Part 2 of 4
 
        SADLY THIS IS BECOMING A BOILER PLATE IN CUSTODY DISPUTES; ACCUSE
        THE FATHER OF ABUSE. To repeat, abusing a child is one of the most
        despicable things an adult can do. That does not however give
        anyone, including mental health professionals, carte blanche to
        trash people's lives.
 
        Unfortunately many jurisdictions in North America have responded to
        the problem by adopting Ronald Reagan's zero tolerance political
        agenda by taking it away from drugs and applying it to abuse. Some
        jurisdictions have granted absolute immunity to child protection
        services so that individuals who work there can report every
        suspected case no matter how slim or even in the absence of
        evidence. Now most social workers carry out their duties to the
        highest ethical level, but the potential for abuse is enormous. THE
        SAN DIEGO GRAND JURY FOR EXAMPLE RECOMMENDED REMOVING THE ABSOLUTE
        IMMUNITY, BECAUSE IT CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY. They heard evidence that
        social workers had lied in reports and had lied in their testimony,
        and that social workers had abused their power by threatening
        therapists, threatening lawyers, and threatening families who did
        not agree with them. Social workers have taken children from homes
        and conspired to have those children adopted by the social workers
        own family. They have even place children with unfit parents in
        apparent reprisal against parents who disagreed with them.
 
        NOW THE IMPORTANT POINT THAT I AM MAKING IS; THAT NOBODY CAN
        SUPPORT THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL ACCUSATIONS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
        ARE TRUE. IT IS ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE THAT THERE BE SOMETHING
        BEYOND THE FACT THAT AN ACCUSATION HAS BEEN MADE, SOMETHING TO
        CORROBORATE THE ACCUSATION. The need for external evidence to
        support the accusations, especially accusations of child sexual
        abuse, is also evident in another growth industry; that is,
        recovered memories of child sexual abuse. There are hundreds of
        cases in North America, and now the rest of the world, in which an
        individual, an adult, with no previous knowledge of being abusedm
        comes to the opinion that he or she was abused as a child for many
        years in the past.
 
        The classic case is the California Ramona case. Holly Ramona went to
        a family therapist Isabella, because she suffered from bulimia,
        which is an eating disorder. Isabella told holly that 80% of the
        people who suffer from bulimia were abused as children. Now that is
        nonsense but it got her foot in the door. Then Holly began to have
        vague flashbacks. Next Isabella and a psychiatrist named Rose,
        administered sodium amytol, that's a drug that heightens
        suggestibility, but Isabella told Holly that it was truth serum.
        There were no notes taken during the drug sessions, but Holly
        remembered some specific cases of abuse. So what did she do? She
        sued her father, and not surprisingly he lost his job, he lost his
        marriage, he lost his community standing. So WHAT DID HE DO? HE
        SUED THE THERAPISTS FOR THE HARM THEY DID WITH THEIR GROSS
        NEGLIGENCE, AND MALPRACTICE FOR IMPLANTING FALSE MEMORIES IN HIS
        DAUGHTER'S MIND. HE WON AND THE JURY AWARDED HIM HALF A MILLION
        DOLLARS. FRANKLY, I WOULDN'T TAKE THE HALF A MILLION IN ADVANCE, TO
        have the consequences but that's a different story. Holly's case
        was later thrown out because the abuse never happened. The
        accusation was false. But Holly still believes it, so I ask you who
        abused Holly, and I think that there is no answer but the
        therapists.
 
        JUST LAST MONTH IN MAY 1995, a New Hampshire court held that memory
        repression and therapy that is deemed to recover repressed memories
        have not gained enough acceptance in psychology, or in scientific
        reliability, to admit them as evidence in the first place.
 
        Joel Humberford's daughter claimed that he had raped her just days
        before her wedding. She repressed the memory, but it came back in
        therapy. The court heard evidence from leading experts from both
        sides of the recovered memory debate and decided it simply wouldn't
        put recovered memorys to the jury. The memories were too unreliable
        and the theories that the therapists used are not generally
        accpeted in the scientific community. NOW I THINK THAT'S THE RIGHT
        ANSWER, DON'T ADMIT THE QUESTIONABLE EVIDENCE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
        In a jury trial, it's the jury's job to assess the credibility of
        the witnesses. They do this based on their own common sense and
        experience.
 
        But our common sense and experience, even in working in studies of
        memory for 25 years, does not equip us to tell if a memory
        recovered in therapy, covers real events or not. Scientists have no
        way of telling whether the story actually happened in the external
        world without some external evidence to corroborate. The person who
        recovers a memory in therapy is usually very passionate about the
        truth of the story. The story has been told very many times and may
        become very consisten, perhaps even plausable to that person. But
        some of thses passionate recovered memories and passionate beliefs
        are from impossible events. For example some people will even
        remember being an egg in a fallopian tube. Others remembered being
        abused in a past life or in some cases 15-20 past lives. It's hard
        to remember that others may not be impossible, but seem somehat
        bizarre. Such as being abducted by aliens or subjected to satanic
        ritual abuse by an intergenerational cult that cannabilizes babies;
        and that others program people to become assassins who will be
        triggered when the right colours are presented to them.
        So some recovered memories are false and we don't know how many,
        and we have no way of telling for sure if memory is true without
        some external evidence to support the story. Neither does the
        therapist, so you can ignore  NONSENICLE COMMENTS LIKE "I LISTENED
        TO THEIR  STORIES AND I KNOW THEY ARE TRUE".
 
continued..........
 
 
... Your sacred cow is my next Double Whopper with cheese.
--- DB 1.58/004910
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