Documentary on The Franklin Scandal and the Johnny Gosch case

Dear Friends,

A documentary is in the works about The Franklin Scandal and Johnny
Gosch's case, mainly thanks to Nick Bryant, author of The Franklin
Scandal: www.franklinscandal.com Please consider investing in this
project to make this important film a reality. Some financial support
from the public is needed for the film to be widely distributed. This
is your opportunity to make a difference!

(note: These links describe crimes)

A trailer of the film is available for your viewing at: http://rumur.com/hoax It is approximately 12 minutes long.

If you want to invest in the documentary, please read the proposal at http://rumur.com/hoax And contact Nick Bryant about this investment
opportunity: nbryant@localnet.com

If you want to anonymously donate to the upcoming Franklin documentary,
a PayPal button is provided at the following Web page. No amount is too
small to help make a difference: http://www.franklinscandal.com/acarefullycraftedhoax Click on DONATE HERE

Thanks for your support!

Israeli cult leader accused of enslaving women

Israeli cult leader accused of enslaving women
(AFP) JERUSALEM 2/14/10 - Israel on Sunday indicted a cult leader on a myriad of charges of enslaving and sexually abusing about 21 "wives" and the dozens of children he had with them. Goel Ratzon, 59, is accused of having taken "control over the lives" of the women since the early 1990s, holding them in a number of apartments in the Tel Aviv area.
Among the charges against him are rape, enslavement and indecent assault. "The defendant entrapped the women in a social group that took the form of a pseudo-family evolving around the cult of himself," according to the indictment submitted to a Tel Aviv court. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9bxfuF19NOW-FjCisVtxoFcaK7Q
http://www.france24.com/en/20100214-israeli-cult-leader-accused-enslaving-women

February 2010 Ritual Abuse Newsletter by ra-info.org

February 2010 Ritual Abuse Newsletter
Prepared by ra-info.org in affiliation with Survivorship

2. Survivorship continues with its Webinars. If anybody would like to give one, write me at jeannie@survivorship.org


Here is the latest schedule. Complete information is at http://www.survivorship.org/webinars.html


Saturday, March 13
“Art and Activism: What the Public Sees.”
Lynn Schirmer
Saturday, April 17
“Healthy Supportive Relationships – What They Are, How to Make One.”
Kitty Downey
Saturday, May 15
“Riding off into the Sunrise.”
Celestial
(This will be a light-hearted look at coping skills in the later stages of recovery.)


Recordings of past Webinars are available without cost to Survivorship members.


3. Survivorship is giving monthly workshops at the Family Justice Center in Oakland, CA. The next one is:


Saturday March 6
“Sharing Difficult Truths” with Mary Mary Ciofalo MFC and Dvora Gordon


4. The European Society for Trauma and Dissociation is holding its second bi-annual conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland on April 8 - 10. In addition, ESTD workshops are currently scheduled in Finland, The Netherlands, Norway, and the UK. Resources, links, and a members’ section are found on http://www.estd.org/


5. Deep Release Training, Counseling in Brentwood, Essex, UK offers a series of workshops on DID, extreme abuse, and related topics. More information is on their website at http://www.deeprelease.org.uk

April 19
“Extreme Reactions: Self-Harm, Suicide and Anorexia Nervosa.” with Pauline Andrew
April 19, October 13
“Early Trauma, Abuse and Neglect.” with Pauline Andrew
April 21
“DID: Who are the Perpetrators?” with Adah Sachs
April 30
“Toxic Churches and Spiritual Abuse.” with Pauline Andrew
July 15
“Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).” with Pauline Andrew


5. Your survey: http://www.ra-info.org would be happy to post a survey you have designed or to help you design it. Write rahome@ra-info.org if you are interested.


6. New surveys: There is a survey on Primary Method of Self-Injury. Includes current results. http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html
“People Against Ritual-Abuse-Torture” has a survey about extreme abuse, torture and discrimination and stigmatization. Includes current results. http://pub25.bravenet.com/vote/vote.php?usernum=2120596064&cpv=2



7. The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse and Betrayal. There is a new book on the nationwide sex trafficking/ritual abuse/child pedophile ring in Franklin, Nebraska, written by investigative reporter Nick Bryant. Bryant had access to many sources of documents including FBI reports and interoffice memos, Omaha Police Department reports and internal memos, Nebraska State Patrol reports, Nebraska Department of Social Services reports, and internal Boys Town reports. http://franklinscandal.com/index.html


8. “Healing from Ritual Abuse and Mind Control: Survivor Trish Fotheringham Speaks Out.” A three-DVD set ($18.00 plus $6.50 shipping) Trish, a Canadian survivor of ritual abuse and mind control, is interviewed at length by Ellen Lacter Ph.D. Information: http://www.MoreThanAnIdea.ca/id74.html

clergy abuse recovered memory Ireland/US, ritual abuse

Child abuse monster Father Brendan Smyth ruined my life By APRIL DREW, Irish Voice Reporter

2/10/10 Helen McGonigle, 48, was just six years old when Father Brendan Smyth, a notorious sex offender from Co. Cavan, first abused her.
McGonigle, now a successful attorney in Connecticut, says Smyth destroyed her family. She blames Smyth for the death of her sister and brother and the demise of her beautiful mother.

After years of suppressing the memories of the horrendous abuse, McGonigle is now dealing with her past and hoping other victims will do the same....Helen wasn't the only sister to encounter Smyth's evil ways. The Cavan priest also sexually abused her older sister Kathleen. In the past few years, both Kathleen, 48, and her brother Gerard, 53, died of drug overdoses. McGonigle claims it was the abuse Kathleen suffered at the hands of Smyth that made her dependent on antidepressants....

It was finally her sister's tragic death in 2005 that lead McGonigle to face her worst nightmares, nightmares from the past she thought she would never need to resurrect.
"It was because I observed my sister rapidly deteriorating and fearful for her life that I began my investigation into the past about our childhood in Rhode Island," said McGonigle during a lengthy interview with the Irish Voice.

While her sister was ailing, McGonigle's father said accusingly, "It was that priest from Rhode Island that gave your sister alcohol that started her problems." Not only did this statement shock and frighten McGonigle, it got her thinking back into her past. Was Smyth really responsible for his sister's problems? "People who do not walk in these shoes cannot comprehend how it (abuse) impacts adults and can be life threatening as in the case of my family," said McGonigle. http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html

In 1968, McGonigle said Smyth was caught molesting children in her parish and sent to Purdysburn Mental Hospital in Northern Ireland for treatment. After his time was served in Ireland, Smyth was allowed to return to Rhode Island, said McGonigle....During the abuse, McGonigle knew nothing but fear. Smyth told her she would "end up like the body in the woods" if she ever told a soul about what he was doing to her. "I took that as a real death threat and was terrified and confused and very young," she says. McGonigle also witnessed Smyth molesting her sister. They had a bedroom with a door directly to the outside that he could enter. Smyth's evil antics didn't stop at the McGonigle sisters either. Their mother also spent time in a mental institution.
According to McGonigle's childhood neighbor who she located after 36 years, in 1968 her mother caught "Smyth sodomizing a little boy behind the stone wall and she shouted, ‘What are you doing to that little boy.' http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html?page=2

The abuse stopped when the family moved from Rhode Island in 1973 but the scars were left for life. McGONIGLE got on with her life. She put her abuse behind her and did her best to lead a normal life. It wasn't until her sister's death five years ago that she began to delve into their pasts. She began to question why her sister suffered from depression in the first place. After a little investigating she too discovered and remembered that Kathleen was a victim of Smyth's lurid acts. After burying her sister McGonigle took time to deal with her own issues http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html?page=3

Not wanting to let Smyth ruin any more of her life, McGonigle reported the sexual abuse inflicted on her to the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island in 2006. They told her she wasn't the first to report Smyth. "I was informed that I was the sixth to come forward, yet newspaper accounts that I located indicated there were no problems whatsoever in our parish," she said.

McGonigle attended a meeting where she said the Vicar General, Paul Theroux, of the Providence Diocesan, offered her $25,000 compensation, or she could "privately arbitrate with a cap of $50,000 (meaning there would be no public record and everything would once again be kept secret)."

McGonigle became infuriated with the financial offer. McGonigle said the diocesan victim outreach coordinator, Michael Hansen, told her to "just send us all your bills."

"I refused their hush money," said McGonigle. The Diocese of Providence has paid for therapy and medical expenses McGonigle has incurred as a result of the abuse by Smyth.

McGonigle, who still has a case pending against the Diocese of Providence, realizes that it's too late for Smyth to be brought to justice, but she longs for the Catholic Church to recognize the abuse he inflicted on the children of her parish while he served his time there. http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html?page=4

Smyth was convicted on 91 counts of child molestation – 17 in Northern Ireland and 74 in the summer. http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html?page=5


describes crimes
Teachers get advice on how to spot signs of ritual abuse....
Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent The Guardian 2/2/07 ....'

Drawing on research showing 38 known cases of child abuse linked to alleged spirit possession in England since January 2000, the government guidance aims to raise awareness of the practice and help those coming into contact with youngsters to recognise indicators of abuse. The signs they are told to look out for, listed in draft advice published today, include marks such as bruises or burns on a child's body, a child becoming "noticeably confused, withdrawn, disorientated or isolated", and "deterioration in personal care" including weight loss, unkempt or dirty clothes, or even faeces smeared on the body.

Children may also report directly that they have been accused of being evil, or that they are having the "devil beaten out of them", according to the advice, which says teachers and others should follow child protection guidelines and pass their concerns to social services or the police.

The most common forms of abuse youngsters may suffer include physical assaults such as beating, burning, cutting, stabbing, semi-strangulation and having chilli peppers rubbed on to their eyes or genitals. Emotional forms of abuse, says the guidance, range from isolation from other family members to threats to abandon the child, who may also be subjected to sexual abuse and neglect extending to denial of food and warmth.
The 38 documented cases involved 47 abused children.

The vast majority of known instances of ritual abuse concerned first or second generation migrants from African countries including Congo, Nigeria, Angola and Ghana as well as south Asia and the Caribbean, but also white English families, according to the document....

The children's minister, Beverley Hughes, said: "While a very small proportion of all abuse cases are linked to spirit possession the impact on the children can be substantial and serious. Faith-based abuse can be hard for professionals to recognise and deal with and we want them to have all the guidance they need to help them tackle this."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/feb/02/childrensservices.schools

Germany's Clergy Abuse Scandal, Ritual Abuse New Zealand

describes crimes
Inside Germany's Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal The Catholic Church in Germany has been shaken in recent days by revelations of a series of sexual abuse cases. Close to 100 priests and members of the laity have been suspected of abuse in recent years. After years of suppression, the wall of silence appears to be crumbling. By SPIEGEL Staff. 2/8/10

This is what it looks like, the document of a conspiracy: 24 pages, with appendix, in Latin, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. A "norma interna," or confidential set of guidelines for all bishops, who were required to keep it a secret for all eternity, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost....

The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn't put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession -- in other words, when he provokes a penitent "toward impure and obscene matters" through "words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch." ....

But now the wall of silence is coming down here in Germany. It started when Berlin's Canisius College, an elite Jesuit high school, recently disclosed the sordid past of a number of members of the order, who had abused students at the school in the 1970s and 1980s. After that, new victims began coming forward on a daily basis. By last Friday, at least 40 of them had accused three Jesuit priests of molesting children and adolescents, first in Berlin and later at the St. Ansgar School in Hamburg, the St. Blasien College in the Black Forest and in several parishes in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.....

For decades, German bishops tried to look the other way when their pastors engaged in sexual abuse, as well as to downplay the problem by characterizing it as isolated incidents. Now they are finally revealing their own figures, though hesitantly. According to a SPIEGEL survey of Germany's 27 dioceses conducted last week, at least 94 priests and members of the laity in Germany are suspected or have been suspected of abusing countless children and adolescents since 1995. A total of 24 of the 27 dioceses responded to SPIEGEL's questions.

A group called the Round Table for Care in Children's Homes recently published an interim report which contains dramatic findings. The report deals with the wrongs committed since the 1950s against children and adolescents living in homes, almost half of which were run by the Catholic Church.
According to the report, more than 150 victims of sexual abuse have come forward with their stories in recent months.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,676497,00.html

Part 5: A Church Pays Hush Money
Instead of investigating the case and putting the chaplain on trial, the abusive chaplain, acting through the episcopal ordinariate, paid the family what amounted to damages for pain and suffering as well as hush money. Then the man was transferred to another parish, which was not informed about the abuse allegations, and where new cases of abuse were reported in 2003.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,676497-5,00.html


New Zealand counsellors talk about ritual abuse: A discourse analysis - Pack, Sylvia - Abstract: Research indicates that in the last five decades, claims of Satanic ritual abuse (RA), and the numbers of clients receiving counselling for RA, have increased in all Western countries. This has resulted in an increased corpus of related literature overseas, which includes studies in which facticity as well as aetiology, symptomology and treatment are debated. This present study focuses on a New Zealand context, and examines the talk of New Zealand counsellors in relation to their views regarding RA and the counselling of RA clients. Social constructionist and positivist epistemologies were evaluated in terms of their suitability for this research, and the discourse analytic method developed by Potter and Wetherell (1987) chosen as the means by which participants' talk might be analysed in such a way as to allow the inclusion of multiple constructions and the emergence of the many discourses and conflicting ideas which occur in overseas literature. A broad selection of the literature was first critically analysed to give an understanding of the topic.

Nine counsellors gave interviews, eight women and one man, all Pakeha, six of whom were ACC-registered (Accident Compensation Commission, 2009). The participants constructed RA as a physical reality, which was justified by the use of the credible client discourse. A traditional linguistic repertoire furnished a discourse of government backing, which was employed to warrant voice...The thesis concludes by highlighting the participants' comments regarding the need for openness and awareness, and specialised literature and training for counsellors treating RA clients.
Publisher: Massey University Issue Date: 2009 http://muir.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/1098
http://muir.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/10179/1098/1/02_whole.pdf

German Church Faces Child Abuse Charges

German Church Faces Child Abuse Charges
By NICHOLAS KULISH February 9, 2010 BERLIN

Shanley recovered memory case : S.M.A.R.T.’s Ritual Abuse Pages

The Roman Catholic Church faces yet another child abuse scandal, this time in Pope Benedict XVI's native Germany. The widening public scandal began last month with allegations that three priests at the elite Canisius Jesuit high school in Berlin had sexually abused students in the 1970s and '80s. In the midst of a steadily growing uproar over the handling of that case, the German magazine Der Spiegel published an article last weekend that said nearly 100 clerics and laypeople had been suspected of abusing children and teenagers nationwide since 1995....

The abuse of children by members of the clergy remains one of the most difficult issues for the church. In December the Vatican accepted the resignations of several Irish bishops after a report by the Irish government detailed the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children by Catholic priests in church-run residential schools, many of them run by the Christian Brothers.

The report found that both the Catholic hierarchy and Irish state agencies covered up complaints by 320 Irish children who said they were abused by priests between 1974 and 2004.

On Monday at the Vatican, Benedict told members of the Pontifical Council for the Family that he condemned the abuse of children by members of the clergy, but he has not commented directly on the situation in Germany.

Der Spiegel said that at least 94 clerics and laypeople had been suspected of abuse since 1995, based on a poll of 27 of Germany's 30 Catholic dioceses.

Irish Victims Write to Pope

DUBLIN (AP) - Irish victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy have written to Pope Benedict XVI asking him to take responsibility for the church's concealment of child molestation by forcing out bishops implicated in the decades of cover-up.

Their plea comes one week before a special Vatican summit meeting involving the pope and Ireland's bishops to prepare a response to scandals in the Irish church. Three bishops have already offered to resign. The letter's writers urge Benedict to write to all the people of Ireland, "accepting fully the harm that has been caused" by child-abusing priests, nuns and brothers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/world/europe/10germany.html

Torturing by Non-State Actors Invisibilized

Torturing by Non-State Actors Invisibilized, A Patriarchal Divide and Spillover Violence from the Military Sphere into the Domestic Sphere Authors: Jeanne Sarson, Linda MacDonald PSJ Peace Studies Journal Vol. 2, Issue 2 Winter 2009 Abstract
Processes of inquiry: a questionnaire, web-survey, and the narratives of women detailing how non-state actor torture (NSAT) inflicted by a mother, father, sibling and guardians who had warring or military experiences, spilled over into the domestic sphere. Discussion illustrates how a patriarchal divide has and does exist internationally and nationally in Canada whereby the defining elements of state torture: severity, intentionality, purposefulness and powerlessness make it a distinct offence from all others, whereas, these elements are not equally applied to NSAT to acknowledge that it is also is a distinct offence that occurs in the domestic sphere, therefore NSAT is invisibilized. It is argued that discrimination exists, even within the UN Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), when there was a failure to recognize Canadian women and girls who survived NSAT as a vulnerable group. Socio-legal visibilization solutions are suggested. http://www.peacestudiesjournal.org/archive/winter09/mcdonald.pdf
http://www.peacestudiesjournal.org/archive/winter09/mcdonald.doc