The Urban Legends of Those Attacking Ritual Abuse Theories

The Urban Legends of Those Attacking Ritual Abuse Theories and the False Logic of False Memory Proponents and Their Occultist Supporters – Presentation at the 2016 Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference

Second half of the article discusses the Grey Faction, a part of the Satanic Temple and Lucien Greaves/Doug Mesner.

This presentation has been adapted for the Internet. It was presented at the conference by Neil Brick, a survivor of ritual abuse and mind control. His work continues to educate the public about child abuse, trauma and ritual abuse crimes. His child abuse and ritual abuse newsletter S.M.A.R.T. has been published for over 20 years. His articles can be found at http://neilbrick.com

All accusations are alleged. This information is educational and not intended as therapy or treatment. The ideas I discuss here today are only my own or where cited taken from sources.
Reading this information may or may not help your recovery process, so please use caution while reading this. This may be heavy for survivors.

The Urban Legends of Those Attacking Ritual Abuse Theories and the False Logic of False Memory Proponents and Their Occultist Supporters

The vicious attacks, harassment and false logic of those untrained to ascertain recovery and therapeutic techniques continues into recent years from the 1990s. Many of these attacks use the same propaganda techniques, like name calling, insults and repetition as those from the 1980s and 90s. Modern examples will be given and compared to those from prior years.

In the 1980’s and early 1990’s there was a strong backlash against child abuse and ritual abuse survivors.

Media Manipulation by False Memory Proponents

There are two excellent articles that discuss this backlash and how the media was manipulated and turned against child abuse survivors.

Links to two important articles discussing this are at: https://ritualabuse.us/research/

Controlling the Media

1) U-Turn on Memory Lane by Mike Stanton – Columbia Journalism Review – July/August 1997
http://web.archive.org/web/20071216011151/http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/97/4/memory.
asp

“Rarely has such a strange and little-understood organization had such a profound effect on media coverage of such a controversial matter. The foundation is an aggressive, well-financed p.r. machine adept at manipulating the press, harassing its critics, and mobilizing a diverse army of psychiatrists, outspoken academics, expert defense witnesses, litigious lawyers, Freud bashers, critics of psychotherapy, and devastated parents. With a budget of $750,000 a year from members and outside supporters, the foundation’s reach far exceeds its actual membership of about 3,000.”

“As controversial memory cases arose around the country, FMSF boosters contacted journalists to pitch the false-memory argument, more and more reporters picked up on the issue, and the foundation became an overnight media darling. The story line that had dominated the press since the 1980s — an underreported toll of sexual abuse, including sympathetic stories of adult survivors resurrecting long-lost memories of it — was quickly turned around. The focus shifted to new tearful victims — respectable, elderly parents who could no longer see their children and grandchildren because of bad therapists who implanted memories…:”


Battle Tactics of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation – Noel Packard – New School for Social Research, N.Y. History Matters Conference April 23-24, 2004 Censorship is also a tactic that FMS Foundation adherents use to silence voices they don’t agree with. Katy Butler, published a critical review of Ofshe’s and Watter’s book, Making Monsters (1994) in the Los Angeles Times. Later the newspaper’s book review editor received a vague threat of a lawsuit from Ofshe’s representative (K. Butler personal communication with Lynn Crook January 28, 2000). Later Butler was asked to write a story for Newsweek examining the uncritical acceptance of Foundation claims and to provide documented cases of recovered memory and traumatic amnesia. Upon learning of this assignment Foundation Advisory Board members Richard Ofshe and Fredrick Crews, as well as Peter and Pamela Freyd, wrote strongly worded letters of complaint to Newsweek which effectively canceled Butler’s assignment (Stanton 1997). Although these censorship activities were reported in Mike Stanton’s article “U-Turn on Memory Lane” (1997) Nevertheless, Newsweek editors confirmed that the FMS Foundation letters helped kill Butler’s article. http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/historymatters/papers/NoelPackard.pdf

Misrepresentation of the data and the harassment of those defending child abuse survivors were two major parts of the false memory movement used against child abuse survivors.

The harassment was meant to scare people from discussing child abuse, ritual abuse and mind control crimes. And this harassment continues today.

We have a page devoted to these tactics:
False memory syndrome proponents tactics – False memory syndrome proponents have done the following to try and ensure that only their point of view is in the public view. Harassing debate opponents, misrepresenting the data in the field and controlling the media. https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/false-memory-syndrome-proponents-tactics/

Harassment

Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter DOI: 10.1207/s15327019eb0802_2 Published in: Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 , pages 115 – 124 Abstract – In 1988 I began a report on the accuracy of expert testimony in child sexual abuse cases utilizing Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield as a case study (Wakefield & Underwager, 1988). In response, Underwager and Wakefield began a campaign of harassment and intimidation, which included multiple lawsuits; an ethics charge; phony (and secretly taped) phone calls; and ad hominem attacks, including one that I was laundering federal grant monies. The harassment and intimidation failed as the author refused demands to retract. In addition, the lawsuits and ethics charges were dismissed.
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/confessions-of-a-whistle-blower-lessons-learned/
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a918444284

Calof, D.L. (1998). Notes from a practice under siege: Harassment, defamation, and intimidation in the name of science, Ethics and Behavior, 8(2) pp. 161-187. Abstract: I have practiced psychotherapy, family therapy, and hypnotherapy for over 25 years without a single board complaint or lawsuit by a client. For over 3 years, however, a group of proponents of the false memory syndrome (FMS) hypothesis, including members, officials, and supporters of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, Inc., have waged a multimodal campaign of harassment and defamation directed against me, my clinical clients, my staff, my family, and others connected to me. I have neither treated these harassers or their families nor had any professional or personal dealings with any of them; I am not related in any way to the disclosures of memories of sexual abuse in these families. Nonetheless, this group disrupts my professional and personal life and threatens to drive me out of business. In this article, I describe practicing psychotherapy under a state of siege and place the campaign against me in the context of a much broader effort in the FMS movement to denigrate, defame, and harass clinicians, lecturers, writers, and researchers identified with the abuse and trauma treatment communities. http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/notes-from-a-practice-under-siege/

David Calof author note : I should also add that this article covers the first four years of what would become an over 10 year campaign of harassment and the most egregious actions actually took place after this article was published.

Misrepresenting the data in the field

“Since at least 95 percent of child molesters initially deny their abusive behaviors, how can untrained lay people like Pamela Freyd and her staff “document” a real or “unreal” case of “FMS,” as appears to be the case with most of their communications, which usually occur over the telephone or by letter. (p. 76) (Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma By Charles L. Whitfield, Christine Courtois Published by HCI, 1995)
http://books.google.com/books?id=z1LW3u1e04YC

Jennifer J. Freyd, Ph.D., author of “Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse”
“Despite this documentation for both traumatic amnesia and essentially accurate delayed recall, memory science is often presented as if it supports the view that traumatic amnesia is very unlikely or perhaps impossible and that a great many, perhaps a majority, maybe even all, recovered memories of abuse are false….Yet no research supports such an implication…and a great deal of research supports the premise that forgetting sexual abuse is fairly common and that recovered memories are sometimes essentially true.” (p. 107)
Science in the Memory Debate – Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 , pages 101 – 113 https://web.archive.org/web/20130225044634/http://fmsf.com/ethics.shtml
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a918444283

“Psychologists Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield have written two books…When a given reference fails to support their viewpoint they simply misstate the conclusion. When they cannot use a quotation out of context from an article, they make unsupported statements, some of which are palpably untrue and others simply unprovable. David L. Chadwick, Book Review, in 261 JAMA 3035 (May 26, 1989)” https://web.archive.org/web/20100315032508/http://vlex.com/vid/underwager-hollida-wakefield-salter-36092881

The myth of panic, called Satanic Panic, a propaganda term that rhymes so people are less likely to forget it. This false concept was developed in the early 1990s.

This concept has been rebutted by Ross E. Cheit, a professor of Political Science and International & Public Affairs at Brown University.in his book:
The Witch-Hunt Narrative http://blogs.brown.edu/rcheit/

This book goes through many of the day care and child abuse cases of the 1990s using primary sources.

The Witch-Hunt Narrative
Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children
Ross E. Cheit
Empirically challenges the view that a series of high-profile cases in the 1980s and early 1990s were hoaxes
Shows how a narrative based on empirically thin evidence became a theory with real social force, and how that theory stood at odds with the reality of child sexual abuse
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-witch-hunt-narrative-9780199931224?cc=us&lang=en&

Yet this book was largely ignored by the mainstream media. But books the continue the dialogue promoting the urban legend of panic continue to get wide spread coverage.

This is the history of the harassment of child abuse survivors in the past.

Now I will discuss the present harassment of those working to expose and present the research of child abuse crimes.

The case study I will use today is my own.

My license to practice therapy has been threatened with filed licensing complaints by people connected to a group called the Grey Faction, a part of the Satanic Temple. My job as a therapist has nothing to do with my advocacy efforts to stop child abuse and I have very clear professional and private boundaries that I maintain to ensure this continues to occur. Yet, the Grey Faction associates keep harassing me and others in the field. Their attacks are factually inaccurate and meritless. Their attempts to silence me have not worked. I have continued to publish research and promote the truth about child abuse, ritual abuse and mind control crimes on the Internet.

Their campaign to silence child abuse survivors and rape victims has combined harassment, propaganda and misinformation.

Harassment:

The Grey Faction has admitted they infiltrated a survivor conference. I believe the person attending lied about why they were at the conference, filmed me without my permission and the Grey Faction put part of the film on the Internet.

Besides the fact that this is highly amoral, they misrepresented what I said and used a variety of propaganda techniques to spin and twist my words and my research.

The video of me is presented in black and white with scary music similar to a horror film. The video falsely portrays my asking people to stop going to their face and using hand signals as paranoia and bullying, yet if you listen to the words, the tone of my voice is calm and quiet. The video discusses the filing of a licensing complaint against me. It discusses and misrepresents my story as a child abuse survivor, where I was forced to hurt others as a child.

The video is in essence pure propaganda. Incredibly, over a thousand people signed a petition written by the Grey Faction to have my license taken away from me, not knowing who I am or the real facts about my research or my job. This is the danger of propaganda and how the media can be misused to hurt others.

The video and the petition against me are both heavily laden with propaganda, misinformation and the misrepresentation of facts.

One fact Lucien Greaves/Doug Mesner (not his real names) repeatedly reports is one where at our 2009 conference one table had clothing that protected against electromagnetic frequencies for health reasons. This got misrepresented as “tin foil hats” and this propaganda has been repeated numerous times by Mesner/Greaves.

One line from his petition states: “Neil Brick continues to propagate debunked and disregarded narratives of concealed occult crimes from the height of the “Satanic Panic.”

I have already shown how there was no panic and these cases were misrepresented by past false memory and now the false memory occultists proponents.

The petition goes on and on misrepresenting my arguments and my research.
We replied to the Grey Faction/Lucien Greaves and their misinformation in depth at:
Reply to the Grey Faction’s Petition to Revoke the License of Neil Brick
https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/reply-to-the-grey-factions-petition-to-revoke-the-license-of-neil-brick/

“We believe that this new letter is part of the continued actions of harassment against Neil Brick and those that help child and ritual abuse survivors.”

“The petition states Neil Brick has a dangerous state-of-mind and unsubstantiated, delusional beliefs. This is pure conjecture and unproven. There is no real evidence presented anywhere of this and Neil’s evaluation during the filing of the previous complaint found there were no problems at all with Neil’s mental state. Neil’s beliefs are clearly substantiated with research at https://ritualabuse.us The use of the pejorative terms in the petition mentioned above are unproven and are used to mischaracterize Neil Brick and his work.”

“The petition links to several articles at the https://ritualabuse.us website. The petition mischaracterizes the content of these articles. Neil as a child was forced to kill people in a cult. He was brainwashed in this group as a small child. Many well known cults today program their members to join and not leave and to follow them, asking them to commit acts they would not do outside of the cult. This is a well researched topic.”

“The (Grey Faction) petition states “While we are not privy to records that indicate methods of treatment employed in Neil Brick’s practice.” This is one of the most important parts of their petition. There is no evidence there are any problems with any methods of treatment Neil uses.”

“The petition mentions Neil Brick promotes implausible ideas, yet Neil’s ideas are backed by research and journal articles. If the Grey Faction decides to ignore or disbelieve this research, this does not mean Neil’s research is implausible. As previously stated, Neil does not and would never promote his research in his role as a licensed mental health care professional as this would be a clear violation of professional boundaries. In our opinion, this is simply part of a continued pattern of on and offline harassment against Neil Brick and others who are trying to get the research out about child and ritual abuse and trauma.”

This is from our website replying to a guest post by the Satanic Temple’s Grey Faction:
https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/reply-to-the-satanic-temples-grey-faction-online-guest-post/

In conclusion, the guest post by the Satanic Temple’s Grey Faction criticizes the strong research and theories of ritual abuse survivors and those with years of research, experience and education in the trauma field. (The members of the Grey Faction have unknown credentials and may not have the experience to accurately determine trauma theory and research.) The guest post by the Satanic Temple’s Grey Faction presents inaccurate arguments, which are refuted in this article. The Grey Faction claims they are combating pseudoscience with rational inquiry, but this rational inquiry is actually predetermined opinion, bolstered by name calling, ad hominem attacks and insults. There is no real rational inquiry because there is no evidence that all of the facts were looked at neutrally to derive a conclusion. It appears the only facts considered were the ones that back their arguments. In its articles, the Grey Faction hides behind the name of science and rationality, when in reality it appears it is an advocacy organization used to discredit ritual abuse survivors realities’ and their resources.


Mesner’s work has critiqued D C Hammond’s research of the early 1990’s.
Copy of Hammond's speech:
http://www.empty-memories.nl/science/greenbaum.pdf
http://whale.to/b/greenbaum.html
https://www.youtube.com/   watch?v=9FUersarZuo  (remove spaces to cut and paste and watch video)


Propaganda (1928) by Edward Bernays

“….But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of cliches, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences. Not many years ago, it was only necessary to tag a political candidate with the word interests to stampede millions of people into voting against him, because anything associated with “the interests” seemed necessarily corrupt. Recently the word Bolshevik has performed a similar service for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of action.
By playing upon an old cliche, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass of group emotions. In Great Britain, during the war, the evacuation hospitals came in for a considerable amount of criticism because of the summary way in which they handled their wounded. It was assumed by the public that a hospital gives prolonged and conscientious attention to its patients. When the name was changed to evacuation posts the critical reaction vanished. No one expected more than an adequate emergency treatment from an institution so named. The cliche hospital was indelibly associated in the public mind with a certain picture. To persuade the public to discriminate between one type of hospital and another, to dissociate the cliche from the picture it evoked, would have been an impossible task. Instead, a new cliche automatically conditioned the public emotion toward these hospitals.”
http://www.historyisaweapon.org/defcon1/bernprop.html

The Grey Faction uses specific phrases repeated to describe my work and the work of researchers in our field. These include “delusional” “paranoid” and “dangerous state-of-mind.” One common concepts they promote is that our researchers “sell(ing) delusion to the mentally vulnerable.” Of course no one is selling anything, there is no presented evidence anyone is delusional (this is unsubstantiated opinion) and there is no presented evidence anyone is “vulnerable” or being taken advantage of in any way.

Unfortunately, others in our field have joined the Grey Faction in their attacks on me and the belief in mind control techniques. Remember that some of our best researchers, who will be speaking tomorrow at our conference have done years of research backing the validity of the use of cult hand signals and other forms of triggers to access survivors’ programming.

I believe that the work of the Grey Faction is meant to purposefully dehumanize and insult ideological opponents, so our ideas are derided and not believed. This is similar to the political cartoons and caricatures of one hundred years ago, when a political figure may be drawn in a demeaning manner. This is similar to the way dictatorships in history have demeaned their targets to gain public acceptance. These dishonest debate tactics go beyond simple ad hominems into personal insults. This is often seen by those in the comment sections below the articles attacking myself and others in our field.

Also from Bernay:
“THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.”

I disagree with Bernay for the need for our society to do this, but this is the society we live in today. This is why it is almost impossible to get our research into the mainstream media, but the occultists and false memory people have no problem getting large amounts of media coverage.

We can see common threads in attacks against child abuse survivors throughout history. Child abuse survivors have been called crazy, confused, hysterical, delusional and so on in attempts to maintain the status quo of child abuse being covered up in our society. Regardless of what the false memory occultists write, the reality is that they are part of this cover up. Instead of focusing on the factual information I write, I have been attacked personally in an attempt to silence me. It has not worked. Historically, when those that harass others win, our society suffers. They will not win. We will.