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27th October 2012, 02:24 PM | #161 |
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Why are you so mad? Just curious?
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27th October 2012, 03:57 PM | #162 |
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That's a good question, and I fully understand your frustration.
I have now spent about five hours on this thread, reading everything, including your excellent review of Ted Gunderson's career. Someone mentioned Debbie Nathan's recent book. Writing for the Village Voice back in the 1980s, Nathan was one of two reporters who championed the cause of Kelly Michaels. The other was Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal. I have Rabinowitz's book, No Greater Tyranny, where she surveys the damage wrought by the kind of doctrine we are discussing in this thread. She writes: State prosecutors building these high-profile cases well understood the problems posed by the strange charges and the fantasy-riddled narratives of the child plaintiffs. How could they make credible to jurors the extraordinary prowess of defendants who could assault whole classes of preschoolers daily, dressing and undressing twenty or more, all accomplished in a half hour’s time, in a busy school, with no one noticing, no child ever sent home with mismatched socks? This was a problem whose solution required the attention of specialists. Jurors had to be given a reason to believe that four year olds could be raped with butcher knives that left them uninjured, could be tied naked to trees and raped in broad daylight in front of a school facing the street and before the entire school population, as Violet Amirault would be accused and convicted of having done. The state’s solution lay with their experts— witnesses who could explain and render such mysteries comprehensible. They found such an "expert" in Eileen Treacy, a social worker who testified in a number of these trials, including that of Kelly Michaels, who explained why evidence of innocence should be seen as evidence of guilt: A child’s emphatic denial that anything had happened was in fact proof that the child had been victimized, she informed the jury. Citing the theory of the child abuse accommodation syndrome, she described its various phases. If children gave a succession of “no” answers when asked if they had been abused, that was, Treacy explained, “proof of the suppression stage.” She also offered insights like the following: A parent noted that her child no longer cared for tunafish. This had significance, Treacy told the jurors: “It’s well known that the smell of tuna fish is similar to the odor of vaginal secretions.” The jury believed it, and convicted Kelly Michaels. How infantile were their minds? I went over to Amazon and cast my votes on Twenty-two Faces. This is like bailing a leaky boat. We just have to keep at it, and hope we can bail faster than the water leaks in. Thanks for an excellent discussion everyone. |
27th October 2012, 04:04 PM | #163 |
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27th October 2012, 04:17 PM | #164 |
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douglas
You know, it's interesting. I've had other conversations where people seem to check their brain at the door if someone is given the title "doctor" or "expert." It is scary to see how people don't have common sense or critical thinking skills and what happens when you get them together in a group. Same thing with the Salem witch trials. Precisely how the jury is made up. Scary and sad. |
27th October 2012, 04:33 PM | #165 |
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I see a story (like so many "DID" cases) of a troubled person made more troubled by fabricated multiple personalities, "memories" of childhood abuse, satanic rituals, and government conspiracies.
Somehow (that's where good writing fails me) it becomes clear that the therapist is creating all these delusions, and bit by bit the patient sheds these beliefs as evidence comes to light. I'd throw in a competent therapist for good measure. And a scene where the Judy Byington-type therapist gets carried away in a straightjacket. |
27th October 2012, 05:17 PM | #166 |
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Fascinating thread, and well done on opening it Orphia. Letting more people know about some of this nonsense can make a difference. I voted both on Amazon and the abc4 website.
Also welcome to some of the newer members here. |
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27th October 2012, 05:22 PM | #167 |
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Thank you! Maybe, just maybe, we'll reach some rational minds in media who will take the folks promoting this whole warped thing to task. The shear number of believers who are posting, some currently in therapy, shows you just what a problem this presents for competent mental health today. Sadly this issue did not go away in the 80s/90s. These therapists still practice unchecked.
We can cast votes, rationally and civilly comment, keep showing the absurdity of the narrative and hold a major news outlet like ABC responsible. This is exactly why I love JREF. |
27th October 2012, 05:34 PM | #168 |
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Sorry, I don't think I made clear anywhere that I reached out to this particular reporter at the ABC affiliate before she aired her report as well.
It would still make me angry even if I hadn't however, because people are hurt by these ridiculous claims in very real, tangible ways that don't require a whole lot of abstraction or speculation to see. You like to think that if you point something like that out to somebody, that they will at least make every effort to understand what you are saying and make sure that they are not doing harm. In fact, I find them engaging in very convoluted tactics to NOT understand what I am saying, and simply dismissing every bullet point and fact as part of a sinister "agenda". It makes me angry because I genuinely see it as an insult to survivors of child abuse who they take the liberty of hijacking their cause to shield their conspiracy theories from critical scrutiny. And it is, of course, dangerous to the mentally vulnerable, who seek help from these "professionals" to be fed paranoid delusions that may haunt their fears forever thereafter. It's frustrating and infuriating because all the tools, knowledge, and information to correct them is readily available to them, and often even pushed at them and broken down into bite-sized pieces... but they can't be inconvenienced to learn anything new, even for fear that they may be ruining the lives of others. |
27th October 2012, 05:53 PM | #169 |
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Thank you. I'm very glad I was able to get the Gunderson article out to some people who appreciate the material. The piece, I think, was too long for the general audience, but I'm going to do another piece, a second part, about Gunderson that will cover his McMartin Preschool investigation. The McMartin trial had the same caliber of "expert" that you cite above. In fact, the trial was such an obvious farce that it pains me to know the prosecutor never went to prison for the gross irresponsibility of it. However, if you look up McMartin online now, you're probably more likely to find some blog piece describing the whole fiasco as irrefutable evidence of satanic ritual abuse, than you are to find an honest assessment of the hysteria.
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27th October 2012, 06:08 PM | #170 |
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27th October 2012, 06:13 PM | #171 |
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Well Doug it really is an insult to actual survivors of child abuse. I think it's like taking the sad stories of abused children and ignoring them, then replacing their stories with something that is more sexually satifying and profitable for the therapist or talk show host, or news network. Somewhere those real victims of abuse have been discarded, they just can't bring in the audience like satanic ritual abuse and CIA conspiracies, and you just can't make enough fame or money off of them either.
vote here: http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc...spx?p=Comments *What the hell ! Some one on that site just insulted me |
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27th October 2012, 06:41 PM | #172 |
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Quote:
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27th October 2012, 06:45 PM | #173 |
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Exactly. This is an absolute travesty. The absurd puerile fantasies of sexually twisted therapists are coached into the memories of unwell people, and then these people are paraded around for the aggrandisement of the therapist so they can crow and preen whilst being treated as "heroes" for "saving" these poor victims from their satanic cult of ritualistic cannibalism or dismemberment or whatever B-movie trope they can dream up. The woman who wrote this book should be jailed for the horrible crime she commits by destroying her patients' lives.
I have a close friend who was molested by her step father when she was very young. As an adult (having not seen him for decades) she decided to press charges. The detective with whom she spoke asked "Did you 'recover' these memories in therapy?" When she answered "No, I didn't need any therapy to remember, I've never forgotten" she heard him breathe a sigh of relief over the phone. As it turned out, he had died in the intervening years, so there wasn't a court case to be had, but yes, these recovered "memories" do nothing to assist the police in bringing real perpetrators to justice. |
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27th October 2012, 06:48 PM | #174 |
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Joesixpack - you should post that over on the abc site. It might offer a counter example to those who are posting stuff like, "my friend had repressed memories and they were totally true, so therefore this book is true", etc.
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27th October 2012, 06:49 PM | #175 |
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27th October 2012, 06:50 PM | #176 |
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27th October 2012, 06:53 PM | #177 |
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I posted again. Hope the truthful posts outnumber the BS posts and I hope the impression it leaves on the undecided browsers is the right one. People will see this story and then go down to the comments section. Hopefully the posts you put there will give people pause to consider the story's actual claims and how absolutely preposterous they are.
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27th October 2012, 06:54 PM | #178 |
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I think that people think about "recovered" memories that way especially because most victims of abuse done't bring it up in day to day life. About a week ago I was out drinking a bit with two professional colleagues and one of them started talking about her sister being killed when she was a teenager. So the other colleague shared some stress about living in India. And so when it got to me they said "we must be upsetting you with these terrible stories" and I said "oh no, I was one of those "basement kids" you hear about in the news." They started asking questions and after about 5 minutes the look of horror on their faces made me back pedal quickly and shut down.
And that kind of reaction makes you keep it silent. When you see these kinds of attention seeking travesties on the news, well I suppose when I do, it's easy to see right through it because the "victim" seems to be getting off on the attention and having everyone lavish sympathy on them. There are six kids in my family and all of us suffered in a varying degree. I was the "scape goat" and I have a big mouth (surprise surprise) so I got the brunt of it. When we talk about it to each other every single one of us remembers every single detail. Every detail. If we forget something it's not from a repressed memory it's just a normal forgetting about not thinking about it in so long. Anyway I'm rambling now. |
27th October 2012, 06:57 PM | #179 |
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27th October 2012, 07:01 PM | #180 |
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27th October 2012, 07:03 PM | #181 |
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27th October 2012, 07:10 PM | #182 |
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Check out this penny dreadful press release.. It is the craziest piece of rubbish I have ever read. I love (and by "love", I mean "loath") how Operation Paper Clip is referred to as the CIA "mind control program".
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27th October 2012, 07:21 PM | #183 |
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Oh, how sad, they've managed to work a genuine missing child case into their delusional narrative. I suppose the fraudulent therapist has figured that this case has been cold so long it will never be solved, and so is safe in using it for her own ends. However, this is still an open criminal case...
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/72dfpa.html I wonder how the police department in question would feel about claims of an eyewitness account? |
27th October 2012, 07:42 PM | #184 |
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Yeah, I saw that. It was lost in the background noise of all the outrageous BS. I'm glad you pointed it out again. Who wants to be the one to contact Trooper Aungust at the Penn State Patrol? I doubt he's gonna think this is a breakthrough, or that it's anything but the further exploitation of an already tragically victimized little girl.
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27th October 2012, 07:46 PM | #185 |
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"Someone" just posted an incredible account on http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc...spx?p=Comments
I hope the "journalist" reads it. |
27th October 2012, 07:56 PM | #186 |
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So weird how these "alters" have all different accents and voices. That doesn't seem to even make any sense. It seems that by doing that the person can keep track of which character is whom. What logical reason would a person who has a disassociation pick up an accent foreign to the area in which they live unless by it's very nature it's playacting?
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27th October 2012, 08:08 PM | #187 |
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27th October 2012, 08:18 PM | #188 |
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I can't tell if it Munchausen by proxy or folie a deux, but either way, it's nothing like a patient/counselor relationship should ever be.
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27th October 2012, 08:29 PM | #189 |
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28th October 2012, 12:39 AM | #190 |
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28th October 2012, 01:01 AM | #191 |
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"Since 2006, Byington has acted as a consultant on satanic crime for the Utah Attorney General's office of Special Investigations."
I hope that's not true. I just emailed the UAG office asking if it is. uag@utah.gov
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28th October 2012, 06:14 AM | #192 |
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I'll repost something here that I just posted to the ABC "news" site. I hope somebody with some rationality and influence is reading these comments in Utah. Judy's site is a treasure trove of self-incrimination.
-------------------------------------- @ Magnaman. Jenny Hill didn’t “remember” at any point. She still doesn’t “remember”. There is nothing to “remember”. It’s been documented that that Jenny was fed this bizarre conspiracy theory by Judy Byington, who interestingly enough, worked as a therapist in Canada, at a time when Colin A. Ross---an embarrassment to many in the psychology profession--was pulling this theory out of the air in the very same providence. Any “journalist” with 15 minutes of time on hand can research this. Ross was subsequently hit with a major malpractice suit and left the country to pull the same crap in TX where he was hit again by another malpractice suit. So Judy picks up the theory from Colin, and passes it on to Jenny, who parrots it back as if it really happened to her. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=F626Lsrdwg4 and watch Judy cut Jenny off...who has apparently forgotten the narrative (2:36)...she then feeds Jenny her lines and nods...keeps nodding at her...Jenny returns the nod. Lots of body language cuing directed by Byington. Byington NOT Jenny says, “You were programmed to be silent...” to which Jenny responds “Yes.” Whose programming whom? Let me repeat, BYINGTON, NOT JENNY, SAYS “YOU WERE PROGRAMMED...” Citing facts is not attacking...its what real journalism consists of. http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc...spx?p=Comments |
28th October 2012, 06:48 AM | #193 |
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Took her awhile but Judy Byington, herself, jusy showed up on ABC-4. There is a temptation to get into a streetfight with this woman. I'd advise against it. She certainly does tick people off...why not use this as a chance to ask her rational questions about her site? We have the source "on the line" so to speak. Of course she probably won't respond rationally, but, in a public forum, it will just detract even more from what credibility she has...if any. Again, this is playing out in Utah, and there is a chance somebody who can do something about this will read the ABC-4 comments. That's who I'm trying to address in mine...anyway. http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc...dutF2O1Bg.cspx
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28th October 2012, 07:11 AM | #194 |
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Oh, by the way, we are all Satanists, according to Byington's post. I think I'll try to approach her with a little humor...something she is not familiar with, might throw her off a bit. I'm "Caring Folk" on the forum, BTW
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc...dutF2O1Bg.cspx |
28th October 2012, 08:34 AM | #195 |
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How can anybody take her seriously? She is quite obviously a hysterical witch-hunter. She is practically a comical caricature of one. But this is how it works with these people: She'll accuse you of being a satan-worshipper, and then the others, taking her cue will say, ".... has been accused of being a satan-worshipper", "suspected of being a satan worshipper", etc. And soon that's tacked on wherever convenient.
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28th October 2012, 08:48 AM | #196 |
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Yeah, I told her I was a Pastafarian, which is true. Gave her a chance to gloat about her relationship with Ross. We'll see if she bites. Love to find out that she kibitzed with him in Canada...which may have started the whole migration to Utah of the virus. She claims working there around that time. Roma, if you are reading, any insight? What facts do you have about Childrens Services for Alberta Canada where she claims she was a supervisor?
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28th October 2012, 09:08 AM | #197 |
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Oh, and she brings out the whole radiofreesatan thing again, which she did before, and it's something that really seems to mean something to Neil Brick also. It came up in the defamation claim against me even, lawyers asking something about my relationship to this site. Years ago, when I was in Detroit, I was doing a podcast with some friends. Sometimes it was noise, sometimes interviews, but it was always public domain and dumped on all the podcast repositories. One site that carried it was this rfs site, and apparently they had something about me or my podcast on their site on some point. I may have approved it, may not have. I can't remember if I made an audio tag for them... but who cares? If they asked, I would have. The site I write on, Process.org. I do that site with two other fellows from a band called Skinny Puppy, and I'm shocked nobody has made a thing of that yet, what with SP's bizarre aesthetic. Also, check youtube for a track by OhGr (SP side project) called 'Typer'. I thought that one would be enough to get the conspiracy crowd all hot & bothered.
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28th October 2012, 09:17 AM | #198 |
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All I know about the connection between Byington and Ross and Alberta is this:
In 1985 Ross was taking his residency at the teaching hospital in Edmonton which is in the province of Alberta. He took it upon himself to re-diagnose a schizophrenic patient in the psych ward there with MPD/DID instead and took her off her medication. Then Ross diagnosed and treated both of her little boys with MPD/DID. For that the Head of psychiatry kicked Ross out. Colin Ross then completed his residency in Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba. In 1986 he was then a psychiatrist in the St.Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg and a teaching professor at the University of Manitoba where he also set up a recovered memory program at the U of M student psych. centre. This is how I came to meet him. In 1986 I was a student at the U of M, I talked to a student guidance counsellor who was a student of Ross' . She asked me what I did when I was under stress, I responded that I just "switched to autopilot". She interpreted that as a seperate personality and took me over to see Ross and that day my life fell into the black hole of MPD/DID/CIA/satanic ritual sexual abuse survivor therapy and I also became a "lab rat" in his illegal drug experiments. So around December 1986 or January 1987, when Ross had me commited and forcibly injected with drugs, I met Ross' old patient from that Edmonton hospital that he had been kicked out of. Ross had her transferred to the St.Boniface Hospital so he could continue treating her. He even helped her file a malpractice lawsuit (I read the papers she had filed in court) against the Head of psychiatry at the Edmonton Hospital for "over medicating her" and misdiagnosing her. She returned to Edmonton, Alberta to become a MPD/DID therapist and set up a MPD/DID counselling centre. In 1990 Dr.Colin Ross was fired from the St.Boniface Hospital and moved to Dallas Texas. There Ross was sued by his patient in Dallas Martha Ann Tyo . https://sites.google.com/site/memory...nn-tyo-vs-ross |
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28th October 2012, 09:18 AM | #199 |
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What we're doing here is a kind of crowdsourced JREF journalism. Everybody is picking the story apart by their area of interest. The story that is emerging is quite compelling. Of course Doug did the bulk of this. But everybody's flushing it out a little, adding personal experiences, asking questions on the ABC-4 site. I hope someone outside of Kimberly @ ABC or in Utah is reading the emerging account and can do something. It's a hell of a job you JREFers are doing. Civil and rational debate always stands up to crazy.
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc...dutF2O1Bg.cspx |
28th October 2012, 09:29 AM | #200 |
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I'm suddenly unable to comment. How surprising.
Could some one of you in the US please contact the police dept in question and tell them that this person claims to be an eyewitness to Kathleen Shea's murder? The contact details are all up there, all you have to do is lift the phone. |
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