False Memory Syndrome Foundation is disbanded.

[Gingerkittykat]

Link here

A foundation which led to the discrediting of survivors of non recent abuse has been disbanded. Let's hope that the damage to the credibility of abuse survivors is undone and they are believed and taken seriously.

That nearly got me!

For a moment I thought you had provided a link to Michael Salter's Twitter feed. Salter, a New South Wales professor (the moratorium on his Phd thesis runs out soon) is one of the few remaining satanic ritual abuse proponents left.

' Michael Salter — a self-styled criminologist and chair of the ISSTD’s Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Organized Abuse (RAMCOA) special interest group — about his beliefs regarding possible Satanic Illuminati conspiracies. Salter responded by saying: “You know exactly what I think because I’ve published these things in print.” Pressed by Greaves to confirm or deny his belief in the credibility of such conspiracy theories, espoused by Ellen Lacter, the previous RAMCOA chair, Salter began walking away, saying “You can read what I’ve written. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words on this topic. I am an open book.”

greyfaction.org/resources/proponents/salter-michael-i/

Now I know your Michael Salter in his Twitter feed describes himself as;

'Scientia Fellow and Associate Professor of Criminology @UNSW. Board of Directors @ISSTD. Complex trauma, violence, technology & www.organisedabuse.com'

It can't possibly be the same Michael Salter, can it. I mean the guy who is a 'self-styled criminologist and chair of the ISSTD’s Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Organized Abuse (RAMCOA) special interest group' is a complete conspiracy theorist loon.

You would never have linked to someone like that on the Mumsnet forum. I'm sure of that.

Regardless of his Michael Salter's credibility in other areas, he appears to be correct that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation has been dissolved. You can verify this on their website: www.fmsfonline.org/ (scroll right to the bottom).

Interesting that Gloria Steinhems pal, Dr Bennett Braun, is facing yet another civil action (his 12th), this time apparently not covered by insurance, but this time not for false-memory/multiple personality-inducing activities.

'By the mid-1990’s, several of the patients Dr. Braun had relied upon in his case studies were suing him for malpractice. The patients declared that their "memories" of abuse and the development of alter personalities were actually caused by suggestion, hypnosis, and excessive medication.'

www.fmsfonline.org/index.php?newsupdate=newsupdates

Perhaps the FMS has decided to wind-up because it reckons its work is done? The Carol Felstead scandal in the UK (her family lives near mine) certainly drew sufficient attention to the activities of those promoting 'recovered memories'.

I understand the ISSTD still hasn't been able to explain why 'recovered memories' and this seeming ability to block-out memories of trauma was only able to work with white middle-class women in the Western world. Others, such as those who were victims of mass rapes in (say) Rwanda, don't appear to be able to capable of just forgetting such events unless someone like Dr Bennett Braun was engaged. And he never went to Rwanda.

A foundation which led to the discrediting of survivors of non recent abuse...
Untrue. It discredited the so-called therapists who persuaded unhappy and vulnerable people that they had been grotesquely abused in childhood, usually by their parents. In many cases this led to the breakup of families; in some case the parents were charged with child abuse and jailed.
The case of poor Carol Feltsead is absolutely typical - she was made to believe that her parents had done horrific things to her, several of which were simply not possible. For example, she believed that she had witnessed the murder of her sister - but the sister had actually died of natural causes before she was born.

The FSM site has lots of information about all this, including a long list of lawsuits bought by 'retractors' - ex-patients who had realised their memories of abuse had been implanted by their therapist. It's worth reading.

I was abused by my brother for a long time in childhood. A lot of it I had always remembered, other bits came back to me much later in life when I started having nightmares and flashbacks.

My parents were extremely neglectful, very poor supervision and exposed us children to a lot of sexual behaviour and alcohol abuse.

I sought therapy to help with the flashbacks, trauma etc.

I eventually told my parents about the abuse and - rather than reflect on the environment they had created for their children to grow up in - they decided that I had been seeing a dodgy therapist who had 'planted' the memories and that I had definitely not been abused by my brother.

This, despite:

• the majority of the abuse I had never forgotten
• I wasn't in therapy when the other bits started coming back to me
• I got corroboration from other childhood friends about my brother's abusive behaviour towards me.

I am expecting my parents to take me to court soon to try to gain access to my children, I suppose 'False Memory Syndrome' will be their argument as to why I am not in my 'right mind'.

I, for one, am glad to see the back of this foundation.

I read Julia Shaw's Memory Illusion recently. She works with memory recall and she's adamant that false memory creation is real and can be induced in anyone.

NotTerf, Elizabeth Loftus conducted research to show that memories can be planted, I don't think anyone is disputing that.

What she admits herself is that there is no way to prove that memory repression does not exist.

Unfortunately, the 'memory wars' have split it into a binary - either repressed memories are non existent and entirely created by bad therapeutic practice, or that they are definitely true and always factual.

The reality is a lot more nuanced.

reality is a lot more nuanced.

Yes that is true. I keep journals and it's incredible how much you forget, even things you'd expect to remember. If you don't dust a memory off ever so often, chances are it'll fade.

"this seeming ability to block-out memories of trauma was only able to work with white middle-class women in the Western world"

Traumatic amnesia is well documented amongst holocaust survivors and those who have experienced war.

Danny Coton also talked about her experience of repressing a near fatal incident when attending Grenfell Tower www.itv.com/news/2018-09-27/london-fire-chief-plagued-by-traumatic-memory-loss-since-grenfell-inquiry-hears/

Perhaps a better question should be why the obsession with claiming memories are false when the surivor traumas have experienced sexual abuse, but not when they've experienced other traumas?

I did ‘forget’ I was raped for twelve years because it happened at a time of other stress and difficulties. I remembered when there was a very similar rape story in the news, just like that, as if it had happened the day before. The fact that I ‘forgot’ massively messed with my head because it made me look at everything which happened afterwards in a different light, as a reaction to being raped rather than just my life.

I know it happened because I wrote to the perpetrator about three years after I remembered and he did acknowledge what had happened - for which I remain grateful, even though I would be more grateful if he had not ever done it. But I am grateful he acknowledged it despite the risks to him. When I remembered, I completely unravelled and went to pieces - partly because I could not comprehend how I could have ‘forgotten’ and because of the way it made me see things which had happened since and partly because, as he had been very dear to me, I could no longer see him as someone dear to me.

No suggestion in therapy, no false memories. Just so many other things happening at that time that my brain closed it out until I needed to remember. It took me several years after that to come to terms with what had happened and I used to dissociate if I talked about it (I had a good counsellor later on) so I think it is part of the same thing. At least for me it was.

Sorry to hear that, waybackthen :(

I can completely relate to not comprehending forgetting. I constantly went backwards and forwards in my head between 'this can't be true' / 'this must be true' when my memories returned.

I have never understood how people like secular111 can convince themselves with absolute 'certainty' that nobody has ever forgotten a sexual assault. But then, they seem to be powered by bias, not fact...

thank you and I am sorry you have experienced this too.

There is a book called ‘the Body keeps the score’ which I found very helpful, the author (Bessel van Dee Kolk) writes about how trauma fragments the brain (which is what I feel has happened to me); but also another by Judith Herman called Trauma and Recovery. The first section of this is interesting for your point about the obsession with claiming memories of sexual abuse are false because if I recall correctly (I do not have the book to hand) she goes all the way back to Freud recanting his work on sexual abuse amongst his patients (which he then reworked as fantasies). His original work makes more sense to me than his subsequent explanations. Society just does not want to face up to it because the perpetrators are not ‘other people elsewhere’, they are among everyone’s family and social circles.

I hope that things are peaceful and better for you now or if not, that they become so

Another vote for The Body Keeps the Score here. I also did EMDR and remembered things about my abuse I had repressed. The memories, funnily enough, specifically demonstrated how devious and intentional my abuser had been in their actions. I believe I repressed them as my coping mechanism was self-blame. When I remembered them, it was like a light came on and I felt disassociated, sick and light-headed. I could not only remember them, but also remember remembering them in the past if that makes sense.

I'm reading the body keeps the score at the moment and it's fascinating. When I found out Bessel van de Kolk had a level of involvement in repressed memories etc I felt a bit put out because I thought that had been kinda disproven. I appreciate the nuance a bit more now.

Not a repressed memory I don't think but when I was 10 or 11 my stepdad (alcoholic and poor mental health) was being bizarre one night and DM barricaded her, me and my Dsibling in a bedroom until he was either arrested or sectioned. I have absolutely no memory of this whatsoever. I remember plenty of other scary events from that age and younger but not that one.

I wonder if it was because I was helpless in that situation whereas the other ones I remember I was able to take a level of action to get away. In the body keeps the score he talks about the difference in trauma between being able to physically respond or not. Makes me wonder if there other things I don't remember. I still have a real fear of people getting in the house.

From that it's hard for me to insist that others must always remember traumatic events that would have been much worse.

There's a case study in the body keeps the score where a patient draws a scene of abuse to describe her childhood to the therapist during an early appointment but can't actually seem to say it happened or acknowledge it for a long time. It's so interesting.

I also think your memory is a lot worse when depressed. I was assaulted later and it led to a mental breakdown over the abuse while living abroad and alone (think not showering or brushing teeth for long periods breakdown). I have almost no memories of this time or the time surrounding it. Alledgedly I went to my sisters Masters graduation with my mum and my aunt. I have no memory of it. My grandparents died. I cannot remember much.

Personally my understanding of dissociative amnesia is that it can and does happen.

The problem is not so much with this idea of blocking out painful memories, it is with the idea that the repressed memories can be recovered in an accurate manner and played back like a tape recorder.

My understanding from reading the literature, Julia Shaw and Elizabeth Loftus are especially memorable, is that nobody’s memories are 100% accurate and they we all constantly change and embellish our memories. This does not just happen in relation to non-recent sexual abuse but in relation to all manner of things.

Unfortunately, the 'memory wars' have split it into a binary - either repressed memories are non existent and entirely created by bad therapeutic practice, or that they are definitely true and always factual.

The reality is a lot more nuanced.

I agree with this and I think that most people who support the work of the various False Memory societies and grass roots support groups for falsely accused and for vulnerable survivors hurt by quacks would agree with it also.

One of the worst and most damaging elements of the quacks and charlatans (and probably well meaning but deluded “therapists”) offering dubious therapies to survivors or recent and non recent sexual violations is that as well as leaving completely innocent people (often parents) facing false allegations of sexual abuse, it leaves genuine survivors of sexual abuse at risk of being gaslighted if they have been on the receiving end of dubious therapies by SRA promoting quacks.

I have significant personal experience of this gaslighting. When I attempted to whistle-blow about the appalling treatment I had received at the hands of more than one mental health professional associated with the ISSTD I was diagnosed with delusional disorder.

I have suffered terrible flashbacks, anxiety, depression and other issues related to being trafficked and tortured. I am fairly open about having experienced mental health problems. However nothing I had experienced before had prepared me for being abused by an SRA promoting therapist who, when I said that I did not believe in SRA, insisted that this was because I had been abused by satanists and could not remember it because it was too traumatic.

The next layer of gaslighting was when I tried to alert other professionals within the NHS. I wanted support, but not from anyone associated with the ISSTD, the ESTD or the many various other SRA promoting organisations. Here I encountered a problem that Glinner described in a video interview, only he was talking about the trans cult. Glinner said that most people have no idea about the very serious and completely insane things that are happening and that when you try to tell people they just either think you must be mad or start to drift away mentally and zone out.

Of course anyone trying to anxiously describe a narrative of personal trauma related to false allegations of SRA is likely to be considered insane by anyone unfamiliar with these things. There is a tiny network of survivors of bad therapy and therapist brainwashing many are too damaged and traumatised to speak out. Anyone hurt by this vicious network of quacks and fantasists is left with little or no support at all, unless you are prepared to risk being hurt all over again by another quack.

One of the worst issues is that many of the survivors of SRA promoting quack therapists is that they, like me, suffered real abuses before going on to suffer abuses at the hands of a bad therapist. We have been let down so often and the abuse continues via quacks in mental health charities, recovery colleges and MH services within the NHS.

Services for survivors of rapes and sexual assaults are significantly infiltrated by this insanity. It is an extremely unsafe situation for anyone, let alone vulnerable survivors of rapes and sexual assaults.

Then there is the network of “true believers” in SRA and the associated condition of DID/MPD. These people share a collective unshakable delusion in the “reality” of widespread SRA and, just as with any delusions, their beliefs appear to be unshakable.

I am in an unusual situation as I was passed from one deluded True Believer to another, with brief encounters with SRA naive experts in-between.

Each time I expressed incredulity at the shenanigans of the previous “expert” and stated that I had never, ever been abused by a satanic cult, it served no purpose other than to convince the expert that I had either imagined the SRA narratives (SRA naive expert) or, in the case of True Believer experts, that I was a mind controlled individual whose experiences with satanic cults were so extensive and traumatic that I had split them off into some other “alter”.

A slight change of style of clothes between sessions was sufficient to generate immense excitement that I was not the same person as in a previous session but in fact an “alter”. Perfectly normal, unremarkable behaviour interpreted as indicative of DID by a therapist who frankly was a vicious, manipulative, lying psychopath.

Traumatic amnesia is well documented amongst holocaust survivors and those who have experienced war.
I know of such instances. What has not been established is the accurate retrieval of memories.

Danny Coton also talked about her experience of repressing a near fatal incident when attending Grenfell Tower www.itv.com/news/2018-09-27/london-fire-chief-plagued-by-traumatic-memory-loss-since-grenfell-inquiry-hears/
The piece you refer to re Danny Cotton is interesting. There is one layer to the story which is about traumatic memories and how they can be compartmentalised within the mind. Another layer, the elephant in the room, is in relation to Cotton’s role in the advice to stay put, advice that cost lives. You see there are other reasons why people are prone to dissociative amnesia apart from trauma, reasons like, for example, avoiding feelings of guilt and of shame.

False memories are not simply limited to people making allegations of non-recent sexual abuse. Perpetrators have false memories too. Very often they manage to compartmentalise and suppress all memory of what they have done.

My father is such a perpetrator. He has accused me of having false memories of sexual abuse. He is very elderly and frail and his memory is genuinely failing. My sisters, with their eyes on inheriting his estate, have joined him in accusing me of having false memories. My estranged brother would confirm that my father was a habitual sexual abuser throughout our childhoods. My sisters have joined together and persuaded my father to cut me and my brother out from his will. They have used the diagnosis of delusional disorder to gaslight me and to make my life as difficult as possible.

It is easy to oppress and scam someone when they have been diagnosed as delusional. The damage done by the SRA promoting therapists ripples out and effects extended families and other settings.

The greedy, the predatory and the ruthless simply delight in horrors inflicted on those already vulnerable and pick the bones of the various victims and survivors in order to grab as much for themselves as they can.

Hurricanes, earthquakes and famines all attract pimps, paedophiles and predators in droves. Psychopaths are drawn to catastrophes like flies to shit. They are also drawn towards those vulnerable individuals who have endured child sexual abuse, rape and other horrific violations.

People whose personal boundaries have been grossly violated are extremely vulnerable to being violated all over again. Anyone who has worked with vulnerable people will understand this.

It is incredibly important that we provide safe, containing, holding spaces for survivors of sexual offences to be supported.

I have extensive experience of attempting to use such services and encountering quacks and charlatans.

I am doing my very best to provide support to other vulnerable people as best I can. The quality services are just not there.

Part of the problem is that essential funding for quality mental health services has been stripped the bone and diverted towards cults and networks of quacks, snake oil sellers and yoni massagers.

There is a huge industry of quacks lining their pockets via the abuse of vulnerable people and there are many extremely dodgy campaigning "Survivor" groups and charities whose main purpose seems to be to line the pockets of the entrepreneurial types running them.

Helping vulnerable people is low down the list of priorities. In fact the situation is extremely similar to that of the various trans rights organisations that bleat about oppression and hurty words whilst ruining the lives of vulnerable people.

The MO of these predatory, ruthless networks is to don the cloak of victimhood and martyrdom whilst accusing completely innocent people of terrible crimes.

There is a huge problem with funding for the police, which has been stripped to the bone, so the police cannot do the job of actually fighting criminals. Revenue streams that should go towards funding crime fighting and proper police work are being squandered on mindfulness and leadership training delivered by cults and dubious organisations. More money is squandered on training the police on how to deal with SRA.

I am appalled by the actions of certain Police Crime Commissioners in this respect, to the extent that I am becoming increasingly concerned about the whole situation with PCCs. More on this to follow.

Perhaps a better question should be why the obsession with claiming memories are false when the surivor traumas have experienced sexual abuse, but not when they've experienced other traumas?

You make an interesting point, however it is my understanding that it is definitely not just memories relating to trauma and sexual trauma that are being demonstrated to be prone to inaccuracies and mis-remembering.

The advent of DNA testing and recent improvements in DNA testing in relation to mitochondrial DNA in particular have resulted in many falsely imprisoned people being released from lengthy jail terms following non-recent false IDs of perpetrators. Advances in DNA testing prove that well meaning, sane people mistakenly identify the wrong person with depressing frequency.

One of the most scary things about some of the SRA promoting quacks is that their claims to work with survivors of extreme abuse have facilitated some of them working with refugees and asylum seekers who claim to have been tortured. In fact it is fairly common for survivors of torture here in the UK to end up with a therapist practicing new age body psychotherapies and other therapies that generate false memories.

The potential harm to national security is extremely serious as is the risk that people who have endured torture and horrific abuses will end up in very unsafe hands.

For a moment I thought you had provided a link to Michael Salter's Twitter feed. Salter, a New South Wales professor (the moratorium on his Phd thesis runs out soon) is one of the few remaining satanic ritual abuse proponents left.

I very much appreciate your contributions to this thread secular111, however your description of Salter as one of the few remaining satanic ritual abuse proponents left. is sadly innacurate

There is a huge push by some very sinister networks to bring about a new satanic panic. Salter is part of a huge movement of quacks, charlatans and deluded well meaning useful idiots that seem to have infiltrated the NHS, the police, social services and the judiciary.

I wondered whether you were aware of the upoming ISSTD quackfest in London in 2020?

check this out
.................................................................

A Day With Professor Michael Salter

5 March 2020 | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Centre for Child Mental Health

We are excited to announce our 2020 Regional Conference in London, UK! Join ISSTD for this one-day conference featuring presentations by Michael Salter, PhD, along with Margot Sunderland, Adah Sachs, Kathryn Livingston, Mark Linington, Sue Richardson, Valerie Sinason, and Nancy Borrett!

:30am-10:00am Registration Open
9:45am-10:00am Introductions and Welcome – Dr Margot Sunderland and Dr Adah Sachs
10:00am-11:15am Organized Child Sexual Abuse: The Contemporary Picture
11:15am-11:45pm Coffee Break
11:45pm-12:45pm Child Sexual Abuse Material: Production, Distribution and Consumption
12:45pm-1:45pm Lunch (Provided)
1:45pm-3:00pm Ritual Abuse, Prolonged Incest and the Intergenerational Transmission of Sexual Violence
3:00pm-3:30pm Coffee Break
3:30pm-4:30pm Small Discussion Groups
4:30pm-5:00pm Final Plenary

Meet our Speakers!

Dr Michael Salter is a Scientia Fellow and Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of New South Wales. His research is focused on child abuse and gendered violence, including primary prevention, complex trauma and technologically-facilitated abuse. He is the author of two books, Organised Sexual Abuse (Routledge, 2013) and Crime, Justice and Social Media (Routledge, 2017), and a range of papers on child abuse and gendered violence. A/Prof Salter sits on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, who awarded him the 2018 Morton Prince Award for Scientific Achievement. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Child Abuse Review and expert advisor to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

Joining Michael Salter will be:

Dr Margot Sunderland, Director of the Centre for Child Mental Health
Dr Adah Sachs, ISSTD, writer and attachment based consultant psychotherapist
Kathryn Livingston BEM, Trainer and Voluntary Co-ordinator First Person Plural
Mark Linington, Clinical Director, Clinic for Dissociative Studies
Dr Elly Hanson, psychologist researcher, clinical advisor to CEOP
Sue Richardson, attachment-based psychotherapist and a founder member of ESTD-UK
Valerie Sinason, ISSTD, consultant psychotherapist, Founder and Patron, Clinic for Dissociative Studies
Nancy Borrett, Consultant Psychotherapist, Clinic for Dissociative Studies

Preliminary Program

9:30am-10:00am Registration Open
9:45am-10:00am Introductions and Welcome – Dr Margot Sunderland and Dr Adah Sachs
10:00am-11:15am Organized Child Sexual Abuse: The Contemporary Picture
11:15am-11:45pm Coffee Break
11:45pm-12:45pm Child Sexual Abuse Material: Production, Distribution and Consumption
12:45pm-1:45pm Lunch (Provided)
1:45pm-3:00pm Ritual Abuse, Prolonged Incest and the Intergenerational Transmission of Sexual Violence
3:00pm-3:30pm Coffee Break
3:30pm-4:30pm Small Discussion Groups
4:30pm-5:00pm Final Plenary

Session 1

Presentation Title: Organized Child Sexual Abuse: The Contemporary Picture
Chair: Kathryn Livingston

Presenter: Michael Salter
Discussant: Mark Linington
Summary: This session will discuss the current state of knowledge about organised forms of child sexual abuse. After a brief history of debates over organised abuse, the session will examine the most common scenarios of organised abuse, and the increasing role of technology in child sexual exploitation. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and professionals, as well as public policy analysis, the session will identify current obstacles to the prevention and detection of organised abuse and the wellbeing and safety of survivors, and lay out a program of policy reform and advocacy.

Session 2

Presentation Title: Child Sexual Abuse Material: Production, Distribution and Consumption
Chair: Elly Hanson
Presenter: Michael Salter
Summary: This session will focus on the current epidemic of online child sexual abuse material and its implications for organised abuse victims and survivors. The session will present research findings based on image analysis of historical and contemporary CSAM, ‘dark web’ offender discourse and surveys of adult CSAM survivors. The complex role of governments, police, non-government organisations and technology companies in the response to CSAM will be outlined, with a focus on the need for significant legal and industry reform. The implications of CSAM for the treatment of survivors will be emphasised.

Session 3

Presentation Title: Ritual Abuse, Prolonged Incest and the Intergenerational Transmission of Sexual Violence
Chair: Valerie Sinason
Presenter: Michael Salter
Discussant: Sue Richardson
Summary: This session will present a theoretical model to understand the intergenerational transmission of sexual violence within families. While intergenerational trauma is now the subject of an expanding evidence base, the normalisation of sexual violence within family networks has been largely overlooked. This session draws together evidence of parental involvement in CSAM and sexual exploitation, the persistence of familial sexual abuse into adulthood, and the role of ritual in familial cultures of abuse, and suggests that object relations theory can assist us in understanding the reproduction of sexual violence in families over generations.

Session 4

Presentation Title: Small Discussion Groups & Final Plenary
Presenters: Michael Salter, Mark Linington, Sue Richardson, Adah Sachs, Valerie Sinason, and Nancy Borrett
Summary: Small discussion groups will be convened by Mark Linington, Sue Richardson, Adah Sachs, Valerie Sinason and Nancy Borrett, followed by final comments and questions for Michael Salter and other discussants.

Conference Venue

The Centre for Child Mental Health

Brittania Row, Islington, London N1

source (via the wayback machine):

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20191231105230/www.isst-d.org/training-and-conferences/upcoming-conferences/london-regional-conference/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20191231105230/www.isst-d.org/training-and-conferences/upcoming-conferences/london-regional-conference/

Observant readers will notice that most if not all taking part in this event are associated with the ISSTD and with historic promotion of the satanic panic

of particular interest is Elly Hanson aka Elly Farmer who was the psycholgist responsible for persuading the cops investingting Edward Heath for being in a VIP paedophile ring to give credence to the batshit insane narratives of Carl Beech

further links

barthsnotes.com/2019/08/23/private-eye-looks-at-clinical-psychologist-involved-with-two-vip-sex-abuse-investigations/

barthsnotes.com/2019/07/28/a-note-on-carl-beech-and-the-psychotherapists/

Elly Hanson, previously know as Elly Farmer has a long history of working with the National Crime Agency, CEOP and the NSPCC

Elly Hanson / Farmer is the daughter of prominent Tory brexiteer Lord Farmer and has also worked with the fascinating Tory think-tank the Centre for Social Justice

I struggle to understand how people who have had their fingers burned by promoting paedophile fantasists as having narratives that are credible and true seem to end up being promoted or end up keeping their posititions of power and influence within the police, NHS and the public sector generally, whereas those who point out that the Emperor has no clothes end up beng bulied, gaslighted and burned out.

Gingerkittykat

I would be intersted in your opinion of Carl Beech

Do you believe he is innocent of the crimes of which he nas been convicted?

I'm asking as you linked to Slater's twitter account and many of Slater's conspiraloon chums at the ISSTD, the ESTD, the Pottergate Centre, the Bowlby Centre, The Clinic for Dissociative Studies, Confer, the Tavistock and Portman clinics and associated organisations, lots of them seem to believe that Carl Beech is innocent.

Did you see this astonishing letter in the guardian? signed by a veritable whos who of SRA conspiraloons associated with the disgusting and sinister ISSTD

What do you make of this extraordinary communication?

Here it in in case you missed it.........

"Trauma and abuse evoke powerful feelings. As therapists, psychologists and counsellors we are concerned that the extra anger being aimed at Tom Watson MP, the police and Carl Beech is missing adequate reflection. Tom Watson suggested, in parliament in 2012, that evidence from the paedophile Peter Righton’s conviction pointed to a “powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and No 10”. This was prior to speaking to Beech, and he was right. National figures such as Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith MP were unmasked as prolific child abusers.

The outcry culminated in the then home secretary, Theresa May, announcing an independent inquiry, and the 2014 pressuring on police to be believing – now rescinded. The scenarios Carl Beech describes, and his complex mixture of untreated victim and perpetrator, are familiar. People need to understand “fantasists” and “liars”. To ignore that subject risks not hearing vulnerable children. Children with dissociative identity disorder from trauma, for example, are often accused of being liars when one state of mind is amnesic to what another has said or done. To be wrongly accused is abuse.

We must provide justice for all, while acknowledging the number of innocent people named is very small compared with the one in 65 survivors who gain justice."

Valerie Sinason, Sue Richardson, Kathryn Livingston, Melanie Goodwin, Rémy Aquarone, Nancy Borrett, Jaclyn Everitt,Andrew Baxter, Penny Johnson, Paula Fenn, Dena Sanger, Ruth Alborough, Kay Luck, Maire Fitzmaurice, Michelle Jowett, Winja Lutz, Sandra Buck, Judy Williams, Lindsay Schofield, Kate Forbes Pitt, Dehra Mitchell, Eimir McGrath, Andrea Aldridge, Liz Hall, Mandy Coghill, Ronete Cohen, Giles Lascelle, Abbie O’Connor, Jane Blackhurst, Cathie Wright, Ruth Leaper, Patricia Bahs, Katia Kohler, Loraine Newbold, Paula Biles, Rainer Kurtz, Judith Marlow, Heather Bacon

source:

archive.is/dH7X3#selection-1693.1-1715.574

Personally I think Carl Beech is a narcissistic, greedy, psychopathic liar who should spend the rest of his miserable life in jail but what do I know?

Genuinely intersted in your opinion

I hesitate to comment, but the letter seems to say the following:

Watson was to some extent correct - references Jimmy Saville and Cyril Smith - hence the vilification of him is misguided.

That these cases (Saville and Smith) led to a response where the police believed what complainants said (now no longer the case)

That if you cannot separate out the liars and the fantasists from the genuine victims, the latter will have less chance of achieving justice. (One might add that this is compounded if there is a culture of disbelief).

Very few people are wrongly named as perpetrators compared to those who get justice (which given that very few people get justice, means even smaller number wrongly accused).

I am going to add that it is massively difficult to get a conviction for CSA, the word of a child even right when it has happened is not seen as enough. I am going to leave this thread now as I do not believe it will be helpful to me, but I would like to thank the posters who have shared their experiences . I wish you peace in the coming year.

Salter, a New South Wales professor (the moratorium on his Phd thesis runs out soon) is one of the few remaining satanic ritual abuse proponents left.

I don't know about Salter, but regarding 'satanic ritual abuse' I always was under the impression that the point of it is to put the children in such an extraordinary environment that their descriptions are not credible (like wearing a Mickey Mouse mask during the abuse), no? Or is the point here that groups of people who abuse children don't actually exist and it is always done by one single perpetrator? (Genuine questions.)

Would the Dr Bessel van der Kolk that some are in awe of be the same Dr Bessel van der Kolk fired from his own Trauma Centre for abusing staff in 2018?

www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/07/allegations-employee-mistreatment-roil-renowned-trauma-center/sWW13agQDY9B9A1rt9eqnK/story.html?p1=Article_Recommended_ReadMore_Pos3

Not sure what you are trying to prove here, secular111. That child sexual abuse isn't a thing or that people who say they've had memories resurface are wrong?

We went through this nightmare in the late 1980s in the US and in the early 1990s in the UK. It reappeared in 2002 due to the embracing of Valerie Sinason by the Metropolitan Police and BBC Radio 4, disappeared again and then resurfaced with the Carl Beech and Esther Baker allegations (helped by Jess Phillips MP) and the Hampstead SRA fiasco.

American feminism was reduced to a laughing stock because of it;

' “It is difficult to explain to justifiably indignant and frightened people that feminist theory and practice are not monolithic, and that many women’s advocates abhor that part of the movement that demonizes masculinity, forges alliances with the anti-feminist right, and communicates such profound fear and loathing of sexuality that — as the ritual abuse cases demonstrate — it is even willing to cast women as demons… It is …obvious that the antipornographers and victimologists are feminism’s main contributors to the ritual-abuse panic. Catharine MacKinnon, for instance, has publicly proclaimed her belief in the existence of widespread ritual sex abuse. So have Gloria Steinem and countless psychotherapists, social workers, doctors, lawyers, and writers who call themselves feminists. Indeed, during the past decade, belief in ritual abuse has become so ensconced in this wing of feminism that the arrest, trial by ordeal, and lifelong incarceration of accused women have occasioned hardly a blink from its proponents. They have remained silent as convicted mothers and teachers are sent to prison.”
(from Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker’s Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt - 1995)

It's easy to go down a rabbit hole with this. I've been called a satanist, a CIA stooge, an alien 'grey' way more times than most on this board have been called a 'terf' and that's because a lot of the loonies from the 1990s are still about (and hoodathunkit above correctly identifies them).

They infested the Tavistock NHS Trust (later the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust from 1994) and teaching hospitals in Leeds, and for some years diagnosing a woman as being a victim of satanic ritual abuse (who had happened to forgotten it) was quite a lucrative little earner. The Carol Felstead Scandal put an end to that, and the Tavistock and Portman Trust and other SRA advocates have moved-on to other things.

I've been called a satanist, a CIA stooge, an alien 'grey' way more times than most on this board have been called a 'terf' and that's because a lot of the loonies from the 1990s are still about...

In what role have you been called all that?

Anyway, my aunt had memories of her neighbour raping her resurface decades later. She even confronted her mother about having told her at the time (who remembered but said she did not understand what her 8 year old daughther had been trying to convey). The neighbour was dead, so nothing was done except tell his grownup son (who ultimately said his father had victimized members of his family, too).

Having seen this play out and having just googled 'False Memory Syndrome', whereby a batshit crazy pro-paedophilia interview of founding member Ralph Underwager for 'Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia.' came up, it is hard to not feel that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation had an agenda.