APS ask for Child Abuse Taskforce Submissions

Yesterday, the Australian Psychological Society (APS) sent its members the following email:

Dear [Psychologist]

The APS Taskforce into Child Sexual Abuse and Psychology has commenced its work and is now inviting submissions from APS members.

The taskforce has been established to provide recommendations to the APS Board of Directors on how the APS can:

• best serve the community to prevent child sexual abuse
• ensure that psychologists have the resources to know how to best respond to survivors and perpetrators they may encounter through their professional practice
• set and maintain the highest professional standards around the conduct of members in relation to child sexual abuse

The taskforce will do three key things:

• review past and current policy and decisions to ensure that they stand to independent scrutiny
• ensure all members clearly understand their legal and professional responsibilities in relation to the reporting of abuse
• develop professional advice, resources and guidelines for how to handle issues of abuse or suspected abuse.

The APS position remains one of absolute condemnation of the behaviour of those who perpetrate abuse.

We are committed to continually improving the provision of appropriate services by psychologists, and to this end the APS will continue to strengthen its position on child sexual abuse through the work of this taskforce. We anticipate that the taskforce will provide recommendations on resources, professional development and governance to provide support for psychologists and the public.

It is the APS position that this taskforce is essential to ensuring survivors of child sex abuse can feel safe, validated and supported by psychologists, and that APS members can feel adequately resourced to address the issue.

Submissions can be made via our secure submissions portal. Submissions will be open until 12am AEST on Friday 11 September 2020.

The APS will keep members informed on the progress of the work of the taskforce, with the intention of completing this work before the end of the year.

If you have any questions please direct these to taskforce@psychology.org.au

Yours sincerely

Ros Knight FAPS
APS President

What a load of crap. The APS should already know the answers to these questions. Good therapists already know the answers to these questions. If a psychologist can’t already discern “how to best respond to survivors and perpetrators they may encounter through their professional practice” – they shouldn’t be registered in the first place!

The APS can start by calling for the resignation of President Ros Knight who shamed and enraged the decent practitioners with her actions that led to this damage control exercise – her sending condolences to convicted kiddie fucker and former APS President Bob Montgomery.

Bob also pioneered Bond University’s psychology program with another convicted pedo psychologist Paul Wilson, who served as Bond’s Dean of Humanities.

The APS conducted an investigation of the complaints fellow Bond psychology masters student Luciana Cruz and I submitted regarding the cover-up of child sexual abuse at Bond University (plus sexual harassment of students by Bond male and female lecturers). This ‘investigation’ proved to be nothing more than an information gathering exercise. The APS handed the information gleaned, to Bond University, which Bond and their pedo contacts at AHPRA and the QLD Board then used against me, to destroy my career. Namely, a Bond professor of psychiatry wrote a favourable report for me, and AHPRA, having the heads up from the APS that this was in my favour, rejected it on the grounds of “bias” – after they initially requested the same report.

My book, Eyes Wide Open contains some great suggestions for the APS which people making submissions might like to consider. People don’t have to be members to make submissions. I did.

I also suggest the general public make submissions to the bullshit ‘taskforce’ via this submissions portal or email address: taskforce@psychology.org.au

I urge all child abuse victims to ask their psychologists to make a submission on their behalf. As your psych to represent your concerns as a victim to this submissions portal. 

Feel free to copy and paste the following information:

APS Introduced ‘False Memory Syndrome’ to Australia

The APS should acknowledge and retract their Australian introduction and dissemination of the debunked and dissolved US False Memory Foundation and their non-existent, unscientific ‘False Memory Syndrome.’

A 1994 FMS newsletter documented a letter to the FMA from Jerome Gelb (a psychiatrist who went nuts and took a loaded handgun to court):

NEWS FROM AUSTRALIA

The Australian False Memory Association has now been formally organized. The links between the AFMA and Australian professionals seem strong and the fact that the Australian Psychological Society [APS]has already established guidelines for recovered memory situations indicates a positive and determined approach by professionals to deal with the problem… [1]

The APS Guidelines Relating to Recovered Memories were introduced on 27 October 1994. According to the 1994 US FMS newsletter, the APS Guidelines Relating to Recovered Memories were adapted from a book written by MK-ULTRA hypnosis researchers Australian Peter W. Sheehan and Kevin M. McConkey which was based on their hypnosis research.[2] Kevin McConkey and Peter Sheehan then presented their views at the 28^th Annual Congress of the Australian Society of Hypnosis. Their presentation paper was subsequently published.[3] Presenters at that same conference included the usual suspects:

• Graham D. Burrows (Chairman, Board of Education, Australian Society of Hypnosis)
• Wendy-Louise Walker (trained at Sydney University by MK-ULTRA Martin Orne). Walker subjected me to years of unspeakable torture at her military-funded laboratory at Holsworthy Army Base.
• Jeffrey Zeig (who rented out Disneyland for two nights for the Psychotherapy conferences at which Milton Ericson and Carl Rogers trained attendees in their MK-ULTRA methods.)
• Barry J. Evans (MK-ULTRA trained under Martin Orne at Sydney University).
• Greg J. Coman, University of Melbourne, co-authored books with Barry J. Evans.

Peter Sheehan (Australian Catholic University) and Kevin McConkey (University of NSW) both conducted hypnosis research with MK-ULTRA psychiatrist Martin T. Orne.[4] Kevin McConkey was the current APS President, and his hypnosis book was currently in press, when the APS introduced their Guidelines Relating to Recovered Memories that he co-authored. Here are the key points from APS Guidelines Relating to Recovered Memories that stopped Australian psychologists acknowledging the existence of ritual abuse and mind control, and treating victims of extreme abuse, for the following 25 years:

• Memories can be altered, deleted, and created by events that occur during and after the time of encoding, and during the period of storage, and during any attempts at retrieval.
• Although some clinical observations support the notion of repressed memories, empirical research on memories generally does not. Moreover, the scientific evidence does not allow general statements to be made about any relationship between trauma and memory.
• The available scientific and clinical evidence does not allow accurate, inaccurate, and fabricated memories to be distinguished in the absence of independent corroboration.
• Assumptions that adult problems may or may not be associated with repressed memories from childhood can’t be sustained by available scientific evidence.
• Psychologists should be alert to the role that they may play in creating or shaping false memories.
• Psychologists should seek to meet the needs of clients who report memories of abuse and should do this quite apart from the truth or falsity of those reports.
• Psychologists should explore with the client the meaning and implications of the memory for the client, rather than focus solely on the content of the reported memory.
• Psychologists should be aware that research is needed to understand more about trauma-related memory, techniques to enhance memory, and techniques to deal effectively with childhood sexual abuse.

Let me place things into perspective: The men who wrote these APS Guidelines trained under Martin Orne who, according to US Congressional witness testimony, raped, tortured and murdered children in the name of national security and psychological research.

Here is my retort to the above points:

• There is zero scientific evidence to support the claim that mainstream therapists can create false memories. Only MK-ULTRA doctors possess the knowledge and military technology to radically alter memory. Memories can only be deleted during and after encoding using unethical hypnosis, illicit drugs, torture, and cutting-edge medical procedures.
• ‘False memory syndrome’ is not a recognised mental health condition, has no clinical history or symptomology (when Repressed Memory has both) and does not feature in the DSM.
• A range of studies using various methodologies across cultures support a causal relationship between trauma and dissociation (alterations in memory and identity). One research team found, ‘strong empirical support for the hypothesis that trauma causes dissociation, and that dissociation remains related to trauma history when fantasy proneness is controlled. We find little support for the hypothesis that the dissociation-trauma relationship is due to fantasy proneness or confabulated memories of trauma.’ [5]
• The APS basically ruled that unless the therapist can find a third-party witness to the abuse, they should not work with – or even acknowledge as substantially true – the client’s abuse memories. The APS should apply the same rule for every experience a client brings to therapy, otherwise that is bias. Courts consider an individual’s witness testimony a form of evidence, yet the APS does not. Perpetrators are adept at concealing their crimes and eliminating witnesses, a fact the APS ignores.
• Genuine belief in a client’s testimony is essential for establishing rapport and eliciting client trust. Therapists can’t possibly meet the therapeutic needs of Extreme Abuse victims unless they believe and understand the abuse account. A client will trust sufficiently to disclose their abuse details, and therefore integrate, only once they perceive the therapist sincerely believes them. Empathy and belief can’t be feigned toward hypervigilant high IQ victims.
• Victims will never process and heal from extreme childhood abuse unless therapy focusses on the actual abuse memories, including the thoughts and feelings experienced during the childhood trauma incident, instead of what the adult victim presently thinks and feels about their memories of Extreme Abuse.

The False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) and its Australian counterpart (AFMA) were formed specifically to counter the tidal wave of disclosure by victims of CIA child trafficking and Project MK-UKLTRA which began in the 1980s and peaked in the early 1990s before the CIA effectively shut it down. The FMSF Board comprised of former CIA and military doctors with backgrounds in behaviour modification – not ritual abuse.[1] All members were accused pedophiles and/or CIA perpetrators. Like PIE, the FMSF offered legal support to accused pedophiles. Here are some facts about key False Memory associates:

USA ‘False Memory Syndrome’ Foundation (FMSF)

Martin T. Orne (Founder)

• Senior CIA MK-ULTRA psychiatrist.
• Raped and murdered countless MK-ULTRA child subjects.
• Co-Director, Unit for Experimental Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania.
• Editor in chief, International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis(1961 to 1992).
• Experimented in hypnotic programming and dissolving memory.
• Defence psychiatrist (with Lois Jolyon West) for 1976 Patty Hearst trial.

Aaron T. Beck

• MK-ULTRA psychologist.
• Father of Clinical Psychology and CBT.

Elizabeth Loftus

• Conducted unethical bogus research, fabricated statistics, generalised narrow findings to population at large.
• Successfully sued twice for lying about child abuse victims.
• Avoided psychology deregistration by resigning.

Ralph Underwager

• Psychiatrist discredited in US courts.
• Told Amsterdam pedophile magazine journalist it is ‘God’s will’ and ‘responsible’ for adults to rape children.
• Told British reporters in 1994 that ‘scientific evidence’ proved 60% of all women molested as children believed the experience was ‘good for them.’

Hollida Wakefield-Underwager

• Ralph Underwager’s wife.

Peter and Pamela Freyd

• Stepsiblings who married.
• Peter was sexually abused at age 11 and later prostituted himself.
• Accused of incest by their daughter.

Harold Lief

• Former Army Major in Medical Corps.
• Close colleague of Martin Orne.
• MK-ULTRA psychiatrist experimented with behaviour modification and hypnosis programming at the University of Pennsylvania’s Unit for Experimental Psychiatry.
• Employed by the Freyds to retrospectively diagnose their adult daughter as a ‘fantasist’ for accusing them of incest, after he joined the FMSF, and when he was not Jennifer Freyd’s doctor. He made this diagnosis after Jennifer had qualified as a PhD psychologist and university lecturer, and after she outed her parents during a 1993 conference presentation.

David Dinges

• Co-Director of University of Pennsylvania’s Unit for Experimental Psychiatry with Martin Orne.

Margaret Singer

• Testified (with Louis Jolyon West and Martin Orne) in the Patty Hearst trial.
• Experts on cults and brainwashing.
• Investigated techniques used by North Koreans against American soldiers.
• Collaborated with CIA doctor Richard Ofshe.[2]

Campbell W. Perry

• Australian hypnosis expert.
• MK-ULTRA psychologist.

Australian False Memory Association

Michael Cox (President)

• Accused by daughter of sexual abuse.
• Convicted of raping two stepsons (his conviction was typically overturned on technicality).
• President CAFSA (Citizens Against False Sexual Allegations; CAFSA knowingly employed convicted pedophile Bob Dutton; CAFSA was supported by MK-ULTRA hypnotist Peter W. Sheehan.

Robert Stanley (President)

• Member International Society of Hypnosis.
• Deregistered by Psychology Board for having sex with a client who died shortly after.[3]

Graham Dene Burrows

• Order of Australia Medal.
• Authored books on hypnosis.
• Provided reference in failed attempt to reinstate associate Robert Stanley’s psychology registration.
• Photographed hosting Martin Orne at his home on 22 August 1979.
• Victorian Medical Board reluctantly ‘investigated’ him in 2011 after the media reported they had received 100 complaints about him in three days.[4] (Used patient as guinea pig, resulting in suicide. Destroyed patient medical file to prevent investigation into his over-prescription of drugs causing kidney failure.)
• Retrospectively diagnosed father as mentally ill and so not responsible for throwing his four-year-old off a bridge.[5] (Criticised by presiding judge. Accused of concocting the evidence by MP who demanded the University of Melbourne sack him.)

Jerome Gelb

• Co-founded the AFMA in consultation with FMSF.
• Branded ‘mentally unstable’ after bringing a loaded handgun to court. A subsequent police raid found a cache of illegal weapons (800 rounds, guns, knives, cattle prod) stored in his home.[6]

Edward Ogden

• Worked for the Victorian Police Force (who were outed by Dr Reina Michaelson as Luciferian pedophiles).
• Said, ‘Mind-control is a fantasy of the Cold War.’
• Involved in various drug experiments.

David Millikan

• ‘Cult investigator’ who said, ‘only middle-class people join cults.’
• Worked for the ABC with Nevill Drury.
• Co-authored ABC book with Drury promoting Christianity and New Age compatibility.
• Drury was a Luciferian and Shaman who took LSD at the Esalen Institute.
• Drury promoted Michael Aquino.
• Drury wrote the only authoritative biography of Rosaleen Norton, the notorious 1950s-60s ‘Witch of Kings Cross’ who worshipped Pan, Hecate, Lilith and Lucifer, and practised Kundalini yoga, out-of-the-body trance exploration, and Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic sex magick.

Jan Groenveld

• ‘Investigated cults’ with David Millikan.
• Daughter is a Satanic Ritual Abuse victim.
• CAN (Cult Awareness Network) member with MK-ULTRA US Army doctor Col. Louis Jolyon West (my perpetrator).
• Founded Australia’s Cult Awareness Information Centre.
• Trained in MK-ULTRA developed Neuro Linguistic Programming.
• Influenced by Steven Alan Hassan (CAN member mentored by NLP creator John Grinder).

Yolande Lucire

• Demonstrated a Scientology approach to psychiatric medication.
• Agreed to not administer psychiatric treatment to a Scientologist’s daughter who consequently killed her father.
• Member Australia’s Cult Awareness Information Centre.

Peter and Pamela Freyd were stepsiblings who married. They coined the term ‘false memory syndrome’ in response to being accused of sexually abusing their daughter Dr Jennifer Freyd, a University of Oregon Psychology Professor who outed them at a 1993 mental health conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. On 17 April 1995, Peter Freyd’s brother William wrote an open letter to WGBH-Boston, criticising the TV station’s inexplicable bias in favour of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation:

There is no doubt in my mind that there was severe abuse in the home of Peter and Pam…The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a fraud designed to deny a reality that Peter and Pam have spent most of their lives trying to escape.[7]

Ralph Underwager was a founding FMSF member. In June 1991, Joseph Geraci, Editor-in-Chief of the pro-pedophilia publication, Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia interviewed Ralph Underwager in Amsterdam. During this interview, Geraci asked Underwager, ‘Is choosing pedophilia for you a responsible choice for the individual?’ Underwager responded:

Certainly, it is responsible. What I have been struck by as I have come to know more about and understand people who choose paedophilia is that they let themselves be too much defined by other people. That is usually an essentially negative definition. Pedophiles spend a lot of time and energy defending their choice. I don’t think that a pedophile needs to do that. Pedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose. They can say that what they want is to find the best way to love. I am also a theologian and as a theologian, I believe it is God’s will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of the flesh, between people. A pedophile can say: ‘This closeness is possible for me within the choices that I’ve made.’ Pedophiles are too defensive. They go around saying, ‘You people out there are saying that what I choose is bad, that it’s no good. You’re putting me in prison, you’re doing all these terrible things to me. I have to define my love as being in some way or other illicit.’ What I think is that pedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, ‘I believe this is in fact part of God’s will.’ They have the right to make these statements for themselves as personal choices. Now, whether or not they can persuade other people they are right is another matter.

APS MK-ULTRA Perpetrators

The following heads of the APS (Australian Psychological Society) are known MK-ULTRA perpetrators:

ABBPS Chairpersons

1955-1956       Oscar Adolph Oeser

1957-1958       Cecil A. Gibb (Fort Street High School, University of Sydney)

1958-1959       Donald W. McElwain

1959-1960       Alfred Gordon Hammer

1962-1963       Ronald Taft

APS Presidents

1977-1978       Peter Sheehan

1984-1985      Ian K. Waterhouse

1993-1994      Kevin M. McConkey

2008-2010       Bob Montgomery

Loftus’ Legacy in Australia

Elizabeth Loftus was discredited, professionally disciplined, and successfully sued in the USA for her blatant lack of ethical conduct and unscientific methodology. Despite this, Loftus’ unproven opinion regarding memory: (a) was the basis for Royal Commissioner James Wood’s dismissal of multiple independent reports of Ritual Abuse; (b) provides the Australian blueprint for dismissing the nature and existence of extreme child abuse within mental health, education, and forensics; and (c) underpins all psychology teaching and educational texts in Australia. Most Australian psychology textbooks are American imports. Mine were. A 2014 study examined three undergraduate psychology textbooks and found, all three concluded that child abuse memories are likely false.[6] All three textbooks referenced Loftus’ writings. Owing to this unfounded and illogical embracement of Loftus’ opinion:

• Australian universities and educational materials teach psychology students that most child abuse memories are false, and repressed trauma memories are particularly unreliable.
• Regulatory bodies deter psychologists from acknowledging the validity of repressed child abuse memories and working with implicit trauma memories.
• Australian psychology students receive no training in the Trauma Model approach.
• Australian therapists receive zero training in recognising or treating ritual abuse and mind control.
• NSW Victims of Crime counselling services forbade the use of scientifically validated, effective tools like EMDR for processing implicit abuse memories (until I publicly accused them of withholding treatment). A therapist can only use EMDR if they tape the sessions; yet this is not required for other, less effective treatment modalities.
• University criminology lecturers do not teach future Australian law enforcement officials that child trafficking is run as a single, integrated global operation.

Elizabeth Loftus: CIA Psychologist

Royal Commissioner James Wood used the gangrenous writings of CIA psychologist Elizabeth Loftus to dismiss multiple witness accounts of organised pedophilia and ritual abuse. Wood’s Final Report referenced Loftus’ 1994 book, The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse, to support his conclusions:

1. ‘False memories’ of Ritual Abuse can be artificially created as a result of third person suggestion,
2. A victim of Ritual Abuse can’t experience dissociation and repression of traumatic memories, and
3. Ritual Abuse victims are female ‘attention-seeking’ hypochondriacs whose flashbacks may be attributed to overly zealous female therapists.

Loftus’ 1994 book was not a scientifically conducted, peer reviewed research publication. It was just a book.

At the time of her 1994 book release, Loftus had published one study relevant to her ‘false memory’ theory, an experiment which examined university students’ memory for films of car accidents.[1]

In 1995, Loftus co-published the notorious Lost in a Shopping Mall study.[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Loftus’ assigned University of Washington postgraduate student James Coan as chief co-investigator for her mall study. Subjects’ family members were asked to provide James Coan with three true childhood stories about the subjects, and to describe a typical family shopping trip. Based on the shopping trip descriptions, a false story was created for each subject about getting lost as a child during a shopping trip. Subjects were told their family members said the events ‘had happened.’ The subjects were asked to repeat the stories and to try and remember more details. Finally, the subjects were told that one of the memories was false and asked to choose the false memory.

Elizabeth Loftus conducted and published this research before receiving ethical approval for the study. Loftus added a second interview plus another evaluation scale to the research protocol long after the study was approved on 10 August 1992.

James Coan reported in his 1993 honours thesis that only 6/24 subjects completed the study, and zero subjects created a false memory.[7] [8] Crook and Dean (1999) analysed Loftus’ data and discovered only 2/24 subjects likely completed the study.[9] First year psychology students are taught, a minimum of n=10 subjects is required for valid statistical analysis. So, Loftus blatantly lied when she reported: ‘Of the 24 total, 19 subjects correctly chose the getting-lost memory as the false one, while the remaining five incorrectly thought that one of the true events was the false one… These findings reveal that people can be led to believe that entire events happened to them after suggestions to that effect.’[10]

The raw data from the shopping mall study were subpoenaed by defence attorneys in Burgus v. Braun. Loftus successfully obtained a gag order for her fraudulent data. The case settled on 31 October 1997 and the data returned to Loftus.

Elizabeth Loftus published another lab experiment in 1996.[11] This examined, ‘whether imagining events from one’s past can affect memory for childhood events.’ A total of 38 undergraduate psychology students (young female university students studying the same course) participated in the study for course credit. Loftus asked the students to imagine described events such as tripping over or falling through a window.

The characteristics of Elizabeth Loftus’ samples made it inappropriate for her to generalise findings from her studies to the population at large. And yet Loftus drew conclusions from these severely flawed studies about the reliability of child abuse memories, and the possibility that a parent or therapist could create false memories of child abuse in a person who has experienced trauma of the most severe kind. Loftus basically equated a psychology student’s experience of watching a car crash film or imagining themselves falling over – with real life accounts of being systematically raped and tortured throughout one’s development. That is beyond preposterous.

Elizabeth Loftus’ conclusions failed to hold up under cross examination. In 1994, Lynn Crook successfully sued Loftus. Lawyer Barbara Jo Levy asked Loftus, ‘If you are asked to testify about your experiments of implanting false memories, would you use those first six?’ Loftus replied, ‘No, I don’t think I will use the first six’ (Transcript, p.61).

In December 1995, two women filed ethics complaints against Elizabeth Loftus with the American Psychological Association, claiming she had misrepresented their successful recalled-memory lawsuits to the media. Loftus resigned from the APA in January 1996, so the APA dropped their investigation.

A Washington Post article entitled, In the Sharon Case, a Grilling to Remember (27 October 2006) described a damning cross examination of Elizabeth Loftus:

But when Fitzgerald got his chance to cross-examine Loftus about her findings, he had her stuttering to explain her own writings and back pedalling from her earlier assertions. Citing several of her publications, footnotes and the work of her peers, Fitzgerald got Loftus to acknowledge that the methodology she had used at times in her long academic career was not that scientific, that her conclusions about memory were conflicting, and that she had exaggerated a figure and a statement from her survey of D.C. jurors that favoured the defence.

In 2003, Nicole Tau successfully sued Loftus for invasion of privacy. At age six years, during a videotaped interview by a medical doctor, Tau had accused her mother of child abuse. Tau subsequently forgot her abuse but spontaneously recalled it at age 17 years. Corwin and Olafson (1997) published an article about the case, favouring the notion that repressed memory of childhood abuse can be recalled. Elizabeth Loftus set out to discredit Tau by hiring a private investigator to locate Tau. The PI lied to Tau’s family by pretending to be Corwin’s research assistant. Loftus subsequently published an article based on the PI’s interviews with Tau’s family in which she identified Tau as a victim of crime. Tau filed an ethics complaint against Loftus in 1999 with the University of Washington who upheld the complaint.

During a 2013 TED Talk about memory, Loftus intentionally misrepresented the basic facts of Nicole Tau’s case by saying it was about a ‘woman’ who ‘accused her mother of sexual abuse based on a repressed memory.’ Loftus knowingly omitted crucial facts of the case: that Tau was six years old when she made the report, then forgot the memory, and then spontaneously and accurately recalled the memory 11 years later at age 17 years.

The APS Won’t Change

So, the APS has a long sordid history of supporting pedophiles and silencing child abuse victims. The APS is a pedophile institution run by perpetrators. Nothing will change because the problem is endemic.

APS: Australian Pedophile Society…

For more information regarding the APS and their facilitation of child abuse in Australia, read my free book which has been downloaded 180,000+ times from my site alone. Click on this LINK.