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Satanic Abuse Rumbles On?

The Virgin Queen said:
Can't I be Faith? I'll tell you want: we'll take turns (I'm sure I know someone with a blonde wig...)
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Ooooooo.....I dunno about that. I could never carry off Whiny Buffy.

We'll have to think a bit more. What about Faith and Drusilla? Or Bad Willow? Or Demon Cordy?
 
Helen said:
We'll have to think a bit more. What about Faith and Drusilla? Or Bad Willow? Or Demon Cordy?
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Bad Willow sounds so good...I could do that...I've not got enough floaty dresses for Drusilla :(
 
Emperor said:
Fire away!!


Also Is the book you refer to:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0752215256/
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Yes thats the book (a very odd productuion with a plastic slip cover). It includes extracts from Nathaniel and Isabel and from Brenda's sexy novel.

There are five pages from Charlotte Light and Dark but here is the most telling extract, Brenda/Charlotte has just been seperated from the only other child in the hospital who is so upset he has mutilated himself. Dr Feinberg has been makin her do word association tests all morning:

CHARLOTTE LIGHT AND DARK by GARETH FEINBERG. PH.D (1979)

Chapter 7: The Swarming Indifference
Page 139


Her narrative work with the pictures was initially encouraging. As I listened to Charlotte spin long, elegant tales from these often quite mundane images, I thought I sensed a naturalness that had been kept from me up until this very moment. But the story she told in response to the last image—that of a young farm girl and an old man standing in front of a grain elevator on the open prairie—showed me how wrong I’d been. I reproduce it below in full, transcribed word for word from the tape of our Session.

Charlotte: “The little girl was coming out to the mailbox, because she is waiting for a letter from the Army. There is a war in Pennsylvania and her brother is fighting in it. He is a demolition paratrooper. He explodes when he lands on the ground. When he explodes, the Army will send a letter to the little girl with a treasure map about where to find her brother’s heart on the battlefield when the war is over. So she is always going to the mailbox to check.”
Me: “And who’s the old man?”
Charlotte: “He’s her doctor.”
Me: “Is the little girl sick?”
Charlotte: “No.”
Mc: “Then why is the doctor there?”
Charlotte: “He’s there because he took the picture.”
(Silence.)
Me: “He took the picture, and he’s in it at the same time?”
Charlotte: “Yes.”
Me: “How did he do that?”
Charlotte: “He took it by hanging the camera on a hook stuck in a cloud. And then he made the little girl stand there while the picture took itself.”
Me: “And why does the doctor want to take the picture?”
(Silence.)
Charlotte: “Because he doesn’t know he exists if he isn’t making someone do some-thing. That’s why he follows the girl everywhere. He’s a shadow.”

It was at this moment I realized that in my twenty years of practicing psychology, I’d never dealt with a psyche as stubborn and resistant as Charlotte’s. Raised by a pair of successful analysts immersed as she was in the culture of self-awareness, she had no way to stop watching herself, no possible avenue of escape from the jewel-like hail of mirrors that was her mind. I saw no hope for further progress and resolved to release her into the custody of her parents. The brief experiment had come to an end.
Or so I thought. For just then, Charlotte did the one thing I had come to believe she would never, ever do.
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The Virgin Queen said:
Bad Willow sounds so good...I could do that...I've not got enough floaty dresses for Drusilla :(
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Well, I could do Faith, but without the pained, Joey Tribiani School of Acting expression. You know; the one that looks like she's dividing 74,932 by 471.
 
Are you making fun of Eliza Dushku's pout?
 
Nah, not the pout. The confused look that just looks like constipation. You know, the forehead crinkles and she's looks like she's trying to spell a particularly difficult word. She's only got three expressions - normal; wolfish grin; and constipated.

It's true, I tell you. No matter how many times I watch her, I just end up entranced by the fact she's actually got less facial expressions that Roger Moore. She can't even do eyebrow acting.
 
Can't say I ever noticed. But I may have been distracted by something else.
 
Leaferne said:
*leans forward expectantly*
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If your wondering - we never find out what Charlotte did next - it juste stops there!
 
Oh. Poo. I appreciate you not letting me lean there forever, btw. :)
 
Helen said:
She's only got three expressions - normal; wolfish grin; and constipated.
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Every emotion from A to B? :D I'll be bad willow...
 
Along similar lines to SRA:

Ex-Nats official guilty of teen sex

27jun04

A FORMER Queensland National Party official protested his innocence after a jury tonight found him guilty of sex acts with teenaged boys during pagan rituals.

Garry Robin Ford, 55, was convicted of 22 charges, including the indecent treatment of underaged boys, sodomy and supplying them with hallucinatory magic mushrooms during 1989 and 1990.

The Supreme Court in Brisbane was told schoolboys had sat in a candle-lit circle as their black-caped "teacher" chanted and danced.

They allegedly performed sex acts on each other and on Ford to be initiated into his White Brotherhood sect.

.........
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http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,9970801%5E1702,00.html

...

Ford denied all claims. He said the White Brotherhood claims stemmed from the title of a book a youth was reading at the time.

The youth was into "sex magick" books and witchcraft and if Ford talked to him of homosexuality and religion he was trying to mentor the youth to put God first.

He denied taking part in any sexual ritual in a bat cave. He recalled visiting the cave one night with a group, including women, and nothing sexual took place.

He denied taking part in an "exorcism" of another youth.

.........
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http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,9961941%5E2765,00.html

Emps
 
A member of the National Party having sex with young boys? The horror! What would his sheep think?
 
anome: No friends of yours then?

-----------------------------
Ritual sex 'victim' stands by claim

June 30, 2004 13:52

A WOMAN who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a couple during "quasi-satanic rituals" has denied her allegations were complete "hocus pocus".

The woman told a jury at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday that she had been interested in witchcraft.

But she denied drawing on her own experiences of witchcraft and Satanism to add credence to her claims against David Stalford, 56, and his 55-year-old wife, Bette.

The woman said she had classed herself as a witch in the past, but was now a pagan, which she defined someone who believed in taking care of nature and worshipping it.

The woman has claimed that when she was a teenager she was recruited to take part in rituals by the Stalfords.

She claimed the couple had approached her when they had been living in the Bury St Edmunds area and asked if was a virgin.

The woman said they had told her they had been contacted by a coven of witches and needed her to help them because she was a virgin.

She told the court that a few nights later she had been told to have a bath and to make sure she was clean from head to toe.

The woman went to bed in a room at the Stalford's house, but was woken up during the night by Bette Stalford and told to put on a bathrobe.

She was then taken downstairs to a living room and recalled: "It was dark and a lot of candles were lit." Both the Stalfords were wearing bathrobes and she was told to go into the middle of the room.

The court heard David Stalford had told her to take off her robe and to kneel. The couple had then allegedly removed their own robes and had told her to perform oral sex on him.

Afterwards she described the Stalfords as being "very pleasant" to her and said they had all gone into the dining room and had had a hot drink.

She said the ritual had been repeated a number of times running into double figures over a period of three to four months.

She said the rituals had come to an end when she had told the couple that she had not wanted to take part in them any more. "It frightened me. They said if I didn't want to do it any more, it would stop," added the woman.

However, she claimed David Stalford had later taken explicit photographs of her while she was naked.

The Stalfords, of Oak Hill, Hollesley, have denied six joint offences of indecent assault and six alternative offences of indecency with a child.

David Stalford has denied five offences of indecent assault and four offences of indecency with a child.

Cross-examined yesterday by Martyn Levett, defending David Stalford, the woman said she had set up a website for pagans and added she had given Bette Stalford a "book of spells" and "the witches bible" as presents.

Mr Levett said: "You told the police a complete hocus pocus story drawing on your experiences of witchcraft and Satanism to give credence to your account that you were assaulted in a sexual manner."

The woman denied this and a suggestion from Mr Levett that she had wanted to go into glamour modelling when she was a teenager and had asked David Stalford to take pictures of her because she knew he was interested in photography.

But she admitted that she had been working recently in a gentlemen's club as a pole and lap dancer.

Asked by Steven Dyble, defending Bette Stalford, if she would have been able to create a fiction of ritual abuse from her own knowledge of paganism and witchcraft, the woman replied: "I would have gone into more detail and I would have been able to answer the questions a lot better."

The trial continues today.
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Source
 
Another report:

Railway ritual claim of sex 'victim'

July 1, 2004 17:54

A WOMAN who claimed she was the victim of ritualistic sex abuse as a schoolgirl has described how a couple took her to a disused railway line to take part in a ritual.

The alleged victim said David and Bette Stalford had walked with her to a patch of open land in Sicklesmere, where they had all took off their clothes and put on robes.

She alleged all three had then stood in a circle, but David Stalford had heard a noise and had gone off to investigate. When he returned, he told the other two to get dressed and they had left the area without anything happening.

Giving evidence at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday, the woman told how she had been recruited for "quasi-satanic rituals" by the couple after David Stalford had asked her if she was still a virgin.

She said David Stalford had explained that he and his wife were members of a group and that they performed rituals.

On one occasion when she was about 11 she was allegedly taken into the Stalfords' living room, where an altar was laid out with a white cloth and with a rosary draped over a bible that was propped up against a wall.

The woman said David Stalford had been alone in the room with her and asked if she would like him to show her how the rituals worked, but she had said no.

She had later spoken to Bette Stalford about what David Stalford had told her and she had confirmed there were rituals and told her they were not anything to worry about.

A couple of weeks later the woman was allegedly told by David Stalford to have a bath and to put on a blue robe, which he gave her.

She was taken to the living room of their home where candles and incense sticks were burning and a makeshift bed had been set up.

"I was told to take my robe off and they took their robes off. I was told to stand in a circle and hold hands with them both," said the woman.

David Stalford had explained to her that in the rituals they all had to touch each other and he would show her what to do.

He had then allegedly run his hand over his wife's naked body and his wife had done the same to him and then given him oral sex. They then told their alleged victim to do the same, but she told them she was not ready.

Bette Stalford, 55, had then allegedly touched the girl's body and then held onto her wrists and got the girl to touch her body.

The woman claimed she had also seen a photograph of David Stalford with his hand on the head of another alleged victim aged 16 or 17 who was giving him oral sex.

The Stalfords, of Oak Hill, Hollesley have denied six joint offences of indecent assault and six alternative offences of indecency with a child.

David Stalford, 56, has also denied five offences of indecent assault and four offences of indecency with a child.

Cross-examined by Martyn Levett, defending David Stalford, the woman denied "lying her head off" and inventing the allegations.

The trial continues today.
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Source
 
Along similar lines although (kind of) the other side of the mirror:

Last modified Saturday, July 3, 2004 8:48 PM PDT

Minister charged with using fear of devil to coerce sex



By: North County Times wire services

LA MESA - A 59-year-old minister from National City was arrested for allegedly using a fear of the devil to induce women to have sex with him, a police sergeant said today.

Carlos Romero, who lives in the 2700 block of Prospect Street, was picked up at his workplace in Kearny Mesa yesterday, La Mesa police Sgt. Dan Willis said.

The arrest came after an investigation launched May 8, when a 31-year-old La Mesa woman reported the suspect to police, La Mesa police Lt. Allen White said.

The woman told officers that her pastor had convinced her that only by having sex with him could she be protected from the devil, White said. The woman said she had been induced to have sex with the cleric umerous times.

During the investigation, police found two other women who told the same story, White said.

One of the women -- a 38-year-old -- started having sex with the suspect in January.The other victim -- a 37-year-old woman -- began having sex with the suspect in March of 1996, White said.

The suspect allegedly had oral sex with all three victims, sexual intercourse with two of the victims and tried anal sex with one of the women, White said.

Police said Romero is a minister who has a congregation of about a dozen people and has nondenominational services in the homes of his Apostolic Church members.

"We haven't determined whether he has been officially ordained," Willis said.

Romero was booked into the county jail on suspicion of inducing consent to sexual acts by fraud or fear and making criminal threats, Willis said.

The suspect allegedly threatened one victim with injury if she told anyone about the encounters, the sergeant said.

A clerk at the jail said Romero bailed out of custody.
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http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/07/04/backpage/7_3_0420_40_41.txt

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5360108/

Emps
 
Terrible story - when will people learn??

'It was like a witch hunt'

In October last year the remote Scottish island of Lewis was torn apart by allegations of ritual child abuse. But two weeks ago, the case against the accused suddenly collapsed, just as similar actions in the Orkneys and Nottingham did before them. It was another case of 'Satanic panic', but as Rosie Waterhouse finds out, the community remains divided

Friday July 16, 2004
The Guardian

It was pitch black outside, misty and bitterly cold, when Ian Campbell rose at 6am on October 3 2003 to get ready for work on a fish farm on the remote island of Lewis in the outer Hebrides. As his wife and five children slept, he made a cup of coffee and sat down in the kitchen of their cottage on the edge of the peat moors of Ness, north of Lewis, when there was a knock at the door.

"There was a plain-clothes officer standing there who identified himself as being the police," Campbell recalls. "Suddenly there were police everywhere. They said, 'We've got a warrant to search your house.' They said something about child abuse."

Shocked and confused, Campbell went to wake his wife, Penny, asleep on the sofabed in the lounge. In the chaos that ensued, plain-clothes and uniformed officers and social workers from Western Isles council seemed to fill up every room in the cramped, two-bedroom home, a converted traditional stone "black house" dating from 1840.

Campbell, 39, was handcuffed and driven off in an unmarked car. Penny, 32, was asked if she wanted to help dress the children, aged between eight months and 11 years, then she too was taken away - leaving her children behind - to be questioned at Stornoway police station, 28 miles away. The couple were interviewed separately - Ian for more than four hours, Penny for three. The allegations they both faced were devastating - child sexual abuse involving three young girls on the island.

The Campbells were among 11 people arrested that October morning in dawn raids on homes on Lewis, Leicestershire, West Yorkshire and Dorset. Three people, including Penny, were released without charge later that day. Eight others, including Ian, and a 75-year-old grandmother, were charged with sexual offences against children over a period of six years between 1995 and 2001.

The charges were said to involve three girls under 16 who had been in the care of the Western Isles social services department. It is understood that the investigation began after one of the girls said something to a carer that caused her concern. This was relayed to a social worker and, over several months, allegations of abuse followed.

The arrests, in what police code-named Operation Haven, soon made headlines on local and national radio, television and newspapers. The more lurid referred to a "child sex abuse network" and a suspected "paedophile ring".

All eight accused denied the charges and a trial was expected soon after. But two weeks ago, on Friday July 2, the case suddenly collapsed. In a statement, Northern Constabulary said the Scottish Crown Office had instructed that no proceedings would be taken. The Crown Office confirmed that all charges had been dropped. No explanation was given.

The next day, determined to clear her husband's name, Penny Campbell wrote a long and impassioned statement which she emailed to the press. In it she revealed publicly, for the first time, the bizarre nature of the allegations that Ian and the others had faced - Satanic ritual child abuse.

Transcripts of police interviews, seen by the Guardian, reveal that those charged were accused of being devil worshippers, of raping and sexually abusing children in black magic rituals and wife-swapping orgies during which they dressed in ceremonial robes and masks, sacrificed animals and drank their blood.

The charges were redolent of similar cases in Orkney, Rochdale and Nottingham - among many others that occurred in the early 1990s - all of which were dismissed due to lack of evidence. The so-called Satanic abuse was exposed as a myth; how could this happen again?

Research into a series of similar ritual abuse investigations in Britain, conducted by Professor Jean la Fontaine and published by the Department of Health in 1994, concluded that although there might have been sexual abuse of children in some of the cases, there was no forensic evidence that Satanic ritual abuse existed.

Further investigations revealed the "Satanic panic" had originated in the United States and been spread there and here by evangelical born-again Christians, and police, social workers and therapists who attended conferences and seminars on this apparently newly discovered and most depraved form of child abuse.

Last Tuesday (July 13) Western Isles council announced it would be conducting a review of events on Lewis and invited the Social Work Services Inspectorate to analyse their involvement. The inquiry is expected to examine methods used by social workers to conduct "disclosure interviews" and therapy sessions with the children whose allegations led to the charges of sexual abuse. The review will start immediately.

It is also expected to investigate how the allegations of "Satanic ritual abuse" first arose and how they developed. An earlier statement from the council, after the charges were dropped, said its employees were to be "commended for their professionalism and commitment in difficult and complex circumstances."

The Guardian has interviewed three of the accused men who remain on Lewis, and also members of their families who were originally suspected of being perpetrators, to piece together accounts of their nine-month ordeal. We also talked to local people in a community that has been shattered by allegations that there was a paedophile ring in their midst.

Peter Nelson, 59, and his daughter Mary-Anne, 37, had also been asleep at their home in Lochs, on the west of Lewis, when they were woken by their dogs barking and the police banging on the door. It was the same routine as with the Campbells - a search warrant was produced and they were invited to the station.

"When they raided this house I don't think the detectives realised I am disabled," Nelson says. "I have spinal injuries and my daughter is my carer. But one of them asked me: 'Is it an unnatural relationship with your daughter? Do you share the same bed?' The next thing he said I was being accused of the rape of three children. And my daughter was being accused as well."

John and Susan Sellwood, were also arrested that cold morning and driven in two cars to Stornoway police station, bewildered and afraid.

"They treated me as guilty from the start," says John. "In the car on the way to the police station they accused me of rape and said they had got me on a video so there was no point me denying it. They said there were others involved so it would be better if I got it off my chest, because if I stayed quiet and the others spilled the beans I would be made to look worse. I didn't know what they were talking about."

Susan Sellwood was interviewed for almost six hours by two male officers in plain clothes. "I was crying and hysterical for most of the interview," she says. "I suffer from panic attacks. At one point I thought I was going to be physically sick. They stuck my head out of the window and told me to get some fresh air.

"I was accused of having relationships, orgies, with all the men. I was accused of holding the girls down while the men performed. I was accused of joining in with a vibrator. They asked what I knew about the occult and the sacrifice of animals. I was just totally hysterical by this time."

The Campbells, the Sellwoods and the Nelsons were interviewed simultaneously at Stornoway that morning. The Campbells were quizzed for longer and in more depth about the Satanic elements and their interest in the occult. The Campbells are Pagans. They made no secret of their religion when they moved to the island in 1997. New Agers flock to Lewis at significant times such as the midsummer solstice because of the famous standing stones of Callanish, monoliths considered second only to Stonehenge as a mystical tourist attraction.

"As soon as I said I was a Pagan I knew I was sunk," says Ian. "The police officers interviewing me didn't know what a Pagan was. They equated being a Pagan with being a Satanist and a devil worshipper. They had taken away two books on Paganism from my house and saw them as evidence of Satanism. We also had a bible and a book on Jehovah's witnesses but they didn't take those.

"When they raided the house again last February - after Penny started writing letters of complaint to the police - they took away some of her clothes including a purple velvet hooded top, a full-length blue and gold Kaftan and a mauve and black lace tunic, which belonged to one of my daughters. They obviously thought Penny was a witch."

There has been no explanation from the police or the Crown Office as to why the charges were suddenly dropped. The Crown Office statement merely said: "We can say that all the available evidence was carefully examined before this decision was taken."

Last week, in the local pub and social club in Ness, where most of the accused had lived at some time, feelings were still running high. At the bar, a table of women on a girls' night out were shocked the charges had been dropped. "There must have been something in it; the police must have had evidence to make arrests," insists one, the mother of two small children.

All eight accused had moved from England to Lewis at some stage, for a better, simpler life, and if there was one consolation for the community it was that at least they were not islanders. A well-known local figure, who agreed to be called Angus, who seems to know everyone in Ness, believes the majority want those accused who remain to leave.

"These charges of paedophilia and child sex rings have brought the island into disrepute," he says. When asked what he thought about the revelation that the allegations included Satanic rituals he says: "I don't believe in that rubbish myself. But we all knew the Campbells were white witches. We all heard this was what the neighbours were saying before they moved to this part of Lewis."

In the nine months that followed the accusations, the effects on the accused have been traumatic. Those in Lewis were subjected to vigilante attacks, personal abuse and have been ostracised by many in the community. Campbell, Nelson and Sellwood have all had the word "paedo" daubed in paint on the walls, and in Sellwood's case on the main road, outside their homes. While Nelson was in prison, the garden that he and his daughter had cultivated over seven years was raided and wrecked. He was so fearful for their safety, that he installed CCTV cameras, which transmit views from around his house and garden onto a massive TV screen in his lounge.

Last March, when he hit his lowest point, Nelson attempted suicide by taking an overdose. "The stress of everything, the hatred that was being shown to us, the damaging of the property and our garden we had worked so hard to create; it was like living in a nightmare," he admits.

Mary-Anne found him unconscious on the sofa and he recovered after four days in hospital. Nelson's mental state is still fragile, and he breaks down often at the memory of recent events, but he is stubbornly defiant and determined to stay on Lewis. "I will probably become a hermit," he says, "and just potter around my garden. But they will not drive me out."

The Sellwoods and the Campbells are not so confident. After mulling over their future in recent days, both couples have decided they will probably leave the island to begin a new life. For Ian Campbell, his world has been turned upside down.

"The way we were as a family has changed," he says. "I find it hard to be close to the kids like I used to be. I can't hug them like I used to. Even now I worry that holding my daughter's hand in the street is going to be interpreted as something different.

"To be called a paedophile, it's like a sickness inside. I have lost control of my life and I have become very angry. I was also very frightened. When the police were interviewing me about devil worshipping, animal sacrifice and the Satanic stuff, they just believed it was true. It was like a 17th-century witch hunt. If this had happened then, Penny and I would have been burned at the stake."

---------------------
· Rosie Waterhouse is a consultant on Newsnight's film, A case of Satanic Panic?, which is on BBC2 at 11.30pm.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1262400,00.html
 
Witchcraft couple jailed for abuse

Witchcraft couple jailed for abuse

Source


September 9, 2004 19:00

AN "evil" child molester who subjected young girls to "quasi-satanic" sex abuse
today smirked as he was jailed for nine years.

His "hedge witch" wife, who told the children they could trust her husband while
he carried out "horrific and vile" sexual acts was jailed for three years.

David and Bette Stalford, of Oak Hill, Hollesley, made two of the three children
abused strip naked in candlelit rooms and ordered them to perform sex acts on
David.

The teenagers, who were unaware of each other's involvement at the time, were
asked by the Stalfords if they were virgins.

They were then told to bathe to cleanse themselves and dress in nothing but
white robes in the middle of the night before the rituals commenced.

Bette Stalford, 55, told one of the girls she needed her because she was part of
a coven of witches who needed virgins for their Paganistic rituals.

Ipswich Crown Court heard that David Stalford, 56, also abused two of the three
girls when they were aged just five or six.

The court heard that the abuse spanned 15 years and was carried out about 30
years ago. The couple also lived in Great Whelnetham and Honington.

Following a month-long trial, David Stalford was convicted of three counts of
indecency and two of indecent assault with a child on his own.

He was also jointly found guilty with his wife of six offences of indecency with
a child.

At today's sentence hearing David Stalford emerged from the cells dressed in a
faded blue denim jacket and jeans and looking subdued. But by the time his
sentence was passed, a grin had spread across his ashen features.

Bette Stalford also looked more dishevelled than at her previous court
appearances. She was wearing a long grey cardigan over black clothing.

Judge Peter Thompson said prison had been particularly difficult for this woman
of previous good character because the nature of the offences had resulted in
fellow inmates dishing out their own forms of punishment.

They have been on remand in prison since being found guilty by a jury in
mid-July.

Judge Thompson told the court the girls who were now mothers had suffered
throughout their lives from the abuse.

He said: "The effect on the girls was profound. Their lives have been blighted
and their own sexual lives as adults have been distorted."

He said Stalford called the women "liars, fantasists and collaborators".

When sentencing David Stalford, Judge Thompson said: "You are an evil man."

He added that Bette Stalford, a "vulnerable individual", had been "subordinate"
to her husband and led the girls to him, making her role "more sinister".

Both defendants were told to sign the Sex Offenders' Register indefinitely and
they were told they would never be allowed to work with children again.
 
You dont know who to believe these days.

I had a friend who was accused of abusing two girls (this allegedley happened 13 years ago)

everyone treated him as guilty, and the jury were all against him.

The judge used his head and passed the case on to a higher court who cleared him.

(still resulted in him losing a good job, and he has had to move)

But what if he had been a pagan? What if he had been a suspectible individual who could be pressurised into a confession?? (as happened with a disturbed man I knew who confessed to being a stalker. Luckly this was before the panic of recent years and so he got away with it) what if he collected classic art of occult books?

We are all at risk these days.
 
I'm not sure who saw the documentary on Channel 5 tonight "The woman with seven personalities" but it veered into SRA territory. Some info:

the woman with seven personalities: extraordinary people

Monday 18 Oct 2004

A chance encounter with her school friend on a train led Ruth Selwyn to make this amazing documentary. After many years of lost contact, Ruth was amazed to discover that her old friend Helen has a rare condition called dissociative identity disorder, more commonly known as multiple personality disorder.

Helen, 35, switches between her 'alter' personalities at a second's notice. The most common ones are Adam, a cute 10-year-old boy who is sad that he isn't allowed to play outside like other kids; six-year-old William, who speaks in a baby voice ; and Alex, a hyperactive five-year-old who tries to shoot everyone to protect Helen, "which is quite wearing", says Helen.

Two other voices are more sinister: under the influence of 'feisty' 13-year-old Brenda and 16-year-old Karl, Helen has overdosed on pills over 100 times, drank herself into alcoholism (from which she is now in remission), and continues to cut her arms.

Helen's condition has made it impossible for her to hold down a job, and she lives on benefits in a council flat. Just to get through each day, she must take an alarming array of medication, including Valium, anti-psychotics and the highest possible dose of Prozac. Helen has little contact with her family and only one other friend, an older man.

When she falls under the influence of one of her 'alters', Helen enters an amnesiac state: when she returns to her own personality, she can't remember anything of what has just happened.

Why has the bright, seemingly cheerful friend Ruth used to know fallen so low? Ruth is horrified when Helen says that she believes someone abused her as a child, although she doesn't know who. She created all these personas to escape from herself, and distance the pain. Karl and Brenda represent the need to embrace physical pain in order to purge her emotional pain (by slicing her arms) or to block it out (her former drinking and pills overdoses). Her more positive 'alters' represent a retreat into the childhood Helen says she was never allowed to have: "All I wanted was to be a normal girl, not one who lives in a prison."

For the past 13 years, Helen has been seeing Dr Joan Coleman, a controversial figure who maintains that Helen was a victim of satanic abuse a scenario that has never been proven in court. Helen says that she has half-buried memories, which Joan, quoting Freud, claims are the signs of the conscious repressing such horrible experiences into the subconscious.

However, Dr Ray Altridge-Morris of the British False Memory Society believes that such claims are the modern equivalent of the medieval witchhunts. He discredits Freud's theory, claiming that people remember horrendous experiences rather than repress them, and that multiple personality disorder is created, sincerely and unconsciously, by therapists and their extremely suggestible clients. Ruth is unsure, and feels that both sides have their own agendas. It seems quite possible that Helen has been abused, for she has obviously been in incredible emotional pain to create such an extreme coping strategy. But, by the end of the film, Ruth is no nearer to an answer.

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There is a free factsheet called Understanding Dissociative Disorders to accompany this programme. Simply click on the link at the bottom of this page.

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For further information on Helen visit the production company website at www.flashagraf.com
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http://www.five.tv/factsheets/sevenpersonalities/

Factsheet:
http://www.five.tv/media/pdf/9810308.pdf

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I suppose it was the nature of the beast that (as it was done by a friend of Helen's) that it wouldn't look to deeply into the background. One expert had only read about it in books but then they went to her therapist who was alarmingly convinced of the truth of SRA - they did wheel someone out from the British False Memories Society BFMS) but I'd have liked to know more about her therapist and her background. They did mention the possible iatrogenic nature of these kinds of disorders (iatros is Grek for physician and it means something that derives from therapy or treatment meaning that it is a construct brought about by a doctor/patient interaction).

In the end I was concerned about how much was 'real' - she had probably suffered a lot of abuse, although probably not satanic (including the claims for an abortion which she was made to eat), but despite this happening fro her early years she didn't actually develop multiple personalities until after she left school (although she claimed to have heard the voices earlier). This would tend to suggest she was suffering from something like schizophrenia which was somehow transformed into multiple personality disorder but there were few details of her history of treatment so it was difficult to tell.

It was all very worrying as it seemed like her therapist was following her own agenda and Helen got dragged along and she is in genuine danger of one of her personalities killing her unless she gets things sorted out. All very sad :(

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BFMS:
http://www.bfms.org.uk
 
The Woman with Seven Personalities

Feel free to move this thread to another area as wasn't sure where best is should go.

Did anyone see this programme on Channel 5 last night (Monday 18th October 2004 9-10pm) about Helen.

Just wondered what others thought of it?

How does the poor woman live like that? I don't think I could. What kind of day to day life does she lead? What do her family/friends think? How do they deal with it? Is she just going to be like that for the rest of her life? What is being done to help her other than the amount of pills she has to pop everyday? What does the medication actually do? Does anyone believe the satanic ritual abuse stories told by the other personalities?
 
They did mention the possible iatrogenic nature of these kinds of disorders (iatros is Grek for physician and it means something that derives from therapy or treatment meaning that it is a construct brought about by a doctor/patient interaction).
Click to expand...

Thank you. I have been wondering what that word meant for years.

An interesting case like this is going to attract a lot of the medical fraternity (who seem to take an interest in interesting cases) and so it seems a likley theory.
 
Isn't MPD seen as a symptom of Disasoative Disorder these days?

Isn't it great to see another example of what an Idealog can do when they ge ttheir hands on the fragility of an individual human being? :furious: :furious:
 
The Virgin Queen said:
Isn't MPD seen as a symptom of Disasoative Disorder these days?
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Yep - the factsheet is a general one on dissociative disorders which covers MPD. In fact MPD has been renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in the DSMMD-IV:

http://www.sidran.org/didbr.html

they say:

DO PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE "MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES"?

Yes, and no. One of the reasons for the decision by the psychiatric community to change the disorder's name from Multiple Personality Disorder to Dissociative Identity Disorder is that "multiple personalities" is somewhat of a misleading term. A person diagnosed with DID feels as if she has within her two or more entities, or personality states, each with its own independent way of relating, perceiving, thinking, and remembering about herself and her life. If two or more of these entities take control of the person's behavior at a given time, a diagnosis of DID can be made. These entities previously were often called "personalities," even though the term did not accurately reflect the common definition of the word as the total aspect of our psychological makeup. Other terms often used by therapists and survivors to describe these entities are: "alternate personalities," "alters," "parts," "states of consciousness," "ego states," and "identities." It is important to keep in mind that although these alternate states may appear to be very different, they are all manifestations of a single person.
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They can come with amnesia which may partly explain why the different personalities don't have knowledge of the activities of others:

http://www.athealth.com/Consumer/disorders/Dissociative.html
 
Monday, Nov 15, 2004

Saskatchewan to pay falsely accused family

Canadian Press



Regina — The Saskatchewan government has settled with the couple at the centre of an infamous case of wrongful sex-abuse charges.

Justice Minister Frank Quennell announced Monday that the province will pay $925,000 to Ron and Linda Sterling and to a person who was a youth at the time the charges were laid in 1992.

At the time, the Sterlings operated a home day care in Martensville, north of Saskatoon. They were among nine people charged with 180 sex-related offences against children in their care. Only one of the accused was ever found guilty.

The children's bizarre stories of murder, animal mutilation and Satanism were eventually proved to be lies and the methods of police and prosecutors came under heavy criticism.

It was later determined that investigators had elicited the allegations by asking the children leading questions and prosecutors had gone ahead with charges despite police misgivings about the veracity of the claims.

“Sexual abuse is one of the most sensitive and difficult issues dealt with by our criminal justice system,” Mr. Quennell said Monday in a prepared statement. “The difficulties are further complicated when the victims are children.”

It has now been recognized that child victims and witnesses cannot be treated the same as adults, he said.

The Sterlings decided to sue for compensation after the province paid former police officer John Popowich $1.3-million to settle his malicious prosecution lawsuit last June. Three lawsuits related to the Martensville case have yet to be settled.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041115.wdevil1115/BNStory/National/
 
An interesting article I stumbled across - it shows how unrelated occurances can be joined together to form a pattern and how interrogating kids can lead to a Salem wicth trials situation:

5 MISSING CASES NOT STRANGER ABDUCTIONS

By: JACQUE HILBURN, Staff Writer January 25, 2005

Five East Texas females are missing and presumed dead, but their disappearances, which span about two decades, cannot be classified or confirmed as stranger abductions, an FBI official said Tuesday.

Jeff Millslagle, FBI supervisor and senior resident agent for the Tyler District, repeated a statement made last week of there being only two confirmed stranger abductions in East Texas since 1986.

One case was last week's abduction and murder of Tyler Wal-Mart clerk Megan LeAnn Holden, 19, and subsequent arrest of suspect Marine Johnny Lee Williams Jr., 24, of Tyler, who remains jailed in Arizona awaiting extradition, the agent said.

And the second was the May 1986 slayings of three Hawkins teenagers. Jerry Walter "Animal" McFadden was later convicted and executed for the strangulation-beating death of Suzanne Denise Harrison, 18. He was never charged with the shooting deaths of her two friends, Bryan Boone, 19, and Gene Lee Turner, 20.

Amid questions of whether other cases may have been overlooked, Millslagle said the bureau sets certain guidelines when classifying cases.

Although other missing East Texas citizens are believed to have been abducted and killed within the past 20 years, there is not enough evidence to say who committed the crimes, he said.

And without a body and identified suspect, there are too many unknowns to determine if the person was taken by a stranger or someone known to them, Millslagle said, describing FBI classification methods.

The people cited by the agent are all believed to be victims of foul play, and do not include every person listed as missing by the Texas Department of Public Safety for other reasons.

All five cases remain open.

"I still stand by my statement," Millslagle said Tuesday. "Here in East Texas, there are only two since 1986. If there are others, someone should bring me some information. The door is open, but the phone isn't ringing - I wish it would.

"I wish I could solve them all," the agent said, "sometimes you can't."

Aside from the obvious point that all five cases involve females, there are no known common threads between them, he said.

"I've still got one person's dental records sitting on my desk," the FBI agent said. "We take these (cases) very personally, I can assure you."

WITHOUT A TRACE

Glenda Frances Moorehead, 43, a mother of three, was last seen Mary 18, 1988, outside Proud Mary's, a former club located in the 3400 block of U.S. Highway 69 North.

Authorities responding to a welfare concern call located her blue, four-door 1975 Chevrolet, but no sign of Ms. Moorehead.

"Her keys and purse were left at the scene," Johnita Campbell, the victim's daughter, said Tuesday. "And they found bloodstains and a shoe."

But a search of the area by authorities turned up few clues.

"We thought we had a suspect," Millslagle said. "He (suspect) was found, but he had committed suicide in Smith County. We still don't know if she knew her abductor or not."

Ms. Carpenter remains desperate for closure.

"In 1999, we had her declared legally dead," Ms. Carpenter said. "We never had her funeral. My heart knows she's dead, but I can't let go - not yet."

The woman said it took four years to get her mother's name added to the crime victims monument, located in downtown Tyler's T.B. Butler Fountain Plaza.

"They say that East Texas is a safe place to be," she said. "All you have to do is count the number of names on that wall and you know that's just not true."

MISSING CHILDREN

Five-year-old Ara Denise Johnson, nicknamed "Nicee" by her family, disappeared after being tucked into bed on April 2, 1986.

Investigators responding to the family's pleas for help found the door of the family's mobile home standing open and the child's orange bedspread missing.

"There was no forced entry," Millslagle said. "No subjects were developed and there was no indication there were any strangers around."

Investigators have always believed the person responsible knew the girl's family and their habits.

In the hours following the disappearance, her distraught mother, Ophelia Johnson, issued this appeal for her safe return: "Ara is missed very much by myself, her family and friends and we want her back home. If anyone has seen or knows of her whereabouts, I am begging you to please, please contact the Tyler FBI office or the Upshur County Sheriff's Department."

The child's body was never located.

Sherri Knox, the girl's aunt, said Thursday, "This happened about the same time those three kids were killed by McFadden. While we were trying to get information about our little girl, they were working on the McFadden case. There were missing persons posters on the wall, but Nicee's was not up there. And it was really hard to get them to put one up - it's devastating to feel like other people don't care."

The girl's mother did not respond to a request for an interview.

Two other youngsters are also among those missing and presumed dead.

Kimberly Norwood, 12, of Marshall was last seen in late afternoon of May 20, 1989, in Hallsville, walking home with three friends.

The group split up about a mile from the girl's home - three going one way and Kimberly going another. She was last seen wearing a white T-shirt with a teddy bear design on the front, jeans and black sneakers.

"We have no idea what happened," Millslagle said. "She has not been found."

And Megan Elizabeth Garner, 3, was last seen in March 1991, playing near her home off Paluxy Drive.

The brown-eyed girl was last seen wearing a long-sleeved striped shirt, pink corduroy pants and Reebok sneakers.

Tyler police did not offer a comment on whether anyone ever revisited the case.

Millslagle said he observed a missing person's flyer with the girl's picture on it still lying on a detective's desk.

'CIRCUS SIDESHOW'

Missing Gilmer resident Kelly Wilson, 17, was last seen leaving a video store in 1992. Her car's vehicle tires had been slashed and her keys were missing.

Those are among the few facts that seem to make sense, it seems.

Ms. Wilson's case was featured last year in a news documentary "Dateline NBC" that unveiled a flawed investigation likened - in the words of one state official - to that of a "circus sideshow."

Overzealous investigators working primarily on hearsay created a mythology about a satanic cult, human sacrifice and child abuse that snowballed into what some would describe as a modern witch-hunt.

In 1994, eight people, including a police officer, were charged with aggravated sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping and capital murder for what had become the story of Ms. Wilson's rape, torture and murder.

The activity was claimed to be part of a grisly pattern of ritual sacrifices in the woods of Upshur County.

And before the investigation was finished, nearly 50 indictments were handed up against 10 people.

Special investigators sent by the Texas Attorney General's office to sort out the mess ultimately found no evidence of the allegations and suspected the chaos was the product of physically restraining children to elicit allegations of cult activity.

Attorney General chief special Prosecutor Shane Phelps said last year the case was hardest on the missing girl's parents.

"All the while these things were going on, the search for their daughter got forgotten about," the prosecutor said. "Our chances would have been much better had all that not happened."

All but three child abuse charges were dismissed, but the story of the woman's disappearance and an out-of-control investigation was played out before a national television audience.

"We thought the phone would ring off the wall after that aired," said Millslagle, the FBI agent. "Still, nothing."

SOLVED ABDUCTION-MURDERS

Other East Texas kidnapping-murder cases, which ended in arrest, were discounted by the agent as being termed actual stranger abductions.

Nicholas West, 23, a medical records clerk, was taken from a Tyler park in 1993 and executed by a group of men, who were on the hunt for homosexuals.

Four Tyler suspects linked to the abduction were later convicted in the slaying of West, whose body was found in a clay pit near Noonday.

"That was a hate crime, pure and simple," Millslagle said.

A Troup man, Kyle McElroy, 18, was abducted March 10, 2000 from his family's plastics company and allegedly murdered by four co-workers, who demanded a $200,000 ransom in exchange for his safe return.

Three suspects remain imprisoned after pleading guilty to various offenses associated with the crime; a fourth is awaiting trial after authorities nabbed her at a Mexican border crossing.

"The people who did that worked with him," the agent said. "They knew him."
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Source
 
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