UPDATED::The legacy of implanted Satanic abuse 'memories' is still causing damage today

Please note that over the course of the incidents surrounding this case I have seen various spellings and name uses applied to the Felstead/Myers.

UPDATE:: Devil's Work The mystery behind the death of a nurse who falsely accused her dad of running a satanic cult and getting her pregnant in ‘ritual’ rape

THE family of a nurse who died after claiming her parents ran a satanic cult and she was repeatedly raped by her dad have been awarded a third inquest to establish the truth around her mysterious death.

Carol Myers, 41, claimed to have had six babies after being ritually raped by members of the cult, all of which she said were then murdered at birth.

She also claimed her mother Joan murdered her baby sister before setting fire to the family home in Stockport, Cheshire.

But a police probe concluded that there was no evidence for any of the allegations, and her family firmly believe that Carol was brainwashed into believing false memories during controversial regression therapy.

Carol, who moved to London in the 1980s and later changed her name, was found dead in her flat in June 2005.
But her brother, Dr Kevin Felstead, says the family weren’t told until TWO WEEKS later – when she was about to be cremated.

UPDATE:: Another look at the Felstead/Myers case,,,

Carol Myers, 41, claimed her family were part of a cult and abused her before alleging that her mother murdered her sister and set fire to their house to hide the evidence.

But a police investigation found the disturbing allegations were unsubstantiated and her family believe they were false memories dreamt up during controversial recovered memory therapy sessions.
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Coroner Fiona Wilcox said she could not rule that Ms Myers suffered from false memories. But she acknowledged that the "extreme allegations that were made of satanic sexual abuse and murder were investigated and found to be absolutely unsubstantiated".

She added: "I wish to be clear that the family absolutely protest claims that Carol was abused sexually, and that the allegations of Satanic sexual abuse and murder that she made in life were investigated by police and found to be unsubstantiated."
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Speaking after the inquest, Mr Felstead said his sister had been given therapy "that would shame a medieval quack and she ended up in a horrific condition".

He placed the blame for her disturbing accusations of abuse with the therapists who counselled her.

He said: "She was regressed and hypnotised. She came to believe that her family were the leaders of a Satanic cult responsible for mass murder.

"It included members of parliament, including two former members of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet. My mother was said to have murdered a baby and burnt the house down to hide it.

 Nurse died after claiming she was sexually abused by Satanic cult, inquest told

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It is sometimes hard to fathom that some 30 years onward, the need to dispel false memories of Satanic abuse still exists.  But yet here it is 2015,,,

When 21-year-old nurse Carol Felstead went to her doctor complaining of repeated headaches, she wasn’t just prescribed painkillers. Instead, she was referred for psychotherapy that would ultimately involve hypnosis to “recover” so-called repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. Carol subsequently came to believe that her parents were the leaders of a Satanic cult and that her mother murdered another of her children, sat Carol on top of the body and then set fire to the family home.

But these allegations were untrue and the memories they were based upon were incorrect. Today, almost 30 years on, “recovered memory therapy” has been discredited by the scientific and academic community and is known to implant false memories, apparent memories for events that never actually happened.

Experimental psychologists have repeatedly demonstrated the ease with which false memories can be implanted in a sizeable proportion of the population under well-controlled laboratory conditions. But it is also undoubtedly the case that such false memories can arise spontaneously as well as in the context of psychotherapy.

Although we are typically not consciously aware of it, we often have to judge whether an apparent memory is real. Is it based upon mental events that were purely internally generated (for example, by imagination or a dream) or based upon events which really took place in the external world?
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Carol cut off contact with her family, changed her name to Carole Myers, and died in 2005, aged 41, in circumstances that are still unexplained. Prior to receiving psychotherapy, she was a bright and intelligent young woman with her life ahead of her. Her story highlights the inherent dangers associated with unproven psycho-therapeutic techniques which seek to recover putative repressed memories of childhood trauma, in particular childhood sexual abuse.

The legacy of implanted Satanic abuse 'memories' is still causing damage today

What made them falsely accuse their dads of sex abuse? | Daily Mail Online

Since becoming popular in the U.S. in the Eighties, this therapy has been largely discredited because of its persistent association with what has been described as ‘false memory syndrome’, in which patients make untrue allegations — usually against their parents and involving sexual or physical abuse.

‘Sadly, some psychotherapists are still using these dangerous techniques,’ says Chris French, a psychology professor specialising in memory, at Goldsmiths, University of London.

‘Society finds it easy to accept the idea that a victim of abuse has repressed the memory and that a skilled therapist can bring it to the surface.

‘But there is little evidence to support the idea that a traumatic experience will be pushed into the unconscious mind. You are far more likely to remember a traumatic event than forget it.’

What made them falsely accuse their dads of sex abuse? | Daily Mail Online

Satanic child abuse claims are almost certainly based on false memories | Chris French | Science | The Guardian

If the situation is different this time and there exists forensic evidence to support the claims being made, it is vital that such evidence is passed to the police as soon as possible. But this looks unlikely. As Lumbasi says in the Scottish Express, “In most cases, we can’t blame the police for not taking action. If they have no actual evidence such as names, times or places to go with, what can they do?”

Keep in mind as you're reading this article that French is raising doubts about the specific claims made by the charities. These claims state that satanic abuse, involving child and animal sacrifice and other extreme behaviors, is rife in Scotland and has been for decades. Very similar to claims that were widespread in the US in the 1980s and 90s (the Satanic Panic) but were never substantiated with physical evidence. Instead, there is strong evidence to support the idea that the claims were either based upon the use of inappropriate dubious memory recovery techniques or inappropriate child interview techniques

“EXCLUSIVE: Charities claim that the satanic abuse of children is rife” screamed the headline in the Express on Sunday earlier this month. The piece reports that two charities, Kilmarnock-based Break the Silence and Dundee-based Izzy’s Promise, believe satanic abuse to be rife in Scotland and that it has been for decades. They say children are forced to take part in satanic rituals involving the sacrifice of babies and the making of snuff movies. According to Kate Short of Break the Silence, “Victims are so brainwashed they don’t dare to speak out.” These are obviously extremely serious allegations – but are they true?

A similar, although more detailed, story ran on the same day in the Scottish Express. Both stories point out that Police Scotland has said it is taking the allegations “incredibly seriously”. Following the Jimmy Savile child sex abuse scandal, it would be very surprising if they had said anything else. We now know that many of Savile’s victims had complained of being abused at his hands at the time the abuse was taking place and that they were ignored by those in authority. That this happened is a disgrace and the result was that Savile was free to abuse dozens, possibly hundreds, more victims.

Have complaints of extreme satanic abuse been routinely made over the years and similarly ignored or suppressed by the authorities? A comment from Short suggests otherwise. She is quoted as saying that “survivors often suppressed their memories of such harrowing childhood events and therefore the specific details are vague, meaning they can be written off as suffering from of ‘false memory syndrome’ or mental illness.”

Similarly, Joseph Lumbasi, project coordinator with Izzy’s Promise, states that, “People who talk to us are relating us their experiences from when they were maybe just eight, nine or ten – kids really.” In other words, it appears highly likely that many of these claims are based upon “recovered memories”. As I have written in the past in these pages, the use of various dubious techniques by therapists and counsellors aimed at recovering allegedly repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse can often produce detailed and horrific false memories.
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In fact, there is a consensus among scientists studying memory that traumatic events are more likely to be remembered than forgotten, often leading to posttraumatic stress disorder. So despite widespread acceptance among the general public, legal professionals, and those working in mental health, the very notion of repression as described by Short is doubted by the majority of memory researchers.

The sad truth is that we have been here before. On 13 March 1990, the headline of the Daily Mirror read, “Kids forced into satan orgies”. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had reported that satanic abuse was widespread in the UK.

Satanic child abuse claims are almost certainly based on false memories | Chris French | Science | The Guardian

The Most Dangerous Idea in Mental Health - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

Troublingly, 43 percent of practicing clinical psychologists still think it is possible to retrieve repressed memories. Those therapists are profoundly out of step with the thinking among research psychologists.

Reading this was a bit like walking down memory lane. Not so much for me personally, in regards to actual treatment, as I have never had a treatment provider go to the extremes cited in this article.  But I did "suffer" with a diagnoses of MPD'DID concurrent with my Bipolar.  I now believe that misnomer was applied because I am a cutter and back in the day, self injury was not well understood.  But I did and still do have friends that are "caught" in this morass, I got sucked into the "belief" of alter-personalities to the point where I began to question my literal sanity.  If not for the excellent care from my last therapist, who knows where I'd be today; probably still locked in one of the nut houses I was a visitor too.

(To be clear, I say that in jest.  There are some excellent facilities helping many individuals.  But there are some not so good ones as well.  I experienced both, the initial 3 years after experiencing my first psychotic episode, I spent 18 months in and out of hospital.  I am crazy and I have the papers to prove it.  Both the good and the bad is part of who I am and  I have no problem making light of it.)

My interest with this article besides the obvious concerning Castlewood, is Cara's reference to belief in "cults [that] roam the country, ritualistically traumatizing children."  In other words the "Satanic Panic" that led to this travesty as well as this one which I prefaced with this comment:

For those that may not remember, it began in 1983 (my sophomore year of college) with the McMartin Preschool case out of California.* Fuel was added by the likes of Mike Warnke, John Todd, Jack Chick, Michelle Smith and of course my buddy Bob Larson; the list is an endless whose who of Christian fundamentalism. Though the flames began to die down in the 90s, the 'San Antonio 4' was one of the  last big cases to sweep the nation. About damn time that some true justice has come for Elizabeth Ramirez, Kristie Mayhugh and Cassandra Rivera. Now all they need is a declaration of innocents to complete the process.

Some may think that Cara is being hyperbolic, or that my interest is a bit over the top.  But when one considers the rise in popularity of demons, deliverance ministries and of exorcisms, I don't think neither of us are delusional in our reporting.

It has been two years since Tom Mitchell last saw his 20-year-old daughter, Anna. “She was planning to come stay with us right after she came back,” he says, gesturing toward her bedroom in his Craftsman style home in New York on a recent afternoon. “We’ve kept everything the same, except for the boy-band posters.”

Nearly four years ago, Tom and his ex-wife sent their daughter to an eating-disorder clinic called the Castlewood Treatment Center, outside St. Louis. In her five months there, Anna grew to believe she had recovered memories of a deeply abusive childhood that she had previously banished from her conscious mind. Since then, Mitchell has lived in the shadow of a horrific accusation: that he sexually abused Anna for more than a decade.

Child sexual abuse is, of course, a serious and widespread issue in America. Researchers agree that it occurs far more often than official statistics indicate, because children so often decline to report their abuse out of embarrassment, a desire to protect members of their family, or in an attempt to avoid the memory altogether. But the idea that people can immediately banish abuse from their own consciousness, lock those memories away for years, and then recover them through therapy is one with far shakier empirical grounding, and a deeply problematic history. The therapeutic vogue for memory recovery in the early 1990s fueled a nationwide moral panic over ritual sex abuse, satanic cults, and other supposedly repressed traumas. Today, for most of us, the fad seems like a strange, self-contained, and very much closed chapter in recent cultural history.

But for Tom Mitchell, who denies his daughter’s accusations, the controversy is very much alive. He believes his family has suffered from the fact that the mental health establishment has never really purged itself of a thoroughly discredited idea—and arguably lacks the basic mechanisms necessary to self-correct.

[,,,]
But the tide really began to turn when former patients started to doubt their own recovered memories. In dozens of lawsuits, patients described coercive therapeutic techniques including hypnosis, guided visualization, and dream analysis, and the pressure of group therapy, often used on them when they were at their most vulnerable. Some former patients related terrifying experiences of being confined in mental health wards stocked with people who believed they had dozens of personalities. Therapists, some of the lawsuits claimed, both encouraged these beliefs and accused patients who expressed doubt of succumbing to programming they received from a cult. Some settlements from the lawsuits reached into the millions.

By the end of the 1990s, many of the trauma clinics that had specialized in recovered memory therapy had shut down. The daytime talk shows about satanic abuse and multiple personalities became less frequent, and the courts became wary of testimony based on recovered memories. Richard McNally, the director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology at Harvard and author of the book Remembering Trauma, put it bluntly in a friend-of-court brief: “The notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry.”

The Most Dangerous Idea in Mental Health - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society