================================================================ MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 54 ================================================================ V E R I C O M M / MindNet "Quid veritas est?" ================================================================ The views and opinions expressed below are not necessarily the views and opinions of VERICOMM, MindNet, or the editors unless otherwise noted. The following is reproduced here with the express permission of the author. Permission is given to reproduce and redistribute, for non-commercial purposes only, provided this information and the copy remain intact and unedited. Editor: Mike Coyle Assistant Editor: Rick Lawler Research: Darrell Bross ================================================================ THE GREAT DEBATE By Anne Hart 1995 ---------------------------------------------------------------- There has been a Great Debate recently between those who believe memories of trauma can be repressed and return later, and those who don't. On November 29, 1993, articles appeared in both U.S. News and World Report ("Unlocking Hidden Memories") and Time Magazine ("Lies of the Mind"). As indicated by the titles, they presented diametrically opposite views of this issue. Two national organizations, Believe the Children and False Memory Syndrome Foundation, lead the way in mirroring these polarities, one side championing damaged children, and the other, accused pedophiles. I would like to comment further on some of the background of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, since this information rarely finds its way to the public. The FMSF was founded by Peter and Pamela Freyd in 1992, a year after their daughter Jennifer Freyd, a university professor and researcher, began therapy ("Theoretical and Personal Perspectives on the Debate" presented by Jennifer Freyd to Foote Hospital, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1993.) Strangely, this Philadelphia foundation sprang into being long before any public allegations of sexual abuse were made by Dr. Freyd against her father. It was evidently designed in advance for the defense of an alcoholic man and his wife who felt the need for such a posture. There is no diagnosis of false memory syndrome in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It is the term created by those who needed the concept of self-defense. A video entitled "False Prophets of the False Memory Syndrome" clearly portrays the protagonists of this family drama in their respective roles. It can be ordered from Nancy Steck, 16 Kingwood Villas, Kingwood, Texas 77339 for $7.00 plus shipping, prepaid. The FMSF caught on. With an extensive media campaign, it has filled a great need as an advocacy group for accused pedophiles. It is difficult to discern those who are incorrectly accused from those who are genuine molesters desperately seeking escape from criminal and civil action, or from their own pain and guilt. The distinction becomes blurred in this self-serving organization. To deny being a perpetrator is a natural response of the perpetrator. Two of the early FMSF Advisory Board members, Ralph Underwager and his wife, Hollida Wakefield, were interviewed by "Paidike, Journal of Pedophilia", Vol. 3, No. 1, 1993. When asked if choosing pedophilia (sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object) is a responsible choice for the individual, Underwager, a former Lutheran minister, replied, "Certainly it is responsible." He went on to assert, "Pedophiles are too defensive... What I think is that paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness they can say, `I believe that is part of God's will.'" Other members of the FMSF Advisory Board such as Elizabeth Loftus and Richard Ofshe have tirelessly promoted the denial of the epidemic of childhood sexual abuse that is becoming evident in our culture. Dr. Ofshe is quoted frequently, encouraging people to view their therapists as "as a new kind of sexual predator" rather than entertain the possibility that these children and adult survivors are telling the truth about their families. (Davis Enterprise, "Childhood abuse victims now question: did it really happen?", December 21, 1993). Most survivors have a great deal of trouble facing the terrible knowledge of sexual abuse, and the inevitable rift it causes in personal relationships. It is understandable that some would choose to deny their memories, preferring to endure the symptoms rather than the anguish of the remembering process. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation attempts to have us believe that delayed memories of trauma are untrue. This flies in the face of extensive scientific literature, research by the respected brain surgeon Wilder Penfield, and experiences of traumas survivors such as the Vietnam veterans who suffer from amnesia and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Certainly some memories can be false. Our mind can play tricks on us, and we find it hard to remember correctly what we ate for breakfast, or the name of a business associate. But there is a tremendous difference between regular, declarative memory which Elizabeth Loftus studies and memory produced by trauma. Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., Chief of Trauma Clinic at Harvard Medical School charts the evolving psychobiology of post traumatic stress in his updated paper titled "The Body Keeps the Score." He writes: "While memory ordinarily is an active constructive process, the PTSD, failure of declarative memory may lead to organization of trauma on a somatosensory level..." That is, the body remembers what the mind cannot. Complex biochemical changes take place, symptoms begin and often psychogenic amnesia of the event occurs. These are cases of Vietnam veterans being completely amnestic for their entire time in the military, despite the record of their time at war. Ivor Browne, M.D., professor of psychiatry at University College, Dublin and chief psychiatrist at Eastern Health Board, Dublin, concurs in his paper "Psychological Trauma, or Unexperienced Experience", ReVISION, Spring '90. He indicates that when memories return, they are remarkably intact and completely experienced, as if they were happening at the moment, rather than re-experienced. A person who has endured on-going child sexual abuse "suspends or inhibits one traumatic insult after another until with the holding back of the final trauma, the nervous system is literally exploding." The painful memories come out, one by miserable one, felt FOR THE FIRST TIME in abreaction. It is kind of "virtual reality" or instant replay in the affective realm. This emotion makes the reality of the remembered quite hard to deny. A computer can store information in its deep recesses for safekeeping if the delete key is pressed. It is unseen, not immediately accessible. Later the material can be downloaded in a form that can be viewed. The analogy with traumatic events stop there. Trauma recovery is not such a tidy process. Since a child cannot cope with the pain of severe abuse, the information is stored until there is a supportive environment. Then it sometimes bursts forth in a matter of shocks and overwhelms the recipient. This may explain why many substance abusers go into a treatment facility and suddenly begin having flashbacks of childhood abuse. The drugs that blocked the internal pain are gone, the environment is safe, and the "downloading" of stored information begins. Welcome to sobriety. Excruciating emotions become conscious and cause many to return to the drugs and alcohol they used originally to numb this very pain. However, after the information is made conscious, it can enter into normal, declarative memory and fade into the past, rather that being stored as symptoms. Pain without memory is replaced by memory without pain. Some people have blank spots in their memory: for example they cannot remember their second grade teacher or any birthday until teen years. Some can't recall anything before age twelve. Others have nightmares of decapitated bodies and wake in horror, unable to sleep in their beds any longer. Others have stabbing rectal pains with no medical explanations, searing phantom burns on the bottoms of their feet, scars they cannot recall having received. The body stores the information in a disguised way. No one wants to believe that terrible things happened to create those empty places in the mind. How wonderful to have a way out described by Dr. Ofshe: decide it never happened and blame the therapist, to whom the person turns for relief from the symptoms, only to have the memories return because of the therapy. The flaw in that reasoning is that most therapists sit quietly and listen, rather than brainwash a client. Deliberate mind control techniques occur in quite another arena during childhood, as many ritual child abuse survivors have pointed out. Many have developed multiple personalities due to the severity of the trauma. Steven Ray and Pamela Reagor, two therapists who treat persons with multiple personalities in California, have uncovered a "sophisticated external implantation, by someone other than the subject, of hundreds of complex personality fragments." There are even special personalities designed to commit suicide. "First, a structured multiple's internal structure and compliment of personalities is engineered largely by an external abuser or 'programmer,' who may or may not participate in a satanic or other cult." (_Other Altars_ by Craig Lockwood, Compcare, 1993, pages 19 and 19.) Survivors report that standard brainwashing techniques are used on them during childhood. These include electroshock and hypnosis, along with drugs, torture and sexual abuse to create strong attachments to encouraged activities, and equal strong prohibitions against others. How convenient to create, for example, a phobia against disclosing, or even remembering, the abuse. Since many abuse survivors excel in order to cover up the awful feelings of shame and guilt, and frequently become very good students, it might explain the sudden suicide of an honors student in high school, or otherwise inexplicable life-threatening behavior such as severe anorexia/bulimia or crack cocaine use. The media has recently described the MKULTRA CIA experiments which attempted to create the perfect "guided animal" through torture masquerading as behavioral conditioning. ("Sins of a Paranoid Age", Newsweek Magazine, Dec. 27, 1993.) Rather than using animals or adults, perpetrators of ritual abuse appear to work hard to create the perfect guided toddler. Most therapists are appalled at the horrors they hear, and sometimes develop a type of secondary PTSD themselves from hearing about man's inhumanity to children. (_Lessons in Evil, Lessons from the Light_ by Gail Carr Feldman, Ph.D, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1993.) Frequently they find that the survivor has tried to fill the empty places in the mind with the pretense of a happy childhood. A false memory, if you will. Many therapists go home and weep at night. And so do the survivors. "There are," understates one therapist, who wishes to remain anonymous, "easier ways to take a person's money." Most trauma specialists receive reduced fees from clients who are in financial distress due to inability to work caused by nightmares, insomnia, phobias, anxieties, suicide attempts, depression, mood swings, eating disorders, compulsive behaviors and addiction stemming from early childhood trauma. Furthermore, therapists who work with trauma survivors donate many hours of telephone support at no cost, since crisis occur at any hour of the day. And the good news is that most therapists see their clients slowly improve in all areas of their lives as they unburden themselves of dreadful secrets. Nightmares diminish. Phobias disappear permanently. Flashbacks are limited to acceptable times and locations, and eventually cease. Addictions are no longer needed to block the pain. Depression lifts. The most difficult repressed memories for the client, the therapists and the general public to cope with are those involving clandestine groups of U.S. citizens who abuse children and commit homicide as part of a religious rite. But don't we have ample historical evidence of this type of activity? Many religions, including Mayan (and Aztec, Hawaiian, Iroquois, etc.) used human sacrifices as a necessary mainstay of their faith. ("Lost Secrets of the Maya," Time Magazine, August 9, 1993.) The adults who performed these culturally condoned ceremonies of the past where pillars of their respective communities. In fact they were military men, the clergy, the government and the community leaders of their time. Today, according to research done by Caren Cook at the University of Colorado in 1991, "Most perpetrators noted by survivors (of ritual abuse) appear to be 'well functioning' individuals in positions of authority." Physicians, ministers and teachers were the most frequently named as abusers. In the Old Testament there are countless references to the sacrifice of children to idols. Deliberate murder of innocent babies has occurred from early times. King Herod had every male under two years of age killed for political reasons. Ancient rituals that included infanticide, cannibalism and sexual abuse were documented by the Romans in the second century A.D., Egyptian monks in the fourth century, secret societies and religions in the "civilized" and uncivilized world throughout history. "During the 1920's and 1930's, (W.B. Seabrook) attended Black Masses in Paris, Lyons, London, and New York and lived to write about it... Are such things occurring today? That they do is certain; when, where, how often, and for what reason is uncertain." (_Other Altars_, page 180.) Children and adults have been sold and raped, tortured in nearly all cultures, including our own, in far less exotic settings. Less than 150 years ago, in this country, humans were sold and tormented at will. In many homes all over our country today, women and children are treated in a very similar manner, and the legal system turns away. New, more humane laws replaced old rules, and the practice of barbarism has simply became more circumspect. In some areas, there has not been not much need of secrecy. In our country, grown men in robes have murdered at night, often with extraordinary impunity, in the southern states. And the Nazis, who often practiced Satanism, according to the PBS documentary "The Occult History of the Third Reich," made a slaughter house out of their country earlier this century. Cults in Jonestown and Waco, Texas demonstrate that children are being subjected to religious horrors in the present day. Recent convictions of day care operations that have ritual allegations are documented here and in other countries on an ongoing basis. This is not a small problem. We have, on one hand, thousands of missing children (and adults), kidnapped, a few found dead, quite often around holiday dates of the grisly religions. Some bodies are found, missing fingers or decapitated. Randy Cerny of the Ritual Crimes Investigators, Central Valley Consultants has photographs of a child's decapitated head, skinned. Ritual abuse crimes have been reported to the Davis, Woodland, West Sacramento police departments by several different families. In the past few years the Davis Enterprise has reported the finding of a decapitated animal head on one occasion, and a bag of human genitals on another occasion right in Davis. On the other hand, we hear adult survivors saying that there are children and adults tortured and killed in rituals, decapitated, skinned, with various body parts removed. It doesn't much of a leap of cognition to put two events logically together. In the video "Children at Risk" from Calvacade Productions, investigator Bill Carmody talks solemnly, eloquently, about infiltrating a satanic cult. This and other films on ritual abuse can be ordered by calling 707-734-1168. In Vallejo, a decapitated body was found and the lesbian lover confessed to a friend that she killed the woman during what was described as a satanic ritual (San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 22, 1993). We read about Jeffery Dahmers raping, torturing, killing, dismembering and refrigerating children and adults, and we wonder if these were things he learned as a child, repressed and acted out in adulthood. The media, from all over the world, is reporting similar events. The mafia murdered at will for over a half a century before the FBI noticed its existence. So there is certainly precedence for law enforcement, for reasons of its own, turning a blind eye and finding "not a shred of evidence" of satanic cult crimes of this nature, in the words of Ken Lanning, FBI investigator. _The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, Murder in Nebraska_ by Nebraska Senator John De Camp, AWT, Inc, 1992, describes a nationwide pedophile organization that includes Satanic human sacrifices. DeCamp documents the chilling activities apparently protected by the FBI, and names high-level perpetrators from Nebraska to Washington D.C. This excellent book can be purchased from EIR News Service, Inc. P.O. Box 17390, Washington D.C. 20041- 0390 for $9.95. If ours were a third world country, we would watch the television cameras play on the mothers of the disappeared. We would assume the police were involved, the judges corrupt, the clergy blind. But it is our community. And we choose to close our eyes. Most horrifying of all, child and adult survivors of cult abuse tell of being currently abducted from their homes, sedated and forced to attend terrible events on an on-going basis. They go to the police and clergy and are turned away for various reasons. What police set up a clever stake-out to find evidence, or follow a named perpetrator to see where he goes on high Satanic holidays? Instead, the overwhelmed legal and child protection systems turn away and leave the children unprotected, allowing the abusers to continue these practically perfect crimes. What pastor unites his congregation in prayer at specific ritual times to ask for divine help in protecting the innocent victims? What good people unite to shelter the victims? How many of us donate therapy funds to help with treatment for victims? What community organizes an investigation into these matters? We seem as a nation to focus on problems in far away places, rather on crimes that are being committed right under our noses. The therapists listen and believe. They sometimes receive, for their trouble, threats and lawsuits. What therapist knows how to even to begin to cope with such trauma and danger? These are the unsung heros, who persist in treating survivors of human-induced trauma, despite the difficulties. And more and more survivors are presenting themselves for treatment each day. Therapists are educating themselves, as must we all, on this subject. "As we begin to understand the etiologies of many diagnostic syndromes are based in defense against trauma (PTSD, borderline personality disorder, the dissociative disorders, adjustment disorders, and as well as some brief psychotic reactions, anxiety disorders, and paraphilias), we gain insight for the therapy of ritually abused persons that is tremendously helpful." (David Sakheim, Ph.D. and Susan Devine, R.N., _Out of Darkness, Exploring Satanism and Ritual Abuse_, Lexington Books, 1992) The field of treatment of severe trauma is still in its infancy and there is much to learn. As a culture, we have searched diligently for the root cause of social ills. Now that research has found clear evidence that childhood sexual and ritual trauma leads to mental, physical and behavioral symptoms of distress, there is an outcry against findings by those who have the most to lose. We have seen this throughout history. Underneath the modern psychological jargon, the ancient cry is the same: "Kill the messenger." For information on political action that can be taken, The American Coalition for Abuse Awareness is beginning a broad based alliance to support national legislation to protect children. They can be reached at 202-426-4688. Believe the Children can be contacted at 708-515-5432 for information about ritual and sexual abuse of children. The American Prosecutors Research Institute's National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse in Alexandria, Virginia can be reached at 703-739-0321 for further legal information on this issue. California State Senator Newton Russell from Glendale has worked long and hard to develop a Ritual Abuse Task Force in California that will be based out of the Attorney General's office. He recently addressed The National Conference on Crimes Against Children in Washington, D.C. which included law enforcement and medical speakers from around the United States. This conference addressed ritual abuse directly, and will hopefully begin the slow, tedious process of acknowledging and halting these crimes against humanity. But they can't do it alone. We must all help. To quote Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Perhaps a Task Force in our country would help to respond to the needs that are being addressed primarily by therapists. It is one thing to help survivors after the abuse has occurred. Would it not make more sense to find out where the attacks are occurring and identify the problem at its origin? Perhaps we could send this article to out mayor and council members to ask for an investigation into the ritual abuse that is occurring in our town. As for the survivors, the truth that they have finally and painfully found is often thrown back upon them, as the messengers are denied, reviled, ridiculed, disbelieved. In Scott Peck's words, "The truth will make you free, but first it will make you damn mad." The witnesses speak out, and like the mythological Cassandra, are not heard. And seated in comfortable armchairs, our collective society continues to fiddle the Great Debate, while we burn.