NST, RA(T), & MC Survivor Advocacy & News

[Project Willow]

[Project Willow]

During the first week of this month, Linda and Jeanne advocated for RA survivors before the Committee on the Status of Women at the UN.

http://nonstatetorture.org/

[Project Willow]

Dr. Jennifer Freyd, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon, whose parents birthed the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in response to her accusations, has published a new book further exploring her Betrayal Trauma theory.

https://sites.google.com/site/betrayalbook/the-book

BLIND TO BETRAYAL

Betrayal is fundamental to the human condition. Betrayal is everywhere and yet because of betrayal blindness often not seen. Drawing on empirical research, clinical thought, and real stories, we will explore with the reader central questions about betrayal and betrayal blindness: What is betrayal? What is its scope? Why are we often blind to it? What are the mental mechanisms that underlie betrayal blindness? What are the effects of betrayal blindness? How should we overcome the effects of betrayal and our blindness to it? How do we become aware of it and heal from its effects? We can create a better world together by facing betrayal and learning to trust ourselves and each other.

Dedicated to JQ Johnson, 1951-2012

BLIND TO BETRAYAL

Table of Contents

Preface
Blind to Betrayal
Children Betrayed
The Wide Reach of Betrayal Blindness
Blind Adherence
Why Blindness?
Knowing and Not Knowing
Mental Gymnastics
Insights from Research
Betrayal Blindness is Toxic
The Risks of Knowing
The Healing Power of Knowing
The Healing Power of Telling
Speaking Our Truth
Now I See: Facing Betrayal Blindness

Recommended Readings

Endnotes

[Project Willow]

Rosanne mentions MKULTRA in recent interview.

[Simulist]

Rosanne mentions MKULTRA in recent interview.

What continues to blow my mind is the fact that the bare mention of MK-ULTRA would or should be surprising — and yet, it is, because almost nobody ever mentions it!

We hear about Watergate and it's prolific progeny (like: Billygate, Iraqgate, Maggiegate, Monicagate, Nannygate, Travelgate, Troopergate, Whitewatergate, and just about any other sort of "gate" imaginable!) all the time, but a vast series of concerted efforts — paid for by U.S. taxpayers — to study and to manipulate (with scientific expertise!) the human mind (and the ongoing offspring of those programs) are treated as a quaint footnote in history, if they're even treated at all.

This should be especially troubling when one considers that, almost certainly, we aforementioned U.S. taxpayers have ourselves been on the receiving end of this broad spectrum of manipulation, which generations of us now have so generously been paying to study.

[Project Willow]

Well said. Sometimes I am amazed the number of people who consider it a "conspiracy theory".

[Simulist]

Thanks, PW. You know, what continues to haunt me is a question I've had since... well, actually forever... concerning precisely what percentage of our thoughts are actually our own. That is, how much of what we perceive, how we perceive it, and how we then process those perceptions — including the conclusions we arrive at concerning all of this — are actually a product of deliberate "external" attempts to shape our collective thinking? I suspect that the real answer would be that we are influenced to a surprisingly significant degree. So much so, in fact, that "Are our thoughts really our own?" then becomes a disturbingly valid question.

But it's a question I've found shockingly few people ever seem to care much about and, even among those who might, it's a question that even they are almost always reluctant to ask with any amount of determination and real persistence.

Which I find totally unnerving.

[Project Willow]

^Through routine socialization, no, not really our own, but then without it, from where would we source our identity? That feels equally as frightening to me. I appreciate the exercise of trying to think about any given subject as if I were an alien being. I've always felt slightly alien in regards to "normal" human behavior anyway.

[Project Willow]

South African ritual murder case. Triggers.

http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/girl-s-satanic-horror-1.1505350#.UXixdoXPmHk

Girl’s satanic horror

April 24 2013 at 07:50am
By SUSAN DU
The Star

Harvey Isha, Robin Harwood, Courtney Daniels and Lindon Wagner appeared in the Palm Ridge Magistrates Court for the murder of Kirsty Theologo. Illustration: Sibusiso Dubazana
Johannesburg - Kirsty Theologo thought that she was going to a party with friends she trusted on the night of October 21, 2011.
She brought another girl along.
She had a drink.

She trusted her friends when they told her they needed to stop by a petrol station to get sweets, then again when they said there had been a change of plans and that they would be going into the “mountains of Linmeyer” instead.

The “party” turned out to be a satanic ritual in which Kirsty was drugged, bound, drenched in petrol and burnt so severely that she died later in hospital.

Her friend, now 16, survived. She can’t be named due to her age.

More at link...

[Project Willow]

April Interview with Colin Ross.

http://www.gnosticmedia.com/an-interview-with-dr-colin-a-ross-pt-1-what-is-mind-control-161/

[Project Willow]

I want my brain back!

It's a medically-induced traumatic brain injury I underwent when I was only 8 years old, and they'd already been making small cuts and tears in the lead-up. I got it back, the memory of the wake-up point, a few years ago. What I hadn't gotten is what preceded it. The wake-up point had produced enough grief. I'm on a gurney, of some sort, I only know that what I was before I no longer am. Parts are missing, integral parts, abilities, feelings, senses of self. All that is left is this awareness of loss and the grief it invokes, and that too is short lived as I follow the conditioning to forget, to forget what I've been trained to lose.

It was 3 and a half days in a hospital setting. There were lots of drugs, a day long stint in an isolation tank, earphones, looped messages, electric shock. It gets blurry then I'm in a wheel chair in a lab room. There is a projector set-up. I am shown a steel door, or an iron door, it must be iron, I guess, because it is black and stained with dripping rust. I can see its edges, jagged, as if cut with a torch. I can feel it. It's not a real door however, it only pivots via suggestions, but it's strong, impenetrable via my limited strength.

They ask me, what would you do to make it move? I spout off a number of possibilities, a lever, a car jack… they want more. There are four devices I devise, none of them suitable, none of them functional. They tell me, "Remember that", and "You cannot move it". This is an introject. Perhaps the most crucial, the most center, the great dividing line of my captivity, the wall between front and back, normative and operational, the wall between what it is still mine, and what fully belongs to them, in my head.

[Project Willow]

^ That was a bit slated to be in my memoir, if the thing can ever take a shape that approaches a whole. It is years out still, but that is as it must be.

I've got some more, an article on breaking the chains of programming by Arauna Morgan, MA, on Ellen's site: http://endritualabuse.org/healing/breaking-the-chains/ . It's defintiely worth the read.

I. Seeing the Chains

When is a survivor ready to look into the present and know about things still going on?

Ongoing abuse is harder to look at than what happened in the past.
External Safety

Survivors may need to lock doors and windows, screen all telephone calls as they come in, stay away from unsafe places- like bars, high-risk- people – like drug/alcohol using friends, and have a safety representative.

A safety representative is a trusted person who is usually present, but especially present at night.

Ongoing abuse perpetrators want survivors to leave their doors and windows open and to answer the phone as it rings. It is important to screen all telephone calls as they come in, let them go to the answering machine/service, and only call back to safe, legitimate callers. Perpetrators don’t like to leave messages.

Survivors may experience discomfort/distress as they defy the abuser group’s ability to access them at any time and as they defy the abuser group’s ability to give them orders at any time of the day or night. This is a normal reaction to doing things differently and will generally or usually pass, over time.

This is where persistence and determination come into play. Persistence and determination are the only ways to get through, to break free. This step is very important and may take longer than expected to complete consistently, but, if the survivor keeps at it, eventually it will be second nature.

....

More at the link above.

Also, two of my absolute favorite peeps in the world are presenting at this summer's SMART conference, Janet Thomas, and Nick Bryant. Wish I could go! If you can go, please do.
http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

...............
Not wanting to make this into a solipsistic exercise, but I may post now and then my own brief ravings, as that is just where things seem to be atm.

You know that old cliche about the tortured artist? As some of my friends know, it is not a cliche in my case. I've long remembered having my fingers dislocated for drawing about what was happening when I was little. I've been processing some additional memories, lab scenes of aversion conditioning to drawing, done with electric shock. Orders to remain silent were so oft repeated, they became banal, but the perps were seriously frightened of what might be revealed in art. Somehow that makes me feel more empowered, and maybe this months-long, intermittent, painting/drawing block will be lifted soon. Art is the emblem of my future freedom.

[Project Willow]

Trigger warning...

http://posttrib.suntimes.com/news/davich/21490912-452/jerry-davich-highland-woman-claims-ritual-abuse-im-not-lying.html

Jerry Davich:
Highland woman claims ritual abuse: ‘I’m not lying’

JERRY DAVICH July 27, 2013 5:48PM
Updated: July 28, 2013 2:01AM

Ruth Zandstra insists she is not lying. Nor is she crazy.

The 62-year-old Highland woman has been insisting this for decades, even though at times it felt as if she was making up such unimaginable acts of abuse during her childhood. And similar acts of domestic and churchly terror against her sister, too.

Cruelty. Incest. Intimidation. Sexual abuse. Psychological torture. Animal sacrifice. Bloodletting. And allegations of satanic ritual abuse at the hands of her father and grandfather under the guise of strict Christian doctrine, a controversial claim she still stands behind to this day.

“I know how all this sounds, but it’s true, sadly true,” she told me at the Portage Riverwalk, an oddly picturesque setting to discuss such ugly subject matter.

Zandstra, who can be shy as a shadow, chronicled all this and more in her 2010 self-published book, “Am I Alive?,” which is available on Amazon. It’s a sad, disturbing yet intriguing book about her tormented yet outwardly idyllic childhood while being raised in Highland. She tells it through a series of chronologically arranged recollections.

She recalls being driven by her father to a clearing in the woods during the middle of the night to take part in sadistic rituals and other unfathomable atrocities. They took place under the stars involving respected, robe-wearing elders from her Dutch Reform Christian Church, she claims.

“The men are eating something and drinking from the silver cup, one by one, and I just hope that since us kids aren’t standing in a circle with them, we won’t have to eat and drink the sacrifice with them,” she writes in the 295-page book. “I hate how the little bite of heart is all tough and rubbery and hard to chew and I hate how the blood tastes.”

She recalls being forced to kill her pet kitten when she was 6 years old, and repeated visits to her home from the FBI, investigating claims of the cult and its late-night activities in the woods.

In another chapter, she writes: “I see the toes of his shoes against my toes, and look up just enough to see both his open hands in front of my face. In one hand there are small, bloody eyes in the palm of his hand. I know that I have to swallow them, so that Satan can see inside me and know what I’m thinking.”

Impossible to digest? Hard to believe? A kneejerk reaction of far-fetched exaggerations, flat-out lies, or a form of false memory syndrome? That’s understandable. Zandstra knows this, too.

“But maybe the right person will read my book and realize they’re not alone,” she says.

Her book was written in part by the 100 or so personalities she created in her head as a kid to cope with the abuse. Clinically it’s called dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. Zandstra simply calls them “the others,” and each one had a name, such as Luke her big brother protector, Martha the grandmotherly nurturer, and Thaddeus, who kept mental notes on everything.

She’s been in therapy for nearly 30 years, mostly with Norm LeClercq, a clinical supervisor with New Leaf Resources in Lansing. Their first meeting was April 3, 1987, and they’ve met for hundreds of hours ever since.

“I totally believe Ruth and what she’s gone through as a child,” LeClercq told me. “She suffered obvious trauma showing me early on that something horrendous happened to her. Ruth doesn’t lie. She’s not crazy. And she’s honest to a fault.”

Her book, he confirms, is not some kind of vendetta against her father, family or former church. But a tangible way to possibly help others while telling her own amazing story.

“I wished many times that what she told me was a figment of her imagination. But it’s not,” he said. “I thought I understood evil before I started in this field. I had no idea.”

Zandstra’s father died in 1979, and her grandfather died before then. She has since married many years ago, and she has four adult daughters.

“One of them has read the book, the others have chosen not to,” Zandstra said.

She also has three brothers, two who live in the region and one who lives in Michigan.

“Two of them want nothing to do with me,” she said.
She received a negative backlash from most of her family, her community, and the Dutch Reform church after the book was released.
“I was repeatedly told that nobody needs to know about this,” Zandstra said.

But then she started receiving letters and emails from readers who had similar experiences involving sexual abuse, ritual abuse and other childhood abuse. It convinced her that writing the book was all worth it.

It’s been a long process of psychological integration within her own mind involving all those personalities she created as a kid to cope with her abuse. Each one has eventually left her psyche.

“It feels a bit lonely to not have them inside me any longer,” sighed Zandstra, who still sometimes refers to herself as “we” instead of “me.” “It’s still a struggle.”

It was only after her mother’s death in 2000 when Zandstra and her sister, who lives in Wisconsin, found something in their parent’s belongings that confirmed decades of torment, suspicion, and repressed memories. They unearthed a thick and heavy gold chain with an intricately-carved goat’s head satanic emblem.

“I’m not crazy! I’m not lying!” she writes at the end of her book.

“It’s the same chain that my father used during those nights in the woods,” she told me. “My sister believes that my mom left it there on purpose, knowing we would find it and find out the truth.”

The “truth” is tricky business in any scenario, but especially with these claims, memories and allegations, especially regarding demonic cults, whose very existence are arguably debatable. Zandstra knows her truth. Her therapist believes her truth. And it’s now up to you to either believe or disbelieve such truth.

I spoke to two other church members from that time period, and both say there are too many strange coincidences in Zandstra’s book to call her allegations flat-out lies or a form of false memory syndrome.

More importantly to Zandstra, she has found peace with her parents and their actions.

“I don’t blame my parents, even my dad. He was sick, mentally ill, and trapped by doing what he did, I believe,” Zandstra said. “He was two different people. Gentle yet mean. A respected church elder yet a sick cult leader.”

These days, Zandstra helps run a greenhouse in town while her husband works at a farm in Hebron, she says. She simply wants to live a simple life, smile at small wonders, and enjoy her three grandchildren.

“I am finally realizing that, yes, I am alive,” she said with a gentle smile.

To hear more details from Zandstra, watch my video posted at http://www.post-trib.com or on my Facebook page. You can also listen to my on-air interview with her on my latest Casual Fridays radio show, posted online at http://lakeshorepublicmedia.org/am-i-alive/. Or contact Zandstra via her website, http://www.ruthzandstra.com.

[Project Willow]

An excellent post on safety methods to keep yourself from being accessed at night...

http://thesinglemultiple.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/the-single-multiples-guide-to-staying-in-at-night/

The Single Multiple’s Guide to Staying In at Night

Needle marks. Bug bites. Bruises. Hard-core yawning and grainy eyes after what you thought were 10 hours of sleep.

These are just a few signs of a multiple who’s been busy at night.

If you’re a multiple who lives alone (or occasionally sleeps alone), nighttime can be stressful, not only because of panic attacks and nightmares and the monumental task of trying to actually sleep but, really, what do you do when you think you’re asleep? It’s enough of a challenge managing all of your selves during the waking hours, it only adds more pressure to the pressure cooker when you don’t know how to manage yourself while trying get some desperately needed rest.

Over the past two months I’ve developed a method for keeping my butt in bed, or at least knowing when my butt has wandered elsewhere. Sticking to the routine faithfully has brought an empowering sense of awareness and stability to my system. I was programmed not to know what was I was doing, and knowing has helped break programming and discouraged handlers from trying to use me at night. Even if you’re a multiple who isn’t programmed (i.e., mind controlled), developing your own nighttime awareness routine is still a highly beneficial recovery tool.

read the rest at the link...

[elfismiles]

Judy Byington is a therapist, author and mental health supervisor and the founder and leader of Trauma Research Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information through CEU accredited seminars and lectures on Dissociation and coordinating ritual abuse survivor group, therapeutic and legal resources. She also works as a consultant on satanic crime with the Utah Attorney General’s office. Judy has interviewed hundreds of ritual abuse survivors and continues to pen books about survivors like Jenny Hill who suffer repressed childhood memories of forced participation in rape, torture and murder. She joins us to discuss her book, Twenty-Two Faces, the story of a survivor-intended-victim of a human sacrificial ceremony, Jenny Hill. Judy details Jenny’s story of alleged satanic ritual abuse and her consequent dissociative identity disorder. We’ll talk about mind control, programming of alters and similar ritual abuse survivor accounts. In the member’s hour, we continue discussing Jenny Hill’s story. Judy responds to therapists who claim ritual abuse survivors such as Jenny are suffering from “false memory syndrome.” We’ll discuss commonly recalled ritual ceremony scenes, which seem to always involve children and drugs. Judy also talks about her encounter with a former freemason who heard about her research. Later, we discuss police investigations into missing children and detectives who do not believe ritual abuse cases are real.

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/20 ... 131129.php
http://rediceradio.net/radio/2013/RIR-1 ... on-hr1.mp3
http://rediceradio.net/radio/2013/RIR-1 ... r1-low.mp3

Byington responds to Dr. Phil.

http://22faces.com/dr-phil-the-rest-of-the-story/

Dr. Phil – The Rest of the Story – By Judy Byington, Author, Twenty-Two Faces
Dr. Phil: “Mentally Ill Moms” – January 11, 2013
rest at the link: http://22faces.com/dr-phil-the-rest-of-the-story/