I don't have the time to go into the complete argument of this.
But here are a few points.

First off, "supporting" someone, does not mean supporting a possible and likely delusion! As a matter of fact, a good therapist would respectfully examine the facts and "reality test" as the most parsimonious conclusion is likley not a global Satanic conspiracy, and something more mundane, like mental illness. But it has to be carefully looked at.

Also, I am very familiar with the FMS.
The people who started the FMS Foundation www.fmsfonline.org/
were accused by their own daughter of sexual abuse. I have seen several documentaries about it. The father who was accused, admitted to doing things like dressing his young daughter up like a Playboy bunny, and having her dance in front of his friends, this was in the wild sexual years. There was also sexual activities that occurred in front of the children, big parties, etc.
Personally, Peter and Pamela Freyd the founders, came off to me as somewhat guilty, the wife in total denial, the dad afraid for his career, and their daughter Jennifer Freyd seems more credible to me. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle, but the parents seemed like they were guilty to me.
[dynamic.uoregon.edu]

I have [b:6b4a53175f]personally [/b:6b4a53175f]seen a [b:6b4a53175f]guilty [/b:6b4a53175f]offender try to use FMS to escape his conviction. Almost [b:6b4a53175f]every lawyer[/b:6b4a53175f] these days tries to use FMS to claim he is innocent.
I believe FMS is way overblown.
There are some cases by BAD therapists, but most licensed therapists do a pretty good job.

People are in denial about the amount of child sexual abuse goes on.
Most people are NOT going to confabulate those types of memories. That being said, human memory is very fallible.
This is an extremely complex area.

Offenders almost all try to use FMS these days.

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The Anticult
This is an extremely complex area.

I most definitely agree.

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Joe K

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Rama Das (slave name)
So if these people are on the level, they are fighting an ENORMOUS uphill battle.

Unquestionably. This uphill battle would be made worse by such reports as this report (found on this site) of the FBI's investigation into such things: [www.culteducation.com] . (It's a huge reports, search for "Conclusion" if you burn out reading it.)

Whoa, yeah, no doubt.

I wonder if they possibly have an agenda of convoluting this particular issue?

I just glanced at it so far, but my eye was caught by this "statistic"...
"There are many children in the United States who, starting early in their lives, are severely psychologically, physically, and sexually traumatized by angry, sadistic parents or other adults. Such abuse, however, is not perpetrated only or primarily by satanists. The statistical odds are that such abusers are members of mainstream religions. If 99.9% of satanists and 0.1% of Christians abuse children as part of their spiritual belief system, that still means that the vast majority of children so abused were abused by Christians."

They are basing the numbers on some idea that the number of "satanists" is known.

I am sure that there are estimates on the number of self proclaimed "satanists", but I am much more sure that that number would likely include NONE of the people who would actually do these things.

Your friendly neighborhood satanist would not be involved in mind controlled slaves, human sacrifice, pedophilia, etc, etc, etc,

They also point to the lack of bodies and evidence of murder, also citing the fact that these circles of abuse would be too large to hide.

Remember that most of these cases, especially Cathy O'brien, claim that these involve the upper strata of government and society, hence the term "high level".

The explanation of this phenomenon from those claiming to be involved or aware of it is that it involves the very "high level", they are completely allowed to do it, and are supplied everything, the victims, the venues, the immunity to prosecution.

Above, or behind the law, if you will.

To extend this a little further, (this is a hypothesis) the networks of heirarchy and power that are occult (hidden) in nature, that are alledged to reign over us contrary to our belief, involve their members in these kind of rituals for many reasons, one most important is so they have a much tighter control on the ones in their ranks.
You will never disobey or defect due to the fear of your shadowy activities coming to light.

By the way, I am a serious Skeptic, and think this is a fairly balanced viewpoint, except there is not enough mention of criminality.

[skepdic.com]

What is missing in the skeptical community is that there are an enormous amount of people who sexually abuse children, and then lie about it. Child sexual abuse and child abuse are very common.
Just look at the internet, the world is full of offenders.

So I think the skeptical community, needs to grow up a bit, and realize there are plenty of child abusers and criminals in the world, who will lie forever about what they did, and now use FMS to try and get away with it.

Some even convince themselves they are innocent. I bet that False Memory is more common, a child sexual offender convincing himself he is innocent.

Again, this is different than a 'global Satanic conspiracy'. I am talking about child sexual abuse, which could seem Satanic to a child, no question.
There are zillions of pedophiles out there, and most of them wear suits.

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Rama Das (slave name)
I wonder if they possibly have an agenda of convoluting this particular issue?

...

To extend this a little further, (this is a hypothesis) the networks of heirarchy and power that are occult (hidden) in nature, that are alledged to reign over us contrary to our belief, involve their members in these kind of rituals for many reasons, one most important is so they have a much tighter control on the ones in their ranks.
You will never disobey or defect due to the fear of your shadowy activities coming to light.

You are, of course, certainly entitled to your hypothesis.

There is no limit on what can be hypothesized by the human mind, however (another thing that cults take advantage of BTW), and personally I tend to find it unlikely that there is any high-level Satanic/occult conspiracy. Just my personal opinion, of course. Instead, for another example, I find this more likely: [skepdic.com] .

Anticult said:
"First off, "supporting" someone, does not mean supporting a possible and likely delusion! As a matter of fact, a good therapist would respectfully examine the facts and "reality test" as the most parsimonious conclusion is likley not a global Satanic conspiracy, and something more mundane, like mental illness. But it has to be carefully looked at."

Why on earth would 'the most parsimonious conclusion' be a reliable means of finding the truth?

It is the easiest way to deal with the situation, no doubt, but especially in this particular area, a lot more is needed than just references to "accepted reality".

The whole premise is based on a SECRET power structure that is by definition not accepted to exist, has at it's disposal every means of removing all evidence and the vast area of research into this field is completely unfamiliar to most people. Most therapists, too, I assume.
It is constantly marginalized, generalized and NEVER elaborated on by 99% of media sources who mention it.

Of course the things these victims say would never be validated by 'the most parsimonious conclusion'.

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The Anticult
...
What is missing in the skeptical community is that there are an enormous amount of people who sexually abuse children, and then lie about it. Child sexual abuse and child abuse are very common.
Just look at the internet, the world is full of offenders.

So I think the skeptical community, needs to grow up a bit, and realize there are plenty of child abusers and criminals in the world, who will lie forever about what they did, and now use FMS to try and get away with it.

...

For me the issue is *not* whether or not there are a multitude of pedophiles. Of course there are, and the impact on their victims is horrible.

For me the issue is whether "recovered memories" are a valid way to *identify* those pedophiles. I think that "recovered memories" are just as, or even more, likely to result in falsely accusing an innocent person (because I personally think that so many recovered memories are iatrogenic) as it is to identify an actual pedophile.

It is impossible to distinguish between an iatrogenic memory and a memory that is based on real events. Therefore "recovered memories" are forensically unreliable and cannot be used to determine guilt or innocence.

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Rama Das (slave name)
Does Rick Ross or any other respected institution have anything to say on the model of the trauma induced memory split?

It makes sense as I was in a car accident as a child and the intense pain and/or shock of the situation, to this day, prevents me from recalling anything before I was laying on the side of the road AFTER it happened, waiting for the ambulance.

The fractioning of the memory is said to be through traumatic experience.

...

Here's all I found on the RR site [www.culteducation.com] .

For me the issue is not whether dissociation resulting in memory "loss" can occur as the result of a trauma. I believe that it definitely can. I myself have no memories of the hours immediately after I saw my father dying after being shot to death in our driveway.

For me the issue is this: If a therapist helped me to "recover" the missing memories, would those recovered memories be factually accurate? My opinion is that I would have no way in the world of knowing, since any confabulated memories would be as real to me as "real" memories would be.

I can't get into this entire discussion, its just too complex.
But the "recovered" memory thing, put out there by the FMSF people, is a Red Herring.
Judges are not stupid, (usually), and they look beyond that.

I went through all of this first hand.
I was a witness in a case around this very issue, from many years ago.
The judges do not rely merely on "memory" as they know its fallible.
But through cross-examining people, a picture does emerge.

For example, I saw certain events with my own eyes, that an offender was blaming on FMS. Fortunately for the victim in this case, there were some witnesses. (in this case, after trying the FMS defence, the accused was convicted, yet still claims innocence, even though I saw what he did with my own eyes, as did others, and those memories were NOT recovered, but the victim of the crime recovered "part" of their memories, while other part of the memory were not even present. Its VERY complex).

Were all the witnesses memories perfect of an event from years past? No, some were distorted. But the judge understands this, and if anything, witnesses with slightly differing memories are more believable that memories that are perfect. Those are usually rehearsed, or have been contaminated.

I am opposed to the FMSF, as every offender is using that now.
There are some cases of a few crazy therapists who have wrecked people's lives.
But in my view, there are many more cases where the victims of sexual abuse are not believed.

Also, as the internet has PROVEN, pedophiles work in groups, so that can explain some memories of pedophile sexual gang/group activity.

Human memory is very fallible.
And judges have to make the best decision they can.
Sadly, sex abuse usually occurs in secret.

All I can say, is that its my view that those falsely accusing others of childhood sexual abuse are quite rare. The actual abuse happens much more than anyone wants to admit.
Often, memories are not even "recovered" and the accused is screaming FMS, FMS to the courts.

Talk to a cop on the child porn unit, and they will explain that "evil" abuse is rampant in this world, its just now being photographed.
So just looking at the facts, seems to me that the falsely accused are much rarer than the pedophiles who get away with it.

That is to say, the guilty get away with the crime, about 100x more than the innocent are convicted.

The skeptical community is very naive in that way, maybe because they have not seen the facts out there first hand.
They should go and see what the police see everyday, and maybe they would realize that horrendous sexual torture of children is very common.
This sexual torture seems to me to explain the "satanic" area of this, in terms of the "experience" of the poor kids who went through it.

The FMS idea was created by people who many consider to be offenders. But now it is used by every criminal out there.
Its way overblown.
Most judges can sort through that stuff, and get a picture of what's really going on. The "false convictions" are much rarer, probably at least 1/100 than the guilty getting away with it.
That's what I think.

People are not going to generally make stuff up like sex abuse, and then go before a judge. Its a nightmare.

The FMSF claims that many therapists are doing this, which is false.
98% of therapists don't worship memory, they know its fallible.

And traumatic memories CAN be "suppressed" by the mind, or at least avoided.

So I think the FMS idea is MAINLY used by offenders to try to avoid prosecution, at this point. The FMSF has become a type of haven for abusers, as they seem to be "all innocent" according to those folks.

There is no epidemic of false memory convictions, just some isolated cases from some bad therapists.
Sexual offenders are the biggest liars on the face of this earth, and they are using the FMS as a legal defense.

Joe K

I would agree, maybee we cannot rely on these recovered memories.

Whether or not the memory is acurate, if the abuse happened, it happened.

Maybee the recovered memories are flawed, but would it not stand to reason that they could be at least fairly acurate, and if there are so many corroborating similar experiences that this is very loudly pointing to this possibly going on?

If the recovered memories are just taken for what they are, this person recovering lost memories of trauma, they do not in and of themselves need to be considered evidence, but at least a very good reason to pay attention.