Make torture a crime, N.S. petition says

from http://ritualabuse.us

Make torture a crime, N.S. petition says by Mary Ellen Macintyre - Truro Bureau 1/22/09 Truro — Jean Sarson and Linda MacDonald wouldn't know how to mince words, even if they wanted to. After years of heartbreaking research into ritual abuse and torture under their belts, they're even less in the mood for mincing. Bill Casey welcomed them into his constituency office in Truro on Wednesday morning. The MP for Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley settled into his chair and smiled....There are close to 800 names on the petition, which calls on Parliament to amend the Criminal Code to make torture a crime. "In the Criminal Code now only officials like police, members of the military or others can be charged with committing torture, Ms. MacDonald said. "We believe if you torture someone, whether you're an official or not, that you should be charged with committing torture...."But they would have never been charged with torture because it's not a charge unless you're a police officer or a member of the military or another official, Ms. MacDonald said....."You have to name it for what it is and recognize the issue and only then will there be social validation for the victim and then there will be help for them, said Ms. MacDonald. "And we'll get more but these signatures are from all across Canada, said Ms. Sarson. Mr. Casey will bring the petition to Ottawa on Monday and said he will have it tabled in the House of Commons. "This is the first step toward change. You've made the first step and we'll see how it progresses, he said. http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1102016.html


Here is a link to the petition:
http://www.nsvow.org/Torture_Free_Circle_files/Petition%20to%20the%20Government%20of%20Canada%20for%20VOW%20website.pdf

more information on ritual abuse torture
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/ftinterface~content=a903766904~fulltext=713240928

http://www.ritualabusetorture.org/

PEACEMAKING - Reflections of a Radical Criminologist by Hal Pepinsky

The University of Ottawa Press ISBN10: 0776606409 2006 "I have mentioned that since 1993 I have come to know many people whom I believe to be genuine survivors of “ritual abuse.” These data came to me by way of parents facing loss of custody for asking that their children be protected from what they and medical professionals believed to be sexual assault while with their other parent. I have testified, borne silent witness in courtrooms, and borne vocal witness on the streets, in conferences, and in classes to countless—to me credible— accounts by those who have in the broadest category survived what in polite company we call “incest.” I have also encountered countless cases in which those who later reported having recovered repressed memories of one form or another of sexualized childhood violence have turned out to know things such as physical layouts of places where they were hurt that they otherwise could not have known. Add to this my learning from countless sources that “covert” or “emotional” incest, which might entail physical coldness and distance, could prove to be as debilitating to its survivors as the doing of anything even remotely illegal. Leave aside whether any of the stories I have heard of homicidal ceremonies is true.
Effects of a problem characterized as “incest,” including the shame and fear of being trapped in “crimes,” dwarf the trauma represented by all the personal violence reported in victim surveys, which in turn far exceed police reports." p. 84
http://critcrim.org/files/Pepinsky_proofs_0.pdf

Cameron, DID on TV (Tara), CIA experiments

describes abuse

from http://ritualabuse.us

The Sleep Room’s Missing Memories by Ray Conlogue Quebec Arts Correspondent, Montreal - Cameron he Sleep Room’s Missing Memories by Ray Conlogue Quebec Arts Correspondent, Montreal “A new CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] miniseries tells how mental patients in Montreal were once subjected to CIA-sponsored brainwashing….recalls a series of barbaric experiments conducted on mental patients over a nine-year period beginning in 1955…the “psychic driving” technique invented by psychiatrist Ewen Cameron took on a science-fiction quality when it was revealed in 1977 that the CIA had helped finance the work. The CIA thought it had potential as a brainwashing technique to be used on “enemies” of the United States during the Cold War….a human catastrophe that stripped more than 300 people of their identities….she sued Ottawa instead, and forced the government to pay $100,000 to each surviving Allan patient.” http://web.archive.org/web/20030402163532/www.serendipity.li/cia/slprm.html

This week on the fifth estate - “The Sleep Room” 1/6/98 - When Canadians first learned that CIA brainwashing experiments had been carried out on Canadians… in Canada… with the knowledge of our government… at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal …the story of Cameron’s experiments and the victims’ struggle for justice have been made into a riveting movie, to be broadcast on CBC Television… For the victims of The Sleep Room, the horror has never really ended. VELMA ORLIKOW (patient of Dr. Ewen Cameron): The man who I had thought cared about what happened to me didn’t give a damn. I was a fly, just a fly. VOICE-OVER ANNOUNCER: Revisiting Canada’s infamous Sleep Room. LINDA MACDONALD (patient of Dr. Ewen Cameron): I was…had to be toilet-trained. I was a vegetable. VOICE-OVER ANNOUNCER: In the 1960s, Dr. Ewen Cameron conducted CIA-funded experiments on troubled Canadian patients he was meant to help… MacIntyre: …the CIA caved in the day before the trial was to begin. They settled out of court for $750,000 - at the time it was the largest settlement the CIA had ever awarded. http://web.archive.org/web/20021225185605/http://www.radix.net/~jcturner/980106-Fifth-Estate.htm
The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 1998-01-10, page C2

Ottawa finally aids brainwashing victims Broadcast Date: Jan. 28, 1984 (digital clip) It sounds like a science fiction plot or a horror movie: A front organization for the American CIA sets up shop in Canada to engage in mind control experiments. But it's no fiction, it's the discussion on the floor of the House of Commons and among lawyers for the Department of External Affairs. Canadians caught up in the research, including a member of Parliament's wife, may finally get some action from the government in their pursuit of answers and compensation. http://archives.cbc.ca/society/crime_justice/clips/15125/


The Sleep Room, A CBC MINI-SERIES discusses CIA and Canadian government funding on Canadian psychiatric patients in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, using LSD and electro-shock treatments. CIA funding helped pay for Dr. Ewen Cameron of Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute experiments. Cameron believed patients’ mental illnesses could be cured by putting the patient into a coma (the sleep room) by using LSD, drugs and repeated electro-shocks to the brain. Linda Macdonald from Vancouver, talks about how she was in a drug-induced coma for 86 days when she was 26 and was subjected to 100 electro-shock treatments and massive LSD doses. When she came out of it, she had no memory. It was destroyed. Other patients had similar or worse experiences. Nine of 127 known survivors sued the CIA. They won the suit. The Canadian government also paid token compensation. (Information from Peter Worthington - Sun Media Newspapers)

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United States of Tara - Learn More About D.I.D. - Showtime supports the awareness for Dissociative Identity Disorder with Richrd P.Kluft MD http://www.sho.com/site/video/brightcove/series/title.do?bcpid=1847322218&bclid=5253538001&bctid=6803420001


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Veterans say CIA tested drugs, mind control on them By Jay Price - Staff Writer 1/11/09 Instead of equipment testing, though, the Onslow County native found himself in a bizarre, CIA-funded drug testing and mind-control program, according to a lawsuit that he and five other veterans and Vietnam Veterans of America filed last week. The suit was filed in federal court in San Francisco against the Department of Defense and the CIA. The plaintiffs seek to force the government to contact all the subjects of the experiments and give them proper health care. The experiments have been the subject of congressional hearings, and in 2003 the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs released a pamphlet said nearly 7,000 soldiers had been involved and more than 250 chemicals used on them, including hallucinogens such as LSD and PCP as well as biological and chemical agents. Lasting from 1950 to 1975, the experiments took place at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. According to the lawsuit, some of the volunteers were even implanted with electrical devices in an effort to control their behavior. Rochelle, 60, who has come back to live in Onslow County, said in an interview Saturday that there were about two dozen volunteers when he was taken to Edgewood. Once there, they were asked to volunteer a second time, for drug testing. They were told that the experiments were harmless and that their health would be carefully monitored, not just during the tests but afterward, too. The doctors running the experiments, though, couldn't have known the drugs were safe, because safety was one of the things they were trying to find out, Rochelle said. "We volunteered, yes, but we were not fully aware of the dangers," he said. "None of us knew the kind of drugs they gave us, or the aftereffects they'd have." http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1362418.html
or http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/12-8

Hell Minus One - signed verified confessions of satanic ritual abuse

this page contains descriptions of graphic crimes of ritual abuse

“Anne’s parents confessed their atrocities—both in writing and verbally—to clergymen, and to detectives from the Utah Attorney General’s Office. Anne’s suppressed memories, which erupted when she was in her mid-30s, were fully substantiated by her mother and stepfather.”

“After spending three years and $250,000 the Attorney General’s office has finished its probe into ritual abuse. Now the 59-page report says investigators found evidence of ritual abuse, but nothing that can be prosecuted at this time.”

“Confessed, and even paid up. The parents settled out of court to pay Jenny’s therapy bills.”

Anne’s Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and her Journey to Freedom “Hell Minus One” When Anne A Johnson Davis was just three years old, her mother and stepfather began to physically, sexually and mentally abuse her—in the name of Satan. Until she ran away from home at 17, her parents and other cult members subjected her to satanic ritual abuse, a criminally inhumane and bizarre form of devil worship. In the middle of the night, Anne would be drugged and forced to endure hours of ritualistic torture as a symbolic sacrifice….The horrors Anne experienced, the astounding miracles that helped her to survive, and the heal-or-die choices she made as an adult to triumph over her tragic past, are revealed in her new book Hell Minus One: My Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and My Journey to Freedom. Hell Minus One is different from other previously published memoirs by victims of satanic ritual abuse. Instead of distressing, heart-breaking accounts without collaborative or corroborative evidence, Anne’s parents confessed their atrocities—both in writing and verbally—to clergymen, and to detectives from the Utah Attorney General’s Office. Anne’s suppressed memories, which erupted when she was in her mid-30s, were fully substantiated by her mother and stepfather….The book’s foreword was written by Lt. Detective Matt Jacobson, who was the lead investigator with the Utah Attorney General’s Office on Anne’s case in 1995. In April 1995, Anne was interviewed by KTVX Channel 4 News and The Deseret News in Salt Lake City for stories regarding a then newly released three-year study by the Utah AG’s Office about ritual abuse. In those news accounts, Anne’s identity was concealed as she explained some of the horrors of her childhood. In Hell Minus One, Anne publicly blows the door open on who she is and tells her story openly for the first time. http://www.hellminusone.com/

“…I knew three years old was supposed to be the right age for sexual activity… You were drugged with cough syrup and the light was shadowy and flickering on the hooded and masked figures… He cut off your nightclothes and panties. A dog was hung by the back feet, throat cut and disemboweled and hind legs cut off. You were hung by your feet after being bound. I let you be used as a symbolic sacrifice, my tiny innocent child. I let you be painted with blood, have the dull side of a knife across your throat and feet. You may have seen me go and kneel… and take an oath that if anyone revealed anything done there or your father did not make you children behave, I would kill you children, him or myself.”
—An excerpt from one confession letter written by Anne’s mother

Foreword for Hell Minus One by Lieutenant Detective Matt Jacobson Utah Attorney General’s Office (retired)

In the autumn of 1994, I was at the Utah State Attorney General’s Office working under a legislative grant to investigate satanic ritualistic abuse. …When Mike King, my AG detective partner, and I traveled to a state in the Pacific Northwest to question Anne’s mother and stepfather about allegations of satanic ritual abuse, we found the contents of their confession letters to her to be true. They confessed to us—in person. The allegations were confirmed. http://www.hellminusone.com/Links.html http://www.johnsondaviscommunications.com/about.htm

Woman revisits the ‘Hell’ of ritual abuse By Ben Winslow Deseret News 12/10/08 She isn’t Rachel Hopkins anymore. Anne A Johnson Davis is shedding the moniker she used in a 1995 Deseret News story about her childhood as a victim of ritualistic Satanic abuse and speaking out in a memoir of her life. Davis, now a Lehi mother of three, is stepping into the spotlight again with the publication of her book “Hell Minus One.” “I have had enough healing and closure of my own, I feel I’m in a place where I really feel the call to share what I have to help others find courage,” Davis said in an interview Wednesday. Davis’ story is so bizarre, it’s hard to believe it actually happened — save for the fact that she has signed confessions from her mother and stepfather, a financial settlement and investigators from the Utah Attorney General’s Office who vouched for her. From age 3 until she ran away at 17, she said she was sexually abused, tortured, bathed in blood and forced to hurt her siblings in Satanic rituals. “They would tell me, ‘Now you’re one of us. If you tell anybody, they won’t believe you and they’ll put you in a mental hospital.’ And they threatened to torture me until I was dead,” Rachel Hopkins said in 1995. It was a study by the Utah Attorney General’s Office that downplayed ritual abuse that prompted Davis to come forward. At the time, she insisted on a pseudonym and did interviews in silhouette. “I’m glad that she’s come out of the shadows and she’s in the sunlight to tell her story so other victims will speak out and know they don’t have to be afraid anymore,” said Paul Murphy, a spokesman for the Utah Attorney General’s Office who interviewed her as a TV reporter back in 1995. He also wrote a blurb on the book’s jacket. Davis still takes issue with the attorney general’s report, which came out at a time when ritual abuse was being attacked as indicative of false memory syndrome — events and fantasies imagined by patients or planted by unscrupulous therapists….The Utah Attorney General’s Office has no plans to revisit the controversial study, but continues to investigate any reports of ritual abuse. “We take all child abuse very seriously,” Murphy said….When she ran away from home at 17, Davis said she cut ties with her family and anyone associated with them. She heard her stepfather died a few years ago but has no idea what happened to her mother. She also isn’t scared about publishing the family secrets. “Secrecy is their greatest weapon,” she said. “I don’t believe I have anything to be afraid of.” http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705269563,00.html

ABC News, KTVX Channel4, Salt Lake City, UT
coverage of Anne’s story http://www.hellminusone.com/Links.html
April 25, 1995 (Pseudonym “Jenny”)

“Good Afternoon and thanks for joining us. I’m Randall Carlisle.”

“And I’m Kimberly Perkins. The report is final. Ritual abuse exists in Utah, but its hard to prosecute.”

Randall Carlisle: “After spending three years and $250,000 the Attorney General’s office has finished its probe into ritual abuse. Now the 59-page report says investigators found evidence of ritual abuse, but nothing that can be prosecuted at this time.”

Kimberly Perkins: “The lack of prosecution of such reports does not mean that the reports are factitious (Ritual Abuse Task Force).

Paul Murphy: “One woman who came forward to tell about ritual abuse brought something no one else has - a confession from the perpetrators. “Jenny” was only three years old when her parents started sexually abusing her.

The bruises in this picture show she was physically abused as well.”

Jenny: “They would go through these very formal satanic rituals and I would be abused and tortured and threatened with my life and used as a sacrifice.”

Paul Murphy: “And most people would be skeptical of Jenny’s story of satanic ritual abuse, except for one thing - her parents confessed. In these letters the parents ask for forgiveness and describe the abuse in detail. Her mother wrote: ‘He cut off your nightclothes and panties. A dog was hung by the back feet, throat cut and disemboweled and hind legs cut off. You were hung by your feet after being bound.’ Others have told similar stories, but had no physical proof.”

Paul Murphy:….Her father wrote: ’I performed the same sexual acts on you at home. The sexual acts on you at home. The sexual abuse in our home was a repeat of the ritual.’

Paul Murphy: “Confessed, and even paid up. The parents settled out of court to pay Jenny’s therapy bills.”

Deseret News, Salt Lake City, UT - Page One Metro Section, April 25, 1995
Ritual abuse does exist, victim says by Jerry Spangler - Deseret News Staff Writer

From the time she was 3 years old until she became a young adult, Rachel Hopkins (not her real name) was ritualistically tortured, raped, bathed in blood and threatened she would be killed if she ever told anyone….
Like most victims of satanic ritual abuse, Hopkins remembered the abuse many years later. But her case is significantly different from others. She has the signed confessions of her parents - both of whom admitted abusing her during satanic rituals - that corroborate every memory she has of the abuse. The confessions offer much greater detail of events Rachel could not have ever known. Hopkins’ parents also confessed in detail to two investigators from the Utah Attorney General’s Office and to the leaders of the church they attended. Hopkins was also able to recover a photograph of herself as a child that shows bruises inflicted during the ritual abuse. Her siblings have also corroborated the events surrounding the ritual abuse….The truth is they (occultists) do wear black robes, they do abuse children, they do kill animals,” she said. “It exists, and to say otherwise is to deny the facts in front of them. Our society used to deny the existence of incest, too, because we didn’t want to believe it.”….Two years and eight months ago, the memories started coming back. At first, she couldn’t believe it either. She has heard of satanic ritual abuse before but had never associated memories with that behavior. “The first time I called my parents up and told them I had been sexually abused and I knew they did it, they told me I was hallucinating,” she said. “Since that time, they have written letters to each of the children confirming everything in explicit detail.”

Hell minus one, ritual abuse-torture, proof satanic ritual abuse exists

http://ritualabuse.us

"Anne's parents confessed their atrocities—both in writing and verbally—to clergymen, and to detectives from the Utah Attorney General's Office. Anne's suppressed memories, which erupted when she was in her mid-30s, were fully substantiated by her mother and stepfather."

Ritual Abuse-Torture Within Families/Groups Authors: Jeanne Sarson, Linda MacDonald DOI: 10.1080/10926770801926146 Published in: Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, Volume 16,Issue 4 July 2008, pages 419 - 438 Abstract - Case studies provide insights into identifying 10 violent thematic issues as components of a pattern of family/group ritual abuse-torture (RAT) victimization. Narratives from victimized women suggest that victimization generally begins in infancy or soon thereafter. A visual model of RAT displays the organization of the co-culture. Examples of the family/group gatherings known as “rituals and ceremonies” provide insights into how these gatherings are used to normalize pedophilic violence. Global activism afforded the first effort ever to track RAT and human trafficking. Recognizing RAT as an emerging form of non-state actor torture, discontinuing the use of language that sexualizes adult-child relationships, and promoting human rights education are suggested social solutions. available at : http://www.informaworld.com/index/903766904.pdf html article : http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/ftinterface~content=a903766904~fulltext=713240928

Woman revisits the 'Hell' of ritual abuse By Ben Winslow Deseret News 12/10/08 describes crimes - She isn't Rachel Hopkins anymore. Anne A Johnson Davis is shedding the moniker she used in a 1995 Deseret News story about her childhood as a victim of ritualistic Satanic abuse and speaking out in a memoir of her life. Davis, now a Lehi mother of three, is stepping into the spotlight again with the publication of her book "Hell Minus One." "I have had enough healing and closure of my own, I feel I'm in a place where I really feel the call to share what I have to help others find courage," Davis said in an interview Wednesday. Davis' story is so bizarre, it's hard to believe it actually happened — save for the fact that she has signed confessions from her mother and stepfather, a financial settlement and investigators from the Utah Attorney General's Office who vouched for her. From age 3 until she ran away at 17, she said she was sexually abused, tortured, bathed in blood and forced to hurt her siblings in Satanic rituals. "They would tell me, 'Now you're one of us. If you tell anybody, they won't believe you and they'll put you in a mental hospital.' And they threatened to torture me until I was dead," Rachel Hopkins said in 1995. It was a study by the Utah Attorney General's Office that downplayed ritual abuse that prompted Davis to come forward. At the time, she insisted on a pseudonym and did interviews in silhouette. "I'm glad that she's come out of the shadows and she's in the sunlight to tell her story so other victims will speak out and know they don't have to be afraid anymore," said Paul Murphy, a spokesman for the Utah Attorney General's Office who interviewed her as a TV reporter back in 1995. He also wrote a blurb on the book's jacket. Davis still takes issue with the attorney general's report, which came out at a time when ritual abuse was being attacked as indicative of false memory syndrome — events and fantasies imagined by patients or planted by unscrupulous therapists....The Utah Attorney General's Office has no plans to revisit the controversial study, but continues to investigate any reports of ritual abuse. "We take all child abuse very seriously," Murphy said....When she ran away from home at 17, Davis said she cut ties with her family and anyone associated with them. She heard her stepfather died a few years ago but has no idea what happened to her mother. She also isn't scared about publishing the family secrets. "Secrecy is their greatest weapon," she said. "I don't believe I have anything to be afraid of." http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705269563,00.html

describes crimes - Anne's Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and her Journey to Freedom "Hell Minus One" When Anne A Johnson Davis was just three years old, her mother and stepfather began to physically, sexually and mentally abuse her—in the name of Satan. Until she ran away from home at 17, her parents and other cult members subjected her to satanic ritual abuse, a criminally inhumane and bizarre form of devil worship. In the middle of the night, Anne would be drugged and forced to endure hours of ritualistic torture as a symbolic sacrifice....The horrors Anne experienced, the astounding miracles that helped her to survive, and the heal-or-die choices she made as an adult to triumph over her tragic past, are revealed in her new book Hell Minus One: My Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and My Journey to Freedom. Hell Minus One is different from other previously published memoirs by victims of satanic ritual abuse. Instead of distressing, heart-breaking accounts without collaborative or corroborative evidence, Anne's parents confessed their atrocities—both in writing and verbally—to clergymen, and to detectives from the Utah Attorney General's Office. Anne's suppressed memories, which erupted when she was in her mid-30s, were fully substantiated by her mother and stepfather....The book's foreword was written by Lt. Detective Matt Jacobson, who was the lead investigator with the Utah Attorney General's Office on Anne's case in 1995. In April 1995, Anne was interviewed by KTVX Channel 4 News and The Deseret News in Salt Lake City for stories regarding a then newly released three-year study by the Utah AG's Office about ritual abuse. In those news accounts, Anne's identity was concealed as she explained some of the horrors of her childhood. In Hell Minus One, Anne publicly blows the door open on who she is and tells her story openly for the first time. http://www.hellminusone.com/

ritual abuse task force, child prostitution, mk-ultra, stopping child abuse

http://ritualabuse.us

Report of the Ritual Abuse Task Force - Los Angeles County Commission for Women - Ritual abuse is a brutal form of abuse of children, adolescents, and adults, consisting of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, and involving the use of rituals. Ritual does not necessarily mean satanic. However, most survivors state that they were ritually abused as part of satanic worship for the purpose of indoctrinating them into satanic beliefs and practices. Ritual abuse rarely consists of a single episode. It usually involves repeated abuse over an extended period of time. The physical abuse is severe, sometimes including torture and killing. The sexual abuse is usually painful, sadistic, and humiliating, intended as means of gaining dominance over the victim. The psychological abuse is devastating and involves the use of ritual/indoctrination, which includes mind control techniques and mind altering drugs, and ritual/intimidation which conveys to the victim a profound terror of the cult members and of the evil spirits they believe cult members can command. Both during and after the abuse, most victims are in a state of terror, mind control, and dissociation in which disclosure is exceedingly difficult. http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/ra.htm

Guatemalan Recounts Time As Gang Member NPR.org December 22, 2008 · El Flaco, as we call him here, was member of Mara Salvatrucha for 18 years, before quitting two years ago. He's 26, was born in El Salvador - and claims to have killed 22 people. Following are excerpts from an interview with NPR's John Burnett. I was part of the Mara Salvatrucha, a gang which started in the United States and then went to El Salvador. The truth is, I want to leave because I was tired of harming the people. There's a certain limit to where you get tired of doing bad things to people. I'm tired of living this life....What sorts of crimes did I commit? Various. Honestly, I considered crime my salary. We had a satanic cult in which we killed people....It's no joke. In MS-13, we sold our souls to the devil, practically, so that he'll give us everything we need. We sacrificed everybody, including innocent women and children. Every month or two we had to do a ritual. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98596425&ft=1&f=1004

From Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter DOI: 10.1207/s15327019eb0802_2 Published in: Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 , pages 115 - 124 http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/confessions-of-a-whistle-blower-lessons-learned/

"The argument between the field of child sexual abuse and the backlash against survivors is not an academic debate between two well meaning groups equally invested in ascertaining truth. It is not an academic debate at all; it is a political fight."
P. 121

“What wins political fights is organization and stamina and a refusal to be intimidated.” P. 122

describes severe crimes of abuse - The Evil Behind the Smiles By Nicholas D. Kristof 12/31/08 Phnom Penh, Cambodia - Sina is Vietnamese but was kidnapped at the age of 13 and taken to Cambodia, where she was drugged.... Sina mostly followed instructions and smiled alluringly at men because she would have been beaten if men didn’t choose her. But sometimes she was in such pain that she resisted, and then she said she would be dragged down to a torture chamber in the basement.“Many of the brothels have these torture chambers,” she said. “They are underground because then the girls’ screams are muffled.” As in many brothels, the torture of choice was electric shocks. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/opinion/01kristof.html

Vets sue CIA, DoD over military experiments By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer 1/7/09 SAN FRANCISCO – Six veterans who say they were exposed to dangerous chemicals, germs and mind-altering drugs during Cold War-era experiments filed a federal lawsuit against the CIA, Department of Defense and other agencies Wednesday. The veterans say they volunteered for military experiments as part of a wide-ranging program started in the 1950s to test nerve agents, biological weapons and mind-control techniques, but were not properly informed of the nature of the experiments. They blame the experiments for poor health and are demanding the government provide their health care. They also want the court to rule that the program was illegal because its administrators failed to get their consent....The suit, filed in San Francisco, alleges that at least 7,800 U.S. military personnel served as volunteers to test experimental drugs such as LSD at the Edgewood Arsenal near Baltimore, Md., during a program that lasted into the 1970s, and that many others volunteered for similar experiments at other locations. "In virtually all cases, troops served in the same capacity as laboratory rats or guinea pigs," the lawsuit states. The suit contends that veterans were wrongfully used as test subjects in experiments such as MK-ULTRA, a CIA project from the 1950s and '60s that involved brainwashing and administering experimental drugs like LSD to unsuspecting individuals. The project was the target of several congressional inquiries in the 1970s and was tied to at least one death. Harf said that MK-ULTRA "was thoroughly investigated and the CIA fully cooperated with each of the investigations." The plaintiffs say many of the volunteers' records have been destroyed or remain sealed as top secret documents. They also say they were denied medals and other citations they were promised for participating in the experiments. They are not seeking monetary damages but have demanded access to health care for veterans they say were turned away at Department of Veterans Affairs facilities because they could not prove their ailments were related to their military service. In 1988, the Justice Department agreed to pay eight Canadians a total of $750,000 to settle their lawsuit alleging they suffered psychological trauma from CIA-financed mind-control experiments that included the use of LSD. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090108/ap_on_re_us/cold_war_experiments_lawsuit

Organized abuse and the politics of disbelief

from http://ritualabuse.us

Organized abuse and the politics of disbelief by Michael Salter (p.243 - 283) Faculty of Law - Faculty of Medicine - University of New South Wales in Proceedings of the 2nd Australian & New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference 19 - 20 June 2008 Sydney, Australia - Presented by the Crime & Justice Research Network and the Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology Network Edited by Chris Cunneen & Michael Salter - Published by The Crime and Justice research Newtork University of New South Wales December, 2008 http://www.cjrn.unsw.edu.au ISBN: 9780646507378 (pdf)

“Since the 1980s, disclosures of organised abuse have been disparaged by a range of activists, journalists and researchers who have focused, in particular, on cases in which sexually abusive groups were alleged to have behaved in ritualistic or ceremonial ways...Whilst these authors claimed to be writing in the interests of science and social justice, what has emerged from their writing are a familiar set of arguments about the credibility of women and children’s testimony of sexual violence; in short, that women and children are prone to a range of memory and cognitive errors that lead them to make false allegations of rape.

This paper argues that this body of literature has systematically misconstrued allegations of organised abuse, and used organised abuse as a lens through which the debate on child abuse could be re-envisioned along very traditional lines, attributing victim status to accused men and constructing liars out of women and children complaining of sexual abuse. The instability, the uncertainty, and the complexity of cases of organised abuse have made it an important discursive site for a number of actors with ideological objections to the changes wrought by feminism and child protection. In particular, by framing allegations of organised abuse as bizarre and beyond belief, they sought to reassert an older politics of disbelief that contests the notion that women and children are reliable witnesses....

During a period in which women and children’s testimony of incest and sexual abuse were gaining an increasingly sympathetic hearing, lobby groups of people accused of child abuse construed and positioned “ritual abuse” as the new frontier of disbelief. The term “ritual abuse” arose from child protection and psychotherapy practice with adults and children disclosing organised abuse, only to be discursively encircled by backlash groups with the rhetoric of “recovered memories”, “false allegations” and “moral panic”. Seeking to recast the debate on child abuse according to an older politics of disbelief, these groups and activists attempted to characterise sexual abuse testimony, as a whole, through the lens of “ritual abuse." http://www.cjrn.unsw.edu.au/critcrimproceedings2008.pdf