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Post by Graveyardbride on Jun 18, 2017 18:36:47 GMT -5
Bishop Malooly Disputes Claims of Dr. Charles FranzThe bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington denies allegations in the Netflix documentary The Keepers that he tried to cover up sexual abuse by a Baltimore priest decades ago.
The seven-part series released in late May focuses on a priest, Rev. Joseph Maskell, who was accused of sexually abusing students at Baltimore’s Archbishop Keogh High School in the 1960s and 70s. The series explores a theory that Sister Catherine Anne Cesnik, a teacher at the school, was killed in 1969 because she suspected Maskell was abusing students. Cesnik’s murder remains unsolved, and Maskell was never criminally charged for the abuse before his death in 2001.
Bishop W. Francis Malooly, who was assigned to the Archdiocese of Baltimore before he became Wilmington’s bishop in 2008, is mentioned in the final episode of the series only.
In the last episode, Dr. Charles Franz (above), a dentist in Maryland, describes a meeting with Malooly to discuss allegations that Maskell abused Franz when he was a child. Malooly said the meeting occurred at Franz’s Catonsville dental office in October 1994, soon after Maskell’s victims began suing the church. Franz recalled Malooly going to the meeting with two canon lawyers and telling him the meeting was so important that the archbishop would have been present had he not been in Rome.
Malooly denied that any lawyers were present and said he told Franz the archbishop would have attended if he could to “express his apology and to reach out personally, had he not been in Rome at the time.”
Franz said that at the end of the meeting Malooly asked him, “Well, what do you want, Charlie?” and then mentioned a boat.
“Do I want a boat?” Franz said in the documentary. “No, I don’t want a boat. I’ll tell you what I would like to see, just do what’s right.”
Malooly denied offering Franz a boat. Malooly recalled offering “counseling and spiritual assistance” and encouraging Franz to report the information to the state’s attorney. “At no time did I offer Dr. Franz a boat,” Malooly insisted.
The series goes on to focus on the timeline in which the Archdiocese of Baltimore learned of possible sexual abuse by Maskell. Franz said his mother made a report about Maskell to Archdiocesan authorities in Baltimore in the 1960s, but the Archdiocese of Baltimore said it did not learn of the abuse until victims came forward in the 1990s. Malooly said in his statement that he knows of no record of a report made by Franz’s mother in the church’s files. “I am not aware of any such report,” Malooly said. “I was a college student in 1967.”
The series goes on to point out that Maskell was able to remain in ministry, even after the first victims disclosed the abuse in the 1990s. Malooly said he first learned of the allegations in 1992 when he was vice chancellor and vicar general for the Archdiocese of Baltimore. He said Maskell was removed from ministry and referred for evaluation and treatment. According to Malooly, after months of treatment, Maskell returned to ministry in 1993 because the archdiocese could not corroborate the allegations.
When additional allegations were made in 1994, Maskell was permanently removed from the ministry and the Archdiocese of Baltimore publicly announced that church officials wanted to speak with individuals who had information regarding Maskell. Those efforts led to the October 1994 meeting with Franz.
Malooly has served two terms as a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse that addresses sexual abuse of minors.
* * *
Following is Malooly’s statement, posted to the Archdiocese of Wilmington’s website, in which he denies attempting to cover up the alleged sexual abuse at Archbishop Keough High School and disputes the claims of Dr. Charles Franz:
“In the spirit of truth, I would like to make some clarifications regarding some of the claims and insinuations that were made in The Keepers. My intention is to set the record straight, and in no way do I wish to minimize the pain and suffering caused by the abuse perpetrated by Joseph Maskell, or any other priest.
“In 1992, while serving as Chancellor and Vicar General for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, I was first made aware of the accusations of sexual abuse of minors by Joseph Maskell. At that time, the adult survivor and her attorney were urged to report the abuse to civil authorities, and the survivor was offered counseling assistance. Maskell was removed from ministry and referred for evaluation and treatment with full disclosure to the facility as to the reason for the treatment. Maskell denied the allegation, and after months of evaluation and treatment, he was returned to ministry in 1993 after the Archdiocese was unable to corroborate the allegation following its extensive investigation.
“When additional allegations were made in 1994, Maskell was permanently removed from ministry on July 31, 1994. The Archdiocese of Baltimore publicly stated that it wanted to speak with individuals who had information regarding Maskell. A detective was hired to search for anyone who may have been abused by him. In 1994, a music director at a Catholic church told the Archdiocese that Dr. Charles Franz may have information regarding Maskell, and so we reached out to him and set up a meeting for October 20, 1994.
“The meeting occurred at the Catonsville dental office of Dr. Franz, with Dr. Charles and Mrs. Denise Franz, Fr. Richard Woy, Director of Clergy Personnel for the Archdiocese, and myself in attendance. There were no canon or civil lawyers present. I explained to Dr. Franz that Archbishop Keeler would have attended the meeting to express his apology and to reach-out personally, had he not been in Rome at the time. I explained the policy of the Archdiocese to offer counseling and spiritual assistance as needed. I also encouraged them to report the information to the State’s Attorney. At no time did I offer Dr. Franz a boat.
“Charles Franz states that his mother made some kind of a report about Maskell to unidentified Archdiocesan authorities in 1967. I am not aware of any such report. I was a college student in 1967. As far as I know, there is no record of any report by Mrs. Franz in Archdiocesan files.
“The crime of sexual abuse of a child or young person is inexcusable, especially when it is committed by a member of the clergy – the very person who should be looking out for the spiritual well-being of all persons – particularly the young. The survivors of clergy sexual abuse should be commended for speaking out. It is because of their bravery that the truth of these heinous crimes has come to light. We as a Church must continue our best efforts to help survivors deal with the painful after-effects of sexual abuse.” Sources: Jessica Masulli Reyes, The News Journal, June 15, 2017, and Catholic Diocese of Wilmington.
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Post by madeline on Jun 21, 2017 23:10:37 GMT -5
This thing just gets more and more unbelievable. I found this paragraph about "Brother Bob" and it seems that there was also a "Brother Ed" and a "Brother Ted":
"Wehner's story of Brother Bob is particularly horrifying since she describes him as a volatile, loose cannon who was out of control. She alleges that he raped her from behind and when he wasn't pulling out, Father Maskell allegedly stopped him so as not to get Wehner pregnant. Before The Keepers, Wehner discussed Brother Bob to the Huffington Post, claiming she was raped by other men who were referred to by these generic names, including a Brother Ed and a Brother Ted. But the Netflix documentary also addresses that Wehner thinks that Brother Bob is responsible for Sister Cathy's death." www.bustle.com/p/who-is-brother-bob-in-the-keepers-jean-wehner-thinks-he-could-be-the-key-to-sister-cathys-murder-58663
Notice that Wehner says that Maskell got upset with Brother Bob for not pulling out because she could get pregnant. This contradicts what those women said in the Inside Baltimore comments about "early abortions." One of them posted:
"How do you know they didn’t? How do you know whether the gynocologist performed early abortions? Rapists do not take the time to put on a condom! We are talking 1969 – only those who lived through those times can fully understand the magnitude of this!"
They never answer a question asked by anyone in the comments sections. Instead, they reply with a question and attack the person asking the questions, which are very good signs that they're lying.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Jul 9, 2017 2:29:37 GMT -5
Petition to Archdiocese to Release Maskell’s FilesThe Keepers, the Netflix docu-series that captured the attention of millions of viewers, has ignited a call for the Archdiocese of Baltimore to release its files on A. Joseph Maskell, the priest accused of sexual abuse.
At the center of the docu-series is the murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik in 1969. Cesnik was working as a teacher at then-Archbishop Keough High School, where Maskell was chaplain. The Keepers theorizes that the nun was killed because she knew about the abuse at the school and was about to expose it.
The accounts of those who knew, or claim to have been abused by, Maskell – including former student Jean Wehner – have sparked both a public outcry and change.org petition. Wehner claims she was taken to Cathy Cesnik’s corpse by Maskell himself in order to scare her into silence. The files maintained by the Archdiocese of Baltimore are believed to contain several complaints of sexual abuse against the priest. “The release of these documents will restore public trust in the Archdiocese, and confirm the Archdiocese statements regarding their handling of the sexual abuse claims,” the petition reads.
Ryan White, director of The Keepers, revealed the files have been requested several times, but the Archdiocese denied the requests. “My point is if [the church investigation] really came up empty-handed, then there’s no personal information to redact, so show us that investigation,” White told the Baltimore Sun. “Prove that you tried to corroborate [Wehner] instead of burying her – and they won't do that.”
Though multiple “victims” came forward, Maskell, who denied the allegations, was never charged. Wehner, along with another former student, Teresa Lancaster, filed a civil lawsuit against Maskell, but the case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired.
The first allegation received by the archdiocese regarding sexual abuse by Maskell was received in 1992, about 20 years after the abuse had occurred, according to Sean Caine, executive director of communications for the archdiocese. An adult survivor, who preferred not to be named, came forward to archdiocesan authorities and told them that she was in the process of recovering memories of abuse by a number of people, including Maskell. The archdiocese encouraged the victim to report the allegation to civil authorities, which she chose not to do at that time. The archdiocese reported the allegation in 1993 when the Maryland attorney general clarified that organizations were required to report any allegation of child abuse to civil authorities, even if the victim was an adult and did not want to make a report.
In 1992, Maskell was sent for psychological evaluation and treatment. He denied the allegation, underwent months of evaluation and treatment, and was returned to ministry in 1993 after the archdiocese was unable to corroborate the allegation of sexual abuse through its own investigation and conversations with attorneys representing the individual who initially came forward, according to Caine. He said the archdiocese continued to seek information about Maskell and when additional individuals came forward in 1994 to accuse him, he was permanently prohibited from public ministry. “The archdiocese subsequently made additional reports and has cooperated with civil authorities,” Caine added. According to Caine, the archdiocese has no record of any report, verbal or written, by Sister Cathy. Sources: Denise See, The Christian Post, July 8, 2017, and Christopher Gunty, Catholic News Service, May 25, 2017.Change.org petition: www.change.org/p/transparency-from-archdiocese-of-baltimore
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Post by Graveyardbride on Aug 4, 2017 17:52:12 GMT -5
This afternoon, I received an email indicating "Jerry Smith" had posted a message on Inside Baltimore, which he addressed to me as follows:
I just noticed this guy lee. Picking on abused women. You are sick for one. My number is 443-275-3117. Call me and we can meet and I will give you my opinion in person coward. And I have a feeling you won’t be standing up long
I immediately called Smith, but there was no answer, so I left a message asking that he return my call -- he hasn't. I also posted the following message on Inside Baltimore and last time I checked, it was still there:
I just received the following message from Jerry Smith: "I just noticed this guy lee. Picking on abused women. You are sick for one. My number is 443-275-3117. Call me and we can meet and I will give you my opinion in person coward. And I have a feeling you won’t be standing up long"
First, Mr. Smith, I'm not a "guy." I just called the above number and left a message, so I'm looking forward to speaking and meeting with you. I do not appreciate being threatened and if you threaten me again, expect a visit from the police.
It probably won't be there long, but here's the link: insidebaltimore.org/2016/11/05/archdiocese-of-baltimore-gives-40000-to-reported-childhood-multiple-rape-victim-apologizes-for-pain-you-have-experienced/#comments
I'm more convinced than ever that everyone associated with the Sacred Cows is as mentally-unbalanced as they are. I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of those heifers put Jerry Smith up to threatening me, thinking I would cower in fear instead of confronting him.
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Post by jane on Aug 4, 2017 22:38:37 GMT -5
This afternoon, I received an email indicating "Jerry Smith" had posted a message on Inside Baltimore, which he addressed to me as follows:
I just noticed this guy lee. Picking on abused women. You are sick for one. My number is 443-275-3117. Call me and we can meet and I will give you my opinion in person coward. And I have a feeling you won’t be standing up long
I immediately called Smith, but there was no answer, so I left a message asking that he return my call -- he hasn't. I also posted the following message on Inside Baltimore and last time I checked, it was still there:
I just received the following message from Jerry Smith: "I just noticed this guy lee. Picking on abused women. You are sick for one. My number is 443-275-3117. Call me and we can meet and I will give you my opinion in person coward. And I have a feeling you won’t be standing up long"
First, Mr. Smith, I'm not a "guy." I just called the above number and left a message, so I'm looking forward to speaking and meeting with you. I do not appreciate being threatened and if you threaten me again, expect a visit from the police.
It probably won't be there long, but here's the link: insidebaltimore.org/2016/11/05/archdiocese-of-baltimore-gives-40000-to-reported-childhood-multiple-rape-victim-apologizes-for-pain-you-have-experienced/#comments
I'm more convinced than ever that everyone associated with the Sacred Cows is as mentally-unbalanced as they are. I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of those heifers put Jerry Smith up to threatening me, thinking I would cower in fear instead of confronting him.
Good for you! I'm not all that computer literate and I don't know very much about the law, but even I know that it's illegal to threaten someone over the internet and he definitely threatened you. Isn’t it a federal offense if a person in one states threatens someone over the phone or internet in another state? I'll bet he wishes now that he had never watched "The Keepers."
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Post by Graveyardbride on Aug 6, 2017 22:09:25 GMT -5
The Dangerously Misleading Narrative of The Keepers
The Keepers, a wildly popular seven-part documentary series aired by Netflix in May 2017, promotes the theory of repressed memories by resurrecting and validating a previously dismissed Baltimore case from the early 1990s. The show relies heavily on recovered memories of abuse to convince viewers that a now-deceased Catholic priest, Joseph Maskell, or another priest known only as “Brother Bob,” murdered a young nun named Cathy Cesnik in 1969, in order to prevent the nun, an English teacher, from reporting sexual abuse of high school students at Keough High School in Baltimore. The series is dramatic, artfully constructed and based on actual events, but it is extremely misleading, especially in accepting, without question, the validity of repressed memories. The Keepers purveys all the old stereotypes, including a psychologist who explains confidently: “Some things we experience are so unbearable and so painful that we shut them out.” This popular series could undo years of good memory science in the public arena.
The star of The Keepers series is Jean Hargadon Wehner, known as “Jane Doe” in the dismissed lawsuit, who was a student at Keough High School, a private Catholic school, from 1967 to 1971. She had no abuse memories until she reach adulthood, but beginning in 1981, the year after the publication of Michelle Remembers (the first blockbuster book about repressed memories and Satanic ritual abuse), Wehner began to see a series of counselors and therapists, including massage and movement therapists. She also learned to put herself into a prayerful trance, which she called “dialoguing with the inner child,” a kind of pseudo-multiple-personality state in which she identified various internal child personalities named Jeannie, Beth, Gloria, Ethel and Martha, each of whom apparently held different abuse memories. During the 1980s, she recovered memories of how her uncle and an array of strangers abused her from age three to twelve – typical of false “massive repression” memories with a ritual abuse flavor. She recalled also that this uncle abused her 10 siblings, though none of them remember it.
During the 1990s, Wehner read an array of popular books about repressed memories, no doubt including The Courage to Heal. In 1992, Wehner began therapy with Ph.D. psychologist Norman Bradford (currently in practice and a professor at Goucher College in Baltimore), who had her keep a dream journal. Shortly afterwards, she began to retrieve her first memories of priest abuse, beginning with Father Neil Magnus (above left), whom she envisioned masturbating while he took her confession. When she discovered that Magnus was dead, Wehner switched to retrieving memories of abuse by another priest, Joseph Maskell (above right), who had been her high school counselor. She eventually recalled vaginal and anal rape (sometimes with a vibrator), oral sex, enemas, his putting a gun in her mouth and forced prostitution.
But Wehner’s sex abuse memories expanded dramatically beyond Maskell to include two policemen, three high school teachers, a local politician who practiced a political speech while she performed oral sex on him, three more priests (Father Schmidt, Father John and Father Daniels), four religious brothers (Brother Tim, Brother Bob, Brother Frank and Brother Ed), two religious sisters (Nancy and Russell) and another religious brother known only as Mr. Teeth, who read from the Book of Psalms as he had sex with her. Wehner also remembered that she herself killed an unidentified nun at her school.
Yet the millions of people who have viewed The Keepers did not learn many of these background facts. (Netflix is notorious for keeping viewer numbers secret, but Newsweek revealed that it had the top two streaming shows in 2016, both with more than 20 million viewers.) What viewers see is that Jean Hargadon Wehner seems to be an attractive, sensitive, self-assured woman with a supportive, wholesome family and that she claims to have recovered memories of abuse by Father Maskell and a few others.
And director Ryan White – whose aunt was Wehner’s high school classmate – goes out of his way to portray her memories as real. After listening to her tell her story for hours, White told his producer, “This woman is telling the truth and we need to be part of this.”
It is true that Sister Cathy Cesnik, 26, an attractive, popular English teacher, was murdered and probably raped on November 7, 1969. Just three days later, another young woman, Joyce Malecki, 20, was killed two miles away in a similar fashion. It is quite likely that the same unknown person killed both of them, but the murderer probably didn’t know that Cesnik was a nun, because she had just started working at a public high school and had permission to dress in normal clothing.
As part of her prayerful memory process, Wehner visualized how Father Maskell had taken her to see Cathy Cesnik’s body and that her face had been crawling with maggots. Maskell must have known that she would immediately repress the memory, just as she allegedly forgot her rapes every time the door clicked shut as she was leaving his office. When Maskell’s body was exhumed in 2017 (he died in 2001), his DNA did not match the DNA taken from Cesnik’s body.
As background, readers should know that the late 1980s and 90s featured the height of an epidemic of false memories of childhood sexual abuse, fomented by this misguided, pseudoscientific form of psychotherapy. The theory behind this fad stemmed from Sigmund Freud’s work a century beforehand, in the 1890s. Freud called it his “seduction theory,” which he himself soon abandoned. But the idea – that people can “repress” or “dissociate” years of traumatic childhood memories and then recall them as adults – refused to die, in part because it provides an appealing plot device for novels, movies and sensational media coverage, and because many psychologists have imbibed the theory somewhat like mother’s milk. It has become an underlying professional assumption that people really can and do banish traumatic memories from their consciousness. And Freud himself promulgated his modified theory as “the return of the repressed” – the pseudoscientific notion that buried desires or fears return in symbolic dreams or actions.
Freud’s theory was resurrected in the 1980s by a group of therapists who were concerned about sexual abuse and believed that women in particular (but men, too) with “symptoms” such as depression, eating disorders or sexual issues must have been molested as children and repressed the memories so that they had no current knowledge of a horrific childhood. Only by remembering the abuse would they be healed. These therapists believed they could help their clients unearth these repressed memories through methods such as hypnosis, dream analysis, interpretation of bodily pangs, induced panic attacks or group experiences. In 1988, with the publication of The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, this movement exploded into a full-fledged epidemic in which women in therapy became convinced they should accuse their fathers or other family members or caregivers of having raped them for years during their childhood and, with the encouragement of their therapists, they cut off all contact with their families.
Many hundreds of lawsuits were filed by therapy patients with brand new abuse “memories.” Thousands of stunned parents and other relatives became the first innocent people targeted by the repressed memory epidemic. In the 1990s, in excess of 500 reported cases were filed in which the only evidence stemmed from recovered memories – 15 percent were criminal and 85 percent were civil cases. Hundreds of additional cases were quietly settled without formal filings, as many parents or other accused relatives or caretakers were embarrassed, devastated and terrified.
As Harvard psychology professor Richard McNally observed in 2005, “The notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry. It has provided the theoretical basis for ‘recovered memory therapy’ – the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy era.” McNally came to similar conclusions in his book, Remembering Trauma, and most reputable memory scientists agree with that assessment. “There is no good scientific evidence that these unconscious forces exist,” wrote psychologist Charles Fernybough in Pieces of Light, his 2012 book on memory. “Traumas are remembered and they are remembered only too painfully. They may not be thought about for a long time ... but they are not forgotten.”
Nonetheless, despite the furor over false memories produced by pseudoscientific theories, those who believed in recovered-memory therapy did not give up their dogma or belief system. Thus, repressed memories did not disappear. Indeed, the idea that people could completely forget years of childhood sexual abuse and then remember the abuse later has become enshrined in the popular imagination, despite its widespread scientific debunking. Unfortunately, the repressed memory epidemic has not really subsided. While it was slowed by scientific analysis and retractor lawsuits, the epidemic continues to this day.
Since the height of the repressed memory epidemic, media coverage has swung wildly between solid scientific reports on the malleability of memory to uncritical regurgitation of recovered memory claims. Most young journalists do not know what happened during the “Memory Wars” decade that followed the 1988 publication of The Courage to Heal and similar books. Add to this the impact of the Internet and acceptance of fake news (really fake, such as the 2016 “news” that a pizza parlor harbored a pedophile ring) and conspiracy theory as reality, and you have a recipe for disaster, which is why I have written Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to Die, to be published by Upper Access Books in October 2017, and The Repressed Memory Epidemic: How It Happened and What We Need to Learn from It, to be published in September 2017 by Springer.
Once an idea enters the cultural mainstream, it has a way of resurfacing like a bloated corpse every few years. The corpse has risen again, if it ever truly sank, and The Keepers is one of the most pernicious examples.
The second star of The Keepers is Teresa Lancaster, “Jane Roe” in the 1994 lawsuit, who was a year behind Wehner at Keough High School. She claimed to have always remembered that Father Maskell forced her to disrobe, sit on his lap, endure his fondling and take enemas and douches while he watched, and that he was present during a gynecological exam. But it was only after she learned about “Jane Doe’s” claims and met repeatedly with Wehner’s lawyer (who also represented her) that she recovered memories of rape by Maskell, the gynecologist and a policeman. Those recovered memories were confused and inconsistent. Lancaster has recently changed her story (and memory), alleging that she always remembered the rapes, but that is not what she said when she made the allegations in the early 1990s. In 1993, Wehner and her siblings sent letters to other former Keough High School students, asking about possible abuse and they received many responses. The Keepers makes it appear that a hundred or more people claimed that Maskell sexually abused them, but because none appeared as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, it is unlikely that any recalled severe abuse. It is more likely that Maskell was inappropriate in many ways and he may have been a voyeur who hugged and fondled girls and watched as they took douches. He may have also acted badly with boys. In The Keepers final, seventh episode, Charles Franz, now a dentist, alleges that Maskell abused him in some unspecified way prior to his counseling position at Keough High School. In a 1995 article, in which he was called “Bill,” Franz revealed there was no severe molestation, but claimed that Maskell, then an associate pastor at St. Clement in Landsdowne, Penn., had grabbed his crotch and said “Hold onto your balls” as he drove over a bump in a car when Franz was 13.
Other former Keough students also recovered memories or attempted to do so. One classmate thought Maskell must have drugged her Coca-Cola. “I’ve never been certain of what happened. There’s so many gaps in my memory of being with him and I only have fragments,” she said in The Keepers. In a recent interview, Teresa Lancaster said she was “focusing on victims that are coming forward. There are a lot of people who can’t remember a lot.”
Donna Vondenbosch is another alleged victim of Father Maskell’s. In The Keepers, she says, “He would hypnotize me sometimes; sometimes it was with a pocket watch he had. There are blocks of time when I have no idea what happened.” In a long article on the Maskell case by Paul Mandelbaum, published in Baltimore Magazine in 1995, a woman identified in the article as “Eva Nelson Cruz” makes very similar claims; it is likely that “Cruz” is in fact Vondenbosch. In the article, Cruz admitted she had recovered memories of the abuse with the help of therapist Kenneth Ellis. As a child, the journalist wrote, “She was certain that God didn’t love her and sometimes, at random moments, she would hear a little voice in her head, her own voice, imploring Jesus to have sex with her.” In incrementally recovered memories, she eventually came to believe that Father Maskell had raped her aboard a boat, in the presence of another man whom she had kicked and that Maskell had also stuck a wooden crucifix into her vagina. “In her [Cruz’s] mind’s eye, she saw him [Maskell] wearing the black clerical cape that he often favored during the winter and she claims he asked her to look deeply into his eyes and told her: ‘You won’t remember. You won’t remember. If you remember you’ll die.’ She could picture him twirling fiercely – the cape flapping around his head.” Kenneth Ellis, the therapist, had helped her interpret her dreams to retrieve these memories. “It’s not unreasonable to interpret Eva’s dreams as tapping into repressed memories of her experiences with Maskell,” Ellis told Mandelbaum, the reporter. (Ellis is still practicing in Maryland and still promotes dream interpretation, writing: “Dreams can be viewed as the dreamer’s attempt to ‘work through’ or resolve some conflict that they are experiencing in reality.”)
Some Keough alums may have reinterpreted always-remembered incidents to make them more sinister in retrospect. As one of them says in the series, “Something that may have seemed insignificant at the time has relevance now.”
Unforgivably, The Keepers puts two true believers in repressed memories on screen as “experts.” Psychologist L. M. Lothstein asserts: “Some things we experience are so unbearable and so painful that we shut them out. The major systems for protection of the self, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal, fight-flight response, the vagal (referring to the vagal nerve) response to play dead, to dissociate, to be unaware of something, they’ll come right into play in order to protect the self from harm.” This is pseudoscientific claptrap. He goes on to say, “We now know so much more about memory. It’s scientifically accepted that memories can be compartmentalized and not known to the conscious ego.” This is absolutely untrue. Reputable memory scientists know that repeated traumatic events tend to be recalled all too well. As Lothstein pontificates in The Keepers, the filmmakers flash sensational headlines about a 2004 study, claiming: “Psychologists Offer Proof of Brain’s Ability to Suppress Memories,” and “A Freudian Theory Proven,” even though this was a study of word pairs that demonstrated nothing whatsoever about repressed trauma memories.
The documentary also features psychiatrist Richard Sipe of Johns Hopkins, who served as a witness for Wehner and believed her recovered memories. “There are things that have the ring of truth, even if they are hard to believe,” he explains in The Keepers. Sipe diagnosed Wehner with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which he compares to that of war veterans. “Naturally we know so much more about this because of men and women coming home from war and being traumatized. We have all sorts of knowledge now about how the brain handles those.” But the brain does not handle war experiences by repressing them, but by being unable to forget them. That is what causes PTSD.
Sipe criticizes his colleague Paul McHugh, the head of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, as having a “blind spot” about repressed memories because McHugh testified they had no scientific validity. McHugh, the author of the book Try to Remember, a critique of repressed memory therapy, apparently convinced the Baltimore judge in the case, who dismissed it before trial, a decision upheld on appeal.
In The Keepers, Jean Wehner tells viewers, “There’s an awful lot I still don’t remember,” so stay tuned for more horrific abuse memories yet to come. In the series, she demonstrates how she recalls her memories, lighting a candle and lying down to go into her prayerful state. As she does so, the camera zooms in on an angel figure beside her, which says “Believe Believe Believe Believe Believe.”
The courts, however, didn't buy it. When the Maryland Court of Appeals threw out the case Jane Doe et al. v. A. Joseph Maskell et al. in 1996, a panel of seven judges wrote, “First, the advisories of repression state that there is no empirical, scientific evidence to support the claims that repression exists. The studies purporting to validate repression theory are justly criticized as unscientific, unrepresentative, and biased. Second, critics of repression theory point out that the scientific, and specifically the psychological community, has not embraced repression theory, and that, in fact, serious disagreement exists,” the judges wrote. “Finally, critics of repression theory argue that the ‘refreshing’ or ‘recovery’ of ‘repressed’ memories is more complicated than repression proponents would have us believe.
“Memories refreshed with the assistance of a mental health professional are subject to manipulations reflecting the biases of the treating professional,” the judges continued, adding that “a repressed memory cannot be retrieved whole and intact from the cold storage of repression.”
The members of the appeals court concluded: “After reviewing the arguments on both sides of the issue, we are unconvinced that repression exists as a phenomenon separate and apart from the normal process of forgetting. Therefore, we hold that the mental process of repression of memories of past sexual does not activate the discovery rule. The plaintiff’s suits are thus barred by the statute of limitations. If the General Assembly should wish to write the law, that is its prerogative and responsibility.”
Jane Doe and Jane Roe, however, have fared far better in the court of public opinion. Critical response to The Keepers has been overwhelmingly positive and credulous. In a review, a Baltimore Sun reporter asked rhetorically why Wehner had not come forward earlier. “Because that’s how ritualized long-term abuse works in children,” she wrote. “The abuser is able to control the victim through threats and intimidation. ... Jean says that to survive the horror, she in effect dissociated herself – severed herself from the experience, put the entire ordeal into a box, sealed it up and buried it. It would stay buried for over 20 years.”
New York Times reviewer Mike Hale called The Keepers “a fascinating and devastating experience” and identified Jean Wehner as “a steely heroine.” He wrote that “trying to obtain justice based on recovered memories has the outlines of a classic tragedy,” without expressing any skepticism concerning the validity of such memories. The Guardian called the series “a breathtakingly brave true crime documentary.”
Prompted by The Keepers series, Vice magazine’s Kaleigh Rogers published an article reviewing the alleged scientific validity of repressed memories, asserting that since the 1990s “we’ve built a much stronger understanding of how and why childhood trauma could lead to repressed memories.” On the contrary, reputable memory scientists have found that years of traumatic events are impossible to forget and that false memories of abuse are frequently produced through suggestion and influence. Rogers erroneously concluded: “The science is firm that traumatic events can cause memory loss and that these memories may resurface years or decades later.” I am sure that she sincerely meant well, but from her photo, Rogers is a young Millennial who was swayed by the series and accepted the myth of repressed memory hook, line and sinker. I fear she is representative of a new generation that will be vulnerable to these dangerous theories.
Source: Mark Pendergrast, Big Trial, July 27, 2017.
Mark Pendergrast is a science writer and independent scholar and the author of many books (www.markpendergrast.com. He discusses The Keepers in his forthcoming book, Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to Die (October 2017).
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Post by jane on Aug 8, 2017 9:30:05 GMT -5
This is the sort of thing witches and shamen do when they're attempting to enter an altered state of consciousness. I wonder if she took tranquilizers or other mood-altering drugs. Hell, if I did that, I could come up with better stories than Jean Wehner did, though seeing dead nuns and being gang-raped by priests and policemen is pretty far out.
Was it Jean Wehner or another of the Sacred Cows who claimed after she was raped, the priest used his semen to make the sign of the cross? Whichever one it was must have read, or heard about the Chambre Ardente Affair.
Shamen and witches enter an altered state of consciousness for the purposes of predicting the future and communicating with spirits. It's like the LSD trips back in the '60s and '70s where people imagined all kinds of things and that's what Jean Wehner was doing. She entered an altered state of consciousness and believed everything that she imagined. It's a form of self-hypnosis. When people hypnotize themselves, they concentrate on and visualize a desired result. She hypnotized herself for the purpose of remembering sexual abuse by priests because that was her desired result and she succeeded.
In the old group, Lee or Joanna posted a very good account of the Chambre Ardente Affair. I wish whichever one posted it would post it again.
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beta
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Post by beta on Aug 9, 2017 15:46:17 GMT -5
This is the sort of thing witches and shamen do when they're attempting to enter an altered state of consciousness. I wonder if she took tranquilizers or other mood-altering drugs. Hell, if I did that, I could come up with better stories than Jean Wehner did, though seeing dead nuns and being gang-raped by priests and policemen is pretty far out.
You're right, Jean's stories really weren't original at all -- they were very similar to all the other Traumatic Repression stories of that era. She started therapy in 1981, a year after the release of the book Michelle Remembers, which quickly became famous in the US and prompted this widespread belief in repressed-and-recovered "memories". The subject of the "biography", Michelle Smith-Pazder and her psychiatrist/husband with whom she co-wrote the book, also gained minor celebrity status, doing lectures and talk shows. Keep in mind, the Pazders had a scandalous beginning, which is still completely ignored by the Recovered Memory/Ritual Abuse crowd today -- she was his patient. Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder were both married to other people when she first started seeing him for therapy, which at first, presumably, was traditional talk therapy. At some point Pazder began hypnosis sessions, in which Michelle began to "remember" these events from her childhood, and they were apparently so titillated by these lurid "memories" they divorced their spouses and married each other. The Michelle Remembers Wikipedia entry is a good overview: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers
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Post by jane on Aug 9, 2017 19:04:16 GMT -5
You're right, Jean's stories really weren't original at all -- they were very similar to all the other Traumatic Repression stories of that era. She started therapy in 1981, a year after the release of the book Michelle Remembers, which quickly became famous in the US and prompted this widespread belief in repressed-and-recovered "memories". The subject of the "biography", Michelle Smith-Pazder and her psychiatrist/husband with whom she co-wrote the book, also gained minor celebrity status, doing lectures and talk shows. Keep in mind, the Pazders had a scandalous beginning, which is still completely ignored by the Recovered Memory/Ritual Abuse crowd today -- she was his patient. Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder were both married to other people when she first started seeing him for therapy, which at first, presumably, was traditional talk therapy. At some point Pazder began hypnosis sessions, in which Michelle began to "remember" these events from her childhood, and they were apparently so titillated by these lurid "memories" they divorced their spouses and married each other. The Michelle Remembers Wikipedia entry is a good overview: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers I read "Michelle Remembers" when it was first published and I'm ashamed to say that at first, I believed it.
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