Blue Mountains cult: part two of Nathan's story

In a continuation of his Shepherd's Heart and Blue Mountains SRA cult story, Nathan Zamprogno writes:

"...I am telling this story in the sincere belief that I am speaking for the voiceless; for all the victims of cult abuse and for the victims of when any religious belief, even an originally well-intentioned one, turns sinister.

I am also writing in the conviction that if no one speaks out, other people inevitably will suffer in the future at the hands of the same group..."

His latest post, In which Nathan's wife is stolen away by a cult includes his coverage on TV, and speech at Parliament House, Canberra, in November 2011.

A wife lost to Shepherd's Heart SRA cult

Sydney's Channel 9 recently covered the Shepherd's Heart cult, a group of Satanic Ritual Abuse believers based in Canberra.

'...Nathan was happily married... three years ago, his wife went out to a Bible class and never came home...'

 '...I never anticipated that things would unravel in such a sinister way...'

'...They've robbed her family of a daughter, a sister a niece, and a  granddaughter...'

'....These people believe they've been subjected to horrendous ritual satanic abuse, at the hands of their own families...'

'...Shepherd's Heart's leader is John Darnell, he and his wife Glenys are demonstrating what the church believes to be appropriate counselling...'

'...Shepherd's Heart calls it Dissociative Identity Disorder…which is based on a belief that followers have suffered abuse so awful, they've repressed the memories, and that only cult members can counsel them...'

Professor Grant Devilly, from Griffith University's Psychological Health research unit: '...My guess is an about 100 years time, we'll look back at this whole area of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Repressed Memory Therapy, and people will just shake their heads and say, what did they think they were doing...'

Watch A Current Affair The Shepherd's Heart – Lost to a Cult on YouTube

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True

Richard Dawkins’ latest book is The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True.

Dawkins sets out in the first chapter—”What is reality? What is magic?”—to define the terms in question. He lays out how we know what is real, through direct sensory perception, as well as by using instruments and methods to test theories using models, arguing that how we know things ultimately comes down to reliance on our senses...

...In “Are we alone?,” Dawkins notes that there are not many ancient legends involving aliens, and therefore discusses more modern phenomena such as the Heaven’s Gate cult.

He treats the victims of the cult humanely, with an effort to explain why they took the actions they did. He is very good in this chapter, which covers the gamut of alien abduction stories, and brings in the studies of a number of psychologists on subjects such as how memory works, false memory syndrome, sleep paralysis and such...

www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011

Conviction of the innocent: Lessons from psychological research

What is the information that one can gather from psychological research regarding conviction of the innocent? Brian L. Cutler has edited a book that offers a comprehensive set of answers to this question. Its relevance cannot be discounted.

In the laboratory, false alarm responses in recollection and recognition may be either a disturbance (if researchers' focus is correct performance) or an interesting phenomenon worthy of serious scientific investigation (see false memory research), all without much consequence for participants...

...One of the most disconcerting aspects of the literature review on the likelihood of false convictions is the lag between research findings on one side and the law and its applications by the justice system on the other.

Discrepancies between the two domains are mostly responsible for flaws exhibited by the current justice system, which, regretfully, encompass all of its three acknowledged pursuits (legislative, adjudication, and corrections). Flaws of different magnitude and consequences are so staggering that one may ask whether the conviction of actual guilty parties is merely an accident in a system where subjectivity reigns...

metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc

Who are the Shepherd's Heart and what do they believe?

At the Palimpsest, blogger Nathan Zamprogno writes:

John Darnell and his wife Glenys run a church in Canberra called the Shepherd's Heart. Formerly it was called The Fold Christian Fellowship. Because I have no aversion to calling things by their right name, I say they are dangerous lunatics.

I know this because they provided a treatment program to my beloved wife which has contributed to the ruination of her life.

I am writing, obviously, to warn others.

The Darnells believe they have a special calling. For years, they have received people (disproportionately, women) whose initial presentation may only be of emotional distress. Some may have diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illnesses. They believe that their calling is to assist their subjects recall, acknowledge and then heal from trauma, even abuse, experienced earlier in life. Critically, the subject may be entirely unaware they had endured this abuse and trauma until the Darnell's techniques produce distressing recollections that then have to be interpreted and processed.

The problem is that these recollections are false.

The implications are devastating, both for the subjects of such counselling and for their families.
There is also an uncomfortable implication for those poor souls who may actually have endured some form of abuse in their past, and for whom this style of counselling muddies the waters no-end.

This is a well known phenomenon called False Memory Syndrome. It is otherwise known as Repressed Memory Therapy (RMT). It has been widely reported, even in the Australian media, and the archetype case, that of a woman named "Sybil", has been comprehensively discredited and debunked.

In the more bizarre and extreme cases of RMT are interwoven fantastic claims that the abuse that subjects have endured (and note, never remembered, and had no prior awareness of) was of a sinister occult character, involving Satanic rituals, sacrifice, cannibalism and quite spectacular end-time conspiracies. This related phenomenon claims there is an concealed epidemic of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) in the world...

http://baliset.blogspot.com/2011/11/

Fight for law change over abuse accusation

Jim Fairlie, 71, believes he should have legal redress against NHS Tayside and the former Perth and Kinross District Council after his daughter accused him of the abuse when she was undergoing controversial Recovered Memory Therapy.

He wants the duty of care that hospitals have for patients, or social workers have for children, to be extended to families. Although his daughter Katrina, now 41, settled her case for damages out of court four years ago, he believes families damaged by false accusations should also be able to sue.

He has written to justice secretary Kenny MacAskill calling for a change in the law. Fairlie, who was the SNP’s deputy leader between 1980 and 1984, says he is campaigning on behalf of thousands of families who have been affected by the now discredited Recovered Memory Therapy...

www.scotsman.com/news

Valerie Sinason and Fleur Fisher on the record

In The Guardian, Will Storr interviews both Sinason and Fisher about the Carol Felstead case:

"...Sinason insists she doesn't use recovered-memory techniques. "I'm an analytic therapist," she says. "The idea of that is someone showing, through their behaviour, that all sorts of things might have happened to them."

Signs that a patient has suffered satanically include flinching at green or purple objects, the colours of the high priest and priestess's robes. "And if someone shudders when they enter a room, you know it's not ordinary incest."

Another warning, she says, is the patient saying: "I don't know." "What they really mean is: 'I can't bear to say.'" A patient who "overpraises" their family is also suspicious. "The more insecure you are, the more you praise. 'Oh my family was wonderful! I can't remember any of it!'"…

…Sinason talks of a popular ritual in which a child is stitched inside the belly of a dying animal before being 'reborn to satan'. During other celebrations, "people eat faeces, menstrual blood, semen, urine. There's cannibalism."

Some groups have doctors performing abortions. "They give the foetus to the mother and she's made to kill the baby…"

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/dec/11/

Justice for Carol in Private Eye magazine

By Rosie Waterhouse

THE damage caused to vulnerable mentally ill patients and their families by therapists who treat them as survivors of Satanic ritual abuse is revealed in the shocking and extraordinary case of Carol Felstead.

Carol, later known as Carole Myers, was found dead in mysterious circumstances in her flat in Wandsworth, south London, on 29 June 2005 aged 41. She was naked from the waist down and surrounded by medication. A post mortem examination found no dangerous levels of drugs in her system, however. The cause of death was "unascertained" and an inquest recorded an open verdict.

In a six-year battle to uncover the truth, the Felstead family, from Stockport, Cheshire, have unearthed a scandal surrounding Carol's treatment over 20 years by a medical profession and a therapy industry using high doses of medication and dubious 'recovered memory' and mind control techniques... 

www.saff.ukhq.co.uk