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News items, from the year 2004
ABOUT RITUAL ABUSE,
SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE (SRA),
MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER (MPD), RECOVERED MEMORY THERAPY (RMT), etc.
Sponsored link.
News items:
 | 2004-JAN-8: Germany: Charges of Satanic Ritual Abuse dropped: A
woman, aged 33, gave a statement to the German police that she had
repeatedly been forced to undergo abortions at "procreation ceremonies"
while other humans were ritually killed, their bodies sawn into pieces, and
parts of them eaten in cannibalistic rituals. The rituals allegedly occurred
in and near Trier in Western Germany, and once in Belgium. State prosecutor
Horst Roos announced that they had found no evidence to confirm any of her
allegations. Many of her accusations had been proven to be untrue. He
concluded that the accusations were "highly unlikely to be based on
actual events". He said: "In sum, nothing remains of the alleged
actions that were still able to be investigated." |
| 2004-FEB-1: USA: New book on best-sellers list: Fern
Michaels' book "Late Bloomer" reached position nine in the New
York Times' paperback best sellers list. It is a novel which
describes how a movie star helped her grand-daughter recover memories of
a childhood tragedy. 2 |
| 2004-FEB-21: Holland: New approach to
child abuse memories judged a success: The de Gelderlander newspaper
reports that a new filtering technique by Justice officials is a
success. They determined that 87% of all reported sexual abuse
allegations can be regarded as false. They now look skeptically at three
categories of child sex crimes: those involving recovered memories of
abuse, memories of ritual abuse, and memories of abusive events before
the age of three. During 2004-FEB, the Ministry of Health's scientific
advisory council urged the government to restrain therapists who still
engage in the search for repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse.
3 |
| 2004-MAR-12: CA: Multiple murders:
News media did a particularly incompetent job reporting the multiple
murders allegedly committed by Marcus Wesson in Fresno, CA. Eleven
deaths are reported including nine children allegedly fathered by
Wesson. At various times, news reports announced that the victims were
mutilated, that ritual killings were suspected, and that Wesson was a
member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. When
the smoke cleared, no rituals appear to have been involved. There was no
mutilation of any of the victims. The Seventh Day Adventist church
issued a formal statement saying that they "cannot find any record of
Marcus Wesson being a member of any Seventh Day Adventist Church."
4 |
This essay concludes below.
Sponsored link:
News items (cont'd):
| 2004-APR-15: CA: Michael Jackson accused of molestation: An
unidentified 18-year old man allegedly recovered memories of childhood
abuse during therapy. He believes that it happened in the late 1980s
when he was three to five years of age. An unidentified source familiar
with the case said: "If an allegation is made, it has to be
investigated. But a lot of corroboration is required, and this is going
back a lot of years." Jackson's lawyer, Mark Geragos, said he
believes the new allegation stems from "a money-hungry lawyer trying
to shake down my client through the use of unfounded, scurrilous
allegations." 5 |
| 2004-MAY-2: U.S: Dateline NBC program on MPD: This was a one hour
program which dealt with Bill Green, who is about to go on trial for the
rape-murder of a young woman some twenty years ago. He has pleaded not
guilty to that crime. However, his DNA ties him to the crime.
The Dateline program mainly dealt with a trial for another crime in
Green's life: that of sexually assaulting his therapist. Green claims to
have MPD and to be actually a family of personalities within one body,
composed of one dominant personality and 22 other alters. His defense
was based on the allegation that he suffered from MPD and that it was
one of the alters who actually performed the assault, not the main
personality -- not Bill Green himself. Two witnesses for the prosecution
were girlfriends of Green with whom he had developed long-term
relationships in the past. Both testified that he exhibited no symptoms
of multiple personalities when he was with them. A fellow inmate
testified that, as an inmate, Green only exhibited alternative
personalities when he was in the presence of his therapists. One inmate
said that Green had displayed a single alter on one occasion where no
therapist was present. Mary Alice was Green's therapist. Her co-workers
each voiced skepticism of Alice's MPD work. They noted that all of the
diagnoses of MPD at the prison were made by one team of therapists; the
other teams found no MPD among the sexual offenders treated.
The jury found him guilty of the assault. |
| 2004-JUN-1: UK: SRA book published: Mary Smith, which
may be writing under a pen name, has written a book titled: "Resistance:
A ritual abuse survivor speaks out." It is an 80 page paperback
published in 2003 by a non-profit organization called SAFE. Its ISBN
number is 0954474007. The book is available from Amazon.co.uk. She
describes how she recovered memories of SRA and realized that she
suffered from MPD through dream interpretation during therapy three
years ago. She is now in her 50s and is firmly convinced that her
parents and extended family had "practised gang-rape, torture, often
with electric shocks, murder, mutilation." She, at the age of 14,
was held with other girls in underground dungeons. When they became
pregnant and gave birth, their babies were taken away. They were forced
to act in
pornographic movies. Mary has terminated all contact with her family. In
a particularly poignant passage, she writes: "The pressure to return
and see my old father, especially over a lonely Christmas, was almost
unendurable. [But now] I'm no longer torn into pieces by feeling I
should help the old man, who I now see as a major criminal." It is
sad to realize that her father will probably die before she realizes
that her memories of ritual abuse -- apparently built upon a foundation of
nightmares -- are false. 7 |
| 2004-JUN-22: UT: Woman sues clinic for
allegedly damaging therapy: Cheryl Denise Ely Haws has initiated a
lawsuit against the Cascade Center, a private mental health
facility in Orem, UT. She claims that she was subjected to painful
holding therapy which was intended to produce rage, and rebirthing
therapy in which she was wrapped in sheets or blankets and sat upon
while she struggled to be free. She claims that she was led to believe
that she had a homosexual orientation, that she had been subjected to
Satanic Ritual Abuse as a child, and that she needed to renounce her
religious beliefs. She claims that she attempted suicide and that her
marriage failed. 8 |
| 2004-JUN-19: Netherlands: Government
requires psychotherapists to warn patients: Robbert Ophorst wrote an
article in a Dutch magazine "Elsevier" ("Health")
concerning recovered memory therapy (RMT). Earlier in 2004, the
Health Council in the Netherlands issued a paper titled "Dubious
Memories." It describes the unreliability of images created during
recovered memory therapy (RMT). The Ministry of Health has issued a
new regulation. Psychotherapists must now give their patients a
pamphlet to warn them of the dangers of RMT. 9 |
| 2004-JUL-4: Scottish M.V.M.O. / SRA
case collapses: In 2003-OCT, police arrested seven men and one woman
who were or are residents of the Island of Lewis, near the west
coast of Scotland. They were charged with various sexual crimes
allegedly committed against three girls under the age of 16. The
investigation apparently centered around Satan worship, animal
sacrifice, group rape, and Satanic Ritual Abuse. As in previous SRA
hoaxes which occurred in the UK during the 1990s, the only evidence that
any criminal acts occurred came from the disclosures of young children.
Unfortunately, there are suggestions that an outmoded, dangerous and
unreliable method of interrogation was used, involving repeated direct
questioning. These techniques have been shown to frequently cause
disclosures of events that never actually happened. The case has
collapsed and the authorities announced that the charges had been
dropped. Two of the adults who were charged are considering suing.
More details. |
| 2004-JUL-15: Italy: Satanism growing in Italy? The
Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported that Satanism is a growth
religion in Italy. Farther Aldo Buonaiuto, director of a crisis/distress
hotline expressed alarm at the market that has developed for consecrated
hosts in that country. CNA reports: "In statements published in the Catholic
magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Fr. Buonaiuto explained that 'a
proliferation of cults exists which practice black masses, with the
profanation of consecrated hosts, rape and torture.. We know of cases of consensual
vampirism, and also the assaulting of young people who have been drugged
in the course of ritualistic orgies....Some cults perform rituals with
the consecrated hosts while under the influence of LSD or cocaine, led
frequently by ex-priests who have offered themselves in the service of
Satan'." The hosts allegedly sell for 80 to 500 Euros each. |
| 2004-JUL-23: Australia: State of
Victoria to hold inquiry into RMT: The Australian False Memory
Association has successfully lobbied the government of Victoria
state to launch an inquiry into RMT. Stateline, a TV program on the
Australian Broadcast Commission reported that the government has
been inundated with letters from parents who claim that they have been
falsely accused of sexually abusing their children. Some want the
practice banned. They also want to see all therapists registered and a
new regulatory body set up to review complaints. The inquiry is expected
to take six months. Their conclusions may well influence other states in
Australia to tighten controls on RMT in their jurisdictions. 11
|
| 2004-AUG-13: India: RMT spreads to India: The Times of India
published an article by a psychologist, Jure Biechonski, concerning
recovered memory therapy. It says, in part: "Hypnotherapy uses
forgotten childhood memories. Everything that happens from childhood to
today is stored in the unconscious mind. These memories and events
control our lives. As adults, when we have illogical thoughts or
feelings it's not us, but the child within us, called the inner child,
which has them. An internal dialogue between the adult and the inner
child is created by the hypnotherapist. The adult then becomes the
parent to the child. We cannot change our past, but can create an inner
parent who looks after our inner child and so helps resolve the
problems." It is being used to treat alcoholism, panic attacks,
depression, asthma, eczema, etc. 12 |
| 2004-OCT-16: NH: Betty Hill, alleged
UFO abductee, died: Betty Hill died at the age of 85. She believed
that she was abducted by aliens on board a UFO and was the unwilling
subject of medical experiments. This allegedly happened on 1961-SEP-19.
She was not the first person to have claimed an alien encounter, but her
story popularized the belief. It resulted in a 1966 book by John Fuller
"The Interrupted Journey: Two lost hours aboard a flying saucer."
Her story was the subject of a television movie: "The UFO Incident."
She originally had no memories of this event. A psychiatrist placed her
under hypnosis and "recovered" memories of having been abducted by short
gray-skinned aliens. Terry Matheson, a professor of English at
the University of Saskatchewan and the author of a 1988 book ''Alien
Abductions: Creating a Modern Phenomenon'' said: ''It's not
unlike the Leda and the swan myth. The alien comes in, probes women in a
distinctly sexual way for purposes that are equally inscrutable, but
which may, we're told, make sense down the road.'' The New York
Times commented: "The Hills' cultural legacy includes films ('Close
Encounters of the Third Kind'), television programs ('Roswell') and
books, like those by Whitley Strieber and John Mack, that treat alien
abduction as a plausible phenomenon." Skeptics generally attribute
these memories to nightmares, dreams, a phenomenon known as sleep
paralysis, and false recovered memories of events that never happened.
13 |
| 2004-OCT-31: Scotland: Satanic Ritual Abuse case disintegrates:
The newspaper "Scotland on Sunday" blew a case wide open on
2004-OCT-31 -- Halloween. It had involved allegations of ritual abuse on
the Island of Lewis in Scotland. Their reporter, Stephen Breen, wrote: "A
woman whose claims of Satanic child sex abuse helped put eight people
in the
dock had a history of making false allegations, which was known to police..."
The case, which was dropped by police several months ago, now
appears to have been based on totally unreliable evidence.
14 |
| 2004-NOV-13: Oxford University Press
publishes new book: According to the Financial Times, the Oxford
University Press has published an update to its 1987 edition of
The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Incredibly, they did not update
their entry on Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity
Disorder. The book is silent on the entire Recovered Memory hoax.
15 |
- "Satanic sex cult 'invented'," Melbourne Herald sun, 2004-JAN-8.
- "Paperback Best Sellers," The New York Times, Section 7, Page 20,
2004-FEB-1.
- "Aanpak van valse aangiften succes. Door onze verslaggever," (In
English: "Approach to false accusations a success. From our
correspondent," de Gelderlander, 2004-FEB-21.
- "Statement from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church," 2004-MAR-14,
Seventh-day Adventist Church in Central California.
- Michelle Caruso, "Jax accused after teen's shrink visit," Daily
News, New York, 2003-APR-15, Page 22.
- "The Many Faces of Bill. Man with multiple
personalities blames alter ego for sexually assaulting his therapist,"
Dateline NBC transcript, broadcast on 2004-MAY-2.
- Mark Pendergrast, Book review of: Mary Smith, "Resistance: A Ritual
Abuse Survivor Speaks Out," CommunityCare.co.uk, at:
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/
- Linda Thomson. "Center is sued over therapies," Deseret Morning
News, 2004-JUN-22.
- Robbert Ophorst, "Harmful therapy. A pamphlet must warn patients
about 'recovered memories' caused by therapy," Elsevier, 2004-JUN-19.
The article is in Dutch.
- "Alarm in Italy as growth of Satanism creates 'market' for
consecrated hosts," Catholic News Agency, 2004-JOL-15, at:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/
- Kate Arnott, "Calls for tighter controls on practitioners of 'repressed
memory therapy'," ABC Online, 2004-JUL-23, at:
http://www.abc.net.au/
- Jure Biechonski, "On the effective use of hypnotherapy as a therapy
tool," The Times of India, 2004-AUG-13.
- Margalit Fox, "Betty Hill, 85, Figure in alien abduction case,"
The New York Times, 2004-OCT-23, Page A8.
- Stephen Breen, "Revealed: the past lies of Satanic abuse witness,"
Scotland on Sunday, 2004-OCT-31, at:
http://news.scotsman.com/.
- Richard L. Gregory, "The Oxford Companion to the Mind," Book
Reviews, Financial Times Weekend Magazine, Page 53, issued 2004-NOV-13.
Copyright © 2004. by Ontario Consultants on
Religious Tolerance.
Latest update: 2004-NOV-13
Author: B.A. Robinson
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