Oct. 31, 2016

“Historical truths emerge only with time, after which they are ours, particularly on Halloween, to mangle.

“Early on, the Salem witch trials disappeared from the record; a hush descended over 1692 for generations. ‘The People of Salem Do Not Like to Be Questioned in Regard to the Witchery Affair’ reads a Philadelphia Inquirer headline – from 1895. It fell to others to resurrect the ‘witchcraft,’ as the South did during the debate over slavery. Then came Arthur Miller, who made off with the story, or at least a version of it.

“A lush mythology grew up around the trials, one that reassured us that these events took place in a remote land in no way resembling our own. In truth, they are deeply woven into the American fabric. They are more relevant than the lore suggests – our earliest instance of conspiratorial fantasy and reckless demonizing, of the brand of national distemper that grips us in anxious times.”

– From “Five Myths about the Salem witch trials” by Stacy Schiff in the Washington Post (Oct. 30)

Fifteen years ago today: Massachusetts officially exonerates five women hanged as witches in Salem.

Jan. 4, 2012

“A few years back, I met a fellow investigative journalist in North Carolina….The subject came around to the Little Rascals case. He assured me the day care workers were guilty….

“I told him about how the McMartin case in California had been the first nationally publicized case to use interviews that practically bullied children into reporting mythical, often totally implausible abuse. Little Rascals was a textbook case of the same kind of tactics, and Ofra Bikel’s three fine documentaries left no doubt about this terrible miscarriage of justice.

“Yet my friend refused to listen to any other evidence or point of view. It transpired that his wife had recovered ‘memories’ of sexual abuse – another subject on which he would hear no other evidence….

“I tell you this just to let you know I am familiar with cases in which otherwise objective journalists develop seemingly incurable blind spots.”

–  From a 1997 letter to Columbia Journalism Review by Mark Pendergrast, author of “Victims of Memory,” challenging criticism of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation

June 16, 2016

“We thought “satanic ritual abuse” was a wholly debunked artifact of the 1980s, but apparently there are still a few ‘therapists’ out there dedicated to ‘helping survivors’….

“According to the Satanic Temple (who aren’t really “Satanists” so much as anti-theocracy advocates), the ‘therapists’ seem to be the ones who are desperately in need of help. And perhaps having their licensure revoked….

“The Satanic Temple’s ‘Grey Faction’ – ‘dedicated to combating pseudoscience and witch-hunting conspiracism with rational inquiry’ — has posted a petition at Change.org asking the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation to investigate counselor Neil Brick….

“Brick, head of something called ‘Survivorship,’ runs conferences where some seriously weird advice is given. For instance, you shouldn’t trust your spouse, since they may actually be an agent of the mind-control conspiracy. The petition asks Massachusetts authorities to investigate a number of ‘potentially dangerous’ and ‘radically paranoid, unsubstantiated, delusional beliefs’  pushed by Brick:

Neil Brick claims to believe that he was brainwashed to be an assassin for the Illuminati/Freemasons.

Neil Brick claims that, as part of his brainwashing by the Illuminati/Masonic conspiracy, he was programmed to rape and kill “without feeling.”

Neil Brick claims that he once murdered a man in an unreported incident in Europe.

Neil Brick holds regular conferences wherein his delusional beliefs are propagated to mental health consumers by him and his co-conspiracists.

At a very recent conference (May 2016), Neil Brick expressed concern that attendees could “trigger” mind-control programming by touching their faces. Neil Brick imposed a prohibition against face-touching and asked that people sit on their hands. (Keep in mind, this is a man who claims that his own mind-control programming impels him to rape and kill. The implication is clear.)

Neil Brick continues to propagate debunked and disregarded narratives of concealed occult crimes from the height of the “Satanic Panic.”

Neil Brick demonstrates a complete lack of understanding regarding cognitive/behavioral development, claiming to believe that Masons and/or Satanic cults torture fetuses so as to begin mind-controlling them at the earliest possible stage.

– From “Mental Health Professional Thinks Someone Programmed Him To Murder. Could It Be … Satan?” at Wonkette (June 14)

It took several requests, but in 2012 the Charleston-based nonprofit Darkness to Light withdrew its approval of Brick’s Survivorship site.

Dec. 5, 2011

In this (Nov. 29) New York Times analysis of science’s ever-growing skepticism about eyewitness testimony I noticed a familiar name:

“One of the earliest and more famous experiments to demonstrate that memories are malleable was conducted by Elizabeth Loftus, a psychology professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an early pioneer of witness memory research.

“In a 1974 study published in The Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, (Loftus) asked participants to view films of fender-benders in which no car windows or headlights were broken. Later, the subjects who were asked how fast the cars were going when they ‘smashed’ into each other – as opposed to ‘hit’ – were more likely to report speeding and describe shattered glass they never actually saw.”

While researching a book on the Wenatchee, Washington, ritual sex abuse case (1994-95), Kathryn Lyon asked Loftus about the consequences when professionals contribute to and reinforce false memories in children.

“If you believe real child abuse has long-term deleterious consequences,” Loftus responded, “then what happens when you create a false memory of child abuse? Are you creating a victim who is also likely to have long-term troubles?

“Having a real and a pseudo memory are in many ways the same. If you create the memory, are you not creating child abuse?”

Lyon, a lawyer, spent a year in Wenatchee to write the thorough and chilling “Witch Hunt: A True Story of Social Hysteria and Abused Justice” (1998).