no future without forgiveness
i

The Ultimate Weapon

False Accusations

False Memories

The Ultimate Weapon
Just published: Eleanor Goldstein's hard-hitting book "Confabulations"
The past twenty years have seen explosive growth in the awareness of childhood sexual abuse, and in therapies to deal with the problem. The hallmark of these therapies has been the credo believe the victims" -- that such stories are always true and that absolute acceptance of their truth is necessary for healing.

Unfortunately, it has become clear that some stories of sexual abuse are confabulations -- alterations in memory produced from fantasy. This can happen for a variety of reasons, notably when therapists lead their patients by suggestive techniques such as guided fantasy and hypnosis

Confabulations is a series of case studies from the point of view of the parents involved It is opinionated, one-sided, and fairly polemical. It preaches against the New Age, feminists, John Bradshow, and even therapy. Yet it presents a point of view that has been silenced and silent Better books will be available later, but patients, parents, and therapists involved in sexual abuse treatments should read this book now. --Alfred Ehlenberger, M.D.

Our daughter told me that, when she went to therapy, the counselor told her right away,"I know just what's wrong with you. You were sexualy molested as a child." Our daughter said, "Oh, no. I'm sure I wasn't" But after more "therapy" from this woman, our daughter began believing it, and she thought it was so neat that her therapist knew right from the start what was wrong with her...

Last Christmas I sent her some shoes and she cut them all up, carved into the soles and sent them home. She thought she had to do that to keep from getting a demon. She thought we were putting a curse on her.

Confabulations Eleanor Goldstein and Kevin Farmer, 1992; 335 pp. ISBN 0-89777-144-3 $14.95 ($16.95 postpaid) from SIRS Books, P. O. Box 2348, Boca Raton, FL 33427; 800/232-7477 COPYRIGHT 1993 Point Foundation

ALSO see Mark Pendergrast, Victims of Memory. webpage on nasw.org.

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Library review of Goldstein's Confabulations
The pioneering critique of recovered memory therapy, Confabulations, remains one the best documented explanations of how "repressed memory therapy" has destroyed families. "Imagine what it is like to have the person you have loved, nurtured, idolized - your CHILD - suddenly turn against you and accuse you of the most horrendous crimes imaginable," writes Goldstein. "That is what is happening in the U.S. today." In their own words, distraught parents tell a horrifying tale that becomes all too familiar by the end of the book. A successful, intelligent adult daughter or son goes to a therapist with a problem - perhaps about marriage, children, an inexplicable illness, an eating disorder. She or he emerges from therapy with the belief that all of his or her problems are related to childhood sexual abuse. And after perhaps the first accusing a babysitter, a cousin, a family friend or a teacher, the parent is almost inevitably accused, not allowed to present a defense, abandoned. In many cases, the parents are sued and even imprisoned - based on "memories" recovered through hypnosis, dream analysis or other pseudoscientific methods. Experts on memory know that memory is not infallible. The more distant in time a memory becomes, the more fragmented it becomes. Memory can be contaminated by later events, by what a person sees, hears or reads. Childhood memories, especially repressed memories, are often confabulations - a mixture of fact and fantasy. Confabulations is the first book to describe the emergence of this controversial issue, has helped thousands of parents and professionals come to grips with this monumental tragedy.

Goldstein, the founder of the Social Issues Resources Series (SIRS) in 1973, suspects that countless adults who undergo therapy come to the mistaken belief that they have been sexually molested by their parents. Unduly influenced by therapists and others, these adults confabulate vivid memories of events that never occurred. Ultimately, families are destroyed. Tragedies such as these indeed occur, and this phenomenon is a side of the child abuse story that needs to be explored. However, a subject as sensitive as this demands objectivity and strong documentation. Unfortunately, this book is a highly subjective denouncement of John Bradshaw (author of Bradshaw on the Family and Healing the Shame That Binds You , both Health Communications, Inc., 1988), Ellen Bass ( The Courage To Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse , LJ 5/15/88), and the feminist and New Age movements. Most of the evidence purporting to demonstrate that ``an epidemic of false accusations is occurring'' is anecdotal and one-sided, culled from more than 500 responses to an 800 telephone number. Although this book uncovers a potentially important problem, it offers too little documentation to be recommended. Goldstein received the ALA's Intellectual Freedom To Read Foundation Roll of Honor Award in 1992.--Ed. January Adams, Somerville P.L., N.J. Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Rape Accusations in the Old South

Susan Brownmiller quotes Freudian psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch, as expressed in Psychology of Women. To wit:

Rape fantasies often have such irresistible verisimilitude that even the most experienced judges are misled in trials of innocent men accused of rape by hysterical women. My own experience of accounts by white women of rape by Negroes (who are subjected to terrible penalties as a result of these accusations) has convinced me that many fantastic stories are produced by the masochistic yearnings of these women.

Emmett Till Murder
What 's really RAPE?

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No Future Without Forgiveness

Those Mean Nuns Left Scars on My Soul

Canada: woman found guilty of abusing children: Lucille Poulin, the leader of a religious community in Prince Edward Island and a former nun was given an eight month jail sentence and three years probation for abusing children under her care. No longer a nun, she is not to care for or live with children under the age of 12 during her period of probation. Ms. Poulin believes that children needed to have the Devil beaten out of them in order to save them from eternal torture in hell. Her group started in 1984 near Westlock, AB. They moved to Prince Edward Island in 1995 after social workers in Alberta obtained a supervision order to monitor the children. Life for children in the commune was filled with violence. They would be beaten for such minor infractions as "laughing, sneaking a cookie, even falling asleep." Sister Poulin was responsible for most of the beatings. However, she had one of the men whip the children if she felt that she was not strong enough to administer sufficiently powerful blows. After sentencing, she commented: "I want to say at this point that the blood of those children are not on my hands anymore. I thank God that I have been faithful to the mandate God gave me. I chose to abide in his word. And he said if you continue in my word, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. He is my beloved, and I am in love with him, and I want to obey God rather than man.... Everyone will answer for what they do and say. I go free with the joy of the Lord in my heart." The judge concluded that requiring her to go to counseling would be unproductive. Poulin's case received national newspaper coverage in Canada during her trial.

BELOW: Represents Prayerful Nun    

Giving Religion a Fair Break

Noted UK atheist Richard Dawkins' unexpected
defense of the Catholic church by an atheist

All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affection for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless if, fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience).

The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of retrospective opprobrium. For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can't help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America.

We should be aware of the remarkable power of the mind to concoct false memories, especially when abetted by unscrupulous therapists or mercenary lawyers. The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown great courage, in the face of spiteful, vested interests, in demonstrating how easy it is for people to concoct memories that are entirely false but which seem, to the victim, every bit as real as true ones.

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Doubt (the Movie)
Related Links

False Memory (FMS) reading list
Creating False Memories (Elizabeth Loftus)
Elizabeth Loftus : who is this courageous woman?
FMS - referenced clinical sources bibliography
Foster father accused and convicted -- FALSELY
The new inquisition -- falsely accusing the innocent without cause
The retractors -- when conscience finally kicks in (for the truth)
The courage to heal - holistic and heartfelt
Site has a bibliography of pertinent references
Falsely accused priests as scapegoat-victims
THE WORLD MUST KNOW: Friends of Father Gordon MacRae
Wenatchee Lessons: the evil power of bearing false witness
False Allegations of Child Abuse (orthodox based site)   Or see
Falsely accused priest : Father Urbain Grandier (Loudun)
Robt Sheaffer: Potiphar's wife is still making false accusations
TUTU: gospel truth there's no future without forgiveness
Greedy plaintiffs and lawyers could bankrupt America's Churches
Called the offscouring of earth : sexual accusation of Christ's church
Letters document corporal punishment in religious schools
Flogged for God: many churches endorse corporal discipline lickings
Network 54 [discussions relative to school corporal punishment]
CORPUN: "For your own good" - Twill make you a better person
Erotic Dangers of Spanking Memories - Steven R. Meyer
I'm all for it - whippings and floggings (Church schools)
False accusations being repudiated by those impugned
Netherlands news item : religious accused
Ireland abuse case goes to trial and sentencing
No denying, abuse really happened at times
When pastors and other authority figures are bullies
Were the 'Good Ol Days' really all that good?
Story of School Strapping on Bottom (from UK)
Taking your licks: the moral value of discipline
Masochistic sexual dangers of spanking memories
Not funny: sarcasm and satire (Snot helpful)

forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet
sheds on the heel that has crushed just it!

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High Standards
I am grateful for my
Catholic education

Georgetown University (Washington DC)
College of Arts and Sciences, 1991

Les Chrétiens Américains citent avec empressement dans la Bible, les proverbes du genre « qui aime bien chátie bien », mais passent sous silence des versets entiers du Deutéronome qui ordonnent des chátiments corporels très durs pour les pour les hommes adultes.

In the Koran it is a severe punishable offense to bear false witness against another person. It is far more than simply (spilling the beans) indiscretion -- or bringing a scandal on someone's good name. OH NO. It is the falseness, the fact that Allah himself is thus involved. Thus, the Islamic requirement that a lone wolf testimony just doesn't get it. Four corroborating witnesses must come forward, otherwise, those who bring unsubstantiated (false) testimony will themselves pay the price -- ie, a severe flogging. It is a bit like, what the person hoped to dish out to their victim, instead gets dished out to them! I suspect a brutal flogging for say, eighty lashes or so, might give someone a little something to think about.   [Could we learn from Islamic traditionalism?]

The Last Acceptable Prejudice?

Philip Jenkins, an Episcopalian and Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University, published the 1996 book Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis in which he claims that the Catholic Church is being unfairly singled out by a secular media which he claims fails to highlight similar sexual scandals in other religious groups, such as the Anglican Communion, various Protestant churches, and the Jewish and Islamic communities. He also claims that the Catholic Church may have a lower incidence of molesting priests than Churches that allow married clergy because statistically child molestation generally occurs within families but Latin-rite Catholic priests do not have families, and the Catholic Church only allows married priests in a few of its rites. He also claims that the term "pedophile priests" widely used in the media, implies a distinctly higher rate of child molesters within the Catholic priesthood when in reality the incidence is lower than most other segments of society". See Michael Coren's blunt new book: Why Catholics are RIGHT

Julie Walters: memories of abuse - On the Clive Anderson chat show British actress Julie Walters admitted being "beaten" on the bottom by nuns in her schooldays. Julie was telling Anderson how the nuns at her school reacted to her northern accent and at the same time she was holding out her hand and acting out taking some whacks on it. Anderson asked her: "So you were beaten by nuns?" Julie replied: "Yes." Julie later attended Holly Lodge grammar school and according to one of my site contributors she was caned on the backside. Julie was eventually expelled from Holly Lodge. In an article in The Sunday Mercury, Birmingham, England, January 30 2005, it was mentioned that Julie was caned at her strict Roman Catholic school in Birmingham, England. Text from article: Julie Walters goes back to school this week, for a drama which brought back memories of her own education. And not all of her memories were pleasant. She hated the private, convent-run primary school in Edgbaston, where she was caned by the nuns.

Solent mendaces luere poenas malefici

see painting by Adam Johan Braun, Le doux châtiment