(Continued from https://johndenugent.com/unshackled-7/)
Unshackled
10. I saw no point in reporting the rape. I didn’t know the names or home addresses of
the first two men-all I could remember was one of their aliases. And because the
third rapist, a relative, had black op training, I chose not to confront him. Also, the
blond rapist told me they had already created alibis that fellow spooks, who had also
attended the counterterrorism conference, would back up. I believed him. Finally,
because I didn’t immediately remember the rapes, I had no physical proofs that they
had occurred. All I had were the emotional and mental scars that would not
go away.
11. The specialized counselors never suggested my memories-they came completely
on their own. Instead, they taught me how to regain my emotional power by allow-
ing myself to feel the full gamut of my suppressed emotions, to understand that the
after-effects from the rape were normal, and what the rapists had done to me was
about power, not sexuality.
12. “Survivors of torture, sexual abuse, and rape . . . have been put into a position
of . . . “forced silence,” that is, the assailant has often directly threatened the
victim that death will result from disclosure, and thus the victim fears annihilation
(as well as rejection from the listener) for telling about the traumas.” (Blank A 14)
13. “Rape … is inherently humiliating and degrading of self-esteem; those are not
meanings supplied by the victim, but rather are objectively contained within the
event, as is the violent and tyrannizing imposition of the perpetrator’s will and
power.” (Blank A 14)
14. I’ve learned that this is a surprisingly common response in many partners of rape
victims, who believe that if it had been them, they could have successfully fought
off the attackers. In reality, being in a room full of assassin-trained spooks didn’t
allow me that luxury; my goal was simply to survive.
The Void
This Is To Mother You
Although remembering and deprogramming were crucial parts of my
recovery, my biggest step in healing was to accept how the methodically
perpetrated traumas, betrayals, and absence of childhood nurturing had
affected my mind and soul.
I’d always felt different from other people, partly because my parents
had used me to meet their emotional and sexual needs instead of being
there for me. Dad had conditioned me from infancy to bond with him
through sex. In those conditioned alter-states, I’d believed that I was his
partner, especially since he did things to me that should have been
reserved for Mom. I’d bonded with him not only through touch and sex,
but also through terror and torture.
From early childhood on, I’d also been a living receptacle for the
hatred inside my parents and some of my other adult relatives. What I
saw in their faces when they looked at me was what I believed I was.
Rarely was I held gently, talked to in a soothing voice, or nurtured-other
than by one paternal aunt and by my maternal grandmother. In the ritu-
als, some of my adult family members openly treated me with scorn,
hatred, and sadism. Believing that they and the other cultists wished that
I didn’t exist, I’d complied by going away in my mind.
After I’d married Albert, Mom had told me that she understood Albert’s
coldness towards me because she wasn’t capable of loving anyone, either.
Although her words had cut deep, they hadn’t surprised me. I’d always
known that she didn’t love me. That is the mother I always knew. She was
so focused on her own needs, wants, and desires that she seemed inca-
pable of giving of herself, emotionally, to others-unless she wanted some-
thing from them.
I didn’t have a mother who mirrored love to me. Instead, she avoided
looking at my face when she changed my diaper. She didn’t delight in
picking me up out of the crib or holding me close to her beating heart as
I did with Rose.
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As a child, I never bonded in love with humans, other than to a limited
degree with my brothers and one childhood friend who was also a victim.
Feeling responsible for my brothers’ welfare, I saw myself as their surro-
gate mother. The death of my baby daughter was probably the final stake
that Dad drove through my heart’s ability to bond. Her death totally split
off the warm, caring part of me. Caring and connecting with other humans
came at too great a cost. I couldn’t bear any more pain.
In childhood, when I drew pictures of trees, I always drew a large black
hole in the middle of each trunk. Even though the trees were full of leaves
and fruit, I was communicating that the tree (really, my soul) was empty
and black inside. People might have looked at me and seen life and intel-
ligence, leading them to think that all was well while in reality, my soul
was dying. Although I felt hollow inside, I tried to be like other people-but
this was not possible. It took so much energy to survive and stay sane!
After we married in 1988, Bill assumed the role of mother-nurturer.
He gave me consistent love, caring and acceptance. His actions helped
me to begin to trust and open up to him.
In August of 1999, we were at home on a Sunday morning, making
last-minute preparations to attend an annual SMART conference later
that week. 1 Bill was shaving in the bathroom when he felt a strong pain
in his chest that traveled down his left arm. When he couldn’t dissociate
it away, he yelled at me to take him to the hospital. I called for an ambu-
lance. As I followed it in my car, listening to the siren scream, I switched
into autopilot mode.
After several tests, the emergency room physician told Bill, “You’re
my prisoner now.” Bill told me that he’d be on the golf course the next
day. I wanted to believe him, but then he was transported by ambulance
to the main hospital in downtown Chattanooga.
The following morning, an angiogram indicated severe blockage in
three main arteries. His cardiologist met with me in a private room and
said, “Mrs. Sullivan, if your husband leaves this hospital, he’s a dead
man.” My body turned to ice; I seemed to hear his voice inside a barrel.
A nurse kindly led me into a large room where Bill was being prepared
for his heart bypass operation.
As Bill lay on his back, joking and teasing the nurses, I thought: “This
might be the last time I’ll ever talk to him.” I tried to laugh at his jokes
as I watched another heart attack on the monitor. Because he was
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371
drugged and dissociated, he never even felt it. As I held back my tears,
my heart felt as if it were shattering into a million pieces.
I felt so alone and frightened, having no safe family members to call
for support. An elderly couple who lived near us, rushed to the hospital
after I called them. They sat and talked with me in the Surgical ICU
waiting room to keep my mind occupied while I counted the hours. Their
presence helped me to realize that I didn’t have to be alone anymore. It
was time to let honest, caring people become members of my new
adopted family.
After Bill’s surgery, I was led into the surgical ICU ward to see him for a
few minutes. I wasn’t ready for what I encountered. His body was ice cold
and his skin was grey. A machine was breathing for him. Although
he’d always responded when I’d touched his hand, now there was no
response at all. And although the smiling, young nurse told me that Bill was
doing well, I felt as if he had just died.
When I returned home from the hospital that night to wash up and get
a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, I felt a shift inside. Pain and grief
paralyzed me. I felt terrified and wasn’t sure I could survive it.
Fortunately, its intensity ebbed away by the next morning-especially
when I saw that Bill was awake, talking to visitors.
Bill’s near-death experience both traumatized me and helped me to
appreciate him more. All the little infractions I’d held against him
stopped being important. Nearly losing him helped me to value our
relationship in a much deeper and mature way.
Do I regret loving Bill, when I know that love can bring pain? Do
I regret having hesitantly moved towards him in my heart, soul, and mind
for fifteen years, so afraid that he’d hurt me, that he’d leave me, that he’d
despise me if he really knew me? Not anymore! How can I regret the
greatest healing force I’ve ever experienced?
Bill taught me how to bond-not just through sex, but by learning to
care and to give and receive love. He taught me that because I’m loved,
I can accept myself as lovable. And by accepting caring from him and
others in my support network, I am also able to care.
He oh- so- slowly helped me to peel away hundreds of thin layers of
steel that had encased my soul. Because of his love and fierce devotion,
I dared to open my soul to him, surprised again and again when it
wasn’t pierced to death by sudden betrayal and cruelty.
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Bill was my soul-hospital, my triage, my burn unit. He helped me to
survive and to know that life is worth living and risking love for.
A year after Bill’s heart surgery, a woman in my support network sent
me an unexpected care package. In it was iridescent, shredded plastic
grass, several beautiful adult coloring books, a 64-count box of Crayons,
several small toys, a card with small pressed flowers on the front, and a
customized CD.
The first song on the CD was Sinead O’Connor’s This Is To Mother
You. Pain paralyzed me and tears streamed down my face as I played it
over and over. Sinead sang about a kind of mother-nurturing that I’d
never experienced, but had always hoped for: a mother who would love
me and forgive my imperfections.
Sinead’s words went deeper and deeper, all the way down into the
black hole that my shell of a soul encased. Then I became the black hole.
The null, the void. The place that had never been filled with loving touch
and compassion, caring and kindness, encouragement, and gentle,
non-sexual kisses. This hole could have only been filled by one person:
my mother, the woman who I believe gave me life. I was astonished by
the depth and intensity of my pain.
For days, I sat and grieved and played the song over and over. I finally
allowed myself to feel the absence of mother-love. I grieved over who
and what I’d never had the chance to be: maternally loving. Caring.
Compassionate. Kind. Gentle. Nurturing. How could I be, when it had
never been given to me by my primary care-givers? And how could I give
out of a deep place that had never been filled?
During my next therapy session, I had great difficulty putting these
thoughts and feelings into words. I told Helen, “I didn’t know how to
become close to other women. I have a big black hole inside with no way
to fill it-my mother hadn’t been what I needed, and probably never can be.
What can I do to fill the hole? Is it even possible?”
She said, “You must learn to nurture your own self. You’ll need
to become your own mother.” As we talked, I realized that the grieving
child inside me needed to let go of the fantasy that Mom might eventually
love me. How could she, when she was unable to love herself?
Now I understood why I’d never been able to forgive myself, and why
I’d always felt “bad.” If my primary caregivers chose not to mirror
forgiveness and acceptance towards me when I made mistakes or failed
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373
to meet their stringent expectations, then how could I have possibly
learned to forgive and accept myself? No wonder I was so damned
dissociated; I’d never developed a core sense of self, because I’d never
been accepted as who I really was !
Although I knew I needed to learn healthy ways to nurture myself,
I had no idea how to start. Helen suggested I buy fragrant bath lotions
and stroke my skin with my fingers in the shower: “sensually, not
sexually.”
I splurged on a bottle of French vanilla scented body soap. Standing in
the shower, I felt my own skin, really felt it, for the first time. I enjoyed
the lingering scent of vanilla and the softness of my skin. I stared at the
hairs on my arms as they stood up when I stroked them backwards with
my fingertips. I touched other parts of my body as a healthy mother
might have if I’d been her delightful, soft-skinned baby. I kissed and
held myself and wept.
Within a week my bottomless appetite for food went away. That
surprised me, because during the past decade, I’d gained over
fifty pounds from bingeing on the same foods that Mom had fed me
as a child. Suddenly, I realized that I’d tried to use the food to fill the hole
in my soul. No wonder I’d never felt full! How can anyone fill an
emotional hole with food? Just as I’d believed that Dad had loved me
because he’d gone to work to pay for our home and our physical
needs, I’d erroneously believed that Mom’s cooking had proven that she
loved me. 2
The next step in healing was to accept nurturing from other adult
females. Because I hadn’t wanted to feel the pain of not having been nur-
tured by Mom, I’d been phobic towards caring females. I needed to get
past that fear. First, I thanked the woman who had sent me the care
package. I told her she was the first non-therapist in my recovery who
demonstrated to me that women other than my mother could give me bits
and pieces of nurturing. Then I met with several women in my local sup-
port network and told them why I hadn’t tried to emotionally connect
with them. I told them that as I practiced loving and forgiving myself, I
would also work harder at opening up to them.
Once I knew how it felt to bond with those women, I felt sad that I’d
spent at least half my life isolating from such wonderful sources of
soul-life. I gave myself permission to grieve that loss, too.
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On the Wings of an Angel
I still didn’t know that I had a hidden nurturer alter-state. In
March, 1999, a sad little Aryan girl part wrote in my journal. She was
in great pain. She hadn’t emerged since Dad’s death in 1990, and
was unaware that my life had changed quite a bit since then. She
wrote:
/ don ‘t want to talk to anybody. Why bother? I was one of theirs
all of my life. How can I be anybody else now? I had no will.
They took it all away and hurt me and slapped me and kicked
me and laughed at me and I am not good. I am a puppet their
puppet and I will do whatever they tell me to do. And if it’s a
good day I will feel something good down there maybe. Why
bother to look for doors when there is no way to get away from
them ? They have my girl, my husband is with them, my dad and
mom and brothers are with them, my in-laws are with them, my
neighbors are with them, even the police and FBI are with
them, and of course our lovely CIA-so where can I go that they
won’t hurt me again, where they won’t do that thing to me
down there again? There is no place but with them, always
with them. Maybe I’m not with them, but I feel I am, and I don ‘t
like me, I don ‘t hate me, but I don ‘t like me, and I don ‘t want to
live. I want to sleep, sleep forever, but I don’t want to
hurt anybody. I don ‘t want to hurt Bill, he ‘s a nice man, but
when he yells he is too much like them. So what do I do now?
I’m supposed to brush my teeth and take a shower, and I’m
supposed to do a term paper, but I don ‘t want to do anything, I
am crying again, and I don ‘t want to do the computer, because
bad people can read it, and they will know what I am doing. I
wish Helen was here. I wish Bill would listen. I wish I had a
friend, but I have no friend, never do. I just want to have a
friend and I want to be in bed under the covers, and I don ‘t
bother anybody.
She drew a picture of herself, naked with short hair, arms crossed
across her chest, eyes closed, crying. Then an adult “angel” alter-state
emerged. She drew herself in behind the lonely little girl and wrapped
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375
her wings around her. She wrote the words of a lullaby on the picture
while crooning them softly:
/ will hold you
I will comfort you
I will be with you
You are no longer alone
I will stay with you
I will share your soul-shattering pain
Rest in my wings
Fall back into my wings
The girl part responded, I feel bad about losing Emily. She saw so much
badness.
/ know, I feel bad about it too.
I did so much badness, I would get so mean at people, even to people I
liked. It’s like all the bad things they did to me built up and built up and
I would be with non-hurters, and I would get upset or angry, and I kept
hurting people I didn’t mean to hurt, and then I wanted to say I’m sorry.
But it was too late to say I’m sorry. Oh god, Oh god. I am such a monster,
worse than them, I am a monster.
Not in my eyes. In my eyes you are not a monster. They trained and
taught and tortured you to be a killer. They did NOT give you some magic
on/off switch.
I talk so soft, but then I get so ANGRY, and then my hands and fingers
get so STRONG, and it is like I don’t think for a while, and when I think
again ” it’s too late.
Emily is still alive. You did not kill her.
But all those people I hurt, all those children I hurt and scared ”
Do you know how attack dogs are trained? Well, they are put in cages.
And they are tortured over and over again until the good nature is
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terrorized out of them. Until their wills are broken, until they will
do ANYTHING their masters tell them to do. But their aggression from
all that torture has to go somewhere. They are dangerous, because
sometimes they just “snap “-not when their masters tell them to attack.
And just like an attack dog, you were terrorized and brutalized and
tortured repeatedly. Your aggression had to go somewhere. Since it was
not safe to turn it on those who tortured you-because they could do it
again-you turned it on yourself-or if called out – on those who would
not torture you. They broke your personality, they made you into an
attack dog. 3
That mean man and lady ” she made the Dobermans . . . they growled so
much at me, I thought they were going to eat me up ! And they put then-
things in me! Ugly! I’m so ugly!
Yes, I know about that too. I know how heartbreaking and terrifying and
degrading that was. They made you a dog. An attack dog. They took you
away from your natural state of being and made you over, into something
totally different.
All those people ” all those bad things, those bad bad things I’ve
done ”
You can thank our Uberfuhrer for that. Dr. Black and his assistants liked
to rechannel aggression and make naturally peace-loving humans turn
on each other.
Why? Why would he do that to me ” to them ” to all of us? Why?
/ wish I could tell you. I honestly do not know. He was a very sick man
and a very perverted man.
They all were.
Very much so. But you had no choice. You had to go where he took you.
You were his hostage, you were his victim, you were his prisoner, you
were his slave. It was never your fault.
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377
I hate myself.
No you don’t. It’s him you hate.
Rest in my wings, Little One
Fall back into my wings
I will comfort you
I will hold you
Rest in my wings
Notes
1. Each summer, SMART sponsors an annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations
and Mind Control Conference. To contact SMART, see the “Supportive
Organizations” list in the back of this book.
2. Rosencrans explains the strong emotional connection between maternal nurturing
and food:
Food and mothers are so intertwined for the daughters that it’s hard
to separate them. Food is used for discipline, rewards, emotional
expression, cultural pride, and many other things . . . The roots of many
eating problems are established in childhood and can lead to life-long
struggles, (pp. 144-145)
3. This has also been done to other animals, to break their wills. In an article in
National Geographic Today, Jennifer Hile reported on a technique still being used
to condition elephants in Thailand:
[A] four-year-old elephant bellows as seven village men stab nails into
her ears and feet. She is tied up and immobilized in a small, wooden
cage . . . The cage is called a “training crush” … In addition to
beatings, handlers use sleep-deprivation, hunger, and thirst to “break”
the elephants’ spirit and make them submissive to their owners . . .
[a shaman said that] to control animals that can eventually weigh as
much as 10,000 pounds, it’s essential they fear their keepers. He believes
it’s the only way to safeguard against the animal kicking, goring, or
otherwise injuring the people with whom they work. (pp. 1 & 4)
Common sense dictates that when these handlers torture the elephants, they enrage
the elephants. Then, fearing the rage, they torture them further to make them fear
them and not attack them. Those who conditioned and tortured me for future ops
used the same insane logic.
Letting Go of the Guilt
Sociopathic Mentality
Although I occasionally discovered comforter parts like the angel,
I was more likely to find assassin trained parts. That was always very
painful. To survive the pain, I had to believe I could survive it. But some-
times I wasn’t sure I could. More than anything else, the guilt was slowly
killing me. I didn’t know, yet, that Dad had methodically created a
foundation for this deadly guilt.
When I was a child, he’d repeatedly told me I was going to hell for my
sins. Because he was a blatant sociopath who refused to accept responsi-
bility for his own horrific sins, he seemed to encourage me to internalize
his un-owned responsibility and guilt. 1
In the 1990s, going to church and a Baptist seminary didn’t help to
free me from this pervasive sense of guilt. I was reminded again and
again that Jesus had died for my sins, and that God had already forgiven
me and washed me clean as snow. This added to my pain, because no
noticeable exceptions were made for those who had been forced to commit
sins against their will.
As I reviewed literature about criminals who were diagnosed with
MPD or DID, I felt more depressed. Even if their host personalities
didn’t commit the crimes, most juries still believed their “criminal”
personalities must be incarcerated, instead of being helped by legitimate
mental health professionals to heal and possibly integrate.
Helen tried to help me understand that I’d had no way out and that
my choices, in controlled alter-states, had been extremely limited.
Although she made sense, every time she uttered the words “making
amends,” I again felt guilty and believed I should spend the rest of my
life making up for my terrible crimes. 2
When I tried to make amends by helping other mind-control and ritual
abuse survivors to recover and heal, I ran out of energy and strength,
spiraled into major depression again, and checked into a local psychiatric
hospital to stay alive. Even after giving a presentation entitled “Letting
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Letting Go of the Guilt
379
Go of the Guilt” at a SMART conference, I couldn’t let go of my own.
I didn’t know how.
I tried to free myself from the guilt by mentally reviewing the techniques
that had been used to mold some of my alter- states into torturer and killer
parts. I was still seeking answers to free me from the guilt- shackles that
held me back from building a new life.
When I was only three years old, Dad had started working on my mind
at least once a week, if not every day. Because he’d focused on making
me a receptacle for his guilt and self-loathing, I’d rarely felt good about
myself. And after a while, even though I didn’t remember his mental
assaults, the ritual killings, and other related horrors, the sense of being
guilty and unworthy of human kindness and forgiveness remained.
Because I was so young, I didn’t understand that Dad wasn’t capable
of feeling guilt. He and most of his criminal associates were sociopaths.
Instead of feeling remorse for their crimes, they gloried in breaking the
law. To them, it was fun and exciting!
Because I’d spent most of my covert life in the presence of sociopaths,
I’ve recently been fascinated by the hit HBO television show, The
Sopranos. Listening to its shady characters’ rationalizations for why they
perform violent acts has almost been like being with Dad and his
criminal associates again.
The rules in their twisted world were almost the direct opposite of
those of normal society. For them, good was bad and bad was good.
Murder and adult-child sex were expected and encouraged. They had no
empathy or compassion for their victims. Torturing innocents, especially
babies, seemed to sexually excite some of them. Murder seemed to be the
ultimate thrill for people like Dad; but because the thrill didn’t last long,
they had to find more and more victims.
I think this is why he extended his mind and hands through mine,
using me to kill even more innocents. I believe he was one of many ritu-
alistic serial killers who have not been brought to justice. 3 The more Dad
got away with murder and wasn’t caught, the more untouchable he felt,
and the more he murdered. The more he raped children and wasn’t
brought to justice, the more he raped children. His criminality spiraled
out of control. 4
Many parts of my shattered personality were forced to live exclusively
in his sociopathic world. I absolutely could not reconcile his bizarre
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world with the normal world that I experienced at school, church, and
play. I had to split completely to function and survive.
Divided Personality
In normal society I was taught to obey, to give, to care, to do good, to
reach out and help those who weren’t as well off. That benign training
and conditioning was the foundation of my core personality.
In addition to that healthy part of myself, Dad created “bad” parts that
were exposed exclusively to immorality, lust, lies, rape, sadism, torture
and murder. Using trauma, drugs and hypnosis, he built impenetrable walls
of amnesia that separated my normal life parts from my covert, hidden
parts that were accustomed to sociopathic mentality.
Then he used hypnosis and brutality to put my anti-moral parts in invis-
ible mental cages with locks that only he and other professional handlers
had the keys to. Specific code words and other triggers released those alter-
states, to perform like trained animals for the handlers and owners.
My covert alter-states were only conscious for as long as those masters
and handlers allowed. These split-off parts weren’t familiar with my life
at home, nor did they know about my past. They had no sense of future.
They didn’t know my real name or how old I was or where I lived. Most
of them didn’t know what the year was, or who my husband was, or if I
had children. Some of them didn’t even know if “the body” was male or
female, young or old, animal or human. Their only reality was what the
programmers and handlers told them.
These alter-states and personality fragments had extremely limited life
experience and knowledge. Most of them had never tasted and swal-
lowed food, touched the soft fur of a pet, slept on a bed, or felt warm
sunshine. When triggered out, most of them didn’t know what country
they were in. And most of them considered the professional handlers to
be their friends and saviors.
They weren’t allowed to talk to strangers. They weren’t allowed to
look out vehicle windows. During debriefings, handlers lied about where
my alter-states had been. They hypnotically implanted false information
to scramble the parts’ memories of the real locations.
The alter-states were often smuggled into buildings through back
doors and underground parking areas and service elevators. Sometimes
Letting Go of the Guilt
381
they were shipped overseas in big wooden crates in planes or on the open
decks of large boats, so they could see nothing and so that no one, other
than assigned handlers, could see and talk to them.
Many times, when handlers made me wait in an office before taking
me home, they either made me sit or walk around with no clothes on, or
only let me keep some of my clothes while they remained fully clothed.
When I emerged from amnesia and found myself naked or partially
clothed, I believed it was my fault. The handlers laughed as I frantically
looked for something to cover myself with. When they held me in rooms
and buildings, they also made me remove my footwear to discourage me
from running away. 5
In spite of all this, some of my alter-states would have stayed, even if
they’d been given permission to leave. To them, the covert world was
addictive and exciting. There is something in the world of amorality and
deception that draws the untamed parts of the soul.
Having been sexually assaulted and conditioned by Dad from infancy,
some of my alter-states sought one male sexual partner after another.
After each interaction, they wanted more. Several female alter-states that
had compartmentalized “black widow” mental programming, saw noth-
ing wrong with having sex with a man and then killing him while he
slept-as ordered.
Because I’d been sexually assaulted and molested by my mother
throughout my childhood and beyond, I’d also developed sexually con-
ditioned parts that hadn’t seen anything wrong with having sex with
women-anytime, anywhere. Like with men, it was never about love-it
was about sexual pleasure, and the power that came from knowing that, at
least for a moment, these parts were able to make the women vulnerable
as they brought them to orgasm.
Finding my sociopathic alter-states was a tremendous shock. They
were everything I’d never allowed my rule-oriented self to be. They were
all that I believed was wrong and evil. I judged them by the knowledge
and rules I’d lived by in the normal world. I didn’t understand that they’d
never experienced goodness, sinlessness, honesty, kindness and love.
I blamed them; I hated them; I despised them. I didn’t understand that
they’d had no choice. Feeling ashamed for what they’d done, I carried a
relentless load of guilt-bricks on my back, day after loathsome day.
I argued that they should have done differently. I wasn’t willing to
acknowledge that amnesic barriers or gaps had kept my knowledge and
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morality from reaching where they had resided in my brain. I didn’t want
to know that they had been tortured and more, to transform them into
seemingly less-than-human, primal and reptilian creature parts.
As I began to blend with them, however, I was overwhelmed by the
intensity of their pain and rage. I realized / did not have the right to judge
them, or myself, for what they’d been manipulated and controlled to do. 6
Addiction to Secrecy
In 2001, 1 made another major discovery about myself. For years, I’d
heard Madonna’s hit song, Live to Tell, but hadn’t listened to the words.
One day, I sat in my office at home, I typed a journal entry. In it, I wrote
my concern that some of my op-trained alter- states still wanted to go
back to spook handlers. These alter-states missed the quiet excitement of
living a double life that even the neighbors knew nothing about.
As I typed, I heard Live to Tell again. Madonna sang about the “secret
inside of me.” Tears streamed down my face as I realized I really was
addicted to secrecy, and I wasn’t the only person struggling with this
problem.
In my next therapy session, I talked to Helen about my insane desire to
go back to living a secret double life. She surprised me by telling me that
secrecy is a common addiction among childhood sexual abuse survivors.
She explained that many women who marry and then have a series of
affairs on the side, are drawn to illicit sexual relationships because
they’re reenacting secretive sexual “relationships” that childhood abusers
had had with them.
As we discussed this phenomenon, I had another revelation. When
I was a child, most of the mind-control programmers I’d been exposed
to, had sexually assaulted me. 7 And when I was an adult, sexual assaults
by spook handlers had seemed to be the norm. Had some of them used
me to reenact their own childhood sexual traumas, this time acting out
the role of the powerful, controlling perpetrator?
I told Helen I was beginning to grasp the powerful connection between
addiction to secrecy and seeking employment within an intelligence
agency. Over and over, I’d heard that the CIA and other intelligence
agencies expect their employees to lie as part of their employment. 8 If the
employees can’t be honest with their families and neighbors about their
Letting Go of the Guilt
383
employment, does lying gradually become second nature? And how
many of them gravitate to intelligence agencies because, having grown
up in secretive families, such environments are most comfortable?
When I shared these thoughts with Bill, he said that-based on his
never-forgotten experiences with CIA spooks in Vietnam-what I theorized
was probably true. More important, he said he also struggled with a strong
desire to go back to living a double life in a “James Bond” manner. In spite
of all that had been done to him by his spook handlers, his addiction was
so strong, he desired to work for them again, without pay!
Although going back to those handlers would mean being controlled,
abused, and possibly placed into deadly situations, we both still desired
to be used by them again!
The allure of living a secret life is powerful. Since I’ve made that dis-
covery, I’ve worked harder to stay honest with my support system-even
admitting to them that I wanted to go back.
Defusing the Threat
After I’d retrieved the bulk of my black op training memories, I
fantasized about doing serious damage to those who had hurt me and
other precious innocents. Perhaps I was lucky that my fundamental
morality restrained me-it put on the brakes. The law that I’d been taught
to respect, by teachers and scoutmasters and pastors and more, still
guided me. As imperfect as our legal system is, without it we’d have my
father’s world. I cannot bear to enter that world again.
Before I’d found and connected with my covert alter-states, they’d
only had enough information to perform their duties. When I blended
with them, my shared knowledge balanced out their conditioning and
programming. Other than their experiences, training, and the traumas
that had been used to create them, the only big difference between me
and them had been lack of information. They hadn’t known what I did,
and I hadn’t had their knowledge. After they blended with me, they had
a new opportunity-to choose between a nearly infinite number of
choices; whereas before, they’d only been permitted to choose between
the lesser of two evils.
Numerous child alter-states wrote or talked about having been repeatedly
sexually assaulted, ritually abused and tortured, and more. Some of those
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parts had stored my greatest rage. Dad and his spook associates had used
them to do the worst physical damage to targeted males. If a part
had held rage from having been raped by men, that part had then been
used to attack that part of a male target’s anatomy or to have sex with him
and then kill him.
An especially effective form of mental programming had been to
convince several of my child alter-states that penis monsters had
extended up into men’s throats. Because an engorged penis and a male’s
windpipe feel alike, those powerfully strong alter-states were condi-
tioned to grab targeted males’ windpipes and yank them forward in total
fury, believing they were saving the men from the invasive monsters !
When these programmed alter-states emerged in therapy, they were
immediately suicidal, feeling tremendous pain as they realized they’d
been tricked into killing the very men they’d tried to save!
The good news is that once those parts shared their experiences with
me in a therapeutic way, and received my knowledge that they’d been
tricked, they immediately stopped being a threat to society. Although
very young, they’d never had the opportunity to play, eat ice cream, and
do other things that “normal” children might experience. As I introduced
them to such activities and experiences, they integrated with me and we
became one. 9
Cult Recruitment
Because Dad was a sadist, he’d enjoyed torturing and traumatizing
others. I suspect he’d also used occult rituals to unconsciously reenact
sexual, physical, and even ritualized traumas that he may have endured
as a child. I also believe he would have perpetrated those crimes, regard-
less of whether or not he’d been influenced by his alleged CIA and Nazi
connections.
Beyond all this, I believe he had another reason for forcing me to
experience such horrors. 10 I believe that employees and operatives work-
ing within several intelligence and military agencies made secretive
arrangements with criminal occult leaders to traumatize and condition
children and to create alter-states in those youths, with the foreknowledge
that their alter-states would eventually be used by these same agencies to
perform illegal activities as mentally controlled slaves. I believe this is
Letting Go of the Guilt
385
the reason why the deadly cover-up about the existence of ritual crime,
repressed memory, severe dissociation, and mentally controlled slavery
continues.
Investigative journalist Alex Constantine thoroughly exposed CIA/cult
recruitment/mind-control/FMSF connections in his 1995 book, Psychic
Dictatorship in the U.S.A. Based on years of extensive research that
included many interviews with recovering ritual abuse and mind control
victims, Constantine concluded:
… the CIA and its cover organizations have a vested interest
in blowing smoke at the cult underground because the worlds
of CIA mind control and many cults merge inextricably. The
drum beat of “false accusations” from the media is taken up by
paid operatives like Dr. Orne and the False Memory Syndrome
Foundation to conceal the crimes of the Agency, (pg. 54)
I strongly recommend reading Constantine’s Psychic Dictatorship,
Dr. Colin Ross’s Bluebird, Carol Rutz’s A Nation Betrayed, and Gordon
Thomas’s Enslaved if you want to learn more about the documented
connections between complicit groups, federal agencies, and other
organizations.
Nazi Sadism and Rituals
The more I’ve remembered about my childhood exposure to Nazis and
neo-Nazi wannabes, the more I’ve felt appalled and amazed at their hatred
towards strangers. My forced attendance at innumerable Aryan meetings
throughout my life helped me to understand that when people chronically
hate strangers who have never harmed them, based solely on their skin color
or ethnicity, they’re actually projecting their self-hatred onto them. That is
one reason why I’ve worked hard on my own self-hatred; I don’t want to
irrationally project it onto others.
I’ve also concluded that when primary caregivers hate their children,
the children learn to hate themselves, using the caregivers as their
role models. In other words, as the caregivers model their projection of
self-hatred onto the innocent children, the children are likely to do the
same to others when they become adults! 11
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No one likes to feel self-hatred. Self-hatred is extremely painful.
It’s always easier to direct one’s self-hatred onto someone else as
pseudo- or false-hatred. (I call it pseudo-hatred because real hatred
occurs when one despises something in a person whom one truly knows.)
Self-hatred that comes from having been neglected or abused as a child
may explain many staunch Aryans’ “need” to hate and attack people they
don’t really know.
I suspect these Aryans keep an emotional distance from their hate-targets
because if they ever really know these people, they will recognize that
their pseudo-hatred is irrational. They may be afraid to know it’s irra-
tional because then they’ll have to give up the pseudo-hate and feel their
painful self-hatred.
The only way I know to get out of this vicious trap is to get profes-
sional help to deal with the underlying cause of the self-hatred. It is hard
work, but it can be done. Although one will have to feel the seemingly
unbearable pain of self-hatred for a little while when confronting its root
causes, surely that’s better than running away from it and unfairly hating
and isolating from others for the rest of one’s life.
Self-hatred can also generate sadism towards the pseudo-hate targets.
The most powerful article I’ve read to-date about the origin of Nazi
sadism, “War as Righteous Rape and Purification,” was published in the
Spring 2000 edition of the Journal of Psychohistory. Written by the jour-
nal’s editor, Lloyd deMause, the article extensively documents the abuses
that average German parents perpetrated against their children in the late
1800s through early 1900s. 12
Such horrific abuse must have generated tremendous rage and hatred
in those children’s minds and souls. I want to clarify that I’m not con-
doning the crimes that many of them committed or supported when they
became adults. And yet, it’s crucial that we understand that what they did
to the victims in the concentration camps may have been their way of
unconsciously reenacting what they had survived as children. I believe
that such heinous brutality always has a source.
DeMause stated: “Every one of the things done to Jews in the
Holocaust can be found to have been perpetrated by parents and others
on German children at the turn of the century. The precise details of
earlier events that were reinflicted upon Jews later are astonishingly
minute and literal.” (pp. 434-435) I believe this is true.
What the Nazis did to many of their victims in the concentration camps
was also perpetrated against American victims (especially children)
Letting Go of the Guilt
387
in secretive occult rituals and also in government- sanctioned
experiments like the CIA’s MKULTRA program right here in North
America. This is one of our country’s dirtiest secrets. I will spend the rest
of my life, if necessary, to help survivors and pro-survivors to fully and
permanently expose it. 13 (We’re angry as hell about what’s been done to
us. We’re not going to be quiet and we’re not going to stop telling! Even
if some of us are stopped-it has been done-others will take our place. I
believe our movement’s momentum, built on decades of pure moral
outrage, is now unstoppable.)
The Nazi immigrants I was taken by Dad and Grandpa M. to meet as
a child, practiced a Teutonic form of occultism. I still wonder if any of
them were aware that they were using these rituals to reenact childhood
traumas. 14 I’ve found verifications from a number of sources that sun
worship, Paganism, and other religious beliefs that I was exposed to at
Aryan Golden Dawn meetings and rituals had also been part of Hitler’s
occult practices. 15
In my presence as a child, Dad and some of his Nazi associates had
repeatedly bragged that they were reincarnated Knights Templar. Dad
had also repeatedly told me that I was an “honorary daughter of
Templar.” He’d told me and the men that our “duty” was to perform
assassinations. To me, the Templar rituals appeared insane; and yet, to
those men, they were logical.
Dad and his Nazi friends seemed to be mentally disconnected from the
world around them and from their own humanity. They claimed they
wouldn’t die if they continued to ingest the life-force stored in human
blood and semen. They believed it would keep them young and strong.
They also told me that, because they’d incorporated Gnostic beliefs into
their Teutonic religious practices, they were gradually transforming into
spiritual gods. They welcomed pain and physical deprivation (other than
from sex), claiming that this speeded their transformations. Living in a
spiritualized fantasy world seemed to be their way of dissociating from
the harsh reality of their real lives. 16
Never Forgotten
Although Dad kept his criminal and Nazi connections secret, he did
say and do other things over the years that I never forgot. Although these
statements and behaviors had seemed odd, I now believe he had tried to
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communicate about his covert world to me and others-possibly because
he’d felt lonely in holding onto so many secrets.
He told my stepmother and me that when he was a teenager, he’d
worked as a lifeguard for a Mafia family at their Florida hotel. He
seemed proud of that.
When I was a teenager, he often took our family on Sundays to
a fancy buffet brunch at Atlanta’s Stone Mountain Park hotel.
Occasionally, he pointed to certain sedans parked outside the hotel that,
he said, belonged to “mobsters” who met regularly at the hotel to discuss
“business.” Although he told us some of their names, because knowing
them wasn’t important to me, I didn’t try to remember them.
In the early 1970s, after Mom divorced Dad, he moved into an
apartment in North Atlanta. During a rare visit to his apartment, Dad told
me that he’d recently fallen in love with a woman named Ellen, who
had been the girlfriend of a Mafia hit man. Dad cried and seemed
very depressed as he told me his sad story: Ellen had approached him,
telling him that her boyfriend was cruel to her. Then she’d charmed and
dated Dad, indicating that she wanted to marry him. In return, Dad had
agreed to protect her from the ex-boyfriend. Dad was emotionally devas-
tated when Ellen unexpectedly broke up with him and went back to the
hit man. Because I didn’t remember that Dad had taken me to meet mob-
sters in several states, I thought it odd that he would get involved with
such a woman.
Dad’s income tax return statements from 1973, 1974, and 1975 verify
that before he married his second wife, he was hired by Pinkerton Inc., a
security agency based in New York City. 17 His first Pinkerton position
was as a night guard in an Atlanta jail. His second position was as a
nighttime security guard at Atlanta’s posh Piedmont Driving Club, where
the local elite and visiting dignitaries discussed business and socialized.
One night, Dad gave Albert and me a tour of the main building and
encouraged me to make a butterscotch ice cream sundae in the club’s
huge, stainless steel kitchen. He bragged that he didn’t need to carry a
gun because he knew how to talk people out of shooting him.
When he was younger, he probably didn’t have the same level of
confidence. Years after his death, his widow sent me four small black and
white pictures of a much younger Dad. Wearing a long-sleeved white
shirt and dark pants, a handgun was in a holster at his waist while he
aimed a rifle under the supervision of an unidentified man.
Letting Go of the Guilt
389
Understanding My Father
Although I accepted and blended with my black op parts, I still had
great difficulty reconciling “Dad the serial killer” and “Dad the
pedophile” in my mind. How could he have been both? I wasn’t willing
to admit how strongly those two aspects of his personality had been
intertwined.
Confused, I scoured many books and articles, searching for
information that would help me understand Dad’s criminal mentality.
Anna C. Salter, Ph.D.’s book, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and
Other Sex Offenders was most helpful. I found other valuable materials
listed in Safer Society’s extensive book catalog. The non-profit’s
primary goal is to inform the public about sexual abuse and its harmful
consequences. 18
One professional journal article helped me to understand how Dad’s
mind worked. “Sexual Compulsivity as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:
Treatment Perspectives,” was written by Mark F. Schwartz, ScD., the
“Clinical Director, Masters & Johnson Sexual Trauma Programs.”
Schwartz explained a compulsion called “trauma reenactment,” in which
men and women who do not work through their original traumas “may
repeat in concealed forms events that are too terrifying to remember.”
This may explain why Dad was so violent (even to the point of killing his
victims) and yet he constantly minimized his own childhood traumas.
Schwartz explained that by performing repetitive trauma reenactments,
sexual abuse victims may also substitute the reenactments for normal
intimacy, (pg. 333)
His description of a typical victim-turned-abuser may explain some of
Dad’s behaviors, especially towards children and women:
Another common theme among sexual compulsives is the
introjection of their perpetrator’s passive or active rage.
Among boys who have watched their mother being raped, it is
common for the child to identify with the rapist in reenact-
ments during play. Similarly, both male and female victims of
abusive parents frequently “identify with the aggressor,” i.e.,
introject the values and beliefs of the powerful perpetrator and
reject the weak, ineffectual, yet equally rageful, passive parent.
Traumatized children internalize the perfectionist, rigid,
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demanding, critical, and conditional love of their parents and
then as adults repeat their parents’ messages daily. The result is
a self-abusive adult often similarly demanding and cruel to
others, particularly his or her own children, (pg. 334)
Some abuse survivors binge and purge or self-mutilate to feel a
release from the discomfort of emerging emotions. Dad seemed to use
long-distance running, even during blazing hot summer afternoons, to
attain the same release and to numb his body. Throughout his life, running
and sexual intercourse seemed to be the two primary compulsions that
helped him to avoid the depths of his painful self-hatred and depression.
Schwartz explained why people like Dad would minimize the severity
of their childhood traumas: “When sexually compulsive patients have a
history of physical and/or sexual abuse and neglect, they are often either
amnesic or they minimize and distort their histories.”
In describing the phases of the cycle of sexual addiction, Schwartz
explained that towards the end, “addicts’ lives become unmanageable
and the compulsive sexual behavior becomes the focus of their lives.”
(pg. 334)
Schwartz’s explanations fit what I’d remembered about Dad. He had
become such an ardent pedophile almost every time that I’d been with
him, he’d seemed to be looking for his next child victim.
Dad made several telling statements in his 1989 civil, pre-divorce
deposition. They may be the only keyhole I’ll ever have, to peer through
to Dad’s internal fantasy world. He made the following statement after
an attorney asked if he was a pedophile:
I do love children, but I do not love them sexually. I am crazy
about children. And I can go to any airport in the country, any
place, and the kids come to me like a dying maggot. I admit that
I love them, and I have no problem with that. (Q: Do you know
what a pedophile is?) No. Now I know; it’s a man who loves
children-sexually. (Q: A sexual sense?) Yeah, right, (pg. 197)
Because Dad had ritually abused me for many years, I was exposed to
many decomposing bodies that crawled with maggots. In the spring of
1964, when I was eight years old, Dad and several of his friends created
an entertainment group, “The Maggots.” One night at dusk during our
Letting Go of the Guilt
391
community’s annual May Day festival at Exeter Township High School,
the men were brought to the stage in a paddy wagon, its siren blaring.
The crowd screamed as Dad and his friends, wearing black wigs,
ascended the stage and then lip-synced several Beatles songs. A big “M”
was marked on the front of each of their white T-shirts, and the word
“Maggots” had been printed on a sign that was draped across the front of
the wooden stage. Later, Dad bragged to us that he’d personally named
the band.
Fast-forward twenty-five years. During his deposition, Dad identified
himself as a “dying maggot.” Only he knew, somewhere deep inside,
what horrifying trauma that mental image may have represented.
Although Dad initially denied knowing what the word “pedophile”
meant, he then stated that a pedophile is “a man who loves children-
sexually.” He also said that children were drawn to him. In reality, I met
very few children who initially were comfortable with Dad. I think Dad
had to believe that children were drawn to him and wanted him sexually
because otherwise, he would have to face that he was a molester and a
rapist. He didn’t want to know that what he’d done was wrong. I believe
he had to believe that he was sexually desired by his objects of lust and
sexual pleasure. I believe if he’d ever faced the truth, his carefully con-
structed false self would have crumbled and he would felt the pain of
having been sexually abused, beaten, and betrayed as a child, by those
who should have loved and protected him.
When I’d accompanied Dad (in controlled adult alter-states) to
meetings of pedophiles, child traffickers, and kiddy pornographers, I’d
noticed that he’d surrounded himself with criminals and pedophiles like
himself. Their world had seemed to become his primary reality; every-
thing else had grown ethereal and temporary. He often told some of my
alter-states that he and his “friends” were the only honest people in
society. He said that everyone else was a hypocrite-at least he was
willing to be who he really was.
Dad seemed so convinced that adult-child sex was normal, he had to
believe that everyone else had the same tendencies. He told me the only
difference was that they didn’t “have the guts” to do what they secretly
desired, whereas he did. This may be why, in the deposition, he said:
I guarantee it, and I don’t know how better to put it, if
I molested my children, every father in this room is a molester.
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Every father in this office is a molester, and every father in the
City of Decatur or the State of Georgia is a molester, (pg. 202)
In the same deposition, he insinuated that I’d “stalked” him in the early
1970s after he’d moved away and was sharing an apartment with a man
in another town. What he said would have been impossible because I didn’t
have access to a vehicle and didn’t know where he lived. I believe that
Dad’s strange statements were another indication of his fantasy world:
Now, when I was sick and when I was single-during-after
we were divorced, Kathy kept coming to my house time and
time again. And from-time and time again, she’d write me
something bordering on MASH notes. (Q: Define what you
think MASH notes means.) When you have your daughter
talking to you like she would like to have a man like me have
her children for her, I consider that MASH notes. And this goes
on and on. I have one of her [Fall 1989] letters here that I’d like
for you to-(Q: Let me see.) And when Kathy-when Kathy
started sending out those registered letters, yes, I put
that through the shredder. I had gotten hundreds of her letters,
and I’m absolutely sick of them and I don’t want to see them
anymore. (Q: But you have an example of this MASH-of a
MASH note from her that you received some time in the past?)
I tried not to save these things because they made me so
mad. This one I started to scribble up because-the word is
pissed off, I guess. (Q: You were, after reading these letters.)
And that’s where I started scribbling my replies. Then
I decided-(Q: Oh, that is your language.) Yeah, that’s my
language, (pp. 206-207)
In reality, several months prior to the deposition, I had written a
total of three or four notes and short letters of confrontation to Dad.
Other than the first one, each had been my response to cards and other
items that he’d sent to me through the mail, to try to frighten and intim-
idate me. In each response, I’d tried to set new boundaries with Dad
while asking him to seek professional help. And in each, I’d written once
or twice that I still loved him. I didn’t understand that, because Dad
Letting Go of the Guilt
393
equated sex with love, he’d inferred that I was requesting to have sex
with him!
(Q: Do you consider that a MASH note, in terms of your
definition?) It is a little much. (Q: In what respect? What
language in there?) Her profession of love. I don’t mind a
person telling me they love me, but when they tell me 25 or 30
times in one letter, I object. (Q: And that upsets you?) It certainly
does. (pg. 208)
Because Dad is dead, I may never know who caused him to internalize
the false belief that when an adult rapes a child, the rape is an expression
of love. In the deposition, he made only one admission about having been
molested as a child:
I had a cousin who was very horny. She was about the horniest
woman I’ve ever met in my life. And when I was about
[her] age, nine or ten, she would shake me down continually.
(Q: How old was she?) Well, she may have been 13 or 14.
She was always about five or six years older than I was. Trying
to get me to touch her, you know, and play with her and
all this kind of stuff. And when she came around, I used to
have to run and hide. But that ” the story stinks. 19 (Q: Well,
did she ever touch you in an ” ) She never touched me.
(Q: ” in your sex organs or anything?) No, she never touched
me. She tried to get me to touch her. (Q: Oh? And you say
that was the most serious-any other such incidents?)
No. (Q: Did any adult ever try to sexually molest you?)
No. (pg. 213-214)
Not Guilty
As I showed Dad’s deposition to Helen, I told her that I knew I wasn’t
responsible for what Dad and his associates had forced me to do. I was
beginning to see they had refused to accept their own guilt and had laid
it on me, making me a monster instead of themselves.
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She sat in silence. Then she said, “If I remember correctly, this is now
the fourth time you came to the conclusion that you were not guilty.
Why doesn’t your discovery last? Why do you again believe you were a
criminal? Why do you still blame yourself for what you had no choice
about doing?”
I couldn’t answer.
When she softly said, “You are not a criminal,” I looked at the floor.
I couldn’t look into her eyes because something in me was warring
against her words.
As I sat quietly in her office, I realized my biggest recurring problem was
that Dad had told me countless times, starting when I was four, that I was a
murderer. That I was guilty. That I was bad. That if people really knew me,
they would not want to have anything to do with me. That they would hate
me. That I deserved to be in prison for the rest of my life. And so on.
I had lived with him for seventeen years; three hundred sixty-five
days a year, minus the times one of us was away from home. If I were
to halve the number of days I’d lived with him, I still count at
least 3100 days that he’d had access to my mind. Dad had hardwired
my brain by using verbal repetition and more, so that his words had
become so much an integral part of my own thought patterns, I hadn’t
recognized that the constant thoughts about being guilty had originated
from him!
Dad couldn’t see himself as who and what he really was. He’d
constructed an immense, nearly impenetrable mental wall behind him.
Behind it was the pain of his having been abused and betrayed as a child.
In front stood the part of Dad that had secretly operated in the criminal
world. This adult part had dumped his guilt onto me, his small victim,
because he’d been unwilling to recognize that he was a murderer and a
pedophile.
Dad had lied to himself most of all. In his fantasy world, he wasn’t a
molester; he expressed his love for children by having sex with them.
He wasn’t a murderer; he had to “teach a lesson” when he believed that
adult cult members had betrayed him. He wasn’t a murderer when he
slaughtered “disposable” infants on altars-he’d need their life-force to
survive. He’d tortured and sometimes killed children for being weak,
with the justification that only the strong should survive. He’d raped
and sometimes killed women because “women always get you in the end.”
Letting Go of the Guilt
395
He’d killed “street bums” because they were worthless and caused prob-
lems. He wasn’t a murderer; he did the world a favor by “taking out the
trash.” 20
Perhaps he couldn’t feel his guilt because he couldn’t accept the
knowledge that those who should have loved and protected him as a
child, had instead willingly hurt and betrayed him.
I believe he also refused to own his guilt because it was too
uncomfortable-he didn’t want to see himself as who and what he really
was. His free-floating guilt and self-hatred had to go . . . well, where else?
Onto his innocent victims.
I became one of several primary extensions of Dad’s ego. He made
me a receptacle for much of his disowned guilt and hatred. In his mind,
I was “bad.”
At the age of four, I was the dark one, the guilty one. I was the one
with blood on my hands and body and soul. It was all me. He was free.
I was enslaved.
In spite of all the trauma that was done to me for decades to make me
an assassin-by-proxy for spook handlers and their associates, I couldn’t
accept that I’d never had a choice. Dad’s thousands of reinforced accusa-
tions had effectively anchored my sense of guilt.
In therapy with Helen, I began to separate these thoughts from my
own. They definitely had Dad’s feel and signature. Perhaps
I could fight them by refusing to accept them as another form of his lies,
throwing them back onto him one by one.
Helen gave me a better solution: reverse his messages. I was not a
murderer at the age of four; in reality, Dad had been the serial killer. Dad
had feared that people wouldn’t want anything to do with him, if they
really knew him. It was all about Dad, not me. For the first time in my
life, I began to mentally separate from Dad and feel my individuality.
I’m now convinced that Dad really didn’t want to know me, because
then he would have had to know himself. To avoid the pain of self-knowledge,
he instead made me one of his egoless, mental/emotional poison
containers.
Armed with that knowledge, I can now accept and love myself for who
I really am. I was never a murderer by choice; Dad was. Step by step,
truth by truth, I’m breaking free of the false, self-destructive beliefs that
he’d implanted in my mind.
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Unshackled
Notes
1. Rosencrans wrote about the false guilt that plagues many abuse survivors:
Oppressed people . . . frequently believe that they themselves are
responsible for their failures and problems. This self-blame is often
encouraged and even planted in the oppressed by their oppressors. The
oppressed may live in an environment that not only allows oppression
but reinforces it as justified, (pg. 231)
2. In Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst described a famous experiment conducted by a
psychologist, Stanley Milgram:
[He] brought people into a Yale University psychology laboratory to
engage-or so they were told-in a study of memory and learning. The
experimenter explained that the issue to be explored was the impact of
punishment on learning, and to that end the designated “teacher” was
asked to administer a learning test to a “learner” strapped in a chair in
another room-and to give him an electric shock whenever his answer
was wrong . . . the teacher was told that, with each wrong answer, he
was to give the learner the next higher shock. Conflict began when the
learner went from grunts to vehement protests to agonized screams,
and the teacher became increasingly uneasy and wished to stop.
But each time he hesitated, the person in authority urged him to
continue, insisting that he must complete the experiment. And despite
the concern for the level of shocking pain that was being inflicted, a
large number of teachers continued to push the switches all the way up
to the highest voltage, (pp. 138-139)
Reading about the obedience and willingness of some of those students to
shock the “learners” to death did help me a little to forgive myself for
having obeyed my professional handlers’ orders.
3. If ritual abuse survivors are telling the truth about these crimes, and I’m convinced
they are, why isn’t our government going after the criminals and shutting
down their operations? I think this is because some government agencies like the
CIA-and US military-are selecting ritually conditioned victims to perform
illegal acts. Similar cover-ups have already been exposed. In 7/28/02, Associated
Press’s Jeff Donn wrote the first of a series of explosive articles that exposed the
FBI’s involvement, from the national headquarters on down through the ranks, in
covering-up for the existence and crimes of members of mafia families-some of
whom still continue to operate freely within the US. The cover-up included “shield-
ing them from prosecution for serious crimes including murder.” Donn reported
that he and his co-workers discovered that although the “scandal has been por-
trayed largely as the work of local agents-mavericks willing to deal with the devil
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397
to bring down a Mafia family” (a typical disinfo ploy), they’d discovered
documents that “directly connect FBI headquarters to a pattern of collusion with
notorious killers.”
4. Viorst’s description of a psychopath provides a glimpse into Dad’s secretive world:
There are . . . the so-called psychopathic personalities who seem to dis-
play a genuine lack of guilt, whose antisocial and criminal acts, whose
repetitive acts of destructiveness and depravity, occur with no restraint
and no remorse. These psychopaths cheat and rob and lie and damage
and destroy with remarkable emotional impunity. These psychopaths
spell out for us, in letters ten feet high, what kind of world this world
would be without guilt, (pg. 138)
5. Shortly before I remembered this, I suddenly “had to” buy as many pairs of socks
as I could cram into my bureau drawers. I probably have enough to last a lifetime!
6. Gordon Thomas’s Journey Into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind
Control and Medical Abuse solidified that reality. In it, he wrote about his good
friend, William Buckley, who had been one of the CIA’s top spies. In March, 1984,
Buckley was kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon. After learning of the abduction, CIA
officials consulted with specialists, asking them what they thought Buckley would
most likely do while in captivity:
… the Agency specialists believed that Buckley’s reactions would
follow an almost immutable pattern, characterized by four distinctive
steps. It would make no real difference in the end that he was a trained
intelligence officer trained in ways to resist interrogation [italics
added]. Because he would be in close and prolonged contact with his
kidnappers, Buckley’s psychological responses would be little different
from any other kidnap victim; there is no actual way to prepare a
person to cope with the stress of being taken hostage, (pg. 42)
After nearly two months, the CIA received the first of at least two
videotapes of Buckley giving false confessions and making political
demands for his kidnappers’ terrorist organization. Twenty-three days later,
they received the second videotape. On June 3, 1985, Buckley
died of pneumonia-still a hostage, (pp. 42, 46-48, 351) If the will of a highly
trained career CIA operative was broken in less than two months to where he
betrayed his beloved agency; then how could a child who was tortured,
drugged, raped, and more on a near-weekly basis resist becoming mindlessly
compliant?
7. Many other mind-control survivors have reported that they were also sexually
assaulted by CIA and military intelligence personnel, and/or by CIA-contracted
MKULTRA doctors.
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8. This is why I find it so bizarre that, on a wall in the entrance to the CIA’s
headquarters in Langley, is the phrase, “The Truth Shall Set You Free.”
9. Blending with emerging child parts sometimes made life difficult, because adult
“me” suddenly became childlike and socially inept. As I integrated with those child
parts, I often felt a sudden need to pursue childlike experiences that they had been
totally deprived of. A bonus to integrating with those child parts was that they’d
compartmentalized wisdom and insights about humanity that had been split off
from my consciousness. And because of their pure and childlike self-knowledge,
these parts could also analyze others in insightful ways. These parts also had essen-
tial character strengths and a pure sense of moral outrage that helped me-as the host
alter-state-to stand up to abusive and controlling people and say “no” to unreason-
able demands.
10. Carla Emery describes a series of techniques that can make a person vulnerable to
hypnotic suggestion. Many of them are used in criminal occult rituals:
Brainwashing researchers have analyzed the types of emotional shocks
and their power to devastate. Shocks are most likely to make a person
suggestible ” and to break him ” when they are: intense, repeated,
unpredictable, uncontrollable, linked to pressure, incomprehensible,
humiliating . . . Any excitement or trauma (sudden fright, fear, terror,
threats) makes you more suggestible . . . erotic excitation and orgasm
greatly increase suggestibility, (pp. 298-299)
11. Dr. Charles Whitfield explains this sad legacy:
… the parent or parent figure is previously wounded from having
grown up in a dysfunctional family and world. As a result, they feel
that they are inadequate and bad at their core, yet they have a toxic
store of unfinished business inside. Because there is no safe place to
express it, the parent or parent figure then regularly or periodically tries
to express their pain, but ends up discharging it in the form of abusing
self or others, including their children or others in or outside of the
family, (pg. 170)
12. In detail, deMause describes what most of the Nazis, as children, had been forced
to endure at home and even at school:
Murder, rejection, neglect, tying up and beating by their mothers and
other women . . . [mothers birfhed] “their babies in the privy, and
treated the birth as an evacuation” . . . [mothers coldly] killed their
newborn babies . . . [babies] could easily be neglected and not fed
enough . . . [mothers] refused to breastfeed their babies . . . [babies
were given to] nursemaids, governesses and tutors . . . Mothers
and other caretakers tied them up tightly for from six to nine months,
and strapped them into a crib in a room with curtains drawn to keep
Letting Go of the Guilt
399
out the lurking evils . . . restraint devices such as corsets with steel
stays and backboards continued their tied-up condition to assure
the parents they were still in complete control . . . Children were given
away and even sometimes sold . . . the mother was far more often
the main beater . . . The widely-followed Dr. Schreber said the earlier
one begins beatings the better . . . [they endured] routine beating,
kicking, strangling, making children eat excrement, etc. . . . [parents
“hardened” them] by washing them with ice-cold water before
breakfast . . . [children were bound] in controlled positions all day
long . . . [they were] frightened by endless ghost stories where they
were threatened with being carried away by horrible figures . . . [infant
toilet training began] at around six months of age, long before the
infant has sphincter control. The training [was] done by regular use of
enemas and by hitting the infant . . . [enemas] resembled sexual
assaults on the anus . . . [children were] used by parents and servants
as sexual objects from an early age . . . incestuous assaults were
regular . . . After using them sexually, [parents] then would threaten to
punish the child for their sexuality . . . [parents used] anti-masturbation
devices such as penis-rings, metal cages with spikes, and plaster
casts to prevent erections while sleeping . . . [children were]
again raped at school, as servants, on the streets and at work. (pp. 410,
412-414, & 416-421)
13. I am not the first person, by far, to make such statements. Other brave souls are also
making the connections between criminal occultism, Nazi immigrants, the CIA,
and mind-control experimentation:
In 1993, Dr. Corydon Hammond, a professor at the University of
Utah’s School of Medicine, conducted a seminar on federally-funded
mind control experiments. Topics covered by Hammond included
brain-washing, post-hypnotic programming and the induction of mul-
tiple personalities by the CIA. Hammond contended that the cult
underground has roots in Nazi Germany, and that the CIAs cult mind
control techniques were based upon those of Nazi scientists recruited
by the CIA for Cold Warfare . . . Hammond was forced to drop this line
of inquiry by professional ridicule, especially from the CIA’s False
Memory Syndrome Foundation, and a barrage of death threats. At a
regional conference on ritual child abuse, he regretted that he could no
longer speak on the theme of government mind control. (Psychic
Dictatorship, pg. 61)
14. As was experienced by many of the German children, most occult ritual abuse
survivors in North America with whom I have been in contact have reported
that they were also forced to eat excrement and drink urine. Many of them claimed
they either witnessed and/or were forced to perform the murder of babies
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and young children. And almost all of them reported they were sexually assaulted
and/or tortured during rituals. Survivors like Carol Rutz, author of A Nation
Betrayed, reported that as children, they were forced to stay in cages for long
periods of time, naked and unable to bathe or use a toilet. Many ritual abuse
survivors have also reported having been starved and/or put in sensory isolation
containers, especially in boxes and coffins. Many of them have also reported
“bug traumas” in which they had been placed inside containers and covered with
insects.
15. An excellent resource is The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults And Their
Influence On Nazi Ideology, by Nicholas Goodrick- Clarke.
16. Joseph Moreno, MT-BC, a Director of Music Therapy at Maryville University,
St. Louis, Missouri, wrote Orpheus in Hell, a fascinating journal article about how
both concentration camp inmates and their Nazi captors used music to cope with
their experiences. Moreno made an observation about those Nazis that I believe
also would have applied to Dad and his Nazi associates in America:
Once a person has reached that level of criminality, to give up one’s
defenses would be an overwhelmingly self-destructive confrontation.
The individual would then be obliged to move from a position of
self-esteem, believing in the rightness of their actions, to a totally
reversed position, that one was, in fact, a monster of evil. One can
readily understand that many would avoid taking such a threatening
psychic leap. (pg. 13)
17. I have repeatedly been advised by investigative journalists that the Pinkerton
agency and the CIA have worked closely together for decades. This may explain
why Dad, a skilled chemical, mechanical and electrical engineer, had also done
security work for Pinkerton.
18. To obtain a free catalog or to learn more about Safer Society, you can mail your
request to Safer Society Foundation Inc., PO Box 340, Brandon, VT 05733-0340
USA; call (802) 247-3132; send a fax (802) 247-4233; or go to their website at
http : //w w w. s af ersociety. org .
19. From what I read in Dad’s remaining papers, and from my talks with several family
members, I learned that Dad was phobic about odors emanating from female
bodies. He even named a small female child victim “stinky” and brought her a toy
skunk from Disney World.
20. Anna C. Salter, Ph.D. explained why people like Dad put unrealistic labels on their
victims:
This type of excuse, that the victim is somehow evil or defective or
“less than human,” is simply projection. The father of one of my clients
told her she was too egocentric to ever have children. Another sadistic
Letting Go of the Guilt
401
father told his daughter/victim that she didn’t feel things but only
pretended to. Someone was, indeed, too egocentric to have children in
that house, and someone didn’t feel things. Someone was also less than
human, but in no case was it the child.
This process of projection is the same one that nonsadistic child molesters
use, projection of the offender’s inner world onto the victim . . . Some
denigrate whole classes of people, such as women or children. Many
rapists believe that women are “bitches” who deserve anything bad that
happens to them. Those who attack children employ similarly distorted
cognitions in regard to children, (pg. 111-112)
Saying Goodbye
Goodbye, Fantasy Mom
Part of saying goodbye to my mother involves telling others what she
did to me. It’s not easy. I’ve already lost my father by telling the truth
about him; all I have left of my parents is my mother. And yet, to hold
back and continue covering-up for her past sins puts me in a bad posi-
tion. Why? Because covering-up for her still reinforces my denial about
what she did to me, about who and what she really is. It keeps me hop-
ing against hope that maybe she’ll turn around, maybe she’ll get help and
see the error of her ways, maybe she’ll grow up, mature, and discover
love inside herself for me. Maybe she’ll stop being a narcissist and reach
out instead of pulling everything into her. I want my mommy-not the
mommy I had, but the mommy I never had.
I tried, once before, to go through the entire process of letting go and
saying goodbye to her (figuratively, not in person) when I found the
black hole inside my soul. I got about halfway through the grieving
process, the letting-go-of-fantasy-Mommy process, but then I took a
ninety-degree turn and sabotaged it.
Instead of fully feeling the grief of knowing that Mom never loved me
and never will, I started looking for mommy-substitutes. I gravitated
towards one woman after another whose personality resembled Mom’s-to
some extent, each woman was cold, controlling, and shaming. I locked into
each one, emotionally, and tried to fashion her into my mother’s personal-
ity. This was sick, but I didn’t realize I was doing it-at least, not at first.
After breaking away from the most recent abusive female, I decided not
to look for another substitute. I knew I needed to get honest with myself
and take a hard look at what was underneath my unhealthy behavior. It
was time to admit that I was still trying to fill the gaping void that the
absence of mother-love had left in my soul.
It was hard to let go of my fantasy mother. Doing this always takes a
lot of courage, strength, and support. As I began to let go of the fantasy,
really let go, I was immediately slammed by new emotions that were so
sharp, so keen, so breath-taking, I could barely move.
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403
I finally entered the full reality that as a child, I’d had nobody. Nobody
at all. Just a little girl, I’d been tortured and sexually assaulted at home
nearly every day, and nobody had been there to help me survive it.
Then I remembered and felt what else I’d blocked out-that as a child
in constant danger, I’d had to stay in the moment to survive. Back
then, I couldn’t bear to think about the next moment, what might
happen-my mind couldn’t survive that. I had to blank my mind out and
think of nothing. Because nothing was all that was left to me.
How did I survive day after day, year after year of unending torture,
rape, and more? To be honest, I really don’t know. I have given myself
pat answers in the past: I managed to dissociate it away; Mom’s mother
gave me nurturing at times; teachers and other adults gave me sprinklings
of love and caring now and then; God loved and cared about me; but in
reality, most of the time (especially at home), I had no one to care about
me, no one to protect me from human evil, no one to hold me, love me,
comfort me. Not even God was there, that I could see or feel. I was
completely alone.
At home with Mom and Dad, the only way I could mentally survive
was to stay in the moment, choosing not to think about what might be
done to me next. I couldn’t bear thinking about such possibilities. And
I was always acutely aware that nobody was there for me. At all. 1
In our rental home in Laureldale, Mom usually made sure my
brother was in his crib for the night before Dad came home from work.
My stomach hurt whenever I saw a gleeful expression on her face. My
stomach hurt even more when, as Dad entered the house, she bounced on
her toes and clapped her hands. 2 That’s how I knew it was going to
happen again. And I was certain I was going mad. At the age of three,
I already knew what madness was.
The reality I’ve still been running away from is hard and harsh: I was
raised by two sadists. Not one ” two. Both of my parents had enjoyed
torturing me – individually, together at home, and with others in larger
gatherings. Any way they could. I had no heroes. I had no rescuers. I had
nobody to love me. Instead, I lived in perpetual dread of what they were
going to do next.
Nearly every night, when we lived in Laureldale, when it was just me,
my parents, and baby brother in the house, Mom and Dad would take me
into the downstairs kitchen in the back of the house to start the next
torture session.
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One time, when I was being toilet-trained, they ordered me to sit on
my potty seat in the kitchen. Dad stuffed purple grapes and a piece of
banana into my rectum and ordered me to sit there all night without
going to the bathroom. This was excruciating for a small child. (Terrified
of Dad’s anger, I obeyed by staying in a trance state – which is probably
what Dad wanted.) Mom laughed at my discomfort and made fun of me
as she watched.
On another night in the kitchen, I sat on a chair. Mom placed a brown
metal bobby pin on my arm and Dad touched it with the end of a live
wire, burning an imprint the shape of a bobby pin on my tender flesh.
Then they both called me “Bobby.” I instinctively created a boy alter-
state that answered to that name from then on. 3
I’ve clearly remembered one night when they went beyond their
normal limits. Earlier in the evening, Mom had placed a large skillet full
of grease atop of the stove. After supper, one parent picked me up and
held me tightly, approaching the stove. The other grabbed my hand and
forced my outstretched palm on top of the scalding-hot grease for several
seconds. It was one of the few times they didn’t punish me for screaming
or struggling. I screamed until my throat was raw. I kicked and wriggled
furiously, trying to get away from the heat and the incredible pain. Snot
ran out of my nose and tears poured down my cheeks. Then I saw Dad
smile and Mom laugh.
I didn’t want to believe that particular memory when it first emerged.
It didn’t fit their profile – usually they tortured me in ways that either
didn’t leave marks at all, or had left marks that could be explained in
other ways. And yet, for the next couple of days, I felt an odd need to be
very gentle with that hand. To not let it touch anything. To nurse it as
I would have, had it recently been burned. Then, in therapy, a child part
came out that had endured the pain and the aftermath. She explained to
Helen and to me that my palm had turned “gooey white.” I can still
clearly see what it looked like. I have no other memory of having been
badly burned, and have not known anyone else who was. The gooey
white substance was pure memory.
Helen confirmed that this is how my hand would have looked, had it
been burned that way. The child part explained that when adults asked
about my hand, Mom told them that I’d burned it atop the stove by
myself. That child part couldn’t understand why the adults believed
her-after all, I wasn’t even tall enough to reach the top of the stove!
Saying Goodbye
405
Because Dad was an electrical engineer with a creative mind, he used
a new variation of a set of standard forms of torture nearly every night.
He might make me sit in a different part of the room. He might say
different words. He might have Mom do something new. By keeping me
on edge, never letting me get used to a predictable pattern, my personality
split and split and split. I believe this is what he intended.
In our home in Reiffton, after Mom gave me my cat, she and Dad
started what they called “cat scratch.” Similar to what Dr. J did to me as
an adult, they used the live end of a stripped electrical cord and scratched
its bare copper end on my back, my arms, anywhere they wanted. I can-
not adequately describe the intensity of the pain of being simultaneously
scratched and shocked. It’s still one of my worst physical memories.
Each time they did it, they said if I told anyone, they’d tell that person
that when I picked up my cat, it scratched me. Believing their threat,
I stayed silent and then blocked it all out.
Other than “cat scratches,” the worst ongoing torture I suffered at
home was being bitten. I’ve had more memories of this than I can
count-I usually relive the pain of the bites when I’m lying in bed at night,
trying to sleep. It’s excruciating.
In each memory I’ve recovered thus far, they made me lie on their bed,
sandwiched between them, all three of us naked, and literally bit me all over
my body, making comments about how I was food. I’m not talking about
nibbles and nips – they bit me hard. By saying I was food, the implied threat
(in my mind, at least) was that they might eat me (cannibalism) as they had
the bodies of babies and children at the rituals Dad officiated. This, more
than anything else, made me terrified of my parents. I believed that some-
day they would eat me alive, making me feel every incredibly painful bite.
This was the life I lived at home as a child. Yes, there were good
times. And yes, most of the time, I wasn’t being tortured. But even when
I wasn’t being tortured, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop,
waiting for when they’d grab me and do something new that was even
more terrible. I became hyper-vigilant when I was just a little child; I’ve
been that way, ever since.
If a child cannot bond with and trust the primary caregivers
(an oxymoron in my case), then how can the child fully bond with
anyone else? If the child is conditioned to constantly live in fear, how can
the child feel safe? Perhaps the home torture I experienced as a child is
why I’m still unable to relax completely at home. Even when I’m sitting
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in my recliner, my feet propped up, reading a good book or watching TV,
I still have figurative eyes in the back of my head. I’m alert to every
change in air pressure, to the tiniest sound in another room, to anything
that indicates someone is about to hurt me – even though I know that no
one is there. The fear never completely goes away.
There. I’ve told you. I’ve told everyone who reads this book. The cover-
up is over. Reality has finally asserted itself: my mother tortured me, too.
My mother chose to torture me. My mother looked forward to torturing
me, and laughed when she did it. And she laughed when she gave me to
other people to hurt me. My mother was, and may still be, a sadist. Both
of my parents were sadists. And I had the bad luck to be born to them.
This is reality. This was my life. This was what I experienced. I never
had a mother who gave a damn about me. I was a soul-orphan. Goodbye,
fantasy mom. I will not miss you. Goodbye.
Goodbye, Childhood Family
I’ve said goodbye to Dad and to Mom. But there are more goodbyes
to be said, before I’m really free.
Part of becoming an independent, mature adult involves cutting ties to
my childhood and all it represents-not to the memories, but to my child-
like relationships with the people I knew back then. This is hard to do,
especially since I’d developed Stockholm Syndrome relationships with a
few of the adults in my childhood family-on both sides.
During a therapy session several years ago, Helen told me a story that
has helped me to understand why I have still feared the recriminations of
perpetrators lurking within the family. The story she told me was about
the strange relationship between two dogs that lived together.
First, the owners adopted the Chihuahua. Their only pet at the time, it
grew up to be a feisty adult. Then the owners adopted a second pet: a
Great Dane puppy.
The Great Dane was small at first, which made it vulnerable to the
domination of the aggressive, controlling Chihuahua. And yet, as the
Dane grew bigger and bigger, it remained submissive to the Chihuahua.
The owners laughed at the Dane’s odd behavior, not realizing it wasn’t
able to comprehend that it was now much bigger and stronger than the
Chihuahua!
Saying Goodbye
407
Helen said that abused children who grow up into adulthood often
perpetuate similar mental/emotional relationships with childhood
perpetrators. Even though the children gradually become bigger and
stronger, they may still feel little and helpless in the abusers’ presence.
And sometimes, the adult children still feel a powerful emotional
attachment to the abusers that they wouldn’t feel if they hadn’t been
abused.
This is the attachment I’ve still felt towards several much-older
perpetrators in my childhood family. Even though I haven’t seen them for
many years, and have only heard from two of them in the last decade, if
you were to ask me if they still matter to me, I would say (in my heart of
hearts), absolutely. I can’t explain why, and yet, the attachment is both
illogical and powerful.
My concern about what these perpetrators might say to me, and about
me to others, has continued to have a strong effect on my mind and my
decision-making processes. Even though I’m much bigger now, and am
better educated with good resources and an excellent support system,
I’ve still felt a vulnerability towards them that I haven’t felt towards any-
one else. It has continued to affect my life, even though I haven’t heard
from most of them in a long time. Even though I’ve recovered greatly.
Even though I’m much wiser and have gradually gained my mind back.
Even now.
As I look deeper within my heart, I discover another reason for the
attachment that leaves me vulnerable towards them. The relationships
I had with my extended family were the closest I experienced with
anyone for a very long time. The family I knew as a child was a tightly
closed system. No outsiders were allowed in without permission. I was pun-
ished if I told outsiders what went on inside the family. We were expected
to keep the family’s secrets at all costs. There was hell to pay either overtly
or covertly whenever one of us tried to buck the family system.
I experienced its power when Mom divorced Dad. I was seventeen. We
lived halfway across the country. What the family thought and said
shouldn’t have mattered that much to me, anymore. But it did.
Furious at Mom for daring to divorce her son, Grandma retaliated
by announcing that she’d disowned me and my brothers. For years, she
totally shunned us. We were no longer her grandchildren. I cannot
adequately describe how deep that hurt went inside me. It was as if she’d
taken away a huge chunk of who I was, and held it hostage. The extended
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family that had been my foundation was pulled completely out from under
me, leaving me with no identity. I didn’t know who I was, if I wasn’t a
Shirk.
Decades later, after Dad’s death, one of Dad’s brothers (also a
pedophile) reminded me by letter of my Shirk identity. The man indi-
cated that no matter how hard I tried to break away from the family,
I would always be a Shirk, first and foremost. I was thrown completely
off-kilter by his letter. It had a profound effect on my mind. For a while,
I forgot who I was and mindlessly agreed – he was right. I’d made a mis-
take by breaking away from the family, by trying to tell the authorities
what some of them had done to me. I was wrong; he was right; I would
always be a Shirk. Not an individual with my own mind and choices, just
a cog in the family machine. Thank God for therapy; it helped me to
break his insane spell over my mind.
Now, I’m weighing the possible consequences of going public about
my past. What will I have to give up if I name my father as a perp, if I
tell what my mother and others in the family did to me? What will telling
the truth cost me? Will some of the perpetrators try to contact me and rat-
tle me to the core again? And if they do, will they be successful? Who am
I, if not a family member? Am I anybody outside of the closed family
system-even though I’ve not had contact with it for years?
If I change my mind and decide to stay silent, if I realign with the
family and its rigid rules, if I recant everything I have remembered and
go back into the fold, what would that decision cost me?
If I stay true to the current course and don’t recant-if I tell-can I bear
the pain of losing every person in the family who has still been dear to me?
I wonder what that would feel like. I decide to test the waters within.
I allow myself to feel the grief of losing them all, every one of them, in
one fell swoop. I emotionally disinherit myself from them before they
can do it to me.
Immediately, I’m slammed by new pain. Unfamiliar pain. It’s a kind
of pain that I’ve not yet acknowledged existing inside me. What’s it
about, I wonder? As I look inside, I make an amazing new discovery: it’s
the grief of losing my relationships with the family perpetrators!
This is a part of my personality that I became too jaded as an adult to
recognize: that even when they had hurt me, even when they had done the
worst to me, I had still loved them. Hated them, yes. Feared them, most
certainly. But the pure child in me had found a way to love them, too.
Saying Goodbye
409
And this is my final connection to them: the love-connection. I hadn’t
wanted to let go of it. It’s my final tie to them, straight from my heart to
theirs. And yet, to truly be free of them once and for all, I must cut the cord.
It’s time.
To my childhood family: goodbye. I love you. Goodbye. I wish you
well. Goodbye.
Notes
1. I am not minimizing my relationship with my brothers; but they were both younger
than I. Even if they had wanted to, they couldn’t have done anything to protect me.
2. Anna C. Salter, Ph.D. wrote: “When you or I see someone in pain, we empathize,
which is to say, we feel some of that pain ourselves. Sadists feel satisfied, high,
happy instead.” (pg. 108)
3. My Bobby persona was one of my primary alter-states. He’d compartmentalized a
large amount of knowledge about my life and my past, and was one of the parts
I could count on the most, to fill me in about the histories of other alter-states when
they first emerged. Some therapists call this kind of alter-state an ISH (internal
self-helper). Bobby had also compartmentalized a large number of traumas. His
last confession, before becoming one with me, was that he’d “had to be a boy”
because otherwise, he feared he’d become Mom in all her insanity.
Coming Home
One of the most difficult questions in my recovery has been,
“Who am I?” In so many different ways in the past, I was hindered from
developing a single core personality-a solid sense of self. I was severely
traumatized for more than three decades. My right to live and to be loved
was never affirmed by my primary caregivers, who modeled dissociation,
and covert hatred and cruelty to me. I was repeatedly betrayed by those I
needed to be trustworthy and safe. My mind was skillfully split and shat-
tered into many hundreds of shards and pieces. All this, and more, con-
tributed to my inability to have a centered self. 1
Until I started remembering my hidden past, I didn’t have a clue to
who I really was, other than what was external. I answered to the name
of Kathy as a child and as an adult, Kathleen; I was a mother and wife
and daughter and sister and aunt; I was also a neighbor and church mem-
ber and insurance clerk.
I had no cohesive internal self. This is why, when I came into con-
sciousness to find myself in one strange place after another, I was easily
able to shift and change with my surroundings. I was so good at adapting,
some of my spook handlers called me a “chameleon.”
These shifts and changes served a vital purpose in the past: I was able
to survive extremely dangerous situations. And yet, when I began my recov-
ery, “switching” into amnesic, altered states of consciousness quickly
became a handicap.
Although I respect the right of trauma survivors who choose to main-
tain their multiplicity (if that’s possible); for me, integration has been an
important goal. I’ve desperately wanted to know what it feels like to be
a “singleton” or “monomind.” I’ve wanted to know what it’s like to wake
up every day, having full knowledge of what happened the day before.
I’ve wanted to experience what it’s like to not live in constant fear that
I may “lose time” again and not know what I’d done in an altered state
of consciousness.
I’ve wanted to be able to build a new life that isn’t in a constant
upheaval due to mental and emotional shifts and changes. I’ve wanted to
be consistent in my behaviors so that my loved ones could feel secure in
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Coming Home
411
my presence and no longer worry that I might have a terrible abreaction
or that a suicidal alter- state might emerge while alone in the house.
I’ve noticed the peace in the faces of some people who don’t dissociate.
They seem to relax as they appreciate the simplicities of their reasonably
normal lives. I’ve wanted to experience that kind of peace, too.
Although I’d worked very hard to remember what I’d blocked out, to
deprogram my mind, and to accept and blend with all of my emerging
alter-states, I’d still felt separated from my deeper self. Sensing an ongo-
ing chasm between my normal life and my more traumatic past, I didn’t
know how to bridge it. This worried me. Because my two lives had been
so drastically different, was it impossible to ever blend them together?
Another worry came from a haunting, nearly indescribable feeling of
homesickness that centered in my belly. The homesickness wasn’t for my
childhood home, nor was it for the family. It was a deep, bittersweet pang
in my gut that just wouldn’t go away. Something was still missing; some-
thing so fundamental that I wasn’t whole without it.
What was causing this homesickness? And what was still keeping me
separated inside myself? I especially felt it whenever I encountered a
perpetrator from my past who tried to reaccess me. I mistakenly assumed
that I’d been pining for that person. I didn’t understand that such people,
with whom I’d developed Stockholm Syndrome relationships, represented
past experiences that I was still denying as part of the fabric of my overall
personality.
I didn’t understand that I was still homesick for my split-off past expe-
riences because they’d been among the most basic building blocks of my
sense of self. I didn’t yet understand that until I allowed the blocks to be
found and placed together, parts of my foundation were still missing.
In the spring of 2003, I learned that physical evidence exists that
proves that some traumatic memories and experiences are split off or
stored in separate parts of the brain, leaving amnesic gaps in-between.
In their 1998 journal article, “Cognitive Impact of Traumatic Events,”
Gordon H. Bower and Heidi Sivers of Stanford University described two
separate memory systems. One holds regular, life narrative memory; the
other stores traumatic memory. They wrote:
. . . re-experiencing of sensory memories of the trauma
triggered by external cues reflect the first, implicit/emotional
system, whereas the coherent verbal narrative of the trauma
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that is gradually constructed during psychotherapy reflects the
second, verbal system, (pg. 640)
What does this mean? As I and many other trauma survivors have
experienced, our memories have often emerged in fragmented, visual
flashbacks and emotional abreactions. Because these pieces of traumatic
memory were not stored in the “normal experience” parts of our brains,
we did not have the ability to regulate or control when or how the flash-
backs and abreactions would occur.
Referring to a 1911 journal article, “Recognition and Selfhood,” by
Eduard Claparede, Bower and Sivers wrote:
… the trauma victim’s consciousness may be distorted
(or attention narrowed?) during the traumatic event, so that
traumatic memories are more likely to be stored in the situa-
tionally-accessible memory system rather than in association
with the cognitive [normally conscious] self. This analysis may
provide a useful account of why some trauma victims are at
times unable to recall voluntarily the trauma, while at other
times they suffer from spontaneous flashback memories of it.
(pg. 640)
The authors explained that although survivors cannot voluntarily
remember these traumas, they can be triggered by cues that are linked to
the memories-as the sight of a dog’s pink penis triggered flashbacks of
bestiality porn shoots in my mind.
They cited a study that seems to verify that the two types of memory
are indeed stored in different parts in the brain:
Some evidence . . . comes from a neuroimaging study by
Rauch, et al. (1996) When traumatic memories were provoked
in PTSD patients (Vietnam veterans), the investigators observed
decreased activation of Broca’s area of the brain along with
increased activation of right cerebral hemisphere areas. Broca’s
area is the area of the brain most centrally involved in trans-
forming subjective experience into speech, whereas the right
hemisphere has been implicated in processing intense emotions
and visual images, (pg. 641)
Coming Home
413
This may also explain why I’d been able to use my left hand to access
visual and emotional information that I’d not remembered when writing
with my right, dominant hand. Using my left hand had accessed informa-
tion that was stored in my brain’s right hemisphere. Before then, my
primary source of information about my past had been what scientists call
Broca’s area. Now I knew why my traumatic memories had been stored
and had emerged quite differently from my cognitive or already-known
memory; they’d been stored in a completely different part of my brain!
This new discovery raised another question: how had I been able to
integrate those traumatic memories, thereby stopping them from gener-
ating more flashbacks, abreactions and nightmares?
In his remarkably honest 2001 journal article, “Threads from the
Labyrinth: Therapy with Survivors of War and Political Oppression,”
Jeremy Woodcock of the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of
Torture, located in Great Britain, used simple terms to explain how trau-
matic memory can be transferred from the right hemisphere to Broca’s
area, where it can then integrate with and become part of the survivor’s
“normal life” experiences.
First, let’s look at his definition of a person’s life narrative:
Narrative is first of all a story, most often the stories of people’s
lives and therefore, in the context of survival, to be taken very
seriously, but not so reverentially that we cannot tease out new
meanings. Narrative implies that these stories have layers and
therefore that there may be tensions and conflicts between
them. These may exist within an individual’s internal world or
between family members who will naturally own different
scripts about their life stories. Some of these layers will be
fully elaborated and out in the open. Others will be hidden,
repressed or denied, (pg. 137)
Woodcock explained why some traumatic memories are repressed
(split-off) and later emerge as memory fragments such as flashbacks:
What is not common, because it is astounding or horrifying or
shameful, often gets lost to the memory or translated into
metaphor [a wellspring of symbolic nightmares?] where its
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Unshackled
capacity to horrify is encapsulated and made more safe to com-
prehend . . . More compelling and less consciously available
dimensions of denial are when memories of gross violations are
so threatening to the psychological and physical integrity of the
survivor that recollections are literally split off from conscious-
ness . . . the shattering manner in which torture and atrocity vio-
late the physical and psychological boundaries of survivors
frequently causes their recall of events to emerge in ways that
may be fragmentary, disconnected and bizarre, (pp. 141, 144)
If traumatic memory can split off and later emerge in fragmented
form, how can a therapist help the survivor to integrate and accept the
traumatic material stored in the right hemisphere by transferring it into
the left hemisphere where the survivor’s life narrative center is located?
Woodcock explained that this is usually done by helping the survivor to
speak-often for the first time-about the traumatic memories. As this is
done, the material or information literally transfers from one side of the
brain to the other, where it gradually blends with and becomes a permanent
part of the survivor’s life narrative, (pg. 147)
This is what a succession of mental health professionals have helped
me to do, one tiny piece of memory at a time. As a result, I’ve been able
to accept much of the past that I’d previously disowned. I can speak and
write about many of my traumatic experiences without trancing out. I can
communicate these memories as Kathleen, as one person.
So far, so good. I’m integrating. And yet, as of six months ago, the
pang of homesickness still bothered me. What was causing it, and why
wouldn’t it go away?
According to Gordon and Sivers, Claparede wrote that a person can
split off part of his/her existence, thereby making some experiences not
part of the self. I found Claparede’s article translated and published in a
1995 edition of Consciousness and Cognition. Claparede provided a
practical explanation for the homesick feeling. He wrote:
But what is this feeling of selfhood? … If I have experienced
a thing I have the feeling that it is mine, belongs to my experi-
ence. This feeling manifests itself even after a few moments of
observing a new object: As the object is considered and
(ap)perceived, it becomes progressively familiar, appears more
and more intimate, and finally attains the character of being
Coming Home
415
“my object.” It is not surprising then if on reappearing, after
some time has elapsed, it again evokes that feeling, (pg. 373)
Claparede’s words told me something I’d known deep inside: the sum
of my experience-a// of it-is who I really am as a person. If I continue to
push any of it away, I’m still pushing me away. I can’t think of anything
I would feel more homesick for, or yearn more for, than my own self.
Although I’d worked very hard to find and integrate every alter-state,
over the past thirteen years, I was still pushing away the essence of my
past experiences; I was still avoiding accepting that my past was an
important and essential part of my personality!
This presented a new challenge: it was time to relax and accept all of
who I am and all of what I’ve experienced, without fighting against it.
My continuing struggle against the essence of my past had been
similar to what I had experienced when I’d been put in a human-sized,
upright, clear container that had been filled with what had probably been
liquid oxygen.
As the liquid had risen to my chest, then my neck, then my bottom
lip, I’d panicked. But because the container had pinned my arms against
my sides, I hadn’t been able to break free. Even as I’d prepared to die,
my survival instinct had straggled to keep me from breathing the
liquid-not understanding that it would not harm me. This same survival
instinct now struggled against accepting the realness of my past-because
I feared its emotional impact might kill me!
For thirteen years, I’d endured one extreme traumatic relive after
another. I’d checked myself into psychiatric hospitals seven times
because the memories were so torturous and painful, I’d had no strength
left to endure them. Many times, I became ill, exhausted and depressed
from their emotional impact. Gradually, without realizing it, I’d devel-
oped a phobia towards the very act of remembering! Because I’d feared
and resisted remembering, I’d become increasingly dissociated.
Eventually, I’d been unable to remember what was still repressed, with-
out first switching entirely into another alter-state.
Claparede explained this form of dissociation:
Voluntary acts imply processes which we call “self.” If for one
reason or another some presentations [e.g., memories of trau-
matic events] are not associated with a feeling of “selfhood,” the
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Unshackled
subject does not have the impression of possessing them and
thus cannot recall them-as one cannot at will move one’s ears
unless the muscles have first revealed themselves through cer-
tain inner sensations. The first prerequisite of recalling a mem-
ory is the impression that we possess it. It is thus understandable
that if the impression of “selfhood” is destroyed, the absence
of recognition which follows is coupled with an absence of
voluntary recall, (pg. 376)
In other words, I now needed to be willing to accept that who I was
in the past is still part of me-regardless of who created the alter-states, or
how much or little I was to blame for what the perpetrators had influ-
enced me to do. This wasn’t about blame; it was about acceptance. It was
about addressing my past as part of my essence instead of calling it by
another person’s name. It was about relaxing in bed at night, allowing
myself to feel total calm and peace instead of tensing with the fear about
what was sure to come in my dreams. It was about opening my mind and
my will and saying, “Whatever is there, I welcome you. I welcome you
as part of me. I will not fear you any more.”
Perhaps this act of surrender was what Claparede referred to when
he wrote:
The feeling of selfhood is, so to speak, the link between an
imaged memory and ourself: The link by which we hold it and
thanks to which we can retrieve it from the depths of the
subconscious, (pg. 376)
Now, if I choose to remain at peace and don’t try to fight or re-repress
my emerging memories, if I’m willing to accept them as part of
me instead of making them “not me,” I don’t automatically dissociate as
they emerge. In general, I’m able to accept them more quickly
as part of my past and my life. Although some of the memories are
still emotionally devastating, and I must still give myself time now and
then to process them in a private and uninterrupted way, I seem to be
struggling less and relaxing more. These memories are, after all, a
fundamental part of who I am. It seems that I’m finally finding my way
home-to me.
Coming Home
417
Notes
1. By analyzing my current behaviors during minor crises, I’ve detected a pattern that
may explain, in part, how I had developed some of my altered states of conscious-
ness as a child, and then named them:
First, whenever I felt overwhelmed by a sudden, troubling event, my automatic
thoughts were usually either “I can’t believe this is happening,” or “This can’t be
happening to me!” I suspect that each time I said or thought this to myself,
I conditioned my mind to store the memory of that particular event in another part
of my brain, separated from where my normal life/”me” memories were stored.
For this reason, whenever I encounter a new crisis now, I’m careful to stop myself
as soon as I utter or think those words. Instead, I say aloud to myself: “Deal with
it. It is happening, and it is happening to you. And if other people can get through
this, you can, too.” So far, this new technique has worked-I’ve stayed mentally
present through each difficult event.
In the past, whenever I’d said, “This can’t be happening to me,” I’d also generated
a missing sense of self-a void that needed to be filled because, after all, the mem-
ory of the event was being stored in my brain as having happened to someonel To
fill that void, I had unconsciously created other personas, giving them (if I were
able to choose) names that were, at least, a bit different than the one I was com-
monly known by: Kathy. I created Little Kathy, Katherine, Catalina, and so on. In
my mind at such times, a fundamental truth had been that each experience had
indeed belonged to someone-but not necessarily to me\
New Life
Progress
Helen has often reminded me that as I continue to heal, I should “keep
one foot in the past and the other in the present.” In other words, I need
to be careful to not become so immersed in the past that I don’t enjoy my
new life, while not running away from the past by focusing solely on the
present. Both are important.
I still rarely know when the next unexpected memory will occur.
Sometimes I can sense that something is emerging when I say or do
something out of the ordinary. I might repeat a word that isn’t part of my
regular vocabulary, or I might have a recurring, vividly detailed dream
that I’ve not had before. When this occurs, I relax my body and mind as
much as possible, so that I won’t fight what’s surfacing.
I may retrieve bits and pieces of traumatic memories for the rest of my
life. Remembering has become part of my daily routine. With each
memory, I learn something new about my past and, more important,
about who I am. Each time I blend with newly emerging alter-states and
personality fragments, I gain their skills, strengths, and abilities. I am
amazed by how much I can do now, that I couldn’t do in the past.
I am no longer paralyzed with fear in the presence of sex addicts,
control addicts, and sociopaths. The more I’ve learned about what
motivated Dad and other abusers, both male and female, the more I’ve
felt compassion for them-at a safe distance. (Helen reminded me to treat
them as I would a rabid dog. The dog might be cute and I might feel sorry
for its deteriorating condition, but I don’t need to get so close that it can
bite me and destroy me, too!)
I feel sad for them because I’m healing while most of them are mired
in misery, denial, chaos, and destructive behaviors. Many of them are so
used to being in pain and running from it every way they can, they don’t
even know they’re hurting!
I don’t tolerate abusive behaviors from others anymore, nor do I allow
myself to be abusive. I’ve finally found a comfortable middle ground. I’m
becoming more willing to connect with people instead of fearing what
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New Life
419
they might do to me. I had been immersed in the ugly underbelly of our
society for so long, I hadn’t known that normal, non-hurtful people
comprise its majority. Now I know that criminals are a minority. What
a relief!
Gifts to Myself
Like wonderful Christmas and birthday presents, I give myself new
gifts that equip me to live a healthier life. Some of these gifts are
everyday rights I’d never been allowed to own. Some are decisions to do
or say something that I’d not been allowed to do or say in the past. Some
are decisions to not do what I’d previously had no choice about doing.
Some are permissions to think in new ways. And some are choices I wasn’t
allowed, before.
I give myself the choice to ask for help if I feel suicidal or if my
emotional pain becomes unbearable. I can call my support network for
emergency support. If needed, I can make arrangements to check into a
psych hospital so the staff can monitor me until I work through the pain.
I give myself the gift of humor-not sarcastic and angry, but silly and
childlike or from my belly. I wasn’t encouraged to laugh as a child and
frankly, there wasn’t much to laugh about. Now, there is. 1 Together, Bill and
I have used humor to weather many difficult crises. Our laughter has been
the oil that smoothes out the roughest days. In the summer of 2002, he had
a stroke. People probably thought we’d lost our minds when we laughed
about how he tilted to the left when he tried to walk forward in his hospital
room. It was a way of reminding ourselves, “This will get better.” It did.
I choose to let go of small grievances. They sap too much of my time
and energy.
I utilize the energy of my anger instead of letting it overwhelm me.
Occasional spurts of anger are a gift because, for a while, they make
me manic. Although I can expect to feel exhausted afterwards,
I visualize myself riding the energy like a booster rocket. I think, “What
can I do with this energy to make a positive change? How can I use it to
accomplish something I normally don’t have the energy to do?”
Much of my anger surfaced between 1996 and 2001. I used it to
create the PARC-VRAMC Living Memorial Garden near Chattanooga.
As I dug holes for trees to be planted, I often encountered rocks and thick
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Unshackled
roots. I used the roots as an opportunity to express my rage at the men in
my past who had sexually assaulted me. And then, when I’d finished
expelling the anger, I planted a tree or bush.
I’ve given myself the opportunity to study to become a better gardener.
Gardening is a major part of my healing now-I call the PARC garden my
“playground.” Whenever I feel overly stressed, I pick up fallen tree limbs
or pull weeds while enjoying the beauty all around. It’s exciting to know
that now, I have the chance to help living things grow and thrive!
I’ve given myself the right to live a long and healthy life. I’m still set-
ting goals that I expect to reach by the time I’m eighty. After that, I’ll
consider retirement.
I’m working towards obtaining a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s
degree in Social Work. Ironically, the US Government provided this
opportunity. Because my husband was awarded 100% disability status
from the Veterans Administration, I was automatically awarded four
free years of college! In my Social Work studies, I’ve been humbled to
learn that all kinds of injustices exist in our world-not just those I’ve
experienced.
I give myself the right to be “good enough.” If I earn less than an A’
in a class, I relax and don’t go into an anxiety-induced tailspin. I don’t
have to be perfect anymore. Having fun is a good goal!
I choose to use visualization, therapy, and memory building
techniques to heal my brain. Every day, I “see” more of its damaged
neuron paths reconnecting. I choose to believe that my brain has the
power to heal itself.
I choose not to obsess about memories that I probably still repress.
I don’t have to remember every piece of every repressed memory to be
able to heal and live a full life. 2
I give myself the right to not forgive those who viciously and willingly
hurt me. I give myself the right to feel anger towards those who battered
me mentally, emotionally, and physically. I allow myself to feel glad
when they fall ill or die, knowing the same can happen to me and my
loved ones (after all, illness and death are not selective). I need to feel the
anger to avoid being their victim again.
I balance out my anger by learning what I can about their childhoods.
I try to understand them and to feel compassion for their woundedness,
although not in a way that emotionally locks me into them again
(remember: rabid dog). 3
New Life
421
To protect my mind and life, I choose not to have any further contact
with my childhood family. Although I miss those who did not harm me,
they are too closely connected to those who did. 4
To avoid feeling overwhelmed and depressed, I allow myself to relax
on family holidays. Sometimes friends invite us to celebrate with them.
Their kindness and caring are precious gifts.
I give myself the right to say, “My mother and other women sexually
abused me.” I choose not to let societal myths about sainted nurturers
silence me anymore. Females sexually assault children, too. 5
I choose to research the evidence of historical conspiracies. I will not
accept the shame that continues to be indiscriminately dumped on intelli-
gent people by our government and the mainstream media when we choose
to question what we’re told to believe. We are not conspiracy theorists or
fanatics. Such labels are condescending and inaccurate. We are realists.
I give myself time to grieve old and new losses. The traumas that
I endured hurt me in many ways. I still grieve the loss of not having had
the ability to nurture, respect, and properly care for Emily. I accept that
I may never fully recover from the murder of my precious baby Rose and
other dear ones I lost along the way.
Never having had loving, protective parents has been a huge loss for
me to grieve. Not having respectful, loving family members to go to
when I feel upset or need advice is another. 6 1 give myself permission and
time to grieve each of these losses ” as often and for as long as I need to.
I give myself permission to be just plain human. When I first discov-
ered the hidden parts of my personality, I was terrified of making mis-
takes or doing something immoral. I was afraid I’d turn into a sociopathic
abuser if I integrated with those parts (I didn’t). Now, I choose to believe
that life is a journey of discovery and growth. Even if I screw up royally,
I can still learn from that mistake and make better choices in the future.
I give myself the right to feel and express gratitude. I do not feel grate-
ful for having been betrayed and harmed in the past. I do, however, feel
grateful for so many good things that have come into my life since I started
to break free from my controllers. I received free schooling. I have good
medical insurance coverage that has kept us from having to file for bank-
ruptcy. I have two functioning legs, arms, and eyes, and a brain that still
works well. I have a nice home. I have a husband who loves and cares
about me. I can hear and talk and hug and type. Even if I lose some of
those abilities, I’ll still have the rest!
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Unshackled
I especially feel grateful that I have today. I’m alive and have the
opportunity to work towards my life goals. I have another day to cuddle
with my husband and inhale his natural, soothing scent. To massage our
elderly dog’s arthritic shoulders as he groans with pleasure. To make new
friends. To fall in love with humanity.
Because I’m alive, I can walk through the garden to see which plants
are in bloom. I have another day to listen to the chorus of thousands of
katydids that rhythmically buzz at night. To read entertaining magazines
(I adore Star, Cosmo, and GQ). To watch a good movie that I didn’t have
the opportunity to enjoy in the past. To walk in the rain. To watch
children at play and note that they are being watched and protected ”
how wonderful! ” by their caregivers.
I give myself the right to change the meanings of those things in my
life that Dad and other perpetrators had sadistically desecrated and per-
verted in my mind. Now, I can enjoy breathtakingly beautiful rainbows
with the understanding that they are not magical and won’t take me to
another dimension. When I see storm clouds roiling in the distance,
I know that a tornado isn’t likely to appear. I can even tolerate the sound
of an approaching military copter and know that I am still safe.
When I light fragrant candles in our home, I know that black-robed
Satanists won’t walk into our living room for a ritual. I even give myself
permission to wear red and black clothes together, knowing they won’t
change the essence of who I am.
Butterflies are another symbol that I have disarmed. Many mind-control
victims have been called “butterflies” by programmers. In the past, I felt
agitated every time I heard a survivor talk about being transformed from
a worm or caterpillar to a butterfly, or about leaving the cocoon, because
such phrases were used as part of our programming. 7
To counter its effects, I created a small butterfly garden, within the
larger PARC-VRAMC garden, to honor those survivors. I installed but-
terfly bushes (some were donated by survivors) and a wooden butterfly
box. Every spring, I plant lantana. On summer days, I watch individual
butterflies flit and land on the flowers, knowing that I was not and never
can be a butterfly. Now I’m able to enjoy them for what they are-beau-
tiful, totally harmless, delicate creatures.
I’ve also reclaimed the real meaning of some of the spiritual elements in
my life. About halfway through the intensive phase of my recovery, I
New Life
423
stopped attending church altogether-too many elements of the services
triggered horrific memories.
In December 2002, 1 decided to go to a Christmas Eve church service
with Bill. I wondered if it would still be too much for me to bear.
Entering the small brick church, I chose a pew behind the rest of the
congregation so that I had an easy avenue of escape. As the service
started, I discovered something new. For the first time since the summer of
1989, 1 was able to hear and enjoy the Christmas carols and the pastor’s
words without trancing or flashbacking. The pastor talked about
communion in a simple way, stating that the grape juice and bread were
symbolic representations of Jesus’ blood and body, “shed and broken for
us.” As I hesitantly took communion at the altar, I noticed that it didn’t
trigger any ritual flashbacks.
As I stood there, I received an unexpected gift. Looking straight into
my eyes, the pastor said, “Your sins are forgiven.” As I heard those
words, icy pain threatened to flash through my body. In a split- second,
I realized that I’d stayed away from church and fellow worshippers for one
more reason I hadn’t been willing to face: I’d still seen myself as
unforgivable and unacceptable, undeserving of the right to be with them.
After I returned to the pew and prayed, I realized that because I’d been
forgiven, I didn’t need to isolate myself from my spiritual brothers and
sisters anymore. Then another revelation unfolded: I’d been starving
from a lack of spiritual sustenance. Every day, I’d been clinging to fraying
strands of hope, fighting blindly to keep doing what I believed was
right-all on my own. But the battle was simply too big for me. I desperately
needed spiritual help and strength.
Feeling a deep connection with the fellow worshippers and with God,
I realized that my own spirituality may be the greatest gift I can ever give
to myself. It transcends all human evil, no matter how much that evil may
yet amass around us. Those who secretly lust, conspire, and kill for power
will rise and fall, but what is spirit will outlast them all.
In spite of the evil that will always exist to some degree in our society;
in spite of the many cruelties I’ve endured and may yet suffer; in spite
of the loss of important relationships; in spite of my mental, emotional
and physical disabilities; and in spite what evil is yet to come; there is
still much hope in the world. Not only do we have a God who truly loves
and cares about us; we also have a world full of people who care about
424
Unshackled
each other and want to do what’s right. I believe if we give it a chance,
goodness will always win-beginning in our own hearts and lives.
Notes
1. Glamour Magazine’s August, 2002 edition stated: “The average child laughs 400
times a day. The typical adult? 15.” (pg. 119) Because I didn’t laugh much as a
child, I’m making up for lost time now.
2. There may be events in my past that it’s best I not remember. This doesn’t
make me weak; it just proves that I, like everyone else, have a limit to the amount
of horror I can endure. “There was an exploration of the labyrinth of torture
and atrocity, and the recollection that we are most vulnerable to destruction
when alone and beyond the gaze or recall of ourselves and others. Perhaps ultimately
the realization that nothing is seemingly beyond the wit of man’s destructiveness:
even the possibility that we will never know the worst that has befallen us.”
(Woodcock pg. 151)
3. I didn’t know that developing empathy towards those who had brutally harmed and
used me, while still feeling anger towards them, might actually be the most sincere
form of forgiveness. Beverly Flanigan, MSSW, does an excellent job of explaining
the forgiveness process in her book, Forgiving the Unforgivable: Overcoming the
Bitter Legacy of Intimate Wounds.
4. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Pamela Freyd, and other outspoken members of the FMSF
publicly attack the character of abuse survivors who choose to separate from their
families to maintain their personal safety and mental health. One of the glaring flaws
in these women’s stance is that they make the cohesion and dysfunctional stability of
“allegedly” destructive family systems more important than the constitutional rights
(such as liberty), survival, and sanity of their individual members.
5. Rosencrans wrote: “I’m concerned that society will not take abuse between mothers
and daughters seriously because both victim and perpetrator are women. In addition,
people might resist this information because they want to continue to stereotype and
view women as nurturers incapable of such abuse, as non-sexual protectors, and as
somehow morally ‘better than men.'” (pg. 238) Although I think the feminist move-
ment has made important advances in bettering the lives of untold numbers of women
(including my own), I think that we-as women-must be extremely careful not to over-
look or minimize the potential of women to also be sexual predators of children.
6. Judith Viorst’s Necessary Losses has helped me to understand that it’s healthy and
normal to grieve these and other personal losses.
7. I and many other survivors were mentally conditioned and programmed via trauma,
hypnosis, NLP, and other nefarious methods to develop alter-states that truly believed
they were fragile, controllable butterflies.
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Recommended Reading
Adams, Jeanne, BS, Drawn Swords: My Victory over Childhood Ritual
Abuse. Available through the Internet at http://www.mrlight.org or from
Genesis Bookstore, 248 East 3900 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84107.
Adams, Stephen B. and Butler, Orville R. Manufacturing the Future: A
History of Western Electric. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1999.
Bashir, Kai, Mind Control Within the United States. Kai Bashir, PO Box
30366, Cincinnati, OH 45230.
Blood, Linda, The New Satanists. New York, NY: Warner Books, 1994.
Blume, E. Sue, CSW, DCSW, “Sympathy for the Devil: ‘False
Memories,’ the Media, and the Mind Controllers,” Treating Abuse Today,
Vol. 9, No. 3.
Chase, Truddi, When Rabbit Howls. New York, NY: Jove Books, 1990.
Constantine, Alex, Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in
America. Venice, CA: Feral House, 1997.
DeCamp, John W., The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and
Murder in Nebraska. Lincoln, NE: AWT, Inc., 1996.
Helmut, Lammer and Marion. MILABS: Military Mind Control and
Alien Abduction. Hidden Mysteries Books. Available through TGS
Services, Frankston, TX.
Herman, Judith Lewis, M.D., Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of
Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York, NY:
Basic Books, 1992.
Hersha, Cheryl; Hersha, Lynn; Schwartz, Ted; and Griffis, Dale, Ph.D.,
Secret Weapons: 2 Sisters’ Terrifying True Story of Sex, Spies and
Sabotage. Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon Press, 2001.
Hoffman, Michael A., II, They Were White and They Were Slaves: The
Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America. Boring,
OR: CPA Book Publisher, 1992.
430
Recommended Reading
431
Hougan, Jim, Spooks: The Haunting of America-The Private Use of
Secret Agents. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1978.
Lee, Martin A., The Beast Awakens. New York: Little, Brown, 1997.
Lewis, H. Spencer, Ph.D., F.R.C. Rosicrucian Questions and Answers
with Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order. San Jose, CA:
Rosicrucian Press.
Lorena, Jeanne Marie, Ed. and Levy, Paula, Ed. Breaking Ritual Silence:
An Anthology of Ritual Abuse Survivors’ Stories. Gardnerville, NV: Trout
and Sons, 1998.
Mackenzie, Angus, Secrets: The CIA’s War At Home. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999.
Matsakis, Aphrodite, Ph.D., / Can ‘t Get Over It: A Handbook for Trauma
Survivors. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 1996.
McClendon, Pat, MSSW, CSW., “Dissociation: Dissociative/Posttraumatic
Stress Symptomatology.” Website, http://www.clinicalsocialwork.com/
dissociation.html.
Newton, Michael, Raising Hell: The Encyclopedia of Devil Worship and
Satanic Crime. New York: Morrow/ Avon, 1993.
Noblitt, James Randall and Perskin, Pamela Sue. Cult and Ritual Abuse:
Its History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary
America. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000.
Oksana, Chrystine, Safe Passage to Healing: A Guide for Survivors of
Ritual Abuse. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Ostrander, Sheila and Lynn, Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries behind the
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Quan, James, “A Consolidation of SRA and False Memory Data,”
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Website, http://www.childhooditshouldnothurt.com.
432
Recommended Reading
[JdN: A number of these websites are no longer up.]
Reid, Gregory, Ph.D., Orphans In The Storm: Male Survivors of Sexual
& Ritual Abuse. YouthFire, Box 370006, El Paso, TX 79937. Website.
http://www.gregoryreid.com.
Russell, Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much, New York: Carroll &
Graf, 1992.
Ryder, Daniel, C.C.D.C., L.S.W., Breaking the Circle of Satanic Ritual
Abuse: Recognizing and Recovering from the Hidden Trauma.
Minneapolis, MN: CompCare Publishers, 1992.
Ryder, Daniel, Cover-Up of the Century: Satanic Ritual Crime & World
Conspiracy. Noblesville, IN: Ryder Publishing, 1996.
Simpson, Christopher, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and
Its Effects on the Cold War. New York, NY: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1988.
Smith, Margaret, Ritual Abuse: What It Is, Why it Happens, How to Help.
New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1993.
Vachss, Alice, Sex Crimes: Ten Years on the Front Lines Prosecuting
Rapists and Confronting Their Collaborators. New York, NY: Random
House, 1993.
Supportive Organizations for Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Survivors
ACHES-MC (Advocacy Committee for Human
Experimentation Survivors – Mind Control)
Website: http://www.aches-mc.org
US Contact, Research & Archives:
–Patty Rehn
Fax # (541) 388-5068
E-mail: aches@bendnet.com
Canada Contact, Research:
–Lynne Moss-Sharman
230 Miles St. E #3
Thunder Bay, ONT
P7C1J6 Canada
(807) 622-5407
E-mail: lsharman@shaw.ca
–Prison Contact:
Vern Mulka
PO Box 5081
Biddeford MA 04007
USA
(207) 282-7225
E-mail: jeanne@lamere.net
433
434
Supportive Organizations
Mr. Light & Associates, Inc.
Website: http://www.mrlight.org
Contact: Jeanne Adams
PO Box 12927
Ogden UT 84412-2927
USA
E-mail: mrlight@konnections.net
PARC-VRAMC
Website: http://parc-vramc.tierranet.com
Contact: Kathleen Sullivan
PARC-VRAMC, Inc.
PMB 129, 5251 Hwy. 153
Hixson TN 37343
USA
(Please note: PARC-VRAMC does not provide individualized
support to survivors.)
Persons Against Ritual Abuse-Torture (RAT) and
Other Acts of Non- Political Torture
Website: http://www.ritualabusetorture.org
Contact:
Jeanne Sarson, RN, BScN, MEd
Linda MacDonald, RN, BN MEd
361 Prince St.
Truro Nova Scotia
Canada B2N 1E4
(902) 895-2255
E-mail: flight@ns.sympatico.ca
Supportive Organizations
435
SMART (Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse
Today)
Website: http://members.aol.com/SMARTNEWS/index2.html
Contact: Neil Brick
SMART
PO Box 1295
Easthampton MA 01027-1295
USA
E-mail: SMARTNEWS@aol.com
Survivorship
Web site : http ://w w w. survivorship . org
Survivorship
PMB 139, 3181 Mission St.
San Francisco CA 94110
USA
E-mail: info@survivorship.org
Information about other supportive organizations and resources can
be found by reviewing these organizations’ websites and literature.
About the Author
Kathleen Sullivan lives near Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband,
Bill. She is the founder and president of a grassroots advocacy organization,
PARC-VRAMC (pronounced “park”) – Positive Activism, Remembrance
and Commemoration for Survivors of Ritual Abuse and Mind Control. For
more information, see http://parc-vramc.tierranet.com.
A master gardener and rock collector, Kathleen enjoys “playing in the
dirt.” She’s currently helping to develop PARC-VRAMC ‘s Chattanooga
Living Memorial Garden. A Social Work student at the University of
Tennessee, she is also the author of MK, a novel about mind control that
is scheduled for publication in 2004. You can visit her personal website
at http://www.kathleen-sullivan.com.
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.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdeMkywlS54