Charlotte Ward, Judy Byington, and Kevin Annett: Connecting the dots

Yesterday we delved into some of the links among the originators of the Hampstead Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) hoax. We noted that Charlotte Ward (aka Carleea, aka Jacqui Farmer), who claimed that her “Hampstead Research” blog was not affiliated in any way with Sabine McNeill or Belinda McKenzie, in fact had a long history with Belinda and her coterie of believers in SRA. We illustrated the links between Charlotte and Robert Green, who vigorously promoted the Hollie Greig hoax, and was himself linked with both the Ritual Abuse Information Network & Support (RAINS) and the Committee on Ritual Abuse (CRA).

In today’s episode, we’re going to look into the links between Belinda’s group and a couple of North American SRA promoters—Judy Byington and Kevin Annett.

In 2012, anti-SRA campaigner Doug Mesner wrote to TV personality “Dr Phil”, who had sheduled an interview with Ms Byington on his show. You can find the full text here, but these excerpts help paint a picture of Ms Byington and her activities:

Specifically, it has come to my attention that you will be airing an interview with Judy Byington, author of a book entitled Twenty-Two Faces which purports to be the true story of one Jenny Hill, an alleged victim of the bizarre and controversial psychiatric condition known as Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID] (formerly listed as Multiple Personality Disorder [MPD]).

However dubious the legitimacy of DID, this diagnosis is by far the least of the problems with Byington’s book. Twenty-Two Faces is openly rife with archaic demonologies, and paranoid conspiracy theories being presented as root causes to the disturbances in Ms. Hill’s troubled mind. That Jenny Hill — a former drug addict and prostitute with a history of mental illness — is troubled seems indisputable, but Byington’s book seeks to expose an alleged satanic government plot behind Hill’s mental malaise that is tantamount to speculation upon who, exactly, is beaming voices into the heads of schizophrenics. Such an ignorant approach to therapeutic practice is harmful to mental health consumers, and your endorsement of such can hardly be of any positive value to your viewers.

The broader harm to the public mental health in endorsing a story as laden with paranoid delusion as Twenty-Two Faces — especially insofar as it is a narrative specifically appealing to the mentally vulnerable — should be clear to a doctor of Clinical Psychology like yourself. In fact, as recently as the 1980’s (and extending into the 90s), stories of non-existent satanic cults — upon which Byington has based her unhinged claims — caused a modern witch-hunt now known to sociologists as the “Satanic Panic”. Books foundational to this panic, and thematically identical to Twenty-Two Faces — particularly Michelle Remembers by Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith, and Satan’s Underground by Lauren Stratford — were soundly and thoroughly debunked by investigative journalists. Unfortunately, these debunkings only arrived after sensational talk-shows, promoting these books uncritically, helped create a moral panic that ruined families, resulted in false convictions of satanic crimes, and exploited the most irrational fears of countless mental health consumers. Both of these books are listed in Byington’s bibliography, despite their debunkings, and despite the fact the Satan’s Underground was so thoroughly discredited as to be withdrawn from publication… following which the author changed her name and abandoned her story of Satanic Ritual Abuse to instead pose as a childhood victim of the Holocaust. …

The book carries an endorsement from Robert Kroon, an esteemed former foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. However, Kroon had been dead for over 5 years at the time of Twenty-Two Faces’ publication. Suspiciously, Tate Publishing, the publisher of Twenty-Two Faces, uses a similar endorsement, allegedly from Kroon, on another book published 2 years after his death.

Judy Byington has not had a license to practice therapy in around 10 years, yet she explicitly describes continuing to conduct therapy sessions with Jenny Hill only months ago…. Judy Byington also offers “therapy” over the phone or via Skype at $25 per session. Do you, Dr. Phil, endorse this type of unlicensed, not to mention grossly irrational, “therapy”?

 

Although it appeared at first that Dr Phil had decided not to air the show, it eventually made it to television. Here’s an excerpt:

There’s more—much more—to say about Byington, who appears to be a fraud through and through, and who gleefully exploits people with emotional difficulties for her own gain.

The Charlotte Ward connection

We’ve mentioned in the past that one of Charlotte Ward’s friends, Trevor Oosterling (aka Trevor Namaste), helped Ms Byington build her Child Abuse Recovery website. However, the link between Charlotte and Ms Byington goes deeper than that.

In late 2013, around the same time she was living in Belinda’s Highgate home, Charlotte can be found speaking on Ms Byington’s behalf on various child sexual abuse blogs. Here she is on a blog called Teresa Lynn—Finding Center: The blogger, who was probably flattered that her online writing had attracted an “important” blogger’s attention, agreed readily: A couple of weeks later, we find Charlotte on another child sexual abuse blog, The Last Straw: No mention of an inspirational e-book in this one, but again, the blog’s author responded happily.

Earlier the same month, Charlotte had left this comment on a blogger’s video: Here’s the video she was praising:

We assume the recording date of “Sunday, December 8, 2014” was a typo, and that the blogger had not actually mastered time travel. However, a quick look at the bottom of the post reveals a familiar name.

Yep, it’s our old friend Kevin Annett, the defrocked United Church minister from Canada, who has “been responsible for an unusual number of hoaxes himself, from the wholly fictional “International Tribunal of Crimes of Church and State” (ITCCS), to his false allegations of mass murders at First Nations residential schools in Canada, to his deranged claims that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip had abducted, sexually abused, and killed several First Nations children from a residential school near Kamloops, B.C., while they were on a royal tour of Canada”.

In the post we wrote about Mr Annett last winter, we noted that he had visited the UK in 2010–2011 to do a speaking tour, supported by Brian Gerrish and Belinda McKenzie (who grew tired of Mr Annett’s requests that she darn his socks!). Mr Annett, who has a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man, also made eyes at Araya Soma, but it was not to be: first he failed to turn up at the Truth Juice event Araya’s landlady had organised in Glastonbury, and then, when Araya was evicted he promised to send her money, but never did.

We speculated in the above post that Mr Annett could have been the “missing link” between Araya’s Glastonbury gang, which included Abraham Christie, and Belinda’s London mob, which included Ella Draper, but we emphasise that we have no hard evidence of this, and won’t have until or unless Abe and Ella are brought back from Spain to face justice.

However, we must say we’re growing ever more intrigued as we delve into the links amongst the SRA hoaxers: ultimately, it seems that theirs is a very small world indeed.