An Infinite Mind is proud to announce Healing Together - an Educational and Support Conference on DID held in beautiful Lake Buena Vista, FL on January 28th-29th 2012 at the beautiful Wyndham Lakes Resort. Escape the winter blues and come to sunny Florida for an amazing weekend of learning, healing, and fun.
Who should attend?
*Survivors with all types of dissociative disorders, especially those with DID.
*Supporters and loved ones of people with dissociative disorders and DID.
*Mental Health Professionals who currently treat dissociative clients or would like to learn more about treating dissociation and DID.
http://www.aninfinitemind.com/healing-together.html
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Utah authorities arrest dozens in child-porn investigation
Utah authorities arrest dozens in child-porn investigation
By Erin Alberty - The Salt Lake Tribune Apr 28 2011
After 114 sex crime investigations, 124 computer seizures, more than 36 million images, thousands of overtime hours and 39 arrests, Utah’s Internet crime investigators on Thursday offered a flat proclamation for their month-long, statewide child-pornography bust....
The suspected crimes range from possession of pornography to creating and disseminating child pornography.
Farnsworth said some of the 114 suspects are accused of filming or photographing their own illegal sex acts with children as young as toddlers, but she declined to discuss those cases. According to a press release, two suspects, a Utah County man and a Weber County juvenile, are accused of manufacturing child pornography.
Additionally, a Davis County man was charged with object rape and aggravated sexual abuse of a child after a federal conviction for producing pornography, and a Salt Lake County man faces two sex abuse charges along with his charge of dealing in material harmful to a minor. Farnsworth would not confirm whether those two men are suspected of committing those abuses in the creation of pornography.
Investigators will not know how many Utah children were victims in the cases until they review the images seized — the total number is estimated in excess of 36 million, according to figures provided by the Attorney General’s Office — and finish the pending investigations, Farnsworth said.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/utes/51712402-78/county-pornography-child-farnsworth.html.csp
By Erin Alberty - The Salt Lake Tribune Apr 28 2011
After 114 sex crime investigations, 124 computer seizures, more than 36 million images, thousands of overtime hours and 39 arrests, Utah’s Internet crime investigators on Thursday offered a flat proclamation for their month-long, statewide child-pornography bust....
The suspected crimes range from possession of pornography to creating and disseminating child pornography.
Farnsworth said some of the 114 suspects are accused of filming or photographing their own illegal sex acts with children as young as toddlers, but she declined to discuss those cases. According to a press release, two suspects, a Utah County man and a Weber County juvenile, are accused of manufacturing child pornography.
Additionally, a Davis County man was charged with object rape and aggravated sexual abuse of a child after a federal conviction for producing pornography, and a Salt Lake County man faces two sex abuse charges along with his charge of dealing in material harmful to a minor. Farnsworth would not confirm whether those two men are suspected of committing those abuses in the creation of pornography.
Investigators will not know how many Utah children were victims in the cases until they review the images seized — the total number is estimated in excess of 36 million, according to figures provided by the Attorney General’s Office — and finish the pending investigations, Farnsworth said.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/utes/51712402-78/county-pornography-child-farnsworth.html.csp
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Victims Say Film on Molesters Distorts Facts
Victims Say Film on Molesters Distorts Facts
By SHARON WAXMAN February 24, 2004
for more information on this case:
http://capturingthefriedmans.wordpress.com/
''Capturing the Friedmans,'' the Oscar-nominated documentary that raises questions about the guilt of a father and son convicted of child molestation, is being criticized by six of their former victims, who say the film omitted or distorted important information about their cases.
The six are suggesting that the director, Andrew Jarecki, created more ambiguity than actually existed about the case both to heighten the dramatic impact of the film and to elicit sympathy for the Friedmans. The film tells the story of the disintegration of a seemingly average Long Island family after the father, Arnold Friedman, and son, Jesse, were accused of molesting children in computer classes they held in the basement of their Great Neck home in the 1980's....
The mother said that Mr. Jarecki's film omitted a third co-defendant, Ross Goldstein, a teenage neighbor who also pleaded guilty to charges of child molestation and who corroborated some of the children's accusations at the time and went to prison. She also said that Mr. Jarecki omitted a tearful confession by Jesse Friedman in prison on Geraldo Rivera's talk show in 1989. Mr. Friedman detailed how his father had molested him as a child. In interviews Jesse Friedman has retracted his confessions, saying he pleaded guilty because he feared he could not get a fair trial and would get the maximum penalty....
Mr. Jarecki said the material on Mr. Goldstein was left out because it duplicated statements by the 13 children but was included in the just-released DVD. He said he considered the Rivera interview unnecessary, since the film showed Jesse Friedman's confession in court....
Two former victims, including the son of the woman who spoke to The Times, wrote an open but anonymous letter last week to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which will give out the Oscars on Sunday. They said that the film portrayed the victims as if they had invented their stories to satisfy an overzealous Nassau County police force.
They wrote: ''We did not lie. We did not exaggerate. We were never hypnotized to tell our stories.'' They said the director had twisted the facts in the film to make it appear that they had....
Mr. Jarecki denies that he has become an advocate for Jesse Friedman. Still, Mr. Jarecki has submitted an affidavit on his behalf to the court.
''One of the hallmarks of a balanced film on a controversial subject is that advocates on both sides will never be satisfied that the film supports their agendas,'' he wrote by e-mail. '
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/movies/victims-say-film-on-molesters-distorts-facts.html
By SHARON WAXMAN February 24, 2004
for more information on this case:
http://capturingthefriedmans.wordpress.com/
''Capturing the Friedmans,'' the Oscar-nominated documentary that raises questions about the guilt of a father and son convicted of child molestation, is being criticized by six of their former victims, who say the film omitted or distorted important information about their cases.
The six are suggesting that the director, Andrew Jarecki, created more ambiguity than actually existed about the case both to heighten the dramatic impact of the film and to elicit sympathy for the Friedmans. The film tells the story of the disintegration of a seemingly average Long Island family after the father, Arnold Friedman, and son, Jesse, were accused of molesting children in computer classes they held in the basement of their Great Neck home in the 1980's....
The mother said that Mr. Jarecki's film omitted a third co-defendant, Ross Goldstein, a teenage neighbor who also pleaded guilty to charges of child molestation and who corroborated some of the children's accusations at the time and went to prison. She also said that Mr. Jarecki omitted a tearful confession by Jesse Friedman in prison on Geraldo Rivera's talk show in 1989. Mr. Friedman detailed how his father had molested him as a child. In interviews Jesse Friedman has retracted his confessions, saying he pleaded guilty because he feared he could not get a fair trial and would get the maximum penalty....
Mr. Jarecki said the material on Mr. Goldstein was left out because it duplicated statements by the 13 children but was included in the just-released DVD. He said he considered the Rivera interview unnecessary, since the film showed Jesse Friedman's confession in court....
Two former victims, including the son of the woman who spoke to The Times, wrote an open but anonymous letter last week to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which will give out the Oscars on Sunday. They said that the film portrayed the victims as if they had invented their stories to satisfy an overzealous Nassau County police force.
They wrote: ''We did not lie. We did not exaggerate. We were never hypnotized to tell our stories.'' They said the director had twisted the facts in the film to make it appear that they had....
Mr. Jarecki denies that he has become an advocate for Jesse Friedman. Still, Mr. Jarecki has submitted an affidavit on his behalf to the court.
''One of the hallmarks of a balanced film on a controversial subject is that advocates on both sides will never be satisfied that the film supports their agendas,'' he wrote by e-mail. '
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/movies/victims-say-film-on-molesters-distorts-facts.html
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Elizabeth Loftus - critiques of her research
The accuracy of Elizabeth Loftus' research and its ethics have been critiqued by several people over the last two decades. Below is a brief synopsis of some of this research.
"Lost in a Shopping Mall" A Breach of Professional Ethics
Lynn S. Crook, Martha Dean ETHICS & BEHAVIOR, vol. 9, #1, pp. 39-50
The "lost in a shopping mall" study has been cited to support claims that psychotherapists can implant memories of false autobiographical information of childhood trauma in their patients. The mall study originated in 1991 as 5 pilot experiments involving 3 children and 2 adult participants. The University of Washington Human Subjects Committee granted approval for the mall study on August 10, 1992. The preliminary results with the 5 pilot subjects were announced 4 days later. An analysis of the mall study shows that beyond the external misrepresentations, internal scientific methodological errors cast doubt on the validity of the claims that have been attributed to the mall study within scholarly and legal arenas. The minimal involvement or, in some cases, negative impact of collegial consultation, academic supervision, and peer review throughout the evolution of the mall study are reviewed.
http://users.owt.com/crook/memory/
Elizabeth Loftus (from jimhopper.com)
Unfortunately, thus far reporters and journalists have almost completely failed to critically evaluate her claims. Nor have they addressed three crucial facts about her work:
1) Loftus herself conducted and published a study in which nearly one in five women who reported childhood sexual abuse also reported completely forgetting the abuse for some period of time and recovering the memory of it later.
....
3) Loftus is aware that those who study traumatic memory have for several years, based on a great deal of research and clinical experience, used the construct of dissociation to account for the majority of recovered memories. However, she continues to focus on and attack "repression" and "repressed memories," which has the effect of confusing and misleading many people.
http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/#el
Consider the Evidence for Elizabeth Loftus'
Scholarship and Accuracy. "Remembering Dangerously" & Hoult v. Hoult: The Myth of Repressed Memory that Elizabeth Loftus Created
by Jennifer Hoult, Esq.
http://www.rememberingdangerously.com/
Elizabeth Loftus herself has published studies showing evidence of recovered memory. The 4 January 1996 issue of Accuracy About Abuse notes: Elizabeth Loftus, high profile FMSF advocate, published a paper with colleagues on Remembering and Repressing in 1994. In a study of 105 women outpatients in a substance abuse clinic 54 % reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. 81% remembered all or part of the abuse. 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time and later the memory returned. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives reported a clearer memory, with a more detailed picture. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives did not differ from others in terms of the violence of the abuse or whether the violence was incestuous. [Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18 (1994) 67-84.]
Loftus has also discussed "motivated forgetting", and has presented the documented study of a college professor who became unable to remember a series of traumas, but after some time was able to recover those memories. Loftus remarked "after such an enormously stressful experience, many individuals wish to forget... And often their wish is granted." (Loftus, 1980/1988, p. 73)" http://web.archive.org/web/20030608221633/http://www.feminista.com/v1n9/false-memory.html
"The hypothesis that false memories can easily be implanted in psychotherapy (Lindsay & Read, 1994; Loftus 1993; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994; Ofshe and Watters, 1993, 1994; Yapko, 1994a) seriously overstates the available data. Since no studies have been conducted on suggested effects in psychotherapy per se, the idea of iatrogenic suggestion of false memories remains an untested hypothesis. (Memory, Trauma Treatment, And the Law Brown, Scheflin and Hammond (D. Corydon) 1998, W. W. Norton 0-393-70254-5)
Memory, Abuse, and Science: Questioning Claims About the False Memory Syndrome Epidemic Pope, K. (1996)
American Psychologist 51: 957. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.51.9.957
Does the trauma specified in the lost-in-the-mall experiment seem comparable to the trauma forming the basis of false memory syndrome? Loftus (1993) described the implanted traumatic event in the shopping-mall experiment as follows: "Chris was convinced by his older brother Jim, that he had been lost in a shopping mall when he was five years old" (p. 532). Does this seem, for example, a reasonable analogy for a five-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her father? Pezdek (1995; see also Pezdek, Finger, & Hodge, 1996) has suggested that this may not be the case. In attempting to arrive at a more analogous situation-that of a suggested false memory of a rectal enema-her experimental attempts at implantation of a suggestion had a 0% success rate.
What is the impact of the potentially confounding variables in claiming the shopping-mall experiment to be a convincing analogue of therapy (Loftus, 1993; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994)? Is it possible that the findings are an artifact of this particular design, for example, that the older family member claims to have been present when the event occurred and to have witnessed it, a claim the therapist can never make? To date, replications and extensions of this study have tended to use a similar methodology; that is, either the older family member makes the suggestions in his or her role as the experimenter's confederate, or the experimenter presents the suggestion as being the report of an older family member, thus creating a surrogate confederate.
Has this line of research assumed that verbal reports provided to researchers are the equivalent of actual memories? Spanos (1994) suggested that changes in report in suggestibility research may represent compliance with social demand conditions of the research design rather than actual changes in what is recalled. In what ways were the measures to demonstrate actual changes or creations of memory representations validated and confounding variables (e.g., demand characteristics) excluded? Given that being lost while out shopping is apparently a common childhood experience, how is the determination made that the lost-in-the-mall memory is not substantially correct? What supports the claim that "Chris had remembered a traumatic episode that never occurred" (Garry & Loftus, 1994, p. 83). That is, is there any possibility that Chris's family had forgotten an actual event of this type?
If the experiment is assumed for heuristic reasons to demonstrate that an older family member can extensively rewrite a younger relative's memory in regard to a trauma at which the older relative was present, why have false memory syndrome proponents presented this research as applying to the dynamics of therapy (e.g., Loftus, 1993; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994) but not to the dynamics of families, particularly those in which parents or other relatives may be exerting pressure on an adult to retract reports of delayed recall? Is it possible that older family members can rewrite younger relatives' memories in regard to traumatic events at which they were present? Might this occur in the context of sexual abuse when the repeated suggestion is made by a perpetrator that "nothing happened" and that any subsequent awareness of the abuse constitutes a false memory?
http://www.kspope.com/memory/memory.php
Quotes: Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D.
http://bit.ly/hxkUbT
A Brief History of the False Memory Research of Elizabeth Loftus
"The lost- in- a-shopping-mall study (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995) provided initial scientific support for the claim that child sexual abuse accusations are false memories planted by therapists. However, the mall study researchers faced a problem early on—the participants could tell the difference between the true and false memories." http://bit.ly/dH9uST
The Alleged Ethical Violations of Elizabeth Loftus in the Case of Jane Doe "In conclusion, I believe Loftus made several ethical breaches during her research and when publishing her study. The right to freedom of speech and academic debate does not allow for the kind of ethical breaches that were made. The violating of Jane Doe’s confidentiality without her written consent around such a sensitive issue appears to have been unnecessary and inappropriate."
http://bit.ly/6bbAW6
"Lost in a Shopping Mall" A Breach of Professional Ethics
Lynn S. Crook, Martha Dean ETHICS & BEHAVIOR, vol. 9, #1, pp. 39-50
The "lost in a shopping mall" study has been cited to support claims that psychotherapists can implant memories of false autobiographical information of childhood trauma in their patients. The mall study originated in 1991 as 5 pilot experiments involving 3 children and 2 adult participants. The University of Washington Human Subjects Committee granted approval for the mall study on August 10, 1992. The preliminary results with the 5 pilot subjects were announced 4 days later. An analysis of the mall study shows that beyond the external misrepresentations, internal scientific methodological errors cast doubt on the validity of the claims that have been attributed to the mall study within scholarly and legal arenas. The minimal involvement or, in some cases, negative impact of collegial consultation, academic supervision, and peer review throughout the evolution of the mall study are reviewed.
http://users.owt.com/crook/memory/
Elizabeth Loftus (from jimhopper.com)
Unfortunately, thus far reporters and journalists have almost completely failed to critically evaluate her claims. Nor have they addressed three crucial facts about her work:
1) Loftus herself conducted and published a study in which nearly one in five women who reported childhood sexual abuse also reported completely forgetting the abuse for some period of time and recovering the memory of it later.
....
3) Loftus is aware that those who study traumatic memory have for several years, based on a great deal of research and clinical experience, used the construct of dissociation to account for the majority of recovered memories. However, she continues to focus on and attack "repression" and "repressed memories," which has the effect of confusing and misleading many people.
http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/#el
Consider the Evidence for Elizabeth Loftus'
Scholarship and Accuracy. "Remembering Dangerously" & Hoult v. Hoult: The Myth of Repressed Memory that Elizabeth Loftus Created
by Jennifer Hoult, Esq.
http://www.rememberingdangerously.com/
Elizabeth Loftus herself has published studies showing evidence of recovered memory. The 4 January 1996 issue of Accuracy About Abuse notes: Elizabeth Loftus, high profile FMSF advocate, published a paper with colleagues on Remembering and Repressing in 1994. In a study of 105 women outpatients in a substance abuse clinic 54 % reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. 81% remembered all or part of the abuse. 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time and later the memory returned. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives reported a clearer memory, with a more detailed picture. Women who remembered the abuse their whole lives did not differ from others in terms of the violence of the abuse or whether the violence was incestuous. [Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18 (1994) 67-84.]
Loftus has also discussed "motivated forgetting", and has presented the documented study of a college professor who became unable to remember a series of traumas, but after some time was able to recover those memories. Loftus remarked "after such an enormously stressful experience, many individuals wish to forget... And often their wish is granted." (Loftus, 1980/1988, p. 73)" http://web.archive.org/web/20030608221633/http://www.feminista.com/v1n9/false-memory.html
"The hypothesis that false memories can easily be implanted in psychotherapy (Lindsay & Read, 1994; Loftus 1993; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994; Ofshe and Watters, 1993, 1994; Yapko, 1994a) seriously overstates the available data. Since no studies have been conducted on suggested effects in psychotherapy per se, the idea of iatrogenic suggestion of false memories remains an untested hypothesis. (Memory, Trauma Treatment, And the Law Brown, Scheflin and Hammond (D. Corydon) 1998, W. W. Norton 0-393-70254-5)
Memory, Abuse, and Science: Questioning Claims About the False Memory Syndrome Epidemic Pope, K. (1996)
American Psychologist 51: 957. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.51.9.957
Does the trauma specified in the lost-in-the-mall experiment seem comparable to the trauma forming the basis of false memory syndrome? Loftus (1993) described the implanted traumatic event in the shopping-mall experiment as follows: "Chris was convinced by his older brother Jim, that he had been lost in a shopping mall when he was five years old" (p. 532). Does this seem, for example, a reasonable analogy for a five-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her father? Pezdek (1995; see also Pezdek, Finger, & Hodge, 1996) has suggested that this may not be the case. In attempting to arrive at a more analogous situation-that of a suggested false memory of a rectal enema-her experimental attempts at implantation of a suggestion had a 0% success rate.
What is the impact of the potentially confounding variables in claiming the shopping-mall experiment to be a convincing analogue of therapy (Loftus, 1993; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994)? Is it possible that the findings are an artifact of this particular design, for example, that the older family member claims to have been present when the event occurred and to have witnessed it, a claim the therapist can never make? To date, replications and extensions of this study have tended to use a similar methodology; that is, either the older family member makes the suggestions in his or her role as the experimenter's confederate, or the experimenter presents the suggestion as being the report of an older family member, thus creating a surrogate confederate.
Has this line of research assumed that verbal reports provided to researchers are the equivalent of actual memories? Spanos (1994) suggested that changes in report in suggestibility research may represent compliance with social demand conditions of the research design rather than actual changes in what is recalled. In what ways were the measures to demonstrate actual changes or creations of memory representations validated and confounding variables (e.g., demand characteristics) excluded? Given that being lost while out shopping is apparently a common childhood experience, how is the determination made that the lost-in-the-mall memory is not substantially correct? What supports the claim that "Chris had remembered a traumatic episode that never occurred" (Garry & Loftus, 1994, p. 83). That is, is there any possibility that Chris's family had forgotten an actual event of this type?
If the experiment is assumed for heuristic reasons to demonstrate that an older family member can extensively rewrite a younger relative's memory in regard to a trauma at which the older relative was present, why have false memory syndrome proponents presented this research as applying to the dynamics of therapy (e.g., Loftus, 1993; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994) but not to the dynamics of families, particularly those in which parents or other relatives may be exerting pressure on an adult to retract reports of delayed recall? Is it possible that older family members can rewrite younger relatives' memories in regard to traumatic events at which they were present? Might this occur in the context of sexual abuse when the repeated suggestion is made by a perpetrator that "nothing happened" and that any subsequent awareness of the abuse constitutes a false memory?
http://www.kspope.com/memory/memory.php
Quotes: Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D.
http://bit.ly/hxkUbT
A Brief History of the False Memory Research of Elizabeth Loftus
"The lost- in- a-shopping-mall study (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995) provided initial scientific support for the claim that child sexual abuse accusations are false memories planted by therapists. However, the mall study researchers faced a problem early on—the participants could tell the difference between the true and false memories." http://bit.ly/dH9uST
The Alleged Ethical Violations of Elizabeth Loftus in the Case of Jane Doe "In conclusion, I believe Loftus made several ethical breaches during her research and when publishing her study. The right to freedom of speech and academic debate does not allow for the kind of ethical breaches that were made. The violating of Jane Doe’s confidentiality without her written consent around such a sensitive issue appears to have been unnecessary and inappropriate."
http://bit.ly/6bbAW6
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Biological Links Found Between Childhood Abuse and Adolescent Depression
Biological Links Found Between Childhood Abuse and Adolescent Depression - ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2011)
Kate Harkness has found that a history of physical, sexual or emotional abuse in childhood substantially increases the risk of depression in adolescence by altering a person's neuroendocrine response to stress. Adolescents with a history of maltreatment and a mild level of depression were found to release much more of the stress hormone cortisol than is normal in response to psychological stressors such as giving a speech or solving a difficult arithmetic test.
"This kind of reaction is a problem because cortisol kills cells in areas of the brain that control memory and emotion regulation," explains Dr. Harkness, a professor in the Department of Psychology and an expert in the role of stress and trauma in adolescent depression. "Over time cortisol levels can build up and increase a person's risk for more severe endocrine impairment and more severe depression."....
Dr. Harkness recently presented her findings at the International Society for Affective Disorders Conference in Toronto. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110420125506.htm
Kate Harkness has found that a history of physical, sexual or emotional abuse in childhood substantially increases the risk of depression in adolescence by altering a person's neuroendocrine response to stress. Adolescents with a history of maltreatment and a mild level of depression were found to release much more of the stress hormone cortisol than is normal in response to psychological stressors such as giving a speech or solving a difficult arithmetic test.
"This kind of reaction is a problem because cortisol kills cells in areas of the brain that control memory and emotion regulation," explains Dr. Harkness, a professor in the Department of Psychology and an expert in the role of stress and trauma in adolescent depression. "Over time cortisol levels can build up and increase a person's risk for more severe endocrine impairment and more severe depression."....
Dr. Harkness recently presented her findings at the International Society for Affective Disorders Conference in Toronto. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110420125506.htm
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Frontline - Catholic Church sex abuse story of Native Americans in Alaska
FRONTLINE reveals a little-known chapter of the Catholic Church sex abuse story: decades of abuse of Native Americans by priests and other church workers in Alaska. In The Silence, FRONTLINE producer Tom Curran and reporter Mark Trahant examine the legacy of abuse by a number of men who worked for the Catholic Church along Alaska's far west coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They would leave behind a trail of hundreds of claims of abuse, making this one of the hardest hit regions in the country. video of show (describes abuse) is at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-silence/
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Doctors Demand State Board Action Against Gitmo Psych, Valerie Sinason - Clinic for Dissociative Studies
articles :
Doctors Demand State Board Take Action Against Gitmo Psychologist
Valerie Sinason - Clinic for Dissociative Studies
Working with Dissociation in Clinical Practice Using an Attachment Perspective - 2011 summer course
Introduction chapter from "Attachment Trauma and Multiplicity" by Valerie Sinason - DID and Ritual Abuse
Doctors Demand State Board Take Action Against Gitmo Psychologist By KYLE ANNE UNISS April 18, 2011
COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) - Two doctors, a minister and a disabled veteran sued the Ohio Board of Psychology, claiming it failed to act on their detailed complaint against a psychologist, an Army colonel who "was responsible for the abuse and exploitation of detainees as a senior psychologist at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, in violation of Ohio law and Board ethics rules." The plaintiffs seek writ of mandamus to compel the State Board to take "formal action" against Dr. Larry C. James, a board-licensed psychologist and Dean of Wright State University's School of Professional Psychology.
James is not listed as a defendant. The plaintiffs say he worked at the Guantanamo prison in 2003 and in 2007-2008. At Guantanamo, James was an Army colonel who led the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, which included psychiatrists and psychologists who "played a role in the exploitation, abuse, and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, subsequently misrepresented that experience, and improperly disclosed confidential patient information," according to the complaint.
James led the team from January to May 2003, and against from June 2007 through May or June 2008, according to the complaint in Franklin County Court.
The plaintiffs are Dr. Trudy Bond, a practicing psychologist from Toledo; Michael Reese, an Army veteran, member of Disable American Veterans, and a former counselor for people with disabilities; the Rev. Colin Bossen, a Unitarian minister from Cleveland Heights; and Dr. Josephine Setzler, director of an Ohio chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/04/18/35867.htm
Valerie Sinason, Director CDS - Valerie Sinason is a poet, writer, child psychotherapist and adult psychoanalyst. She is Director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies. She specialises in work with abused/abusing and dissociative patients including those with a learning disability She has written over 12 books and 100 papers and lectures nationally and internationally. http://valeriesinason.co.uk/index.html
The Clinic for Dissociative Studies was set up with the aid of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in 1998 as one of the few national centres of specialist expertise in the care and treatment of people with dissociative disorders. As an Independent Provider to the NHS it is commissioned by PCTs, mental health trusts and local authorities nationally to provide diagnosis, outpatient treatment and training. http://clinicds.com/
Working with Dissociation in Clinical Practice Using an Attachment Perspective - 18-19th June and 2-3rd July 2011, Summer course in collaboration with The Bowlby Centre - This 4-day continuing professional development course introduces key concepts for working therapeutically from a relational perspective with adults suffering from dissociative experiences. Dissociation will be explored as a survival strategy which begins when an individual is faced with repeated early emotional, physical and/or sexual trauma at the hands of attachment figures. http://clinicds.com/news.html
http://clinicds.com/resources/bowlby+2011+perfect++with+phil+.gif
Introduction chapter from "Attachment Trauma and Multiplicity" by Valerie Sinason - DID and Ritual Abuse
In America the largest amount of DID is diagnosed in connection with allegations of ritual Satanist abuse....It is worth noting that both at the Portman Clinic and in the Clinic for Dissociative Studies we have not found evidence of fundamentalist religious beliefs, recovered memory or Munchhausen's as issues in those alleging this kind of abuse. Indeed, the pilot study on patients alleging ritual abuse that Dr Robert Hale, then Director of the Portman Clinic and I submitted in July 2000 included the finding that the only two out of 51 subjects who had any link with evangelist religious groups made contact with them after disclosing ritual Satanist abuse, and only because no-one else would listen to them....
I have stated elsewhere (Sinason, 1994) that the number of children and adults tortured in the name of mainstream religious and racial orthodoxy outweighs any onslaught by Satanist abusers. http://clinicfordissociativestudies.com/short%20att%20tram%20mult%20Introduction%20for%20web.htm
Doctors Demand State Board Take Action Against Gitmo Psychologist
Valerie Sinason - Clinic for Dissociative Studies
Working with Dissociation in Clinical Practice Using an Attachment Perspective - 2011 summer course
Introduction chapter from "Attachment Trauma and Multiplicity" by Valerie Sinason - DID and Ritual Abuse
Doctors Demand State Board Take Action Against Gitmo Psychologist By KYLE ANNE UNISS April 18, 2011
COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) - Two doctors, a minister and a disabled veteran sued the Ohio Board of Psychology, claiming it failed to act on their detailed complaint against a psychologist, an Army colonel who "was responsible for the abuse and exploitation of detainees as a senior psychologist at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, in violation of Ohio law and Board ethics rules." The plaintiffs seek writ of mandamus to compel the State Board to take "formal action" against Dr. Larry C. James, a board-licensed psychologist and Dean of Wright State University's School of Professional Psychology.
James is not listed as a defendant. The plaintiffs say he worked at the Guantanamo prison in 2003 and in 2007-2008. At Guantanamo, James was an Army colonel who led the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, which included psychiatrists and psychologists who "played a role in the exploitation, abuse, and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, subsequently misrepresented that experience, and improperly disclosed confidential patient information," according to the complaint.
James led the team from January to May 2003, and against from June 2007 through May or June 2008, according to the complaint in Franklin County Court.
The plaintiffs are Dr. Trudy Bond, a practicing psychologist from Toledo; Michael Reese, an Army veteran, member of Disable American Veterans, and a former counselor for people with disabilities; the Rev. Colin Bossen, a Unitarian minister from Cleveland Heights; and Dr. Josephine Setzler, director of an Ohio chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/04/18/35867.htm
Valerie Sinason, Director CDS - Valerie Sinason is a poet, writer, child psychotherapist and adult psychoanalyst. She is Director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies. She specialises in work with abused/abusing and dissociative patients including those with a learning disability She has written over 12 books and 100 papers and lectures nationally and internationally. http://valeriesinason.co.uk/index.html
The Clinic for Dissociative Studies was set up with the aid of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in 1998 as one of the few national centres of specialist expertise in the care and treatment of people with dissociative disorders. As an Independent Provider to the NHS it is commissioned by PCTs, mental health trusts and local authorities nationally to provide diagnosis, outpatient treatment and training. http://clinicds.com/
Working with Dissociation in Clinical Practice Using an Attachment Perspective - 18-19th June and 2-3rd July 2011, Summer course in collaboration with The Bowlby Centre - This 4-day continuing professional development course introduces key concepts for working therapeutically from a relational perspective with adults suffering from dissociative experiences. Dissociation will be explored as a survival strategy which begins when an individual is faced with repeated early emotional, physical and/or sexual trauma at the hands of attachment figures. http://clinicds.com/news.html
http://clinicds.com/resources/bowlby+2011+perfect++with+phil+.gif
Introduction chapter from "Attachment Trauma and Multiplicity" by Valerie Sinason - DID and Ritual Abuse
In America the largest amount of DID is diagnosed in connection with allegations of ritual Satanist abuse....It is worth noting that both at the Portman Clinic and in the Clinic for Dissociative Studies we have not found evidence of fundamentalist religious beliefs, recovered memory or Munchhausen's as issues in those alleging this kind of abuse. Indeed, the pilot study on patients alleging ritual abuse that Dr Robert Hale, then Director of the Portman Clinic and I submitted in July 2000 included the finding that the only two out of 51 subjects who had any link with evangelist religious groups made contact with them after disclosing ritual Satanist abuse, and only because no-one else would listen to them....
I have stated elsewhere (Sinason, 1994) that the number of children and adults tortured in the name of mainstream religious and racial orthodoxy outweighs any onslaught by Satanist abusers. http://clinicfordissociativestudies.com/short%20att%20tram%20mult%20Introduction%20for%20web.htm
Monday, April 18, 2011
Frontline Investigates Church Sex Abuse in Alaska
The Silence - Tuesday, April 19, 2011, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS
FRONTLINE reveals a little-known chapter of the Catholic Church sex abuse story: decades of abuse of Native Americans by priests and other church workers in Alaska.
In The Silence, the first of two magazine segments airing Tuesday, April 19, 2011, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS, FRONTLINE producer Tom Curran and reporter Mark Trahant examine the legacy of abuse by a number of men who worked for the Catholic Church along Alaska's far west coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They would leave behind a trail of hundreds of claims of abuse, making this one of the hardest hit regions in the country....
"This was 1970," says Anchorage attorney Ken Roosa, who represented the Alaska victims in a class action law suit against the church. "It was absolutely unthinkable that the Catholic Church could be involved in the sexual abuse of children. There was nowhere for the kids to hide. There was no one they could talk to. The adults believed the abusers over their own children. It was a perfect storm for molestation." As part of the church's class action settlement with the victims, the bishop of Fairbanks, Donald Kettler, was asked to do something that no other bishop in the country had done on this scale: return to all of the villages where the abuse occurred and apologize to the victims in person.
In December 2010, FRONTLINE gained unique access to Bishop Kettler's visit to the village of St. Michael -- frequently referred to as "ground zero" for the abuse -- where the bishop would come face-to-face with the reality of the abuse that the church had refused to acknowledge for years.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-silence/
FRONTLINE reveals a little-known chapter of the Catholic Church sex abuse story: decades of abuse of Native Americans by priests and other church workers in Alaska.
In The Silence, the first of two magazine segments airing Tuesday, April 19, 2011, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS, FRONTLINE producer Tom Curran and reporter Mark Trahant examine the legacy of abuse by a number of men who worked for the Catholic Church along Alaska's far west coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They would leave behind a trail of hundreds of claims of abuse, making this one of the hardest hit regions in the country....
"This was 1970," says Anchorage attorney Ken Roosa, who represented the Alaska victims in a class action law suit against the church. "It was absolutely unthinkable that the Catholic Church could be involved in the sexual abuse of children. There was nowhere for the kids to hide. There was no one they could talk to. The adults believed the abusers over their own children. It was a perfect storm for molestation." As part of the church's class action settlement with the victims, the bishop of Fairbanks, Donald Kettler, was asked to do something that no other bishop in the country had done on this scale: return to all of the villages where the abuse occurred and apologize to the victims in person.
In December 2010, FRONTLINE gained unique access to Bishop Kettler's visit to the village of St. Michael -- frequently referred to as "ground zero" for the abuse -- where the bishop would come face-to-face with the reality of the abuse that the church had refused to acknowledge for years.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-silence/
Sunday, April 17, 2011
SYBIL In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Ritual Abuse Torture
"SYBIL In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings" by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D.
SYBIL is a new book about Shirley Mason who had 16 personalities. It tells the story of her life after her cure depicted in the book SYBIL and TV movie starring Sally Field. This book contains paintings by 5 of Sybil's alternate personalities. The author's interviews with Shirley Mason report her own words and her new whole personality. (video of Dr. Suraci explaining the book.)
http://bea11.mapyourshow.com/3_0/exhibitor_details.cfm?exhid=331445&markcamefrom=y
"SYBIL In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings" by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D. presents evidence refuting Dr. Spiegel's claim to have hypnotized Shirley Mason. Dr. Suraci discovered an audio cassette where Ms. Mason and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her therapist, discuss how it was impossible for Dr. Spiegel to hypnotize Shirley, because she did not trust or like him.
SYBIL In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings (2011), a book written by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D. ISBN: 978-0-615-44600-4
http://members.authorsguild.net/psuraci/
Born May 31, 1936 in Rochester, New York, Patrick Suraci received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Assumption College, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the New School for Social Research, New York in 1981.
His latest work, Sybil In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings is being launched at Book Expo America at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York City on May 24, 2011....Dr. Suraci was a Staff Psychologist for the New York Police Department and is now in private practice in Manhattan. He has taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Baruch College at the City University of New York.
Sybil In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings
Dr. Suraci developed a friendship with Shirley Mason (Sybil) after she was cured from Multiple Personality Disorder. She gave him personal effects and paintings made by five of her personalities which all appear in the book. He discovered evidence to disprove the critics who were attempting to attack the veracity of her case.
http://members.authorsguild.net/psuraci/
Sybil In Her Own Words on facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sybil-In-Her-Own-Words/108610352553254
--
Persons Against NST Non-State Torture Including
Ritual Abuse-Torture (RAT) have a new website at http://nonstatetorture.org/
We work from a human rights, relational feminist perspective. All forms of non-state torture (NST) are a violation of the victimized persons human rights as stated in international human rights instruments such as UDHR, CAT, CEDAW, ICCPR and CRC. Perpetrators of NST, like all torturers, goal is the destruction of the victimized person's sense of personhood, therefore, our relational perspective is aimed at helping individuals so victimized to reclaim and empower their relationship with/to/for Self.
There are many forms of NST, such as ritual abuse-torture (RAT), child torture, spousal torture, relational torture, acculuraltural, and combinations of all of these, such as enduring torture - NST - when being trafficked. These realities are all found in our writings, our educational materials and our presentations. http://nonstatetorture.org/about/
Ritual Abuse Torture - Child Abuse Wiki
SYBIL is a new book about Shirley Mason who had 16 personalities. It tells the story of her life after her cure depicted in the book SYBIL and TV movie starring Sally Field. This book contains paintings by 5 of Sybil's alternate personalities. The author's interviews with Shirley Mason report her own words and her new whole personality. (video of Dr. Suraci explaining the book.)
http://bea11.mapyourshow.com/3_0/exhibitor_details.cfm?exhid=331445&markcamefrom=y
"SYBIL In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings" by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D. presents evidence refuting Dr. Spiegel's claim to have hypnotized Shirley Mason. Dr. Suraci discovered an audio cassette where Ms. Mason and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her therapist, discuss how it was impossible for Dr. Spiegel to hypnotize Shirley, because she did not trust or like him.
SYBIL In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings (2011), a book written by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D. ISBN: 978-0-615-44600-4
http://members.authorsguild.net/psuraci/
Born May 31, 1936 in Rochester, New York, Patrick Suraci received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Assumption College, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the New School for Social Research, New York in 1981.
His latest work, Sybil In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings is being launched at Book Expo America at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York City on May 24, 2011....Dr. Suraci was a Staff Psychologist for the New York Police Department and is now in private practice in Manhattan. He has taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Baruch College at the City University of New York.
Sybil In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings
Dr. Suraci developed a friendship with Shirley Mason (Sybil) after she was cured from Multiple Personality Disorder. She gave him personal effects and paintings made by five of her personalities which all appear in the book. He discovered evidence to disprove the critics who were attempting to attack the veracity of her case.
http://members.authorsguild.net/psuraci/
Sybil In Her Own Words on facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sybil-In-Her-Own-Words/108610352553254
--
Persons Against NST Non-State Torture Including
Ritual Abuse-Torture (RAT) have a new website at http://nonstatetorture.org/
We work from a human rights, relational feminist perspective. All forms of non-state torture (NST) are a violation of the victimized persons human rights as stated in international human rights instruments such as UDHR, CAT, CEDAW, ICCPR and CRC. Perpetrators of NST, like all torturers, goal is the destruction of the victimized person's sense of personhood, therefore, our relational perspective is aimed at helping individuals so victimized to reclaim and empower their relationship with/to/for Self.
There are many forms of NST, such as ritual abuse-torture (RAT), child torture, spousal torture, relational torture, acculuraltural, and combinations of all of these, such as enduring torture - NST - when being trafficked. These realities are all found in our writings, our educational materials and our presentations. http://nonstatetorture.org/about/
Ritual Abuse Torture - Child Abuse Wiki
Saturday, April 16, 2011
North American Truth and Reconciliation Commission
North American Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The NATRC seeks Truth and Reconciliation over historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government. http://natrcoalition.org/
The NATRC seeks Truth and Reconciliation over historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government. http://natrcoalition.org/
Friday, April 15, 2011
No Way Out But One documentary - woman accused of kidnapping her own children
No Way Out But One is a feature length documentary currently in post-production. It tells the story of an American woman accused of kidnapping her own children, a woman who fled the country and became the first American to be granted asylum by the government of the Netherlands on grounds of domestic violence. The 13-minute version presented here serves as a trailer for the feature and a documentary short.
In 1994 Holly Collins became an international fugitive when she took her three children and fled the United States to protect them from abuse. The family courts had ignored medical evidence of domestic violence and gave full custody of Holly's children to the man they named as their abuser – her ex-husband and the children's father. Wanted by the FBI, Holly became the first U.S. Citizen to receive asylum from the Netherlands.
In No Way Out But One, Holly Collins shares a story that in many respects is like thousands of others. It is estimated that 58,000 children a year are ordered into unsupervised contact with physically or sexually abusive parents following divorce in the United States.
Unlike so many of the other tragic stories happening around the country, Holly was able to protect her children and keep them safe. Despite all the harrowing trials, her story ultimately has a happy ending. Even though she and the kids had No Way Out But One.
http://nowayoutbutone.com/
In 1994 Holly Collins became an international fugitive when she took her three children and fled the United States to protect them from abuse. The family courts had ignored medical evidence of domestic violence and gave full custody of Holly's children to the man they named as their abuser – her ex-husband and the children's father. Wanted by the FBI, Holly became the first U.S. Citizen to receive asylum from the Netherlands.
In No Way Out But One, Holly Collins shares a story that in many respects is like thousands of others. It is estimated that 58,000 children a year are ordered into unsupervised contact with physically or sexually abusive parents following divorce in the United States.
Unlike so many of the other tragic stories happening around the country, Holly was able to protect her children and keep them safe. Despite all the harrowing trials, her story ultimately has a happy ending. Even though she and the kids had No Way Out But One.
http://nowayoutbutone.com/
Thursday, April 14, 2011
482 children died. Now what?
482 children died. Now what? Carol Capó
April 11, 2011 If 482 children had died in Virginia because of tainted formula or shoddy cribs, there would be people going door to door to recall all the suspect cans and cribs they could find.
If 482 children had died in Virginia because the brakes on a certain make of car were faulty, we would have demanded action from Congress — and got it.
482 children did die in Virginia, over the 11-year period that ended June 30, 2010. But they weren't sickened by bad food or suffocated by collapsing cribs or crushed by careening cars. They died because the people who loved them, or should have, killed them or let them die.
That astounding number is the count of children who died of abuse or neglect at the hands of a caretaker, in just this state in just this period of time....
In Hampton Roads, in that time, 196 children died....
This is what we know about those 196 children: They were almost all babies. About half never got to celebrate their first birthday, and three-quarters were no older than two.
We know how they died: The single most common cause was inflicted head injury.
We know who killed them. 60 percent died because of the action or inaction of a parent; 11 percent were the victims of a parent's lover, usually the mother's.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-nws-capo-column-0412-20110411,0,1411662.column
April 11, 2011 If 482 children had died in Virginia because of tainted formula or shoddy cribs, there would be people going door to door to recall all the suspect cans and cribs they could find.
If 482 children had died in Virginia because the brakes on a certain make of car were faulty, we would have demanded action from Congress — and got it.
482 children did die in Virginia, over the 11-year period that ended June 30, 2010. But they weren't sickened by bad food or suffocated by collapsing cribs or crushed by careening cars. They died because the people who loved them, or should have, killed them or let them die.
That astounding number is the count of children who died of abuse or neglect at the hands of a caretaker, in just this state in just this period of time....
In Hampton Roads, in that time, 196 children died....
This is what we know about those 196 children: They were almost all babies. About half never got to celebrate their first birthday, and three-quarters were no older than two.
We know how they died: The single most common cause was inflicted head injury.
We know who killed them. 60 percent died because of the action or inaction of a parent; 11 percent were the victims of a parent's lover, usually the mother's.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-nws-capo-column-0412-20110411,0,1411662.column
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Ritual Abuse And Extreme Abuse Clinician’s Conference 2011
Ritual Abuse And Extreme Abuse Clinician’s Conference 2011
August 5, 2011
DoubleTree near
Bradley International Airport
16 Ella Grasso Turnpike
Windsor Locks, CT
Internet conference information is at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ritual-abuse-and-extreme-abuse-clinicians-conference-2011/
Conference Goals
- To educate practitioners and their helpers about ritual abuse and extreme abuse issues
-To help practitioners network and discuss some of the issues their clients may have
-To discuss techniques that may help practitioners
Speakers and Biographies
(This is a partial listing. Please check our conference home page for our latest speaker list and schedule.)
Please note: Listing of these speakers does not necessarily constitute our endorsement of them.
.
Staci Sprout MSW, LICSW, CSAT specializes in empowering individuals who have survived complex traumas and are seeking support in moving forward toward their life visions. Her practice is particularly dedicated to those in recovery from sexual addiction, and she is a Nationally Certified Sex Addiction Therapist trained directly by Patrick Carnes, Ph.D. through the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP). Staci graduated from the University of Washington in 1992 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and a Master’s of Social Work degree in 1994, with a concentration in Health and Mental Health Treatment. She has worked in both private practice and agency settings as a psychotherapist and group facilitator over the past 14 years. She uses cognitive behavioral skill-building approaches combined with deep listening, validation, encouragement, and education about healing and recovery. She is a trained provider of Lifespan Integration therapy, levels I and II, a gentle yet effective method for healing past traumas. Her topic is: Sexual Health after Extreme Trauma: Questions to Ask and Tools You Can Use
Lee Schwecke has been a psychiatric nursing educator for 42 years and a staff nurse in an inpatient psychiatric facility for 23 years, working with survivors of violence and trauma. She co-authored 5 editions of a psychiatric nursing textbook and is a contributor to the 6th edition. (Schwecke, LH. (2011). Survivors of violence and trauma, in NL Keltner, CE Bostrom, and TM McGuinness. (2011). Psychiatric Nursing (6th ed). St. Louis: Elsevier. She has published 2 editorials on the same topics in a national psychiatric nursing journal: Schwecke, LH. (2009). Childhood sexual abuse, PTSD, borderline personality personality: Understanding the connections. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, 47(7), 4-6. and Schwecke, LH. (2011). Beyond childhood sexual abuse: Ritual abuse-torture and human trafficking. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, 49(1), 8-10. Her topic is: Helping survivors of violence and trauma through education of nurses and mental health professionals.
Ginny Fouts, LPC, LMFT, is founder of Innovative Therapies LLC. Mrs. Fouts has worked in the mental health field for 30 years in a variety of settings. She has experience helping individuals, couples, adolescents and groups, along with a wide-range of training working with those who have experienced severe trauma. Over the years she has seen counseling bring healing to many lives and relationships. Her topic is: Foundations of good DID Therapy
Conference Schedule
The conference will be held on August 5, 2011 from 8 am until 5 pm at the DoubleTree near the Bradley International Airport, 16 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, CT. A free shuttle is available to and from the airport.
A free lunch buffet will be available to all conference participants. The cost of this conference is only $50 and limited seating will be available, so please register as soon as possible.
Due to the nature of the information being discussed, all conference proceedings will be confidential. Handouts and materials will be available for participants to take home.
Conference Registration
Registration is not guaranteed, so before making any travel arrangements, please contact smartnews@aol.com by e-mail, sending your professional qualifications.
Conference Registration
(Please read the entire brochure before registering.)
After approval, please mail this registration form and checks (made out to S.M.A.R.T., US Banks only please), money orders (US) to: Clinician's Conference, c/o S.M.A.R.T., P O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027 USA
Name: (please include names and individual addresses of all registrees, thanks.)
___________________________
Licensing information :
___________________________________
Street: ____________________________
City: ___________________State:______
Zip:________E-mail_________________
Total Amount Due _____________
special meals needed ____________________
Please make checks payable to S.M.A.R.T.
(US banks only, please.) Refund Policy: Fees will not be refunded after July 7, 2011. Please send us written notice. Refund will be minus $20.00 deposit per registree.
Conference Information
Conference Participants
This conference will be open to licensed practitioners in related fields to discuss issues in working with clients suffering from ritual abuse and extreme abuse symptoms. Students studying in related fields and retired licensed practitioners may write smartnews@aol.com by e-mail for more information.
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.
Transportation
There is a free shuttle to and from the airport. Hotel parking is available at no charge for those attending the conference. Conference sponsors, etc. assume no responsibility for ground and/or air transportation arrangements. Conference sponsors cannot assume responsibility for additional expense or losses due to illnesses, cancellation of flights, strikes or other causes.
Accommodations
Room rates for Friday night at the DoubleTree Hotel at Bradley International Airport (CT) are $89 a day for one person (not incl. tax), please mention the SMART 2011 conference to get the special rate. This rate is guaranteed until 7/7/11 or all rooms at the special rate are gone. Call 860-627-5171 for information. Lunch will be free both days for all conference attendees that register before August 1, 2011. The hotel has no information about the conference, other than room information.
Attendance Policy
Presentation of a picture ID will be required of all conference participants, unless prior arrangements are made. This is for the protection of all participants. Conference sponsors, cosponsor, speakers, organizers and exhibitors assume no responsibility for any reactions resulting from attending our conference. Statements made and materials exhibited and distributed by attendees, speakers and exhibitors are their own and don’t necessarily represent the policies or views of conference sponsors, cosponsor, speakers, exhibitors, organizers or attendees. Children are not permitted to attend the conference. S.M.A.R.T. and its representatives also reserve the right to remove anyone from the conference at any time. Photographing, audio taping and videotaping without written permission from S.M.A.R.T. are prohibited.
(Permission given to forward this in its entirety to those sympathetic to extreme abuse issues and to other clinical lists.)
August 5, 2011
DoubleTree near
Bradley International Airport
16 Ella Grasso Turnpike
Windsor Locks, CT
Internet conference information is at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ritual-abuse-and-extreme-abuse-clinicians-conference-2011/
Conference Goals
- To educate practitioners and their helpers about ritual abuse and extreme abuse issues
-To help practitioners network and discuss some of the issues their clients may have
-To discuss techniques that may help practitioners
Speakers and Biographies
(This is a partial listing. Please check our conference home page for our latest speaker list and schedule.)
Please note: Listing of these speakers does not necessarily constitute our endorsement of them.
.
Staci Sprout MSW, LICSW, CSAT specializes in empowering individuals who have survived complex traumas and are seeking support in moving forward toward their life visions. Her practice is particularly dedicated to those in recovery from sexual addiction, and she is a Nationally Certified Sex Addiction Therapist trained directly by Patrick Carnes, Ph.D. through the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP). Staci graduated from the University of Washington in 1992 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and a Master’s of Social Work degree in 1994, with a concentration in Health and Mental Health Treatment. She has worked in both private practice and agency settings as a psychotherapist and group facilitator over the past 14 years. She uses cognitive behavioral skill-building approaches combined with deep listening, validation, encouragement, and education about healing and recovery. She is a trained provider of Lifespan Integration therapy, levels I and II, a gentle yet effective method for healing past traumas. Her topic is: Sexual Health after Extreme Trauma: Questions to Ask and Tools You Can Use
Lee Schwecke has been a psychiatric nursing educator for 42 years and a staff nurse in an inpatient psychiatric facility for 23 years, working with survivors of violence and trauma. She co-authored 5 editions of a psychiatric nursing textbook and is a contributor to the 6th edition. (Schwecke, LH. (2011). Survivors of violence and trauma, in NL Keltner, CE Bostrom, and TM McGuinness. (2011). Psychiatric Nursing (6th ed). St. Louis: Elsevier. She has published 2 editorials on the same topics in a national psychiatric nursing journal: Schwecke, LH. (2009). Childhood sexual abuse, PTSD, borderline personality personality: Understanding the connections. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, 47(7), 4-6. and Schwecke, LH. (2011). Beyond childhood sexual abuse: Ritual abuse-torture and human trafficking. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, 49(1), 8-10. Her topic is: Helping survivors of violence and trauma through education of nurses and mental health professionals.
Ginny Fouts, LPC, LMFT, is founder of Innovative Therapies LLC. Mrs. Fouts has worked in the mental health field for 30 years in a variety of settings. She has experience helping individuals, couples, adolescents and groups, along with a wide-range of training working with those who have experienced severe trauma. Over the years she has seen counseling bring healing to many lives and relationships. Her topic is: Foundations of good DID Therapy
Conference Schedule
The conference will be held on August 5, 2011 from 8 am until 5 pm at the DoubleTree near the Bradley International Airport, 16 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, CT. A free shuttle is available to and from the airport.
A free lunch buffet will be available to all conference participants. The cost of this conference is only $50 and limited seating will be available, so please register as soon as possible.
Due to the nature of the information being discussed, all conference proceedings will be confidential. Handouts and materials will be available for participants to take home.
Conference Registration
Registration is not guaranteed, so before making any travel arrangements, please contact smartnews@aol.com by e-mail, sending your professional qualifications.
Conference Registration
(Please read the entire brochure before registering.)
After approval, please mail this registration form and checks (made out to S.M.A.R.T., US Banks only please), money orders (US) to: Clinician's Conference, c/o S.M.A.R.T., P O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027 USA
Name: (please include names and individual addresses of all registrees, thanks.)
___________________________
Licensing information :
___________________________________
Street: ____________________________
City: ___________________State:______
Zip:________E-mail_________________
Total Amount Due _____________
special meals needed ____________________
Please make checks payable to S.M.A.R.T.
(US banks only, please.) Refund Policy: Fees will not be refunded after July 7, 2011. Please send us written notice. Refund will be minus $20.00 deposit per registree.
Conference Information
Conference Participants
This conference will be open to licensed practitioners in related fields to discuss issues in working with clients suffering from ritual abuse and extreme abuse symptoms. Students studying in related fields and retired licensed practitioners may write smartnews@aol.com by e-mail for more information.
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.
Transportation
There is a free shuttle to and from the airport. Hotel parking is available at no charge for those attending the conference. Conference sponsors, etc. assume no responsibility for ground and/or air transportation arrangements. Conference sponsors cannot assume responsibility for additional expense or losses due to illnesses, cancellation of flights, strikes or other causes.
Accommodations
Room rates for Friday night at the DoubleTree Hotel at Bradley International Airport (CT) are $89 a day for one person (not incl. tax), please mention the SMART 2011 conference to get the special rate. This rate is guaranteed until 7/7/11 or all rooms at the special rate are gone. Call 860-627-5171 for information. Lunch will be free both days for all conference attendees that register before August 1, 2011. The hotel has no information about the conference, other than room information.
Attendance Policy
Presentation of a picture ID will be required of all conference participants, unless prior arrangements are made. This is for the protection of all participants. Conference sponsors, cosponsor, speakers, organizers and exhibitors assume no responsibility for any reactions resulting from attending our conference. Statements made and materials exhibited and distributed by attendees, speakers and exhibitors are their own and don’t necessarily represent the policies or views of conference sponsors, cosponsor, speakers, exhibitors, organizers or attendees. Children are not permitted to attend the conference. S.M.A.R.T. and its representatives also reserve the right to remove anyone from the conference at any time. Photographing, audio taping and videotaping without written permission from S.M.A.R.T. are prohibited.
(Permission given to forward this in its entirety to those sympathetic to extreme abuse issues and to other clinical lists.)
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Ritual Abuse and Child Abuse Newsletter - May 2011
The newsletter is at: http://ritualabuse.us/2011/04/issue-98-may-2011/
This issue contains information on the Pennsylvania clergy abuse case, the Pope, Northwest Jesuits, Kevin Annett, military abuse allegations, online abuse, UK child abuse convictions (Satanic Ritual Abuse), CIA/Bush Torture Program Sirhan Sirhan mind control allegations, SMART conference podcasts, Army psyops, US Medical Experiments on disabled people and prison inmates, Solitary Confinement in the United States, Johnson v. Rogers Memorial Hospital, dissociative amnesia in Holocaust survivors, the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, Senator Scott Brown child abuse story, twin study - PTSD trauma link, parental alienation syndrome, Mackenzie Phillips
A conference to help survivors of severe child abuse (ritual abuse) and torture will be held on August 5 - 7, 2011, between 8 - 5 PM Saturday and Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel near Bradley International Airport, 16 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, CT 06096 (between Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA). This conference will help educate survivors of this abuse and their helpers. Pre-registration is preferred. For information write S.M.A.R.T., P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295 E-mail: smartnews@aol.com, conference information is at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
Ritual Abuse And Extreme Abuse Clinician's Conference 2011 - A one day conference preceding our regular conference will be open to licensed practitioners in related fields to discuss issues in working with clients suffering from ritual abuse and extreme abuse symptoms. Students studying in related fields and retired licensed practitioners may write smartnews@aol.com by e-mail for more information. Internet conference information is available at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ritual-abuse-and-extreme-abuse-clinicians-conference-2011/
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Dialogue on Clergy Sex Abuse - Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
Annual Restorative Justice Initiative Conference Event
04-04-2011 Marquette Law School
Harm, Hope, and Healing: International Dialogue on the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal April 4 & 5, 2011 Marquette Law School - Marquette University campus
(links to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's Lecture
and viewing the conference)
http://law.marquette.edu/cgi-bin/site.pl?2216&deEvent_eventID=3256&date=04-04-2011
4/4/2011 Marquette Conference Address
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY - HARM, HOPE AND HEALING
Marquette University International Dialogue on the Clergy Sexual Abuse Scandal
THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE: A PERSONAL JOURNEY
Lecture Notes of Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin
Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland
Marquette University, Milwaukee, 4th April 2011
Let me give you some brief statistical background into the extent of the abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Dublin. In the period between 1940 and 2010 – as far as it has been possible to ascertain - allegations or suspicions of sexual abuse have been made against over 90 priests of the Archdiocese and against about 60 religious priests who held diocesan appointments. 10 Dublin priests, or former priests, have been convicted or have cases pending in the criminal courts. Two non-diocesan priests, who served in Dublin, have also been convicted in the criminal courts. The number of victims who have been individually identified is 570, but it is generally accepted that the number of children who were abused must run into thousands, possibly by about 10 priests who were clearly serial pedophiles....
I remember well the first complaint about the behaviour of a priest that arrived on my desk. I looked briefly at the priest’s file to see if there were any earlier indications about his behaviour. At the top of the file I found a yellow page saying “Inspected regarding CSA - Nothing found”. I felt however that I should look at the file in a little more detail and found that the very next document was an internal note: “Father X seems to be back to his old activities”. Clearly there was knowledge of “old activities” but no clear understanding that these activities indicated an on-going serious pattern of grooming which should clearly have raised red flags. The case was effectively dealt with respecting the appropriate norms; the priest was removed from ministry and the civil authorities informed....
If I take a Father Z, I can categorise him statistically in various ways. He can be statistically registered as one priest; it can be determined however that he abused perhaps one hundred known victims; there can be valid indications that he had probably abused hundreds more other children; the number of family members affected will then easily reach into the thousands. And that is just for one priest. And in Dublin you must multiply Father Z by about ten real serial abusers....
I tell these events not to re-open history, but to illustrate just how difficult it is to bring an institution around to the conviction that the truth must be told. All institutions have an innate tendency to protect themselves and to hide their dirty laundry. We have to learn that the truth has a power to set free which half-truths do not have. The first condition for restorative justice is that all parties are willing to tell the truth and to take ownership of the truth, even when the truth is unpleasant. As I said at a recent liturgy of lament in Dublin: “The truth will set us free, but not in a simplistic way. The truth hurts. The truth cleanses not like smooth designer soap but like a fire that burns and hurts and lances”....
http://www.dublindiocese.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2367&Itemid=1166
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Ritual Abuse and Mind Control: The Manipulation of Attachment Needs
Ritual Abuse and Mind Control: The Manipulation of Attachment Needs
Editors : Orit Badouk Epstein, Joseph Schwartz, Rachel Wingfield Schwartz
Publisher Karnac Books 2011
ISBN 13 : 9781855758391
ISBN 10 : 1855758393
Synopsis:
People who have survived ritual abuse or mind control experiments have often been silenced, accused of lying, mocked and disbelieved. Clinicians working with survivors often find themselves isolated, facing the same levels of disbelief and denial from other professionals within the mental health field. This report - based on proceedings from a conference on the subject - presents knowledge and experience from both clinicians and survivors to promote understanding and recovery from organized and ritual abuse, mind control and programming. The book combines clinical presentations, survivors' voices, and research material to help address the ways in which we can work clinically with mind control and cult programming from the perspective of relational psychotherapy.
Description:
‘Although my father wrote about dissociation and multiple personality, it wasn’t until Valerie Sinason asked me to do some filming for a survivor of ritual abuse that the penny really dropped. We had been filming the locations where much of the abuse had occurred and the woman asked me “Do you believe me?” And I realized that I did. This book of papers from a pioneering conference of survivors and therapists stands as a testament to the courage of those willing to come forward to name and identify the horrors of organized abuse practiced on children in our society. Every therapist should read it.’
- Sir Richard Bowlby
‘This book, and the remarkable conference it documents, has brought together an impressive group of experts, professional and experiential, to discuss one of the most controversial issues in the fields of trauma and mental health. Attachment theory can definitely throw new light on a topic that some sceptics might prefer be left in the dark altogether.’
- John Read, Professor of Clinical Psychology, the University of Auckland
Editors:
Orit Badouk Epstein is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor who trained at The Bowlby Centre, London where she is a member of the executive committee. She works as a relational psychotherapist in private practice and has a particular interest and passion for working with individuals who have experienced extreme abuse and trauma, DID, ritual abuse and working relationally with parents
Joseph Schwartz is a training therapist and supervisor at the Bowlby Centre. He is the author of numerous papers on clinical practice, the history of psychoanalysis, and the lack of a role of genetics in mental distress.
Rachel Wingfield Schwartz is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and a training supervisor and teacher at the Bowlby Centre. Rachel has been working with ritual abuse survivors since 1993 and is passionately committed to ending the disbelief and silence surrounding this issue.
http://www.karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=29482
http://bit.ly/eX71Do
http://books.google.com/books?id=xU6GZ28gGy4C&dq=Ritual+Abuse+and+Mind+Control:+The+Manipulation+of+Attachment+Needs&source=gbs_navlinks_s
http://tinyurl.com/3cnlawt
http://books.google.com/books?id=xU6GZ28gGy4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Ritual+Abuse+and+Mind+Control:+The+Manipulation+of+Attachment+Needs&source=bl&ots=lBhIDQb2Bl&sig=Vqq6xIa_Y23-kw-azoJa_XAgbjQ&hl=en&ei=zAudTameMMbSgQey64D8Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
Editors : Orit Badouk Epstein, Joseph Schwartz, Rachel Wingfield Schwartz
Publisher Karnac Books 2011
ISBN 13 : 9781855758391
ISBN 10 : 1855758393
Synopsis:
People who have survived ritual abuse or mind control experiments have often been silenced, accused of lying, mocked and disbelieved. Clinicians working with survivors often find themselves isolated, facing the same levels of disbelief and denial from other professionals within the mental health field. This report - based on proceedings from a conference on the subject - presents knowledge and experience from both clinicians and survivors to promote understanding and recovery from organized and ritual abuse, mind control and programming. The book combines clinical presentations, survivors' voices, and research material to help address the ways in which we can work clinically with mind control and cult programming from the perspective of relational psychotherapy.
Description:
‘Although my father wrote about dissociation and multiple personality, it wasn’t until Valerie Sinason asked me to do some filming for a survivor of ritual abuse that the penny really dropped. We had been filming the locations where much of the abuse had occurred and the woman asked me “Do you believe me?” And I realized that I did. This book of papers from a pioneering conference of survivors and therapists stands as a testament to the courage of those willing to come forward to name and identify the horrors of organized abuse practiced on children in our society. Every therapist should read it.’
- Sir Richard Bowlby
‘This book, and the remarkable conference it documents, has brought together an impressive group of experts, professional and experiential, to discuss one of the most controversial issues in the fields of trauma and mental health. Attachment theory can definitely throw new light on a topic that some sceptics might prefer be left in the dark altogether.’
- John Read, Professor of Clinical Psychology, the University of Auckland
Editors:
Orit Badouk Epstein is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor who trained at The Bowlby Centre, London where she is a member of the executive committee. She works as a relational psychotherapist in private practice and has a particular interest and passion for working with individuals who have experienced extreme abuse and trauma, DID, ritual abuse and working relationally with parents
Joseph Schwartz is a training therapist and supervisor at the Bowlby Centre. He is the author of numerous papers on clinical practice, the history of psychoanalysis, and the lack of a role of genetics in mental distress.
Rachel Wingfield Schwartz is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and a training supervisor and teacher at the Bowlby Centre. Rachel has been working with ritual abuse survivors since 1993 and is passionately committed to ending the disbelief and silence surrounding this issue.
http://www.karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=29482
http://bit.ly/eX71Do
http://books.google.com/books?id=xU6GZ28gGy4C&dq=Ritual+Abuse+and+Mind+Control:+The+Manipulation+of+Attachment+Needs&source=gbs_navlinks_s
http://tinyurl.com/3cnlawt
http://books.google.com/books?id=xU6GZ28gGy4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Ritual+Abuse+and+Mind+Control:+The+Manipulation+of+Attachment+Needs&source=bl&ots=lBhIDQb2Bl&sig=Vqq6xIa_Y23-kw-azoJa_XAgbjQ&hl=en&ei=zAudTameMMbSgQey64D8Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The Wikipedia Child Abuse and Ritual Abuse Cover Up
The Wikipedia Child Abuse and Ritual Abuse Cover Up
Wikipedia has a long history of problems with accuracy, bias and allegations of connections to pedophilia and pornography.
1) The Bomis Connection
2) Pedophilia Allegations
3) Wikipedia Accuracy Problems
4) Summary of the problems with Wikipedia
5) Bias in child abuse articles – banning websites with information on child abuse crimes
The Bomis Connection
Wikipedia was financially supported by Bomis a dot-com company that was founded in 1996. It was founded by Jimmy Wales (one of the founders of Wikipedia) and Tim Shell. Bomis ran a website called Bomis Premium at premium.bomis.com until 2005, offering customers access to premium, X-rated pornographic content.
Until mid-2005, Bomis featured the Bomis Babe Report publishing news and reviews about celebrities, models, and the adult entertainment industry. The Babe Report linked to Bomis Premium and often posted updates about new models joining Bomis. Bomis has operated nekkid.info, a free repository of selected erotic photographs. Bomis continues to host The Babe Engine, which indexes photos ranging from glamour photography to pornography. (from Wikipedia)
also see :
Congress Reacts to Wikipedia Firestorm By James R. Marsh on April 29, 2010 http://www.childlaw.us/2010/04/congress-reacts-to-wikipedia-f.html
Pedophilia Allegations
FOX News ran an expose on the connections of child pornography, Wikimedia and Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Distributing Child Porn, Co-Founder Tells FBI By Jana Winter FOXNews.com April 27, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/wikipedia-child-porn-larry-sanger-fbi/
“The parent company of Wikipedia is knowingly distributing child pornography, the co-founder of the online encyclopedia says, and he’s imploring the FBI to investigate.
Larry Sanger, who left Wikipedia in 2002, said Wikimedia Commons (the parent company of Wiki products including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikiquote) is rife with renderings of children performing sexual acts. Sanger sent a letter to the FBI earlier this month outlining his concerns and identifying two specific Wikimedia Commons categories he believes violate federal obscenity law. The first category, entitled “Pedophilia,” contains 25-30 explicit and detailed drawings of children performing sexual acts. The category was created three years ago. The second, “Lolicon,” provides cartoons similar in detail and depiction. One of the more egregious cartoons shows a rendering of a young child about to perform oral sex on a much older man.” Wikimedia Foundation posted an online response stating that The Wikimedia Foundation obeys the law and had not been contacted by the FBI or any other law-enforcement agency about allegedly illegal content. They stated that they delete illegal material when they are told about it.
Wikipedophilia By James R. Marsh on April 20, 2010
http://www.childlaw.us/2010/04/wikipedophilia.html
“About two years ago, rumors started floating around about Wikipedia’s involvement with child pornography and the pedophile agenda. First there was a row about this image on Wikipedia depicting child nudity. Then there was the long-standing allegation by Perverted Justice that:
Pedophiles have long sought to use Wikipedia to justify and promote their agenda. They organize together in order to create Wikipedia accounts and then seek to use Wikipedia’s all-inclusiveness to promote their point of view. When pointed out, Wikipedians themselves often don’t believe that there is an organized campaign to subvert the user-edited encyclopedia in order to promote the pedophile agenda.
http://www.wikisposure.com/Wikipedia_Campaign
Well now these allegations have risen to a new level. Last week, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger reported the site’s parent organization to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he believes the Wikimedia Commons “may be knowingly distributing child pornography.”
EXCLUSIVE: Shakeup at Wikipedia in Wake of Porn Purge By Jana Winter – FOXNews.com 5/14/10 updated on May 17, 2010
On May 7, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that Wales had personally deleted many of the images from Wikimedia’s servers, and that he’d ordered that thousands more be purged. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages….
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/14/exclusive-shake-wikipedia-porn-pressure/
see http://ritualabuse.us/2010/06/issue-93-july-2010/
for more information on the Wikipedia – Pedophilia allegations
Wikipedia Accuracy Problems
There have been a variety of newspaper articles and studies over the years showing accuracy problems with Wikipedia.
Comparison of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias for accuracy, breadth, and depth in historical articles
Findings – The study did reveal inaccuracies in eight of the nine entries and exposed major flaws in at least two of the nine Wikipedia articles. Overall, Wikipedia’s accuracy rate was 80 percent compared with 95-96 percent accuracy within the other sources. This study does support the claim that Wikipedia is less reliable than other reference resources. Furthermore, the research found at least five unattributed direct quotations and verbatim text from other sources with no citations.
Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia. Ann Pharmacother. 2008;42(12):1814-1821
RESULTS: Wikipedia was able to answer significantly fewer drug information questions (40.0%) compared with Medscape Drug Reference (MDR) (82.5%; p < 0.001). Wikipedia performed poorly regarding information on dosing, with a score of 0% versus the MDR score of 90.0%. Answers found in Wikipedia were 76.0% complete, while MDR provided answers that were 95.5% complete; overall, Wikipedia answers were less complete than those in Medscape (p < 0.001). No factual errors were found in Wikipedia, whereas 4 answers in Medscape conflicted with the answer key; errors of omission were higher in Wikipedia (n = 48) than in MDR (n = 14). There was a marked improvement in Wikipedia over time, as current entries were superior to those 90 days prior (p = 0.024).
CONCLUSIONS: Wikipedia has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission than the comparator database. Wikipedia may be a useful point of engagement for consumers, but is not authoritative and should only be a supplemental source of drug information.
http://www.theannals.com/cgi/content/abstract/42/12/1814
Wikipedia itself makes no guarantee of validity at its General Disclaimer page.
quotes:
WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY
“Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information.”
“However, Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields.”
“Wikipedia is not uniformly peer reviewed; while readers may correct errors or engage in casual peer review, they have no legal duty to do so and thus all information read here is without any implied warranty of fitness for any purpose or use whatsoever.”
Wikipedia ‘shows CIA page edits’
An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6947532.stm
See Who’s Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign
By John Borland Email 08.14.07 The result: A database of 34.4 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization’s net address has made. Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material.
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker
Jimbo Wales ends death by Wikipedia
Kennedy murder shames online cult
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
On Tuesday afternoon, following a Washington luncheon celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama, longtime US Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd kicked the proverbial bucket. At least, that’s what happened in Wikiland. In our world, they’re still among the living.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/22/wikipedia_vandalism_crackdown/
Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah’s Traverse Mountain
By Cade Metz in San Francisco 6th December 2007
Wikipedia is not a democracy. But the totalitarian attitudes of the site’s ruling clique go much further than Jimbo cares to acknowledge. In early September, the Wikipedia inner circle banned edits from 1,000 homes and one massive online retailer in an attempt to suppress the voice of one man.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/
The word on Wikipedia: Trust but verify
Popular online encyclopedia, plagued by errors, troubles educators By Lisa Daniels and Alex Johnson msnbc.com and NBC News
March. 29, 2007 “I was looking at a stack of final examinations,” said Waters, a professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College in Vermont, “and I found several instances of misinformation that [were] identical from one student to another.” All of those students in Waters’ Japanese history class late last year had been steered wrong by the same source — Wikipedia, the sprawling online encyclopedia that has revolutionized how ordinary people find information.
….The department banned students from using it as a source in their papers, although they are allowed to consult it for background material, a move that was quickly mimicked by professors at other schools, including UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17740041/
10 Questions: Jimmy Wales 3/21/07
How can I persuade my teachers to allow me to use Wikipedia as a legitimate research source?—Kaitlyn Grigsby, Medina, Ohio
I would agree with your teachers that that isn’t the right way to use Wikipedia. The site is a wonderful starting point for research. But it’s only a starting point because there’s always a chance that there’s something wrong, and you should check your sources if you are writing a paper.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1601491,00.html
One great source — if you can trust it
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff July 12, 2004
So of course Wikipedia is popular. Maybe too popular. For it lacks one vital feature of the traditional encyclopedia: accountability. Old-school reference books hire expert scholars to write their articles, and employ skilled editors to check and double-check their work. Wikipedia’s articles are written by anyone who fancies himself an expert….
Ross admits to reading and enjoying Wikipedia, and has even gotten ideas there for future Britannica articles. But the absence of traditional editorial controls makes Wikipedia unsuited to serious research. “How do they know it’s accurate?” Ross asks. “People can put down anything.”
Wikipedia and Beyond – Jimmy Wales’ sprawling vision -
Katherine Mangu-Ward from the June 2007 issue
Wales moved to Chicago and became a futures and options trader. After six years of betting on interest rates and currency fluctuations, he made enough money to pay the mortgage for the rest of his life. In 1998 he moved to San Diego and started a Web portal, Bomis, which featured, among other things, a “guy-oriented search engine” and pictures of scantily clad women. The en déshabillé ladies have since caused trouble for Wales, who regularly fields questions about his former life as a “porn king.” In a typically blunt move, Wales often responds to criticism of his Bomis days by sending reporters links to Yahoo’s midget porn category page. If he was a porn king, he suggests, so is the head of the biggest Web portal in the world….
Wikipedia does fail sometimes. The most famous controversy over its accuracy boiled over when John Seigenthaler Sr., a former assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, wrote about his own Wikipedia entry in a November 2005 USA Today op-ed. The entry on Seigenthaler included a claim that he had been involved in both Kennedy assassinations. “We live in a universe of new media,” wrote Seigenthaler, “with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research-but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects.”….
Wikipedia’s other major scandal hasn’t been quite as easy for Wales to laugh off, because he was the culprit. In 2005 he was caught with his hand on the edit button, taking advantage of Wikipedia’s open editing policy to remove Larry Sanger from the encyclopedia’s official history of itself. There has been an ongoing controversy about Wales’ attempts to edit his own Wikipedia entry, which is permitted but considered extremely bad form. After a round of negative publicity when the edits were discovered, Wales stopped editing his own profile. But in the site’s discussion pages, using the handle “Jimbo Wales,” he can be found trying to persuade others to make changes on this and other topics.
http://reason.com/archives/2007/05/30/wikipedia-and-beyond
A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE December 11, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/media/11web.html
Wikipedia’s Accountability Problem By Daniel Brandt
Saturday, January 21, 2006
There is a problem with the structure of Wikipedia. The basic problem is that no one, neither the Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, nor the volunteers who are connected with Wikipedia, consider themselves responsible for the content. If you don’t believe me, then carefully read Wikipedia’s disclaimer. At the same time that no one claims responsibility, there are two unique characteristics of Wikipedia that can be very damaging to a person, corporation, or group. The first is that anyone can edit an article, and there is no guarantee that any article you read has not been edited maliciously, and remains uncorrected in that state, at the precise time that you access that article.
The second unique characteristic is that Wikipedia articles, and in some cases even the free-for-all “talk” discussions behind the articles, rank very highly in the major search engines. This means that Wikipedia’s potential for inflicting damage is amplified by several orders of magnitude.
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/brandt01212006/
Wikipedia Watch – This site examines the phenomenon of Wikipedia. We are interested in them because they have a massive, unearned influence on what passes for reliable information.
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/
Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People By NOAM COHEN
August 24, 2009 Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia’s contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia’s implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries….Under the current system, it is not difficult to insert false information into a Wikipedia entry, at least for a short time. In March, for example, a 22-year-old Irish student planted a false quotation attributed to the French composer Maurice Jarre shortly after Mr. Jarre’s death. It was promptly included in obituaries about Mr. Jarre in several newspapers, including The Guardian and The Independent in Britain. And on Jan. 20, vandals changed the entries for two ailing senators, Edward M. Kennedy and Robert C. Byrd, to report falsely that they had died.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/technology/internet/25wikipedia.html
The 15 Biggest Wikipedia Blunders JR Raphael, PC World
Aug 26, 2009 Here are 15 of the biggest Wikipedia blunders the new editing system might have prevented. These false facts, according to widely published accounts, all appeared on the Wikipedia site at some point.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/170874/the_15_biggest_wikipedia_blunders.html
Summary of the problems with Wikipedia
1) There is no guarantee its information is correct.
2) Its editors are anonymous and may be biased about the topic they are writing about and may be unqualified to write encyclopedia articles.
3) There is inconsistent or no fact checking, depending on the article.
4) The rules of Wikipedia at times are used to control article content and delete other content from strong sources.
5) Experts working on certain topics in Wikipedia may be derided and discouraged from contributing to certain articles.
Therefore, one is probably better off reading a real encyclopedia or journal article, due to the potential for reading inaccurate information and a slanted or biased article.
Bias in child abuse articles – banning websites with information on child abuse crimes
Editors and Administrators have worked hard to maintain a strong bias from the perspective of the alleged or convicted perpetrators in a variety of child abuse articles, including the ones connected to ritual abuse topics. Even when presented with information directly from court cases, this information has been deleted from articles. Several administrators watch these articles, to make sure that balancing information is not allowed in these articles. Even when the perpetrators discussed in these articles were convicted of a child abuse or ritual abuse crime and lost every appeal, many Wikipedia articles will still lean toward the perspective that the conviction was unjust and not allow added information from the victim’s perspective of the crimes.
Editors attempting to make these articles balanced have been harassed and even banned from Wikipedia. Several web pages with legal case, scientific journal articles and mainstream newspaper articles have been banned by Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has blacklisted four websites that describe ritual child abuse and extreme child abuse crimes in detail. These sites are: http://extreme-abuse-survey.net , http://ritualabuse.us , http://www.endritualabuse.org and http://abusearticles.wordpress.com
These sites contain journal articles and news accounts of these crimes. These websites are perfectly fine websites with accurate legal information with a variety of scientific studies and news articles. It appears that no pages in Wikipedia will be allowed to have any links to these sites.
blacklisting and deleting important information from Wikipedia
http://abusearticles.wordpress.com
The following information from four articles at Wikipedia was deleted due to it being from the newly blacklisted wordpress site http://abusearticles.wordpress.com . This site provided information from mainstream newspapers and court documents showing evidence that abuse had occurred in these cases.
These included information deleted from the Fells Acres Case article, the McMartin Preschool Trial case article, from the from Day Care Sex abuse cases and from the Wenatchee sex ring article.
Other articles have also had balancing information deleted from them.
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/ritualabuse-us-blacklisted-by-wikipedia/
Wikipedia “Satanic Ritual Abuse” article critique
November 8, 2008
Intimidation, bullying, sarcasm: such are the tactics used by the current editors of Wikipedia’s “Satanic Ritual Abuse” article (and other related articles): (1) discounting the existence of sexual crimes against children associated with true or staged satanic worship; and (2) undoing references in Wikipedia articles by editors who present findings from research and legal cases that support the existence of ritual/sexual crimes against children by organized groups of pedophiles.
The Truth about Satanic Ritual Abuse
A Rebuttal to Wikipedia’s Portrayal of Satanic Ritual Abuse
November 2, 2008 By Wanda Karriker, PhD
Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) is NOT a moral panic.
SRA is a subset of Ritual Abuse (RA).
(The article cites several studies proving the existence of ritual abuse as a phenomenon.)
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/the-truth-about-satanic-ritual-abuse/
There are many sources on the Internet proving the existence of ritual abuse crimes.
These include:
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse
ritualabuse.us blacklisted by wikipedia
Wikipedia has blacklisted four websites that describe ritual child abuse and extreme child abuse crimes in detail. These sites are: http://extreme-abuse-survey.net , http://ritualabuse.us , http://www.endritualabuse.org and http://abusearticles.wordpress.com
These sites contain journal articles and news accounts of these crimes. These websites are perfectly fine websites with accurate legal information with a variety of scientific studies and news articles. It appears that no pages in wikipedia will be allowed to have any links to these sites.
edited release from endritualabuse.org on their site being blacklisted
http://endritualabuse.org/activism/wikipedia-blacklisted-four-important-websites/
Wikipedia Blacklisted Four Important Websites on Ritual Abuse on July 18, 2009
By Ellen P. Lacter, Ph.D.
(Date of this article is July 27, 2009)
On July 18, 2009, at about 9:30pm Pacific time, Wikipedia blacklisted the following important websites on ritual abuse:
http://abusearticles.wordpress.com
http://extreme-abuse-survey.net
My website is endritualabuse.org
I have attempted to get information from Wikipedia on why my website was blacklisted and to get it de-blacklisted. I have been stonewalled on both counts.
Since February, 2008, on Wikipedia’s page on “Satanic Ritual Abuse,” Wikipedia’s staff has been suppressing and deleting credible posts from credible sources (including my posts- I am a licensed California psychologist) that have documented substantial criminal and psychological evidence of criminal ritual abuse, and instead has completely discounted the existence of ritual abuse. As of July 27, 2009, Wikipedia’s page on “Satanic ritual abuse” begins as follows: “Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organised abuse, sadistic abuse and other variants) refers to a moral panic that originated in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout the country and eventually to many parts of the world, before subsiding in the late 1990s.”
Wikipedia has now escalated its censorship of all information supporting the existence of ritual abuse by blacklisting four important websites about ritual abuse on July 18, 2009….
An account of my correspondence with Wikipedia on this matter is pasted in below.
This correspondence clearly demonstrates that Wikipedia has stonewalled my polite attempts to communicate with them on this issue. When I persisted, Wikipedia directed me to send a letter via registered mail to the Wikimedia Foundation for comment,
Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
P.O. Box 78350
San Francisco, CA 94107-8350 USA
However, when Wanda Karriker, Ph.D., on October 15, 2008, sent a registered letter to Wikipedia concerning Wikipedia’s treatment of the subject of ritual abuse, she received no response. I also include the correspondence by Dr. Karriker below.
Dr. Karriker is one of four authors of the Extreme Abuse Survey. The website for the Extreme Abuse Survey, extreme-abuse-survey.net, is one of the four websites that Wikipedia blacklisted on July 18, 2009.
It is clear that Wikipedia refuses to consider any documentation about the existence of ritual abuse.
Wikipedia claims that its mission is: “The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.”
Wikipedia claims that its vision is: “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.”
I find these claims by Wikipedia to be untrue, based on its censorship of the evidence of ritual abuse….I deem Wikipedia to be irresponsible, unethical, and to be in violation of its own statutes.
I urge individuals and organizations to disseminate this article, including freely re-posting it to other websites, with the condition that it be posted in its entirety with nothing added or removed from the article .
Ellen P. Lacter, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist in California, USA
blacklisting and deleting important information from wikipedia
http://abusearticles.wordpress.com
The following information from four articles at wikipedia was deleted due to it being from the newly blacklisted wordpress site ( http://abusearticles.wordpress.com ) . This site provided information from mainstream newspapers and court documents showing evidence that abuse had occurred in these cases.
deleted from Fells Acres Case article
All nine children testified in a broadly consistent way…The children testified to numerous instances of sexual abuse. Some of the children testified that they were photographed during this abuse, describing a big camera with wires, a red button, and pictures which came out of the camera. The children testified that the defendant threatened them and told them that their families would be harmed if they told anyone about the abuse….The Commonwealth also presented a pediatric gynecologist and pediatrician who examined five of the girls who testified…She made findings consistent with abuse in four of the girls.[5]
The motion judge who heard Violet and Cheryl’s motion, declared that “[a]t best, the defendants could only see the right ear and a part of the right cheek of the testifying witness.” The Commonwealth contends that the defendants could see almost a full profile view including the child’s lips and that the child witness could make eye contact by turning toward the defendants.[5]
Commonweath v. Amirault, Middlesex, 424 Mass. 618
http://abusearticles.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/common-vs-amirault-424-mass-618-page-624.jpg
deleted from McMartin Preschool Trial case article
One source stated that a hospital exam confirmed he was sodomized, and that he named a teacher at the school as the perpetrator.
Tamarkin, Civia (1994). “Investigative Issues in Ritual Abuse Cases, Part I and Part II”. Treating Abuse Today. http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/investigative-issues-in-ritual-abuse-cases-part-1-and-2-1994/
deleted from Day Care Sex abuse cases
(Fells Acres case)
All nine children testified in a broadly consistent way…The children testified to numerous instances of sexual abuse…The children testified that the defendant threatened them and told them that their families would be harmed if they told anyone about the abuse”
“Commonweath v. Amirault, Middlesex” 424 Mass. 618. http://abusearticles.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/common-vs-amirault-424-mass-618-page-624.jpg
http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/category/commonwealth-vs-amirault/
(Wenatchee Sex Ring)
Dr. Deborah Harper testified in the trial “One girl showed definite medical signs of sexual abuse and it could not be ruled out for two others.”
“Doctor confirms abuse in sex-ring case.” Associated Press. 1996-12-05. http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/category/articles-on-wenatchee/ . “One girl showed definite medical signs of sexual abuse and it could not be ruled for two others, a defense witness testified…in the child rape and molestation trial of a Pentecostal preacher and his wife … Prosecutors allege unordained pastor Robert “Roby” Roberson and his wife, Connie, has sex with children at the East Wenatchee Pentecostal Church of God House and Prayer and at their home.”
http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/category/articles-on-wenatchee/
deleted from Wenatchee sex ring article
During the trial, a defense witness stated that one girl showed “definite medical signs of sexual abuse” while “it could not be ruled out for two others. “Doctor confirms abuse in sex-ring case.” Associated Press http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/category/articles-on-wenatchee/ . “One girl showed definite medical signs of sexual abuse and it could not be ruled for two others, a defense witness testified … in the child rape and molestation trial of a Pentacostal preacher and his wife … Prosecutors allege unordained pastor Robert “Roby” Roberson and his wife, Connie, has sex with children at the East Wenatchee Pentacostal Church of God House and Prayer and at their home.”
A U.S. Department of Justice investigation also found that there was no evidence of civil rights violations. Consultant finds no fault in sex ring probe” Associated Press in Tri-City Herald. February 22, 1996. http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/category/articles-on-wenatchee/ . “A consultant hired by the city’s insurer to look into the way Wenatchee police conducted child sex-abuse investigations said Wednesday the cases were properly handled.”
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