Issue 100 – September 2011
S.M.A.R.T
(Stop Mind control And Ritual abuse Today)
P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295 USA E-mail: SMARTNEWS@aol.com
Home page: http://ritualabuse.us/
Issue 100 – September 2011
The purpose of this newsletter is to help stop secretive organizations and groups from abusing others and to help those who allege they have been abused by such organizations and groups. This newsletter is not a substitute for other ways of recovering from ritual abuse. Readers should use caution while reading this newsletter. If necessary, make sure other support systems are available during and after reading this newsletter.
Important:
The resources mentioned in this newsletter are for educational value only. Reading the books cited may or may not help your recovery process, so use caution when reading any book or contacting any resource mentioned in this newsletter. Some may have a religious or other agenda that may be separate from your own recovery process. Others may have valuable information on the Masons and other organizations, but have triggers or be somewhat sympathetic to those organizations. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the views expressed in this newsletter constitute expressions of opinion, and readers are cautioned to form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions by consulting a variety of sources, including this newsletter. Resources listed, quoted and individual articles, etc. and their writers do not necessarily support all or any of the views mentioned in this newsletter. Also, the views, facts and opinions mentioned in this newsletter are solely the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily the opinions of this newsletter or its editor.
Copyright 2011 – All rights reserved. No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.
CD ordering information on the 2011 ritual abuse conference information is at http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
This issue contains information on Casey Anthony and child abuse, Christian Choate, Benjamin Janicki – Former Church Daycare Worker, Phylicia Barnes Murder: Possible Child Porn Link, online child pornography ring, statistics on missing and exploited children, French clergy abuse case, Irish Catholic clergy abuse – The Cloyne Report, clergy abuse allegations – Chicago Archdiocese, Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals, Lilly Manning, missing and murdered aboriginal women – Canada, teacher abuse – England, Delaware ex-pediatrician guilty of child sex abuse, Gloucester child abuse, Catholic priest sex abuse scandal in Los Angeles, Sugar Ray Leonard – child abuse, Allegations Link U.S. Companies to Brazilian Sex Tourism, Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs convicted in child sexual assault case, Ame Deal, ritual abuse conference Scotland, West Point Day Care Sexual Abuse Case with Ritual Abuse allegations, US Government Experiments on Americans-LSD and MKULTRA, Documentary Trailer, Hole in the Head, Martha Marcy May Marlene – movie about cult brainwashing, Paterson bloody religious ritual, religious child maltreatment, sex trafficking of Americans, dissociative identity disorder, MPD, child trafficking, long term effects of sexual abuse, Parental Alienation Syndrome DSM-5 Proposal, Trauma and Dissociation in China, Hippocampal and Amygdalar Volumes in Dissociative Identity Disorder, neurobiological consequences of early stress and childhood maltreatment, etiology of Dissociative Identity Disorder – neurodevelopmental, Dissociative Amnesia, traumatic memory, dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors, risk factors predict repeat abuse, Buck Brannaman Documentary – BUCK – child abuse, violence against women lifelong toll
Resources and Information
Please note: Listing of these resources does not necessarily constitute our endorsement of them. They are for educational value only and some may be heavy for survivors to read. Some of the conferences listed may not necessarily be safe for all survivors. S.M.A.R.T. recommends always bringing a support person to all conferences. If you are a survivor of mind control and/or ritual abuse, S.M.A.R.T. recommends that you try to bring a support person that is familiar with mind control techniques.
Legal Information
Casey Anthony – Child Abuse Connection
WENDY J. MURPHY: Casey Anthony trial an exercise in absurdity By Wendy J. Murphy GateHouse News Service
Jun 27, 2011 Recently dubbed the “Trial of the Century”, the prosecution of Florida mom Casey Anthony for the murder of her toddler daughter, Caylee, could more aptly be called the Trial of the Absurd. The prosecution seems desperate to prove Anthony’s innocence while the defense can’t manage a single reference to the evidence that actually proves Casey did not kill her child. Casey knows more than she’s saying about who and why Caylee is dead, which is why she was offered immunity early on. The prosecution squeezed her very hard – even putting the death penalty on the table – but Casey resisted and the prosecution all but conceded defeat last week when they rested their case after presenting a woefully small pile of evidence.
….The prosecution’s case raised more questions than it answered, and it failed address the following important issues:
….3. In May and June of 08, when Caylee was sleeping with Casey at a friend’s apartment, Casey got a phone call in the middle of the night, in response to which, she roused Caylee from sleep and delivered her to some unknown location. Then she returned to her friend’s apartment and went to sleep. Casey also delivered Caylee to unknown locations on other occasions when she claimed to be bringing Caylee to a “nanny.” Where did she bring her? Why?
4. Why is the docket sheet in the case under seal? It would show what motions were filed to “seal” certain evidence. It would also show that the case has been designated a sex crime prosecution – which is important given that a sex crimes detective was involved in the early stages of the investigation. Why?
5. Casey searched the internet to learn how to make chloroform; a substance commonly used to sedate children in the making of child porn. The public thinks Casey used chloroform to kill her child, but the drug is popular among parents who pimp their kids because it’s cheap and it causes amnesia so that victims can’t remember being abused. Pimping kids is dangerous business and Casey apparently made someone very angry. Maybe she cut out an earlier “business” partner or ripped someone off. A “Zenaida Gonzales” reported her laptop stolen in early June.
The distortion of truth in this strange case will lead to Casey’s acquittal, which begs the real question: will the prosecution then have the guts, and the political will, to file new charges against Casey for what she REALLY did to that poor little girl. http://www.patriotledger.com/archive/x898079778/WENDY-J-MURPHY-Casey-Anthony-trial-an-exercise-in-absurdity
WENDY MURPHY: Why Casey Anthony will be acquitted GateHouse News Service Jun 09, 2011 There has never been a more reviled criminal defendant than Casey Anthony, the Florida mom on trial for murdering her nearly 3-year-old daughter, Caylee, in 2008. Casey behaved like a raving psychopath after her child went missing. She went out partying, didn’t shed a tear, and got a tattoo that read “beautiful life.” Her lawyer claims she acted weird because she was sexually abused as a child. Maybe she was, which would help explain evidence uncovered during the murder investigation that showed Casey may have been working as a prostitute at the time Caylee was killed. Studies show that well over 90 percent of prostituted women were sexually abused as children. http://www.patriotledger.com/opinions/x1459481866/WENDY-MURPHY-Why-Casey-Anthony-will-be-acquitted
Casey Anthony: Judgment day July 5, 2011 (CBS News) ORLANDO, Fla. – It began three years ago with a mystery that turned into an unthinkable crime. A community outraged, a family torn apart, and a nation’s attention focused on one woman. After 91 witnesses and 30 days of testimony – stunning revelations, a family accused, disturbing evidence and even more disturbing behavior – finally a shocking verdict….
On July 5, 2011, Casey Anthony was acquitted of murder, acquitted of manslaughter and acquitted of child abuse. She was convicted only of four misdemeanors: All of them about lying to investigators….
In his opening argument, attorney Baez said Casey had a reason to lie about Caylee’s whereabouts. And for the first time in public, he revealed it.
“She never was missing. Caylee Anthony died on June 16, 2008, when she drowned in her family’s swimming pool,” Baez told the court in his opening statements.
That awful event, Baez said, overwhelmed this deeply disturbed young mother – a woman who had learned to keep secrets because she had been sexually abused by her own father from an early age.
“It all began when Casey was 8 years old and her father came into her room and began to touch her inappropriately. And it escalated. And it escalated,” Baez continued….
Baez accused George Anthony of being the real villain in this case – a brutal man who intimidated his daughter for years. Baez told jurors that George found Caylee in the pool that day and then Casey found him holding the body of her lifeless child.
“She immediately grabbed Caylee and began to cry. And cry. And cry,” Baez continued. “And shortly thereafter, George began to yell at her, ‘Look what you’ve done! Your mother will never forgive you and you will go to jail for child neglect for the rest of your frickin life.'”
Baez contended that Caylee’s accidental death became one more ugly family secret… a secret just like George’s alleged sexual abuse.
“Casey was raised to lie. …she could be 13 years old, have her father’s penis in her mouth, and then go to school and play with the other kids as if nothing ever happened,” Baez told the court.
Throughout Baez’ accusations, George Anthony remained stoic. Later, on the witness stand, he would unequivocally deny the allegations against him….
Prosecutor Jeff Ashton : Have you ever sexually molested your daughter Casey Anthony?
George Anthony: No, sir.
“When you heard the accusations against George Anthony, did you think they were credible? Troy Roberts asked Forensic Psychologist Louis Schlesinger.
“Anything is possible. I don’t think it was credible,” he replied….
And he was accused of having an affair with a woman named Krystal Holloway.
Defense attorney Jose Baez: Did you at any time ever tell her not to say anything about your affair with her?
George Anthony Sir, I never had a romantic affair with Krystal Holloway.
And the defense put Holloway on the stand in their only attempt to prove Caylee’s death was not a murder.
Krystal Holloway [River Cruz]: He also said “It was an accident that snowballed out of control.”
Krystal Holloway takes the stand
Defense attorney Jose Baez: You never told her this was an accident that snowballed out of control?
George Anthony: (pauses) Never did. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/05/48hours/main20076969.shtml
Child abuse expert: Casey Anthony cases don’t help by Sandra Haros/KTAR July 6th, 2011 PHOENIX — Child abuse in America is at an all-time high and cases like the Casey Anthony trial in Florida don’t really help curb the problem, according to Robert Bell with Childhelp. “Five children die each day and that should alarm us as a society,” said Bell. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe most people actually know that.” He said the numbers on child abuse are shocking — that a new report is filed every 10 seconds. “In Arizona, in 2009, we had 33,000 reports to Child Protective Services involving more than 45,000 children.” Of those, Bell said 64 children died at the hands of abusers….
Bell said cases like the Anthony trial do little to stop abuse, but instead sensationalize it. “We can become desensitized as a country or, a better way to put it is we can be lulled into thinking that the problem isn’t as pervasive as it actually is,” he said. http://ktar.com/category/local-news-articles/20110706/Child-abuse-expert:-Casey-Anthony-cases-don%27t-help/
Will the Casey Anthony Case Bring Awareness to Other Child Abuse Cases? The words “not guilty” did not sit well with many people. Those who have been following the Casey Anthony trial from the beginning don’t believe she should have gotten off so easily. Jul 5, 2011 Deanna Bettineschi ….Child abuse cases that end in death are the ones that usually get the most attention…but there are plenty of local cases that happen in the wiregrass that don’t get noticed at all. “These high profile cases do bring a lot of media attention to cases however, last year in Dothan, Houston…Henry County, in the wiregrass area we had three hundred and sixty eight cases of child sexual abuse. “says Child Advocacy Center Executive Director Sherryl Walker. Many of these children suffer in silence, and don’t have anybody to speak up for them. “There’s no winners…even when children are abused and they live, they have to live with the scars forever” says Walker. Walker hopes the Casey Anthony case will bring public awareness to child abuse problems across the nation http://www.wtvy.com/home/headlines/Will_the_Casey_Anthony_Case_Bring_Awareness_to_Other_Child_Abuse_Cases_125046209.html
Jesse Grund, Casey Anthony’s Ex-Fiance, Calls Family A ‘Carnival Of Dysfunctionality’ 7/6/11 Casey Anthony’s ex-fiance Jesse Grund calls the Anthony family a “carnival of dysfunctionality.” In an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, Grund says he witnessed the dynamics between Casey, her parents, and her brother, and says that “there is no way Casey goes back home.” “There is no way they have any semblance of a normal family life,” he says. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/06/jesse-grund-casey-anthony_n_891351.html
Casey Anthony Trial: Former Fiance Says Lee Anthony Groped Sister By JESSICA HOPPER June 28, 2011
A former fiance of Casey Anthony testified today that the Florida woman’s brother once groped her while she slept and that she wanted to keep her daughter Caylee away from him. Jesse Grund testified at Casey Anthony’s murder trial without jurors in the room. Judge Belvin Perry will decide Wednesday whether the testimony is admissible. If his testimony is allowed, it could help the defense’s claims that Casey Anthony suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her brother and father. Casey Anthony, 25, is accused of murderinig daughter Caylee and could face the death penalty if convicted. Her father, George Anthony, has denied the abuse accusations. Lee Anthony has never been asked directly by the prosecution or defense if he abused his sister. Another former boyfriend of Casey Anthony, Tony Lazzaro, previously testified that the Florida woman said her father was physically abusive and that Lee Anthony had tried to “feel her up” but didn’t succeed….
George Anthony Denies Affair With Caylee Search Volunteer
Casey Anthony’s father also took the stand today and was questioned about reports that he had an affair with a volunteer searcher named Krystal Holloway and once confessed to her that Caylee’s disappearance was an “accident that snowballed out of control.” George Anthony denied ever saying that. He also denied ever having a romantic or intimate relationship with Holloway who also goes by the name River Cruz. George Anthony laughed off the accusations, saying it was funny to him that the defense would think he had an affair. However, he attacked Holloway’s character. “I never had a romantic affair with Krystal Holloway or River Cruz….she has a questionable past….she is not a good person,” George Anthony said.
He admitted to going to Holloway’s home by himself. He said he was consoling her because she had revealed to him and his wife, Cindy Anthony, that she had a brain tumor. http://abcnews.go.com/US/casey_anthony_trial/casey-anthony-trial-fiance-lee-anthony-groped-sister/story?id=13947225
‘Caylee’s Law’ Petition Goes Viral, Aims To Make Not Reporting A Missing Child A Crime The Huffington Post Dean Praetorius 7/7/11 “Caylee’s Law” has already gained over 330,000 signatures on Change.org. The petition, which was created by Michelle Crowder of Oklahoma, aims to make not notifying police of a missing child a crime. According to USA Today, it also calls for strict penalties when parents do not quickly report the death of a child. The call for the law comes in the wake of Tuesday’s verdict in the Casey Anthony trial, in which the young mother did not report her child missing for some time.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/07/caylees-law-petition-casey-anthony_n_892317.html
Editorial for 7/9: Anthony case opens eyes on child abuse Jul. 8, 2011 The great majority of Americans — including those living in the mid-Hudson Valley — are aghast by a jury’s decision to acquit Casey Anthony of killing her 2-year-old daughter, in a case that sparked unyielding media attention. Anthony will be released soon after being found guilty of lying to police and accounting for the time she already has served in this three-year ordeal that has left so many questioning the judicial system….
Unfortunately, child abuse and neglect often are hidden acts. And those living in this area should be reminded that the state’s Central Register of Child Abuse hotline received more than 4,500 calls from Dutchess County in 2010, according to Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse of Dutchess County. What is even more troubling is how many incidents never get reported. Nevertheless, the center served more than 16,000 at-risk and abused children last year and also provided support to more than 3,000 adults. The center’s website is full of useful information, ranging from what types of actions should be reported to coping measures for parents.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20110709/OPINION01/107090310/Editorial-7-9-Anthony-case-opens-eyes-child-abuse?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|PoughkeepsieJournal.com|s
describes crimes
NOT GUILTY VERDICT IS THE RIGHT RESULT – BUT WE’RE NOT DONE YET 2011 July 8 by Wendy Murphy – The newsroom blog of the Patriot Ledger
People outside the courthouse in Orange County Florida, and across the country, are outraged by the acquittal of Casey Anthony in the murder of her toddler daughter, Caylee, and they have every reason to feel angry. But their energy is misplaced. Justice for Caylee is still possible, notwithstanding the acquittal, if people call for full disclosure of the entire investigative file – including an unsealing of the evidence thus far hidden from public view.
Release of the photographs of Caylee that were seized from the Anthony home and placed “under seal” by the court would be a good place to start. Many people are not even aware that a lot of evidence in the case is under seal, which itself is problematic. But the simple fact is, there’s far more to be said about what hasn’t been revealed in this case than what we’ve seen thus far.
In addition to the sealed photographs, there are search warrants under seal.
Assuming the sealed photographs of Caylee involve sexual content, warrants would have been issued authorizing a search for child pornography in computers and elsewhere. The public may have had no right to see this evidence while the case was pending because it might have prevented Casey from getting a fair trial, but now that she’s been acquitted, everything should be released. And if the photographs can’t be released lawfully because of what they show, a description of what they reveal is an acceptable substitute. Courts describe inappropriate photographs of children all the time without releasing the images….
And while the state opined that the child was killed so that Casey could go out partying, didn’t it seem a bit of, um, overkill that a mother would seal her child’s entire face shut with three levels of duct tape, then put her in a trunk, as a way of keeping the child quiet so she could have fun? If it was an accidental killing, wouldn’t it have been enough to put her in the back seat with one piece? The prosecutor said Casey intentionally killed Caylee so she could be free to go out partying, but on the day the child was last seen alive, Casey stayed home all night watching movies. Where was the party?
The style of Caylee’s death was more mob hit than parental homicide. And though the state claimed that Casey was the only one who could have killed the child, which is a compelling argument that often proves murder beyond a reasonable doubt in cases where there is no reasonable basis for believing that anyone else was involved, there were too many gaping holes in the timing of the state’s theory of what happened to sustain that idea in this case….
As Casey’s brother Lee testified at trial, Casey was told that Caylee was taken from Casey to “teach her a lesson”. If, as I wrote in an earlier column, Casey knew the people who had Caylee, and stayed quiet in the hope they would give her child back, her failure to report Caylee missing makes sense.
All of this provides some explanation for the not guilty verdict, but it also leaves us with the new responsibility of demanding immediate and full disclosure of the case file. When a child is killed, her mom or dad can be expected to lead the fight for justice and demand that state officials tell the truth about what they know. But when a parent is involved, the rest of us have to step up. Millions of people have watched this case unfold from day one, riveted by the story of a little girl who was tossed away like trash and a mother who didn’t seem to care.
If we paid attention because our concern is sincere, we will keep fighting for Caylee until the whole truth is known. If we watched, instead, out of some sadistic voyeurism or need to feel better as mothers and fathers by jabbing a judgmental finger of blame at a worse parent, there will never be justice for Caylee – or any child – and it will our fault. http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/front-page/2011/07/not-guilty-verdict-is-the-right-result-but-were-not-done-yet/#axzz1RrCRW6vd
Caylee Anthony – killed for child pornography? By James R. Marsh on July 11, 2011 Child advocate Wendy Murphy has a compelling blog entry about the Casey Anthony acquittal entitled “Not Guilty Verdict is the Right Result – But We’re Not Done Yet.” Murphy argues that “Justice for Caylee is still possible, notwithstanding the acquittal, if people call for full disclosure of the entire investigative file – including an unsealing of the evidence thus far hidden from public view. Release of the photographs of Caylee that were seized from the Anthony home and placed “under seal” by the court would be a good place to start.” Law enforcement may have discovered “sexualized” images of Caylee on the Anthony family computers which were placed under seal to avoid prejudicing the jury. Murphy believes that “The style of Caylee’s death was more mob hit than parental homicide.”….
http://www.childlaw.us/2011/07/caylee-anthony-killed-for-ch.html
People upset with Casey Anthony trial can help fight child abuse by Mary Avila 07.08.2011 Across the country many are furious with the Casey Anthony verdict and believe justice wasn’t served for her 2-year-old daughter Caylee. “People who are angry and upset need to pick up the phone and call casa or call the children’s advocacy centers,” said Alicia Gracia the Executive Director at CASA. “And say how can I help these children now.” CASA is a group of special advocates who volunteer their time to children in cases of abuse or neglect….
Just this year Gracia said they’ve seen over 5000 confirmed cases of child abuse. “Its horrifying to hear an 8 year old little boy who is being raped by mother’s boyfriend to find his mother walked in on them only to say don’t be changing rooms if you all are going to be doing that,” said Gracia. “Can you imagine what he felt to look into her eyes and hear her say that.” At Casa they see at least 100 victims of abuse or neglect come through their doors monthly. http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=638348
Witness Tampering At Casey Anthony Trial Alleged By Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings 7/13/11 ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Authorities were looking into allegations of witness tampering during Casey Anthony’s murder trial, a Florida sheriff said Tuesday during a wide-ranging news conference with his top investigators in what he said was an effort to bring closure to a case that polarized the country. Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings also revealed that prosecutors were considering perjury charges against Anthony’s mother, but a spokeswoman for the state attorney’s office later said they would not be pursued….
Anthony’s defense said Caylee accidentally drowned in the family pool and her father, a former police officer, helped cover it up. Anthony’s partying and shopping during the month before her daughter was reported missing was caused in part by her father’s sexual abuse, her attorneys said. George Anthony denied the claims in court, and investigators said Tuesday they were rebuffed by the defense team when they tried to interview her about the allegations….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/13/witness-tampering-casey-anthony_n_896806.html?icid=maing-grid7|maing10|dl1|sec1_lnk3|77564
Caylee Anthony ripple hits state By Jason Cato, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW Wednesday, July 13, 2011
A wave of legislation in response to the Casey Anthony verdict soon could touch Pennsylvania; a Philadelphia lawmaker said he intends to strengthen state laws to better protect children. “I was motivated by the protection of children,” said Sen. Larry Farnese, a Democrat. “Nothing is more important to me as a legislator.” Legal and child-abuse prevention experts question whether such laws would help because, they said, cases such as Anthony’s are rare. Anthony, 25, is scheduled for release from jail on Sunday. A Florida jury last week cleared her of charges she killed her toddler daughter, Caylee….
Farnese said he envisions “Caylee’s Law,” which would change concealing the death of a child from a first-degree misdemeanor to a third-degree felony with a maximum penalty of seven years incarceration and a $15,000 fine. Farnese plans to introduce another bill that would make neglecting to report a missing child to authorities a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine….
Lawmakers in at least 17 other states, including West Virginia and Ohio, are considering similar bills. A petition on Change.org urging such laws drew nearly 1.2 million signatures by Tuesday. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_746454.html
Damaging Letters Released in Casey Anthony Case Apr 7, 2010 Michelle Ruiz – Newly released letters exchanged between Casey Anthony and a jailhouse companion could provide valuable new evidence for prosecutors in their case against the woman accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, in 2008. Florida prosecutors on Tuesday released more than 250 pages of handwritten correspondence between Anthony and fellow inmate Robyn Adams, in which Anthony writes that the baby sitter she said abducted Caylee, Zenaida Gonzalez, did not exist. They also reveal details about Caylee’s remains that investigators say only the killer would know….
“The letters released today reflect the natural desire for companionship when isolated for 23 hours a day,” the statement said. “Casey Anthony maintains her innocence and looks forward to her day in court.”
Writing in schoolgirl-style penmanship, Anthony also levels sexual abuse allegations against her brother, Lee, saying he fondled her in her bedroom between the ages of 12 and 15. Anthony wrote that her mother, Cindy, dismissed her when she approached her about the alleged abuse.
“I was to blame for my own brother coming into my room at night and feeling my breasts while I slept,” Anthony wrote. “When I told my mom about it two years ago, she made excuses, saying that he was sleepwalking.”
Anthony also told Adams she “thinks” her father, George, may have touched her inappropriately when she was a child, writing: “I think my dad used to do the same thing to me, but when I was much younger.”
George and Cindy Anthony denied any abuse occurred in their family. Their attorney, Brad Conway, said in a statement that there was never “a time when Casey told them of inappropriate conduct by her brother or father,” according to Orlando’s WESH-TV. Investigators said Anthony and Adams exchanged their letters through books in the prison library, agreeing to flush them after reading. But Adams mailed Anthony’s letters to a friend, Tracey Nealley. http://www.aolnews.com/2010/04/07/damaging-jailhouse-letters-released-in-casey-anthony-case/
Casey Anthony Case Overshadows Widespread Abuse and Neglect of America’s Kids By Kristi Murphy July 15, 2011 The Casey Anthony trial and the terrible story of the death and dismemberment of 8-year-old Leiby Kletsky in Brooklyn this week has captivated our nation like so many high profile cases in the past. While many might believe that cases like this will bring attention to the issue of protecting our children, at the end of the day these individual stories only highlight the tip of the iceberg. The reality is that 150 children, most under the age of four, die every month from abuse or neglect. While high profile cases do bring awareness, they take our focus off the real issue of suffering children and instead keep us embroiled in speculation and legalities.
Despite intense public and media scrutiny of cases such as Susan Smith in 1994, JonBenet Ramsey in 1996, Andrea Yates in 2001 and Baby Gabriel in 2009, the number of child deaths from abuse keeps rising and these abused children become tabloid fodder. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), more than 3.3 million reports of child abuse are made every year, or about one every 10 seconds. The 2009 Child Maltreatment report from HHS estimates that 1,770 child abuse deaths occurred in 2009, averaging to five per day and this number is on the rise. Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education. Child abuse is an epidemic and brutal deaths happen every day in neighborhoods just like those in which we all live….
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/15/casey-anthony-case-overshadows-widespread-abuse-and-neglect-americas-kids/
WHEN WILL WE SEE THE “SEALED” EVIDENCE? 2011 July 16 by Wendy Murphy – The newsroom blog of the Patriot Ledger – First, I’m excited to let you all know that I have a book coming out very soon. Technology allows for the publication of books far faster than ever before, but it still takes a bit of time to get things organized. Stay tuned here for more information on the likely release date. My hope is that it will be out before the end of August….
Assuming the backstory includes “sealed” evidence of postitution and/or child pornography, which I believe is the case, there are two key reasons this information would have been excluded from trial. One is that the court “sealed” the information because it was never directly connected to Caylee’s murder. If highly prejudicial information is not strongly related to proof of the crime, which is to say, the witnesses have not explained why the evidence helps to prove or disprove guilt, the court would be compelled to exclude the information as unduly prejudicial without sufficient probative force. The second reason is that the feds are involved in investigating the porn issues and they want to be able to proceed on these charges against Casey, and perhaps others, in federal court. If the evidence had been allowed in during the murder trial, Casey’s acquittal would have precluded retrial on the porn charges under double jeopardy principles….
Under the Supreme Court’s “same facts” Blockburger test, if the state offered any evidence of Casey Anthony’s involvement with prostitution or child pornography, those facts could not be used against her again, in a pornography prosecution, by state or federal officials….
But now that that she’s been acquitted, the truth should be told about what was sealed during trial, and what’s going on with the feds…. http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/front-page/#axzz1QbbpsUzU
Casey Anthony case sheds new light on child abuse in southeast Wisconsin – There is help for parents feeling overwhelmed Tami Hughes FOX6 Reporter July 6, 2011 WITI-TV, MILWAUKEE — The Casey Anthony trial in Florida shed new light on the issue of child abuse in Wisconsin; an issue that affects thousands of kids every single year. In 2009, there were more than 38,000 reports of child abuse in Wisconsin – and there were likely thousands more that went unreported. Here are a couple cases — and please note, the details are rather graphic….
Eloise Anderson is the Secretary of the Department of Children and Families. She said on Wednesday, “We need to pay attention to our own communities because we have a lot of mothers that are close to this, because of stress, who need our help.” http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-20110706-child-abuse-prevalence,0,4807319.story
Caylee’s Law: Closing the Loopholes in Florida Law – Senator Mike Fasano (R), New Port Richey, has draft legislation for the 2012 legislative session after the Casey Anthony verdict came down. By Analyn Megison 7/21/11
….“Over and over, from the beginning of this, Sen. Fasano kept asking about the 31 days: why is it that this child was missing for 31 days and no one reported it?” said Greg Giordano, Fasano’s chief legislative aide.
“As we know now, there is no law in Florida that requires that missing children be reported to law enforcement within a certain time-frame. If there had been such a law on the books this case may have turned out quite differently.”
Fasano hopes to close this loophole in Florida law, and I think it would get law enforcement involved in a timely fashion when there is a missing child. Also, it is another tool that could be used in a prosecutor’s arsenal whenever someone is eventually charged by the state for this type of crime…. “Senator Fasano is proposing legislation that will require a caretaker (someone in a custodial role, i.e. parent, grandparent, babysitter, guardian, etc) who willfully or by culpable negligence fails to make contact or verify the whereabouts of a child 12 years of age or younger for a period of 48 hours will be guilty of a third degree felony if he/she fails to report the child’s absence to law enforcement at the end of said 48 hours. “If the child suffers great harm, disability or permanent disfigurement while missing the charge will be raised to a second degree felony…”
http://clearwater.patch.com/articles/caylees-law-closing-the-loopholes-in-florida-law-2
Lawmakers will study Wyoming ‘Caylee’s Law’ By JOSHUA WOLFSON Star-Tribune staff writer Tuesday, July 26, 2011 Public outcry following Casey Anthony’s acquittal has prompted Wyoming lawmakers to explore legislation that would punish parents who fail to report missing children within a certain time frame. The Legislature’s Joint Judiciary Interim Committee will study the need for a “Caylee’s Law” when it meets next month in Sundance, a committee chairman said. More than 20 states are considering versions of Caylee’s Law, which would make it a felony for parents or guardians to wait more than 24 hours to notify authorities of missing children. Other states are also contemplating making it a felony to wait more than an hour to report a child’s death.
An Oklahoma woman proposed the legislation in an online petition created after a jury acquitted Anthony of murdering her daughter, Caylee. Anthony waited a month before reporting her daughter missing. The online petition has collected more than 1.25 million signatures. Many state lawmakers have also received emails from constituents urging passage of a Caylee’s Law in Wyoming, said judiciary co-chairman Sen. Drew Perkins. Instead of individual lawmakers pursuing a bill, the Legislature’s Management Council assigned the judiciary committee to study the issue.
http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_8c07f961-0e6b-5af0-995d-b83bd396333f.html
Casey Anthony /Casey Alleges Family Abuse, Chloroform Use In Jail Letters cfnews13.com http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=pM36-UNP8wI
Video vault: The case against Casey Anthony http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2011/june/257670/
Wis. lawmakers look to pass “Caylee’s Law” Jul 31, 2011 By Megan Wiebold Eau Claire (WQOW) – After the acquittal of Casey Anthony in the death of her daughter, Caylee, many lawmakers clamored to create a law that would punish parents for failing to alert police when their son or daughter is missing. Wisconsin is just one of nearly two dozen states that are looking into creating a measure that would be called “Caylee’s Law”. Caylee Anthony, 2, had been missing for 31 days before police knew about her disappearance. Wisconsin lawmakers say they’ve gotten hundreds of e-mails and phone calls about creating a law to punish parents who do not report their child missing. ….There are currently no laws in Wisconsin that punish parents for failing to report a missing child. Lawmakers say it’s an issue that’s been discussed for years. ….Currently, there are two versions of the law being drafted. http://www.wqow.com/story/15182706/wi-lawmakers-look-to-pass-caylees-law
In wake of Caylee Anthony court case, let’s refocus on ending child abuse July 20, 2011 By Patriot-News Op-Ed By Jennifer Storm and Cathleen Palm – In the wake of the Caylee Anthony court decision, there is frustration and outrage. But simply being outraged is not sufficient. It’s time we changed the story for our children. Preventing child abuse and protecting children is a shared community responsibility. Each of us has a part to play.
Changing the story for Pennsylvania’s children requires, in part, advocacy and action to realize public policies and investments that provide opportunities for every child to be healthy, to be safe and to live within stable homes among people prepared for, committed to and supported in the toughest job: parenting.
It also requires continued public-private partnerships to ensure that even during tough budget times investments continue in voluntary evidence-based home visiting services that improve maternal and child outcomes and strengthen the confidence and competence of parents.
We should prioritize prevention and evidence-based home visiting programs, such as Healthy Families, Nurse Family Partnership and Parents as Teachers, to reduce adverse childhood experiences and to realize significant return on the investment. http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2011/07/communities_can_help_prevent_a.html
Child Pornography Cases
72 charged in online child pornography ring – Fifty-two have been arrested in the U.S. and abroad and 13 have pleaded guilty in the case, the result of a crackdown by the Justice and Homeland Security departments. Twenty remain at large. By Andrew Seidman, Washington Bureau August 3, 2011 Reporting from Washington-
The Justice Department has charged 72 suspected members of an online child pornography ring that encouraged its members to engage in sexual acts with children 12 and under and submit gruesome, violent material to build a massive private database of images and videos on the Internet. The crackdown is the result of a joint effort by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security launched in December 2009 to target about 500 people in 13 countries on five continents for their suspected participation in “Dreamboard,” a members-only online bulletin board that was created to encourage the sharing of graphic images and videos.
“The members of this criminal network shared a demented dream to create the preeminent online community for the promotion of child sexual exploitation,” Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement, “but for the children they victimized, this was nothing short of a nightmare.” According to court documents filed in Louisiana, where the ring originated, administrators for Dreamboard set up strict barriers to entry and created a sophisticated membership system that offered incentives for further contributions to the website. Individuals had to post child pornography in order to join the site. To maintain membership, individuals were required to continue to upload images of sexual abuse….
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the bulletin board distributed the equivalent of 16,000 DVDs of child pornography, adding that the department had recovered more than 1 million images in the U.S. alone. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-child-porn-20110804,0,5337258.story
Phylicia Barnes Murder: Child Porn Link Under Investigation 7/11/11 The Phylicia Barnes murder case is being investigated for a possible link to child pornography and sexual exploitation, ABC news reports. The FBI is pursing warrants in order to gain legal access to the email and Facebook accounts of Barnes and four men from Baltimore.
An article from the Charlotte Observer reported that investigators have “reason to believe” that the warrants will result in uncovering evidence of child sex crimes or pornography. Although the autopsy ruled Barnes’ death a homicide, authorities have not announced a cause of death in the hopes that they can question suspects about it in the future, Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley told ABC News. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/11/phylicia-barnes-murder-child-porn_n_894749.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk3|77185
Clergy Abuse Cases
In the dock: bishop who knew but did not tell – French abuse case stirs controversy over secrecy in Catholic Church – Special report: religion in the UK Jon Henley in Paris The Guardian, Thursday 14 June 2001 01.27 BST
A Roman Catholic bishop will appear in the dock today for the first time in modern French history, accused of knowingly covering up the crimes of a paedophile priest who had been telling his Church superiors of his sexual relations with young boys for more than 25 years. Monsignor Pierre Pican, the bishop of Bayeux in Normandy, faces up to three years in jail in a landmark case that pits one of the essential tenets of Catholicism, the secrecy of the confessional, against the moral requirements of a secular justice system.
Mgr Pican will be asked to explain why he failed to report to the police the activities of Father René Bissey, sentenced to 18 years in jail last year for repeatedly raping one boy and sexually abusing 10 others between 1989 and 1996. A long list of similar offences dating back to 1970 had exceeded the statute of limitations.
Despite issuing an official condemnation of paedophilia, the Catholic church remains bitterly divided over the case, with some senior figures continuing to defend the vital importance of secrecy to their profession and the “curative role” of the confessional in their faith. Mgr Pican was formally notified of Bissey’s activities in 1996 by the vicar general of Normandy, Michel Marcel, who had received a letter from the mother of a young victim. He is alleged to have known of the priest’s behaviour for far longer. During his trial last October, Bissey – described by a police psychiatrist as an “authentic paedophile” who “felt no guilt whatsoever towards his victims” – said he had repeatedly admitted his activities with young boys to his confessors within the Church. He had carried on, he told the court, because he was always pardoned….
The case eventually came to court only after one of the principal victims, Yann, then 25, filed a complaint against Bissey in mid-1999. Mgr Pican, 66, now faces charges of “failing to disclose the sexual abuse and maltreatment of minors below the age of 15 by a figure in authority”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/jun/14/religion.uk
Irish Report Finds Abuse Persisting in Catholic Church By DOUGLAS DALBY and RACHEL DONADIO July 13, 2011
DUBLIN – The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, long after it issued guidelines meant to protect children, and the Vatican tacitly encouraged the cover-up by ignoring the guidelines, according to a scathing report issued Wednesday by the Irish government….
In Germany on Wednesday, the country’s Roman Catholic bishops took new steps to bring previously unreported abuse to light. The German bishops said they would allow outside investigators to look for abuse cases in diocesan personnel records dating back at least 10 years, and in some cases all the way to 1945, though there were indications that some crucial records may have already been destroyed.
In both Germany and Ireland, the abuse scandal has touched the highest echelons of the church. The new developments showed the tensions between civil and ecclesiastical justice in a crisis that has shaken the church’s moral authority worldwide. The Irish report in particular revealed a complex tug of war between the Irish church and the Vatican over how to handle abuse, with a fine line between confusion and obstruction.
The Cloyne Report, as it is known, drafted by an independent investigative committee headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, found that the clergy in the Diocese of Cloyne, a rural area of County Cork, did not act on complaints against 19 priests from 1996 to 2009. The report also found that two allegations against one priest were reported to the police, but that there was no evidence of any subsequent inquiry.
John Magee, the bishop of Cloyne since 1987, who had previously served as private secretary to three popes, resigned last year. In a statement on Wednesday, Bishop Magee offered a “sincere apology,” but he did not accept direct responsibility for covering up the abuse. “While I was fully supportive of the procedures, I now realize that I should have taken a much firmer role in ensuring their implementation,” Bishop Magee said. “I accept in its entirety the commission’s view that the primary responsibility for the failure to fully implement the church procedures in the diocese lay with me.”
The Cloyne Report is the Irish government’s fourth in recent years on aspects of the scandal. It shows that abuses were still occurring and being covered up 13 years after the church in Ireland issued child protection guidelines in 1996, and that civil officials were failing to investigate allegations. The report warned that other dioceses might have similar failings….
Cardinal Brady issued an apology on Wednesday and called for more openness and cooperation with civil authorities. He has been fighting calls for his resignation since last year, when he acknowledged helping to conceal the crimes of one serial-rapist priest from Irish authorities in the mid-1970s. …
After a 2009 report found that thousands of children were abused in state-run Catholic boarding schools from the 1930s to the 1990s, the Irish government paid hundreds of millions of euros in compensation to the victims. One in Four, an organization of Irish abuse victims, said that the new report “documents a familiar saga of priests sexually abusing children with impunity, protected by senior churchmen conspiring to cover up the abuse with an astounding indifference to the safety of children.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/world/europe/14church.html
The Cloyne Report Published: July 13, 2011 Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child sexual abuse against clerics of the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/14/world/europe/14church-report.html
Commission of Investigation – Report into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne December 2010
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/216118/cloyne-report.pdf
Op-Ed Columnist An Archbishop Burns While Rome Fiddles By MAUREEN DOWD June 4, 2011 THE archbishop of Dublin was beginning to sniffle. He could not get through a story about “a really nasty man” – an Irish priest who sexually abused, physically tortured and emotionally threatened vulnerable boys – without pulling out his handkerchief and wiping his nose. “He built a swimming pool in his own garden, to which only boys of a certain age, of a certain appearance were allowed into it,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told me recently. “There were eight other priests in that parish, and not one of them seemed to think there was something strange about it.”
Two years after learning the extent of the depraved and Dickensian treatment of children in the care of the Irish Catholic Church – a fifth circle of hell hidden for decades by church and police officials – the Irish are still angry and appalled. The only church leader who escapes their disgust is the no-nonsense, multilingual Martin. He was sent home to Dublin in 2003 after 27 years in the Vatican bureaucracy and diplomatic corps and found the Irish church in crisis, reeling from a cover-up that spanned the tenures of four past Dublin archbishops….The frustrated Martin has criticized the Vatican’s glacial pace on reform and chided the church: “Denial will not generate confidence.”
He has mourned the lack of faith among young people in Ireland, where fewer than one in five Catholics go to Mass in Dublin on Sunday. (A victims’ support group is called One in Four, asserting that’s how many Irish have been affected by the sexual abuse scandal.) In return for doing the right thing, he has been ostracized by fellow bishops in Ireland and snubbed by the Holy See. Showing again that it prefers denial to remorse, the Vatican undermined Martin’s call for accountability. In 2009, after the Irish government’s 700-page Murphy report on sexual abuse came out, Pope Benedict XVI refused to accept the resignations of two Irish bishops who presided over dioceses where abuse cases were mishandled. The following year, when Martin expected to be named cardinal, the pope passed him over. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05dowd.html
Irish prime minister attacks Vatican Enda Kenny says Cloyne report on child sex abuse by priests highlights dysfunction and elitism in Rome – Henry McDonald in Dublin guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 July 2011
Ireland’s prime minister has launched an unprecedented attack on the Vatican, accusing it of downplaying the rape and torture of Irish children by clerical sex abusers. Enda Kenny said in parliament that the Cloyne report, released on 13 July, had exposed the Vatican’s attempt to frustrate the inquiry into child sex abuse. During a debate on the fallout from the Cloyne findings, the taoiseach said the report had illuminated the dysfunction and elitism still dominant in the Vatican….
Kenny said the rape and torture of children had been downplayed or “managed” to uphold the institution’s power and reputation. The all-party motion being debated in the Dáil “deplores the Vatican’s intervention which contributed to the undermining of child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish state and the Irish bishops”. One of the most damning findings of the Cloyne report was that the diocese failed to report nine out of 15 complaints made against priests, which “very clearly should have been reported”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/20/irish-prime-minister-attacks-vatican
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has strongly criticised the Vatican for what he said was an attempt to frustrate the Cloyne inquiry, accusing it of downplaying the rape of children to protect its power and reputation.
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=mo5MXrqbDeA
Vatican Recalls Ireland Envoy Amid Abuse Uproar By VICTOR L. SIMPSON 07/25/11 VATICAN CITY — Chafing under extraordinary criticism, the Vatican made the rare move of recalling its ambassador to Ireland on Monday following accusations that the Holy See sabotaged efforts by Catholic bishops to report clerical sex abuse cases to police. A Vatican spokesman said Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza was recalled to help prepare an official response to Irish complaints, but that the decision “does not exclude some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions.”
The spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, acknowledged the recall of an ambassador was a measure rarely used by the Holy See, underlining “the seriousness of the situation.” The deepening crisis follows a July 13 report that the Irish diocese of Cloyne failed to act on complaints against 19 priests from 1996 to 2009. It further alleged the Vatican encouraged bishops to ignore child-protection guidelines including the requirement that abuse claims be reported to civil authorities….
Prime Minister Enda Kenny denounced to lawmakers last week what he called “the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism – and the narcissism – that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”
It was the first time in the past 17 years of pedophile-priest scandals in Ireland that parliamentarians have taken on the Vatican rather than local church leaders. Revelations of widespread abuse have eroded Catholic authority in a nation where the church still owns most schools and several hospitals, and state broadcasters still toll a twice-daily call to Catholic prayer.
A confidential 1997 Vatican letter – originally published by The Associated Press in January – instructed Irish bishops to handle child-abuse cases strictly under terms of canon law. It warned bishops that their 1996 child-protection policy, particularly its emphasis on the need to start reporting all suspected crimes to police, violated canon law. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/vatican-recalls-ireland-envoy_n_908462.html
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin ‘ashamed’ at church failures – The Archbishop of Dublin said there are groups in the Vatican and the Irish hierarchy trying to undermine child protection measures. 21 July 2011 Speaking on RTE on Wednesday, Dr Diarmuid Martin said there were systems in place that were ignored. His comments come after Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny launched an attack in parliament on the Catholic Church. Mr Kenny said the recent Cloyne Report into allegations of priest sex abuse showed change was needed. In an unprecedented attack, the taoiseach said the historic relationship between church and state in Ireland could not be the same again and the report exposed the “elitism, dysfunction, disconnection, and narcissism that dominated the Vatican”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14230086
Irish PM in unprecedented attack on Vatican 20 July 2011 Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has launched an unprecedented attack in parliament on the Catholic Church. He said the recent Cloyne Report into how allegations of sex abuse by priests in Cork had been covered up showed change was urgently needed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14224199
Dublin Archbishop ‘ashamed’ of church 21 July 2011 The Archbishop of Dublin said there are groups in the Vatican and the Irish hierarchy trying to undermine child protection measures. Speaking on RTE on Wednesday, Dr Diarmuid Martin said there were systems in place that were ignored. His comments come after Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny launched an attack in parliament on the Catholic Church. Mr Kenny said the recent Cloyne Report into allegations of priest sex abuse showed change was needed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/14234488
2 women sue archdiocese for alleged sex abuse – Separate suits claim recovered memories of 1950s incidents By Manya A. Brachear, Tribune reporter August 3, 2011 Two women filed separate lawsuits against the Chicago Archdiocese on Tuesday, alleging they were sexually abused in the 1950s by a priest at St. Peter Damian Catholic Church in Bartlett. In the suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court, Patricia Vestey and Kathryn Joan Ebeling, both in their 60s, say they repressed memories of abuse at the hands of the Rev. Thomas Barry Horne for several decades. It wasn’t until they learned that others had accused Horne of abuse that their recollections began to surface, the suit said. Horne retired in 1973 and has since died. Frederic Nessler, the Springfield attorney representing both women, said the archdiocese refused to settle out of court. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-repressed-catholic-memories-20110803,0,990086.story
Dan Rather Reports – All Is Not Forgiven – An investigation of shocking new evidence in the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal in Los Angeles. http://www.hd.net/programs/danrather/
article describes abuse
He was my priest and my friend. Then I found out he was a paedophile – How the scandal of Father Kit Cunningham has made Peter Stanford question his church and his faith Peter Stanford The Observer, Sunday 19 June 2011….In Abused: Breaking the Silence, a documentary to be shown on BBC1 on Tuesday, reporter Olenka Frenkiel hears from other former pupils at Soni about how they were subjected to a regime of sexual abuse from which they were powerless to escape….There have also been repeated public expressions of regret by the Catholic authorities as these scandals have emerged all round the globe, revealing this as an endemic problem in the church rather than, as Pope John Paul II originally suggested in 2002, a case of a few bad apples….Abused: Breaking The Silence is on BBC1 on Tuesday at 21 June, 10.35pm http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jun/19/kit-cunningham-child-abuse
Rabbinical court opens sex abuse debate in orthodox community By Marian Scott, Postmedia News July 26, 2011
MONTREAL – A rabbinical court has brought the long-hidden issue of sexual abuse in Montreal’s Orthodox Jewish community out into the open. In an advisory issued at the start of the summer-camp season, the Beit Din, a religious court, told parents to teach children about inappropriate touching, whether it’s by another child, a relative or an authority figure. The written notice said parents should explain to children it’s an obligation – not a sin – to tell a parent or rabbi if an incident occurs.
The move is a departure for a community that’s been accused in the past of sweeping the sensitive topic of sexual abuse under the carpet. “That already is a huge step for the Orthodox community,” said Diane Sasson, executive director of Auberge Shalom, a centre for women and children affected by conjugal violence. That the Jewish court is acknowledging the existence of sexual abuse is a sign of progress, Sasson said. But an expert on sexual abuse in the Orthodox community criticized the religious court for not telling parents to report incidents to police or youth-protection authorities…. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Rabbinical+court+opens+abuse+debate+orthodox+community/5162525/story.html
Tempest in the Temple – Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals Amy Neustein, ed.
Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture and Life – Brandeis University Press 2009 Sociology / Jewish Studies 978-1-58465-671-5….
Tempest in the Temple brings together fifteen practicing rabbis, educators, pastoral counselors, sociologists, mental health professionals, and legal advocates for abuse victims, each of whom offer insights into different facets of the problem.
This book is divided into three sections. The first section, “When the Vow Breaks,” describes rabbis who break their “vows” through active pedophilia. The second section, “Sacrificing Victims,” illuminates the community dynamics surrounding abuse: how a community unwittingly contributes to the cover-up of abuse; why victims of abuse are all too often ignored or cast off by their religious communities; and the mechanisms by which powerful religious institutions protect their own. The third section, “Let Me Know the Way,” addresses how Jewish communities can overcome the ignorance, bias, and corruption associated with clergy sexual abuse. Solutions—some already successful, others yet to be tried—are explored here. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~upne/1-58465-671-9.html
Orthodox Jewish Child Abuse: Shattering a Traumatic Silence 8/1/11 Eishes Chayil – Author, ‘Hush’ ….Three weeks ago, in Borough Park, 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky walked home from day camp. He got lost. He asked a man for directions. The man seemed safe. He wore a kippa. He did not wear jeans…. The ultra-Orthodox world of Brooklyn came to a terrifying halt. Tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews froze in horror. They recoiled in shock. They gathered together, bound in their mind-bending grief, people weeping in the streets, asking the questions again and again.
….For the hundreds of victims of sexual abuse who have lived through childhood in fear and silence, this is not a new question. They did not know the words sexual, abuse or molestation, but lived day after day through the raw horror of it, leaving old scars still bleeding like open wounds. How does a teacher, a counselor, an uncle, do such a thing? And why did nobody warn us about it, they ask.
I accidentally learned what the words molestation and rape meant at age 23, after telling a therapist I met about something I had witnessed happening to a friend when we were children. Suddenly I realized I had been talking to strangers all my life. After I started meeting with victims and speaking with therapists, I began to encounter the community’s wall of denial. These are things Jews don’t do, I was told. It was easy to say it was all a lie or just faulty memories of childhood.
When I first tried to write about abuse in our community, to use the words needed to describe what was happening to so many children, I was firmly told not to.
Some subjects are better left in silence, the rabbis said. Orthodox Jews did not need such words. Those were words for gentiles. We had built walls and had built them high; the outside world could never enter. But as the walls grew higher and wider, we forgot look inside, to see that the most dangerous enemy always grows from within.
….Children have always gotten hurt in our world — sometimes quickly, walking home from school, sometimes slowly, piece by piece, over years of abuse and terror. Perhaps we live in a world that is black and white, perhaps we want to keep it that way, but we must at least know that there is still a whole lot of gray in it, strangers live among friends and that such words, after all, are very complicated to define.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eishes-chayil/orthodox-jewish-child-abuse_b_915557.html
The Book No Pope Would Want You To Read by Tim C. Leedom and Maryjane Churchville – Historical and recent information on the Catholic Church. EWorld Inc. ISBN: 978-1-61759-029-0 http://www.nopope.com/
NO POPE Book Trailer HD http://www.youtube.com/user/popebook
Severe child abuse cases
Christian Choate Abuse: More Than A Dozen Knew About Beatings 7/11/11 The tragic story of Christian Choate, the Gary, Indiana boy who was allegedly locked in a cage, beaten and ultimately killed by his father and stepmother, was apparently known to several family members, neighbors and others. But almost all of the at least 13 people who knew about Choate’s abuse didn’t report it to authorities, out of either apathy, uncertainty, or fear of retribution, according to a new report in the Northwest Indiana Times. Riley Choate, Christian’s father, and Kimberly Kubina, his stepmother, are charged with murder and several other felonies after the boy’s body was discovered in a shallow concrete grave earlier this year. According to authorities, the two kept Christian locked in a dog cage, fed him infrequently, and beat him regularly for the last year of his life. One such beating apparently took his life on April 4, 2009. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/11/christian-choate-abuse-mo_n_894820.html
Who knew Christian Choate was being abused? By Lindsay Machak and Marisa Kwiatkowski Times Staff Writers Sunday, July 10, 2011 More than 13 people may have known of alleged abuse endured by Christian Choate before his 2009 death, but most said nothing to authorities, a Times review of Indiana Department of Child Services records shows. Only one adult claims to have brought her concerns to law enforcement. The rest appear to have kept silent — some claiming fear, others because they allegedly were the ones hurting the boy.
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/crown-point/article_6c37d91b-093a-5596-9455-f348882c4b58.html
Benjamin Janicki, Former Daycare Worker, Gets 40 Years In Prison For Sexually Abusing Preschool Kids 7/22/11 ….Benjamin Janicki, 20, a former Denver church daycare worker, has been convicted of sexually molesting nine preschool children and sentenced to 40 years in prison, the maximum allowed under a plea agreement, according to The Denver Post. The plea agreement was arranged so the nine young girls would not have to testify about the horrifying abuse they faced at the hands of Janicki, who was a summer hire aide for pre-Kindergarten aged kids at the daycare center, according to 9News….
Janicki plead guilty to to two counts of first degree assault and two counts of attempted sexual assault on a child, according to CBSDenver. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/22/benjamin-janicki-former-d_n_907343.html
Plea Deal Announced In Church Day Care Molestation Case May 9, 2011 Benjamin Janicki entered a guilty plea in court Monday morning to two counts of first degree assault and two counts of attempted sexual assault on a child. He was charged after being accused of molesting four preschool-aged children at the Park Hill United Methodist Church. Janicki worked as an aid at Park Hill United last summer when he was 19. Originally the charges Janicki faced stemmed from four victims. On Monday during court proceedings it was revealed that five more victims were added to the list. http://denver.cbslocal.com/2011/05/09/plea-deal-announced-in-church-day-care-molestation-case/
describes severe abuse
California, Texas agencies all failed to rescue Lilly Manning By Marjie Lundstrom Jul. 31, 2011
Lilly Manning was 15 when she escaped from a cramped closet in south Sacramento, after being stabbed and beaten and shoved into the darkness. This time, she said, she knew she would have to save herself.
Government documents confirm she was right. Four different agencies visited the family at least 11 times on reports of suspected abuse or neglect in a five-year period but did not move to protect her or her siblings, according to confidential records obtained by The Bee.
“They came, they looked, they left,” said Lilly, now 19, reflecting on the parade of visitors from law enforcement, Child Protective Services and the schools, some of whom she had secretly called. “We just gave up.” Today, Lilly Manning lives with more than 100 scars etching her 5-foot-3 body, physical reminders of the hammer attacks, beatings, burns and strikes to the head with a 2-by-4 and a padlock swinging from a cord. Earlier this month, her adoptive mother and great-aunt, Lillian Manning-Horvath, was sentenced to up to six years in a mental health facility, followed by consecutive life terms in state prison. The woman’s husband, Joseph Horvath, was convicted by a jury in 2009 and also sentenced to multiple life terms. Documents and interviews with family members also reveal how a domineering matriarch terrified people who witnessed and endured years of her verbal tirades and physical abuse….
Authorities swept in, and the rest of the children were taken into protective custody in the early morning hours of Nov. 6, 2007. The children would never go home again. Help that didn’t come – Lilly says she does not remember much about those chaotic first days and has “lots of blank spots” about her childhood. She knows that she and her four siblings were removed from their biological mother in the early 1990s and placed with their great-aunt Lillian, who later adopted them. In 2002, their adoptive mom married Horvath, a felon 18 years her junior. Lilly wants to know more. She recently sought and received nearly 700 pages of documents from the Sacramento Juvenile Dependency Court, which detail the many missteps among government agencies. She shared those records with The Bee. CPS also is preparing to give her her file….
Ann Edwards, director of Sacramento County’s Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CPS, said she could not legally comment on Lilly’s case for confidentiality reasons. However, she agreed to talk in general terms about issues raised by the case. “It’s not uncommon for siblings to want to remain together,” said Edwards. “And it’s not uncommon for children to be afraid of the unknown. “It’s quite remarkable that even children who are horribly abused typically still love their parents, or the people who are abusing them.” Lilly says today that their adoptive mom often manipulated the kids into keeping quiet or lying, promising she would stop the abuse.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/31/3806037/california-texas-agencies-all.html
describes graphic crimes – Delaware ex-pediatrician guilty of child sex abuse By Dan Shortridge, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal 6/23/11
GEORGETOWN, Del. — A Delaware pediatrician was found guilty Thursday of raping and abusing his child patients. Earl Bradley, 58, accused of raping or assaulting more than 100 girls he treated, was convicted of all 24 counts of rape, assault and sexual exploitation that he faced in Sussex Superior Court here. The verdict was expected: Evidence of the attacks included videos that he recorded and Bradley’s lawyers did not mount any defense. Instead, they are expected to appeal an earlier ruling from Judge William Carpenter Jr. that 13 hours of videos seized from Bradley’s office was admissible. A state police detective who viewed the videos said during the trial that Bradley used mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a few girls who were “ashen gray” from choking and suffocation after he forced them to perform oral sex on him.
The videos also show children in diapers screaming as they attempt in vain to escape from their doctor before he rapes them in an outbuilding at his office where he took children for candy and toys. In one case at his home, a video shows Bradley using nitrous oxide to keep a sleeping 7-year-old girl sedate during his attack, police testified. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-06-23-delaware-pediatrician-sex-abuse_n.htm
describes severe abuse
Gloucester residents in dark as child abuse came to light By Joanne Kimberlin The Virginian-Pilot June 5, 2011 GLOUCESTER COUNTY This rural community isn’t used to making headlines, especially the kind it’s had lately….perhaps the worst case of child abuse ever in these parts – one that speaks volumes about what can hide behind closed doors. On April 28, deputies checking a home for stolen goods discovered a naked, starving little girl inside a filthy, makeshift cage. Under a shed nearby, they found the remains of a baby….
Up until a few weeks ago, the trailer was home to Brian and Shannon Gore. Both have longtime roots in the area and no record of trouble with the law. Shannon, 25, worked at the Bojangles restaurant in nearby Yorktown. Brian, 29, listed his occupation as “HVAC Service Tech” on a Gloucester High School reunion website.
On a video posted to their Myspace pages, the Gores look like any other young couple. It was taken in 2008 on Shannon’s birthday, the day Brian got down on one knee and proposed to her in a crowded restaurant. Shannon beams, hugs Brian and admires her new ring. Family and friends ooh, ahh and applaud.
But behind that happy moment, the couple already had dark secrets: two children, both born at home, with no medical assistance. One was hidden away; the other was buried in the yard – dead from causes that, so far, remain a mystery. Ron Smith, one of Shannon Gore’s attorneys, has told media that the couple concealed the pregnancies because they weren’t married, though no one has explained how they hid Shannon’s swollen belly in small-town Gloucester….
Edwards, who has three kids of her own, said the couple strolled the neighborhood with their new baby, who appeared well-cared for. “I didn’t know either of them very well,” Edwards said, “but she sent over bottles and pacifiers when my baby was born, and I’d see him out cutting the grass. They seemed like nice people. I’d wave to them.” Despite the thin walls and cramped space of trailer park living, “None of us knew they had a daughter,” Edwards said. “We never heard her cry or anything. Not even people who’ve been inside their house.” It all came to light when a burglary investigation led Gloucester detectives to the Gores’ trailer. Shannon Gore was suspected of selling about an ounce of stolen gold to an auction house – bars of bullion that had been swiped from a home in the county. http://hamptonroads.com/2011/06/gloucester-residents-dark-child-abuse-came-light
Other Cases
Nigerian ‘baby factory’ raided, 32 teenage girls freed Jun 1, 2011 – Nigerian police have raided a home allegedly being used to force teenage girls to have babies that were then offered for sale for trafficking or other purposes, authorities said on Wednesday. “We stormed the premises of the Cross Foundation in Aba three days ago following a report that pregnant girls aged between 15 and 17 are being made to make babies for the proprietor,” said Bala Hassan, police commissioner for Abia state in the country’s southeast. “We rescued 32 pregnant girls and arrested the proprietor who is undergoing interrogation over allegations that he normally sells the babies to people who may use them for rituals or other purposes.”….
Hassan said the owner of the “illegal baby factory” is likely to face child abuse and human trafficking charges. Buying or selling of babies is illegal in Nigeria and can carry a 14-year jail term….
In 2008, police raids revealed an alleged network of such clinics, dubbed baby “farms” or “factories” in the local press. Cases of child abuse and people trafficking are common in West Africa. Some children are bought from their families to for use as labour in plantations, mines, factories or as domestic help. Others are sold into prostitution while a few are either killed or tortured in black magic rituals. NAPTIP says it has also seen a trend of illegal adoption. “There is a problem of illict adoption and people not knowing the right way to adopt children,” said Okoronkwo. Human trafficking is ranked the third most common crime after economic fraud and drug trafficking in the country, according to UNESCO. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/nigeria/8550792/Nigerian-baby-factory-raided-and-32-teenage-girls-freed.html
National inquiry sought over missing and murdered aboriginal women By NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUN July 29, 2011
VANCOUVER — The Native Women’s Association of Canada is calling for a national inquiry into the growing number of missing and murdered aboriginal women after feeling shutout from B.C.’s Missing Women inquiry. “The government of B.C. has shut us out of the British Columbia Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, and now we have no confidence that it will be able to produce a fair and balanced report,” NWAC President Jeannette Corbiere Lavell said in a statement issued today. “The decision of the BC government to restrict funding for counsel primarily to police and government agencies demonstrates how flawed and one sided this process has become.” Her comments came after B.C. Attorney General Barry Penner has repeatedly rejected calls for funding for 13 groups who have been granted standing at the Missing Women inquiry, including the NWAC. The attorney general has only granted funding for a lawyer to represent the families of the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton….
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/National+inquiry+sought+over+missing+murdered+aboriginal+women/5180377/story.html
Jailed teacher’s abuse of primary pupils prompts serious case review – Probe ordered into how crimes went undiscovered after teacher Nigel Leat jailed indefinitely for years of sexual abuse – Steven Morris guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 June 2011 A review has been launched to establish if authorities could have acted sooner to prevent a primary school teacher sexually assaulting pupils as young as six, allegedly for more than a decade. Nigel Leat was jailed indefinitely for abusing children he taught, often when other pupils were present, and secretly filming his attacks. He groomed at least one girl a year at Hillside first school in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset and showered her with gifts, afforded her privileges and organised one-on-one teaching sessions.
Leat, 51, would swear his victims to secrecy and even write letters to them in which he would describe what he wanted to do to them and ask them to reply. After the sentencing, North Somerset council revealed that the headteacher of Hillside, Chris Hood, had been suspended and an independent serious case review was being held….
Married father of two Leat, from Bristol, admitted 36 offences involving five pupils aged between six and eight over five years. The offences included sexual assault, attempted rape, voyeurism and possessing extreme pornography. But police say they could have charged him with as many as 500 offences and believe he had been abusing children for 12 years. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/14/teacher-jailed-indefinitely-sexual-abuse
Jake Ormerod sentenced to 10 years in jail for sexually abusing girls – Gang member used Facebook as part of a campaign to sexually abuse more than 100 schoolgirls in the Torbay area Steven Morris and Sandra Laville guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 July 2011 A member of a gang believed to have sexually abused more than 100 schoolgirls in a seaside resort has been sentenced to 10 years in custody. Jake Ormerod, 20, used Facebook as part of his “campaign to groom naive and immature girls” and then “mercilessly corrupted” them to satisfy his “insatiable need for sex”. He admitted 13 charges of sexual activity with eight girls. He plied victims with drink and drugs in the Devon resort of Torquay, before having unprotected sex. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/08/jake-ormerod-10-years-jail-torbay
U.S. Army major accused of raping an infant Freeman Klopott Crime Reporter 05/21/10 A U.S. Army major who had 30,000 images and 100 videos of child pornography on his computers now faces rape and sodomy charges in Arlington for allegedly raping an infant. Daniel A. Woolverton faces up to 30 years in prison when he’s sentenced in Alexandria’s federal court on Friday. Among the videos found on his computers in his Arlington home were images of Woolverton having sex with a 2- to 3-month-old baby, court documents said. After his sentencing, he’ll head to Arlington County’s Circuit Court to face the rape and sodomy charges. Woolverton pleaded guilty to possessing the child pornography in January. Before an FBI agent linked Woolverton to images downloaded from Woolverton’s computer through a peer-to-peer file sharing network, the major’s career as an Army trial lawyer was on the fast track. http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime-and-punishment/us-army-major-accused-raping-infant
For Sugar Ray Leonard, memoir is therapy By Shemar Woods July 2, 2011 On some days, Michael Arkush’s interviews with Sugar Ray Leonard would last from 9 a.m. into the night. Other days, the boxing great would tell Arkush to stop the recorder, his mood darkened by the retelling of a troubled past. But in small doses over 18 months, Leonard began to open up about a career full of highs and lows. The result was “The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring,” a book co-authored by Leonard and Arkush that was released June 6….
The book’s most disturbing revelation – that Leonard was sexually abused by a boxing coach and another man while a young amateur fighter in the 1970s – came to light over months of conversations between Arkush and Leonard. Leonard, who said that he didn’t intend for the scene to make the book, initially revealed only a few details. Only after watching actor Todd Bridges explain how he was sexually abused on “Oprah” did Leonard begin to fully open up about the harrowing details of the abuse. “It was clear the experience was very cathartic for him and liberating,” Arkush said. “It was difficult at times, of course. But you could could see how much satisfaction he got from just coming to terms with everything” http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/boxing-mma/for-sugar-ray-leonard-memoir-surved-as-therapy/2011/07/01/AGoQyhvH_story.html
Allegations Link U.S. Companies to Brazilian Sex Tourism By BARRY MEIER July 8, 2011 The Justice Department has been conducting a criminal investigation of sports fishing expeditions in the Amazon that may have been used as covers for Americans to have sex with underage girls, according to newly filed court papers. The investigation and two related actions — a parallel criminal inquiry in Brazil and an unusual lawsuit filed in federal court in Georgia — could provide a rare look at the business operations of the multibillion-dollar international sex tour industry, which has increasingly focused on Brazil. “Brazil is taking over from Thailand as a premier sex tourism vacation” spot, said Kristen Berg, an official of Equality Now, an advocacy organization in New York that helped bring the lawsuit in Georgia.
That lawsuit was filed last month on behalf of four Brazilian women who claim that they were coerced as minors to serve as prostitutes for Americans on Amazon fishing expeditions operated by an Atlanta-area businessman. One of the women said that she was 12 years old at the time. Ms. Berg said the lawsuit was the first time that a federal law, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, had been used to seek damages from someone accused of operating sex tours. On Thursday, the defendant in that case, Richard W. Schair, filed a motion asking that the lawsuit be stayed. The motion cited continuing criminal investigations in the United States and Brazil. In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Schair, who operates an Atlanta-area real estate business, said that allegations that he was involved in child sex tours were untrue. He declined to discuss specifics of the inquiries. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/business/allegations-link-us-companies-to-brazilian-sex-tourism.html
Warren Jeffs – Trial
Texas Town Braces For Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs’ Trial (WATCH) WILL WEISSERT 07/25/11 SAN ANGELO, Texas – The first hint of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs’ defense strategy came Monday when his attorney said his right to freedom of religion was trampled by Texas prosecutors, who claim he sexually assaulted two underage girls after manipulating them into “spiritual marriages.” Jury selection began Monday in the case of the 55-year-old ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. The church’s 10,000 members see Jeffs as a prophet who speaks for God on Earth….
Jeffs is accused of sexual assaulting two girls, one younger than 17 and one younger than 14. The charges against him include aggravated sexual assault of a child, which is punishable by up to 99 years to life in prison. He faces a separate trial for bigamy in October. The charges stem from an April 2008 police raid on a church compound known as Yearning For Zion outside the town of Eldorado, about 45 miles south of the West Texas oil and gas town of San Angelo.
Authorities who believed girls were being forced into polygamous marriages removed more than 400 children living at the compound, and TV images of women wearing frontier-style dresses and 19th century hairdos were shown across the country. The original call to a Texas domestic abuse hotline that sparked the raid turned out to be a hoax. Most of the children seized from the compound have since been returned to their families, but the evidence collected proved enough to charge Jeffs and 11 other church men with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy. Seven church members have been convicted and received prison sentences of between 6 and 75 years. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/warren-jeffs-polygamist-trial_n_908442.html
Warren Jeffs Case: Polygamist Leader Fires Lawyers, Represents Himself In Bizarre First Day Of Child Sex Assault Trial 7/29/11 SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs broke his silence Friday, delivering before jurors a 55-minute sermon defending plural marriage as ordered by God and protected by the U.S. Constitution. Jeffs, 55, is accused of sexually assaulting two underage girls and could face life in prison if convicted. He fired his high-powered defense team on Thursday and has been representing himself, but he made no opening statement and spent hours sitting alone at the defense table staring into space in silence while prosecutors made their case. That changed, however, as FBI agent John Broadway testified about seizing eight desktop computers and 120 boxes and large folders of documents from the sect’s West Texas compound in April 2008. Broadway was about to describe a list of names and birthdates for those living at the compound when Jeffs suddenly cried “I object!”
“There is sacred trust given to religious leadership not to be touched by government agencies,” he said.
Jeffs is ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. The church’s 10,000 members see Jeffs as a prophet who speaks for God on Earth….
“We cannot surrender these principles based on the laws of man trying to convince us that our religion is not necessary in practice,” he said, referring to freedom of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Jeffs later added, “this must stop in a land of freedom if all others are to receive a similar guarantee against their freedom of religion being trampled.” Jeffs said his church has practiced polygamy for five generations and believes it is the will of God, who is a higher power than courts, state legislatures and the U.S. Congress. Jeffs is scheduled to be tried for bigamy in October….
When Jeffs finished, lead prosecutor Eric Nichols rose and said the Supreme Court has found since the 1890s that religious freedom does not extend to polygamy….
Jeffs and 11 other FLDS men were charged with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy. All seven sect members prosecuted so far have been convicted. They received prison terms of between six and 75 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/warren-jeffs-case-polygamist-leader-fires-lawyers_n_913008.html
Warren Jeffs, Polygamist Leader, Convicted In Child Sexual Assault Case 8/4/11 SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs of child sexual assault Thursday in a case stemming from two young followers he took as brides in what his church calls “spiritual marriages.” The 55-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stood stone-faced as the verdict was read. Jeffs, who acted as his own attorney, faces up to life in prison. The jury went immediately into sentencing proceedings. They had deliberated on a verdict for more than three hours.
Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. They also played audio recordings in which Jeffs was heard instructing young women on how to please him sexually. Jeffs has claimed he was the victim of religious persecution. The FLDS, which has at least 10,000 members nationwide, is a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism. The church believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven and that Jeffs is God’s spokesman on earth.
Police had raided the group’s remote West Texas ranch in April 2008, finding women dressed in frontier-style dresses and hairdos from the 19th century as well as seeing underage girls who were clearly pregnant. The call to an abuse hotline that spurred the raid turned out to be a hoax, and more than 400 children who had been placed in protective custody were eventually returned to their families. But authorities brought charges against several men from the group, with Jeffs by far the highest-profile defendant…..
Jeffs represented himself after firing seven attorneys in the six months leading to the trial. He broke his courtroom silence with an objection marked by a nearly hourlong speech defending polygamy, and twice threatened the judge and the court with warnings of punishment from God.
….Eleven other FLDS men were charged with crimes including sexual assault and bigamy. All seven of those who have been prosecuted were convicted, receiving prison sentences of between six and 75 years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/warren-jeffs-polygamist-leader-convicted_n_918915.html
article describes severe and graphic abuse
Ame Deal, Arizona 10-Year-Old, Killed By Family For Taking Popsicle: Police 7/29/11 The family of a 10-year-old found dead in a trunk outside an Arizona home initially claimed the child died while playing hide-and-seek. But investigators now believe Ame Deal suffocated after her family locked her in the box because she took a popsicle from the freezer without permission. Phoenix police claim Deal’s grandmother, aunt and two cousins regularly subjected the child to horrific treatment, ultimately culminating in her July 12 death. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/ame-deal-killed-over-popsicle_n_913646.html
Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Information
10TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE ON RITUAL ABUSE Host organisation IZZY’S PROMISE Location DUNDEE, Scotland November 3, 2011 09:30 AM – Izzy’s Promise is hosting a conference for survivors, support workers and organisations on the subject of RITUAL ABUSE IN THE UK 10 YEARS ON. Izzy’s Promise formerly (Tayside Ritual Abuse Support and Helpline Project TRASH) has been up and running for 10 years. It was started in 2001 by volunteers and service users out of a direct demand for services by survivors of ritual/organised abuse. The main speaker will Laurie Matthew, who has 30 years of experience working with ritual abuse survivors. The charges are £50 for statutory/funded organisations, £25 smaller charities and £10 for survivors. Website http://www.izzyspromise.org.uk Enquiries josephlumbasi@aol.com http://www.thirdforcenews.org.uk/2011/07/10th-anniversary-conference-on-ritual-abuse/
West Point Day Care Case
Army Doctor Turns Down Promotion By Kathy Sawyer Washington Post Staff Writer The Washington Post Jun 25, 1985 ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Washington Post (1877 – 1994) pg. A6 An Army doctor rejected promotion to major at a public ceremony yesterday because, he said, officials have failed to respond adequately to charges that his daughter, 3, and other children were sexually abused at the day care center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Capt. Walter R. Grote, 33, told a gathering at a promotion ceremony at Fort Dix, N.J., “I cannot accept promotion in a system that at first refused to acknowledge and now refuses to deal with the victims of extensive child abuse that occurred at the West Point Child Development Center.”…. A federal grand jury has been hearing the allegations that 11 children, from ages 13 months to 3 1/2, were sexually or physically abused at a facility near the Academy athletic field. One suspect was transferred to administrative duties with the post division that oversees the day care center, Yeagley said. The other has left the Academy work force.
West Point Day Care Sexual Abuse Case with Ritual Abuse allegations
Cunningham, Douglas and Alan Snel “A Legacy of Pain: Settlement Doesn’t Ease Abused Children’s Fears,” The Times Herald Record (Middletown, New York), June 11, 1991. The Times Herald-Record Copyright (c) 1991, The Times Herald-Record 9106110008 Long : 227 lines Tuesday, June 11, 1991 Final North News 4 By DOUGLAS CUNNINGHAM and ALAN SNEL Staff Writers
The Record photos: A new sign indicates a building number change. The red brick West Point Child Development Center was at the center of controversy in 1984. Mug photos: Judge W. Knapp William E. Crain Dr. Walter R. Grote
Record photo by Jeff Goulding: New center Director Nancy Campbell-Capen, above, talks about improvements to the building, including viewing windows in doors.
The Record photo: The West Point Child Development Center as it was in the mid-1980s, when the child abuse charges first surfaced. Back then, the building number was 666, leading to speculation that the abuse was satanically motivated.
A LEGACY OF PAIN SETTLEMENT DOESN’T EASE ABUSED CHILDREN’S FEARS
WEST POINT
Seven years have passed since she was sexually abused at West Point’s child-care center. Yet today, the 10-year-old girl can’t go to the bathroom without her mother waiting by the door.
The girl – who was 3 when West Point child-care workers were accused of sexually abusing her and 10 other children in 1984 – also asks her mother about whether she will be able to bear children when she grows up.
“This happened seven years ago, and it’s not any better,” the girl’s mother said. “She’s constantly asking, `What if we’re out in the store, Mommy, and we see these people? Are they going to hurt me?’ . . . But this is constantly on her mind because she knows these people are not in jail for what they did.”
In the U.S. District Court files in Manhattan, the West Point sexual abuse case is resolved. The government failed in 1985 to indict any suspects in its criminal investigation. But last month, it settled a civil suit brought by the parents of the 11 victims. Nine of the victims will receive $2.7 million, with awards ranging from $25,000 to $625,000.
But even as the legal dust has settled, the case lingers as a legacy of pain for the families.
“These people stole our children,” the mother said. “(She’s) nothing like she used to be. She’s a very angry little girl. She doesn’t trust anyone. She’s nothing like she was before this happened.
“It’s never going to be over for them, or for us.”
The case began in 1984, when allegations surfaced of sexual and physical abuse of children at the West Point Child Development Center.
The incidents unfolded against a backdrop of satanic acts, animal sacrifices and cult-like behavior among the abusers, whose activities extended beyond the U.S. Military Academy borders to Orange County and a military base in San Francisco, parents charged.
The specter of satanism would later spur U.S. Military Academy officials to change the West Point child-care center’s building number from 666 to 673.
Despite 950 interviews by 60 FBI agents assigned to the investigation, an investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani produced no federal grand jury indictments. The investigation did find “significant indications that children may have been abused” at the center.
Until now, no official reports or investigations have verified the sexual abuse. The Times Herald-Record, however, has learned that a still-secret, independent report – prepared by one of the nation’s top experts on child sexual abuse – confirms the children’s accusations of abuse. The report also played a vital role in ending the seven-year legal ordeal and in enabling the case to be settled without the children undergoing potentially hostile questioning on the witness stand, said U.S. District Judge Whitman Knapp, who heard the civil case.
The expert, Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess, a professor of psychiatric nursing at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia and the author of the book, “Child Pornography and Sex Rings,” entered the case in 1989.
She interviewed all the children. She said yesterday that her goal in the case had been to reduce harm to the children because testimony in open court could have triggered symptoms of abuse, prompted by a “resurfacing” of the original incident.
Knapp said that because Burgess worked for neither the government nor the plaintiffs, but reported directly to the court, her findings carried additional credibility. Neither Burgess nor others would speak about her specific findings.
“You can draw your own conclusions from the fact that (the government) paid all this money,” Knapp said about Burgess’ report. “The government wouldn’t have likely paid that money unless the report gave them a basis for doing that.”
The families’ lawyer, William E. Crain, who now practices in Elkin, N.C., and formerly worked in Newburgh, said the report is independent confirmation of the children’s claims. He received nearly $300,000 in legal fees in the case. The amount, 25 percent of the settlement, is set by law.
“Just generally speaking, it corroborated the children’s allegations they had been sexually abused by day-care center staff,” Crain said of the report.
“That report was sealed and has never been seen by anybody else and I hope it never will be,” Knapp said. “That has all the intimate details of what happened to these children. Certainly, they don’t want to be plagued by that when they grow up.”
The government, however, admitted none of the allegations in making the settlement. Edward T. Ferguson III, the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the case, declined to comment on Burgess’ role. He said that the settlement was in the best interests of the children and did not require them to testify in court.
“Everyone involved – the parents, the government and the court – all wished to avoid (the children taking the witness stand), if an accommodation could be reached,” Ferguson said.
Among other things, several of the settlements – made individually with each child’s family – provide for medical costs, counseling and a college fund. The actual cost of the settlement is $1.175 million. Much of the money will be invested and paid out during the victims’ lives, thereby increasing the total to $2.7 million.
“They’re children. They’re going to have to live with what happened to them. So are their parents,” Crain said. “But in terms of legal work, the legal end of it is finished.”
Nancy Campbell-Capen’s job began just four months ago. West Point hired the New Jersey native to run its child-care program, including the center, a red-brick building tucked on a hill between playing fields and a playground.
Ms. Campbell-Capen recalled talking about the sexual abuse case with her boss and other center staffers.
“More people were reacting to the media coverage than the actual possible event,” Ms. Campbell-Capen said she was told.
The center serves 150 children – 80 percent from military families and 20 percent from civilian workers. There are 120 children on a waiting list for the center that now complies with federal guidelines, which were strengthened in 1989.
“They certainly tightened the old regulations,” said Ms. Campbell-Capen, who ran child-care centers at Army bases in Germany. “We discovered the need to tighten up with staff training.”
Only a handful of the center’s 86 workers remain from the 1984 staff. Ms. Campbell-Capen said the staff had no response to the lawsuit settlement.
The center is trying to receive accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
The center’s dedication to meeting child-care standards contrasts with the way victims’ parents were treated when they sought to alert West Point and the military that their children had been sexually violated.
The Army’s reaction to the parents’ plight so enraged former Army Dr. Walter R. Grote that the ex-captain refused a promotion to major in 1985 because of the treatment of his child’s sexual abuse case at West Point. He was one of the first parents to file the lawsuit, but later dropped out of seeking money from the case.
“Unfortunately, money can’t . . . undo the trauma incurred by scores of children at West Point . . . because people with responsibility didn’t exercise that responsibility,” said Grote, now in private practice in New Jersey. “What the hell is a settlement? . . . They could have caught these people doing it at the time that they were doing it.
“We have a tendency to think that everything that’s evil and bad is on the other side of the Pacific or the Atlantic. “And that’s not the case.”
The mother of the 10-year-old said the settlement will pay her daughter’s college bills. But the mother said she would have preferred the government kept its money and punished the abusers.
Without the prosecution, West Point has retained its polished national image, she said. Even last month, the government admitted none of the allegations in making the settlement, a reminder of what parents say was West Point’s callous denial.
“They wouldn’t acknowledge what happened,” the mother said. “I’m sure if it was done anywhere else but West Point, it would have been acknowledged.”
Another parent whose son was sexually abused recalled that the Army was not prepared to treat satanic abuse.
“You had a bunch of kids who had some kind of abuse and the concerns of the parents seeking assistance fell on deaf ears. The medical treatment for the satanic abuse was not meeting the bill. It was far beyond what (the Army) could handle,” said Maj. Bob Caslen, an infantry officer reached stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky.
Two teacher aides were suspended and later quit after the charges surfaced.
After a federal grand jury failed to return indictments, community members joined the parents in calling for another investigation in 1985.
Joan Benedict walked with parents at a protest in Highland Falls in hopes of inspiring another probe. And she was a member of an Orange County anti-pornography group that sponsored a forum to allow the victims’ parents to speak out in 1986.
Ms. Benedict said she used to pray and walk at West Point because of the 189-year-old institution’s majestic Hudson River views. But no more.
“When I saw the headlines of the child pornography ring at West Point, it cut me to the heart,” Ms. Benedict said. “I know West Point is only surface beauty. They were outright cruel to the parents.”<
Ms. Benedict, a Town of Cornwall resident, started her own crusade to spark the Justice Department to reopen the abuse case. She ended her efforts in 1988 when she was convinced of a federal cover-up after receiving a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Mary C. Spearing, a special attorney with the Justice Department’s National Obscenity Enforcement Unit, wrote that the case was closed.
“Unfortunately, no new evidence, revelation or hint of wrongdoing or negligence surfaced during our review,” she wrote. She noted in her letter that the assistant U.S. attorney on the case was a father of four and that she had two children herself.
The monetary settlement, however, did not resolve the parents’ bitterness over what they still maintain was a botched FBI investigation. In fact, court papers filed by parents showed federal investigators not only refused to believe the children, but, in some cases, also criticized some parents for not keeping their children under control in their homes.
“When the agents came to the house, they did not appear to have a tape recorder and they were not taking notes during the interview,” one parent said in a sworn statement, according to 1984 court papers. “He became annoyed and frustrated and said, `It looks like she’s just trying to get attention.’ ”
Recalled Grote: “The tragedy is the abusers could have been caught . . . with a little imagination and a lot less chauvinistic narcissism on the part of West Point and the initial FBI investigator.”
Prosecutor Giuliani did not return calls last week. In 1987, Giuliani said his detailed investigation showed only one or two children were abused. The federal investigation cleared the center staff members accused by the children.
The mother of the 10-year-old girl still tries to cope with the abuse’s aftermath. “As far as I’m concerned, the government gave them a license to go out and abuse other children,” the mother said. “I have to explain to my daughter these people are still out there. “And she still has nightmares. She’s afraid they’re going to come through the window at night to get her.”
Center changes
Despite sexual abuse charges that surfaced in 1984 and a $1 million renovation of the building, the West Point day-care center was hit with 79 violations in January 1988. Here are some of the violations found by the 14-member Pentagon task force and how they have been resolved:<
– Doors lacked windows. According to inspectors, this “increases the potential for child abuse.” All center doors now have windows.
– No background checks. The names of the 22 child-care providers were not submitted to the Army Central Registry to determine whether they had prior criminal records. All employees now have background checks done.
– Unprotected electrical outlets. All outlets now have protective caps.
– Toilets not immediately adjacent to activity areas. Restrooms have been renovated and child-size toilets have been installed.
– Some workers, from the center’s acting director to receptionists, did not receive proper training. Training has begun.
An Army Child Care Evaluation team spent a week in August scrutinizing the center and did not list any infractions, said Ray Aalbue, a West Point spokesman.
Experimentation Cases
US Government Experiments on Americans—LSD and MKULTRA By Russ Baker on Jun 2, 2011 Readers have shown considerable interest in the trailer we ran recently for the video about unknown radiation experiments on African American children. Continuing our exploration of secret government experiments on American citizens, we now re-publish an article I wrote in 1999 about the CIA and LSD experiments. That article was originally commissioned by the New York Times Magazine, which opted in the end not to publish it. Instead, it appeared in the magazine of the esteemed British newspaper The Observer, the German newsmagazine Spiegel, and in top newspapers in Australia, Netherlands, and other countries. It did not run in the United States….
from the 1999 article:
This coming Tuesday in a US court, Stanley’s past will be the focus of a lawsuit pitting the Glickman family against the US Government. At issue will be exactly what happened in a Paris cafe in November 1952 when, according to the family, a CIA official slipped a large dose of LSD into Stanley’s drink, triggering a psychotic episode and transforming him into a neighbourhood ‘character’ with a secret.
http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/06/02/us-government-experiments-on-americans%e2%80%94lsd-and-mkultra/
Acid, Americans and the Agency – In 1952, Stanley Glickman was a promising young painter studying in Paris. Then one night he shared a drink with some fellow Americans, and his life fell apart. Did the CIA spike his drink with LSD? By Russ Baker The Observer, Sunday 14 February 1999 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/1999/feb/14/life1.lifemagazine
Thursday, May 6, 1999 The CIA’s purple haze By Douglas Cruickshank – TV stars run amok; geriatric criminals terrorize nation. ….Or how about the Central Intelligence Agency dosing unsuspecting United States’ citizens with LSD? True, it’s an old story, but it may well be a true story, and one of its longest chapters closed last week when a New York jury, in the court of U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood….ruled against the estate of artist Stanley Glickman. Until his death in 1992, Glickman insisted that a CIA agent, who for 40 years he consistently described as having a clubfoot, had slipped him a mind-bending mickey in a glass of Chartreuse liqueur at a bar in Paris in 1952, driving Glickman mad and destroying his life….
In addition to newspaper and magazine articles, and sworn testimony given at the 1977 Senate hearings on CIA abuses, chaired by Sen. Ted Kennedy, at least two books feature extensive, and colorful, coverage of the Company’s psychoactive shenanigans — “Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion,” by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain (1985) and “Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream” by Jay Stevens (1987). According to “Acid Dreams,” and a Feb. 14 article in The Observer, in the 1950s the U.S. government began operating a covert drug-testing program called MK-ULTRA http://www.salon.com/people/rogue/1999/05/06/cia
SALON DARK HOTEL The Manchurian Experiment – cartoon version http://www.salon.com/comics/dark/spain/1998/10/02spain1.html
Documentary Trailer, Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed By Russ Baker on May 24, 2011 (has graphic pictures) http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/05/24/documentary-trailer-hole-in-the-head-a-life-revealed/
Organised Abuse and Testimonial Legitimacy by Michael Salter
This paper will discuss the relationship between sexual abuse, invalidation and testimonial legitimacy with a particular focus on organised abuse. Using qualitative data drawn from a study of adult survivors of organised abuse, the paper emphasises how strategies of invalidation, disbelief and minimisation are embedded in children’s experiences of organised abuse as well as in the response of others to organised abuse throughout their lifespan. This analysis troubles the distinction between everyday and legalistic notions of credibility and emphasises instead how the denial of testimonial legitimacy to children and women in a range of contexts is underpinned by relations of power that compound the gendered risks and harms of sexual abuse. The findings of this study suggest that the denial of testimonial legitimacy is a serious barrier to the wellbeing and safety of victims of sexual abuse, such as those disclosing organised abuse, whose life histories render them particularly vulnerable to strategies of invalidation.
Background to the Research
Although most incidents of sexual violence involve one victim and one perpetrator, a significant proportion of victims report experiencing victimisation by more than one perpetrator (Kellogg and Hoffman 1997;
Horvath and Kelly 2009; Harkins and Dixon 2010). In the case of child sexual abuse, victimised children and adults reporting multiple perpetrators have typically experienced more severe victimisation than victims reporting one perpetrator (Finkelhor and Williams 1988; Long and Jackson 1991; Casey and Nurius 2005) and they exhibit greater psychological distress and mental illness (Briere and Conte 1991; Leserman et al 1997; Steel et al 2004). Some of the most acutely ill survivors of multi-perpetrator sexual abuse disclose what La Fontaine (1993) has defined as `organised abuse’; that is, incidents of child sexual abuse that involve multiple adults acting in a coordinated way to sexually abuse multiple children.
Health and welfare workers in diverse contexts have reported contact with adult and child clients with histories of organised abuse (Creighton 1993; Bibby 1996; Cooper 2004), including clients disclosing sadistic, ritualistic or otherwise extreme experiences of sexual abuse (Sinason 1994; Noblitt and Perskin Noblitt 2008; Sachs and Galton 2008).
conference presentation at ANZCCC: The Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference 2010
Institute of Criminology, Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney http://sydney.edu.au/law/criminology
full paper at http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/7372/1/Salter_ANZCCC2010.pdf
Un Certain Regard – Martha Marcy May Marlene By Peter Debruge Jan. 22, 2011 A young woman looking for somewhere to belong finds it difficult to readjust to society after escaping life with a cult in “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” a sensitive treatment of a sensational subject that heralds the arrival of talented tyro Sean Durkin behind the camera and promising new star Elizabeth Olsen. Picking up as its heroine breaks free and then using uneasy flashbacks to suggest the character’s lingering paranoia, Durkin’s effective yet frustratingly obtuse feature debut — a sister project to his short “Mary Last Seen” — invites contemplation while withholding the narrative drive needed to break out beyond, yes, cult status. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117944343/
‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ – A Devastating Portrait of Cult Brainwashing [Sundance Review] January 22nd, 2011 by David Chen ….Martha Marcy May Marlene tells the story of Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), a woman who escapes from a cult in rural New York and tries to reintegrate into a normal life with her sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson). Lucy brings Martha to her Connecticut vacation home, where she and her husband Adam (Hugh Dancy) are trying to enjoy a few days away from their regular lives in the city. Martha constantly experiences chilling flashbacks and begins to lose her grip on reality. As the days pass and Martha’s behavior becomes more and more erratic, it becomes clear that her time away from home may have had far more effects on her than initially believed. http://www.slashfilm.com/martha-marcy-may-marlene-review/
movie trailer – IMDb Video Martha Marcy May Marlene (shows violent scenes) – Haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia, a damaged woman struggles to re-assimilate with her family after fleeing an abusive cult. http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1493409049/
these articles describe rituals in detail
Pa. mother sentenced in NJ for religious ritual Jun 25, 2011 HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) — A Pennsylvania woman who made her daughter observe a bloody religious ritual in New Jersey has been sentenced to 18 months probation. Yenitza Colichon of Jamesburg pleaded guilty last month to child neglect and cruelty charges stemming from the May 2007 incident, in which she made her 7-year-old daughter watch an initiation rite in Paterson….
Passaic County prosecutors say Colichon was about to start Army basic training and wanted to protect her daughter in the Palo Mayombe religion before she left. The religion originated in central Africa.
The girl later told a teacher that she was having nightmares and child welfare officials were contacted.
http://www.necn.com/06/25/11/Pa-mother-sentenced-in-NJ-for-religious-/landing_nation.html?&blockID=3&apID=2af86dbdd8864f2ca0ffce1723d90e9b
Mother pleads guilty over Paterson bloody religious ritual Monday, May 23, 2011 BY JOHN PETRICK STAFF WRITER The Record – A mother who exposed her 7-year-old daughter to bloody religious initiation rituals in Paterson that included making her watch a chicken being sacrificed and feeding the girl its heart pleaded guilty in state court Monday to cruelty and neglect of a child. A Paterson couple who were practitioners of the Palo Mayombe religion and who the mother asked to perform the ritual also were accepted into pre-trial intervention Monday for one year….Dolls, a shrine, religious statues, bones, machetes and bundles of sticks bearing numbers and names were among artifacts found at the home. The items, some of which had blood and animal hair on them, matched a description the girl gave about what she saw at the home.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/crime_courts/052311_Mother_pleads_guilty_over_bloody_religious_ritual.html
describes rituals
What Price Religious “Freedom”? May 28, 2011 By Janet Heimlich – The state of Oregon stands poised to end a dangerous practice. If a bill that has passed both the House and Senate becomes law, parents who allow their sick children to die after refusing them medical care on religious grounds would no longer be granted prosecutorial immunity. Passing this bill sends an important message: Parents who harm their children for religious reasons should be punished just as severely as parents who harm their children when religion is not a factor.
Unfortunately, however, legislators and the courts still frequently maintain a double standard when it comes to deciding the fates of abusive and neglectful parents, depending on whether harm is perpetrated in the name of faith. For example, if a woman neglects to feed her child because she is strung out on drugs, she will likely be prosecuted. But if that denial happens as part of a religious fast, the law usually has no problem with it….
http://religiouschildmaltreatment.com/2011/05/what-price-religious-freedom/
Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment by Janet Heimlich – High-profile cases such as the child sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church and “faith healing” deaths in certain fundamentalist Christian congregations have made the public aware that religion can sometimes mask deviant and harmful behavior. But the extent of the problem is far greater than most people realize. In this revealing, disturbing, and thoroughly researched book, award-winning journalist Janet Heimlich exposes a dark side of faith that most Americans do not know exists or have ignored for a long time—religious child maltreatment.
After speaking with dozens of victims, perpetrators, and experts, and reviewing a myriad of court cases and studies, Ms. Heimlich explains how religious child maltreatment happens. She then takes an in-depth look at the many forms of child maltreatment found in religious contexts, including biblically-prescribed corporal punishment and beliefs about the necessity of “breaking the wills” of children; scaring kids into faith and other types of emotional maltreatment such as spurning, isolating, and withholding love; pedophilic abuse by religious authorities and the failure of religious organizations to support the victims and punish the perpetrators; and religiously-motivated medical neglect in cases of serious health problems.
In a concluding chapter, Ms. Heimlich proposes changes in societal attitudes and improved legislation to protect children from harm and pushes for more people to recognize and acknowledge children rights. http://religiouschildmaltreatment.com/breaking_their_will/
Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment by Janet Heimlich Prometheus Books 2011 ISBN: 978-1-61614-405-0 http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=90_199&products_id=2047
Oregon Senate against spiritual defense for murder TAMI ABDOLLAH, Associated Press May 24, 2011 SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Senate voted Monday to drop faith healing as a legal defense to murder after repeated deaths of children in a local church community. The Senate voted 25-5 to approve the measure. It was drafted largely in response to the 2008 deaths of children among members of the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City, who rely on spiritual treatments instead of medical care. “The bottom line is that children in Oregon ought to be seeing the kind of health care they need to live, thrive and survive,” said Republican Sen. Bruce Starr of Hillsboro, who sponsored the bill. Under the measure, prosecutors can seek first-degree manslaughter or murder charges against parents whose children died because they were treated solely with faith. http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2011/05/24/news/doc4ddbe8675384b113908828.txt
Journal articles and child abuse and trauma information
Sex Trafficking
these articles may have graphic descriptions of these trafficking crimes
Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door By Amy Fine Collins May 24, 2011 ….In the Sex Crimes Bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, in the pediatric division of Fort Bragg’s Womack Army Medical Center, in the back alleys of Waterbury, Connecticut, and in the hallways of Hartford’s Community Court, Assistant D.A. Rhonnie Jaus, forensic pediatrician Dr. Sharon Cooper, ex-streetwalker Louise, and Judge Curtissa Cofield have all simultaneously and independently noted the same disturbing phenomenon. There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry—an estimated 300,000 at this moment—and their ages have been dropping drastically.
“The average starting age for prostitution is now 13,” says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from “the life.” Says Judge Cofield, who formerly presided over Hartford’s Prostitution Protocol, a court-ordered rehabilitation program, “I call them the Little Barbies.”
The explanations offered for these downwardly expanding demographics are various, and not at all mutually exclusive. Dr. Sharon Cooper believes that the anti-intellectual, consumerist, hyper-violent, and super-eroticized content of movies (Hustle & Flow), reality TV (Cathouse), video games (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City), gangsta rap (Nelly’s “Tip Drill”), and cyber sites (Second Life: Jail Bait) has normalized sexual harm. “History is repeating itself, and we’re back to treating women and children as chattel,” she says. “It’s a sexually toxic era of ‘pimpfantwear’ for your newborn son and thongs for your five-year-old daughter.” Additionally, Cooper cites the breakdown of the family unit (statistically, absent or abusive parents compounds risk) and the emergence of vast cyber-communities of like-minded deviant individuals, who no longer have disincentives to act on their most destructive predatory fantasies. Krishna Patel, assistant U.S. attorney in Bridgeport, Connecticut, invokes the easy money.
Criminals have learned, often in prison—where “macking” memoirs such as Iceberg Slim’s Pimp are best-sellers—that it’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day—and a “righteous” pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings….
Introduced and signed into law under the Clinton administration, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. 1591, covers labor trafficking as well as sex trafficking, but only when a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or when the person induced to perform such an act is a minor, under 18….
The unlikely trafficking-abolitionist coalition—consisting of secular social-justice advocates, faith-based groups, black activists, second- and fourth-wave feminists, liberals, conservatives, Democrats, and Republicans—shares a peculiar adversary in the form of trafficking skeptics, coming largely from the left. The Nation, for example, ridiculed the “‘sex slave’ panic,” and both Slate and City Pages questioned the alarming statistics published by the Department of Justice, the State Department, and non–government organizations such as ecpat and the Salvation Army.
“All the numbers we have on trafficking are inaccurate,” avows Deirdre Bialo-Padin, chief of the domestic-violence bureau of the Brooklyn D.A.’s office. “They’re too low. It’s an underreported crime. Who is going to raise her hand and say, ‘Hi, I’m a trafficking victim!’ when her family has been threatened? With the right laws in place, we will get harder numbers.” For victim advocates, saying that trafficking in America isn’t a problem is akin to J. Edgar Hoover saying the Mafia doesn’t exist. Melissa Farley believes “we’re still in the Dark Ages with trafficking because, unlike incest, rape, and domestic battering, trafficking generates massive revenues—$32 billion a year worldwide.”….
Scates had noticed that the X-rated classifieds in the back of The Hartford Advocate had dwindled slightly, she hoped as a result of the task force’s valiant efforts. But she quickly caught on that a new, tech-savvy generation of pimps was filling the void by merchandising girls on Craigslist (in September 2010 the site succumbed to pressure to remove its adult-services section, which was expected to earn $44 million last year); on Backpage.com (owned by Village Voice Media); or via theeroticreview.com. Females on theeroticreview.com are rated for consumers—ostensibly by “hobbyists” but more often than not, victims say, by their ever shrewder pimps. With the help of untraceable, prepaid cell phones and credit cards, this futuristic breed of trafficker can….obliterate any paper trail. “….
the theory behind the Sex Purchase Law in Sweden. As of 1999, johns are punished by up to six months’ imprisonment, traffickers are locked up for 2-to-10-year hits, and prostitutes are offered medical care, education, and housing. As a result, prostitution has been reduced by 50 percent in Sweden, and the purchase of sex, which is understood to be a human-rights abuse, has decreased by 75 percent. In contrast, Europol studies show, nations such as Holland and Australia, where prostitution has been legalized, have become lucrative, low-risk magnets for international sex-slave drivers and organized crime….. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/sex-trafficking-201105
Sex Trafficking: The Girls Next Door By James R. Marsh on June 2, 2011 Vanity Fair has a great story about child sex trafficking and prostitution in All-American Hartford, Connecticut. Here’s an edited excerpt of this excellent piece:
There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry—an estimated 300,000 at this moment—and their ages have been dropping drastically. “The average starting age for prostitution is now 13,” says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from “the life.”
The explanations offered for these downwardly expanding demographics are various, and not at all mutually exclusive. Dr. Sharon Cooper believes that “history is repeating itself, and we’re back to treating women and children as chattel,” she says. “It’s a sexually toxic era of ‘pimpfantwear’ for your newborn son and thongs for your five-year-old daughter.” Additionally, Cooper cites the breakdown of the family unit (statistically, absent or abusive parents compounds risk) and the emergence of vast cyber-communities of like-minded deviant individuals, who no longer have disincentives to act on their most destructive predatory fantasies.
http://www.childlaw.us/2011/06/sex-trafficking-the-girls-next.html
Colin McEnroe Show: ‘Sex Trafficking Of Americans’ How is prostitution treated in Connecticut? By Colin McEnroe Published: Jun 01, 2011
….But the story of Connecticut’s human sex trafficking ring is not as distant as 19th-century London. It’s a story of right here, right now, maybe a girl you saw walking across the parking lot as you drove past a motel in the Meadows or on the Berlin Turnpike. She’s young, and maybe even something about the way she’s dressed makes you think, “She’s a hooker.” What might not occur to you is how young the woman is and how trapped into the trade. Some of those young women, right here, right now, have been bought and sold so that they can be forced to do a smaller, seamier version of the buying and selling of themselves.
http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/wnpr/colin-mcenroe-show-sex-trafficking-americans
may be triggering
Multiple Personalities Documentary
In early times, evil spirits were thought to possess people and make them act in strange and frightening ways. By the 1800’s, the study of this hysteria led some doctors to believe one person could have separately functioning personalities. In this rare research film from the 1920’s, a woman has different personalities who believes they are separate people. One is a male that is not comfortable in women’s clothes. Another is a small child. The affliction has been known by different names, but recognized for centuries. Today it is called multiple personality disorder. Why have they become tormented and broken into different personalities? What is the childhood pain that lies buried in the unknown depths of their mind? How can they search for the deadly memories that holds the secrets of their paths and the promise of their healing? http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/multiple-personalities/
Child Welfare Response to Child Trafficking By James R. Marsh on June 1, 2011
Human trafficking is arguably one of the most disturbing human rights abuses of our time. The United States Department of Justice has estimated that between 14,500 and 17,500 foreign men, women, and children are trafficked into the United States each year. While estimates indicate that thousands of child trafficking victims exist in the United States, very few have been identified and recovered. Between 2001 and 2009, only 212 foreign minors were successfully recognized by U.S. authorities as victims of trafficking. Human trafficking is a relatively new issue and emerging area of knowledge for most social service, legal, and law enforcement professionals. It was only in 2000 that the first federal anti-trafficking statute, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), was enacted. http://www.childlaw.us/2011/06/child-welfare-response-to-chil.html
Building Child Welfare Response to Child Trafficking – Center for the Human Rights for Children, Loyola University Chicago – International Organization for Adolescents (IOFA)….
Human trafficking is arguably one of the most disturbing human rights abuses of our time. The United States Department of Justice has estimated that between 14,500 and 17,500 foreign men, women, and children are trafficked into the United States each year.1 These estimates, however, do not include U.S. citizens who have been trafficked, including an estimated 293,000 young people who may be at risk for being trafficked specifically for the sex trade.2 Women and children may comprise as much as eighty percent of the total number of victims of human trafficking.3
These unprotected young children and adolescents are forced into prostitution, domestic servitude, restaurant work, and other types of exploitative labor, or simply find ways to survive on the street…. Global estimates suggest there are upwards of 27 million people in slavery around the world….16,000 women and girls are commercially sexually exploited in the metropolitan Chicago area, with an average age of 12 years old at entry. Over 60% enter prostitution before the age of 18. http://www.luc.edu/chrc/pdfs/BCWRHandbook2011.pdf
Effects of Abuse
Effects of sexual abuse last for decades, study finds – Levels of so-called stress hormone are altered for years, sometimes causing physical and mental problems, researchers find By Joan Raymond msnbc.com contributor 6/30/2011
Young girls who are the victims of sexual abuse experience physical, biological and behavioral problems that can persist for decades after, a new study shows. Researchers, who tracked a group of girls ranging in age from 6 to 16 at the start of the study in 1987 for the next 23 years, found that they had higher rates of depression and obesity, as well as problems with regulation of brain chemicals, among other issues, compared to a control group of girls who were not abused.
The study, published in the Cambridge University Press journal Development and Psychopathology, was conducted by researchers from the University of Southern California and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Those in the study were assessed by researchers six times at varying ages and developmental stages. Researchers hope to continue the study looking at the women, who are now in their 30s, as well as their children. The racially-diverse group of 80 girls, who lived in the Washington, D.C., area, were victims of incest, broadly defined as suffering sexual abuse by a male living within the home. On average, the girls were abused for about two years prior to the abuse coming to the attention of child protective services. Some girls were abused when they were as young as age 2.
Compared to a non-abused control group, the researchers found the study participants, all of whom were provided three therapy sessions on average in group and individual settings, suffered severe effects during different stages of their lives, which affected their sexual and cognitive development, mental and physical health, as well as their brain chemical profile. Study participants were more likely to be sexually active at younger ages, have lower educational status, and have more mental health problems.
As children, they had higher levels of cortisol, the so-called “stress hormone,” which is released in high levels during the body’s “fight or flight” response. But by about age 15, testing showed that cortisol levels were below normal, compared to the control group. Lower levels of cortisol have been linked to a decrease in the body’s ability to deal with stress, as well as problems with depression and obesity. Lower levels of the hormone have also been linked to post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The cortisol levels (of some study participants) wound up looking like Vietnam vets,” says study co-author Dr. Frank Putnam, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “That tells us they are in a chronic state of stress, and never feel safe.” ….The long-term effects of the abuse “were absolutely profound,” says lead author and child psychologist Penelope Trickett, USC professor of Social Work. “It’s just not mental health issues. Some of these women are suffering from a lot of problems today like sleep issues, poor health utilization, and have a lot of risky behaviors. It’s very disturbing.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43594639/ns/health-health_care/
The neurobiological consequences of early stress and childhood maltreatment Martin H. Teicher, Susan L. Andersena, Ann Polcarib, Carl M. Andersona, Carryl P. Navaltae, and Dennis M. Kima –
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews Volume 27, Issues 1-2, January-March 2003, Pages 33-44 Brain Development, Sex Differences and Stress: Implications for Psychopathology
Abstract – Early severe stress and maltreatment produces a cascade of neurobiological events that have the potential to cause enduring changes in brain development. These changes occur on multiple levels, from neurohumoral (especially the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal {HPA} axis) to structural and functional. The major structural consequences of early stress include reduced size of the mid-portions of the corpus callosum and attenuated development of the left neocortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. Major functional consequences include increased electrical irritability in limbic structures and reduced functional activity of the cerebellar vermis. There are also gender differences in vulnerability and functional consequences. The neurobiological sequelae of early stress and maltreatment may play a significant role in the emergence of psychiatric disorders during development.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763403000071
Dr. Martin H. Teicher – Recent findings regarding brain development and childhood abuse/adversity – – Does Child Abuse Permanently Alter the Brain? https://drteicher.wordpress.com/
Keynote: Pierre Janet memorial lecture ISSTD Martin H. Teicher, M.D., Ph.D. (PowerPoint) https://drteicher.wordpress.com/2010/11/
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences – New York Academy of Sciences June 1997 Volume 821 Psychobiology of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, The – Pages xi–xv, 1–548
includes: Psychobiological Effects of Sexual Abuse : A Longitudinal Study (pages 150–159)FRANK W. PUTNAM and PENELOPE K. TRICKETT DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb48276.x
Preliminary Evidence for Abnormal Cortical Development in Physically and Sexually Abused Children Using EEG Coherence and MRI (pages 160–175) MARTIN H. TEICHER, YUTAKA ITO, CAROL A. GLOD, SUSAN L. ANDERSEN, NATALIE DUMONT and ERIKA ACKERMAN DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb48277.x
Implicit and Explicit Memory for Trauma-Related Information in PTSD (pages 219–224) RICHARD J. MCNALLY DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb48281.x
Trauma, Dissociation, and Memory (pages 225–237) DAVID SPIEGEL DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb48282.x
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.1997.821.issue-1/issuetoc
“Parental Alienation Syndrome:” Another Alarming DSM-5 Proposal
Using a medicalizing label to mask child sexual abuse by Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D. in Science Isn’t Golden – June 6, 2011 – Among the scientifically unwarranted and socially dangerous proposals that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 authors have not yet seen fit to rule out is the addition of something its advocates call Parental Alienation Syndrome. This is a medical-sounding term for nothing more than “She’s a vengeful woman who’s trying to make her children tell horrific lies about their father.”
When applied to a parent in a case involving an allegation of child sexual abuse, it is nearly always applied to a woman whose child is allegedly being molested by the father. Despite not yet being in the DSM, PAS has in some courts proven an astonishingly effective vehicle for deflecting the focus from the abuser and simply claiming that the woman must be lying, and coaching her children to lie, because she has the alleged mental illness of PAS. [1] The claim is that without cause, she wants to turn the children against their father.
What often gets short shrift, as a result, is even the consideration of the possibility that the children are truly being molested….The construct of PAS is unscientific, composed of a group of general symptoms with no empirical basis….
Major professional bodies, including the American Psychological Association, have discredited PAS on the grounds that it is misused in domestic violence cases and that there is no scientific evidence of such a “syndrome.” The more recent APA Online document Issues and Dilemmas in Family Violence…. particularly Issue 5, describes the tendency of family courts to miminize a context of violence, falsely accusing the mother of alienation and granting custody to the father in spite of his history of violence. The National Council on Juvenile and Family Court Judges’ 2006 manual states that “parental alienation syndrome or PAS has been discredited by the scientific community” and “should therefore be ruled inadmissible” (p. 19). A number of prominent figures, including Dr. Paul J. Fink, past president of the American Psychiatric Association and president of the Leadership Council on Mental Health, Justice, and the Media, and Professor Jon R. Conte of the University of Washington Social Welfare Doctoral Faculty have also discredited PAS and its lack of scientific basis (see Bruch, 2001).
Because of the use of PAS as a tactic by many CSA perpetrators to influence decision makers and the court system, abused children have been placed in the hands of their abusers (Childress, 2006). It is estimated that “over 58,000 children a year are ordered into unsupervised contact with physically or sexually abusive parents following divorce in the United States” (http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/1.html) and that PAS was used in a large number of these cases. [2]….
The DSM-5 editors could at any time have already struck PAS from their planned additions but have so far chosen not to. If this alarms you, and especially if PAS has been used against you, please consider going to dsm5.org before their June 15 cutoff date for input from the public arrives, and send them your concerns. Please urge everyone else you can think of to do the same. The DSM-5 authors will do themselves and the manual’s reputation no favors if they include PAS, and they need to hear from people whom the label has harmed. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-isnt-golden/201106/parental-alienation-syndrome-another-alarming-dsm-5-proposal
Trauma and Dissociation Articles
Trauma and Dissociation in China – Zeping Xiao, M.D., Heqin Yan, Zhen Wang, M.D., Zheng Zou, M.D., Yong Xu, M.D., Jue Chen, M.D., Haiyin Zhang, M.D., Colin A. Ross, M.D., and Benjamin B. Keyes, Ph.D. Am J Psychiatry 163:1388-1391, August 2006 doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.163.8.1388 American Psychiatric Association
OBJECTIVE: In order to determine whether pathological dissociation occurs in China, the authors conducted a survey among psychiatric inpatients, outpatients, and the general population in Shanghai, China. There is virtually no popular or professional knowledge of dissociative identity disorder in China, and therefore professional and popular contamination cannot exist. METHOD: Chinese versions of the Dissociative Experiences Scale and the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule were administered to 423 inpatients, 304 outpatients, and 618 factory workers in Shanghai by Chinese psychiatrists working at the Shanghai Mental Health Center.
RESULTS: Dissociative disorders were diagnosed in 24 respondents by structured interview, and 15 respondents fell into the dissociative taxon on the Dissociative Experiences Scale. The outpatients reported the highest rates of childhood physical and/or sexual abuse and of pathological dissociation. CONCLUSIONS: Pathological dissociation can be detected readily among psychiatric outpatients in China but is much less common in the general population. Pathological dissociation is more frequent in more traumatized subsamples of the Chinese population. The findings are not consistent with the sociocognitive, contamination, or iatrogenic models of dissociative identity disorder. http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/163/8/1388
Trauma and Dissociation in China – Zeping Xiao, M.D., Heqin Yan, Zhen Wang, M.D., Zheng Zou, M.D., Yong Xu, M.D., Jue Chen, M.D., Haiyin Zhang, M.D., Colin A. Ross, M.D., and Benjamin B. Keyes, Ph.D. Am J Psychiatry 163:1388-1391, August 2006 doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.163.8.1388
2006 American Psychiatric Association
quotes:
“China is a country in which there is little public or cultural awareness of dissociative identity disorder or other forms of chronic, complex, pathological dissociation. We are not familiar with any representation of the disorder on television, in film, in novels or plays, or in popular folklore. The trauma model of dissociation is not taught at medical schools in China, and dissociative disorders are very rarely diagnosed by mental health professionals. China, therefore, is virtually free of cultural or professional contamination concerning dissociative disorders.”
“The results of our study support the epidemiological prediction of the trauma model of dissociation and are not consistent with the sociocognitive model. Pathological dissociation was reported by Chinese respondents, despite the lack of contamination, role demands, and iatrogenic suggestion in China.”
“As shown in Table 1, there are hints in the secondary features of dissociative identity disorder that full or partial forms of dissociative identity disorder could affect more than 2.3% of the Chinese outpatient sample (the sum of the frequencies of these two diagnoses on the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule). For instance, 3.6% of the Chinese outpatients said that they have another person inside of them. The outpatients reported more childhood trauma than the other two groups. The outpatients had more dissociative disorders on the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule, more members of the dissociative taxon on the Dissociative Experiences Scale, higher average scores on the Dissociative Experiences Scale, and more secondary features of dissociative identity disorder on the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule. Thus, the outpatients were more dissociative than the other two groups on four different ways of assessing dissociation. The fact that they also reported more childhood abuse is consistent with the trauma model of pathological dissociation.”
“China provides an example of a culture largely uncontaminated by popular or professional knowledge of dissociative identity disorder and therefore is suitable for testing the epidemiological predictions of the trauma and sociocognitive models.”
full text at http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/163/8/1388.pdf
Hippocampal and Amygdalar Volumes in Dissociative Identity Disorder – Eric Vermetten, M.D., Ph.D., Christian Schmahl, M.D., Sanneke Lindner, M.Sc., Richard J. Loewenstein, M.D., and J. Douglas Bremner, M.D. Am J Psychiatry 163:630-636, April 2006 doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.163.4.630….
METHOD: The authors used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the volumes of the hippocampus and amygdala in 15 female patients with dissociative identity disorder and 23 female subjects without dissociative identity disorder or any other psychiatric disorder. The volumetric measurements for the two groups were compared. RESULTS: Hippocampal volume was 19.2% smaller and amygdalar volume was 31.6% smaller in the patients with dissociative identity disorder, compared to the healthy subjects. The ratio of hippocampal volume to amygdalar volume was significantly different between groups.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings are consistent with the presence of smaller hippocampal and amygdalar volumes in patients with dissociative identity disorder, compared with healthy subjects. http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/4/630
Hippocampal and Amygdalar Volumes in Dissociative Identity Disorder Eric Vermetten, M.D., Ph.D. Christian Schmahl, M.D. Sanneke Lindner, M.Sc. Richard J. Loewenstein, M.D. J. Douglas Bremner, M.D. (Am J Psychiatry 2006; 163:1–8)
Objective: Smaller hippocampal volume has been reported in several stress-related psychiatric disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder with early abuse, and depression with early abuse. Patients with borderline personality disorder and early abuse have also been found to have smaller amygdalar volume. The authors examined hippocampal and amygdalar volumes in patients with dissociative identity disorder, a disorder that has been associated with a history of severe childhood trauma….
Results: Hippocampal volume was 19.2% smaller and amygdalar volume was 31.6% smaller in the patients with dissociative identity disorder, compared to the healthy subjects. The ratio of hippocampal volume to amygdalar volume was significantly different between groups.
Conclusions: The findings are consistent with the presence of smaller hippocampal and amygdalar volumes in patients with dissociative identity disorder, compared with healthy subjects….
In clinical studies, most patients with dissociative identity disorder have also been found to meet the DSM-IV-TR criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In epidemiological studies of the general population, the prevalence of dissociative identity disorder has been found to range from 1% to 3%. Numerous studies have shown an association between a dissociative identity disorder diagnosis and an antecedent history of childhood trauma, usually multiple, sustained forms of maltreatment beginning in early childhood….
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have shown that adults with PTSD related to combat or to childhood physical/sexual abuse have smaller hippocampal size, relative to healthy comparison subjects or to comparison subjects who experienced trauma but did not develop PTSD. Borderline personality disorder is also commonly associated with exposure to childhood trauma. Patients with borderline personality disorder and a history of early abuse have been found to have smaller hippocampal and amygdalar volumes, compared to healthy subjects. Smaller hippocampal volume has been found in patients with major depressive disorder and a history of early childhood trauma, compared to major depressive disorder patients without early life trauma. A consistent finding of these studies is smaller hippocampal volume in patients with a history of exposure to traumatic stress and an accompanying stress-related psychiatric disorder….
All patients with dissociative identity disorder in this study also had a diagnosis of PTSD according to the DSMIV-TR criteria and the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale….
Electrical stimulation of the hippocampus and adjacent regions in patients with epilepsy resulted in a number of dissociative-like symptoms, including feelings of déjà vu, depersonalization, derealization, and memory alterations. Administration of ketamine, an antagonist of N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors, which are highly concentrated in the hippocampus, resulted in dissociative symptoms in healthy subjects, including feelings of being out of body and of time standing still, perceptions of body distortions, and amnesia. On the basis of these findings, we have hypothesized that stress, acting through NMDA receptors in the hippocampus, may mediate symptoms of dissociation….
Clinical studies have found comorbid PTSD or a lifetime history of PTSD in 80%–100% of dissociative identity disorder patients. Davidson and Foa, in their summary of work by members of the APA DSM-IV Advisory Committee on PTSD, included multiple personality disorder/dissociative identity disorder among the disorders related to “abnormal stress reaction[s].”….
There are several possible explanations for the current study findings. Previous studies have shown that dissociative identity disorder patients essentially universally report high rates of exposure to repeated stressful experiences in early life. The hippocampus is a major target organ for glucocorticoids, which are released during stressful experiences. It has been hypothesized that prolonged exposure to glucocorticoids could lead to progressive atrophy of the hippocampus.
Smaller hippocampal volume in dissociative identity disorder could thus be related to stress exposure and could represent a neurobiological finding that dissociative identity disorder shares with other stress-related psychiatric disorders such as PTSD….
These findings suggest that early abuse associated with a stress-related psychiatric disorder may be related to smaller amygdalar volume. In addition, these findings are in contrast to findings from studies of depression that have shown no differences or larger amygdalar volume in depressed patients, compared with healthy subjects….
This finding suggests that dissociative identity disorder is associated with relatively greater volume reductions in the amygdala than in the hippocampus….
full text http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jdbremn/papers/DID_MRI.pdf
Toward an Etiology of Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Neurodevelopmental Approach
Kelly A. Forrest – Consciousness and Cognition Volume 10, Issue 3, September 2001, Pages 259-293 doi:10.1006/ccog.2001.0493
Abstract – This article elaborates on Putnam’s “discrete behavioral states” model of dissociative identity disorder (Putnam, 1997) by proposing the involvement of the orbitalfrontal cortex in the development of DID and suggesting a potential neurodevelopmental mechanism responsible for the development of multiple representations of self. The proposed “orbitalfrontal” model integrates and elaborates on theory and research from four domains: the neurobiology of the orbitalfrontal cortex and its protective inhibitory role in the temporal organization of behavior, the development of emotion regulation, the development of the self, and experience-dependent reorganizing neocortical processes.
The hypothesis being proposed is that the experience-dependent maturation of the orbitalfrontal cortex in early abusive environments, characterized by discontinuity in dyadic socioaffective interactions between the infant and the caregiver, may be responsible for a pattern of lateral inhibition between conflicting subsets of self-representations which are normally integrated into a unified self. The basic idea is that the discontinuity in the early caretaking environment is manifested in the discontinuity in the organization of the developing child’s self. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810001904933
Questions and Answers Regarding Dissociative Amnesia by Stephanie Dallam RN, MS, FNP
….there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.
….Is dissociation a rare phenomenon?
No. Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma. Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture. Evidence of this process can be found in the early literature on World War I and World War II.
….Carlson, E., & Rosser-Hogan, R. (April, 1993). Mental health status of Cambodian refugees ten years after leaving their homes. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 63 (2), 223-231.
Dissociation is also a frequent finding in survivors extreme terror. Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated one to three million of a population of seven million Cambodians were killed or died of starvation. Carlson, E., & Rosser-Hogan selected 50 subjects at random from a list of all refugees (~500) resettled by nonprofit organization between 1983 and 1985. None had any formal education and had lived in the US for a mean of 5 years. 86% met the criteria for PTSD. The mean number of traumatic experiences the refugees endorsed was 14 and “90% reported amnesia for upsetting events.”
….Krell, R. (1993). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Strategies of adaptation. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 38 , 384-389.
Krell reported on 22 Holocaust survivors who, as children, hid from the Nazis.
“As children they were encouraged not to tell, but to lead normal lives and forget the past . . .” “The most pervasive preoccupation of child survivors is the continuing struggle with memory, whether there is too much or too little . . .”
“For a child survivor today, an even more vexing problem is the intrusion of fragments of memory – most are emotionally powerful and painful but make no sense. They seem to become more frequent with time and are triggered by thousands of subtle or not so subtle events . . .”
Marks, J. (1995). The hidden children: The secret survivors of the Holocaust. Toronto : Bantam Books.
One holocaust survivor, Ava Landy, describes her amnesia: “So much of my childhood between the ages of four and nine is blank….It’s almost as if my life was smashed into little pieces . . .
The trouble is, when I try to remember, I come up with so little. This ability to forget was probably my way of surviving emotionally as a child. Even now, whenever anything unpleasant happens to me, I have a mental garbage can in which I can put all the bad stuff and forget it . . . . I’m still afraid of being hungry. . . . I never leave my house without some food….Again, I don’t remember being hungry. I asked my sister and she said that we were hungry. So I must have been! I just don’t remember.” (p. 188).
What types of traumas result in dissociative amnesia?
A review of 50 studies revealed that amnesia rates tend to increase with severity of trauma and is particularly high in victims of sex crimes….
What is the relation of memory recovery to psychotherapy?
Albach et al. studied 97 adult victims of extreme sexual abuse and a control group of 65 women, matched for age and education who reported on their memories of “ordinary unpleasant childhood experiences.” The abuse survivors were broken into two groups. One group had participated in psychotherapy while the other group had not. There was no significant differences in amnesia, memory recovery, or other memory phenomena between the survivors who participated in psychotherapy and those who did not.
…How accurate are recovered memories?
Dalenberg, C. J. (1996). Accuracy, timing and circumstances of disclosure in therapy of recovered and continuous memories of abuse. Journal of Psychiatry & Law,24 (2), 229-75.
Accuracy for Continuous Versus Recovered Memories
Percent with evidence supporting memory
Continuous 75% Recovered 75%
Conclusion
Scientific evidence shows that it is not rare for traumatized people to experience amnesia or delayed recall for the trauma. Amnesia has been reported in combat, for crimes, and for concentration camp experiences and torture. The more severe the trauma, the more likely it is to be forgotten.
Overall, a recovered memory is just as likely to be accurate as a continuously remembered one. However, recovered memories have a prominence of emotional and sensory-perceptual elements vs. declarative (verbal) elements. They are often fragmentary and incomplete and thus hard to make into coherent story. http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/amnesia.html
“Traumatic memory”: memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia – The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory. Included are cases involving survivors of childhood abuse, survivors of the Holocaust, and war veterans. In addition to supporting the phenomenon in general, these articles also counter the argument that recovered memory is (a) no more than a recent cultural “fad” and (b) specific to false accusers of sexual abuse.
excerpts:
Bremner, J. D., Krystal, J. H., Charney, D. S., & Southwick, S. M. (1996). Neural mechanisms in dissociative amnesia for childhood abuse: Relevance to the current controversy surrounding the “false memory syndrome.” The American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 71-82.
….CONCLUSIONS: John Nemiah pointed out several years ago that alterations in memory in the form of dissociative amnesia are an important part of exposure to traumatic stressors, such as childhood abuse. The studies reviewed here show that extreme stress has long-term effects on memory. These findings may provide a model for understanding the mechanisms involved in dissociative amnesia, as well as a rationale for phenomena such as delayed recall of childhood abuse.
….Briere, J., & Conte, J. R. (1993, January). Self-reported amnesia for abuse in adults molested as children. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 6(1), 21-31.
….A sample of 450 adult clinical subjects reporting sexual abuse histories were studied regarding their repression of sexual abuse incidents. A total of 267 subjects (59.3%) identified some period in their lives, before age 18, when they had no memory of their abuse. Variables most predictive of abuse-related amnesia were greater current psychological symptoms, molestation at an early age, extended abuse, and variables reflecting especially violent abuse
….Chu, J. A., Frey, L. M., Ganzel, B. L., & Matthews, J. A. (1999, May). Memories of childhood abuse: Dissociation, amnesia, and corroboration. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 156(5), 749-755.
….Childhood abuse, particularly chronic abuse beginning at early ages, is related to the development of high levels of dissociative symptoms including amnesia for abuse memories. This study strongly suggests that psychotherapy usually is not associated with memory recovery and that independent corroboration of recovered memories of abuse is often present.
….DeWind, E. (1968). The confrontation with death. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 302-305. Excerpt: “Most former inmates of Nazi concentration camps could not remember anything of the first days of imprisonment because perception of reality was so overwhelming that it would lead to a mental chaos which implies a certain death.”
….Durlacher, G. L. (1991). De zoektocht [The search]. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff.
Dutch sociologist Durlacher, a survivor of Birkenau, describes his search for and meetings with another 20 child survivors from this camp. Excerpt: “Misha..looks helplessly at me and admits hesitantly that the period in the camps is wiped out from his brain..With each question regarding the period between December 12, 1942 till May 7, 1945, he admits while feeling embarrassed that he cannot remember anything..Jindra.had to admit that he remembers almost nothing from his years in the camps..From the winter months of 1944 until just before the liberation in April 1945, only two words stayed with him: Dora and Nordhausen
….Elliott, D. M., & Briere, J. (1995, October). Posttraumatic stress associated with delayed recall of sexual abuse: A general population study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 8(4), 629-647. (Child Abuse Crisis Center, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA.) Abstract: This study examined delayed recall of childhood sexual abuse in a stratified random sample of the general population (N = 505). Of participants who reported a history of sexual abuse, 42% described some period of time when they had less memory of the abuse than they did at the time of data collection. No demographic differences were found between subjects with continuous recall and those who reported delayed recall. However, delayed recall was associated with the use of threats at the time of the abuse.
….Feldman-Summers, S., Pope, K. S. (1994, June). The experience of “forgetting” childhood abuse: A national survey of psychologists. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62(3), 636-639. Abstract: A national sample of psychologists were asked whether they had been abused as children and, if so, whether they had ever forgotten some or all of the abuse. Almost a quarter of the sample (23.9%) reported childhood abuse, and of those, approximately 40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse. The major findings were that (1) both sexual and nonsexual abuse were subject to periods of forgetting; (2) the most frequently reported factor related to recall was being in therapy; (3) approximately one half of those who reported forgetting also reported corroboration of the abuse….
Herman, J. L., & Harvey, M. R. (1997). Adult memories of childhood trauma: a naturalistic clinical study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10(4), 557-571. Abstract: The clinical evaluations of 77 adult psychiatric outpatients reporting memories of childhood trauma were reviewed. A majority of patients reported some degree of continuous recall. Roughly half (53%) said they had never forgotten the traumatic events. Two smaller groups described a mixture of continuous and delayed recall (17%) or a period of complete amnesia followed by delayed recall (16%).
….Krell, R. (1993). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Strategies of adaptation. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 38, 384-389. Excerpt: “The most pervasive preoccupation of child survivors is the continuing struggle with memory, whether there is too much or too little…For a child survivor today, an even more vexing problem is the intrusion of fragments of memory-most are emotionally powerful and painful but make no sense. They seem to become more frequent with time and are triggered by thousands of subtle or not so subtle events
….Kuch, K., & Cox, B. J. (1992). Symptoms of PTSD in 124 survivors of the Holocaust. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 337-340. Potential subjects with confirmed or suspected organicity, bipolar or obsessive compulsive disorder were excluded. One group (N=78) had been detained in various concentration camps for greater than 1 month. A second group (N=20) had been detained in Auschwitz and had been tattooed. A third group (N=45) had not been in labor camps, ghettos, or had hidden in the illegal underground. Psychogenic amnesia was found in 3.2% of the totals sample, in 3.8 of the general concentration camp survivors, and in 10% of tattooed survivors of Auschwitz. 17.7% (N=22) of the total sample had received psychotherapy.
….Loftus, E. F., Polonsky, S., & Fullilove, M. T. (1994, March). Memories of childhood sexual abuse: Remembering and repressing. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(1), 67-84. (University of Washington, Psychology Department, Seattle, WA.) Abstract: Women involved in outpatient treatment for substance abuse were interviewed to examine their recollections of childhood sexual abuse. Overall, 54% of the 105 women reported a history of childhood sexual abuse. Of these, the majority (81%) remembered all or part of the abuse their whole lives; 19% reported they forgot the abuse for a period of time, and later the memory returned.
….Melchert, T. P. (1996, October). Childhood memory and a history of different forms of abuse. Professional Psychology: Research & Practice, 27(5), 438-446. (Texas Tech University, Department of Psychology, Lubbock, TX.) Abstract: A widespread professional and public controversy has recently emerged regarding recovered memories of child sexual abuse, but the prevalence and nature of these memories have received limited empirical examination. This study (N = 553 nonclinical participants) found that very similar proportions of those with histories of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse reported that they had periods without memory of their abuse (21%, 18%, and 18%, respectively).
….Musaph, H. (1993). Het post-concentratiekampsyndroom [The post-concentration camp syndrome]. Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid [Dutch Journal of Mental Health], 28(5), 207-217. Amnesia exists for certain Holocaust experiences, while other experiences are extremely well remembered.
….van der Hart, O., Bolt, H., & van der Kolk, B. A. (2005). Memory fragmentation in dissociative identity disorder. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 6(1), 55-70. (Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.) Abstract: This study examined the quality of self-reported memories of traumatic experiences in participants with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and compared them with their memories of non-traumatic, but emotionally significant life experiences. Systematic interview data were gathered from 30 DID patients in The Netherlands. All participants reported a history of severe childhood abuse; 93.3% reported some period of amnesia for the index traumatic event, and 33.3% reported periods of amnesia for significant non-traumatic childhood experiences. All participants who had been amnestic for their trauma reported that their memories were initially retrieved in the form of somatosensory flashbacks. This suggests that, like PTSD patients, DID patients at least initially recall their trauma not as a narrative, but as somatosensory re-experiencing.
….Wagenaar, W. A., & Groeneweg, J. (1990). The memory of concentration camp survivors. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 77-87. Abstract: This study is concerned with the question whether extremely emotional experiences, such as being the victim of Nazi concentration camps, leave traces in memory that cannot be extinguished. Relevant data were obtained from testimony by 78 witnesses in a case against Marinus De Rijke, who was accused of Nazi crimes in Camp Erika in The Netherlands. The testimonies were collected in the periods 1943-1947 and 1984-1987. A comparison between these two periods reveals the amount of forgetting that occurred in 40 years. Results show that camp experiences were generally well-remembered, although specific but essential details were forgotten. Among these were forgetting being maltreated, forgetting names and appearance of the torturers, and forgetting being a witness to murder.
….Williams, L. M. (1994, December). Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women’s memories of child sexual abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62(6), 1167-1176. (University of New Hampshire, Family Research Lab, Durham, NH.) Abstract: One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question “Do people actually forget traumatic events such as child sexual abuse, and if so, how common is such forgetting?” A large proportion of the women (38%) did not recall the abuse that had been reported 17 years earlier. Women who were younger at the time of the abuse and those who were molested by someone they knew were more likely to have no recall of the abuse.
….Yehuda, R., Schmeidler, J., Siever, L. J., Binder-Brynes, K., & Elkin, A. (1997). Individual differences in posttraumatic stress disorder symptom profiles in Holocaust survivors in concentration camps or in hiding. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 453-465.
46% of 100 survivors report amnesia on PTSD measures.
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/traumatic-memory/
The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors. In addition to supporting the phenomenon in general, these articles also counter the argument that recovered memory is (a) no more than a recent cultural “fad” and (b) specific to false accusers of sexual abuse.
The excerpts below are from this website. http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/
DeWind, E. (1968). The confrontation with death. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 302-305. Excerpt: “Most former inmates of Nazi concentration camps could not remember anything of the first days of imprisonment because perception of reality was so overwhelming that it would lead to a mental chaos which implies a certain death.”
Durlacher, G. L. (1991). De zoektocht [The search]. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff.
Dutch sociologist Durlacher, a survivor of Birkenau, describes his search for and meetings with another 20 child survivors from this camp. Excerpt: “Misha…looks helplessly at me and admits hesitantly that the period in the camps is wiped out from his brain….With each question regarding the period between December 12, 1942 till May 7, 1945, he admits while feeling embarrassed that he cannot remember anything.”
Jaffe, R. (1968). Dissociative phenomena in former concentration camp inmates. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49(2), 310-312.
Case descriptions include amnesia for traumatic events and subsequent twilight states in which events would be relived without conscious awareness. Excerpt: “The dissociative phenomena described here turn out not to be rare, once one is on the look out for them.”
Keilson, H. (1992). Sequential traumatization in children. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. Amnesia in Jewish Dutch child survivors for the traumatic separation from their parents.
Krell, R. (1993). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Strategies of adaptation. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 38, 384-389.
Excerpt: “The most pervasive preoccupation of child survivors is the continuing struggle with memory, whether there is too much or too little.”
Krystal, H., & Danieli, Y. (1994, Fall). Holocaust survivor studies in the context of PTSD. PTSD Research Quarterly, 5(4), 1-5.
Kuch, K., & Cox, B. J. (1992). Symptoms of PTSD in 124 survivors of the Holocaust. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 337-340.
Psychogenic amnesia was found in 3.2% of the totals sample, in 3.8 of the general concentration camp survivors, and in 10% of tattooed survivors of Auschwitz. 17.7% (N=22) of the total sample had received psychotherapy. The tattooed survivors had a higher number of PTSD symptoms overall.
Lagnado, L. M., & Dekel, S. C. (1991). Children of the flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the untold story of the twins of Auschwitz. New York: William and Morrow & Co. Excerpt: “A few of the twins insisted that they had no memories of Auschwitz whatsoever.”
Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N. C. (1989). Failed empathy—A central theme in the survivor’s Holocaust experience. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 6(4), 377-400. Excerpt: “Holocaust survivors remember their experiences through a prism of fragmentation and usually recount them only in fragments.”
Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N. C. (1993). Knowing and not knowing massive psychic trauma: Forms of traumatic memory. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 74, 287-302.
Excerpt: “Erecting barriers against knowing is often the first response to such trauma. Women in Nazi concentration camps dealt with difficult interrogation by the Gestapo by derealization, by asserting ‘I did not go through it. Somebody else went through the experience.’….Unintegrable memories endure as a split-off part, a cleavage in the ego…When the balance is such that the ego cannot deal with the experience, fragmentation occurs….Simply put, therapy with those impacted by trauma involves, in part, the reinstatement of the relationship between event, memory and personality.”
Marks, J. (1995). The hidden children: The secret survivors of the Holocaust. Toronto: Bantam Books. Excerpt: “So much of my childhood between the ages of four and nine is blank….It’s almost as if my life was smashed into little pieces….The trouble is, when I try to remember, I come up with so little. This ability to forget was probably my way of surviving emotionally as a child.”
Mazor, A., Ganpel, Y., Enright, R. D., & Ornstein, R. (1990, January). Holocaust survivors: Coping with posttraumatic memories in childhood and 40 years later. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 3(1), 11-14.
Modai, I. (1994). Forgetting childhood: A defense mechanism against psychosis in a Holocaust survivor. In T. L. Brink (Ed.), Holocaust survivors’ mental health. New York: Haworth Press. In a debate about uncovering painful memories of the Holocaust, Modai’s case is of a 58 year old woman who is unable to remember her childhood.
Moskovitz, S., & Krell, R. (1990). Child survivors of the Holocaust: Psychological adaptations to survival. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Services, 27(2), 81-91. Excerpt: “Whatever the memories, much is repressed as too fearful for recall, or suppressed by well-meaning caretakers wishing the child to forget.”
Musaph, H. (1993). Het post-concentratiekampsyndroom [The post-concentration camp syndrome]. Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid [Dutch Journal of Mental Health], 28(5), 207-217. Amnesia exists for certain Holocaust experiences, while other experiences are extremely well remembered.
Niederland, W. G. (1968). Clinical observations on the “survivor syndrome.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49, 313-315. Discusses memory disturbances such as amnesia and hypermnesia.
Stein, A. (1994). Hidden children: Forgotten survivors of the Holocaust. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Excerpt: “Over the years I have been trying to re-experience those feelings, but they kept eluding me. I was cut off from most of my memories, and from relieving the anxiety of that time….I remember nothing about the time I spent with those people…not a face, not a voice, not a piece of furniture.”
van Ravesteijn, L. (1976). Gelaagdheid van herinneringen [Layering of memories]. Tijdschrift boor Psychotherapie, 5(1), 195-205.
Wagenaar, W. A., & Groeneweg, J. (1990). The memory of concentration camp survivors. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4, 77-87. Abstract: This study is concerned with the question whether extremely emotional experiences, such as being the victim of Nazi concentration camps, leave traces in memory that cannot be extinguished. Relevant data were obtained from testimony by 78 witnesses in a case against Marinus De Rijke, who was accused of Nazi crimes in Camp Erika in The Netherlands. The testimonies were collected in the periods 1943–1947 and 1984–1987. A comparison between these two periods reveals the amount of forgetting that occurred in 40 years. Results show that camp experiences were generally well-remembered, although specific but essential details were forgotten. Among these were forgetting being maltreated, forgetting names and appearance of the torturers, and forgetting being a witness to murder. Apparently intensity of experiences is not a sufficient safeguard against forgetting.”
Wilson, J., Harel, Z., & Kahana, B. (1988). Human adaptation to extreme stress: From the Holocaust to Vietnam. New York: Plenum Press.
Yehuda, R., Elkin, A., Binder-Brynes, K., Kahana, B., Southwick, S. M., Schmeidler, J., & Giller, E. R., Jr. (1996, July). Dissociation in aging Holocaust survivors. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153(7), 935-940.
Yehuda, R., Schmeidler, J., Siever, L. J., Binder-Brynes, K., & Elkin, A. (1997). Individual differences in posttraumatic stress disorder symptom profiles in Holocaust survivors in concentration camps or in hiding. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 453-465.
46% of 100 survivors report amnesia on PTSD measures.
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/
Risk Factors Predict Repeat Abuse By Nancy Walsh, Staff Writer, MedPage Today July 05, 2011
When child abuse has been substantiated, a number of risk factors can predict the likelihood that abuse will be repeated if the child is returned to the care of the abuser, according to a prospective cohort study. For instance, when the parents or caregivers were in their teens or twenties, were survivors of abuse, and had never taken parenting classes — the child faced a 54% risk of being harmed again, wrote Suzanne R. Dakil, MD, and colleagues from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. But the risk was higher even higher — 60% — for children younger than 8.5 years who were returned to parents that had taken parenting class, the researchers reported online in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine….
A total of 44% of children in the sample were reported to child welfare authorities again after the index report. Bivariate analysis determined that these repeated reports were more likely when the child was between 3 years and 10 years of age and had behavior disturbances or developmental delays.
A new report also was more likely if caregivers were younger, had themselves been abused, and were limited in their employment because of health or emotional problems. A family factor associated with repeated report was income below $20,000, while active domestic violence was less likely. The finding of lower risk in the presence of domestic violence may be explained by the possibility that children in such homes are more likely to be removed or to be provided with closer support and monitoring, according to the researchers….
Among the 1,252 substantiated index cases, 38% involved a second report. However, this rose to 86% when the caregiver had a history of abuse and was younger than 33.5 years, the child was younger than 12.5 years but showed no behavioral difficulties, and when five or more children were present in the home. A cluster of characteristics associated with low incidence of repeated abuse — 26% — was a substantiated index report, older age of the caregiver, no parenting classes, and non-African-American race….
The finding that risk was still high in cases where there had been parenting classes suggests that classes may not be adequate for high-risk families, and additional support or removal might be considered, they noted. And the increased risk seen with low income and behavior difficulties signals a need for assistance in basics such as housing, employment, medical care, and behavioral services….
Primary source: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine – Source reference: Dakil S, et al “Recidivism in the child protection system: identifying children at greatest risk of reabuse among those remaining” Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2011; DOI:10.1001/archpediatrics.2011.129. http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/DomesticViolence/27417
Buck Brannaman Documentary – BUCK, a richly textured and visually stunning film, follows Brannaman from his abusive childhood to his phenomenally successful approach to horses. A real-life “horse-whisperer”, he eschews the violence of his upbringing and teaches people to communicate with their horses through leadership and sensitivity, not punishment.
Buck possesses near magical abilities as he dramatically transforms horses – and people – with his understanding, compassion and respect. In this film, the animal-human relationship becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges of life. A truly American story about an unsung hero, BUCK is about an ordinary man who has made an extraordinary life despite tremendous odds. Cedar Creek Productions, LLC http://www.buckthefilm.com/ http://www.buckthefilm.com/content.htm
describes abuse – WENDY J. MURPHY: Not all mothers love their children GateHouse News Service Jul 17, 2011 COMMENTARY — This is part one of a three-part series about a real person whose story is at once desperately sad and profoundly hopeful. She asked me to write it in the first person – but without using real names – so her voice could be heard. The facts are all true….
The first time grandpa touched me I was 4 years old. I was on a bed at my grandmother’s house. It was the middle of the night and I was wide-awake. I must have known it was safer not to fall asleep. He said if I told anyone, I would never be believed because my mother hated me. He was right….
Grandpa molested mom, too, when she was a little girl, but she didn’t tell me about it until I was grown. She tried to tell her mother, but she called mom a “liar” and hit her with a wooden spoon.
Grandpa touched my older sister, too, when she was seven, but she screamed when it happened and ran around telling everyone. So he stopped for a while. He tried again when she was 14. She smacked him and they had a fist-fight. After that, he left her alone for good.
He didn’t leave me alone until I was 11. That’s when I started fighting back. In the meantime, he got me pretty good every time I was at his house, sometimes once a week, for seven years. When I wasn’t being abused by grandpa, I was home with a mother who beat me. Grandpa’s abuse was far worse, even though my mother did unspeakable things….
Mom made sure we had the best clothes, doctors, etc. On the first day of second grade, I had brand new cranberry colored tights. My best friend was upset because her mother refused to buy her a pair. She had no idea that I’d have gladly traded those tights to live with almost any other family in the world.
By the time I was in junior high, I was in a locked psychiatric ward. I had severe dissociation and almost no memories of being sexually abused. After intensive treatment, I started remembering things but the more I remembered, the more I felt like jumping off a bridge. I finally had a breakthrough when my doctor tried to explain why mom kept sending me to stay with grandpa. I asked him how a mother who was supposed to love her child could send her child to stay with a man she knew was a monster.
I was crushed to hear his response:
“Just because she gave birth to you, doesn’t mean she likes you.”
Hearing this made me very sad, but it needed to be said and, frankly, it helped me to move on….
http://www.patriotledger.com/opinions/x1510859918/WENDY-J-MURPHY-Not-all-mothers-love-their-children
A child sex crime is committed every 20 minutes, but charities fear the true figure could be even worse By Daily Mail Reporter 26th May 2011 Home Office figures reveal 23,000 offences last year, but many may have gone unreported – A child sex crime was committed every 20 minutes last year, shocking Home Office figures reveal. A staggering 23,000 child sex offences were reported to police in England and Wales – 64 a day – but with many going unreported, that figure could actually be much higher. A quarter of the victims were primary school age while more than 1,000 were too young to even go to school. One in four suspects was under the age of 18. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391021/A-child-sex-crime-committed-20-minutes-shocking-Home-Office-figures-reveal.html
Statistics – National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)
How many children are reported missing each year?
The U.S. Department of Justice reports
797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.
203,900 children were the victims of family abductions.
58,200 children were the victims of non-family abductions.
115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.) [Andrea J. Sedlak, David Finkelhor, Heather Hammer, and Dana J. Schultz. U.S. Department of Justice. “National Estimates of Missing Children: An Overview” in National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, October 2002, page 5.]
http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2810#1
Child Maltreatment 2009 – U.S. Department of Health & Human Services – Administration for Children and Families – Administration on Children, Youth and Families – Children’s Bureau
….Victims in the age group of birth to 1 year had the highest rate of victimization at 20.6 per 1,000 children of the same age group in the national population. Victimization was split between the sexes with boys accounting for 48.2 percent and girls accounting for 51.1 percent. Less than 1 percent of victims had an unknown sex. Eighty-seven percent of victims were comprised of three races or ethnicities-African-American (22.3%), Hispanic (20.7%), and White (44.0%).
What were the most common types of maltreatment?
As in prior years, the greatest proportion of children suffered from neglect. A child may have suffered from multiple forms of maltreatment and was counted once for each maltreatment type. CPS investigations or assessments determined that for unique victims:
More than 75 percent (78.3%) suffered neglect;
More than 15 percent (17.8%) suffered physical abuse;
Less than 10 percent (9.5%) suffered sexual abuse; and
Less than 10 percent (7.6%) suffered from psychological maltreatment.
….Child fatalities are the most tragic consequence of maltreatment. Yet, each year children die from abuse and neglect. Forty-nine States reported a total of 1,676 fatalities. Based on these data, a nationally estimated 1,770 children died from abuse and neglect.
….Four-fifths (80.9%) of duplicate perpetrators of child maltreatment were parents, and another 6.3 percent were other relatives of the victim; Of the duplicate perpetrators who were parents, four-fifths (84.7%) were the biological parents of the victim; Women comprised a larger percentage of all unique perpetrators than men, 53.8 percent compared to 44.4 percent; and Four-fifths (83.2%) of all unique perpetrators were between the ages of 20 and 49 years. ….Forty-four States reported that more than 3 million children received preventive services; http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm09/cm09.pdf
Violence Against Women Can Take Lifelong Toll: Study – Research shows how rates of mental and physical illness rise, quality of life falls By Serena Gordon HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 2 (HealthDay News) — Women who’ve suffered from gender-based violence are more likely to develop anxiety disorders or other mental woes, experience physical and mental disabilities, and have worse quality of life than other women, new research shows. Gender-based violence includes rape and other forms of sexual assault, intimate-partner violence (such as spouse abuse) and stalking.
Risks for these long-term problems rose with the intensity of abuse. For example, women who’d experienced three or four types of gender-based violence had 10 times the odds of developing an anxiety disorder than women who haven’t experienced such violence, the study found. The odds of a woman who’d been subjected to such violence developing a substance abuse problem were almost six times higher than for a woman who hasn’t experienced gender-based violence….
Results of the study are published in the Aug. 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. In the United States, more than 20 percent of women have experienced intimate-partner violence, stalking or both. A full 17 percent have reported rape or attempted rape, according to background information in the study. The data for Rees’ study came from a national survey done in Australia on mental health and well-being. The survey included over 4,400 women between the ages of 16 and 85 years old. In that group, 1,218 women (27 percent) reported experiencing at least one form of gender-based violence, while 139 had been exposed to three or more forms of gender-based violence.
The average age that women were first raped was 13 years old and 12 years old for sexual assault. The average age that women were beaten by a partner or stalked was 22 years old. The more violence a woman was exposed to, the greater her risk of developing mental illnesses, according to the study. http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=655484
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence Facts (NCADV) One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. ….An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year. The majority (73%) of family violence victims are female. Females were 84% of spousal abuse victims and 86% of abuse victims at the hands of a boyfriend.
The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services. Boys who witness domestic violence are twice as likely to abuse their own partners and children when they become adults. ….children who are exposed to domestic violence are more likely to exhibit behavioral and physical health problems including depression, anxiety, and violence towards peers. They are also more likely to attempt suicide, abuse drugs and alcohol, run away from home, engage in teenage prostitution, and commit sexual assault crimes. http://www.ncadv.org/files/Massachusetts.pdf
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Please use caution while reading all of these papers. Some of the information may be very heavy for survivors. If in doubt, download the page and wait to read it until you are with your therapist or a trusted support person.
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