copied with permission from https://ritualabuse.us/2024/11/issue-179-november-2024/
The
Survivorship Trafficking and Extreme Abuse Online Conference 2025
- Survivor Conference will be on Saturday and Sunday May 18 - 19, 2025. This
year's topic is "Celebrating the Gains Fighting Ritual Abuse." The
Clinician's Conference will be Friday May 17, 2025. This year's topic is
"Progress Against Extreme Abuse." Please write info@survivorship.org
for more information. The Conference Web Page is at https://survivorship.org/the-survivorship-trafficking-and-extreme-abuse-online-conference-2025 Updates will be posted when available.
Psychiatric Impact of Organized and
Ritual Child Sexual Abuse: Cross-Sectional Findings from Individuals Who Report
Being Victimized Johanna Schröder, Susanne Nick, Hertha
Richter-Appelt and Peer Briken Institute for Sex Research and Forensic
Psychiatry, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf,20246 Hamburg, Germany
....Published: 31 October 2018
Abstract:
Organized and ritual child sexual abuse (ORA) is often rooted in the child’s
own family. Empirical evidence on possible associations between ORA and
trauma-related symptoms in those who report this kind of extreme and prolonged
violence is rare. The aim of our study was to explore socio-demographic and
clinical characteristics of the individuals reporting ORA experiences, and to
investigate protective as well as promotive factors in the link between ORA and
trauma-related symptom severity. Within the framework of a project of the
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany, we recruited 165 adults
who identified themselves as ORA victims via abuse and trauma-specific networks
and mailing lists, and they completed an anonymous online survey. We used
variance analyses to examine correlations between several variables in the ORA
context and PTSD symptoms (PCL-5) as well as somatoform dissociation (SDQ-5).
Results revealed a high psychic strain combined with an adverse health care
situation in individuals who report experiences with ORA. Ideological
strategies used by perpetrators as well as Dissociative Identity Disorders
experienced by those affected are associated with more severe symptoms (2 p =
0.11; 2 p = 0.15), while an exit out of the ORA structures is associated with
milder symptoms (2 p = 0.11). Efforts are needed to improve health care
services for individuals who experience severe and complex psychiatric
disorders due to ORA in their childhood.
Introduction
Child
sexual abuse (CSA), once thought to be rare, is nowadays accepted as a frequent
reality that occurs across a range of cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds
worldwide and encompasses many types of sexually abusive acts towards children,
including sexual assault, incest, the production and use of child pornography,
as well as commercial sexual exploitation [1 ]. Sexual child abuse involving a
network of perpetrators acting repeatedly and jointly on multiple victims is
defined as ‘organized abuse’ [2 ]. Organized abuse that follows a (pseudo-)
ideological strategy (e.g., symbols or group activities with religious,
magical, or supernatural connotations) in order to frighten and intimidate the
children or to force the victims to participate whilst simultaneously
accomplishing the perpetrators’ exculpation is referred to as ‘ritual abuse’
[3,4]. Salter further describes ritual abuse as ideological framing in
organized CSA contexts, functioning as strategical practices through which
abusive groups indoctrinate the victims into a violently misogynistic worldview
in order to control them [4]. In other words, ritual abuse occurs when a
religious, political, or spiritual authority uses its position of power and the
sovereignty to interpret the respective belief system to manipulate and
dominate its followers. Since the 1980s, evidence of organized and ritual abuse
(ORA) has been consolidated due to studies documenting psychological harm
amongst children and adults disclosing such experiences.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328647987_Psychiatric_Impact_of_Organized_and_Ritual_Child_Sexual_Abuse_Cross-Sectional_Findings_from_Individuals_Who_Report_Being_Victimized
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30384461/
Ritualistic Abuse Survivors
Difficulties Obtaining Services - Neil Brick
Ritualistic
abuse survivors have struggled to obtain adequate mental health and social
support services for over twenty years. This problem has been exacerbated by a
lack of trained providers and adequate social services to deal with the complex
problems ritualistic abuse survivors present. Most clinicians do not receive
proper training due to severe trauma topics and their symptomatology not being
adequately covered in their master level training programs or in post
continuing education training. Very few organizations are available to educate
clinicians and survivors about the research in the field. Insurance companies
often do not adequately cover services for long term treatment. Social services
employees are not adequately trained to work with severe trauma survivors.
There
is a paucity of training regarding trauma informed services and ways to work
with clients suffering from dissociative disorders. Application guidelines
often make it very difficult for ritualistic abuse survivors to receive in the
timelines given. Survivors may have difficulties getting to offices, getting on
the Internet or filling out paperwork. This presentation will include the
presenter’s own struggles receiving adequate services over the last thirty
years. Issues to be discussed will include the symptomatology of dissociative
disorders, attachment disorders, mood and anxiety disorders, economic problems,
and social barriers. Solutions to decrease and eliminate these difficulties
will be discussed. These will include public advocacy, public education,
survivor training, and the building of a research base to help survivors and
their helpers move forward to prevent these difficulties in the future. https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/ritualistic-abuse-survivors-difficulties-obtaining-services-neil-brick/
50 years after Philadelphia halted
prison medical testing, families seek reparations By
MARYCLAIRE DALE October 23, 2024
PHILADELPHIA
(AP) — Fifty years ago, Philadelphia prison officials ended a medical testing
program that had allowed an Ivy League researcher to conduct human testing on
incarcerated people, many of them Black, for decades. Now, survivors of the
program and their descendants want reparations.
Thousands
of people at Holmesburg Prison were exposed to painful skin tests,
anesthesia-free surgery, harmful radiation and mind-altering drugs for research
on everything from hair dye, detergent and other household goods to chemical
warfare agents and dioxins. In exchange, they might receive $1-a-day in pocket
change they used to buy commissary items or try to make bail.
“We
were fertile ground for them people,” said Herbert Rice, a retired city worker
from Philadelphia who said he has had lifelong psychiatric problems after
taking an unknown drug at Holmesburg in the late 1960s that caused him to
hallucinate. “It was just like dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit.”
The
city and the University of Pennsylvania have issued formal apologies in recent
years. Lawsuits have been mostly unsuccessful, except for a few small
settlements. On Wednesday, families at a Penn law school event are set to seek
reparations from the school and pharmaceutical companies that they say
benefited from the Cold War-era research. A University of Pennsylvania spokesperson
said the school had no comment on the push for reparations.
The
testing was led by Albert M. Kligman, a University of Pennsylvania
dermatologist with research ties to the Army, the CIA and the pharmaceutical
industry, according to author Allen Hornblum, who ran an adult literacy program
at Holmesburg in the 1970s and saw the effects firsthand. Medical testing in
prisons was pervasive in the 1960s, with radiation studies conducted on people
incarcerated in Washington and Oregon, cancer studies in Ohio and flash burn
studies in Virginia, Hornblum said.
Human
testing was also conducted on children in institutions, hospital patients and
other vulnerable populations in much of the 20th century. The tide turned in
the early 1970s, when outrage over the Tuskegee Syphilis Study — in which the
U.S. government let Black men go untreated for syphilis to study the disease’s
impact — sparked an evolution in medical ethics, Hornblum said. Kligman
defended his work until his death in 2010....
In a 1966 interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer, Kligman described his
first visit to Holmesburg with excitement, saying, “All I saw before me were
acres of skin.”.... https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-prison-experiments-black-reparations-ff8a08483fb13d1b949d938d7ae29656#
Archdiocese of Los Angeles agrees to
pay $880 million to victims of clergy sexual abuse
October 16, 2024
LOS
ANGELES (AP) — The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880 million to
victims of clergy sexual abuse dating back decades, in what an attorney said
was the largest single child sex abuse settlement with a Catholic archdiocese,
it was announced Wednesday. After the announcement of the agreement in
principle, Archbishop José H. Gomez said in a statement, “I am sorry for every
one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart.” “My hope is that this
settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women
have suffered,” the archbishop added. “I believe that we have come to a
resolution of these claims that will provide just compensation to the
survivor-victims of these past abuses.”
Attorneys
for 1,353 people who allege that they suffered horrific abuse at the hands of
local Catholic priests reached the settlement after months of negotiations with
the archdiocese, the Los Angeles Times reported. The agreement caps a
quarter-century of litigation against the most populous archdiocese in the
United States. The archdiocese has previously paid $740 million to victims in
various settlements and had pledged to better protect its church members, so
this settlement would put the total payout at more than $1.5 billion, the Times
said. Attorney Morgan Stewart, who led the negotiations, said in a statement
that the settlement is the largest single child sex abuse settlement with a
Catholic archdiocese.... https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-archdiocese-clergy-sexual-abuse-bf23e8967410017c036f765bb83910f6
President Biden to apologize for
150-year Indian boarding school policy By GRAHAM LEE BREWER October 24, 2024
NORMAN,
Okla. (AP) — President Joe Biden said he will formally apologize on Friday for
the country’s role in forcing Indigenous children for over 150 years into
boarding schools, where many were physically, emotionally and sexually abused,
and
more than 950 died. “I’m doing something I should have done a long time ago: To
make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their
children for so many years,” Biden said Thursday as he left the White House for
Arizona....
The
investigation she launched found that at least 18,000 children — some as young
as 4 — were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that sought
to assimilate them into white society while federal and state authorities
sought to dispossess tribal nations of their land. The investigation documented 973 deaths — while acknowledging the
figure is likely higher — and 74 gravesites associated with the more than 500
schools.
No
president has ever formally apologized for the forced removal of these children
— an element of genocide as defined by the United Nations — or the U.S.
government’s actions to decimate Native American, Alaska Native and Native
Hawaiian peoples....
The
forced assimilation policy launched by Congress in 1819 as an effort to
“civilize” Native Americans ended in 1978 after the passage of a wide-ranging
law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was primarily focused on giving tribes
a say in who adopted their children. The U.S. government has offered apologies
for other historic injustices, including to Japanese families it imprisoned
during World War II. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act in
1988 to compensate tens of thousands of people sent to internment camps during
the war.
In
1993, President Bill Clinton signed a law apologizing to Native Hawaiians for
the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy a century earlier. The House and Senate
passed resolutions in 2008 and 2009 apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow
segregation. But the gestures did not create pathways to reparations for Black
Americans.
In
Canada, a country with a similar history of subjugating First Nations and
forcing their children into boarding schools for assimilation, former Prime
Minister Stephen Harper made a formal apology in 2008. There was also a truth
and reconciliation process, and later a plan to inject billions of dollars into
communities devastated by the government’s policies.
Pope
Francis issued a historic apology in 2022 for the Catholic Church’s cooperation
with Canada’s policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced
assimilation of Native people into Christian society destroyed their cultures,
severed families and marginalized generations....
In
2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples for his government’s past policies of
assimilation, including the forced removal of children. New Zealand Prime
Minister Jacinda Ardern made a similar concession in 2022....
https://apnews.com/article/indian-border-schools-apology-biden-haaland-701872132d7f191973d54cd05286ef75
Book: Demystifying Mind Control and
Ritual Abuse: A Manual for Therapists - Alison Miller
Karnac Books July 2024 Paperback
ISBN 13 : 9781800132658 ISBN 10 : 1800132654 Dr. Miller spoke at the 2024 Online Annual
Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Conference - August 10 - 11,
2024. Information is at https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
Karnac
books
https://www.karnacbooks.com/product/demystifying-mind-control-and-ritual-abuse-a-manual-for-therapists/97609/?MATCH=1
Google
Books limited preview:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Demystifying_Mind_Control_and_Ritual_Abu.html?id=9MFx0AEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description
This
book was written to meet the need of therapists: a succinct, thorough,
practical, clear, down-to-earth handbook to which a therapist can refer as
needed. Many, if not most, therapists have encountered a victim of complex mind
control and ritual abuse, and most therapists feel deskilled in this work.
Working with such clients is a challenge for therapists, given the extreme and
prolonged nature of the clients’ trauma, the severity of their dissociative
disorders, the complexity of the mind control they have experienced, and the
reality of organised perpetrator groups who follow up on their victims. Every
therapist needs to know the basics of this work.
Chapter
1 defines and explains dissociation, ritual abuse, and mind control. It lists
indicators which suggest a client may be a victim, and recommends developing
‘reflective belief (or possibly) disbelief’ rather than maintaining
‘therapeutic neutrality’. Chapter 2, The therapeutic relationship, describes
victims’ training to not form bonds, the parental nature of the therapeutic
bond with such clients, and practical ways to relate to someone dealing with
internal multiplicity. Chapter 3, The life of a mind control survivor,
describes victims’ planned experiences from infancy all the way through
adulthood. Chapter 4, Engineered personality systems, describes the most common
forms of training or programming, and the ‘jobs’ of inner parts of the victim.
Chapter 5, Stabilisation and internal safety, explains the way in which some
parts punish the victim for disloyalty by creating destabilising symptoms.
Chapter 6, Working with the personality system, describes internal hierarchies
and how to work with them. Chapter 7, Present-day physical safety, looks at the
ongoing torture and harassment of many victims by perpetrator groups, and
describes the training of various parts to return to the perpetrators, report
to them, and be available for further abuse. Chapter 8, Working through the
traumatic memories, gives guidelines regarding how to help a client work
through the numerous traumatic training memories. Chapter 9, Confronting the
spiritual issues in ritual abuse, describes the perpetrators’ spiritual/moral
abuse and simulation of spiritual entities. It discusses the question of
demonic possession, and looks at the real spiritual issues which victims and
therapists must deal with. Chapter 10, Healing for our clients and ourselves,
discusses victims’ emotional healing, grieving, developing self-esteem and
integration, and therapists’ intimidation and vicarious traumatisation.
‘Alison
Miller’s latest book, Demystifying Mind
Control and Ritual Abuse, is a tour de force in advanced psychotherapy for
the most difficult of clients, those who have been subjected to torture since
before birth and throughout their childhood in order to create compliant slaves
without walls. She is a knowledgeable, tough, and compassionate guide who takes
a clear-eyed look at what it really takes for therapists to do this work and
gives us the tools to do so. She calmly addresses a topic that most find unbearable
to acknowledge, that children can and are routinely used to serve the darkest
desires of humanity. She lays out many practical tips; each chapter could
almost be its own book. Any therapist who finds themselves confounded and
feeling deskilled by a victim of organized abuse that is cult related, ritually
abused and/or mind controlled will find helpful tips and resources in these
pages. This book should be required reading for all therapists.’ Susan Pease
Banitt, LCSW, psychotherapist and consultant specialising in trauma and extreme
abuse, sought-after speaker, and award-winning author
‘Having worked in this difficult field for
several decades, Alison Miller has found a further way of passing on her
knowledge of mind control and ritual abuse. What’s more, she does so in the
most honed, processed way. This is a handbook which is easy to read despite the
fearfulness of its subject. It is filled with wise information culled from
decades of experience. It will aid the newcomer and the experienced clinician
alike.’ Valerie Sinason PhD, founder and patron, Clinic for Dissociative
Studies, and author of The Orpheus Project
‘Demystifying Mind Control and Ritual Abuse:
A Manual for Therapists delivers just what Dr. Miller promises – a book for
therapists “who need a succinct, practical, down-to-earth guide for this
challenging work.” She describes the strategies that mind control abusers apply
to victims, beginning in infancy, to induce dissociated identities to form, to
manipulate them, and to then set them up against each other for long-term,
often lifetime control. These abusers hope to prevent victims from ever
consciously accessing their memories, from being able to receive the help of a
psychotherapist, and from ever defying and escaping their mental controls. Then
Dr. Miller offers step-by-step therapeutic guidance in troubleshooting all of
these obstacles so that survivors may discover their own minds and exercise
agency over their own lives. This is a wonderful reference book to help
psychotherapists navigate this toughest-of-all courses of psychotherapy.’
Ellen Lacter, PhD, psychologist, USA
‘Dr.
Alison Miller's new book, Demystifying Mind Control and Ritual Abuse: A
Training Manual for Therapists, is the most comprehensive book written to date
on this topic. Dr. Miller discusses all of the techniques needed to help
survivors of these crimes. Her book is easy to read and understand. It explains
ways to work with trauma survivors in a compassionate, respectful, and
comprehensive manner. Her many years of experience and research provide a
unique guide into helping mind control and ritual abuse survivors. I have been
proud to work with Dr. Miller in both Survivorship (survivorship.org) and SMART
(ritualabuse.us). Every time I attend one of her workshops or webinars or read
one of her books, I learn more about our field, myself, and ways to help other
survivors.’ Neil Brick, editor and
conference coordinator for SMARTNews at https://ritualabuse.us
