Rebuttal to an attack on our recent conference in August 2009.
Our ritual abuse conference went really well this year. Many excellent researchers from several countries presented data backing the existence of ritual abuse crimes in a variety of settings.
Unfortunately a “journalist” snuck into the conference under false pretenses pseudonymously. This person on a website for radiofreesatan, where he is a DJ and is described as “an unscrupulous journalist.”
This journalist paid to enter the conference with a check. He stopped payment on the check after the conference.
Our conference brochure, which all that register are required to read, states “Members of secret organizations, acting out perpetrators, and/or members of unsympathetic organizations are excluded from the conference. This is for the protection and safety of those in attendance.”
Also, it is clearly announced at the beginning of the conference, “Please note that media people are not allowed in the conference at any time without the written permission of SMART.”
Less than one week after the conference, he placed a vicious article on a major Internet newspaper about myself, personally attacking myself Neil Brick, the conference attendees, the field of DID and memory. Attacks on myself included disparaging remarks about my appearance and voice as well claiming child abuse survivor accounts at the conference were fictional. Fortunately, with the hard work of many people, this article was removed from this major Internet newspaper after four days.
The author repeats the rebutted attacks on the field of DID and ritual abuse made over twenty years ago. The scientific research on DID shows it to be a solid and robust phenomenon that had been misdiagnosed as schizophrenia for over half a century. The research he cites “offer(s) no evidence that either stable alter personalities or the range of clinical features typically associated with MPD can be created in the laboratory.” Accurate information on DID and rebuttals to skeptics can be found at http://ritualabuse.us/research/did/
He also attacks the phenomenon of recovered memory. Yet recovered memory has been found to be a proven and verifiable phenomenon in many cases with fairly high accuracy rates. For more information on this, see http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories
He repeats the same misstatements made about “panic” made twenty years ago. Yet, ritual abuse crimes and their incident rates have been shown to be very real. For more information on this, see http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse and http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/
This author’s article concludes with several misstatements about what he claims I stated at the conference about the FMSF. However, I never stated any of these things. This is another misstatement made by the author.
In essence, his article contained insults, personal attacks, misstatements, misrepresented and slanted data as well as blatant lies.
The following are some comments posted on the website below the article attacking our conference before the article was permanently removed from the Internet. Some of these comments were removed from the page by the author, yet comments calling myself a “pedophile” more than once were allowed to stay up.
(Note: Many additional comments were made defending myself, the conference and ritual abuse survivors, we have not received permission yet to post these.)
Neil Brick 8/22/09
This article contains many untruths and insults.
No one by the name of _____ attended the conference. (Note: he attended with a fake name)
We clearly state in our conference registration form “members of unsympathetic organizations are excluded from the conference. This is for the protection and safety of those in attendance.”
We also clearly state that members of the media are not permitted to attend the conference without written permission, to protect the attendees anonymity.
The author above, if he did attend the conference, attended with a fake name and under false pretenses.
The article itself personally insults both myself and the conference attendees, with statements like….Yet several attendees and speaker have solid evidence including confessions of the perpetrators and scientific books and publications. These were left out of his article.
Neil Brick
The article also misrepresents the data around many important issues.
There are hundreds of scientific books and journals documenting the reality of ritual abuse crimes. Information on these can be found at http://ritualabuse.us
There was no MPD craze. It is well documented that most MPD (now called DID) cases were misdiagnosed as schizophrenia for over 60 years. There is no evidence of therapist “coercion” in the scientific literature. Spanos has been critiqued as seriously overgeneralized his data and his data “data offer no evidence that either stable alter personalities or the range of clinical features typically associated with MPD can be created in the laboratory.”
There was no “panic.” There were victims of horrible crimes coming forward to expose their perpetrators….
Neil Brick
Readers should draw their own conclusions around this issue, with thorough research about the topics of ritual abuse and DID.
However, one sided articles like the one above that contain personal insults about people serve no constructive purpose whatsoever. They only continue to polarize the debate around these issues and lower the level of civil and intellectual discourse.
August 23, 2009
Neil Brick
There is no such thing as “repressed memory therapy.” This is a construct of those that attack the field of therapy and those that attack those that help trauma survivors.
You make excuses for your personal attacks of others, yet you are responsible for your own behavior. You insult my voice and appearance in your article as well as the other conference attendees because of your supposed “disgust.” This goes beyond an ad hominem attack on your part, degenerating into name calling and personal insults.
You create a straw man argument, discussing an “international satanic conspiracy” yet no one has discussed this, and no has mentioned anything about a conspiracy. What has been mentioned is that ritual abuse does exist.
At my website, there are hundreds of books and article documenting ritual abuse crimes. Go to ritualabuse.us and click on the ritual abuse tab.
August 23, 2009
Neil Brick
You state (in the article author’s comment on the page): “yes, I did attend pseudononymously.” In other words, you must have used a fake ID to attend the conference, as all participants need to present an ID to gain admittance to protect the safety of all conference members.
So you lied to attend the conference. You misrepresented the reason you were attending and you even lied about who you were. So why should we believe you now?
You knew media personnel were not allowed at the conference without permission, yet you attended anyway, simply to attack myself and the conference.
You made up statements about what you claim I stated about the FMSF and you state we often cite Ms. Freyd, another fabrication. You even got my height wrong.
Your article does not fairly represent the research on the topics it presents.
You state “I see my description of Brick as accurate, even charitable.” Really, personally insulting someone’s appearance and voice is “charitable.”
Neil Brick
The author mentions Loftus to back his theory of memory.
Loftus is very biased in her interpretation of traumatic memory. There is NO evidence that traumatic memories can be created through manipulation. Loftus’ work has also been heavily critiqued. See the work of Hopper, Hoult, Crook, Pezdek and Pope. Loftus even published a study that shows recovered memory exists (Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18 (1994) 67-84.)
The reality is that recovered memory has been proven in numerous studies to exist and that it has fairly high corroboration rates. (go to ritualabuse.us and click on the related research tab)
Or use a search engine for “101 corroborated cases of recovered memory”
Neil Brick
8/23/09
Since you ignored my question the first time, here it is again:
You state: “yes, I did attend pseudononymously.” In other words, you must have used a fake ID to attend the conference, as all participants need to present an ID to gain admittance to protect the safety of all conference members.
So you lied to attend the conference. You misrepresented the reason you were attending and you even lied about who you were. So why should we believe you now?
What kind of a “researcher” uses a fake ID to attend a conference and then repeatedly uses name calling and insults to “prove” their points?
Note:
The author of the article attacking our conference made a comment on 8/23/09 about the daughter of Pamela Freyd, stating her daughter (Jennifer) recovered her memories during therapy sessions and then retracted the claim and reconciled.
It was point out to the author in a comment on the page that Jennifer did not recover her memories in therapy, nor did she retract, nor did she ever reconcile with her mother. This entire section was deleted by the article author the next day.
Neil Brick
8/23/09
You keep mentioning “hats.” One conference table (of many, note how the author only describes one) run by one person did have information on how to protect oneself from certain electromagnetic frequencies. There is scientific evidence that certain electromagnetic frequencies can cause problems for certain people. However, most conference participants were not involved with this topic. And whether one believes this topic is accurate or not certainly has nothing to do with the fact that ritual abuse exists around the world.
A dishonest debater would of course conflate the two terms to discredit both.
Neil Brick
8/24/09
It is interesting that several comments I have made defending myself,
even today, as well as others’ comments defending me have been deleted, yet libelous comments calling me a “pedophile” have been kept.
The author’s creation of a straw man argument, that there is an organized conspiracy, is of course a dishonest debate tactic. The point is that ritual abuse exists around the world and that this is well documented.
My organization helps trauma survivors, by providing resources and
accurate information to them. His article hurts them, by
personally attacking myself and them, in a one sided and inaccurate
manner. He has not corrected his several misstatements as promised, but he has continued to present his disinformation. He has no experience in the field of trauma, and repeats the same misstatements by others about the field of trauma.
sondra
This reporter failed to mention the professionals who spoke at this conference, or Anne A Johnson, author of Hell Minus One, who obtained written confessions from her parent. Another sources for facts: Colin Ross’ book, Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists, based on 15,000 pages of documents obtained from the CIA. The FMSF was formed by Pamela and Peter Freyd, Hollida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager. Pamela and Peter Freyd are parents of Jennifer Freyd, who, despite statements to the contrary, always had memories of her abuse, and never recanted. You can find Jennifer’s story (and her refusal to recant) in her book, Betrayal Trauma: the Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. This reporter entered the conference under false pretenses, creating false images. I am disappointed in this newspaper for allowing this, and expect better things from it in the future. Meanwhile, please do your own research on this topic rather than buying into this version. sondra
Cecilie says:
I am very grateful to Neil Brick for the work he continues to do on behalf of RA and government mind control victims. Articles like yours contribute to survivors fears of coming forward and reinforce the public’s head in the sand position, thus prolonging the exposure of this kind of activity.
I am a survivor of ritual abuse in the Catholic Church….If you are a sincere person and not just trying to add to the misinformation out there, I suggest you do some reading on the current research out there on trauma and DID. You are are sadly misinformed.
August 24
August 22, 2009.
Pamela Perskin Noblitt
I responded to the article with the following comment:
If I were Mr. Brick, I would consult a lawyer to discuss the defamatory manner in which he was characterized in this article. Your disrespectful, biased, and poorly researched story is clearly a work of fiction….Journalism requires an open mind, an investigative spirit, and a passion for truth and justice. Sadly, you are lacking in each of these departments. Perhaps you should take the time to actually do some research. And by research, I mean studying alternative perspectives from your own with discretion, respect, and scientifically based inquisitiveness. Remember the first rule of science is parsimony. The simplest answer is often the truest. Which is more likely? That people dreadfully abused in childhood carry lifelong scars? Or that well-reared, well cared for children grow to adulthood and suddenly turn on their good parents? I wish you well in your next career.
Pamela Perskin Noblitt
I have been researching the area of religious cults for the past 33 years and ritual abuse for the past 20 years. In my chapter on History of Satanic Religions in Out of Darkness (I document that satanic (in the original meaning of the term satanic as simply adversarial to social norms) has a long history. This dovetails with University of Alberta Sociology Professor Stephen Kent’s articles in Religion in 1993 in which he analyzed the content of abuse survivors statements and found differences between Masonic satanic abuse, Christian satanic abuse and Mormon satanic abuse….
all the best
Martin H. Katchen
Kay says:
My memories were clear all the way. I was seduced at 14, which is rape by law. He told me to keep quiet, because he was a man of [God] and because of brainwashing by the Institutional Corporate Roman Catholic Church. It took me more than 45 years but, because of survivor support groups like SNAP and SMART, I can now post my full name without fear….I believe Mr. Brick is a victim/survivor of ritual abuse, further; I admire and respect Mr. Brick and SMART for reaching out to other survivors. You chose, with the stroke of your pen, to degrade not only Mr. Brick, but every other human being who does not fit in a [box]. Like…, your attitude comes across as arrogant and threatening. People have feelings.
August 23, 3:43 PM
Kay says:
ATTENTION! NEWSFLASH! Freedom of Speech exists, is alive, and flourishing. Freedom of the Press exists, is alive, and flourishing. Mr. Brick convened a group of people who are survivors of ritual abuse. The author attended that conference. Instead of reporting on the conference, he chose to use…to vent against victim/survivors of any form of abuse, including abuse by brainwashing. The author has certainly achieved his goal….The author has chosen to use his talent as a writer to demean others. I am NOT a survivor of ritual abuse. I am NOT a professional with credentials. I AM, however, a survivor of child rape by a Roman Catholic priest via brainwashing that led me to believe that a priest is “God” on earth.
August 23, 1:33 PM
This was sent to the online newspaper after the article was taken down.
Thank you for taking down the article about the SMART conference, dealing with Ritual Abuse Torture and Mind Control. As a survivor, this conference had been a life line for me. When the problem of Child Sexual abuse within the family was first brought up, people didn’t want to believe that it was happening. Not even professionals. I don’t think that any of us would deny it today. Ritual Abuse Torture is going through the same process.
Hopefully the writer doesn’t have a personal interest in discarding survivor’s reports, as do the actual criminals. I would like to think that he just has a hard time believing such things can happen to children. They do. They happened to me and to clients I worked with as a therapist.
No matter what the writer’s motivation is, survivors need support and not attack. The person who organizes these conferences put many hours of hard work into them and does not deserve such treatment. Neil especially takes a special care to make this conference a safe place for survivors. Just a small example: I must have been coming to the conference for the last five years and Neil knows me quite well by now. Never the less you can rest assure that he will still be asking for my ID when I first walk in.
Trying to discredit and silence us does not help the children who still suffer today. Again, thank you for removing the article…from your website. It was defamatory, insulting, and inaccurate.
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