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15 December 2008

• It appears that in about mid-to-late November, hackers using sophisticated password-cracking software managed to break the FTP password for StopBadTherapy.com and inserted hostile JavaScript redirect code on to the home page. They also uploaded some PHP scripts. The site has been cleaned. All files on the site were deleted and restored from an archived backup copy. The FTP passwords have been radically strengthened and will be changed periodically going forward. We apologize for any inconvenience! Here are some general security recommendations. Web site administrators should use very, very long complicated FTP passwords and change them periodically. Internet users should be sure to keep their browsers and operating systems up to date to make sure they are protected against old exploits. If on Windows, they should also be sure to run up-to-date antivirus software.
  

• I am sad to report that Jack Collier, the former longtime head of the South Bay Chapter of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, recently passed away after a long and courageous battle with cancer. Jack was falsely accused by his daughter of sexual abuse in 1992 based on "repressed memories" she "recovered" during therapy, long before the public generally understood that such claims are scientifically groundless and completely unreliable. Fortunately, at trial the jury took less than 90 minutes to acquit him of all charges. Thereafter he founded and energetically led the South Bay Chapter of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation for many years, providing desperately needed support and understanding to other innocent victims. Tragically, although it took a jury less than 90 minutes to realize his daughter's charges were false, after more than 10 years his daughter never did and he passed away without the joy of reconciliation, like so many other innocent victims of this epidemic. Jack, thanks for being a lighthouse in the storm for the rest of us when we were alone on the tossing seas. Here's to you.
• I've created a discussion newsgroup, the Yahoo! eGroup "StopBadTherapy," on this site to enable visitors to post and respond to community messages. To cut down on spam postings, I've set it so that only registered members of Yahoo! eGroups can post messages, but remember that anyone can join Yahoo! eGroup "StopBadTherapy"  for free. The group is unmoderated and anyone is free to post messages. Messages must be on topic (FMS, claims of repressed/recovered memories, therapy, etc.), free of obscene language, and generally consistent with Usenet etiquette. I'll delete messages that violate those rules, but I won't censor based on opinion. If you want to be free to post without filling your email inbox with all the group's messages, set your Yahoo! eGroups preferences so that you read messages "on the site" and don't have the messages forwarded to you personally. Have at it!
• David Corwin's cherished case study of "Jane Doe," which he claimed for years was proof of the existence of repressed and recovered memories, has been comprehensively debunked thanks to the hard work of (no surprise!) Elizabeth Loftus and her colleague Mel Guyer in Who Abused Jane Doe? The Hazards of the Single Case Study: Part 1 and Part 2. By debunking this chestnut that had found its way into courtrooms and university classrooms (and incidentally, catching a whole raft of ostensibly eminent psychologists and psychiatrists forgetting everything research has shown, presuming to subjectively judge a story's veracity after viewing a videotape, and credulously endorsing the claims of memory recovery), Dr. Loftus and Dr. Guyer have done the world a great service. Unfortunately, they were immediately subjected to a harsh sneak attack by recovered memory aficionados (as detailed in The High Cost of Skepticism) that makes the Spanish Inquisition look fair by comparison. This exercise in intellectual sloppiness and academic McCarthyism has required me to add a whole new rogues' gallery to the Experts Debunked section of the web site.
  
• Worse, the psudonymous "Jane Doe" of the story, Nicole Taus, has chosen to reveal her identity by filing a spurious lawsuit against everyone who debunked this story while so carefully keeping her identity a secret, including Elizabeth Loftus, Mel Guyer, Carol Tavris, the University of Washington, Shapiro Investigation, the Skeptical Inquirer, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, the publisher of Skeptical Inquirer). I'd encourage anyone who cares about academic integrity, freedom, or the First Amendment to help pay for their legal defense by making a tax-deductible donation to CSICOP by using the link on the CSICOP home page or this one here:
  
  

March 20, 2002

• The StopBadTherapy.com Truth Squad gave Ellen Bass a "warm welcome" for her recent appearance at the Bookshop Santa Cruz. The turnout to hear her read poetry was quite poor, but volunteers picketed both entrances and distributed over 300 protest fliers to passerby, bookshop patrons, and attendees explaining that bad therapy kills and debunking the myths promoted by the Courage to Heal. Ellen Bass probably expected to spend the evening basking in praise for her latest scribblings but instead found herself facing a well-prepared audience, about half of whom were holding fliers asking "How many more women must die before Ellen Bass will withdraw The Courage to Heal from publication and apologize for the harm she has done?" If anyone overlooked the protest or the fliers, it was fortunately brought to their attention by one of her co-panelists, a model citizen who felt compelled to brag about how she spat on a flier on the way in; this bit of chutzpah moved at least one audience member to walk out of the reading and ask us more questions. (Thanks for the free publicity, ma'am, and we've got more fliers where that one came from!) Pleasantly, even in Ellen Bass's own home town, the response from passerby was overwhelmingly positive. We can't bring the victims of so-called memory recovery therapy back to life, but we can warn others to try to reduce the number of deaths going forward. We look forward to the opportunities for further public education that her future appearances will provide! Are Ellen Bass or Laura Davis speaking in your area? Copy our fliers, bad therapy kills and myths, and help spread the word!

• I'm pleased to add another never-before-published retractor story to StopBadTherapy.com, Jaye D. Bartha's How My Psychiatrist Became Daddy. Many thanks to Jaye and all other retractors who have had the courage to step forward and document their stories to prevent future therapeutic tragedies and perhaps lead other victims of bad therapy to realize the true cause of their problems.

• Look Ma, no framesets! I'm pleased to announce that after five months of steady page editing, StopBadTherapy.com at last has gotten the visual design makeover that I always wanted but never had the time to produce before. This new version should improve lots of things: search engines will index the site more thoroughly; it should be easier to navigate; the color scheme is an improvement; the navigation bar takes less space; and there are other things I'll now be able to do on the site that were never possible before. If you find broken links or pages that don't display/don't look good in a particular browser, let me know. The files for the old version are still available, but will no longer be maintained and will ultimately be taken down.

• Check out the new Site Map for StopBadTherapy.com! The site map lists almost every page on the site and will hopefully make it even easier to find pages you're looking for.
• Sadly, America has succeeded in exporting its problems of bad therapy and false memories to plague other countries, but I'm happy to report two new web sites in Europe raising awareness of the problem and fighting back:
• In France, FranceFMS.com is a new site about False Memory Syndrome founded by a couple who looked for French-language information about FMS on the web and, finding none, decided to create their own web site!
• In the United Kingdom, VEX the Campaign for the Registration and Regulation of Counsellors and Therapists is an online support group (including a telephone contact number) for victims of bad therapy anywhere in the English-speaking world, particularly for those in the U.K. who wish to network and work together for effective regulation of therapy there.

• This just in from the "totally obvious unless you're on the board of the American Psychological Association" department: REGARDLESS OF AGE, CHILDREN SUSCEPTIBLE TO FALSE REPORTS OF EXPERIENCES  WHEN GIVEN MISINFORMATION BY PARENTS, SAYS LATEST RESEARCH: More Evidence That Children Can Be Unreliable As Witnesses In Forensic Investigations . (Read the full article .) No, really? Do tell. I guess I'm grateful that the same organization that has spent a decade trying to avoid taking an unambiguous position on memory  recovery therapy is at least shining some light on the otherwise well-known phenomenon of children's succeptibility to suggestion, but it's still amazing that the American Psychological Association considers this "news" in the year 2001. The suggestibility of children has been well-documented both anecdotally and experimentally for decades. I have to wonder whether it will take the American Psychological Association until 2011 to generalize this conclusion to other authority figures besides parents such as police officers, social workers, etc., and until 2021 to see the connection between this research and the testimony of abuse in underground  tunnels,  by robots, and in hot-air balloons that was elicited from helpless children during the long-discredited McMartin and Fells Acres day-care trials of the early nineties. Child abuse is indeed a real problem, and children can provide testimony that's vital to convicting actual perpetrators. But because children--and even some adults!--are highly succeptible to suggestion,  interviewers in investigations must take the utmost care to avoid suggesting answers to interviewees! Anyone who through haste, ignorance, or overzealousness fails to do so risks eliciting false accusations against innocent people (and sending the innocent to prison) or eliciting discrediting testimony from actual victims of abuse (and making it impossible to convict the guilty). If you aren't familiar with research findings on unconscious and inadvertent suggestion through tone of voice or body language, you shouldn't be interviewing subjects in criminal investigations. Gerald Amirault is still languishing in a Massachusetts prison because  of precisely this problem. Suppose the APA will mail a copy to the prosecutors who still think that his family had robots abuse children and placed knives  into their rectums without leaving a trace--or the governor who has so far failed  to pardon him and end this travesty of justice?

• Another courageous retractor has stepped forward to tell the world about a nightmarish journey through so-called "memory recovery therapy." Lisa from Central Illinois writes that "With the help of yet another therapist, I saw that I had indeed been abused.  But not by my parents.  I had suffered 4 years of abuse at the hands of my therapist, the staff at the hospital, and even colleagues who believed that if a psychologist said I was ill, I must be. My life lay in ruins in front of me.  My life savings was gone. My physical health had taken a beating.  My professional reputation was a shambles ... Still, I’m better off than the two women in my Survivor’s Group who committed suicide." Receiving a new retractor story is always a bittersweet experience for me. It's sad to learn of yet another shattered life, yet it's inspring to see the courage of those who step forward to speak out against injustice. How many more innocents must die before the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association will accept that we need informed consent to protect patients from incompetent and irresponsible therapists?

• If you subscribed to the old MindIt! notification service that told you when this page changed, please click here to join stopbadtherapy-updates, our new Yahoo! eGroups newsletter that will let you know every time this page changes. This replaces the old NetMind MindIt! notification service for this page, which is no longer free and will stop working. (I'm leaving it on this page temporarily so that it hopefully continues to work long enough that you get this message.) Only Eric Krock can post messages to stopbadtherapy-updates, so you won't receive spam or messages from other list members. If you ever change your mind, you can just use these links to subscribe and unsubscribe from the list.
• Sorry for the prolonged absence from StopBadTherapy.com; in the rest of my life, I shipped two products, went on sabbatical for six weeks, and took a new job at a startup. Whew!
• Some great new web sites and pages to report:
•   The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases is a new report from the Department of Justice documenting that from 1991 to 1998, the number of reported cases of child sex abuse has dropped 26%, and the number of substantiated cases of child sex abuse dropped 31% from 1992 to 1998. The report offers a number of possible explanations for this change, including the possibility that the public and professionals have become more conservative in the identification of possible signs of sexual abuse. (Read: the number of false accusations of child sex abuse may hopefully be dropping as the day care hysteria and memory recovery fad of the late 80s and early 90s ebbs, and as police interviewing techniques hopefully improve in their wake.) Child sex abuse is a real and tragic problem, but misinterpreting unrelated things as signs of abuse and falsely accusing innocent people helps no one and diverts valuable police and child protection service resources from investigating cases of real abuse and prosecuting actual offenders. The full text of the report can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat or HTML format from the  OJJDP Publications - Child Protection page.
• Speaking of false accusations of child sex abuse, read about the tragic case of Bruce Perkins, who remains in prison in Texas based on bizarre, incredible, and unsubstantiated accusations. Calling his prosecution a witch hunt would be an injustice to witch hunts. Unfortunately, his case is by no means unique. Read about other Dubious Accusations and Convictions on the excellent home page maintained by Robert Chatelle.

• Two great new web sites to report!
• Steven Hassan, the author of  Combatting Cult Mind Control, has published a new book,  Releasing the Bonds, which although not perfect is even better than his previous work and offers excellent insights for families with loved ones they hope to liberate from the bonds of False Memory Syndrome. (I'll post a full review Real Soon Now.) He has started an accompanying web site,  http://www.freedomofmind.org/ , which contains information on a variety of cults including memory recovery therapy.
• A courageous retractor who once believed she was a victim of satanic ritual abuse (but does no longer) has started  http://www.witchhunt.org/ to accompany the mailing list by the same name. Check it out!

• Another "memory recovery therapist" has lost her license to practice! It's the usual story: a Colorado Springs woman sought therapy for an unrelated condition (shyness), and wound up believing that "she was a high priestess in a Satanic cult who was being stalked and 'remembered' she had given birth to two children as an adolescent, one of whom was ritualistically killed." Sound familiar? It should; the woman is reading from the same script as the clients of Bennett Braun and Judith Peterson, among others. She's also reading from the same script as other clients of Hardie, a third of whom claim to be victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse. (This therapist and her clients are apparently unaware that the myth of satanic ritual abuse was debunked years ago.) Fortunately, this woman's husband had the courage to inform authorities, and counselor Laura Hardie, who has a master's degree in counseling from Colorado Christian University, has surrendered her license to practice. Unfortunately, as was the case for clients of Bennett Braun and Judith Peterson , a family was devastated, and the woman still believes her delusions. How many more clients must be exploited and innocent families must be shattered before licensing boards will strip the licenses of all therapists who use these discredited, dangerous techniques and American professional organizations will take clear, unambiguous stands against bogus therapies?

• StopBadTherapy.com is pleased to host in streaming audio format some of the speeches from the April 2000 "Memory and Reality: Return to Reason" family conference of the FMSF Foundation. Hosting of these speeches has been made possible by anonymous donations. Visit the streaming audio page and hear all the good news from the front lines of the memory wars!

• Now, what about all the innocent people your members drove to suicide or put in prison?  The American Psychiatric Association has issued an updated position statement, Therapies Focused on Memories of Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse . (It's in PDF format; you'll need the free Adobe Acrobat viewer to read it.) As with the previous statements, its contents have clearly been dictated by internal APA political compromises and the desire to protect members from lawsuits rather than by any principled dedication to scientific findings or to patient safety, welfare, and rights. (After all, basing your treatment techniques on scientific research findings rules out so many entertaining ways to waste an hour of your client's time and money, and taking responsibility for your actions and your results isn't any fun at all!) It's a pale shadow of the stance taken by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. But it does contain this interesting statement: "When asked to provide expert opinion involving memories of abuse, psychiatrists should refrain from making public statements about the historical accuracy of individual patients' uncorroborated reports of new memories based on observations made in psychotherapy." In other words: remember all those psychiatrists in the 80s and 90s who swore under oath that in their "expert opinion," their patients' recovered memories were historically accurate, so therefore the accused should go to prison or pay a civil settlement? The APA finally admitted that they really shouldn't have done that. Oops! Sorry ... This raises some obvious questions: What about all the people like Gerald Amirault who such testimony sent to prison? What about all the clients and falsely accused family members who committed suicide because of such misguided therapies? Will the APA spring them from prison, give back their lives, or raise them from the dead? And what reforms will the APA put in place to prevent future epidemics of untested therapy and miscarriages of justice? Well, half a loaf is better than none. Congratulations and thanks to all StopBadTherapy.com visitors who have sent letters to the APA demanding action! I'll update the site's form letter to them shortly so it demands a commitment to informed consent as well as a clear, unqualified commitment to patient rights and patient protection.
• Go ahead and use harmful therapy techniques; just don't wind up in the New York Times. Bennett Braun (of "handcuffs and a gun" fame and the $10.6 million settlement) has finally been expelled by the Illinois Psychiatric Society and the American Psychiatric Association. Congratulations to Pat Burgus for having the courage to see her lawsuit and her complaint through to successful conclusions! We need to keep in mind, however, that Bennett Braun should justly consider himself the "sacrificial lamb" thrown to the wolves by these groups in the interest of distracting public attention from the fact that thousands of other psychiatrists used the exact same techniques he did, and they are still practicing today! Moral of the story: if you're an American psychiatrist, you're free to use untested, unsafe, and downright harmful techniques so long as you don't embarrass your colleages by winding up on the front page of the New York Times due to a $10.6 million settlement. What does this "OK so long as you stay out of the Times " standard say about the morals of the mental health industry as a whole?
• Truth is Stranger than Fiction. Judith Peterson's husband tells people to visit StopBadTherapy.com in an article in Treating Abuse Today? No, I am not making this up. His article "Call to Arms" in the current issue is a detailed two-page review of StopBadTherapy.com. Michael Peterson writes: "Since its inception, the web site has gotten more sophisticated in its layout and capability. In fact it evokes grudging admiration in me for its organization. Eric Krock, the owner of the web site, has put a lot of effort into pulling a vast amount of information in an easy-to-use form for single-issue people .... I encourage you to visit the website." (p. 5) Needless to say, Peterson isn't endorsing SBT.com's content or its position on issues like informed consent or testing for safety and effectiveness; his theme is that "the leadership of the DID field" will have to be equally active in promoting its point of view. Maybe they should put that leader of the DID field Bennett Braun to work as their spokesman? I hear he's got time on his hands these days ...
• Pardon Our Dust! I finally fixed the hit counter; thanks to those of you who wrote to complain! I switched to a different counting service and initialized the new counter to the value the last time I recorded it (25365 on 5 May), so actually the tally is missing about six weeks of hits. (A rare example of a web site understating its hit count ...) Also, I've updated the licensing boards page with many submissions; thanks to all of you who wrote in with information!

• I've added a new Welcome To APA Members .

• Good news! Last summer my sister began sending letters to my mother. Then she began sending letters to my mother and father together, and just this week I received my first letter from her since she entered "therapy." (Dear sister, if you ever read this, I love you, thank you for your wonderful letters, and it is wonderful to hear from you again!) I will continue to protect my sister's privacy and will not broadcast details of her situation or her life over the Internet, but in brief, she has not retracted; she says that she does not wish to discuss the past, but rather to focus on the present, and my family respects her wish. It is enough that she has returned to our lives, and her letters, each one warmer than the last, are a source of great joy in our lives. We have hope for the future, and the increasing number of families in which reconciliations after False Memory Syndrome are occurring are a source of hope for all who have been affected by this epidemic of scientific illiteracy and professional irresponsibility and incompetence. But no family will be safe until the mental health industry is reformed to protect consumers and require that therapies, like medicines, be tested for safety and effectiveness. Until that happens, it is only a matter of time before the next untested therapy fad spreads like wildfire and devastates another generation of innocent families. When will psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers care enough about their clients' welfare to reform their industries to "first, do no harm" and swear off the easy money and false promises of therapies never tested for safety and effectiveness?
• Another streaming audio speech: a presentation by Pamela Freyd on Picking Up the Pieces: Family Reconciliation. This speech was presented at the British False Memory Society conference in May 1999. Thanks again to the British False Memory Society for providing the needed videotape!

• Two more streaming audio speeches: an update from R. Chris Barden and an overview of the Canadian False Memory Experience by Alan D. Gold. Both were presented at the British False Memory Society conference in May 1999. Thanks to the British False Memory Society for providing the needed videotape!

• Now for something really cool--streaming audio speeches come to StopBadTherapy.com! With the freely downloadable RealPlayer plug-in, now you can listen to Rev. Tom Rutherford and his family  tell their tragic and triumphant story in their own voices! You can also listen to the audio from the FMS Foundation's introductory video False Memory Syndrome , and you can listen to R. Chris Barden's presentation on family law malpractice from the 1997 Memory and Reality conference. If you have any problems, use the streaming audio help page. SBT.com will be adding new speeches as quickly as possible!

• Here's a new essay in response to an inquiry I get frequently from both therapists and members of the public:  "What is 'Good Therapy?'"
• I've gathered some of the feedback about StopBadTherapy.com into a new page, What People are Saying About StopBadTherapy.com .

• Some therapists claim that therapies can't be tested for safety and effectiveness. They're wrong. In response to a query from a visitor to StopBadTherapy.com, I have posted a list of Therapies Tested and Found to Be Safe and Effective. Interestingly, this visitor learned of the site on an audiotape about professional ethics. It's pleasing to see that StopBadTherapy.com is gradually working its way into communications among therapists. The first step towards solving a problem is admitting that it exists.

• Martha Churchill has published an excellent essay,  "Junk Science Invades Psychiatry," in the Detroit News. In it, she profiles notorious memory recovery therapy promoters Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., and Bennett Braun, M.D. Apparently van der Kolk's memory recovery business must have fallen on hard times, because he has now taken up promoting a new form of quackery, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. (People often ask me why I don't add stories about other kinds of bad therapy besides so-called memory recovery. The answer? There are far too many to keep track of.) SBT.com will keep you posted on Dr. van der Kolk and his continuing efforts to waste the time and money of the mentally ill!

• In a belated victory for free speech and the exposure of governmental and social worker incompetence, the Nottinghamshire County Council in the UK has lifted an injunction which had suppressed the publication on the web of the JET Report from the Broxtowe Files web site. The  JET Report was the conclusions of a Joint Enquiry Team (half police, half social workers) that was formed to investigate lurid tales of sexual and satanic ritual abuse being told by some young children in foster care. Their report revealed that nearly every statement made by the children that could be verified true or false turned out to be false, the children were asked leading questions by foster parents who had been briefed on "Satanic Indicators" by a poorly trained social worker using materials from the United States. Chillingly, the report went on to predict that if presentations about ritual abuse by and to social workers were not stopped, there was a risk that a "witch hunt" would develop in the UK. Unfortunately, the report was sealed and kept secret for seven years. During that time, the report's worst fears were realized as a satanic panic spread through the UK, fed by misinformation from the United States, and there were multiple, disastrous cases of hysterical false accusations followed by incompetent investigations that tore innocent families apart. Truly it is said, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
• The British False Memory Society has set up an elegant web site. It includes  Twelve Myths about False Memories and a  Therapist of the Month page that would be funny if the consequences of therapeutic incompetence were not so tragic.

• Help fight False Memory Syndrome by writing book reviews on Amazon.Com and BarnesAndNoble.com. Our new Write Book Reviews page includes links to the web pages for submitting reviews for forty-five books--both the books that are perpetuating the problem and those that are resolving it. Just click and type to make a difference, and even if you don't have time to write a detailed review, give the book a star rating to influence the "average reader rating!"

•  Salon.com has published one of the best articles I've seen anywhere,  "False memory syndrome: As women bring lawsuits, therapists are having to pay for their mistakes." This is particularly encouraging because Salon.com is overall a rather liberal publication. It appears that editors at "progressive" publications are waking up to the fact that memory recovery therapy is one of the worst injustices ever perpetrated on women, not to mention innocent family relations of both genders.

• Bennett Braun, M.D., has surrendered his license to practice medicine for two years in a plea bargain with the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation! As part of the agreement, he will have to show the original complaint against him to any future employers. I don't want to be overoptimistic, but the $10.6 million settlement against him, the loss of his license, and the complaint together may make it difficult for him to find work in psychiatry going forward, preventing further harm to additional patients.
• Want to see how Judith Peterson , Ph.D. (mis)treats her patients? Read these online transcripts of her therapy sessions that became public during the course of her trial. (Note: Peterson continues to practice today, and her licensing board has done nothing.)
• Cornerstone Magazine has published "Lauren Stratford: From Satanic Ritual Abuse to Jewish Holocaust Survivor," a debunking of the recent re-emergence of Lauren Stratford as a purported Holocaust survivor. Cornerstone had already debunked her book Satan's Underground, an account of her recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse, in their earlier article "Satan's Sideshow: The True Lauren Stratford Story."  Binjamin Wilkomirski claimed to have remembered her from a concentration camp.
• Guideposts will feature an article about the Rutherford family in their January, 2000 issue. To order a copy, send a check for $1.20 to Customer Service, Guideposts, 39 Seminary Hill Road, Carmel, NY 10512.

• The publisher of Fragments, Schocken Books, withdrew hard copies from bookstores in September and suspended publication of paperbacks in October, conceding that the purportedly autobiographical account of the Holocaust was in fact a fantasy. So much for Binjamin Wilkomirski's recovered memories!

• must practice psychology only under the supervision of a licensed psychologist,
• shall obtain therapy from a licensed psychologist whose name has been provided to her by the Board's Complaint Resolution Committee

• Great news on the legal front: $850,000 jury award against Juan Fernandez III, M.D., for negligence in his diagnosis of MPD and treatment of Joan Hess. Read the Wausau Daily Herald articles, the article "Verdict could affect the use of hypnosis", and a related press release

• SBT.com is pleased to publish "How a Christian Therapist Caused MPD and False Memories of SRA," an original, never-before-published story of a retractor who was led by a "Christian therapist" to believe that she suffered from multiple personality disorder and that this was because she had been the victim of satanic ritual abuse at a day care center as a child. Today she writes: "I have a hard time believing SRA exists at all. That is not to say that all those hurting people aren't legitimately hurt. I just hesitate to accept the SRA explanation. And I don't believe that the patients are lying or making it up, any more than I was. Just that it is being put into a framework that they have been given, in a sincere effort to heal. My best friend also came to retract her SRA belief later in therapy, as have many other people I know. My goal is to give us a voice, because we are shouted down and silenced every time we try to speak our pain, and we deserve healing too. I lost a lot due to FMS and I need to be able to speak about it."

SBT.com is pleased to publish:

• My Sister's Therapy, an account by a woman whose half-sister went down the slippery slope of bad therapy into the trap of literal dream interpretation, false memories of satanic ritual abuse, and obsession with "recovering repressed memories" of events that never happened. How many more families must be destroyed before therapists will care enough about clients to test their techniques for safety, let alone effectiveness?
• My Friend Rudy, an account by retractor Deborah David of the experience of Rudy Laubscher, a friend who recently passed away
• MPD Misdiagnosis, an account by a retractor who was misdiagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder
• The Dedication, an account by Rev. Tom Rutherford of another family's experience

• Anyone who ever placed any faith in Renee Fredrickson, Ph.D., her theories of memory repression and recovery, or her book Repressed Memories : A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse should read  BEFORE THE MINNESOTA BOARD OF PSYCHOLOGY: STIPULATION AND CONSENT ORDER In the Matter of Renee Fredrickson, Ph.D., L.P.. The headlines tell the story: "Failure to Inform Clients of Licensee's Use of Innovative or Newly Emerging Services and Techniques, Including Risks," "Exhibiting Signs of a Possible Mental Dysfunction," "Failure to Obtain Informed Written Consent to Disclose Private Information," "Unprofessional Conduct; Failure to Maintain Boundaries" ... The scandal is twofold: that an individual so gravely impaired could achieve so much influence over the mental health industry for so long, and that after such documented malpractice she has been allowed to continue to practice with supervision and a $15,000 fine. The licensing boards are toothless indeed if this is the most they can do in the face of such extraordinary incompetence and disregard for patient safety.

• 20/20 has run an excellent expose of a murder conviction of a minor based on a coerced and apparently false confession,  A Child's Confession. This highlights again the ease with which adults can coerce or suggest children to say things which are not true--even that the child committed a murder!--and the need for law enforcement personnel and mental health providers to avoid coercing or suggesting false accusations and false confessions.

• StopBadTherapy.com hosts an original, never-before-published family story, My Daughter's Story.

• StopBadTherapy.com hosts Mark Pendergrast's  letter to the editor of the New Yorker  in response to Philip Gourevitch's article "The Memory Thief."

• StopBadTherapy.com is mentioned in the cover article of the June 14th New Yorker magazine article by Philip Gourevitch on Fragments by Binjamin Wilkomirski. In "The Memory Thief," Gourevitch writes on pp. 59-60: "Since 'Fragments' was published, Wilkomirski and Bernstein have shared the billing at several psychotherapy conferences in Vienna as the authors of a paper on the historical verification of early traumatic memories, which contends that 'the question of whether there is actual truth in the client's early-childhood memories is irrelevant for the psychotherapist.' (A critical discussion of their ideas was posted for a time [emphasis added] at a Web site called StopBadTherapy.com.)" Note: This is an error by Gourevitch! The critical discussion by Mark Pendergrast and the English translation of the Die Weltwoche expose have been posted here on StopBadTherapy.com continuously since January and February, respectively.

• Want to be emailed whenever we add something new to StopBadTherapy.com? Enter your email address in the "Receive email when this page changes" box at the top of this page and click the button. NetMind will automatically send you an email each time this page changes!

• StopBadTherapy.com hosts an original, never-before-published retractor story,  A Retractor's Letter to Steven Hassan.

• CBS News 48 Hours has run an expose of the notorious Fells Acre Day Care trial. Gerald Amirault has spent 14 years in prison after being convicted in a trial based that included ludicrous charges of sexual abuse by a clown in a "magic room" and child pornography, even though no evidence of the alleged crimes was ever found. The only "evidence" was statements extracted from a few young children in lengthy, highly suggestive, coercive interviews. All of the adults at the day care testified that no abuse took place. His sister Sheryl and mother Violette, who were also convicted, have since had their convictions overturned, and the judge in that case ruled that the children's testimony had been permanently, irremediably tainted. Even so, Gerald remains in prison, separated from his wife and children, and Sheryl is actually facing a possible retrial as prosecutors stubbornly refuse to admit the obvious: they convicted an innocent man, his sister, and his mother of crimes which never occurred. How much longer must an innocent man remain behind bars?

StopBadTherapy.com hosts excerpts from Survivor Psychology: The Dark Side of a Mental Health Mission by Susan Smith.

•  "Six Categories of Misconceptions About Body Memories"
•  "Constructing Evidence Using the Survivor Logic Formula"
•  "'True Believer' Logic"
•  "Soft Sell Tactics: Exploiting Neurosis--Constructing 'Evidence'"
•  "Profile of therapists who participated in the survey"
•  "Partial Results of the Structured Interview Survey Regarding 'Body Memories'"
•  "Survivor Logic and the Sale of Dissociative Disorders"
•  "Partial Results from the survey of 38 therapists from the Phoenix area"

Two new articles hosted from the Vancouver Sun:

• Compensation for 'false memory syndrome' costly for B.C. taxpayers: "B.C. tax dollars are being spent to compensate people who have uncovered "memories" of childhood sex abuse, even though there is no proof the crimes occurred. Critics of so-called "false memory syndrome" -- including a father who says the B.C. government funds helped tear his family apart -- say governments that pay for counselling reinforce the impact of artificial memories "recovered" during dubious therapies."
• Memories split his family : "After his daughters went to therapists who helped them 'recover' memories about being sexually abused, Lloyd Corney lost his wife and children. But the accused man has never had his day in court and thousands of tax dollars have been spent on therapy for the accusers."

• CBS 60 Minutes II has done an excellent expose called Unsafe Haven on poor standards of care at Charter Behavioral Health Systems. Check out the information CBS has placed online, including:
•   Unsafe Haven program information
•  nationwide index of reporting standards and mental health advocacy groups
•   viewer email responses

• Lloyd Corney posts online his report  Therapy as Sponsored by the Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia which documents government-funded "memory recovery therapy" by using therapist's notes obtained under subpoena. You can read the entire report at http://sites.netscape.com/bunwgn/THERAPYh.htm.

• StopBadTherapy.com reprints Chapter 7,  "Women Against Women,"  from retractor Gail MacDonald's new book The Making of an Illness: My Experience With Multiple Personality Disorder
• StopBadTherapy.com added to two more web rings:
• Falsely Accused Parents Web Ring
• Consumer ACTION & ADVICE Ring (by invitation from the list owner!)
• Dr. Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters publish a new book, Therapy's Delusions. Visit the web site for Therapy's Delusions.

• Link to J. T. Stocks in Social Work: "Recovered Memory Therapy: A Dubious Practice Technique"

• "Die Geliehene Holocaust-Biographie: The Purloined Holocaust Biography" by Daniel Ganzfried, translated from the German by Katherine Quimby Johnson.

English translation of the original German article which exposed as false Binjamin Wilkomirski's claim in Fragments to have been at Auschwitz.

• "Recovered Memories and the Holocaust" by Mark Pendergrast.

A discussion of Binjamin Wilkomirski's claim to have "recovered memories" of the Holocaust, the discovery that he in fact lived in Switzerland at the time, and the implications this raises in the "recovered memory" debate.

• The Appendix "Three Papers" from Making Monsters

•  Press Release for Launch of StopBadTherapy.com (text-only version to copy and paste for emailing)
•  text-only launch announcement (includes press release) for emailing to friends, mailing lists, and newsgroups
•  statement of Deborah David (retractor) for launch of StopBadTherapy.com
•  statement of Jim (affected father) for launch of StopBadTherapy.com
•  statement of Carol Marks (MFCC) for launch of StopBadTherapy.com

• The "Experts" Debunked
• Informed Consent Legislation and Indiana SB109
• Myths, updated!
• Hypnosis Facts
• A Mother's Story
• New pages for people considering therapy , law enforcement officers and prosecutors
• Excerpts from Suggestions of Abuse, by Michael Yapko, Ph.D.
• State of Illinois Files Complaint Against Bennett Braun, M.D.
• "The Candy Cane and the Bear" , an Essay by Deborah David, Retractor
• Criminal Trial of Judith Peterson, Gloria Keraga and Others Underway in Houston: Read About it at www.FMSFonline.org

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