Updated May 2, 2021, with Important Contributions by an Anonymous Survivor-Colleague. Originally published October 6, 2006. Important note: This article includes some very disturbing content. Survivors may want to have a therapist, clergy-person, or other support person review it first and then discuss when it might be the right time to read it and whether to read it together. Introduction Most...
Treatment of Victims Who Condemn Themselves for Harm Done to Other Victims
BackgroundThis presentation will discuss the treatment of victims who have done harm to other victims driven by: a) abuser coercion andthreats, b) psychological manipulation by dissociation-savvy abusers, and, c) enactments of sexual and physical abuse in dissociated states. MethodThe author, a PhD qualified Clinical Psychologist, has worked with abuse survivors since 1982 and with victims of...
Have We (Us Grown-ups) Been Naughty or Nice?
Our Hopes for Our Children We wish our childhoods were filled with love and happy memories. But for many people, maybe most, our childhoods were something less. Perhaps our parents were harsh and overly critical. Perhaps we were abused in unthinkable ways. Now we have our own children. Will we make our children feel the way we felt growing up? Or will we be able to give them more love and peace...
Sexual Responses to Sexual Assault
I have worked primarily with child sexual abuse since 1984, treating both child victims and adult survivors, probably about 100 of each, if I had to hazard a guess. In this time, I have learned a startling, as well as somewhat obvious, effect of child sexual abuse: Perpetrators who sexually abuse children achieve whatever response they are seeking in the child. Perpetrators have the advantage of...
Forgiveness as an Act of Defiance, by Reverend Lynn James, LMHC
I have spent the past 20 years as a counselor working with survivors of all kinds of violence. I have listened to brutal details of atrocities that happen daily in all kinds of war zones. Too often, these war zones are right in people’s own homes and lives. What strikes me over and over again are some troubling polarities that are often imposed on victims about forgiveness, such as: Forgiveness...
Spirituality, Evil, and Suffering
The Messages Communicated to Child Abuse Victims As a trauma therapist, I hear daily how people’s spiritual beliefs can be a deep source of comfort and wisdom. However, sadly, in some instances, spiritual beliefs and messages can actually reinforce the messages of child abusers and increase the self-blame and the pain of victims and survivors. Abused and neglected children, and sometimes even...
Seeing and Breaking the Chains: Steps for Recognizing On-Going Abuse and How to Break FREE
Note from Ellen Lacter: This piece is based on a presentation by Arauna Morgan, MA, which was given at the May 2013 Survivorship Conference in Oakland California. Arauna Morgan is a trusted colleague, in the process of becoming a California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and a survivor of ritual abuse and mind control. I recommend her as a consultant to therapists working with survivors...
Ritual Abuse and Torture-based Mind Control: Reducing and Preventing Re-contact with Abusers
Cautionary Notes: This is one of the more distressing pages on my website. Survivors in therapy should read this webpage only after their therapists have first read it and assessed that the survivor would benefit from reading it. If a survivor does not have a therapist, I strongly recommend that she/he obtain a therapist and only read this webpage with the therapist’s approval. Information on...
Deep Inner Decisions that Allow Survivors to Heal
Choices of Strength and Healing Positions of Defeat To choose life. To consider death as an option. To have deep inner reasons to live. To simply exist or look to others for reasons to live. To find safety if suicidal feelings are not controllable. To look to others to magically stop suicidal feelings. To hunger for truth, despite the pain, for freedom. To run from truth and hope for healing...
“The Moral of the Story”
This page is the first publication of Trish Fotheringham’s epilogue to her chapter entitled, “Patterns in Mind-Control: A First Person Account”, published in Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-first Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social and Political Considerations, (2008), J.R. Noblitt & P. S. Perskin Noblitt (Eds), pp. 491-540. Bandon, Oregon: Robert D. Reed Publishers. The chapter by Trish...