Dr Joan Coleman and the RAINS Grudge List

Earlier this week, it was brought to our attention that Dr Joan Coleman, one of the co-founders of RAINS (Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support), had died on 6 July.

Writing on DavidIcke.com (because where else?), none other than Sycophant in Chief Robert Green eulogised Dr Coleman, and threw in a few kind words for himself while he was at it.

Warning: reading this excessively sugary tribute may cause diabetes. Venture at your own risk.We’ve previously discussed Dr Coleman’s bizarre and unfounded allegations against Ted Heath—including the fact that Robert Green was able to feed the allegations to former Wiltshire Chief Constable Mike Veale.

We’ll skip over some of the self-congratulatory bits, and get straight to the conclusion, but if you feel you can stomach the whole thing you can find it at this link. Robert saw Dr Coleman as “kind, scrupulously fair-minded…a woman of unshakeable goodness and morality and treated all her work in a dispassionately professional though humane and caring manner”.

We beg to differ.

Even a quick scan of the “RAINS list” reveals that Dr Coleman had a penchant for carrying personal and professional grudges which she deployed in the form of nasty innuendo against anyone she felt had slighted her belief in SRA, or had thwarted her professional ambitions.

The RAINS list: ‘Are you now or have you ever been a Satanist?’

A week or so ago, we noticed that various True Believers in Satanic ritual abuse had posted an “updated” version of the infamous list produced by Dr Coleman in the early 1990s. This list of alleged “Satanists” consisted of names “revealed” to Dr Coleman, a psychiatrist, by one of her patients, Helen G., who claimed to have been ritually abused by all those she named.

The list reflected a curious duality: on one hand, Dr Coleman was fond of the idea of scandalously wealthy and/or powerful people, who were also secretly Satanist ritual abusers, and thus had access to large private country estates on which to bury those they’d sacrificed. On the other hand, according to S.A.F.F., Helen G. came from a “notorious council sink-estate in Havant”, and so a good proportion of the list also consisted of rather ordinary people—an electrician, several junkies, and others whose occupations are not named.

Much like the list of names compiled by Ella Gareeva and Abraham Christie in 2014, which was designed to have maximum impact on anyone who’d slighted or offended either Abe or Ella, many of those named on the RAINS list were simply people who’d angered Dr Coleman at various times.

For example, the list included:

• Virginia Bottomley, Secretary of State for Health in the early 1990s, who had the temerity to state in an interview on Radio 4 that she was “delighted that the myth of ritual abuse had been exposed”;
• Dr Bill Thompson, lecturer in Criminology at Reading University, who Dr Coleman wrote “has been an expert witness for the defence in cases where people have been accused of Satanic ritual abuse”;
• Dr Tony Baker, Child & Adolescent psychiatrist, about whom Dr Coleman wrote, “I have had a number of encounters with him. Back in 1989, when I was working with BS, my first SRA survivor, Guildford CID called him in for second opinion. His conclusion was that I had invented the entire story and suggested it all to her, causing her to believe all the elaborate detail she had given us. This finished the police investigation on that case”;
• Ray Aldridge-Morris, a psychologist, about whom Dr Coleman wrote, “Wrote many sceptical papers on SRA”;
• Cardinal Cormack Murphy O’Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, about whom Dr Coleman wrote, “Years ago, when he was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, I met him and tried to talk to him about SRA. He was very dismissive”;
• Terry Grange, Chief Constable of Dyfed-Powys, about whom Dr Coleman wrote, “In Jan.2005, I was asked by Lee Moore to write to him in his capacity as holder of Violent Crimes Portfolio for ACPO, supporting her request for a national Police Unit to be set up, to deal with the subject of Ritual Crime and Abuse. She received a scathing reply, of which I was sent a copy, stating that there is no evidence, past or present, that SRA is a reality. He referred to [Jean La Fontaine]’s research and maintained that there were ‘myths’ in the early 90’s resulting in children being taken into care, but as soon as the allegations were dismissed, the children were returned home”;
• Richard Ingrams, former Editor of Private Eye, current Editor of The Oldie, magazine for the over 50s, about whom Dr Coleman wrote: “lst edition ever, 21st Feb. 1992, contained an article by Rosie Waterhouse, entitled “A Modern Witch Hunt” giving details of a RAINS Meeting (7th Feb. 1992) held in Nottingham, to which we naively invited [Jean La Fontaine]. She was not mentioned in the article but I was, in some detail”;
• Bob Woffinden, journalist, about whom Dr Coleman wrote: “Wrote sceptical article about SRA for Private Eye. Wrote anonymously. Has written other articles in similar vein. Said to be friendly with Margaret Hodge and [Jean La Fontaine]”;
• Prof Gisli Gudjonnson, lecturer at London University, about whom Dr Coleman wrote: “In with [British False Memory Society]. Frequently acts as Expert Witness, esp. in Child Abuse cases and SRA cases.  Paid £6,000 by cults for every SRA case he successfully discredits”.

The entire list, of course, is much longer, and includes others who had not directly offended Dr Coleman, but who she claimed were “known to be associated with” people such as Jean La Fontaine or organisations such as the B.F.M.S.

In other words, the punishment for disagreeing with Dr Coleman was inclusion on this list, which circulated freely amongst True Believers for a number of years.

While the list contains multiple references to crimes including murder, so far as we are aware Dr Coleman never bothered to report any crimes to police. Rather, the power of this list lies in its ability to smear people—especially those disliked by Dr Coleman or her associates—with an indelible stain through unproven allegations and innuendo.

As we’ve seen with the victims of the Hampstead SRA hoax, such lies can grow very long legs, and can follow innocent people for many, many years.

Lies and the Spreading of Fake Information