June 16, 2016

 

“We thought “satanic ritual abuse” was a wholly debunked artifact of the 1980s, but apparently there are still a few ‘therapists’ out there dedicated to ‘helping survivors’….

“According to the Satanic Temple (who aren’t really “Satanists” so much as anti-theocracy advocates), the ‘therapists’ seem to be the ones who are desperately in need of help. And perhaps having their licensure revoked….

“The Satanic Temple’s ‘Grey Faction’ – ‘dedicated to combating pseudoscience and witch-hunting conspiracism with rational inquiry’ — has posted a petition at Change.org asking the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation to investigate counselor Neil Brick….

“Brick, head of something called ‘Survivorship,’ runs conferences where some seriously weird advice is given. For instance, you shouldn’t trust your spouse, since they may actually be an agent of the mind-control conspiracy. The petition asks Massachusetts authorities to investigate a number of ‘potentially dangerous’ and ‘radically paranoid, unsubstantiated, delusional beliefs’  pushed by Brick:

Neil Brick claims to believe that he was brainwashed to be an assassin for the Illuminati/Freemasons.

Neil Brick claims that, as part of his brainwashing by the Illuminati/Masonic conspiracy, he was programmed to rape and kill “without feeling.”

Neil Brick claims that he once murdered a man in an unreported incident in Europe.

Neil Brick holds regular conferences wherein his delusional beliefs are propagated to mental health consumers by him and his co-conspiracists.

At a very recent conference (May 2016), Neil Brick expressed concern that attendees could “trigger” mind-control programming by touching their faces. Neil Brick imposed a prohibition against face-touching and asked that people sit on their hands. (Keep in mind, this is a man who claims that his own mind-control programming impels him to rape and kill. The implication is clear.)

Neil Brick continues to propagate debunked and disregarded narratives of concealed occult crimes from the height of the “Satanic Panic.”

Neil Brick demonstrates a complete lack of understanding regarding cognitive/behavioral development, claiming to believe that Masons and/or Satanic cults torture fetuses so as to begin mind-controlling them at the earliest possible stage.

– From “Mental Health Professional Thinks Someone Programmed Him To Murder. Could It Be … Satan?” at Wonkette (June 14)

It took several requests, but in 2012 the Charleston-based nonprofit Darkness to Light withdrew its approval of Brick’s Survivorship site.

March 14, 2012

“Prosecutor Nancy Lamb practiced a little ‘voodoo’ psychology by telling the jury that when Dawn Wilson held and played with her child during breaks in the trial, it wasn’t because she loved the child – it was all a show for the benefit of the jury.

“No psychologist could have accurately reported on the state of mind or the motives of Wilson when she played with her child. However, had a psychologist known that Wilson had been offered a plea bargain which included no jail time if she pointed the finger at the others, and had told prosecutors to ‘Find yourselves another patsy,’ that psychologist might have known something about Nancy Lamb’s state of mind when she made those statements.”

– From “Due Process Is Good Psychology,” article in
Michigan Lawyer Weekly by Michael G. Brock

Defending this smear, one of many, Lamb said Wilson was presenting herself as a good mother, and “We had to remove that mask.”

In 1995 the N.C. Court of Appeals overturned her conviction. And then of course the prosecutors rushed to apologize to Dawn Wilson for their disgraceful vilification.

Aug. 15, 2012

The North Carolina Supreme Court won’t release its next batch of opinions until August 24, but its recent decision on a 2009 child sex abuse case could augur well for Junior Chandler.

On June 14 the court upheld the North Carolina Court of Appeals’ overturning of Patrick Loren Towe’s conviction in Surry County. Here’s the crucial part of the opinion:

“Under the North Carolina Rules of Evidence, a qualified expert may testify as to her opinion in her field of expertise if the testimony will assist the jury in understanding the evidence. An expert may not, however, testify as to the witness’s credibility or state that she believes the defendant is guilty.

“In sexual abuse cases involving child victims, an expert may not testify that sexual abuse has occurred without physical evidence supporting her opinion. An expert may not testify that the child has been ‘sexually abused’ if the testimony is based solely on the interview with the child-victim.”

In Patrick Towe’s case, only one expert witness so testified – in Junior Chandler’s it was six.

Without such a parade of “expert vouching,” Junior surely would have spent the past 25 years back home in Madison County instead of behind bars. How can the North Carolina Supreme Court now fail to acknowledge this?

Jan. 4, 2017

“[Richard Beck’s ‘Believe the Children’] is perhaps most poignant on the subject of the damage to the young people who acted as witnesses. ‘Children as young as three and almost never older than nine or ten,’ Beck writes, ‘children who previously understood their time in day care as essentially normal, whether happy or not, had their lives reorganized around the idea that they were deeply and irrevocably traumatized.’ ”

– From “Our Panics, Ourselves” by Rebecca Onion in Boston Review (Sept. 22, 2015)