#BelieveSurvivors
Features

Harvey Weinstein’s “False Memory” Defense and its Shocking Origin Story

How Powerful Sex Offenders Manipulated the Field of Psychology

Last week in the Harvey Weinstein rape trial, the defense called to the stand expert witness Elizabeth Loftus, a researcher on the phenomenon of so-called “false memory.” This legal tactic, explicitly designed to discredit the testimony of sexual abuse survivors, has a sordid and astonishing history dating back to the 1980s and 90s, an era known to the psychology field as the “memory wars.”

The “memory wars” were essentially a war on sexual abuse survivors who dared to speak out in an era before #METOO. More specifically, the “memory wars” targeted a particular group of sexual abuse victims: Incest survivors.

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From the Editor

Uncle Daddy, Nazis, and Fascism in the US

Fascism has not suddenly burst onto the scene in the US with the election of a single president.

Wernher von Braun

Wernher von Braun at Peenemünde in 1941, and at NASA in 1970.

In the late 1970’s, my father co-owned a strip mine in northern Alabama. There was a labor dispute, I never knew the exact details, but the local KKK was supporting the union. The dispute wore on quite awhile until, as my father told it, a few clansmen took him into a shed on the property, held a gun to his head, and told him to get his yankee ass out of the state. Not long afterward, we moved back to Detroit.  Continue reading

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From the Editor

Between Two Worlds—The Emergence of Truth in Turbulent Times

The world was our solace. Now the world is reflecting the experiences of our childhood.

Tidal Reflection by Janet Thomas

A note regarding the following: I posted this on social media and it was one of the most challenging and frightening things I’ve done as a survivor. I wrote a book about my experiences (Day Breaks Over Dharamsala), but writing a book is done in safety and solitude. Posting on social media, however, is exposure up-for-grabs. It was excruciating. But these times are excruciating. They call out for our voices in all their vulnerable warrior complexity. “Coming out” to one another helps us all. “Coming out” to the world can now help the world.

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The Keepers screenshot
Features

The Investigation of a Nun’s Murder Delivers a Death Blow to the False Memory Narrative

The Keepers, a documentary series about the 1969 murder of a Catholic nun, is currently available on Netflix. This article contains spoilers. [Updated 9/23/2017]

The Keepers follows the progress of a devoted amateur team of investigators as they uncover a trafficking ring run by a Catholic priest in Baltimore in the late 1960’s. Victims, mostly teenage girls at the time, recount being raped not only by the priest, but a cast of shady characters including police officers and politicians. They also recount that the priest, a psychologist, drugged, and hypnotized them.  Continue reading

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From the Editor

Recommended Viewing

Streaming now on Netflix is Who Took Johnny, a documentary about the Johnny Gosch case. Johnny Gosch was abducted while delivering newspapers in the wee hours of a Sunday morning in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1982. Through the tireless efforts of his heartbroken and persistent mother, the case gained national attention, yet remains officially unresolved to this day. Produced by Rumur studios,  with contributions from Franklin Scandal author, Nick Bryant, the film explores several leads in the case—leads that law enforcement refused to pursue—suggesting the complicity of local and national justice institutions in elite child trafficking rings.  Continue reading

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In the News

New Book: Confessions of a DC Madam

Most people understand that our political system has been hijacked by monied and corporate interests, what they don’t yet understand however is the extensive level of control exercised by the national security state through much less obvious means. Confessions of a DC Madam: The Politics of Sex, Lies, and Blackmail outlines how the appetites of high ranking officials render them vulnerable to blackmail, and how strong-arming operations are covered-up by complicit media and justice system personnel.  Continue reading

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In the News

Karen Wetmore: Investigating CIA Experiments in Vermont

Karen Wetmore’s memoir, Surviving Evil: CIA Mind Control Experiments in Vermont, is a moving account of her childhood and confinement as a teenage psychiatric patient in Vermont hospitals. Like many survivors of extreme trauma, she still struggles to make sense of her experiences, but unlike most, she’s done years of investigative work, tracking down every available medical document related to her case. The records revealed she’d been treated by doctors listed as contractors of the CIA’s behavioral experimentation program MKUltra. After her book was published in 2014, she continued to ply the CIA with multiple FOIA requests. Their most recent non-response responses to her were telling enough, they claim the records she’d requested are still classified.

She says, “The Vermont press and the national press remain silent on the information I documented in my book, despite having been informed. A foreign journalist told me that he couldn’t understand why American journalists were not, as he put it, “All over this story.” Again I ask the question: What did CIA do in Vermont institutions that requires such measures to ensure secrecy fifty years later?  Beginning in September 2013, I decided to try to find out.

Read the rest of her important revelations on Fire Dog Lake, or order her book.

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Art

Polyvore

Examples of Polyvore sets by Gaylin Laughlin. Used with permission.

At first glance, Polyvore seems like an unlikely place to harbor a community of trauma survivors using art to heal. Continue reading

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Features

Qualities and Knowledge Useful for Survivors and Therapists Working with Dissociative Identity

Brian, a therapist who has worked with survivors of severe trauma for more than 30 years, lays out the finer points of what’s important for both therapists and survivors in navigating a path to healing. –Eds.

Personhood

Tolerance for Ambiguity

Integrating a trauma narrative, especially if it is the result of sophisticated mind control procedures, is a complex and lengthy process where subjective states (hypnosis, drugs) and manipulated states (electric shock, psychic-driving, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation) are mixed with objective states (veridical memory of ritual/sexual abuse or any other experiences meant to terrorize.) Continue reading

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Interviews

Getting to Gratitude

When survival and surviving are core challenges it is all too easy, and often all too instinctive, to overlook the good in life. Gratitude is a way of affirming the good—life over death, creation over destruction, connection over isolation, and triumph over loss. Gratitude takes trust—trust in the untrustworthy idea of authentic help, support, and love. And gratitude requires healing—because rage and its relatives are always scrambling for center-stage. Gratitude trumps rage. It requires us to grow up, get a bit of distance, and honor the fact that we actually need one another when need itself can feel like the ultimate four-letter word.

In this spirit of creative conundrum, Borne is committed to expressing gratitude to those working to eliminate torture and abuse in our world. We honor the work of Linda MacDonald and Jeanne Sarson in Naming the Unspeakable: Non-State Torture. In this post we express gratitude to long-time activist and educator Jean Riseman.

We invite you to send us your appreciation for those who cast a light into the shadows of this world and make a difference.
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