Peter
Ellis Org : Seeking Justice for Peter Ellis
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Books Ç return to index
W - Authors
Wassil-Grimm, Claudette Diagnosis for
Disaster, 1995
Watters, Ethan, Ofshe, Richard Therapy's Delusions, 1999
Webster, Richard The making of a modern
witch hunt, 2005
Wakefield, Hollida; Underwager, Ralph
Return of the Furies, 1994
An investigation into recovered memory therapy
Reviews
From Booklist, October 1, 1994
Pointing out that they "became actively involved in defending victims
of child abuse long before it had become fashionable or lucrative,"
Wakefield and Underwager thoroughly investigate the practitioners, patients,
and literature in this exploding field. Drawing heavily upon the cases of more
than 200 retractions of child abuse charges, they show that thousands have been
falsely accused. They look closely at the claims that "therapeutic
truth" is more important than "research" and put their fingers
on the logical and practical errors of such an approach. The theory of
repression has no scientific supporting evidence, they contend, and they tell
the story of the division in the American Psychological Association over this
question, the breakaway of the more scientifically oriented psychologists, and
the remaining group's failure to discipline nonscientific practitioners.
Although most therapists believe they are doing good,
The publisher, [email protected] ,
October 15, 1997
Praise for RETURN OF THE FURIES:
"Return of the Furies is encyclopedic in its scope. It provides us with an
in-depth understanding of the origins of the false-memory phenomenon, the
methods by which it has been promulgated, and the people who are perpetuating
it. The book is convincingly written with hundreds of useful references. I do
not know of a more comprehensive book on this timely subject." Dr Richard
Gardner,
Wassil-Grimm, Claudette
Diagnosis for Disaster, 1995
The devastating truth about FMS and its impact on accusers and families
Reviews
From Booklist, January 15, 1995
Wassil-Grimm surveys the several voices in the debate over the
"recovery" of supposedly repressed memories of sexual abuse in
childhood through such techniques as hypnosis and suggestion. She focuses
primarily upon why remembering and discussing such memories is so appealing
despite possible falsehood and severe damage done to the accused, family
members and friends, and ultimately, the accuser. Interviews with women who
eventually retracted their claims, reviews of the scholarly literature,
participation in conferences, and personal experience constitute the basis for
Wassil-Grimm's analysis of the nature of memory, trends and fads in psychology,
the false memory debate, and the recent dramatic increases in accusations of
ritualized abuse and diagnoses of multiple personality disorder. Wassil-Grimm
accords special attention to the claims of The Courage to Heal (2d ed., 1992),
which is widely regarded as the handbook of memory recovery. Although well
written and organized, displaying Wassil-Grimm's thorough knowledge of the
subject, her book is a tough read because of both the complexity of the issues
and their emotional charge. Kathryn Carpenter
Copyright© 1995, American Library Association.
From Kirkus Reviews , December 15, 1994
A well-aimed blast at the recovered memory movement that exposes the roots
of false memory syndrome and the reasons for the acceptance and persistence of
the phenomenon. Wassil-Grimm, a writer and media commentator on family
psychology (How To Avoid Your Parent's Mistakes When You Raise Your Children,
not reviewed) outlines the dispute between those who believe claims that
forgotten memories of childhood sexual abuse can be recovered and those who
reject claims of such recovered memories as false. She effectively demolishes
the arguments, especially the statistics, of the believers, and urges all
therapists to look critically at their assumptions and methods. Wassil-Grimm
has mastered the expos‚ and self-help formulas, that is, she writes clearly,
includes lots of case studies loaded with human interest to reinforce her
arguments, and hammers them home by ending each chapter with a concise summary
of the points made in it. There are helpful lists of tips for therapists, for
those in or seeking therapy, and for the families of those falsely accused of
sexual abuse. Throughout the book she raises the question of why anyone would
believe they'd been sexually abused by a parent if it were not true, and each
time she returns to the question she provides an additional answer. Thus she is
able to conclude with a list of 16 persuasive explanations. Two related
phenomena--the willingness of many therapists to believe quite fantastic
reports of recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse and the startling
increase in reports by therapists of patients with multiple personality
disorder (considered a psychological defense against abuse)--come under Wassil-Grimm's
skeptical eye. This is a welcome addition to recent literature on the subject
(see Making Monsters, p. 1105, and The Myth of Repressed Memory, p. 908).
Strongly recommended. Succeeds both as an expos‚ of a dangerous fad and as a
survival guide for its victims. --
Synopsis
An examination of repressed memories presents arguments for the False
Memory Syndrome while offering opinions on why such memories occur and
challenging the credentials of sexual abuse therapists and the authors of
self-help guides.
Synopsis
False Memory Syndrome is a dangerous phenomenon that is gaining tremendous
momentum in this country. Truth or Fantasy? is a powerful look at this shocking
trend. The book tells the story of this crisis through the voices of
retractors, backed up by psychiatrists, psychologists, and memory experts.
Booknews, Inc. , August 1, 1995
Explores the increase in cases of False Memory Syndrome, through the voices
of retractors. Exposes weaknesses in The Courage to Heal, and examines related
trends such as satanic ritual abuse and multiple personality disorder. Defines
False Memory Syndrome and describes its impact on therapy survivors and family
members. Of interest to psychology professionals, clients and victims of child
abuse therapy, and falsely accused parents. Annotation copyright Book News,
Inc.
Watters, Ethan,
Ofshe, Richard
Therapy's Delusions, 1999
The Myth of the Unconscious and
the Exploitation of Today's Walking Worried
Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews , February 15, 1999
The psychodynamic theory of the mind and the treatment methods derived from
it are the quackery the mental health profession is burdened with surviving,''
according to this pull-no-punches assault on the current practice of
psychotherapy. The prior collaboration of Watters, a freelance journalist who
has written for the New York Times Magazine and elsewhere, and sociologist
Ofshe (Univ. of Calif., Berkeley), Making Monsters: False Memory, Satanic Cult
Abuse, and Sexual Hysteria (1994), indicted a specific area of psychotherapy;
the present work is a broader attack, going to its very roots. Freud, they
assert, was one of the century's great myth makers and a ``shameless
self-promoter who committed scientific fraud'' with his claim that a dynamic
unconscious controls human behavior and that therapists can tap into its
secrets by talking to patients. Drawing on the work of historians, medical
researchers, and other scholars, they trace the influence of Freud's ideas in
20th-century
Synopsis
Two acclaimed authors deliver an attack on talk therapy, from its Freudian
underpinnings to contemporary practice, and expose the failure of this
"pseudoscience" that still holds enormous sway over the American
mind.
Cahners Publishing Company, Publishers Weekly February 15, 1999
Following Making Monsters, their
much-discussed attack on recovered memory therapy, Watters and Ofshe offer a
rigorous critique of talk therapy of the Freudian variety and its many
offshoots. In a broadside as withering as those by anti-Freudian critic
Frederick Crews (Memory Wars; Unauthorized Freud), the authors assail
psychoanalysis as a convoluted system of assumptions and anachronistic beliefs.
Using cases from the psychoanalytic literature, they find troubling evidence of
analysts' arbitrary diagnoses, misogyny, hubris and pretense of scientific
authority. Ofshe, a sociology professor (UC-Berkeley), and freelance journalist
Walters observe that with the psychotherapy profession in defensive retreat
from its claim to reveal the secrets of unconscious minds, talk therapists have
increasingly allied themselves with social movements and cultural trends,
spawning feminist therapy, body/mind therapy, care of the soul (e.g., Thomas
Moore's books) and so forth.
The authors reject these approaches as fundamentally flawed because, in their
view, Freud's notion of a dynamic unconscious that influences our everyday
lives is nothing more than a culturally supported myth. The "biogenetic
approach" they favor - combining pharmacotherapy, research into brain
dysfunction and rehabilitative behavioral/cognitive therapy - has already made
progress in treating schizophrenia and mood disorders.
Ultimately, however, their wholesale rejection of the existence of an
unconscious, and of the roots of mental illness in developmental or childhood
factors, seems an article of faith as debatable as the exaggerated claims of
talk therapists. Nevertheless, their provocative analysis of what happens in
therapy sessions -- the patient internalizing the life story that he or she
creates in tacit collusion with the therapist -- will challenge patients and
practitioners alike.
An appendix dismantles the upbeat conclusions of an influential 1995 Consumer
Reports survey, "Does Therapy Help?"
Bonnie Nadell.
The making of a modern
witch hunt
by Richard Webster
New March
15 2005
A
new book The Secret of Bryn Estyn by Richard Webster is being
launched at the House of Commons (Portcullis House) on19 March 2005, by
Claire Curtis- Thomas mp, chair of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on
Abuse Investigations. The contents of the book are embargoed until its
publication on 19 March, but what follows is taken from the advance press
release.
A story of false accusations, judicial blindness, bad journalism and
innocent lives destroyed
The Secret of Bryn Estyn tells the story of the greatest
series of miscarriages of justice in recent British history – how innocent
lives have been destroyed, the public deceived and millions of pounds wasted in
a witch-hunt against innocent people.
Early
in the morning of 15 March 1992, 40 police officers took up positions in
streets in and around Wrexham in North Wales. As dawn broke they swooped down
on their suspects and arrested sixteen men and one woman. All but one had
worked at Bryn Estyn, a care home for adolescent boys on the outskirts of
Wrexham. According to reports which began to appear in the press in 1991, Bryn
Estyn had lain at the centre of a network of evil – a conspiracy which
supposedly involved the extensive homosexual abuse of adolescent boys by a paedophile
ring, whose members terrorised their victims and subjected them to a regime of
violence and brutality.
The
paedophile ring turned out to be a figment of the investigators’ imagination.
Yet rumours of its existence led to the largest child abuse investigation in
Britain. The police trawled allegations from 650 witnesses, who accused 365
people of abusing them at homes throughout North Wales. When only six
prosecutions followed, with only two new convictions for sexual abuse, the
police and the authorities were accused of mounting a cover-up. Police officers
themselves were said to belong to the very paedophile ring they were supposed
to be investigating. The story became a national scandal.
A
senior police officer, publicly accused of raping adolescent boys at Bryn
Estyn, sued for libel and won. Still, rumours of a cover-up persisted. In 1996
the government set up the largest Tribunal of Inquiry in British history, under
Sir Ronald Waterhouse. In February 2000, the Tribunal made damning findings of
extensive abuse in North Wales. By then, the police trawling operation which
had begun there had spread to whole of Britain. Police forces collected
allegations against 5,000 former care workers and teachers, and hundreds were
arrested.
Cover-up or witch-hunt?
But
was Waterhouse right to find there had been wholesale abuse in North Wales? Or
did his inquiry, and the investigations that led up to it, form part of a
modern witch-hunt? In this book Richard Webster, the acclaimed author of Why
Freud Was Wrong, tells the extraordinary story of
what
really happened in North Wales. It is a story with disturbing implications not
only for the modern child protection movement but for the way we understand our
history and ourselves.
The spread of injustice
The Secret of Bryn Estyn is a richly documented account of
the development of a modern witch-hunt. Full of human interest and drama, it
focuses initially on a small number of key players in the North Wales story and
shows how their actions helped to shape an unprecedented police investigation,
which would eventually spread to the whole of the United Kingdom.
The
book traces the origins of the gravest series of miscarriages of justice in
modern British history, as a result of which thousands of people have been
falsely accused and as many as a hundred wrongly imprisoned. The book records
these continuing injustices and sets them in the context of earlier historical
witch- hunts. And, in chapters interspersed through the narrative, The Secret
of Bryn Estyn offers an illuminating analysis of the development of the modern
child protection movement, tracing its roots back to Victorian London.
Credulous journalists
A
large responsibility for creating the witch-hunt described in the book lies
with journalists – and in particular with journalists on broadsheet newspapers.
The narrative demonstrates what one editor, Peter Wilby, has himself noted:
investigative journalists can be the most credulous of people. The Secret
of Bryn Estyn relates how a
broadsheet exclusive went tragically wrong, and encouraged the making of false
allegations against a large number of innocent people. It sheds a revealing
light on the current state of British journalism. Gary Horne, a former Panorama
producer who is now a lecturer in journalism, says the book will be compulsory
reading for all his students.
A legal system skewed by prejudice
In
the great European witch-hunt of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a key
role was played by learned men, especially judges and lawyers. The French
jurist Jean Bodin wrote that ‘not one witch in a million would be accused or
punished if the procedure were governed by the ordinary rules’. In order that
witches could be executed in large numbers, the normal rules of justice were
relaxed and witchcraft itself was defined as crimen exceptum – an
exceptional crime.
The Secret of Bryn Estyn shows how, in a series of
judgments made in the House of Lords during the last fifty years, child sexual
abuse has become a new crimen exceptum, in respect of which the
normal rules of justice have effectively been suspended. It goes on to show
that the £15 million North Wales Tribunal of Inquiry was itself a travesty of
justice which, in its determination to find evidence of widespread abuse,
turned reality upside down. The Waterhouse Tribunal should be seen, it is
suggested, along with the first Blood Sunday Tribunal, as one of the great
judicial disasters of the twentieth century.
The role of social workers
Although
both journalists and lawyers played a major role in driving this modern
witch-hunt forwards, the ideas and fantasies out of which it grew developed
within the profession of social work. The book traces the origins of these
ideas and sets them in a much broader historical context, arguing that the
modern child protection movement is a revivalist movement, rooted deeply, for
all its apparent secularism, in an ancient religious tradition.
Ruined lives
The
figures which are available indicate that by now between 5,000 and 10,000
former residential care workers and teachers have been accused of physical or
sexual abuse as a direct consequence of police trawling operations. Some of
these allegations are true. The evidence presented in the book, however,
suggests that the overwhelming majority are false. Many other false allegations
of sexual abuse have been made in other contexts – including the recovered
memory movement and satanic abuse ‘scares’. The Secret of Bryn Estyn is
the most complete account ever written of the cultural climate out of which
these false allegations have emerged.
Publicity for The Secret of Bryn Estyn
Richard
Webster is an uncompromisingly independent author who has been interviewed on
the subject of false allegations by John Humphrys on the Today
programme, by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, and by Jenni Murray on Woman’s
Hour. He has written about the issue of child sexual abuse in the Guardian,
the Observer and the New Statesman, and gave evidence to the Home
Affairs Select Committee inquiry into police trawling operations in 2002. The
Secret of Bryn Estyn, the product of a nine-year-long
investigation, is his most controversial book yet. All publicity will be geared
to the launch of the book in March.
Richard
Webster’s previous books have been published to critical acclaim in Britain and
the US by HarperCollins and Weidenfeld. The Secret of Bryn Estyn
is published by his own imprint, The Orwell Press, which has a track record of
dealing with some of the most contentious issues in con-temporary culture. The
book’s appearance is likely to lead to controversy and wide media coverage.
Orders
Advance orders for The
Secret of Bryn Estyn are being taken now. Postage is free to all
addresses in the United Kingdom. To order your copy for delivery by the
publication date, please send a cheque for £25 to The Orwell Press at the
address below. For addresses outside the UK, please add £10.
The
Orwell Press
61
Hayfield Road,
Telephone:
01865 558596
Oxford
OX2 6TX
Email:
[email protected]
Online
bookshop: http://www.orwellpress.co.u k Orwell Press. (But please order by
cheque if possible)