Issue 161 – November 2021

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: https://ritualabuse.us/

Issue 161 – November 2021

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 secretive 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 2021 – All rights reserved. No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.

Information in this issue includes: Shards of glass, Sanne Terlingen, satanic ritual abuse, Dutch National Radio, Trauma, Memory, science, Valerie Sinason, Ashley Conway, Ross Cheit, False memory syndrome movement, Lost in the Mall, Sigmund Freud, dissociation, disinformation, Michael Salter, Child Sexual Abuse, Jennifer Freyd, DARVO Deny Attack Reverse Victim and Offender,British FMS, North American Man/Boy Love Association, Lynn Crook, False Memory Syndrome Foundation, The Search for Satan, Elizabeth Loftus, Lost in the Mall, Dissociative identity disorder, repressed and unconscious memories, R Kelly, sex trafficking charges

Shards of glass and dark rituals (English transcript)
Argos investigates satanic ritual abuse
https://www.vpro.nl/argos/lees/nieuws/2020/glass-shards-and-dark-rituals-english-transcript-.html

May be very triggering for survivors. Describes rituals and violence in detail.

Sanne Terlingen, Huub Jaspers, Sophie Blok

Over the last year, Argos collected the experiences and stories of over two hundred victims of organized sexual abuse. A hundred and forty victims told us about ritual abuse. In the radio documentary below, Argos highlights their stories and discovers unsettling similarities.

This documentary aired on Dutch national radio (NPO Radio 1) on June 27, 2020. Original title: Glasscherven en duistere rituelen.

….NARRATOR [ST]
Our questionnaire generated all kinds of stories. Twins Beatrix and Stefanie reached out, because they wanted to find the child pornography recordings that featured them. We received stories of sexual abuse at sports clubs and boarding schools, on grooming and cults. But reports of a very different nature quickly started to surface. Stories about unimaginable torture practices and rituals.

….NARRATOR [ST]
When these types of responses first started pouring in, we had no idea what to do with them. We found out there is an official definition: Ritual Abuse. In the nineties, health care workers sounded the alarm bells, and a lot of media attention ensued.

….NARRATOR [ST]
Marinke wrote down that she would be taken away in a car. From a very young age. She was often under the influence of drugs, so that she wouldn’t know where she was brought to. There were men and women who would at times wear black and purple robes. Family members, teachers, lawyers, and ‘even people working within the Dutch government, although no one will probably believe that’, she wrote. She also writes that obedience was enforced in many different ways.

….We analysed the 140 questionnaires in which ritual characteristics were mentioned. That’s how we discovered even more wrong assumptions. For example, there were no signs of hypnosis. And over forty people mention abuse that took place within the past ten years. That group includes people who shared stories of a network they’re still a part of to this day.

NARRATOR [HJ]
Those aren’t exactly ‘recovered memories’ from a long-forgotten past.
The assumption that all victims file police reports is also incorrect. Only a handful of respondents claims to have done so. And that would usually be against one or two persons, not an entire network.

NARRATOR [ST]
One assumption is correct: over three quarters of the respondents have been diagnosed with DID – dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. This includes Marinke.

….NARRATOR [ST]
Christel Kraaij is a clinical psychologist working for GGZ Centraal (Dutch mental health care facilities). She is one of the experts that helped us out with drawing up our questionnaire. She has been treating clients with DID for over ten years. Around fifteen of them speak of Ritual Abuse.

Christel Kraaij:
I treat people that have gotten out of the network completely, I treat people that are still being pressured by the network but can stay safe. So people who receive emails and texts but no longer respond to them. And I do also treat people who are still actively approached by the network and who are abused and mistreated.

NARRATOR [ST]
The horrific acts they speak of show distinctive similarities:

Christel Kraaij:
The holidays are of course a similarity, whether it be Easter or Pentecost or Christmas or Ascension Day, but also all kinds of days that don’t stem from Christianity but are things like a Full Moon, the change of seasons. That those are the days on which the most horrific things take place.

….NARRATOR [ST]
And there’s something else victims of Ritual Abuse have in common:

Christel Kraaij:
It’s what I call ‘mind control’. People who have experienced Ritual Abuse show a lot more signs of…brainwashing you could say.

They would sometimes refer to them as ‘programs’, that can switch on and display very typical behaviour that isn’t really visible in people who have DID but did not suffer Ritual Abuse. What they say about that is that there is a type of training, more like conditioning, that when someone says A, they have to do B.

….NARRATOR [ST]
As has probably become clear by now, we decided to take up the gauntlet. We start by looking for the common denominator in these stories. Almost every single one of the 140 people who filled out our questionnaire state that they were introduced to the network by a family member, usually their father or mother. All of them were drugged. Almost every one of them was forced into prostitution. Child pornography was produced, as well as torture porn.

NARRATOR [HJ]
We’re talking dozens of overlapping testimonies. Over a hundred people mention abuse on specific holidays. Two thirds mention men and women in robes – black, purple, red or white.
….But we find a detail that we can investigate further: several women state that the perpetrators insert glass into their vaginas. The thought behind it is that they would have to return to the network in order to get it removed. But some women did end up getting their injuries treated in hospital.

NARRATOR [HJ]
We phone gynaecologists and care workers. These conversations are confidential. We have to promise that we won’t name any names. Four gynaecologists confirm that they have encountered such things, where they had to remove glass from a vagina. One gynaecologist states that she removed glass from the bodies of two women. These are severely traumatised victims of sexual abuse. With one of them the gynaecologist questioned whether she might have inserted the glass herself. But with the other one, a young girl, she was convinced that someone else did it to her. But still, that does not prove there’s a network behind these crimes.

….Mother-in-law:
I remember very clearly, it was a quarter to nine and she was playing the piano and had her phone up on the piano and then, all of a sudden an image appeared on her phone, a picture of a V with flames going through it, and at that point she just changed at once. Marinke was gone and in her place a sort of robotic alter appeared, saying: I must leave, I must leave. And a while later a message followed, something like ‘it’s starting to take very long now’. And yes, it just went on for a while actually. Like, ‘you have to come now, or else: rest in peace’, these kinds of threats.

Sanne: Can you fake an alter?
Mother-in-law: I’d imagine that if you’re an amazing actor you could fake it, yes. But to continue to do that, year in, year out, and to fake awful recollections and horrible nightmares in the middle of the night, that seems a bit farfetched. And to continue doing that for five years.

NARRATOR [ST]
It’s far from the only incident they’ve been through with Marinke. Often, when Marinke received such a phone call, or when it was a special holiday, she’d disappear.

….NARRATOR [ST]
That changes when Marinke even receives a letter while staying at the closed ward in Emergis, a mental health facility.
Mother-in-law:
Every single possession she had at Emergis, I had personally brought her. She was there, in a little room, without access to computers, printers or anything. She just couldn’t have done this herself.
NARRATOR [ST]
That night, they receive a phone call from the facility: they can’t find Marinke.
Mother-in-law:
It’s just puzzling how she managed to get out of that closed ward. Because there’s actually a very high fence there.
Sanne:
There wasn’t like a little step or anything in front of that fence?
Mother-in-law:
No, because the fence was meant to keep people inside.

….NARRATOR [ST]
You’re listening to Argos, the investigative journalism show by VPRO and Human on NPO Radio 1. Over the past year we’ve received over a hundred and forty statements concerning Ritual Abuse. One of the girls who shared her story with us is Marinke. Her parents-in-law kept a large dossier in which they record everything that happened to her. It contains pictures of the window through which Marinke escaped from the closed mental health facility. It was smashed in, from the outside. It also includes photos of a sawed through brake line, belonging to a car. Pictures of injuries on Marinke’s body, and a letter from Marinke’s family.

….Bas Kremer, therapist and board member at the Knowledge Centre for Organized Transgenerational Abuse:

I think every single police report on ritual abuse has been dismissed. That they just automatically get sent to the LEBZ, and with that, discarded.

NARRATOR [ST]
Bas Kremer works as a therapist and is member of the board at the Knowledge Centre for Organized Transgenerational Abuse.
….NARRATOR [ST]
The Knowledge Centre is made up of a group of health care specialists who deal with clients that have come forward with stories on Ritual Abuse. They’ve been active for 25 years. They also conducted research, for which they interviewed just under thirty health care workers. They discovered very clear overlaps between their clients’ testimonies.

Bas Kremer:
There are a few very clear similarities. Certain very specific recurring locations, also certain names of perpetrators that would have also been mentioned by other victims. And we also saw a lot of overlap in the mind control that was imposed on them.
NARRATOR [ST]
The health care officials sounded the alarm bells. They themselves experienced things that severely frightened them.

Bas Kremer:
When our therapy session finished, they’d go out and there was literally a dying pigeon lying there in the house, in the hallway, right in front of the door of the practice.
….Bas Kremer:
We are also talking about abuse that starts at a young age, baby age, toddler age. And it’s almost inevitable that the parents would play a part there, or can safeguard it to the group.
Children, I’m almost afraid to say, but they’re trained, I think, to continue to function normally while being abused. That also entails that children can endure abuse from age zero, can continue smiling, even though they are being hurt severely. Remaining silent and never saying a word, in order to make it possible to let them get abused by strangers without anyone finding out.

NARRATOR [ST]
The reality is not nearly as mysterious as the term ‘ritual abuse’ might lead you to think. Victims don’t call it ritual abuse, but speak of ‘them’ or ‘the network’. ‘They’ are also engaged in drug and arms trafficking. Take a van to the port and pick up a bag of cocaine. Switch number plates. Make a quick stop at a holiday park or a rest stop in order to exchange the bag for two teenage girls. Switch number plates again and take the girls to a party, where they’re made to ‘wait’ in a cage or caravan until the party starts. On other days there are smaller, private parties at someone’s residence.

NARRATOR [HJ]
An errand boy describes how he would drive young women to a rest spot at the Veluwe, where they were forced to ‘work’ for the group. Other girls had to do the same in large hotels or sex clubs.

NARRATOR [ST]
Some victims speak of the ‘cult’. Mostly to make clear how brainwashed they are and how difficult it is to break loose.

Bas Kremer:
The number one characteristic of a cult is how they manage to isolate people. It can be very difficult to cut ties when you’re an adult, but we’re talking about networks that you’re born into here. So, this is what you’ve known your entire life
….The same goes for pregnancies. 78 percent states that they got pregnant through the abuse. The majority more than once. They’d get tortured to the point of losing their baby, they say. But they also speak of ‘nobodies’. Children that were born into and kept within the network, and never got officially registered. Some of them are dragged from place to place. Others live with families that are active within the network. Their mothers are only allowed to see them if their sexual performance is up to par. If they continue to come back. These nobodies undergo the most severe forms of abuse.

NARRATOR [HJ]
These are all stories that the people working for the Knowledge Centre are told too, board member Bas Kremer says. We ask him whether he’s also heard about the involvement of highly ranked officials in the abuse or its coverup:

Bas Kremer:
Yes, that is something that I often hear. I also think it’s something they’re told again and again, within these networks, the children too. Like they’re in charge of everyone and control the entire world.

….NARRATOR [ST]
Our map is covered in stickers at this stage: over eight stickers on a Belgian castle, which was also pointed out by Marinke. Several stickers on a residence, in a specific street in a mid-sized city. And on a building in the Veluwe. We end up locating over ten spots that were named by several of our participants.

And then we receive an anonymous email: ‘Beware, they know about your investigation. They’re going to get rid of evidence – just like they did with Dutroux’.
That same day the warehouse in the Bollenstreek burns down. We phone the fire department. The damage is so severe that a cause of fire cannot be determined.

–

Recently a new book was published about the False Memory Movement. Over the years, this movement has been extremely damaging for trauma, rape, child abuse and ritual abuse survivors and their helpers. This movement has used propaganda, bullying, harassment, disinformation and pseudoscientific research to bolster its claims. The False Memory Movement has been used to defend accused and convicted pedophiles, rapists and murderers.

Fortunately there have been many brave therapists, researchers and survivors that have spent years fighting the false memory movement’s pseudoscience, including inaccurate statements denying traumatic amnesia and denying the traumagenic origins of dissociative identity disorder.

This new book “Trauma and Memory – The Science and the Silence” is an excellent resource for those who continue the fight against false memory disinformation. The book consolidates older historic information from the Freud’s era and the 1980’s and 1990’s as well as newer research about more recent events.

SMART highly recommends this book. There is a hard copy and e-book available at the website below. “The abuse of science to silence the abused” by the false memory movement has been exposed once again. https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-and-Memory-The-Science-and-the-Silenced/Sinason-Conway/p/book/9781032044293

Trauma and Memory
The Science and the Silenced
https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-and-Memory-The-Science-and-the-Silenced/Sinason-Conway/p/book/9781032044293

Trauma and Memory will assist mental health experts and professionals, as well as the interested public, in understanding the scientific issues around trauma memory, and how this differs from other areas of memory.

This book provides accounts of the damage caused to psychology and survivors internationally by false memory groups and ideas. It is unequivocally passionate about the truth of trauma memory and exposing the damaging disinformation that can seep into the field. Contributors to this book include leading professionals from the field of criminology, law, psychology and psychotherapy in the UK and USA, along with survivor-professionals who understand only too well the damage such disinformation can cause.

This book is a valuable resource for mental health professionals of all disciplines including those involved with relevant law and public health policy. It will also help survivors and survivor-professionals in gaining insight into the forces resisting disclosure.

Editors
Biography

Valerie Sinason, PhD, is a widely published Writer and Psychoanalyst. She has pioneered disability and trauma-informed therapy for over 30 years, is President of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, Founder and Patron of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and on the Board of the ISSTD.

Ashley Conway, PhD, AFBPsS, is a Counselling Psychologist. He has worked in a wide range of fields of trauma, ranging through severe critical incidents to long term abuse, and has published widely in these areas. He is currently the Chair of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, UK.
ISBN: 978-1-032-04432-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-04429-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19315-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003193159

Chapters include:
1 In conversation with Ross Cheit ASHLEY CONWAY
2 False memory syndrome movement: The origins and the promoters MARJORIE ORR
3 The rocky road to false memories: Stories the media missed LYNN CROOK
4 Re-examining the “Lost in the Mall”: study Were “false memories” created to promote a false defence? In conversation with Ruth Blizard VALERIE SINASON
5 Evaluating false memory research WINJA BUSS
6 The abuse of science to silence the abused ASHLEY CONWAY
7 False memory syndrome SUSIE ORBACH
8 Trauma, skin: memory, speech ANN SCOTT
9 Sigmund Freud’s concept of repression: Historical and empirical perspectives BRETT KAHR
10 Terror in the consulting room – memory, trauma and dissociation PHIL MOLLON
11 How can we remember but be unable to recall? The complex functions of multi-modular memory MARY SUE MOORE
12 What if I should die? JENNIFER JOHNS
13 Finding a new narrative: Meaningful responses to “false memory” disinformation MICHAEL SALTER
14 “Do no harm”? KHADIJA ROUF AND DANNY TAGGART

Excerpts:

page 1 The FMS model provided an explanation for the beginning of the exposure of the scale of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) worldwide, and it enabled the awful truth to be displaced. The multitude of stories of abuse that were beginning to be made public could be explained away – they could be blamed on the therapists who were hearing their clients’ histories.
As long as truth struggles with power, there will be offshoots of such models of displacement and the history of denial goes far back. The FMS may have gone off-grid for now, but it is simply another move in the theories of denial of abuse, and more efforts to silence the truth will follow. The principles remain the same.

page 2
The account of Cassandra tragically fits Jennifer Freyd’s concept of DARVO (Freyd, 1997). DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. This is the common response of a person or an institution that will not accept responsibility and accountability for the violations they have caused.

page 19
Jennifer Freyd regarding her parents (FMSF founders):….The grandparents had an affair which culminated after 11 years in marriage, at which time Pamela and Peter Freyd also married aged 18 and 20. Professor Freyd recollected her father speaking openly of his own childhood homosexual liaison as an 11-year-old with a paedophile artist. She remembered being made to dance nude in front of him aged 9 with a friend; of being taught to kiss on the mouth “like an adult” for a school play aged 11 in front of the cast….he continually made sexual comments which were regarded as normal in the family….He drank heavily through her childhood and was hospitalised for alcoholism.

page 26 – 27
Another key figure in the FMS movement is New Zealand doctor, Felicity Goodyear-Smith. Her book First Do No Harm is subtitled “The Sexual Abuse Industry” (Goodyear-Smith, 1993)….The major theme in First Do No Harm is that sexual abuse is a cultural taboo. There is no intrinsic moral objection to adult–child sexual contact and no automatic damage caused by it. Underwager and Wakefield are quoted as the principal references.

Felicity Goodyear-Smith admits to a personal as well as professional involvement in the abuse field. Her husband and parents-in-law were imprisoned for sexual abuse offences, having been members of a New Zealand community, CentrePoint, which encouraged sexual intimacy amongst its members, including the children.
The author quotes studies that purport to show that adult–child sex can be harmless. Under a section on “Children’s Sexual Rights” she describes groups, such as the Paedophile Information Exchange, the Rene Guyon Society (“sex by eight, or it’s too late”), and the North American Man/Boy Love Association, as “holding radical beliefs regarding children’s sexual rights”.

page 31
Lynn Crook
Some have suggested the media’s failure to challenge the false memory scenario reflected a need to deny the scale of the sexual abuse of children. Perhaps their editors failed to encourage a critical analysis of the story because everyone else was covering it – so it must be true. Some reporters may have failed to question the story because they had been accused of molesting a child. Others may have been protecting someone.

page 33
The government’s witnesses included many of the individuals who had appeared in Frontline producer Ofra Bikel’s “The Search for Satan”. In court, their stories did not hold up as well as they had in Bikel’s interviews. Under cross-examination by Peterson’s attorney, Rusty Hardin, Shanley conceded on 8 October 1997 that she could not name any memories that were implanted. The Houston Chronicle headline on 8 October 1998 announced, “Former patient can’t attribute false memories to therapy” (Smith, 1999). On 1 March 1999 the government moved to dismiss the indictment. The national media did not cover the story.

page 36
Believing that one had been lost while shopping in childhood is not analogous to remembering sexual abuse. In fact, a large proportion of subjects can be convinced that they were lost in a mall as children, but none could be led to falsely believe they had been administered enemas (Pezdek, Finger & Hodge, 1997).

page 37
The first six subjects in the formal mall study failed to develop false memories (Coan, 1993), but those results were never published. In the second iteration of the formal mall study (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995), there is little explicit description of the methods of recruitment of subjects, experimental controls or training of investigators….Most importantly, no evidence is presented that any subjects formed full false memories. Nevertheless, the authors imply that, based on study results, they “are providing an ‘existence proof’ for the phenomenon of false memory formation” (pp. 723–4).

page 40
Rather, most false memory studies attempt to suggest to subjects that they experienced much more commonplace events, such as getting lost, spilling a bowl of punch, going for a balloon ride, or getting sick after eating eggs. It may be profitable to wonder whether many of the false memory researchers have been swept up in the FMSF campaign to exonerate parents who claim they have been falsely accused.

page 41
Other researchers and authors attempting to criticise false memory studies may have been intimidated. Between 1992 and 2017, nearly two dozen psychologists, psychiatrists, attorneys, authors, researchers, journalists, and abuse survivors have been subjected to ad hominem attacks by Loftus (Crook, personal communication, 2019). Those defamed include Ellen Bass, E. Sue Blume, Martha Dean, Laura Brown, Mary Harvey, Jim Coan’s mother, Judith Herman, David Calof, Kenneth Pope, David Corwin, Diana Russell, Lynn Crook, Lenore Walker, Laura Davis, Charles Whitfield, B. J. Levy, Neil Brick, Karen Olio, Bessel van der Kolk, Holly Ramona, Nicole Taus Kluemper and Gerald Koocher.

page 42
Many academics may be equally motivated to deny the existence of child abuse as was Freud. Those who gain considerable income from testifying in defence of accused perpetrators, as have Underwager, Gardner and Loftus, may have additional motivation for claiming that abuse accusations were fabricated.

page 44
Careful analysis of the research shows it is not easy to implant false memories of childhood abuse. False memories with autobiographical belief, recollective experiences and confidence in memory are rare to non-existent.

page 55
The false memory syndrome (FMS) advocates do not want evidence of false negatives – that we can experience something and then be persuaded that it did not happen, because that would not suit their narrative.
….There is no evidence that anyone has ever had a false belief implanted that they were sexually abused as a child.

page 59
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the most severe of all dissociative disorders, and its features include recurrent amnesia. Recent research (Reinders et al., 2019) has demonstrated that individuals with DID can be distinguished from healthy controls on the basis of abnormal brain morphology.

….“Every single scientific study of memory of childhood sexual abuse, whether prospective or retrospective, whether studying clinical samples or general population samples, finds that a certain percentage of sexually abused individuals forget, and later remember, their abuse” (Van der Kolk, 2014, note on p. 398 re. p. 190).

page 60
As McMaugh and Middleton (2020) state, “the ‘false memory’ movement enabled society to ignore a whole new generation of abused children”.

page 61
Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes & Conway, 2010) is an informative book written to describe how vested interests have manipulated the media, to mislead and confuse in areas of great importance to society, including smoking, acid rain and climate change….they create an institute, with scientific advisors who can use their credentials to present themselves as authorities. The advisors cherry-pick data to advance a position, present ideas as if they were facts and use their authority to try to discredit any science they do not like. They use the mass media, making simplified, dramatic statements to capture public attention and draw in journalists to give their minority views more credence than they deserve. They then use these press stories, quoting them as if they were facts. If there is an individual whose opinions are contradictory to the desired line, ad hominem attacks are an option.

page 88
Sigmund Freud also realised that repressions could be lifted as a result of psychoanalytical treatment. In his essay on “Trauer und Melancholie” (Freud, 1917a), better known in English as “Mourning and Melancholia” (Freud, 1917b), he observed that the clinical process of psychoanalysis will frequently activate memories, and, that after treatment has progressed satisfactorily, repressed and unconscious memories will eventually return to the fore of consciousness, no longer subject to the disguise of repression.

page 90
Nevertheless, Erdelyi’s data does most certainly substantiate Freud’s claim that repressed material can return to consciousness, simply as a result of talking….Astonishingly, 38% of the sample of 129 women did not report the abuse, which Williams and colleagues knew, on the basis of hospital records, had, in fact, occurred.

page 156
Survivor accounts, combined with scientific advances in the understanding of trauma, are creating enriched understandings of how abuse can injure the usual process of memory and psychological functioning. Time is yielding an opportunity to reshape public understandings of trauma and its aftermath. This could lead to the correcting of harmful narratives which have led to unethical treatment of survivors, through denial, victim-blaming, or “othering”.

R. Kelly Is Found Guilty of All Counts and Faces Life in Prison Sept. 27, 2021

Mr. Kelly’s conviction marked a stunning fall for a man who was once one of the biggest names in R&B music. It came after the first Me Too-era trial in which most of the victims were Black women.
The singer was convicted of federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges for a decades-long scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex. Once one of the biggest names in popular music, he could face decades in prison.
The conviction of R. Kelly on all nine counts against him came as a significant moment in the Me Too movement for both Black women and for the music industry, ushering in a sense that, finally, justice had been served.

But the verdict on Monday also prompted an obvious question: Women have said that the singer’s abuses began as early as the start of the 1990s — why did it take three decades for the singer to receive criminal punishment?
Here are a few possible answers:
The entertainer had an expansive network of enablers around him, federal prosecutors said, from his closest confidantes and employees to many in the music industry who knew of the concerns about his behavior but did not intervene.
The government drew attention to what has been described as the “settlement factory” that kept his accusers quiet, offering evidence of Mr. Kelly’s payments to women who made accusations in exchange for their silence.
And when that was not enough, Mr. Kelly “used his henchmen to lodge threats and exact revenge,” blackmailing women with nude photographs of themselves or embarrassing information, one prosecutor, Elizabeth Geddes, said in closing arguments.

Federal prosecutors also accused Mr. Kelly of paying witnesses to not cooperate with the authorities in the lead-up to his 2008 trial and acquittal. They said the singer let some witnesses know they could be “subject to physical harm” if they proceeded…. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/09/27/nyregion/r-kelly-trial-news

R. Kelly made his victims write letters exonerating him. Instead, they helped convict him. Sept. 27, 2021 By Emily Palmer
Much of the evidence that prosecutors used to convict R. Kelly came from the singer himself.
He obsessively collected message slips and letters written by the women he interacted with — some of them underage — according to Ryan Chabot, the lead federal investigator in the case. Mr. Chabot said he sifted through the evidence recovered from several searches of the singer’s Chicago apartment and storage facility.
Mr. Kelly kept some of the evidence in FedEx folders, with labels like “Old Messages,” and other pieces — like a seven-page, front-and-back, handwritten letter from a woman who testified for three days early in the trial — in protective sleeves in a locked safe.

Calling Mr. Kelly a “great man,” the woman wrote: “At the age of 17 I never had sex with Robert Kelly,” then proceeded to tick off a list of specific sex acts that she said she had not participated in with the R&B superstar.
Less than two years later, when the woman who had written the letter testified under a pseudonym, she said she had experienced coerced and recorded sexual encounters with the singer starting when she was 17. He hit her often, she said, and forced her to get an abortion….
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/09/27/nyregion/r-kelly-trial-news

November 4, 2021 · Filed Under Newsletter 2021 - Issue 156 - 161