In yesterday’s Comments section, regular commenter Arthur Pint asked an important question about the interview between Brian Gerrish and Vicky Ash:
I watched the video with Vicky Ash talking to Brian Gerrish and i wondered does she really believe in what she is saying due to a mental illness or is she straight out lying?
How much of any SRA claimant’s story can be attributed to a genuine belief that they were sexually victimised by mysterious cult members, and how much is simply so much made-up nonsense? Is it always one or the other, or can there be a mixture of true belief and ulterior motive? The answer is that we just don’t know.
Memory is a funny thing
Most people think of their own memories as being something like a video recorder which accurately captures life experiences in a more or less orderly fashion, and deposits them in an “archive”, something akin to a hard drive in the brain, from whence they can be accessed at will.
The reality is much messier, and much less reliable.
Of course we all know the feeling of having “misplaced” a memory: we see a person in the street and struggle to recall their name or where we know them from; we distinctly recall that we left our phone on the kitchen table, but somehow find it in our coat pocket instead.
However, the idea that a person could misremember something as important as whether they were sexually abused as a child, or whether they participated in murdering babies, seems extraordinarily far-fetched to most people. If such things had really happened, wouldn’t they be etched permanently into the person’s memory? And if they hadn’t happened, how could such ghastly memories be created long after the fact?
American memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus has shown that false memories may be induced via suggestion, and that such memories can become stronger and more vivid over time. Rather than remaining static, memories become distorted and begin to shift and change; and old memories may be “adapted” to accommodate new ones.
Loftus has described her own experience with false memory:
At a family gathering for her 44th birthday, Loftus’s uncle told her that she had been the one to find her mother’s body floating in the pool after a drowning accident. Before that, she had remembered very little about the incident, but after her uncle’s comment, the details suddenly began to come back.
A few days later, she discovered that her uncle had been mistaken and that it was actually her aunt who discovered her mother after the drowning. All it took to trigger false memories was a simple comment from a family member, illustrating how easily human memory can be influenced by suggestion.
Freud and ‘repressed memory’
The idea that overwhelmingly traumatic childhood events could be somehow stored so deeply in a person’s unconscious mind that it was virtually lost to recall originated with the early work of Sigmund Freud. He connected this repression with “hysteria” (now known as “conversion disorder”), a diagnosis which was popular at the time amongst female patients.
(Believe it or not, this was a step up from the popular belief that “hysteria” was caused when a woman’s uterus went walkabout, causing various strange symptoms depending upon which part of the body it landed in. So, uh, go Freud?)
According to this article in The Conversation,
Those who accept the repression interpretation argue children may repress memories of early abuse for many years and that these can be recalled when it’s safe to do so. This is variously referred to as traumatic amnesia or dissociative amnesia. Proponents accept repressed traumatic memories can be accurate and used in therapy to recover memories and build up an account of early experiences.
It should be noted that while Freud’s ideas and terminology have seeped into the language over the past 100 years, with terms like “repression”, “neurosis”, and so forth becoming part of the general lexicon, none of his hypotheses about repressed memories have ever been verified by rigorous scientific proof.
Recovered memories?
Freud’s idea that it should be possible to dig around in the unconscious mind in a search for repressed memories which, once released, would free the patient from their neurotic symptoms, is at the root of much of the modern practice of “recovered memory therapies” (RMT).
However, this article on RMT notes that
There is … little scientific evidence supporting the notions that memories of childhood sexual abuse are unconsciously repressed or that recovering repressed memories of abuse leads to significant improvement in one’s psychological health and stability.
In general, RMT refers to any therapeutic technique which is based on the belief that traumatic memories of abuse can be forgotten or repressed and later recovered during therapy. These memories, no matter how bizarre or improbable, no matter whether they can be corroborated by others or validated by any other form of evidence, are deemed to be accurate and true.
We’ve discussed some high-profile RMT therapists here in the past: Valerie Sinason, Fleur Fisher, Sandra Fecht, Lawrence Pazdor, Colin Ross, and others. All of them have used suggestive and/or hypnotic techniques to reconstruct what appear to be memories, and have assured their clients that “the unconscious doesn’t lie”.
The problem is that the unconscious most definitely does lie…or at least it misleads. Claiming that memories can be recovered in this way is like claiming that anything that we dream of while we’re asleep is 100% real and true.
Hypnosis isn’t the only technique used to dig for the mind’s detritus, incidentally. RMT techniques wax and wane in popularity, and have included:
- Hypnosis
- Free association
- Relaxation training
- EMDR (“eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing”)
- Guided imagery and visualisations
- Analysing dreams for suggestions of abuse
- “Body therapies” which claim to release “memories stored in the body”
- Age regression or past life regression therapy
- Use of “truth serum-type” drugs to enhance memory recall
- Having the client imagine abuse that could have happened to them
RMT can create false memories
We don’t want to portray all RMT therapists as evil people who mess with their clients’ minds for the fun of it. However, when therapists are passionately invested in certain things—such as Satanic ritual abuse—being true, they can shape their clients’ treatment in such a way that the client will almost certainly remember what the therapist wants them to. While this might not be malicious, it is certainly a form of malpractice, which can have disastrous consequences.
For example, at the Castlewood Treatment Center in Missouri, a number of clients have sued various therapists for implanting false memories of SRA during their treatment for eating disorders.
The first lawsuit, filed in 2011, alleged “gross malpractice” while the claimant was undergoing treatment at the centre:
defendant carelessly and negligently hypnotized plaintiff at a time when she was under the influence of various psychotropic medications and said hypnotic treatment directly caused or contributed to cause the creation, reinforcement, or increase in plaintiff’s mind, of false memories including the following:
a) Plaintiff suffered physical and sexual abuse;
b) Plaintiff suffered multiple rapes;
c) Plaintiff suffered satanic ritual abuse;
d) Plaintiff was caused to believe she was a member of a satanic cult and that she was involved in or perpetrated various criminal and horrific acts of abuse;
e) Plaintiff was caused to believe that she had multiple personalities at one time totalling twenty separate personalities.”
In June 2016, Kate Wheeling reported in the Pacific Standard:
The former Castlewood Treatment Center patients claimed that, under the influence of hypnosis and psychiatric drugs, they were encouraged to link their current problems to forgotten childhood abuse. The false memories of abuse, according to the suits, exacerbated the emotional distress the patients were already experiencing. But the patients who were incepted with these emotionally disturbing and false memories aren’t the only victims of the discredited technique. …
Although there is no full tally, University of California-Berkeley professor Frederick Crews, who wrote about recovered memory therapy, suggested (conservatively, he says) that one million patients may have been convinced they had recovered repressed memories. Of course, as Crews notes, the number of those affected was far greater; the accusations from each of these patients almost always radiated through families and communities, leading to bewildering and painful estrangements for fathers, mothers, teachers, and others.
While there’s little evidence that people can completely forget highly emotional events, there is plenty of evidence that people can form false memories of emotional events. “People can falsely create, or come to believe, that emotional events occurred that never occurred, people can misremember the details of emotional events, but what they don’t seem to do is have an emotional event occur and then shove it into some basement of their subconscious and not be able to recall it,” says Linda Levine, a psychology professor at the University of California-Irvine. “You don’t see literature on people wholesale forgetting emotional events. Events that are highly emotional to people are typically very well remembered.”
Are false memories forever?
Some victims of false memory induction do eventually recover. Some call themselves “retractors”; others gradually come to realise that the memories which seemed so real to them had no basis in reality.
We found this statement from a victim of RMT very insightful; this and other statements from retractors can be found on the False Memory Syndrome Foundation website. Amy P. writes:
I did not set out intentionally to hurt anyone, including my parents. I have had problems with mental illness since my early teens. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was twenty years old. I spent about five years in the mental health system being treated like a chronically mentally ill person. I was prescribed anti-psychotic medication that eventually led to early signs of tardive dyskinesia. This was a desperate fearful time in my life, and I began searching for an alternative answer. I had a case manager who wanted to be a therapist with me. She began probing, and slowly but surely, I began coming up with vague memories of sexual abuse. As this progressed more memories came, and my diagnosis was changed to Multiple Personality Disorder. This was a relief to me because it meant that I could be cured if I worked in therapy, whereas schizophrenia was more hopeless.
I continued to work with this therapist for four years. The memories grew more complicated, gruesome, and detailed. My life also continued to get worse at this time. I read all the right books, including The Courage to Heal. I spent most of my time alternating between numb denial of what I was doing and hysterical panic. At one point I was hospitalized for three months in a Dissociative Disorders unit to receive more intensive treatment. It was then that the subject of ritual abuse came up. I resisted this idea as long as I could, but was under a great deal of pressure to accept it. I am sad to say that eventually I caved in and began to come up with ritual abuse memories, as well as cult alters. This was not a conscious process on my part. I didn’t wake up one day and decide suddenly that I had been abused in a cult. It was gradual and directly related to subtle and not so subtle pressure from the staff in this unit and other patients. I was led to believe that I would not be released if I remained “in denial” about my abuse. I am not proud of it, but I capitulated, and gave them what they wanted.
My therapist at home was untrained in dynamic psychotherapy. She viewed me as a fascinating and interesting client. In fact, I was her only client. I was flattered by her attention, and this probably led me to attempt to please her. Pleasing her involved coming up with still more memories of abuse, and working hard in therapy and never doubting her abilities. At some point she grew tired of my dependency, and abruptly terminated therapy. I was devastated at the time, but it was actually a blessing in disguise.
I have been in therapy for two years with a woman who makes no effort to decide what my issues are or lead me in any particular direction. A few months ago I read the book True Stories of False Memories, and was very moved by the stories in it. I felt a stirring of recognition. I opened up my mind at that point and came to realize that not only had I been duped, but that I had actively participated in it.
Right now my heart goes out to all innocent persons who have been falsely accused of abuse of any type. I understand why they would be angry, and I think they have a right to their anger. Therapists and treatment centers are responsible for part of this epidemic of “repressed memories,” but ultimately each individual must make their own choices. I take full responsibility for the accusations I have made. I have had to struggle daily with my sense of guilt and remorse. It is not an easy process-retracting things you were so sure of at some point. I fervently wish all this had never happened, but since it did, I am now seeking to repair the damage. I never accused my parents directly of abusing me, but they were aware of my MPD diagnosis and my hospitalization. I can’t make it up to them without causing them pain because if I tell them I made false accusations, then they will want to know what those accusations were in the first place. It is a dilemma.
I am truly sorry I allowed myself to be led so easily, and will not allow it to happen again. I am sorry that sexual abuse exists, and I am sorry that people are falsely accused of it. The FMS Foundation is right. False accusations detract from the real needs of sexual abuse victims. I hope that some of this damage can ultimately be repaired.
Thanks for this fascinating post, EC. Amy’s story is so moving. It’s sad to think that whilst she’s found a way to snap out of the fakery that was instilled in her by professionals who should have known better, there are so many others out there who are still falsely accusing their parents, uncles, aunties, siblings, teachers and so on of serious abuse (and also disempowering real abuse survivors by damaging their credibility, as OMG pointed out yesterday). I wonder what the primary motivation is of the unscrupulous therapists/charlatans who do this to people? Is it purely financial, I wonder, or are they motivated by a misguided sense of religious/moral duty, or do they actually believe the crap they instil in their vulnerable patients (aka victims)?
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Speaking as a former social worker/psychotherapist myself, I think I can address the latter part of your question, Tinribs.
I was trained as a therapist during the heyday of the 1980’s/90’s satanic panic, and I and many of my fellow students were taught that terribly traumatic memories could be buried so deeply in the psyche, and could cause so many mysterious symptoms, that the only way to cure the patient was to dig up the memories and have the patient work through them. Once this happened, we were told, the patient would be cured.
At the same time, we were being told as social workers that a terrible new source of childhood trauma was being uncovered by certain very courageous colleagues. This trauma, we were told, was “even worse” than child sexual abuse, and those who didn’t believe in it were as good as complicit with the satanic cults that abused the children. A few years into my practice as a therapist a group was formed called the “False Memory Society”. Of course, we were told that this group had been formed by abusive parents who only wanted to hide their tracks. It never dawned on the vast majority of us that the FMS people could have been right, and that we were terribly, terribly wrong.
I can’t identify the exact moment when I stopped believing in satanic cults as a source of trauma, but I’d estimate it was some time in the mid-1990’s. I think of it more as a gradual realisation that it just wasn’t true. I think it had to do with a particular patient whose stories seemed to grow more outrageous every time I saw them. I took the unusual step of checking up on some of her allegations and discovered that at least one of the people she named as her abusers didn’t exist. This worried me. I decided as an experiment to stop asking questions about her supposed satanic abuse, and acting as though her supposed “alters” (she had been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder by her previous counsellor) didn’t exist or were no longer important.
Just as Amy says in her story above, once she stopped thinking that she had to please me by offering me ever more elaborate and amazing stories of abuse, she began to recover and her “flashbacks” and memory fragments began to die down. I realised to my shame that I had been aiding and abetting her in creating a completely imaginary mental illness.
Like Amy, I felt terribly ashamed of this error. It’s easy to blame the times, the way we were taught, and all sorts of other factors, but ultimately I was forced to realise that I had been so blinded by the glamour and excitement of treating a “real live satanic abuse survivor/DID patient” that I had willed myself not to notice the inconsistencies and impossilities in her story.
I’ve since spoken to other therapists who were led down the same garden path, and I think the common emotions most of us feel about our role in promoting this nonsense are guilt and shame. None of us would ever have knowingly hurt a patient, and yet by colluding with the SRA hunters, that is exactly what we did.
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I like the honesty in your comment, Shrink Rapt.. but what do you think of Therapists who still believe in it?
Do you think they genuinely do? Or do you think they just enjoy the publicity and affirmation from the conspiracy minded people on the internet?
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I can understand to a degree why some therapists still believe in satanic ritual abuse etc. Once you’ve invested your reputation, your career, and much of your life in this sort of thing, it’s very difficult to pull back and take a long hard look at what you’re really doing. I was a relatively young person in my mid-30s when I ‘saw the light’, and it was with the help of a very perceptive supervisor I should add. He asked me what I was getting out of the therapeutic alliance with the client I mention above, and I had to be honest and confess that she made me feel I was her saviour, that only I could help her.
A great many people who cling to this path aren’t doing it to be deliberately destructive or nasty. They just cannot face the possibility that they have wasted their entire lives, their careers, their expensive education, their reputations, chasing after something that doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean they should be allowed to continue doing damage to individuals and families, but I think a certain amount of understanding is called for, at the same time that they are brought to account. They will be defensive and closed-minded about it, as you might expect, and they might never accept that their life’s work has been not just a waste, but that they have violated the very people they started out trying to help.
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I think this could be useful information to help us understand why those who believe in these things cannot seem to let them go. It explains the barrage of abuse we receive when we question the True Believers on social media sites. Thanks, SR!
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I just wanted to show some appreciation for your comments Shrink Rapt
It takes courage to admit mistakes, even if making mistakes and getting carried away with narcissistically gratifying narratives are mistakes that we all make at some point in our lives, to do so is very human.
I think your comments are immensely helpful in our struggle
Thanks again
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Thanks for that insight into the world of therapists Shrink Rapt.
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Wow, thank you for your insights and honesty, SR. I think you have little to be ashamed of. You believed what the ‘experts’ in your field had told you and acted in good faith; and you had the bravery to change your methods when you realised that all was not what it seemed.
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That was around the time that society was starting to wake up to CSA as a thing and to actually take it seriously. The hysteria that prevails today was just starting to build, along with the paranoia that there were paedohiles under every bed. I guess it was a backdrop ripe for exploitation by the unscrupulous SRA pushers – the Valerie Sinasons and Judith Dawsons of the World – to ‘brainwash’ aspiring young teachers, social workers etc. I vividly recall a guest speaker coming to one of our lectures during my teacher training in ’92 to ’93 to speak about CSA. She announced to a room full of shocked trainee teachers that one in ten boys are sexually abused – and one in four girls (so one in seven overall*) – and that 93% of male prisoners were sexually abused as children. As we all gasped in horror, not one of us thought to challenge her claims or at least to ask her what her sources were.
*Incidentally, the NSPCC puts the overall figure at one in twenty, which is still pretty shocking if true (?):
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/child-sexual-abuse/sexual-abuse-facts-statistics
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Robert Green talking bollocks at the FSF’s “hugely successful” conference yesterday, before getting chucked out by the bar manager (as recounted yesterday by Jake Blake, who’d kindly taken the trouble to watch the live broadcast):
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Cat and Dave desperately didn’t want people to see this humiliating ejection from the bar. So thank you, Malcolm, for stabbing your mates in the back and sharing it anyway. And thank you also for posting a link to our copy of the earlier bar video that Cat had removed from her Facebook page because she didn’t want people to see it. As always, your disloyalty is our gain 🙂
PS: I’m a child rapist because I shared Cat’s video? How does that work?
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“I’m a child rapist because I shared Cat’s video? How does that work?”
Malcolm shared it too, so by his logic what does that make him?
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Cat still has the bar manager ejecting them on her video on her twitter page, so I think she must be proud of it and see it as some kind of proof of a “cover-up” in Aberdeen. LOL!
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She appears to have taken it down. She just has the three Periscope videos on her Twitter page now. She must have seen your comment and panicked. She did the same yesterday when she took down the Facebook one right after me mentioning it here. Maybe she’s starting to realise that their ejection wasn’t so much a proud act of rebellion as a load of sad drunken twats getting chucked out of a pub. Not that she’s known for her self-awareness but we live in hope.
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I still see it? It’s in one of those periscope videos on her twitter page.
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The brave Wildcat has blocked me on Twitter, not such a fighter after all.
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Thanks, Jake. I did wonder if you meant those three videos. I’ve just checked again. I figured it would be the second one but I was assuming it would be near the end but I now see it’s much earlier, at 4:27:
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1YqJDQvygEkxV?q=calamitcat
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I very much enjoyed the looks on their faces as they were ejected. Thanks so much for sharing and putting a smile on my face this morning 🙂
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They come across as a pack of sad knobheads with an air of desperation.
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Yes, that about covers it Grobnob.
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Hardly shakespear I know, but it sums that motley crew up. I don’t know whether to call them the false start foundation or failed start foundation after this aborted attempt to publicize themselves went pear shaped. They’re almost like a real life sitcom, only filled with abuse and slander for anyone who disagrees with them.
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It’s really just a social group isn’t it?. An excuse to get together and indulge in their fantasies.
Robert Green’s eyes- is it the filming?. He looks insane.
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A social group of anti social people brought together by their desire to falsely accuse innocent people and generally spout hatred on social media. It was great to see their Convention ended barely five minutes in. Hah hah hah 😈
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An afternoon with Robert green. A whole afternoon, three hours . . . . Soon as the stream starts the venue gets a gchq phone call and their gang is banged. Good work peeing on their parade. These idiots need stopping.
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Next time we should hire a strippergram dressed as the devil 😈 to ruin their fun. Fresh start ? More like failed to start. They’re going to get a rep for never seeing an event through to completion.
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Is John Wedger really that stupid?
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I don’t think Jon Wedger was there, was he?
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Fascinating post EC & thought provoking too. I was quite prepared to class false memory syndrome & those who use it for abuse accusations of any kind as attention seekers & fantacists. However, after reading that Amy P’s story & having a relation who suffers from scizophrenia, I can quite easily see how Amy P. may have been manipulated.
I know my relation would be easily manipulated & it does not help one bit when successive medical people change the medicines that put my relation out of sync. It’s upsetting, dangerous & highly emotive for everyone. That is a dangerous time when meds that were working perfectly well are changed. Dangerous incidents have occurred such as trying to kill a parent with a knife, setting fire to the family home, (minimal damage thankfully) & a host of other distressing incidents. That is when any suggestions, good or bad, would sit on their brain & any kind of action could occur.
I hate that these false memory gurus target vulnerable people, why they do it, I don’t know but my theory is that they want to be ‘someone’, that they were not getting far enough in their chosen careers, perhaps jealousy played a part, jealousy of their superiors or someone else, but course anyone going down that route would have to already had some type of mental disorder in the first place which they were very good at disguising.
The fact that people like Becki, APD, etc. then try to say they have similar problems & try to use it as a ‘get out of jail free card’, makes my blood boil. How dare they, they are despicable individuals with no respect for people like Any P. who have been hoodwinked & will suffer possibly forever from the effects of their manipulation. I do wish the necessary authorities would ban the ‘practioners’ that do this from private & public practice.
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Great post EC
You posted a really good comment speculating about Becki’s reasons for her SRA claims in yesterday’s post. I wanted to reply to it but had spent most of a lovely sunny day online and needed to rest my eyes.
Could you please post it again as I think it is worthy of further discussion?
IMO it makes sense, when confronted with a mysterious and inexplicable case of SRA allegations develop a number of provisional hypotheses and work on proving or disproving them until we have a validated hypothesis, if that time ever comes.
Re the case with Amy P, her retraction, which I believe is extremely helpful and courageous, validates a hypothesis of false memories.
Re Becki Percy some provisional hypotheses might be as follows:
Becki was a genuine survivor of SRA
Becki was a genuine survivor of CSA but her narrative became contaminated with false memories or delusions / fantasies of SRA
Becki was a genuine survivor of non-sexual child abuse or neglect but her narrative became contaminated with false memories or delusions / fantasies of CSA and SRA
Becki is a vulnerable young person who is suffering from delusional disorder or some other mental illness and has never endured sexual abuse of any kind
Becki has a personality disorder that compels her to generate the excited attention of others through making false claims of SRA
Becki is a scammer who is trying to improve her lifestyle and generate financial revenue streams by making false accusations of SRA
Obviously the above hypothesis are not mutually exclusive and there could be other possibilities
In fact there are countless provisional hypotheses we could imagine
For example Becky could be say a mentally ill person with delusional disorder who experienced sexual abuse by a family acquaintance and whose narrative evolved into SRA by family members due to her mental illness.
In EC’s comment yesterday he reflected upon whether the validating response Becky received from others spurred her on into making more and more wild allegations, which I think is an important point.
I suppose I am just trying to say that we should retain our ability to think rationally, scientifically but also creatively and playfully about this situation, not just with Becki but the whole tidal wave of fake news regarding SRA allegations.
This is especially true when we consider that some extremely powerful and influential individuals and organisations are promoting such deranged conspiracies, a good example being this
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/28/russian-orthodox-church-suggests-tsars-death-jewish-ritual-murder/
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Also, re anyone claiming to have been abused by a satanic cult, I believe that we should hold in our minds that possibility that the person may have been abused in some kind of cult. If not then we are falling into a trap set by the SRA promoters and satan hunters. Many different people describe themselves as satanists, some are atheist rationalists, some are religious satanists and it is possible that some individual or group who wishes to abuse children would identify as satanists to child victims in order to terrify them into compliance.
It is also possible that a person genuinely abused by a religious or pseudo-religious cult might describe their experiences as SRA if they do not have the words of comprehension to describe their experience in any other way.
Obviously with Becki, her old FB account with multiple photos of her apparently living a normal, happy childhood would seem to invalidate the hypothesis that Becki is / was a genuine survivor of SRA.
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I think it should be a crime to accuse anyone of a crime on the internet unless a criminal complaint is first made to the police and is allowed to be investigated.
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That’s a really interesting idea, SV. Off the top of my head I cannot think of any reason why this should not be so. Might be worth discussing with your MP?
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Was this the comment, OMG?
I think it’s an important question. This is worth addressing in more detail, but I believe the short answer would be “it depends”. I think that “recovered memory therapies” can make people believe that these terrible things really did happen. Then there are the fakers, who create the stories as they go, in order to gain attention, money, or both. Even they, though, can come to believe some of their own lies, as they repeat them so often they begin to feel true.
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No, although I think that’s a great post that I agree with.
I don’t know how to link to the post I meant but in it you said
“In Becki’s case, I noticed that early on, before she’d really got into the “my parents were evil abusers” line, she was attempting to raise awareness of mental health issues, particularly autism, on Twitter. I wondered whether she might have been diagnosed on the ASD, but from what she tweeted, it seemed that one of her friends was in that situation, and Becki was trying to support her.
This is only a hypothesis, but that did make me wonder whether she got a bit of attention for her efforts, it felt good, and so she started changing the story, a bit at a time, each time finding that she got a bit more public admiration. It’s entirely possible that the internet, in a sense, helped to shape and mould her story into what it has now become.”
I think it is an interesting hypothesis that is rather kind and generous towards Becki, but may well have some milage in it. When looking at a cult centred around an individual (and one way to look at the Becki Percy case is that it is a cult of personality) is to understand that it is not only the cult leader that makes a cult but the need of the group to worship and idealise a leader.
The leader can start off as a kind person with good intentions, however as soon as a cluster of adoring people start to worship the leader it has a profound effect on the dynamics of the group and on the personality and behaviour of the leader.
Becki is looking to reinvent herself. escape her past life and find a circle of adoring fans. Her fans have let her know what they want from her and she is happy to provide it. It will continue in a self-perpetuating circle until such time as the bubble bursts.
The dynamics work in a similar way to the dynamics around DID. Vulnerable people want attention and dodgy therapists give them not only attention in the consulting room but typically parade them around on TV shows and at book signings etc. Both sides gain different things from the relationship and feed off each other. Often the therapists gain financial wealth and professional status and the patients gain lots of concerned attention and even sometimes media coverage.
These relationships are obviously dysfunctional and in Becki’s case, given her false allegations against innocent people and her Daddy no 3’s enthusiasm for firearms, there is a high risk that the screwed up dynamics could lead to the injury or death of an innocent person.
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I had a rather disturbing ‘false memory’ episode. Disturbing because it made me realise how easy it is to “compute” the information in your brain and construct a false narrative.
I genuinely believed, as I lived in the area at the time, that the gay activist Peter Tatchell was elected as the Labour MP in South London and then had to resign because he had ‘dual citizenship’ ( Australia / UK) decades before the current controversy over same in Oz has seen numerous politicians have to resign.
But it never happened?.
I used to get quite annoyed with people who said it did not pan out like this and he was never elected. It’s only when Tatchell himself confirmed on Twitter that I had a “false memory” that I began to question what other “memories” have I distorted in my head?.
Decades ago a UK University conducted an experiment on he London Tube system. A number of volunteers of all types, ethnicity etc got on and off a tube train and other volunteers agreed to record their thoughts about them.
The results were amazing- not one had the same belief about the passengers who got on and off..some thought say a young black man looked dodgy while a young black teen girl fancied him and thought he was a student (he was an accountant) and so on.
A middle aged women thought a man in a suit was respectable and he was probably a solicitor or similar but he was an auto mechanic who agreed to wear a suit for the experiment.
In fact descriptions varied widely (as police now understand that eye-witnesses can give entirely different versions of an event).
Memory ???
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Years ago I remember being certain that the actor Roy Kinnear had been killed falling off a horse during the filming of a movie. I mentioned it to someone and they pointed out that he was still alive but I was certain that I remembered it happening and that it had been all over the news. Then bizarrely, years later, Roy did of course get killed when he fell of a horse during the filming of ‘The Return of the Three Musketeers’!
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Witchcraft ! Damned by your own post.
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Wow, that’s almost under the heading of premonition, isn’t it?
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Tatchell did stand in the Bormondsey by-election in 1981 but lost to Simon Hughes.
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Indeed but I was convinced he was elected and the scenario I wrote about occurred. I really had it fixed in my head that the resulting drama went on.
In fact Tatchell could have still been elected even with Aust. citizenship but he also said on Twitter he had taken out UK citizenship and couldn’t have been disqualified in any event.
Along with Wilfred Hyde Park’s “memory” perhaps we are genuine psychics although Mr Park’s was far more accurate while mine predicted a bizarre scandal that decades later would claim numerous MPs across the otherside of the world.
# Not sure if you are aware but your Gold Koala Award gets you a 1% discount at all McDonald’s (that are approved by the Cult) on the Big Baby Mac and at all retailers who sell the Cult Baby Skin shoes.
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I had a bizarre one just this week, I was convinced Stephen fry had played a character in red dwarf. I’ll bet we all have false or constructed memories that we hold as genuine until addressed. As far as the SRA claimants goes ? I suspect they’re very vulnerable and damaged people brought before therapy and pretty easily manipulated. I’ve heard of kidnapped people being manipulated like patty Hearst or various Stockholm syndrome cases. It doesn’t strike me as beyond reason that some people will lie and others will accept what a less than reputable therapist drills into them. In my opinion becki is a rather slow individual who’s got too much positive reinforcement for her fantasy and is milking it for attention. I predict her future in the UK will be a problematic time for her if she wants to continue her narrative of trafficking, mass murder and serious allegations against various people. I suspect she thinks she won’t be sent home and it’ll be interesting how she reacts to the result of her appeal. As for her level of fame ? She’s a very minor player compared to the best selling michelles and warnkes of the past and should soon be returning to obscurity as jsa agreements, seeking accommodation and filling out the atos questionaire
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And we all know that ATOS do not believe anyone.
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Oh no, that was me who corrected you on the Stephen Fry thing, Grobnob. I feel guilty now, like I’ve shattered your illusions!
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Nah. My twenty odd year old memory is as fallible as everyone else’s. But it seemed like fry voiced legion. Hardly a huge error. I remember that comment got away from me unfinished due to a phone issue. But you get where it’s going. Becki is due one huge wake up call and is gonna meet reality head on for the first time in her grifting life. My money says she’s gonna be screaming all the way home.
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In your defence, the voice isn’t too dissimilar to Fry’s:
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It appears the Esther Baker is not going to be facing charges over allegations of abuse at the hands of John Hemming
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5871849/Former-MP-blasts-police-woman-false-child-rape-allegations-against-isnt-charged.html
It’s a difficult situation, as far as I am aware Baker was the recipient of quack therapy at the Lantern Project so it is probably correct not to charge her as she is highly likely to have had false memories.
Article re the Lantern Project here, the co-founder of the Lantern Project has refuted the claims made in the Mail – you can read about it at the end of the Mail article.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3351986/VIP-child-sex-charity-loses-NHS-funds-concerns-controversial-therapy-use-cause-false-memories.html
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Hemming used to comment on here. Not a big fan of ours as I recall 😀
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Indeed. If memory serves, that was triggered by the widely held belief that it was his office who’d tipped off Sabine of her imminent arrest back in 2015, thereby enabling her to abscond to Germany before the rozzers could nab her.
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This was indeed a rumour, but as I recall the person who was spreading it wasn’t all that credible, and ducked out of sight when pressed for evidence. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t true, but nor does it mean it was, imo.
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Yes, apologies EC. I should have squeezed an ‘allegedly’ in there somewhere!
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Yes I have read all about Hemming and his interests re Iran, the MEK etc. Then there was the stolen cat issue.
It does seem very strange to me , the ways in which Hemming is connected to various narratives relevant to Hoaxtead
He is a fan of the sinister Iranian cult MEK, the same cult that was Belinda’s cult of choice at one time and that benefitted from her Iran Aid charity debacle.
He is a supporter of Marie Black, a woman convicted of appalling sexual abuses against children including many abuses (e.g. blood drinking) that often pop up in SRA cases. In fact lots of things about the Marie Black conviction are extremely concerning.
He was the victim of false allegations of sexual abuse by a self proclaimed SRA survivor
I wish I had a hypothesis as to what it all means but to be honest I just feel confused about the whole thing.
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Also, no matter how much I dislike someone or their beliefs, I wouldn’t wish false allegations of CSA or SRA on anyone.
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Yes, that’s right. I don’t have to like someone to believe that they should not be victimised by false allegations. It only muddies the waters.
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Also possibly of interest to the readers of this blog
A professor of clinical psychiatry who believes in demonic possession
Story in the Washington Post
By Richard Gallagher July 1, 2016
Richard Gallagher is a board-certified psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College. He is at work on a book about demonic possession in the United States.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9be618d285a1
Someone who should be on our radar I think
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Where there is a large scale activity of harming many children, it would be natural in my opinion that victims would seize the chance to have those crimes investigated, the abusers arrested, that no more children suffer the abuse. Red flags rise of a fake narrative if there is resistance to an investigation, questions have to be asked of if the allegation maker is making things up.
Becki Percy is an example of someone who is raising resistance to investigating her allegations a cult is killing many children in Hull. Percy mainly uses Twitter to communicate with the world, and she has blocked me on Twitter, her 3rd “mum” blocked me yesterday, and I expect her business account will soon block me. Perhaps it is that she knows I am a Satanist. Sadly, others who have offered to help, or have done some initial work to link Percy up with Interpol and the police have also been ignored.
Percy seems to think that using social media to make allegations, but do nothing else, is all she is required to do as a campaigner. I have news for her, no it is not. If her allegations are true, and her life is in danger, my associate Ajax has now put himself in danger because he has contacted the police for Percy. However, Percy is quite willing to leave others to face consequences whilst calling upon her mob of followers to write to Trump to help her political asylum case. Percy is quite willing to point fingers on social media identifying various individuals, accusing them of being murderers and child abusers, inviting her followers to attack them on social media, yet has not been helping the police to drive forward a proper investigation into her claims.
It is unjust that Ajax puts himself out on a limb, that children are potentially in danger, that individuals have been accused of crimes but are being denied the right of an objective police investigation.
Percy is now an adult, she is responsible for her own actions, the consequences of her actions. The world has no need for another Angela Power Disney or Sabine McNiell. This lady is going to learn that allegations come with a responsibility of backing them up, or facing legal penalties for doing so.
Becki Percy currently lives a fairy story existence: a devoted family she always wanted; a centre of attention as a “victim” of a horrific narrative with 30k est. followers on Twitter; a personal business; easy money making from go-funding campaigns; a role as a child abuse campaigner against evil Satanists.
Percy has to see the big picture, her fairy story is coming to an end. Trump is too busy to be aware of the existence of Becki, she faces stressed judges and immigration officials who are dealing with her case. Percy has lost her case at all stages of her political asylum process, she relies on a final set of appeals, which delays but probably won’t help her to stay in the USA. Percy came to the USA based upon a lie, the intention of staying permanently rather than as a three month visit on a tourist VISA. Homeland Security knows she attempted to come in as an illegal immigrant, she should have claimed political asylum straight away rather than get by them on a tourist VISA. Saying her life is in danger is not enough, what is her evidence? Did she tell the police in Britain her life was in danger, that there are thousands of children murdered by an alleged cult in Hull? Does the police in the UK have a record of these allegations? Are they investigating? Can Homeland Security verify this? Homeland Security is not going to give a naive British girl with an unproven story a free pass to US citizenship, especially after she tried to trick them with a tourist VISA. The end state is that Becki Percy will be deported from the USA, she will never be able to visit the USA again.
Back in Britain it will be hard to keep her candle business going with her hardcore Trump-Christian market. Percy has to find a home, a job and a new support system. If Percy continues with her allegations in the UK, and this has not been supported by a criminal investigation and convictions, she will be in all kinds of legal trouble starting with harrassment charges.
The future is bright for Percy if her allegations are true, dire, if they are false.
I do not need Becki Percy to get a police investigation going, Ajax has started the ball rolling. Our Arachnae Project has taken over the case. We use complexity theory and special tools to link people and information together. We think we have tracked down her teacher Percy disclosed to. This teacher will soon learn about the SRA allegations that Percy has made, this teacher will be linked up to the police anchor point that Ajax created, so the police and teacher will be talking to each other. We will do the same with social workers and Homeland Security. If Percy has broken any laws, or there are criminal complaints against her, the system at all the UK borders will flag her up when she comes back to the UK, she will be taken into custody.
Percy has made some serious allegations against named individuals, it was inevitable once Ajax followed the correct system for reporting crimes, that this would trigger into something that Becki now will have to become a part of if she likes it or not.
The wheels are beginning to turn. Becki can be a responsible adult and take the lead in these developments by working with the British police investigation, or she can lose credibility, her choice.
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I’m a Christian and she’s blocked me too.
Re the police – I’m still trying to figure out why the Police in Ireland haven’t been to see Angela about her allegation that she knows about a video where Ella is seen abusing a child. Angela should have been interviewed about this. Bottom line – you see child abuse or are told about it, you should report it. Her ‘contact’ should have no anonymity where the police are concerned.
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That’s absolutely right.
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We have established it is not a dislike of Satanists then. I reactivated Facebook, and all I see is a happy Percy family, pure working class. Nothing sinister at all. In 2012 Becki Percy posted this on her Facebook:
“The three things I hate most in life is liers, thief’s and two faced people. What’s the point in doing it. Your gonna get cause sooner or later”
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Truer words, Becki. Truer words. 😆
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Let’s hope that Becki’s words come back to bite her on the backside.
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I’d say she doesn’t like Satanists but she’ll block anyone who questions her or disagrees with her. I don’t troll or be mean to people I just ask questions. Rarely get a sensible answer.
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“The three things I hate most in life is liers, thief’s and two faced people. What’s the point in doing it. Your gonna get cause sooner or later”
Four including grammar pedants?
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LOL, where would we be without you TCL?
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Becki is a “Christian” and her numerous new families seem to be Evangelicals. While believing Becki’s ridiculous claims which police obviously thought were far-fetched I bet her host families also support Donald Trump separating asylum seeker parents from their kids.
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The new “mom” aand “dad” of Becki Percy in Texas supports Trump and his separation of children from families of of immigrants. Trump can do no wrong in their eyes.
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And in other news, England are 2-0 up 🙂
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Recently overheard:
‘Football is better than sex.’
‘No way – that’s just not true’.
‘Yes it is. When did you ever have forty minutes each way and a band in the middle?’
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LMAO!
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An opportunity for the classic post-match interview gag:
“It was a great game. I scored three goals and got pulled off by the manager at half time.”
“Really? We only got oranges.”
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England are doing well at that ‘wrestling match’!
More other news, Arlene Foster is at the Ulster Final, that must be sticking in her craw. 😂😂😂
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The end result England 6-1, so glad I saved my last beer for today. 🍺🍺👍
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Indeed, mate! In fact they’d scored 3 more by the time my comment showed up! LOL
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Great result indeed, I hope you enjoyed your time in the pub Tinribs.
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Very nice thank you, Arfur. Always a good crowd in the Milford Arms 🙂
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For anyone too young to “see what I did there”. Aww tergevva nah…
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Great post and research EC. Memory is indeed a peculiar thing. My younger siblings can recall stories that I have no memory of at all or I remember it differently to the way they do.
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So true, Arfur. Another example of the top of my head – do you remember that tenner I lent you last Tuesday?
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I remember it as being just 50p that you lent me Tinribs, your memory deceives you, my good man. 🙂
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You’ve been talking to Valerie Sinason again, mate. She’s got you believing it was 50p but I’m that sure with a course of hypnotherapy it’ll all come flooding back to you. £10 £10 £10 £10 £10… Just keep saying it over and over in your head until you believe it.
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I went to see the Three Tenors in concert once. It cost me thirty quid.
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Ah, Tinribs I am glad I caught up with you again as I believe I owe you £10.
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I’m sure we agreed on thirty, mate. Don’t you remember?
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Oh yes, of course it is £30 I owe you Tinribs. Where would I be without you, thanks for reminding me. You are such a good friend.
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Desperate Devine’s been harassing receptionists again:
And another one on his Facebook page
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I’ll bet Receptionists open their newspaper and start doing the crossword when people like Devine and Berry call them, just letting them prattle on in their ear, with the occasional, “uh-huh” uttered as they try to work out the answer to the clue for 5 down.
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Annoying caller, 6 letter word starting with a ‘w’ and ending with “er”..
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Waiter?
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Not good at crosswords are ya? 😀
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No, i am bloody terrible at them. 🙂
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“Annoying caller, 6 letter word starting with a ‘w’ and ending with ‘er'”
Look, just coz you didn’t like Weller’s last album, there’s no need to accuse him of crank calling!
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Jeez, have a word with yourself, Neelu!
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This is the problem with people like Neelu. They say what they want to see and it’s a distorted view of reality.
All I saw was a frustrated old Priest slap a crying baby on the face. Something he should never have done.
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Neelu is never one to exaggerate is she, she says it as it is. It’s just a shame that she sees things differently to the rest of us.
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Yes, it was a shocking sight as it was, no need to turn it into something more dramatic.
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It seems Rupert has taken down both of his videos!
https://www.youtube.com/user/kivresp/videos
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His Walmart one is still appearing on his G+ page.
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Yes, I think he’s set it to unlisted.
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