, there will be offshoots of such models of displacement and the history of denial goes far back. The FMS may have gone off-grid for now, but it is simply another move in the theories of denial of abuse, and more efforts to silence the truth will follow. The principles remain the same.

Excerpts:

page 2
The account of Cassandra tragically fits Jennifer Freyd’s concept of DARVO (Freyd, 1997). DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. This is the common response of a person or an institution that will not accept responsibility and accountability for the violations they have caused.
page 19
Jennifer Freyd regarding her parents (FMSF founders):….The grandparents had an affair which culminated after 11 years in marriage, at which time Pamela and Peter Freyd also married aged 18 and 20. Professor Freyd recollected her father speaking openly of his own childhood homosexual liaison as an 11-year-old with a paedophile artist. She remembered being made to dance nude in front of him aged 9 with a friend; of being taught to kiss on the mouth “like an adult” for a school play aged 11 in front of the cast….he continually made sexual comments which were regarded as normal in the family….He drank heavily through her childhood and was hospitalised for alcoholism.
page 26 – 27
Another key figure in the FMS movement is New Zealand doctor, Felicity Goodyear-Smith. Her book First Do No Harm is subtitled “The Sexual Abuse Industry” (Goodyear-Smith, 1993)….The major theme in First Do No Harm is that sexual abuse is a cultural taboo. There is no intrinsic moral objection to adult–child sexual contact and no automatic damage caused by it. Underwager and Wakefield are quoted as the principal references.
Felicity Goodyear-Smith admits to a personal as well as professional involvement in the abuse field. Her husband and parents-in-law were imprisoned for sexual abuse offences, having been members of a New Zealand community, CentrePoint, which encouraged sexual intimacy amongst its members, including the children.
The author quotes studies that purport to show that adult–child sex can be harmless. Under a section on “Children’s Sexual Rights” she describes groups, such as the Paedophile Information Exchange, the Rene Guyon Society (“sex by eight, or it’s too late”), and the North American Man/Boy Love Association, as “holding radical beliefs regarding children’s sexual rights”.
page 31
Lynn Crook
Some have suggested the media’s failure to challenge the false memory scenario reflected a need to deny the scale of the sexual abuse of children. Perhaps their editors failed to encourage a critical analysis of the story because everyone else was covering it – so it must be true. Some reporters may have failed to question the story because they had been accused of molesting a child. Others may have been protecting someone.
page 33
The government’s witnesses included many of the individuals who had appeared in Frontline producer Ofra Bikel’s “The Search for Satan”. In court, their stories did not hold up as well as they had in Bikel’s interviews. Under cross-examination by Peterson’s attorney, Rusty Hardin, Shanley conceded on 8 October 1997 that she could not name any memories that were implanted. The Houston Chronicle headline on 8 October 1998 announced, “Former patient can’t attribute false memories to therapy” (Smith, 1999). On 1 March 1999 the government moved to dismiss the indictment. The national media did not cover the story.  

page 36
Believing that one had been lost while shopping in childhood is not analogous to remembering sexual abuse. In fact, a large proportion of subjects can be convinced that they were lost in a mall as children, but none could be led to falsely believe they had been administered enemas (Pezdek, Finger & Hodge, 1997).

  page 37
The first six subjects in the formal mall study failed to develop false memories (Coan, 1993), but those results were never published. In the second iteration of the formal mall study (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995), there is little explicit description of the methods of recruitment of subjects, experimental controls or training of investigators….Most importantly, no evidence is presented that any subjects formed full false memories. Nevertheless, the authors imply that, based on study results, they “are providing an ‘existence proof’ for the phenomenon of false memory formation” (pp. 723–4).

page 40
Rather, most false memory studies attempt to suggest to subjects that they experienced much more commonplace events, such as getting lost, spilling a bowl of punch, going for a balloon ride, or getting sick after eating eggs. It may be profitable to wonder whether many of the false memory researchers have been swept up in the FMSF campaign to exonerate parents who claim they have been falsely accused.

page 41
Other researchers and authors attempting to criticise false memory studies may have been intimidated. Between 1992 and 2017, nearly two dozen psychologists, psychiatrists, attorneys, authors, researchers, journalists, and abuse survivors have been subjected to ad hominem attacks by Loftus (Crook, personal communication, 2019). Those defamed include Ellen Bass, E. Sue Blume, Martha Dean, Laura Brown, Mary Harvey, Jim Coan’s mother, Judith Herman, David Calof, Kenneth Pope, David Corwin, Diana Russell, Lynn Crook, Lenore Walker, Laura Davis, Charles Whitfield, B. J. Levy, Neil Brick, Karen Olio, Bessel van der Kolk, Holly Ramona, Nicole Taus Kluemper and Gerald Koocher.

page 42
Many academics may be equally motivated to deny the existence of child abuse as was Freud. Those who gain considerable income from testifying in defence of accused perpetrators, as have Underwager, Gardner and Loftus, may have additional motivation for claiming that abuse accusations were fabricated.

page 44
Careful analysis of the research shows it is not easy to implant false memories of childhood abuse. False memories with autobiographical belief, recollective experiences and confidence in memory are rare to non-existent.

page 55
The false memory syndrome (FMS) advocates do not want evidence of false negatives – that we can experience something and then be persuaded that it did not happen, because that would not suit their narrative.
….There is no evidence that anyone has ever had a false belief implanted that they were sexually abused as a child.

page 59
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the most severe of all dissociative disorders, and its features include recurrent amnesia. Recent research (Reinders et al., 2019) has demonstrated that individuals with DID can be distinguished from healthy controls on the basis of abnormal brain morphology.
….“Every single scientific study of memory of childhood sexual abuse, whether prospective or retrospective, whether studying clinical samples or general population samples, finds that a certain percentage of sexually abused individuals forget, and later remember, their abuse” (Van der Kolk, 2014, note on p. 398 re. p. 190).

page 60
As McMaugh and Middleton (2020) state, “the ‘false memory’ movement enabled society to ignore a whole new generation of abused children”.

page 61
Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes & Conway, 2010) is an informative book written to describe how vested interests have manipulated the media, to mislead and confuse in areas of great importance to society, including smoking, acid rain and climate change….they create an institute, with scientific advisors who can use their credentials to present themselves as authorities. The advisors cherry-pick data to advance a position, present ideas as if they were facts and use their authority to try to discredit any science they do not like. They use the mass media, making simplified, dramatic statements to capture public attention and draw in journalists to give their minority views more credence than they deserve. They then use these press stories, quoting them as if they were facts. If there is an individual whose opinions are contradictory to the desired line, ad hominem attacks are an option.

page 88
Sigmund Freud also realised that repressions could be lifted as a result of psychoanalytical treatment. In his essay on “Trauer und Melancholie” (Freud, 1917a), better known in English as “Mourning and Melancholia” (Freud, 1917b), he observed that the clinical process of psychoanalysis will frequently activate memories, and, that after treatment has progressed satisfactorily, repressed and unconscious memories will eventually return to the fore of consciousness, no longer subject to the disguise of repression.

page 90
Nevertheless, Erdelyi’s data does most certainly substantiate Freud’s claim that repressed material can return to consciousness, simply as a result of talking….Astonishingly, 38% of the sample of 129 women did not report the abuse, which Williams and colleagues knew, on the basis of hospital records, had, in fact, occurred.

page 156
Survivor accounts, combined with scientific advances in the understanding of trauma, are creating enriched understandings of how abuse can injure the usual process of memory and psychological functioning. Time is yielding an opportunity to reshape public understandings of trauma and its aftermath. This could lead to the correcting of harmful narratives which have led to unethical treatment of survivors, through denial, victim-blaming, or “othering”.

False Memory Syndrome at 30 – Flawed Science, Scientific Evidence for Dissociative Amnesia,- Michael Salter – Organized Abuse, Evan Rachel Wood accuses Marilyn Manson of abuse,- Paedophile Karl Sabbagh jailed for grooming child (False Memory Proponent), Survivorship 2021 Winter Journal and May Conference

 

 – The False Memory Syndrome at 30: How Flawed Science Turned into Conventional Wisdom

 The Scientific Evidence for Dissociative Amnesia

– Michael Salter – Organized Abuse– Evan Rachel Wood accuses Marilyn Manson of abuse

– Paedophile Karl Sabbagh, author and film maker, jailed for grooming child (False Memory Proponent)

– Survivorship Notes and Journal  – 2021 Winter Journal

– Survivorship Online Conference – May 21 – 23, 2021

The False Memory Syndrome at 30: How Flawed Science Turned into Conventional Wisdom
The false memory syndrome stands in direct scientific opposition to the wealth of evidence supporting dissociative amnesia—a psychological defense mechanism which, according to trauma therapists, enables people to split off painful events from conscious awareness for years….

Moreover, the broad acceptance of the false memory syndrome in the cultural ecosystem can end up silencing, or even shaming, people like Jennifer Freyd, who believe that they have stumbled upon painful experiences in their childhood and seek to understand the truth about their own past and its connection to their current feelings. In addition, in the courtroom, the Freyds’ view of memory can serve as a protective shield for those who have, in fact, sexually abused children…

Another problematic flaw with the mall study is its laboratory setting. “Loftus is not a clinician and never studied how people process traumatic experiences,” said psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. “Trauma often overwhelms the central nervous system, so the brain may not be able to register it fully when it happens. That’s why delayed memories of abuse are not uncommon.”

Finally, critics have pointed out that the study is riddled with methodological flaws and lapses in its reporting of results. For example, in “Lost in the Mall: False Memory or False Defense,” published in 2019 in The Journal of Child Custody, psychologists Ruth Blizzard and Morgan Shaw reported that Loftus tossed out six subjects who were in her original 1993 study—a move which constitutes a major ethical lapse for an experimental researcher. “The mall study,” they concluded, “has received a minimal amount of critical analysis, regardless of the vague and contradictory reporting of results, failure to report negative results, lack of definition of false memory, and conflation of informal observations with formal research.”…

Loftus was the sole defense witness called in the February 2005 trial of the late Paul Shanley, the so-called “Boston street priest,” who had admitted on several occasions since the late 1970s—to both journalists and to church authorities—that he had abused numerous boys. The 2005 case concerned a Boston area firefighter who claimed that Shanley had raped him on numerous occasions when he was between six and nine years old. The accuser, who was 27 at the time of the trial, testified that he had forgotten about the years of abuse for about 15 years….

The Scientific Evidence for Dissociative Amnesia The flip side to the false memory studies is a large body of research, conducted over the last century, that provides evidence that dissociative amnesia is, in fact, a common reaction to trauma. However, this research has often been ignored in news articles and textbooks that discuss the false memory syndrome. “There are now hundreds of studies in lots of different populations showing that people forget trauma,” said psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. “We see it in victims of sexual abuse, natural disaster, torture, rape, war, and kidnapping. And research also shows that delayed memories of abuse are as reliable as continuous memories.” One of the psychologists who has synthesized much of this research on dissociative amnesia has been Jennifer Freyd herself. “I am a memory psychologist, so I needed to make sense of what had happened to me,” she said. In 1996, she published Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse (1996)—a book published by Harvard University Press, which describes what she has called betrayal trauma theory. “Memory of trauma can be dangerous to children,” she stated, summing up the central argument of her book. “They may need to forget in order to function in important relationships.”….

Evidence for dissociative amnesia has also been gathered by Brown University political scientist Ross Cheit, who reports that he forgot his own sexual abuse at the age of 12 by a camp counselor for decades. In the mid-1990s, he launched the Recovered Memory Project, and he has now gathered 110 corroborated cases of recovered memory. He also has compiled a long list of citations to scholarly articles on dissociative amnesia in various populations such as child abuse victims and Holocaust survivors. Cheit spent a decade writing a book, The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children (2014), in which he reviewed the major child abuse cases over the previous 30 years—from the McMartin Preschool case of the 1980s through the priest abuse cases and the Jerry Sandusky case. In it, he documents how there has been a bias in the media against recognizing dissociative amnesia, even though in the clinical world it is well known that “sexual abuse disclosures are often delayed and then disclosed in bits and pieces.”
https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/02/false-memory-syndrome

/Michael Salter – Organized Abuse
https://ritualabuse.us/smart/michael-salter/

Michael Salter
Organised abuse has been reported by child victims, adult survivors and a range of professionals for over thirty years. However, organised abuse remains poorly understood.
This website has been developed by criminologist Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter who specialises in the study of organised abuse and complex trauma. The aim of the website is to disseminate reliable information about organised abuse to professionals, victims and survivors.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/

Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter
I am the Scientia Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of New South Wales, Australia. I specialise in the study of organised sexual abuse. In addition to my work on complex trauma, I have researched and published widely on violence against women and children.
I sit on the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. I am an Associate Editor of Child Abuse Review, the peer-reviewed journal of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and I sit on the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.
I act as a consultant and trainer to a range of non-government organisations and government departments at the state and national level. I am an expert advisor to the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/michael-salter

Marilyn Manson: His satanic majesty
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/marilyn-manson-his-satanic-majesty-116023.html
Evan Rachel Wood describing the abuse she suffered when she was in a relationship with Marilyn Manson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1270709342032072704

Evan Rachel Wood accuses Marilyn Manson of abuse
2 February 2021
‘Brainwashed’
On Monday, Wood alleged that Manson was her abuser for the first time via a statement posted on her Instagram account.
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” the Westworld actress claimed.
“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55889002

Remembering our Childhood: How Memory Betrays Us
Karl Sabbagh
Print publication date: 2011 Print ISBN-13: 9780199218417  Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2015  

Freyds and Feuds  Karl Sabbagh 
This chapter describes the British False Memory Society (BFMS) and its American equivalent, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). These organizations are made up of parents who had been accused of abuse — they would say falsely — by one of their children.
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199218417.001.0001/acprof-9780199218417-chapter-11

Paedophile Karl Sabbagh, author and film maker, jailed for grooming child
By Will Walker 
27th September 2019
A RENOWNED author and filmmaker was secretly a depraved paedophile who preyed on a ‘vulnerable’ child before grooming her.
Predator Karl Sabbagh began talking to his 14-year-old victim about films and literature but the conversation soon moved on to him sending videos of himself performing sex acts.
The 77-year-old pervert of Crab Tree Close, Bloxham, went on to ask the child to ‘stop shaving her pubic hair’ and later sent her a vibrator in the post….”He sent a video of himself masturbating, there was talk of meeting her.”….
Sentencing, Judge Peter Ross, jailed Sabbagh for 45 months and ordered that he sign the sex offenders register for life.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17933474.paedophile-karl-sabbagh-author-film-maker-jailed-grooming-child

Survivorship Notes and Journal
2021 Winter Journal

Articles:
Institutional Child Abuse – Annika Lundin and Randy Noblitt
Boulspo, 2016 – Wendy Hoffman
My Personal Experience – Victoria Skye

Poetry:
Whitman’s Samplers on the dining room table – Forest Hills, 1940s – Wendy Hoffman
Now and Then – Victoria Skye
https://survivorship.org/notes-and-journal/

Survivorship Online Conference – May 21 – 23, 2021 “

Being a survivor/clinician in a changing world”  https://survivorship.org/the-survivorship-ritual-abuse-and-mind-control-2021-conference/ 

Survivorship is one of the oldest and most respected organizations supporting survivors of extreme child abuse, including sadistic sexual abuse, ritualistic abuse, mind control, and torture. Survivorship provides resources, healing, and community for survivors; training and education for professionals who may serve survivors; and support for survivors’ partners and other allies. The organization functions as a lifeline for survivors who may be isolated emotionally or geographically. Through community outreach and training, Survivorship also raises awareness about these difficult issues.  

Speakers Include:  

One Hundred Children: A Parable for Healing from Dissociation-savvy Mind Control Presenter: Ellen Lacter, Ph.D. 

Production of Sadistic Child abuse Materials: Psychology of the Victims and Perpetrators Presenter: Ellen Lacter, Ph.D.  

Self-Esteem  Presenter: Wendy Hoffman  

 Mind Control and How to Stop it. Presenter: Neil Brick  

 

The Memory War – Jennifer Freyd accused her father of sexual abuse. Her parents’ attempt to discredit her created a defense for countless sex offenders.

The Memory War – Jennifer Freyd accused her father of sexual abuse. Her parents’ attempt to discredit her created a defense for countless sex offenders.
By Katie Heaney
https://www.thecut.com/amp/article/false-memory-syndrome-controversy.html

“Pam and Peter Freyd retaliated. In the wake of Jennifer’s disclosure, they formed an organization called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. Through the nonprofit’s work, they popularized a term — false memory — that became one of the most effective tools to instill doubt not only about allegations of child sex abuse but in all forms of sexual violence. Between 1992, when the foundation was launched, and December 2019, when it abruptly shuttered, it bolstered the defense strategy employed by countless sex offenders, from Michael Jackson to Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.”

“Peter (Freyd) was always interested in Jennifer’s (Freyd) sex life. On one occasion, when kissing a high-school boyfriend while seated on her bed, Jennifer caught her father watching them from her open doorway. Another time, she found him reading her diary; he accused her of purposely leaving it out where he could see it. Jennifer felt an enormous relief when she left for college at age 16, though visiting home for the holidays made it clear that little had changed: When guests came over for dinner and drinks, Peter told them the family’s toy poodle, Carbon, humped people to whom Jennifer was sexually attracted.

“In a variation on the (Lost in the Mall) mall study published in 1997, researchers sought to emphasize this distinction by presenting subjects with one true memory and two false ones: being lost in the mall and receiving a rectal enema. The hypothesis was that the less plausible event, the enema, wouldn’t create false memories so easily. Three of 20 subjects “remembered” having been lost in the mall. Zero remembered the enema.

“The typical response was ‘No fucking way. That didn’t happen,’ ” says Kathy Pezdek, a cognitive psychologist and an expert in eyewitness memory, who conducted the experiment.

Coan, Loftus’s former student and now a neuroscientist and psychology professor at the University of Virginia, has decidedly mixed feelings about the experiment he inadvertently spearheaded. “I’m slow enough on the uptake that it took me a while to realize that the study I was doing was making people who had been sexually abused feel like I was their enemy,” he tells me. “That was completely devastating to me.” Although he has been asked to testify about false memory in countless court cases, Coan has always refused. He just doesn’t think the mall study is sufficiently relevant. In her excitement, he thinks, Loftus may have “mischaracterized” what started out as an undergraduate assignment for extra credit.

“I got five points,” Coan says. “Five points and decades of grief.”

“….But while the (False Memory Syndrome) foundation may be gone, its legacy is likely to be long-lasting. Stories of brainwashed daughters falsely accusing their parents have become a staple of popular culture, from talk shows like Sally Jessy Raphael to PBS documentaries like Divided Memories. “I was just astounded that this big lie could be perpetrated with impunity and with great success across all major media,” says Hopper, the Harvard psychologist. The concept of false memory does more than provide child sex abusers with a pseudoscientific defense — it offers a perversely reassuring explanation for anyone who wants to believe that such abuse is less common than it actually is. While statistics vary by source, an epidemiological overview of worldwide data estimates that 8 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. And contrary to the FMSF’s claims, most victims of child sex abuse are extremely reluctant to share their abuse with others or reporting it to the police.”

Nearly 1,700 Suspected Child Sex Predators Arrested During Operation “Broken Heart”, Lost-in-the-mall: False memory or false defense?, Sybil and Multiple Personality Disorder: Original Sybil book was an accurate description of Shirley’s life

Nearly 1,700 Suspected Child Sex Predators Arrested During Operation “Broken Heart”

The Department of Justice today announced the arrest of almost 1,700 suspected online child sex offenders during a two-month, nationwide operation conducted by Internet Crimes Against Children task forces. The task forces identified 308 offenders who either produced child pornography or committed child sexual abuse, and 357 children who suffered recent, ongoing or historical sexual abuse or were exploited in the production of child pornography.The 61 ICAC task forces, located in all 50 states and comprised of more than 4,500 federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies, led the coordinated operation known as “Broken Heart” during the months of April and May 2019. During the course of the operation, the task forces investigated more than 18,500 complaints of technology-facilitated crimes targeting children and delivered more than 2,150 presentations on internet safety to over 201,000 youth and adults. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nearly-1700-suspected-child-sex-predators-arrested-during-operation-broken-heart 

Lost-in-the-mall: False memory or false defense?
Ruth A. Blizard & Morgan Shaw
Published online: 26 Apr 2019
https://doi.org/10.1080/15379418.2019.1590285

Abstract

False Memory Syndrome (FMS) and Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) were developed as defenses for parents accused of child abuse as part of a larger movement to undermine prosecution of child abuse. The lost-in-the-mall study by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus concludes that an entire false memory can be implanted by suggestion. It has since been used to discredit abuse survivors’ testimony by inferring that false memories for childhood abuse can be implanted by psychotherapists. Examination of the research methods and findings of the study shows that no full false memories were actually formed. Similarly, PAS, coined by Richard Gardner, is frequently used in custody cases to discredit children’s testimony by alleging that the protective parent coached them to have false memories of abuse. There is no scientific research demonstrating the existence of PAS, and, in fact, studies on the suggestibility of children show that they cannot easily be persuaded to provide detailed disclosures of abuse.

Deconstructing the lost in the mall study
Lynn S. Crook and Linda E. McEwen
Journal of Child Custody

ABSTRACT
In their frequently-cited “lost in the mall” study from two decades ago, Loftus and Pickrell claimed their findings “reveal that people can be led to believe that entire events happened to them after suggestions to that effect.” The study continues to be cited by the media and by academics to support claims that adults who recover memories of childhood sexual abuse have been led to believe such claims by therapists. The study parallels claims that parents coach children to falsely accuse and thus alienate the other parent in child custody cases. We describe how laws passed by state legislatures led to the need for a new defense for abuse accusations and how a foundation was established to promote that defense. We report that Loftus, who designed the study to support the new defense, testified over 20 years later that the study results apply only to the 24 subjects and cannot be applied to other populations.

Sybil and Multiple Personality Disorder
The original Sybil book was an accurate description of Shirley’s life.
http://sybilandmpd.blogspot.com/2011/11/review-of-sybil-in-her-own-words-by.html

Review of “Sybil in her own words”

Permission was given to post this here.

The book “Sybil in her own words” by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D. is for sale at Amazon.com

After reading the book “Sybil in her own words” by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D., I realized the importance of this book. The people in the Sybil story are treated like human beings and they are allowed to speak about their own life stories. What is interesting about this book, is that it is written by a professional who has experience with the scientific knowledge of MPD.

The book shows how Dr. Connie Wilbur’s treatment was successful and that Shirley Mason (Sybil) never had a relapse or return of her MPD symptoms after her treatment with Wilbur. She was able to live a full life, as shown in her interactions and discussions with Patrick Suraci, Ph.D.

In chapter seven, Dr. Suraci goes back to Shirley Mason’s home town to check on her story and validate it. He speaks with three women, Wilma Bode, Betty Christen and Patricia Alcott, who were classmates and playmates with Shirley in her childhood. Wilma and Betty were two of the few children that were able to enter Shirley’s household.

Wilma stated, “We always said that her mother was an old witch.” She describes Shirley as having troubles concentrating in school and not knowing if she was day dreaming or that her attention was drawn away. Wilma is asked if she believes if Shirley was abused. Wilma states that she believes that some of what is written in the book did happen.

Betty talks about Shirley’s mother. She states that her mother never came over to visit, but would come over and look (or peek) in the windows when they had company. She said that “Ms. Mason relieved herself in a neighbor’s yard.”

Patricia describes Shirley’s mother as “strange, stern, raucous” and “someone to stay away from.”  She states that Shirley’s mother (Mattie) “had a shrill voice and ridiculed Shirley.” Shirley’s mother repeated things over and over again. Patricia stated Mattie “played the piano too loudly, bombastically, venting anger. She was harsh.”  She said that Shirley’s father (Wilbur) “stood in shaded corners with his head down.”

Patrick Suraci describes the mechanism of “splitting” that contributed to the development of Shirley’s personalities. Shirley came to view Mattie sometimes as the “good mother” and sometimes as the “bad mother.”

In his chapter on Shirley in New York, Patrick Suraci speaks with Jim and Naomi, Shirley’s closest living relatives. Jim had noticed that on the phone Shirley “was a different personality, a different person.”  Naomi agreed and described a strong change in personality also. Naomi in Chapter Nine tells Patrick that Shirley and Dr. Wilbur confirmed that the book Sybil “was 100% accurate.”

The pictures in the book are excellent. Under one of the pictures drawn by Shirley’s alter Peggy of a Christmas tree (in black and white), the note describes that Christmas was unpleasant for Shirley because she would receive a lot of games and toys which her mother would put away and not let her play with. Shirley was told she could play with them another time. Yet her mother would give them away to a poor family that didn’t have anything.

Patrick Suraci states in his chapter Controversy Over Sybil that Mason, Schreiber and Wilbur were offered money, television and media interviews to reveal Shirley’s identity, but did not do this. He discusses the problems with Dr. Herbert Spiegel’s view of the Sybil story, as well as other skeptical of the story.

I highly recommend this book to those interested in the Sybil story. It is very well documented, using actual transcripts of conversations with those in the story and those that knew Shirley, showing that the original Sybil book was an accurate description of Shirley’s life.

‘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

Hall: victims say abused at BBC, Ritual killing accused found hanged, How Commune Became Cult Movie, Lost in the Mall Critique, Women forced into sex 25 times a day

– Stuart Hall: victims say they were abused at BBC
– Ritual killing accused found hanged
– Chile ‘Devil Baby’ Murder: Cult Leader Who Sacrificed Three-Day-Old Child Found Dead in Peru
– Movie Review  How Commune Became Cult
– DAUBERT  FRYE CRITIQUE  #1:  LOST IN THE MALL, BY LOFTUS, ET. AL.
– U.S.: Women forced into sex 25 times a day

Stuart Hall: victims say they were abused at BBC
Steven Swinford – 03 May 2013

Two of his victims have come forward to say they were sexually abused by Hall in the 1960s and 1970s after he was hired for their school prizegivings.

Hall invited both girls to the BBC’s Manchester headquarters after promising that he would help them with their careers. One victim said Hall plied her with “plenty of champagne” before raping her in his dressing room.

Another said Hall sexually assaulted her in his car after inviting her to a “mocked up” studio session at the corporation’s Manchester studios.

Both said Hall was helped by his friends, amid growing concerns that other staff at BBC may have turned a blind eye to the abuse.

Angie Bray, a Conservative member of the culture, media and sport select committee, said: “They have to look at this all over again. Depressingly, we see a pattern developing. Jimmy Savile is not just a one-off.”

The investigation into Hall’s activities began after one of his victims wrote an anonymous letter to a columnist at The Independent newspaper.

She said that she had been groomed and sexually abused by Hall after meeting him at her school prize-giving in the 1970s, when he was a presenter on Look North, a local BBC news programme.

Hall told her headmaster he was “impressed” and thought she could have a “future in television journalism”, inviting her back to the BBC’s studios.

She said:”I was young for my years and easy meat for a man like him,” the woman wrote. To have a man of my father’s age take a benevolent interest in me seemed wonderful.

“Sadly the world is too full of girls (and boys) who are looking for love, and find out too late that they have found sex with a predator instead.”….
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/stuart-hall-victims-say-they-were-abused-at-bbc-29240672.html

Ritual killing accused found hanged   02 May 2013

The body of a Chilean man accused in the ritual killing of a three-day-old boy has been found hanged in an abandoned house in Peru.
Ramon Castillo, 36, was found hanging from a beam on the second floor of the house in the highlands city of Cuzco.

He was wearing jeans, a gray jacket, a cap, shoes and a backpack, General Javier Avalos, the regional police chief, said.

He said the body was identified through fingerprints that Chile sent via Interpol. He said it was too early to say whether Castillo’s death was suicide….
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/ritual-killing-accused-found-hanged-29237361.html

Chile ‘Devil Baby’ Murder: Cult Leader Who Sacrificed Three-Day-Old Child Found Dead in Peru   By Drishya Nair    May 3, 2013
A Chilean man accused of “sacrificing” a three-day-old baby girl has been found hanged in an abandoned house in Peru.

Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete, 36, is believed to have been the leader of a 12-member cult that declared the baby girl the anti-Christ and killed her by burning her alive.

The incident took place on 23 November, in the town of Colliguay. Gaete has been on the run since February.
Ramon Gustavo Castillo Gaete was found dead in the second floor of an abandoned house in Peru….
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/464177/20130503/chile-baby-thrown-bonfire-cult-leader-dead.htm

Movie Review
How Commune Became Cult
‘The Source Family,’ a Documentary on Father Yod
Jim Baker, also known as Father Yod, center, used his Hollywood health food restaurant to recruit members for what became the Source Family.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS   April 30, 2013

For anyone looking to teach a master class in brainwashing techniques, “The Source Family” might be an excellent place to start. Documenting the hippy-dippy lifestyle and hedonistic principles of Hollywood’s favorite 1970s cult — led by the self-professed guru and suspected bank robber Jim Baker, a k a Father Yod — Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille’s disturbing film is an object lesson in psychological manipulation.

Working a powerful combo of personal magnetism and easy-to-digest philosophies — what young person doesn’t want to hear that marijuana-enhanced sex is the purest route to enlightenment? — Mr. Baker became the “superrich father” to a band of gorgeous devotees (not a few of them underage girls)….
http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/movies/the-source-family-a-documentary-on-father-yod.html

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.

….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.
http://wendymurphylaw.com/LOSTINTHEMALL.pdf

U.S.: Women forced into sex 25 times a day
Associated Press Wed May 1, 2013 12:57 PM

NEW YORK — The young Mexican women were driven to rural New Jersey, where their handlers used threats to make them have sex with 25 farmworkers a day. Or they were confined to dingy brothels in the New York City area that advertised their services with “chica cards,” business cards passed out on street corners to attract customers. They were paid very little, or nothing at all.

U.S. authorities detailed their ordeal in a criminal complaint charging 13 people with smuggling dozens into the United States and forcing them into prostitution. Some of the defendants were to appear Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan to face multiple counts including sex trafficking and interstate transportation for prostitution.

The ring “lured their unsuspecting victims to the United States and then consigned them to a living hell,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

The investigation was among several aimed at “blockading the repugnant sex trafficking corridor” used to exploit victims from Tenancingo, Mexico, said James Hayes, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York….
http://www.azcentral.com/news/free/20130501new-york-sex-ring.html