A Review of MPD & The
Origins and Development of The Satanic Ritual Abuse
Myth
The Child Abuse Industry generally has been in the
doldrums after over-selling the risk to children in the
1970s in order to gain public and fiscal support. After a
string of scares child-carer activists are left in an
ideological cul-de-sac and very little raison d'etre. The
Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth (SRAM) is an ultimate scare
which is the only thing providing a large proportion of
activists in social work with an occupation at the moment
and gives certain people a unique professional opportunity
which has made their professional reputation.
Lesser known social workers and therapists can become
stars overnight with all the professional kudos and
recognition that brings in its wake. Regular social
workers always have their hands full but the
middle-management exist solely by virtue of the
one-upmanship of such doctrinal invention.
The system itself aids and abets this situation because
only those who make the loudest political fuss obtain
funding. If we ignore those who are simply opportunists
following every fashion which protects their self-interest
we see that the people most actively involved in promoting
the SRAM in Social Work and Therapy are those who are
suspicious and distrusting of all male motives. Fanatical
feminists.
This has become an extension of their own social
theories which have played themselves out in regular
social work over the years. Although there are very many
intelligent and aware women satanists the stereotype of
the SRAM is of an ultimate manipulative male sadism. The
fanatical feminists (and I am not a femophobe) have an
ultimate icon to discredit men in the Satanic Ritual Abuse
Myth and a false-memory syndrome which allows them to
accuse their fathers by proxy.
The parallel current of torrents of circumstancial and
imagined evidence from disturbed victim imposters within
and without the fundamentalist movement gives a pseudo
authenticity to doctrinal claims providing a psychological
feedback loop for 'carers' which allow a display of crass
emotion and sympathy which convinces the gullible and
wrong-foots critics thereby providing activists with the
moral high ground and political leverage.
All this would be bad enough at a therapeutic level were
it not for the fact that, in order to overcome the
specific failures and lack of proof of the doctrine, both
therapists and fundamentalists have, of necessity, to
promote the idea of a Global Satanic Conspiracy as motive
for these imagined acts.
The Satanic Conspiracy stems from the ingrained
psychology of End-time Christians who have been imprinted
with the prophecies outlined in the Book of Revelations.
From obssessed religious fanatics who pore over every word
and nuance in that psychopathic tale, to those from a
strict Christian background where the images and
interpretations have been implanted during childhood, the
paranoia of Global Satanic Domination is an integral part
of the psychologies of people who, because of their
self-appointed duties as do-gooders, always form a large
section of the infra-structure of social workers and
charity workers.
The idea that Freemasonry embodies Satan's campaign for a
single
world-government and money system is a direct projection
of prophecies
in the Book of Revelations which alludes, in the eyes of
the
fundamentalists, to a single global state and money system
controlled
by people on the payroll of satan. This is the 'Zionist
New World Order
Conspiracy' nonsense which has flooded the internet of
late. (see below centre for latest example).
There is literally forests of literature in the
fundamentalist circuit about this supposed conspiracy. In
my view any assumed conspiracy of self-interest in
Freemasonry pales into insignificance when compared to the
actual conspiracies and hidden agendas played out by the
Fundamentalist Christian Leaders themselves but that is by
the way.
In the Viewpoint 93 programme In Satan's Name,
you will see that claims of global conspiracies related to
Freemasonry are evident not only in the O.T.T.
fundamentalist preachers, but are de rigeur for
evangelistic leaders like Bob Larson. What really shocked
was the fact that Catherine Gould (the creator of the
satanic abuse symptoms list which largely brought about
the identification of false cases in the US and UK was
also interviewed in the programme) was selling the same
conspiracy.
Kingpin of the Satan Myth is the idea of released or
recovered memories obtained through regression hypnosis.
It has become accepted as a bona fide therapeutic method
by many therapists. In fact Regression Therapy is not new.
It was tried by Freud himself but then abandoned in favour
of regular psychotherapy. The recent upsurge of interest
in it was West-Coast inspired and evolved in several ways.
The earliest modern example method was devised by a
group of Australian Christians during the late 1960s
ostensibly to provide a doorway to past-lives. It was
originally known as the Christos Experience because the
occultists concerned were Christian Mystics and believed
the technique was revelatory.
The method was first published in Windows of the Mind
by M. Glaskin. (1971) Paralleling the development of the
Christos experience was the growth of free-association
therapy into the rebirth experience which was being tried
at the same time as the technique of 'regression
hypnosis'.
This last also sought to discover past lives by regressing
the patient under normal hypnotic methods into a pre-birth
state. Genuine occultists see all this is nonsese of
course. The mind is so powerful, and clairvoyance so real,
that one can never be sure of which memories or
conceptions are ones own, which are telepathic images,
which are future occurrences and which are confabulations.
Therefore occultists don't take any of them seriously
and find the only people who do are those who need an
excuse of some kind to escape the reality of their
situation. In fact the book Reliving Past Lives
By Keaton also comes with a disc containing recordings of
subjects
undergoing hypnotic regression and they are remarkably
like the antics
of MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) sufferers. The
point is that, as
far as we are aware, thousands upon thousands of people
with an
interest in the supernatural have undergone regression
hypnosis over
the past thirty years but NONE of them have come up with
tales of
Satanic Ritual Abuse. On the other hand we understand that
none of
those suffering MPD have ever come up with tales of past
lives either!
The one disproves the other.
Click on the image below
to see Vera Diamond's slap-dash
recovered memory technique
The point is that the feminist biased therapy sub-culture
has refined these techniques into a doctrine of MPD which
can be applied by anyone virtually anywhere. With the
urging of provocative self-help books like Courage To
Heal within a self-help cultural more, we are now
seeing Survivor Summer Camps where free-style regression
sessions are scheduled daily as an emotional 'fix' by
people who are in the vast majority of instances
incapable of a sense of proportion.
If this doesn't give rise to an epidemic of
victim imposters and the waste of millions of pounds
of taxpayers money in the next few months I'll eat my
hat.
(c) world copyright holders: The Sub-culture
Alternatives Freedom Foundation (S.A.F.F.) Leeds,
Yorkshire, U.K.
BY THE S.A.F.F.
13th July 1993
NOTE: Since this piece was written
criticism of the theory of Multiple Personalities by
observers both within and without the psychotherapy
movement has grown to such an extent that those in favour
of the idea have renamed it DID (Dissociative Identity
Disorder) - presumably in order to defeat the sceptics and
disguise their intent. See
here:
BBC: NEWSNIGHT DOCUMENTARY
REVEALS CASE OF WOMAN PUSHED BY HER DOCTOR
INTO BELIEVING SHE WAS SATANICALLY ABUSED
Anna
Hunter went to see her doctor because of an
eating disorder and came
out believing she had been satanically abused
by her family.
Her 'recovered memories' were shocking but
unlike those truly mentally
ill people who fall into the clutches of
believers in SRA and have
their entire reality forever reordered, Anna,
with the love of her
family, was able to break the spell of the
satan hunters in the medical
profession and escape their clutches.
She is one of the few people to have been
brainwashed with so-called
'recovered memories' who has returned from
that twilight zone to tell
the truth about how some members of the
medical profession are willing
to create false-victims regardless of the
effect it has on their lives.
Click on the image above to see her
story in
this stunning BBC documentary
|
|
VOODOO THERAPY: Read
What believers in Satanic Ritual Abuse think
constitutes recovered memories
SATANIST RITUAL ABUSE:
CHALLENGES TO THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM
By Sarah Nelson
Dept of Sociology, University of Edinburgh
Extracts from a Paper given at Ritual
Abuse Information
Network Support (RAINS) Conference, Warwick
University, 13 – 14
September 1996
I believe this issue needs much more attention, for
the mental health
professions may prove to be the major repositories
of the "SRA secret":
just as they were of the "incest secret". I
believe new knowledge
about SRA should now impel a radical,
wide-ranging, top-level review of
symptoms and treatments in many mental disorders.
Those of us who
are outsiders need to build alliances with
courageous voices within
those professions - in order to support them, to
strengthen their
demands for radical review, and to force the subject
into the public
arena......
.....We need to learn from them how that support
could be most
effective, and how we can exert any influence on
professions.....
Perhaps a joint commitment to hearing, supporting
and empowering SRA
survivors, in a range of community and institutional
settings, will be
the most important route to building alliances and
planning strategies
for change......
MENTAL HEALTH AND SEXUAL ABUSE
.....But my own discovery of SRA directed me, and
I
suspect many others, towards mental health as
never before. A huge
impetus is given to the questioning which is
already taking place of
diagnosis and treatment in mental disorder.
This prompts whole
chains of speculation. Puzzlement about specific
behaviours or symptoms
brings renewed doubt about the whole medical model
of mental disorder,
and leads to absorbed speculation on how massive a
role life-trauma
actually plays. SRA is, of course, only one extreme
form of trauma, and
all forms deserve urgent attention but given the
extent of torture and
privation it inflicts, we could justifiably
expect that many
survivors will have found their way into the
mental health system, and
that they will be a significant population within
that system.
ISSUES FOR SPECULATION - INCLUDING DISSOCIATION,
MPD,
OBSESSIVE - COMPULSIVE DISORDERS, SELF-HARM,
EATING DISORDERS,
SCHIZOPHRENIA
.........As many mental health professionals working
with sexual abuse
have increasingly questioned their theories,
diagnoses and treatments,
issues around dissociation and multiple personality
have often
dominated discussion. The subject of recovered
memories and the role
played by therapists in their retrieval has also
been much debated, not
least as a result of vituperative media attacks by
the "false memory
syndrome" lobby. These are all major issues I
would not wish to
diminish. For instance, the majority of
cases of "multiple personality disorder" may
prove to be linked with a history of Satanist
abuse. But there are many other
important questions for psychology as well as
psychiatry......
.... For psychoanalytically-trained therapists, for
instance, theory
has determined how certain behaviours and statements
are interpreted. Many
come to question what they have been taught by
asking "what if these
inexplicable, extreme fears are based on real
experiences?" or "What if
these accounts I am hearing are not fantasy after
all?"
Outsiders in contrast may start by learning about
the forms and
techniques of SRA and the known impact of these on
some survivors,
especially children in publicised cases. Thus they
expect fear or
terror, and look for settings in which it may
manifest itself. They
wonder, "Where are all these terrified children
when they become
adults?" Then familiar bells begin ringing in the
brain, connections
are made with pieces of mental health knowledge
and that knowledge is
revisited with a more critical eye. Instead of
tending to see the fears
of people with phobias, panic attacks and anxiety
states as irrational,
for instance, they will tend to ask what might
have frightened these
people so much.
In SRA living creatures are used to terrorise
children in several ways:
as agents in themselves, as objects to be killed,
mutilated or
ingested, and as supposed watchers and spies (the
spider will tell us
if you talk). In later life the same creatures may
well invoke all
these different fears, and for people whose memories
are repressed,
they may be one of the few phenomena which "ring a
bell". ...
[Ed: So arachnophobia which is a
prehistoric fear response in 90%
of the population is now categorical evidence
that people who don't
like spiders may have been satanically abused?]
I now feel it will be important to consult those
working with phobias,
including self- help groups; to build more detailed
information on
common objects of terror and aversion, and to
check what proportion of phobics also have other
symptoms common in sexual abuse survivors.
Research across countries would also be valuable.
I learned of the disgusting defilement SRA victims
must endure, the use
of filth, excrement, blood, body fluids, the innards
of animals and
humans. This offered powerfully suggestive
reasons for some common
obsessive-compulsive behaviour around repeated
washing and cleaning,
behaviour which could be seen as both symbolic and
literal. .....
[Ed. So obsessive
cleanliness,
widely recognised in psychiatry as an evocation
of unconscious guilt
has now become first-hand evidence of Satanic
Ritual Abuse?]
........
It would seem absolutely predictable and
understandable that many SRA survivors would
develop eating disorders or problems. How
far might these be linked, not with theories about
the "diet culture",
the loss of a loved parent or perfectionism, but
with forced eating of
noxious things, with starvation and oral sexual
abuse? The bulimic
may be literally and symbolically rejecting, over
and over again, both
what had to be tasted and swallowed, and the
horrified guilt of
collusion as a child in murder or cannibalism.
[Ed So now Anorexia Nervosa,
psychiatrically recognised as fear of obesity,
has been
redefined as the result of oral abuse by
satanists!]
.... I had also assumed that various powerful and
negative feelings
about themselves accounted for self-mutilation,
cutting and
blood-letting in many sexually abused people. I now
believe there are
extra reasons for some SRA survivors, like the
impact of programming,
special triggers and even, in some cases, addiction
to tasting or
drinking blood. This last insight was
passed to me by several workers with SRA survivors......
[Ed: Is there anything which is not
somehow connected with Satanic Abusers? ]
.....Many people with OCD also suffer from morbid
preoccupations, phobias and depression: fears
about death and dying, graveyards and cemeteries
seem common....
[Ed. So now universal fears about the
inevitability of death
which every single person experiences are
redefined as evidence of
Satanic Abuse! Who can escape the pointing
finger of the Satan
Hunters? ]
....For instance an anorexic is making herself
as unattractive as
possible, and is less likely to be made pregnant by
her abuser/s. .....
[Ed : Which is entirely opposite to how
psychiatry looks at it.
Anorexics, who universally rationalise their
compulsion not to eat by
stating that they want to look more presentable
and attractive, have
been redefined by Nelson as people who want to
make themselves look
LESS attractive so they are not raped by
Satanists! Down is up
and up is down.]
.....Finally, knowledge about SRA brings questioning
of some diagnoses
of major mental illness. To learn about its
brainwashing techniques, to
read the testimonies of children who believe their
mothers can hear
them through walls or radios, to listen to survivors
who are "multiple",
means looking differently at paranoid and
hallucinatory symptoms
critical to many schizophrenia diagnoses. Could
the process of torture,
brainwashing and early programming produce the
voices people hear in
their heads, and their "paranoia" about being
watched or controlled?
How many false diagnoses of schizophrenia have
there been?....
[Ed. Schizophrenia is categorised by a
dopamine imbalance in the brain. This can be
tested for and all drugs
for Schizophrenia attempt to control that
balance. It has little to do
with skill in psychiatric diagnosis or whether
or not you believe the
patient's stories. Nelson is flying a kite. ]
The symptoms of many people incarcerated in
special
hospitals need, in particular, to be reviewed for
possible connections
with a history of SRA......
[Ed: Fertile ground. Of patients recently
discharged by psychiatrists from Broadmoor over
two dozen killed again.]
MORE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS...
The challenge of SRA merely serves to highlight more
urgently two basic
problems in traditional mental health practice. The
rush to diagnosis,
within days or even hours, may be appropriate for
people with broken
legs or heart conditions. But it ill serves
people with very
complex problems„ who may take months to trust
someone enough to reveal
any of their past trauma and may themselves have
repressed the memory
of it.
Secondly there is a basic contradiction in most
conventional treatments. So often they work to
contain, damp down,
suppress, alter or ignore powerful emotion and
feeling. (They also risk
throwing away the clues revealed by behaviour
which may be the body's
symbolic, reactive or adaptive way of speaking
loudly what has happened
to that person, if we had ears to hear and eyes to
see).
Yet so many victims of trauma need just the
opposite: they need to be reconnected with
powerful emotions and
feelings in order to begin healing. They need to
express them openly,
often disturbingly, sometimes violently, in a
safe environment and be
supported to make that experience manageable.
[Ed: Tell that to
Caroline
Marchant, Carol Felstead and Maxine Berry who
was persuaded by
therapists to sterilise herself so as not to
give birth to a child
which she might compulsively satanically
abuse! See rightmost column ]
THINKING ABOUT NUMBERS AND LOCATIONS
The concluding issue I want to raise is about the
impetus given to
proactive inquiry about where SRA survivors are
located, and how
numerous they may be.
The logic of accepting that SRA will cause a range
of mental health problems for many survivors is that
instead of being sceptical, reactive or waiting
for evidence to drop from the sky,
you begin looking for people in places they are
likely to be. This
could range from outpatients' clinics and
self-help groups in the
community, to schools for "challenging" or
"disturbed" children, right
through to penal institutions, secure units and
special hospitals.
This creates a climate in which certain mental
problems, symptoms and behaviours will be
re-examined critically along with their diagnoses
and treatments.
It creates a climate of accessibility and support
for survivors, as
well as permission to speak out and share
experiences with each other.
........
Suppose 5% of the adult population over 16 have
a
childhood history of sexual abuse. Suppose only one
in ten of these
abused people experienced SRA. In the adult
greater Edinburgh population of about 333,000,
more than 1650 people would have been involved in
SRA,
[ Ed. There are 5,600 registered
psychiatrists in the
U.K.. Suppose 5% of them are bonkers and
chase after phantom
satanists. Using Nelson's flim-flam that
means there are
280 who are insufficiently trained in both
psychiatry and maths
who are likely to believe in any old tosh.]
......That is the kind of evidence which needs to
be
harnessed in the future - to call for long-overdue
changes in theory
and practice, in diagnosis and treatment, in
professional and public
accountability.....
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Sarah Nelson is
author of
"Incest: Fact and Myth" (Stramullion Press 1982
& 1987), a
pioneering British feminist analysis of sexual
violence within the
family. A professional journalist, she wrote
extensively about the
"Orkney child abuse affair" and subsequent
Inquiry. She is currently
writing her second book on sexual abuse, and is
planning a research
study on women survivors' experiences of
psychiatric services.
[Ed. I wonder if Ms Nelson will be
including the experiences of Carol Felstead and
Maxine Berry in her book?]
Nun, sent
'white powder' to parliamentarians
including
Nick Clegg,
accusing them of being 'evil
devil worshipping freemasons'
Nick Clegg was sent envelope with 'sex with
30 plus women'and 'your poor
Catholic wife and children' scrawled
on it
Baroness Scotland was sent envelope with a
swastika on it'
By Anna Edwards PUBLISHED: 18:14, 23
July 2012
A Catholic nun is
alleged to have sent six envelopes containing
white powder to parliamentary figures including
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a court heard
today.
The defendant, who is
known as Sister Ruth Augustus, is accused of
scrawling 'devil worshipping' on
envelopes filled with white powder that she
posted to Nick Clegg and Baroness Scotland,
Harrow Crown Court was told.
The letters were
intercepted, three at a time on two separate
occasions, at a mail screening centre and the
powder was found to be non hazardous, the court
heard.
The defendant, of
Leyton, east London, denies six counts of hoaxes
involving noxious substances or things.
Mark Kimsey,
prosecuting, said Augustus accepts that she sent
envelopes with letters in them but says police
put the white powder in them.
Mr Kimsey said three
envelopes were intercepted at a mail screening
centre in east London on June 17, 2011.
One was addressed to
Mr Clegg and on the envelope was written 'devil
worshipping', 'freemason', 'sex with thirty
plus women' and 'your poor Catholic wife and
children'.
The second was to
Baroness Scotland, and had a swastika on it,
and two crosses, and 'stop this evil
devil worshipping'.
The third was to
Baroness Kennedy, and was endorsed with a
swastika, and 'stop these
evil devil worshipping freemasons'.
The envelopes
contained a gritty substance, but it was found
they had already tested negative for anthrax,
and specialist police who were called in found
them to be non hazardous.
On October 1, at the
same mail centre,
three more envelopes were found, addressed to Mr
Clegg, Baroness
Kennedy and Edward Leigh MP.
The envelopes carried
similar endorsements and slogans and contained
white powder which was found to be non
hazardous.
Mr Kimsey told the
jury: 'The issue is whether she herself put the
white powder within the envelopes, and, if so,
was it with the intention to induce the
recipient to fear they were hazardous.
'Albeit this is a
hoax, it's a serious
matter, when what was sent was white powder,
with the intention to make
the person believe they were receiving a noxious
substance.'
On December 7,
Augustus was arrested at a hotel in north west
London where she was staying and told police
'It's a load of lies', Mr Kimsey said.
The court heard that
Augustus told police during interview: 'I'm
Sister Ruth, a 71-year-old disabled nun.'
She also said: 'I look
like a terrorist, don't I, working for a
charity all over the world, with orphans?'
The jury heard that
she told interviewing officer Detective
Constable Anne Adams: 'The police are run
by freemasons. All the top women are in it.'
Asked why she had sent
a letter to Mr Leigh, she said: 'He's a
Catholic, and goes to Westminster
Cathedral.'
As for Mr Clegg, she
said he 'lied about
all the tuition fees and everything else,
keeping those Tory
millionaires and rats in government'.
She added: 'He boasted
about all the women he's had sex with. He's an
atheist singing hymns in the Albert Hall.'
At one point she said:
'I'm not a Muslim terrorist, I'm a Catholic
nun.'
And she said of the
police: 'They opened the envelopes, and put
white powder in, to frame me. I know they
monitor it all.
Asked if she was
sending the letters for 'attention', she said:
'Of course I am. I'm deliberately writing on the
envelope as well so all the postmen will know
all about it.'
The trial was adjourned
until 10.30am tomorrow.
Source:
|
Women brainwashed by therapists to
believe their parents abused them
By Amanda
Cable
Carol Felstead, a trained nurse,
went to doctor about headache age 21. She had
20 years of Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT) - but
sessions sparked False
Memory Syndrome - memories of terrible events that
never happened.
She was convinced that her loving family were
really a group of murderous Satanists
Maxine Berry, 41, contemplated
suicide after believing father had raped
her. Afraid of
also becoming an abuser, Maxine had herself
sterilised aged 23. Maxine
later discovered her memories had been replaced
Carol Felstead was unequivocal in the accusations
she made against her family.
Her mother Joan, a nurse, and father, Joseph, an
engineer, may have seemed like a respectable
couple with five children.
But behind closed doors, she said, they were
Satanists, who subjected her to years of childhood
abuse.
The 41-year-old psychology graduate recounted in
disturbing detail the
night her mother murdered Carol’s older sister,
Joan-Julie, before
setting fire to the house to hide the evidence.
Such a catalogue of horror would cause lasting
damage to any child. No
one could blame Carol for cutting off contact with
her parents and her
four brothers.
Yet, shockingly, not one of Carol’s claims was
true.
Though she seemed to believe every word, it later
emerged that her recollections were false
memories, which had been dredged up during
controversial recovered
memory therapy (RMT) sessions throughout her
adult life.
Carol is just one of thousands of people believed
to be victims of
False Memory Syndrome, a phenomenon whereby a
person is encouraged
through therapy to ‘remember’ forgotten childhood
trauma that is
supposedly affecting them as adults.
‘But these so-called experts are often
unregulated,’ says Carol’s
brother Dr Kevin Felstead, 53, a former university
lecturer from
Stockport, Cheshire. ‘Anyone can go online, pay a
fee to do a part-time
course and be accredited to give therapy after
just two weeks. Into
their hands are placed vulnerable young women,
such as my sister.’
A growing body of research shows that childhood
memories are unreliable at best.
Indeed, a study published last week in the Journal
of Experimental Psychology concluded that
the higher the level of detail of a childhood
memory, the less likely it is that it is accurate.
Other clinical studies have shown it is
possible to
plant false memories in a person’s mind, then
have them ‘recall’ them
in convincing emotional detail that they believe
themselves..
Madeline Greenhalgh, director of the British False
Memory Society,
a registered charity, says they have records of
2,500 cases of untrue
claims of sexual abuse after RMT, and receive
thousands of phone calls
from worried relatives each year.
Carol, fell victim to False Memory Syndrome,
whereby a person is
encouraged through therapy to ‘remember’ forgotten
childhood trauma
that is supposedly affecting them as adults
‘Just yesterday a father rang to say his daughter,
who is in her 50s,
had suddenly made an allegation of abuse following
sessions with a
counsellor. He was distraught,’ she says.
‘We’re talking about fathers who give away
their daughters at
weddings, decorate their houses and babysit their
grandchildren. Then something goes wrong in the
daughter’s life and she sees a therapist as she
searches for answers.
‘This isn’t about people who have a feeling
that something was wrong
in the past and then remember more during
therapy. This is about people
who produce a ‘memory’ out of the blue.
‘Suddenly, parents are hit by an allegation of
abuse. The strain often
ends their marriage and we see fathers lose their
families, homes and
jobs.’
Once the allegation has been made, Madeline says
it proves difficult for the women to backtrack.
‘They have often grown close to their
therapist, who believes they are saving them.
They wield a huge influence,’ she says.
‘In Carol’s case, she found herself surrounded
by therapists who took
her stories at face value, though they remained
utterly
unsubstantiated.’
Carol’s birth in 1964 had heralded a new beginning
for her devoted parents after a run of devastating
bad luck.
The year before she was born, a fire had destroyed
the family home, and
the year before that a much-loved baby,
Joan-Julie, had died in
hospital from a heart defect at the age of two
months.
Carols’ parents had three sons, Kevin and twins
David and Anthony, who
were older than Carol. Two years later, they went
on to have another
son, Richard.
‘Carol was the only surviving daughter, and
though my
parents didn’t have favourites, she held a
special place in their
hearts,’ says Kevin. ‘She was adorable
and we couldn’t help spoiling her.’
But a trip to the GP with a headache at the age of
22 changed the course of Carol’s life — and her
family’s.
She was referred to counselling for stress and
later began ‘psychosexual’ therapy, which included
RMT.
Carol’s family were unaware of her therapy
sessions. But they did notice she had become
hostile and unhappy. ‘She moved out of the
family house around that time,’ says Kevin.
‘On her visits, she was distant and moody.
Gradually, she stopped
coming to the house. She moved to London
in 1992 and gained
a degree in psychology at Westminster University,
but gradually stopped
keeping in touch.
‘The last time we saw her was in 1994. She sent
Christmas and birthday
cards, but rang only once a year and never left
her address. Then in
2005, she rang my brother Richard, said she was
lonely and wanted to
return home to live near her family.’
But she never made it home — two months later,
Richard received a phone
call from the coroner’s office in Battersea, South
London, to say Carol had been found dead in
her flat, surrounded by medication, aged just
41.
The cause of death was unknown and the inquest
recorded an open verdict.
‘Richard was told that Carol had died two weeks
earlier, and a
cremation and funeral had been organised by a
therapist, Dr Fleur
Fisher, who had declared herself next of kin,’
says Kevin. (See full
details of Fisher's involvement in Chapter 20 of
the Felstead's recently published book on
Carol's story, here.)
The family were left reeling, but worse was to
come.
‘Dr Fisher had handed police a document,
supposedly written by Carol,
detailing satanic child abuse and alleging that
Joan-Julie had been
murdered by Mum,’ says Kevin.
‘My parents collapsed with grief; it was a double
blow. They had lost
their daughter — then they learned she had made
these shattering
allegations.
‘We were able to prove our innocence easily —
Dad could
produce Joan-Julie’s death certificate to show
she died in October 1962
and the house fire was covered in the local
newspaper in 1963 —but the
damage was done.
‘My mother’s hair turned grey overnight, she
suffered from depression
and died from cancer in 2010. I am convinced the
shock helped to kill
her.’
Through data protection requests, the family were
able to retrieve
Carol’s medical notes, which revealed a catalogue
of increasingly
incredible treatment.
‘One therapist noted that urinary tract
infections, which Carol
suffered from, are a sign of ritual satanic sexual
abuse,’ says Kevin.
‘We believe Carol was effectively brainwashed by
her therapists.’
Retired clinical psychologist Katharine Mair is so
concerned about the trend for RMT that she has
written a book, Abused By Therapy, which
was released at the end of last year.
‘There is an ongoing campaign by groups and
clinics to spread the
notion that various psychological disorders are
always caused by
childhood abuse. This really alarms me,’ she
says.
‘The therapy is intensive and often the patient
is placed in a trance-like state as they are
encouraged to “remember”.
‘This is when false childhood memories spring
up. The
therapists encouraging these “memories”
genuinely believe they are
helping and, being in a position of authority,
are able to convince
clients that these visions really did happen.’
According to Mair, families accused of abuse
because of recovered memory therapy tend to be
middle class.
However, statistically, abuse is more likely to
occur in deprived and impoverished homes.
‘This treatment is devastating previously happy
families,’ she says.
Today, Peter Jones, 70, a product development
engineer from Sheffield,
has nothing but photographs to remind him of the
happy family he’s lost
because of a therapist who still treats his
48-year-old daughter Janet.
‘This therapist must have made an awful lot of
money out of my daughter — and yet all our lives
have been destroyed,’ he says.
‘My marriage has broken up, I lost my job and
my family. I haven’t seen my granddaughter
since she was three.’
After going to the doctors of a headache aged
21, Carol
was brainwashed into accusing her loving family
of satanic sex rituals,
murdering a sister and being high priests of a
cult.
Janet, a former banker, turned to a private
psychotherapist ten years ago when her career
collapsed after a period of illness.
‘A few weeks later she came to see my wife Mary
and me. She could hardly speak,’ says
Peter.
‘Eventually she said my wife’s parents — her
beloved
grandparents — had raped and abused her. I
couldn’t believe it, but my
wife Mary instantly threw her arms around her
and comforted her.
‘My in-laws were on holiday in Spain and I had
to ring
them to tell them. Six months later, her grandpa
died of a heart attack
— a broken man. I rang the psychotherapist and
left messages, begging
her to call me and saying I was worried about
Janet. Shortly
afterwards, Janet wrote to my wife, claiming I
had abused her as well.
‘It was just ridiculous. I’m certain Mary
didn’t believe
it, but she had no choice but to support Janet
or risk being cut out of
her life altogether, like my in-laws.
‘She divorced me, but secretly sent me a photo
of our
granddaughter. Why would she do that if she
thought I had abused our
daughter?
‘I’ve since discovered that before going
private, the
therapist had at least one disciplinary hearing
while working for the
NHS for misleading patients.
‘I still love Janet, but I can’t believe our
whole
family has been destroyed. I should have been
celebrating my golden
wedding anniversary this year — instead, I am
utterly alone.’
Peter’s only hope is that some victims of false
memory syndrome do realise they may have made a
terrible mistake.
‘One woman last month did manage to admit it,’
says
Madeline. ‘She is an intelligent woman in her
40s and, after ten years
of accusations and then silence, she walked up
the drive as her father
was washing the car and said: “I’m so sorry,
dad.” They fell into each
other’s arms and hugged.’
Maxine Berry, 41, is thankful her father was
just as
forgiving when she retracted false accusations
that he had abused her
as a child.
A senior clinical trial assistant from Leeds, she
was 18 when she went
to see a student counsellor after suffering with
stress about starting
university.
(Ed:
Note
well that Maxine was sucked into
confabulating false memories of
Satanic Abuse in 1996, the year in which
Sarah Nelson began the
RAIN campaign to persuade therapists
countrywide to seek out SRA
'victims' amongst their patients - see
middle column )
‘The counsellor referred me to a private clinic
which, unbeknown to me, specialised in recovered
memory techniques,’ says Maxine.
‘I was given a book to read about childhood
abuse and
invited into group therapy sessions. Finally, in
one therapy session, I
said “Well, perhaps my father did do something
to me in the past” and it just spiralled
from there.
‘I was doped with a cocktail of
anti-depressants and
gradually my stories became wilder. I claimed I
was abused by my father
from the ages of two to ten.
‘But my dad Gary, a writer, split up with my
mother when I was three and moved away. I hadn’t
actually seen him since.
'I was told I was bound to become an abuser,
too. So I had myself sterilised'
‘Our group counselling sessions became like a
competition, with everyone trying to out-do each
other with a worse
story than the person before. One therapist
became really angry when I
started to question if these things had really
happened, telling me:
“You are not accepting things.”
‘My claims started with inappropriate touching
and
spiralled until I truly believed my father had
raped me. I was so
unhappy I attempted suicide several times.
‘It was my husband Brian who finally said I
sounded as
if I was reading from a script. Our marriage had
suffered because of
the therapy, too.
‘We married when I was 22, but separated within
a year because I wouldn’t listen to him. Therapy
had taken over my whole life.
Thankfully, we reconciled the following year,
but when I told my therapists we wanted children
they were horrified, telling me I would
probably abuse them in turn because I had been
so damaged.
‘I was so worried that I had a sterilisation
when I was 23, denying me the chance of having
my own family.
‘It was only as Brian helped me come off the
medication that my head started to clear. Later
that year we saw a TV documentary about
recovered false memories and I realised that
was what had happened to me.’
Maxine began legal action against the clinic,
but they
settled out of court. Afterwards, she made
contact with her father Gary
for the first time in 20 years.
‘He was horrified to hear what I had believed,’
she says.
‘Our meeting was highly emotional. He forgave
me, hugged me and now we
see each other often. But Mum didn’t speak to me
for years.
‘I’m so angry that therapists played with the
mind of a vulnerable girl. It almost destroyed
my family and nearly killed me.
‘I managed to walk up to my father’s front door
and say sorry, but it took all the courage I had
to admit I’d been wrong.’
Some names have been changed.
Abused By Therapy by Katharine Mair
(Matador, ?10.99, available on troubador.co.uk.)
Justice For Carol by Dr Kevin Felstead and
Richard Felstead (amazon.co.uk, 9.69).
Source: Daily Mail: Wednesday, Feb
12 2014
Full background to the Myers case here:
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