Previous News Items from 2006
Satanic Panic - Private Eye, 3-16 March 2006
Graham Laban acquitted of all charges
The BFMS remains concerned about the way many of this country’s key agencies – from social services departments to the police – go about investigating allegations of historical sexual abuse, and whether these investigations instinctively lean towards the assumption that the accused must be guilty. It was therefore interesting to see the outcome of a recent case involving BFMS member Graham Laban. This case, a retrial, saw Graham acquitted of all charges and a woman police officer facing a major inquiry after the judge ruled the case had ‘not been properly investigated’. The policewoman had failed to use her pocket books to keep a record of her dealings with witnesses in the case. Follow this link to the Burton Mail for the latest…
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Dr Camile De San Lazaro - 15 November 2006
Following the recent adjudication by the High Court concerning the GMC right to discipline expert witnesses, the delayed GMC Fitness to Practice hearing in the case of Dr Camile De San Lazaro will now take place on the 19/20 February 2007.
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Family point to 'glaring flaws' in abuse memoir - The Times, 20 September 2006
The family of an Irish woman who wrote a best-selling memoir detailing years of abuse at the hands of her father and the Catholic church says she made it up. Seven of Kathy O`Beirne`s siblings held a news conference in Dublin on Tuesday to denounce her book published in Ireland as 'Kathy`s Story' and in Britain as 'Don`t Ever Tell'. Click here for the full article.
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Judge's mother sues her for libel - The Sunday Times, 17 September 2006
The mother of Constance Briscoe confirmed that she has issued legal proceedings against her daughter over claims of extraordinary abuse made in her autobiography, Ugly.
In the 'memoir', published in January, Miss Briscoe, one of Britain's first black judges, alleged that her mother Carmen beat her, kicked her, spat at her, deprived her of food, cut her with a knife and, on one occasion, knocked her unconscious. Click here for the full article and see the following links for the full story.
We should ask if a memoir of abuse is true - Daily Telegraph, January 2006
A happy ending is not enough - Daily Telegraph, January 2006
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Attorney General's concern over "good faith" ruling by High Court
In what was described on the BBC Today programme (Saturday 20 May 2006) as an “unusual step”, the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith decided publicly to give his support to the General Medical Council who had appealed against the High Court’s decision that they were wrong to find Professor Sir Roy Meadow guilty of serious professional misconduct.
It was Meadow’s evidence as an expert witness in the trial of Sally Clark that led to her being found guilty of the murder of her children. After the GMC’s ruling, Meadow appealed to the High Court which said that he should not have been subject to disciplinary proceedings as he had given his evidence in good faith.
Interviewed on the programme by James Naughtie, the Attorney General said that the issues arising from the High Court decision were far reaching. “This case raises a very important point of principle which goes far beyond the facts of this particular case. Actually it won't affect the position of Professor Sir Roy Meadow personally at all and it goes far beyond simple medical evidence and that’s because the issue in the cases (is) whether expert witnesses should have immunity in respect of evidence they give in court from being referred to their own professional bodies who would normally regulate the standard of their conduct unless the judge before whom they give evidence makes a referral.”
Lord Goldsmith’s choice of words probably failed to give full expression to his depth of concern. The High Court obviously did not anticipate the implications of its decision. This drove a coach and horses through the long established and legally structured relationship between professional bodies and their members – and not only in medicine but, as Lord Goldsmith pointed out, “in many, many different fields, medical, accountancy, forensic, all the rest of it”.
The High Court ruling also heaped huge additional responsibilities on judges, assuming they possessed the depth and breadth of knowledge of all these fields to know when an expert witness had fallen below the standards expected by his/her professional body. Was the Attorney General’s decision to intervene partly a result of concerns expressed by his fellow judges? Possibly the High Court itself belatedly recognised the adverse consequences of its own ruling, as expressed (above) by the Attorney General, and asked him to intervene. He does not admit to this but it would be surprising if he had not consulted with members of his own professional body before going public on the issue. He said, “We need to have confidence that when the evidence is given it is given in accordance with proper professional standards. Now there are several ways of doing that but one of them in the last resort it seems to me is that people should be subject to the regulation of their own professional bodies who are in the best position to judge whether what they have done is no more than an honest mistake after carrying out proper research or is something worse than that………..I don’t think in principle the judge is right to say the person who decides whether or not somebody has broken their own professional code is the judge. It must be, I believe, for the regulating bodies in the final analysis to decide whether somebody has broken that code and they should decide whether it is right to investigate that.”
The question of public confidence in the use in court of expert witnesses was mentioned only briefly. However the Attorney General said that while experts should not be discouraged from giving evidence in courts, he did seem to give the issue of public confidence supremacy over the right of expert witnesses to the defence of good faith. “We have had big public debates about expert evidence arising out of the shaken baby cases in particular and people need to know that when experts go into court they are there to help the court and if they exceed proper professional boundaries they may be subject to disciplinary action by their own professional bodies.”
It is not known how many court cases or disciplinary hearings by professional bodies are delayed pending the outcome of the GMC’s appeal against the High Court decision. The GMC alone has a heavy, on-going workload of disciplinary hearings some of which may be delayed pending the outcome of this appeal. One, in particular, has suffered considerable delay – that of the referral by the Council for Healthcare and Regulatory Excellence to the High Court of the GMC’s decision not to find Dr Camille de Sam Lazaro guilty of serious professional misconduct. On the basis of their latest “good faith” ruling, the High Court might have decided that she was treated too harshly rather than too leniently by the GMC. There is no doubt that this decision will be influenced by the Attorney General’s intervention. The two nursery nurses whose lives were destroyed by her wrong diagnoses will, along with many others in a similar position, be watching closely to see whose interests are paramount in the view of the Court of Appeal.
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‘Books on Prescription’ – Library Service Promotes Courage to Heal
Cornwall County Library service has introduced a service to readers called ‘Books on Prescription’. As its title suggests, it recommends a range of self-help books for a variety of conditions. The accompanying leaflet lists 38 books covering 21 conditions ranging from ‘anger’ to ‘worry’ and including anorexia nervosa, bulimia, depression, manic depression, pain and PTSD. Each library has a display of leaflets and a selection of books. Unfortunately, the books listed include Courage to Heal and Breaking Free which are ‘prescribed’ for ‘Child Sexual Abuse (Adult Survivors)’.
Alongside Cornwall CC logos, the leaflet carries the NHS symbol, thus appearing to give official credence to the service and to the books recommended. It is not know whether the NHS has, in fact, approved the reading list.
The BFMS would be grateful if members could advise them if other libraries are providing a similar service. Representations have been made to Cornwall Libraries and Social Services.
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Encouraging false accusations of sex abuse - Letter to The Herald (Glasgow), 8 March 2006
THE report by Karen McVeigh (March 6) that the Royal College of Psychiatry is calling for the withdrawal of the booklet, A Can of Worms, is good news. The response from the spokesperson for the Scottish Executive is not so good, but is par for the course for this body, when called on to deal with its own incompetence.
The booklet, which is concerned with child sexual abuse (CSA), was first endorsed by the Parliamentary Cross Party Group (CPG) and is part of a £2m project by the executive on child protection. I first called the office of Marilyn Livingstone, CPG convener, in late January, to voice my concerns about the booklet but was told to write to her. I did so on February 2, outlining my concerns and drawing attention to the number of high-profile cases where false allegations of sexual abuse had led to children being taken into care and families almost destroyed, using the self-same techniques now being advocated in this booklet and endorsed by the executive.
In order to establish my own status on this issue, I mentioned my own experience, along with Rochdale, Cleveland, Shieldfield and Nottingham, as well as Ayrshire (twice), Orkney, the Borders and Western Isles. I pointed out that some of the references used by the authors of the booklet, were highly questionable and that one of them, The Courage to Heal, has been described as one of the most pernicious self-help books ever written. More important, I asked why there was no mention of any of the scientific literature such as the Brandon Commission report, which completely discredited the approach of the authors of A Can of Worms.
Ms Livingstone's reply of February 14 was that "the CPG had taken a decision not to become involved in individual cases" and that she could not help me.
I wrote again on February 17, pointing out I had neither asked for her help in my case, which has been resolved, nor had I asked her to get involved in any individual cases. She also claimed the CPG "believed that the majority of survivors are telling the truth about their abuse". That seems to suggest that a minority are lying and I asked her on what basis the group had come to that decision. She was also asked what experience, professional or otherwise, any of the members of the CPG had of child protection and CSA, whether any of them had any knowledge of the cases I had cited and what had been their reaction to those cases. As yet there has been no reply, nor has there been any response to another e-mail I sent, asking her when, or if, I was going to receive a reply. In light of the McKie debacle, I do not expect a reply to my correspondence and know that other interested professionals in this field have had the same difficulty in getting the executive to respond to their written concerns. But the issue is far too important to be left as it currently stands and the executive and the CPG may yet find themselves under pressure similar to that which they are encountering over their handling of the McKie affair.
The nonsense in A Can of Worms is no more than a rehash of the dangerous nonsense found in The Courage to Heal and similar literature. It is likely to lead to another spate of false allegations and state-sponsored child abuse.
Jim Fairlie
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Executive's Sex-Abuse Therapy Booklet is condemned by Experts - The Press and Journal, 8 March 2006
by Lindsay McIntosh
A Booklet endorsed by the Scottish Executive could lead to false allegations of sexual abuse, it was claimed last night.
Experts have routinely criticised the advice contained in the leaflet, which was printed at the end of last year and endorsed by Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald.
A Can of Worms - Yes You Can! Working With Survivors of Sexual Abuse is part of a £2million executive strategy aimed at "breaking the myth" that the subject should only be dealt with by trained specialists.
But a panel of psychologists and psychiatrists are concerned it does not appear to be based on any recognised work and could encourage people to falsely believed they were abused.
James Ost, a chartered psychologist and senior lecturer in psychology at Portsmouth University, said: "I got a copy of the booklet and my real concern was that there was no real reference to anything in it.
"There's a whole body of psychological literature on abuse and it's clearly something frontline workers do need guidance on - no one I know would disagree with that. Unfortunately, this booklet just isn't backed up. It's got no reference to any literature from the past 20 years."
He said self-help guides had produced "numerous cases" of false allegations of abuse in the US.
He said: "One needs to be incredibly careful about the advice you give out. If this is the only guidance frontline workers are getting, it's very worrying.
"If I was to run a course where that was required reading, I'd resign tomorrow."
The group, which is working with charity British False Memory Society, have sent their concerns to the executive.
Last night a spokeswoman said the booklet, by Dr Sarah Nelson and Sue Hampson, was aimed at stimulating debate on the sensitive subject.
"Can of Worms is aimed at raising awareness among healthcare and social work professionals of the issues adult survivors of sexual abuse may face," she said.
"This has been written from a practical perspective, and informed by the personal experiences of adult survivors.
"Ultimately, we want to increase public awareness of childhood sexual abuse so people will feel more comfortable disclosing abuse at an earlier stage.
"If people can access services and support earlier, this will aid their recovery and reduce their risk of physical and mental illness and suicidal behaviour."
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Satanic Panic - Private Eye, 3-16 March 2006
A BOOKLET called A Can of Worms: Yes, You Can! Working with Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse has sparked controversy among professionals and academics who specialise in this sensitive field.
As revealed in Eye 1150 (Satanic Panic), the 74-page document, published by the Scottish Executive in December 2005, lists useful contacts including organisations dealing with survivors of so-called ritual abuse (formerly known as Satanic abuse) — a notion long ago exposed as a myth.
The dangers of this nonsense still being peddled by a network of believers across the UK are not lost on people who have been falsely accused of being devil-worshipping, animal-sacrificing paedophiles, as recently as 2004 on the Scottish island of Lewis (see Letters, Eye 1152). But potentially even more widespread harm could be caused by A Can of Worms being distributed to "healthcare, social work professionals and other frontline workers" across Scotland.
A group of eminent psychologists and rKvchiatrists has written a devastating critique of :he booklet and called for it to be withdrawn, or substantially rewritten.
In a scathing seven-page letter to the Lothian Health Board, the distributors, copied to ministers and officials from the Scottish Executive and UK Department of Health, the critics question the authors' apparent lack of knowledge of the academic literature. And they attack the advice tey give to practitioners that they should "always" look for childhood sexual abuse as the root cause of a range of mental health problems from eating disorders and depression to drug and alcohol addiction and personality disorders. "There is almost no condition that the authors do not consider a sign of past abuse," they wrote.
The booklet's recommended reading list includes a library of discredited "self help" books which suggest the reader should try to recover supposedly repressed memories of abuse. These include a much pilloried American book, The Courage to Heal, which encourages readers to believe they were sexually abused, if they think they were, or have "body memories", even if they can't actually remember it. The Can of Worms booklet also refers to body memories as if they were recognised scientific symptoms.
The letter says: "This document demonstrates an almost total lack of awareness of the necessary information and relevant literature. Consequently, it is at best, a long way from fulfilling its stated aims of providing 'good practice guidelines for working with male and female survivors'. At worst it is propagating pseudo-scientific and widely discredited beliefs about the effects of childhood sexual abuse.
"If the guidance set out in this booklet is followed, then many vulnerable people could be damaged... Some people who have not been sexually abused, but who have the 'symptoms' will be led into a false belief that they were, and may experience false memories; their mental health will also be severely damaged."
The authors of A Can of Worms are Dr Sarah Nelson, a research fellow in the sociology department at Edinburgh University (see Letters, Eye 1151) and Sue Hampson, a "person centred counsellor" with a social work background in the NHS and mental health. They both work for Health in Mind, formerly the Edinburgh Association for Mental Health, which published research by Dr Nelson on 22 adult survivors of sexual abuse in a another booklet, Beyond Trauma, in 2001.
That study was approved only after the group's ethics committee considered concerns from a project advisor, a consultant psychiatrist, that Nelson had no clinical training to qualify her to conduct such interviews.
Approval was suspended and reinstated only after Dr Nelson reluctantly agreed to notify the participants' GPs of their involvement.
Dr Nelson, a former journalist, has published many articles on child abuse, and chapters in books on ritual abuse including the notorious Orkney case. They have generally been carefully worded and measured. But the Eye has obtained a paper she delivered at a conference at Warwick University in 1996 organised by a group called Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support (RAINS), set up for child care workers and therapists who believed in satanic ritual abuse despite a government inquiry concluding in 1994 it didn't exist.
Admitting it was "not an academic paper" and not based on any formal research, and that she did not have the expertise in mental health which others might have, Dr Nelson argued that it was not surprising that many victims of satanic abuse suffered from mental health problems such as eating disorders after being forced to eat and drink such things as "human and animal flesh, blood, urine, excrement, vomit, maggoty meat and drugged drinks". She confidently estimated more than 1,650 people in Edinburgh had been involved in satanic ritual abuse.
Dr Nelson is a member of the Scottish parliament's cross-party group on Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse which launched the Can of Worms booklet as part of a £2m government-funded national strategy to improve services for abuse survivors.
On her university website she writes: "My major research interest is in childhood sexual abuse. Particular interests include mental health and sexual abuse." However, her PhD. from the University of Strathclyde, in 1979, was not about child abuse or mental health but loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. In a later book she explained she worked as an "unqualified social worker" to do the research.
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Report on Bowman and recovered memory
After liaising with the BFMS, Radio 4’s PM programme carried a report on false memory, linked to the case of Thomas Bowman whose appeal against his conviction for murdering his wife was heard in February. The Appeal Court judges have retired to consider their verdict. As at 24th February there is still no decision.
A transcript of the report is given below. It is, however, important to ask a few questions which are begged by the comments of Dr Robin Royston, a consultant psychiatrist who presented the case for the validity of recovered memories.
PM’s Jane Peel makes the point that ‘getting proof (of recovered memory) is rare’ and Dr Royston then offers the case of ‘Emma’ and a female relative who, he claims, independently of each other, began to recall the same things by ‘different psychiatrists at opposite ends of the country’. Dr Royston offers this case as proof that recovered memory isn’t a myth. The questions that this raises are:
1. Is this the only case history he has to offer for the validity of recovered memories to place against the thousands of proven cases of false memory? Of course the weight of evidence for false memory does not necessarily disprove his claim that the one case he quotes proves that recovered memory exists, but a great deal more information is required. And in any area of academia, it is usual for a single outcome to be replicated by others, under controlled conditions, before it is accepted as proven fact.
2. Given that the two women are related, was there any joint experience (other than that which they claim to have ‘recalled’) in their past lives that may have given rise to these ‘memories’? Did they, together, see a film or television programme on this subject, or read the same self-help book?
3. How did the similarity of experience come to light. Was it in the reports of the two psychiatrists prior to the two women meeting following their consultations, or was it reported back to the psychiatrists after the women had met? Were the similarities expressed, initially, in general terms and the details ‘filled in’ by the clients later?
4. Has Dr Royston’s claim been subjected to peer group review?
Apart from these questions, it is, perhaps, an indication of Dr Royston’s anxiety to be proven right that he says ‘such practices (false memory therapy) are old hat’ and are ‘less of a problem now’. Fortunately Jane Peel immediately responds, ‘Tell that to Sarah and her son John, accused just a few months ago.’
Readers might recall the reviews of Out of the Dark written by Dr Royston in conjunction with his patient, Linda Caine, in which her ‘blackness’ develops during treatment following considerable guidance from Dr Royston into claims of childhood sexual abuse.
Transcript
Presenter: Now a word about a murder case different from almost any other. Thomas Bowman has begun an appeal today against his conviction for murder. He was jailed for life for killing his wife Mary, after the couple’s daughter said she had witnessed the killing. Diane Bowman said the attack by her father happened more than 20 years previously when she was five years old but the memory of it only emerged in adulthood. His story highlights the growing controversy over what is termed recovered memory syndrome where adults apparently recall traumatic events in childhood. Our correspondent Jane Peal has our report. Some of the names have been changed to protect those involved.
Jane Peel: Last autumn the lives of Sarah and her 33 year old son John were turned upside down. Sarah’s adult daughter Jennie, John’s sister, had accused them both of abusing her throughout her childhood. They were arrested and questioned. The allegations were shocking,
Sarah: Abuse of a sexual nature from when she was two years old, that I had kicked her and broke her ankle when she was about 7, having photographs taken of her in the nude, making her available for sex. The worst that she had had a baby and I had killed it. To have somebody say that to you, even now it makes me want to cry. You cannot imagine anything worse than to have your daughter accuse you of things like that.
Peel: Jennie accused John of sustained sexual abuse. The only evidence was Jennie’s word. All he could do was deny it.
John: Before this I didn’t know that somebody could make an accusation and it was actually possible for you to be prosecuted purely on the basis of someone’s story however unrealistic and in today’s climate of hysteria over sexual abuse cases if someone makes an allegation against you of a sexual nature, then it is terrifying.
Peel: Jennie’s memory of sexual abuse emerged during psychotherapy. According to her family she’d had mental health problems for years and had been reading a lot of self-help books. They are convinced the therapy induced in her false rather than real memories. Some experts say it is easily done. (Voice Over of Dr Naish: now what I am going to do for this little test, it is a memory test. It is straightforward enough) Dr Peter Naish, a psychologist and scientific adviser to the British False Memory Society demonstrates a simple test which he says proves the point. Linda is given a list of words to remember. There’s an obvious theme.
(Dr Naish conducts an experiment to show the fallibility of memory)
Peel: It is a trivial example but Dr Naish says it shows how the mind can trick us
Dr Naish: It’s false memory, basically, it’s a very understandable one but it illustrates how easy it is to have activity in your head and if your don’t know for sure why it is there you just interpret it as a true memory when it isn’t.
Peel: Dr Naish says that techniques such as hypnosis are very good at making people visualise imaginary experiences as if they are real. It is a contentious subject. A study carried out by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the 1990s concluded that the recovery of long-buried memories was a myth. However, the college was so divided on the issue that the report was never adopted. Dr Robin Royston, a consultant psychiatrist, says in his experience recovered memories can be genuine. But if they cannot be proved, how do you know they are not lies?
Dr Royston: Well you don’t. That’s the bottom line. What you then have to start to think about is the clinical situation you are confronted with – if you have someone who is entirely reliable, does not have a personality disorder, has nothing to gain, by coming out with memories that are not true and has the clinical problems that are associated with, say, sexual abuse in childhood then there is no reason to disbelieve them.
Peel: Getting proof is rare. In the case of Emma it was a female relative who confirmed that her memories of abuse were real. Both women were being treated by different psychiatrists at opposite ends of the country when they both began to recall the same things.
Emma: Huge, huge sense of relief at somebody coming and confirming that they too knew what we were talking about. We were talking about the same people, the same vehicles, the same clothing smells, glasses and it was just like hang on, this can’t be my imagination, it can’t be coming from nowhere, it can’t be coming from the depths of insanity, because two people, surely cannot have the same thoughts.
Peel: Dr Royston believes this proves recovered memory isn’t a myth. He accepts that some now discredited forms of therapy might have encouraged patients to believe wrongly that they have been abused but he says such practices are old hat.
Royston: I have seen cases where therapists have generated false memory and most practitioners are aware of the danger of certain techniques which give rise to false memories. But it is much less of a problem now.
Peel: Tell that to Sarah and her son John, accused just a few months ago. Although the police have now told them they wont be prosecuted, Sarah fears the devastating allegations made by the daughter will have a last affect.
Sarah: It puts a lot of your life into question. It does make you very insecure and doubtful what I thought was a lovely childhood I am being told was something out of a horror story. It’s very hard to deal with. Very hard.
Presenter: The voice of Sarah, falsely accused of sexual abuse.
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Truly 'A Can of Worms'!
A review of A Can of Worms : Yes You Can! - Working with Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse written by Sarah Nelson and Sue Hampson, pub. Scottish Executive December 2005
The booklet A Can of Worms, written by Sarah Nelson and Sue Hampson, and issued by and with the authority of the Scottish Executive, builds up a picture in the reader’s mind, without explicitly saying so, of widespread, undiagnosed child sexual abuse (CSA) which can only be identified if all those dealing with disturbed adults react, ‘particularly if someone displays several of the effects listed below’. The authors have failed to make it emphatically clear that any of these effects may have other causes. The brief note of caution: ‘Of course, there are often other or additional reasons for these problems’ is dangerously inadequate, given the book’s powerful and seductive message, and the qualification contained in the next sentence, ‘however, the possibility that CSA is part of the underlying reason should always be considered’. And, ‘being sexually abused does NOT mean people will necessarily suffer the problems below.’
These ‘effects’ are 13 major ‘pointers’ and the same number of ‘more subtle effects’ (including ‘the way they hold their bodies’, ‘difficulty sleeping’, ‘cleaning and tidying their houses repeatedly’ and male ‘sexual orientation’), each of which should, surely, carry details of possible alternative causes to help the reader avoid making false diagnoses.
In offering the book as an important component in the necessary and laudable fight against the very real tragedy of CSA, the authors have, consciously or unconsciously, used this to give legitimacy to the questionable advice it gives and to the recruitment to the ‘cause’ of a wide range of people, ‘including staff and volunteers working in mental health, community projects, counselling and support services, health and social work services, homeless projects, addiction services, criminal justice, older people’s projects and in young people’s services’. They do not, the book claims, require ‘higher qualifications and lengthy training’.
The statement, ‘we’re not looking for great experts, we want human beings’ is potentially misleading to those without knowledge of the broader psychological and physical health issues of which CSA is part. A quote in the Scottish Executive’s news release, attributed to the authors, said, ‘We want to break through the myth that this is only for highly trained specialists. In fact human qualities and skills like acceptance, empathy and respect are what matter most.’ Although qualified by reference to the ‘additional considerations………..most notably child protection guidelines’, the claim that the ‘general principles outlined here are also relevant for those working with children and young people’ can only give cause for further concern.
If the consequence of the booklet is to mislead thousands of paid and voluntary workers in a wide range of fields into believing they can recognise a history of CSA in clients with ‘psychotic episodes, dissociation, personality disorders, suicidal thoughts and behaviour, self-harm and self-mutilation, post traumatic stress disorder (including night terrors, flashbacks, phobias, anxiety states, panic attacks, amnesia), eating disorders, dysfunctional sexual relationships, physical ill-health, anger and aggression, alcohol or drug misuse, and depression/post natal depression’, then it can only be a matter of time before we have a new wave of false allegations. Indeed the reader is implicitly exhorted not to be reluctant to raise or discuss sexual abuse with ‘service users’ for fear of triggering child protection guidelines and starting a chain of events which could involve police, judiciary and/or court appearance, or because, ‘sexual abuse is so common that if we started a service we’d be overwhelmed’. The use of the phrase, ‘so common’, in this way is, perhaps, a clever way of implying that CSA is endemic.
The authors skate around the issues of recovered memory and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). In a brief reference that is potentially dangerous for practitioners and their clients, they state, ‘it could be worth sympathetically exploring the possibility of dissociation and working out ways of “grounding” which work for the survivor, perhaps with help from a mental health professional (italics added). Both recovered memory therapy and DID are minefields, even for the most highly qualified and experienced of mental health practitioners and the authors should have taken note of well-researched evidence of the damage they can do in the wrong hands. The risk of inducing symptoms in a patient as a result of the counsellor’s wrong words or actions is considerable.
In the words of Dr Ray Aldridge-Morris, Consultant Clinical Psychologist of over 35 years standing, ‘MPD is itself a fiction. I debunked this psychiatric hoax in a book in 1989. There is no such clinical entity as MPD and no psychopathologist with any credibility would ever make such a diagnosis. It was always largely a North American phenomenon and those clinicians foolish enough to so label their patients are now facing the consequences. These include lawsuits from the patients themselves and their families.’ Dr Aldridge-Morris was responding to a review in the New Statesman of Matt Ruff’s novel, ‘Set This House In Order’ in which MPD is discussed at length.
The issue of recovered memory is not explicitly discussed but the authors have sought to introduce the possibility into the reader’s mind e.g., ‘…one survivor in Beyond Trauma1 kept inflicting very severe burns on her arm before recalling that, as a child, her abuser had repeatedly burned her arm on the cooker’. By not qualifying the comment, ‘Amnesia contributes to the uncertainty and self-doubt which so many survivors feel, especially given the waves of media publicity about alleged “false memory syndrome”…….Am I a fraud? Did I make it up or imagine this? Was my brother there or not? Did my mother try to stop it?’ the authors have failed in their duty to warn practitioners of the unreliability of recovered memory and of practising recovered memory therapy. Then, in two further veiled references to recovered memories, the book says: ‘I once saw a woman go back to when she was a child in her bedroom, the terror, breathing etc. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just talked her down’; and, ‘confusing “memory blanks” about her childhood’. Again, there is massive, documented evidence of the damage that even the experienced practitioner can inflict, both to the client and his/her family, by encouraging or wrongly reacting to so-called ‘recovered’ memories. The definitive document, ‘Recovered Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse – Implications for Clinical Practice’ by the late Professor Brandon and his team of psychiatrists, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, effectively discredited the practice. Yet there is no reference to it in A Can of Worms (see below).
Not surprisingly, the booklet’s recommended reading list includes Courage to Heal and other books by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. Courage to Heal was described in the House of Commons by Claire Curtis-Thomas MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on abuse investigations as, ‘one of the most dangerous self-help books ever written. Its authors encourage readers to search their memories for dark and shameful episodes of sexual abuse which, they are told, may have been completely hidden by repression. The book says, “If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, then you were”. Symptoms seem to include virtually anything except in-growing toenails. The book advocates that ‘survivors’ fantasize about castrating or murdering their abuser and says, “Wanting revenge is a natural impulse, a sane response. Let yourself imagine it to your heart’s content.” ’ The advice given by Nelson and Hampson, ‘believe the victim’ is a clear reflection of the first part of the above quote from Courage to Heal. Although there are 36 publications (among a total of 68) listed giving advice to Counsellors and Therapists, the Brandon report - a vital source of reference for anyone dealing with CSA, is totally ignored.
No-one can argue with the forward by Lewis Macdonald, Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care in Scotland, which calls for ‘better and more joined-up services to help improve support for survivors of childhood sexual abuse’ and for ‘better training and good practice guidelines’ (indeed, this has been said many times, most recently in the 59 recommendations made by Professor Pat Cantrill, following the case of five Sheffield children who were found living in squalor and near to death from starvation, despite the family’s problems being known to a number of agencies). But the later statement that the booklet ‘aims to support people working in a wide range of services in gaining a better understanding of the needs of people……, how best to raise the issue and how to respond in an appropriate, sensitive and supportive way’ is not justified by its content. Regrettably, the comments of the minister give unwarranted official authority to the booklet as part of the Scottish Executive’s £2 million scheme ‘to fund local demonstration projects to share good practice nationally.’
Unfortunately, the booklet is likely to give credence to unproven practices and entrenched beliefs within the CSA and the child protection culture, particularly the presumption of abuse histories in disturbed children and adults and the use by well-intentioned amateurs of recovered memory therapy and suggestive interviewing techniques to elicit ‘disclosures’.
There can be little doubt the booklet truly lives up to the title, A Can of Worms.
References:
- Nelson, S. 2001. Beyond Trauma: Mental Health Care Need of Women who Survived Childhood Sexual Abuse. Edinburgh Association for Mental Health
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When Satan Came To Town - BBC1, 9pm, 11th January 2006
In 1990 the Devil came to Rochdale. Families woke up to every parent’s worst nightmare when, with no warning, police and social services came to take their children away.
Social services believed that they had uncovered evidence that the children were being forced to take part in ritual devil worship. It was the most notorious of a series of similar claims made against families across the country.
Allegations ranged from the sacrifice of human babies, robed devil worshipping, to locking the children in cages and caves. None of the claims were ever proved.
It was Britain’s Salem Witch Hunt.
This programme reveals the real story of how at the end of the 20th Century hysteria swept through our social services.
This was a total failure of 'due process', common sense and its results were horrific. 16 children were kept in care without any contact with their parents for months and it took 10 years before the last child was released from care back to his family.
Because the children at the heart of the story were made wards of court it has not been legally possible to identify them. Only now that they are adults can the story be told – and they are telling the BBC exclusively.
The BBC has challenged Rochdale Council through the family courts and has obtained video evidence of the interviews with the children taken at the time as social workers tried desperately to prove their unfounded theory that the families had been worshiping the devil and abusing their children.
They show the catalogue of mistakes and manipulations of the truth told by the social workers that resulted in the enormous personal cost to the families caught up in this satanic panic.
This year, the children take Rochdale council to court in an attempt to get an apology for one of the biggest mistakes ever made in social work.
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