It’s BAFAB week: Buy A Friend A Book! Bloggers get to give away books, or buy people books, all week. It is fun and awesome. I just discovered this today and I am so happy… Big BAFAB Giveaway for Buy A Friend A Book Week!
Trish over at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? shared this problem in her blog the other day. Basically, she has a tenant who said he couldn’t make April’s rent and that he would be out by… Principles equal ground rules equal boundaries
One major aspect of abuse is that survivors often reach adulthood without the basic skills they need to be successful. Some survivors were not taught how to take care of themselves, some could not learn… Tools of Recovery: Merit Badges
Nutrition is in some ways a less well-defined tool than the others described here. There is so much information flying around about what is and isn’t healthy – and so much of that information ends… Tools of Recovery: Nutrition
http://www.dlisted.com/node/24802
Really says it all, doesn’t it? I think the good people at the FOOBiverse were particularly eloquent about this one….
Project Monarch, unfortunately, is many things to many people. At its most basic, it is one of the CIA‘s human experimentation projects, probably as part of MKULTRA. It has become something of a banner term for survivors and conspiracy theorists alike, which is to say that “Project Monarch” is sometimes used as a catch-all term for CIA experimentation in general (as, for that matter, is “MKULTRA”).
The severity of torture involved in a lot of the CIA’s projects has lent Project Monarch something of an air of lunacy. Survivors of any kind are often not believed when they talk about their abuse, and this may be particularly true of survivors whose abuse included their government, specific political figures, the creation of many people inside their bodies, elaborate programming, and extreme and horrific physical, sexual, and mental abuse. On top of that, ritual abuse survivors – including governmental ritual abuse – are often set up to sound like their memories can’t possibly be true, as we’ll see a little later on. Here, we’ll examine what Project Monarch may have been, some of the things that Project Monarch is said to have done, and exactly what evidence there is for all of that.
Disney, E.T., and the Wizard of Oz: What is involved?
The primary claims made about Project Monarch, from what I have read, are that it:
Some secondary claims (i.e. those made with less frequency or which are in my opinion less relevant to the question of what people have experienced) include (but are not limited to) claiming that it:
Project Monarch: Content and Deliverance
Here we’ll look at some of the most common elements attributed to Project Monarch and other government abuse, and look for any evidence of their truth.
CIA Plans
“I am a survivor of mind control experiments performed under the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program. MK-ULTRA was established in 1953 to counter Soviet and Chinese advances in brainwashing and interrogation techniques and consisted of 149 subprojects contracted out to at least 80 institutions including hospitals and Universities. In 1977 Director of Intelligence Stansfield Turner said the program was initiated because the Agency was confronted with ‘learning the state of the art of behavioral modification at a time when the U.S. Government was concerned about inexplicable behavior of persons behind the ‘Iron Curtain‘ and American prisoners of war who had been subjected to so called brainwashing.'”4 — Carol Rutz
As we’ve already seen, the MKULTRA subproject which attempted in part to create “multiple personality disorder” in children used (or at least the documents we have state their intention to use) nonconsensual electroshock, drugging, et cetera; all of these and more items discussed in this writeup tally perfectly with claims made by survivors.
Then there’s Ewen Cameron, who conducted CIA-financed psychiatric experiments where he “would drug his victims to sleep for weeks on end, waking them daily only to administer violent electric shocks to the brain.”15 (There’s that pesky electric shock thing again!) According to author Anton Chaitkin, “Patients lost all or part of their memories, and some lost the ability to control their bodily functions and to speak. At least one patient was reduced almost to a vegetable; then Cameron had the cognitive centers of her brain surgically cut apart, while keeping her alive.”15
There’s a public desk at the front of my workplace with a daily calendar. Every year, the supervisor for that department buys a calendar she thinks will amuse and delight patrons. This year, she chose… “How stingy was he?”
Total shout-out! You remember Amy Winehouse’s excellent demonstration of Lifetime Alcoholic Hair? (She sometimes sports a wonderfully intense version where all her hair looks as dead and dull as a really cheap wig, which I… The week of no pants on
(I originally wrote this for Everything2.com. Articles there follow a practice of hyperlinking – people link words or phrases of their choice to other E2 entries so that it forms a big meandering hypertexty web. I’ve left most of the links in, here, because most of them add a snarky subtext that you can see by mousing over (holding your cursor over the link and reading the text that pops up). Some of them link to great writing themselves.)
“The FMSF supports parents who say the accusations by their adult children of childhood sexual abuse are false. These parents are typically aged 50s, 60s and 70s. Their accusers are adults who, for one reason or another, have met unbearable emotional pain and insurmountable difficulties in adult relationships – at work, socially or at home – and have sought to relieve the burden of their memories.”10
A punchy enough quote. But a brief review of the background and personalities involved with the Foundation is enough to suggest that instead, this writeup should read:
PEDOPHILES!
CIA AGENTS!
SHATTERED LIVES!
DRAMA!!!
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation was started in the United States in 1992, by parents whose children had come out about being sexually abused.
At least, that is the most neutral way to describe them. As will be explained here, they are an organization which acts to discredit survivors of child abuse, founded and staffed (as we will see here) largely by abusers.
On their website, they say their goals are:
It is crucial to understand, above all, that False Memory Syndrome, or “FMS,” is not a communicable disease. It is not a valid syndrome at all, in fact. It is not recognized as such by any part of the medical community, and it does not qualify as a “syndrome” in the first place. It is a term made up by those accused of sexual abuse to shame and discredit survivors. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation, in short, invented this condition and then devoted itself to stopping its imaginary spread and healing its victims.
How?
“Since 1995, I have become aware of the parallel between the intimidation and silencing in the microcosm of the abusive family and in the macrocosm of a society that is ill at ease in dealing with the abuse of children. During my childhood my father protected himself from being held accountable by threatening me into silence. I believe that published documents demonstrate how some members and supporters of false memory groups publish false statements that defame and intimidate victims of proven violence and their supporters. Such altered accounts are used to discredit others in court and in the press.” – Jennifer Hoult16
Their website is heavy on their history and theories, but extremely light on their actual actions. All they will say is that “The FMS Foundation has played a role as a clearinghouse of information and as a catalyst for discussion and research about the specific claims that have formed the basis of the debate in the areas of memory, social influence and therapeutic practice.”
One of the FMSF’s main activities is the filing of amicus briefs — that is, unsolicited opinions — in court cases relating to child abuse.
Between 1995 and 1998, the FMSF filed thirteen such briefs in the United States, mainly to appellate courts and once to a Court of Appeals.
They have also attacked therapists around the country. One of their tactics seems to be to sue therapists who treat (in particular) survivors of ritual abuse, suing them for anything from trivial legal loopholes to alleged malpractice.
Primarily, however, they have acted as media boosters. From the beginning, the FMSF has pushed people to take their angry stories to the media, to talk shows as well as reporters. They have the benefit of a star-studded base of supporters: they have recruited many psychologists, lawyers, and goverment figures to their ranks. Their psychologists are often discredited, and their government connections are largely to the scarier parts of the CIA… but that just adds to the fun of it!
As Mike Stanton writes in the Columbia Journalism Review,
“A study published (in 1996) by a University of Michigan sociologist, Katherine Beckett, found a sharp shift in how four leading magazines — Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and People — treated sexual abuse. In 1991, more than 80 percent of the coverage was weighted toward stories of survivors, with recovered memory taken for granted and questionable therapy virtually ignored. By 1994, more than 80 percent of the coverage focused on false accusations, often involving supposedly false memory. Beckett credited the False Memory Syndrome Foundation with a major role in the change.”8
Child Rights Watch puts it in a more damning nutshell:
“A legitimising barrage of stories in the press has shaped public opinion and warmed the clime for defence attorneys. The concept of false memory serves the same purpose as Holocaust denial. It shapes opinion. Unconscionable crimes are obstructed, the accused is endowed with the status of martyr, the victim is reviled.”10
Their Research
One of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation’s main claims is that they simply promote the most recent scientific findings on memory. This is made easier for them by their Scientific Advisory Board, which has such stellar figures as… well, actually, everyone discussed below except the Loftus couple.
Oddly enough, the scientific research produced by these people, and still promoted by the FMSF, has been thoroughly discredited.
For example, Board member Elizabeth Loftus is possibly the most vocal, visible, and quoted member of their organization. She produced the ground-breaking study entitled “Lost In the Mall: Misrepresentations and misunderstandings,” wherein she presented twenty-four adults with four possible childhood experiences.
The experiences were presented as short written anecdotes, and culled from the subjects’ relatives. The false story in each case featured the subject getting lost in a shopping mall as a child. Loftus asked the relatives to provide similar stories about childhood shopping trips. The subjects were asked to write anything they remembered about each experience, or to write that they did not remember the experience.
According to her study, six thought they remembered at least part of the one that never happened. One to two weeks later, the subjects were interviewed again. This time they were told that one of the stories had been false, and asked to identify which one. Nineteen correctly chose the shopping mall story; five did not. It is not clear whether those five students were part of the previous group of six.
Researchers Lynn Crook and Martha Dean have written several articles critiquing (among other things) the ethical and methodological issues involved with Loftus’ study.12 However, even if her study had been airtight, it has very little relevance to the question of whether repressed memories are false.
Why?
Because a repressed memory of something traumatic which is unlike anything the family thinks happened does not have a whole lot of similarity to six out of twenty-four adults thinking they remember all of several similar childhood stories.
That is, repressed memories are generally of scary, threatening experiences. They are very different from what we convinced ourselves our childhood looked like. Loftus’ study, and every other study I have seen which supported her findings, focuses entirely on seeing if it is possible to convince people that something happened to them which is very much like other things that they, and the researchers, know happened.
By way of example, a 1995 study by K. Pezdek and C. Roe entitled “The effect of memory trace strength on suggestibility” found that three of twenty subjects falsely recalled getting lost in (again) a shopping mall, but none recalled getting a painful enema.
And in a review of “Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law,” (1998) attorney Helen L. McGonigle describes how the authors undertook a detailed review of thirty studies of memory and child sexual abuse, and found that “while base rates varied, the average rate of full amnesia across all thirty studies was found to be approximately 29.6%.” That means that these studies consistently found that almost thirty percent of subjects had completely repressed the memory of the abuse; that’s not even counting the many people who remembered only part of what happened to them. The authors also found that “the gist of recovered memories is generally accurate although perhaps not the insignificant, peripheral details.”14
Sidran Press, which publishes information on trauma, dissociation, and post-traumatic stress disorder, has a chart explaining what makes someone repress a memory:13
Factors in Continuous Memory versus Factors in Dissociation/Amnesia Single traumatic event Multi-event (repetitive)Natural or accidental cause Deliberate human causeAdult victim Child victimValidation and support Denial and secrecy
Like much information from Sidran Press, it is not true for everyone. But it is a good basic explanation of current findings in memory and trauma research.
So Who Are These People, Anyway?
The following does not represent their entire board or organization by any means; it’s just a quick wander through their biggest names from the past ten years.
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation: Mock ’em if you got ’em