14 ~ Sunday, June 28, 1998 — North Shore News Crisis society living in the dark ages lana Mercer Contributing Columnist KUDOS to the North Shore Crisis Services Society (NSCSS) for thinking long and hard about the name- sake of its Emily Murphy transition house for abused women and children, The organization might next want to revise the “readings” and training material it dishes out to vol- uiiteers. Because some of this material reads like the Malleus Maleficarum, only with a contemporary gloss. The Mallens was an authori- ty on witchcraft written in 1486. And where the NSCSS’s “readings” live up to it is in promoting the old chestnuts of ritual abuse and muitiple personality disorder. In the “readings,” Cheryl WaterWomon, who identifies herscif as a lesbian feminist and survivor of ritual abuse, . flutes on about its effects on her life. “T was forced to watch and partici ate in sadistic _murders of animals and human beings, torture, can- nibalism, forced prostitution, pornography and other numerous horrific forms of abuse.” . The cult, says Ms. WarerWomon, not only | threatened but also pro- grammed her to kill herself. Evidently with no success, has lived to tell the prurient tale. Courtesy of the aware- ness campaign at the NSCSS, volunteers must peruse a paper by Daniela Coates, “written in hepes of bridging the gap between society’s naivete about ritual abuse and survivors’ desper- “We must conclude that like abduction by space travellers, accounts of satanic abuse are false.” ate need for support.” Ms. Coates, a founding member of the now defunct Ritual Abuse Awareness Network Society, explains that “multiplexity i is created during the childhood ofa ritual abuse survivor.” “Multiplexity” is the term Ms. Coates has minted for multiple personality disorder. And she describes those who have it as if they were mythi- cal unicorns. “Individuals with multiplexity ... have unique coping mechanisms” and “multiples,” vaporizes Coates, have better recall than “aniplexed” individu- als. Those being run-of-the- mill mortals with one per- sonality. Truth is, chere is no proof to support the ritual abuse stories. Despite aggressive inves- tigations nothing has ever turned up that would point to the existence of a wide- spread cult network. - “We must conclude,” stated a report issued last year by Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists, “that like abduction by space travellers, accounts of satanic abuse are false.” The U.S. federal govern- ment sealed the case in a 1994 study that concluded rumors of organized satanic child abuse were unfounded. Still, che moral panic over satanic cults has produccd strange bed-fellows and some left-wing radical femi- nists have slipped between the shects with selected right-wing conspiracy ufts. Members of both groups believe there is an interna- tional conspiracy of sexual abusers who brutalize chil- dren, use them in child porn, then murder and eat them. As the dernonic twin of recovered memory therapy, multiple personality disorder has grown in a single decade from am exceptionally rare diagnosis to an epidemic. Thanks to the many PhD psychologists and MD psy- chiatrists who practice mem- ory retrieval and who believe that childhood trauma caus- es children and young adults to split into new personali- tics, upwards of 25,000 peo- ple in North America have been told they harbor the disorder. As a graduate student, my information was that less than 200 multiple personali- ty disorder cases had been recorded in niedical history. As a NSCSS volunteer I was being brought up to 98 PONTIAC SUNFIRE COUPE Built for drivers looking for sporty styling in a fun to drive coupe. speed and primed ty respond in the event tha: Semen present themselves with mul- tiple personality disorder (MPD). British psychologist Ray Aldridge-Morris calls MPD an exercise in deception and See Voiunteer page 19 ‘aa ; "Lease or. Purchase Financing... up to 48 months oe On. selécted models’. ‘oeehy 36 wants cae bn ieasay-; POW! 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