• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
 
media manipulation and harassment - the cover up of child abuse crimes"The argument between the field of child sexual abuse and the backlash againstsurvivors is not an academic debate between two well meaning groups equallyinvested in ascertaining truth. It is not an academic debate at all; it is apolitical fight." P. 121 "What wins political fights is organization and staminaand a refusal to be intimidated." P. 122 - Anna Salter (Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned) harassment:Calof, D.L. (1998). Notes from a practice under siege: Harassment, defamation,and intimidation in the name of science, Ethics and Behavior, 8(2) pp. 161-187.Abstract: I have practiced psychotherapy, family therapy, and hypnotherapy forover 25 years without a single board complaint or law suit by a client. For overthree years, however, a group of proponents of the false memory syndrome (FMS)hypothesis, including members, officials, and supporters of the False MemorySyndrome Foundation, Inc., have waged a multi-modal campaign of harassment anddefamation directed against me, my clinical clients, my staff, my family, andothers connected to me. I have neither treated these harassers or their families,nor had any professional or personal dealings with any of them; I am not relatedin any way to the disclosures of memories of sexual abuse in these families.Nonetheless, this group disrupts my professional and personal life and threatensto drive me out of business. In this article, I describe practicing psychotherapyunder a state of siege and places the campaign against me in the context of a muchbroader effort in the FMS movement to denigrate, defame, and harass clinicians,lecturers, writers, and researchers identified with the abuse and trauma treatmentcommunities. http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/notes-from-a-practice-under-siege/Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter DOI:10.1207/s15327019eb0802_2 Published in: Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2June 1998 , pages 115 - 124 Abstract - In 1988 I began a report on the accuracyof expert testimony in child sexual abuse cases utilizing Ralph Underwager andHollida Wakefield as a case study (Wakefield & Underwager, 1988). In response,Underwager and Wakefield began a campaign of harassment and intimidation, whichincluded multiple lawsuits; an ethics charge; phony (and secretly taped) phonecalls; and ad hominem attacks, including one that I was laundering federal grantmonies. The harassment and intimidation failed as the author refused demands toretract. In addition, the lawsuits and ethics charges were dismissed. Lessonslearned from the experience are discussed.http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/confessions-of-a-whistle-blower-lessons-learned/http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-data/Media Manipulation:U-Turn on Memory Lane by Mike Stanton - Columbia Journalism Review - July/August1997The FMSF builds much of its case against recovered memory by attacking a generallydiscredited Freudian concept of repression that proponents of recovered memorydon't buy, either. In so doing, the foundation ignores the fifty-year-oldliterature on traumatic, or psychogenic amnesia, which is an accepted diagnosis bythe American Psychiatric Association. In his 1996 book "Searching for Memory," theHarvard psychologist and brain researcher Daniel L. Schachter — who believes that
 
both true and false memories exist — says there is no conclusive scientificevidence that false memories can be created….The foundation and its backers"remind me of a high school debate team," says the Stanford psychiatrist DavidSpiegel, an authority on traumatic amnesia. "They go to the library, surgicallyextract the information convenient to them and throw out the rest."….Manytherapists, like their patients, hesitate to speak out.Recently, though, they havebegun to make a more concerted effort to mobilize a response. One of the mostoutspoken critics of the false-memory movement is a Seattle therapist, DavidCalof, editor until last year of Treating Abuse Today, a newsletter fortherapists. He has identified what he calls the movement's political agenda —lobbying for more restrictive laws governing therapy and promoting the harassmentof therapists through lawsuits and even picketing of their offices and homes.Calof himself has been the target of picketing so fierce that he has been in andout of Seattle courtrooms over the last two years, obtaining restraining orders.He was spending so much time and money fighting the FMSF supporters' campaignagainst him, he says, that he was forced to stop publishing the newsletter lastyear. He recently donated the publication to a victims' rights group inPennsylvania, which has resurrected it as Trauma. The new publisher says thatviews part of its mission as reporting on FMSF, since the mainstream media don't.Among journalists, perhaps the most relentless critic of the foundation is MicheleLandsberg, a Toronto Star columnist. In 1993, she says, an Ontario couple,claiming to have been falsely accused, contacted her and asked her to write abouttheir case. Unconvinced, she declined, and eventually started writing insteadabout the foundation.She attacked its scientific claims and criticized thesensational media coverage. She described how a foundation scientific adviser,Harold Merskey, had testified that a woman accusing a doctor of sexual abuse in acivil case might in fact have been suffering from false memory syndrome. But theaccused doctor himself had previously confessed to criminal charges of abusingher. Landsberg also challenged the credentials of other foundation advisers. Shenoted that one founding adviser, Ralph Underwager, was forced to resign from thefoundation's board after he and his wife, Hollida Wakefield, who remains anadviser, gave an interview to a Dutch pedophilia magazine in which he was quotedas describing pedophilia as"an acceptable expression of God's will for love."Landsberg also wrote that another adviser, James Randi, a magician known as "TheAmazing Randi," had been involved in a lawsuit in which his opponent introduced atape of sexually explicit telephone conversations Randi had with teenage boys.(Randi has claimed at various times, she said, that the tape was a hoax and thatthe police asked him to make it.) "Why haven't reporters investigated the FalseMemory Syndrome Foundation?" she asks. "It's legitimate to examine theirbackgrounds –here are people who really do have powerful motivation to deny thetruth." http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/97/4/memory.aspBattle Tactics of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation - Noel Packard - New Schoolfor Social Research, N.Y. History Matters Conference April 23-24, 2004 Censorshipis also a tactic that FMS Foundation adherents use to silence voices they don'tagree with. Katy Butler, published a critical review of Ofshe's and Watter's book,Making Monsters (1994) in the Los Angeles Times. Later the newspaper's book revieweditor received a vague threat of a lawsuit from Ofshe's representative (K. Butlerpersonal communication with Lynn Crook January 28, 2000). Later Butler was askedto write a story for Newsweek examining the uncritical acceptance of Foundationclaims and to provide documented cases of recovered memory and traumatic amnesia.Upon learning of this assignment Foundation Advisory Board members Richard Ofsheand Fredrick Crews, as well as Peter and Pamela Freyd, wrote strongly wordedletters of complaint to Newsweek which effectively canceled Butler's assignment(Stanton 1997). Although these censorship activities were reported in MikeStanton's article "U-Turn on Memory Lane" (1997) Nevertheless, Newsweek editorsconfirmed that the FMS Foundation letters helped kill Butler's article. Butler
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...