For the reasons stated above, we know that children do not make up stories asserting they have been sexually molested. It is not in their interests to do so. Young children do not have the sexual knowledge necessary to fabricate an allegation. Clinicians and researchers in the field of sexual abuse are in agreement that false allegations by children are extremely rare [7]. Further in those unusual instances where they do occur, there is usually some serious malfunction in the family.
A bitter divorce *may* be categorised under serious malfunction. The psychologist may have believed this was one of those very rare instances where the abuse was fabricated or perhaps exaggerated to please the father. I doubt it. As an adult the daughter maintains that she was abused. She hasn't changed her mind. At this point it would be beneficial for her to do so, in terms of the relationship with her grandfather. All of the kids to some extent have suffered for sticking by her. One of the brother's is told he can't serve a mission because of all this, right?
Often a child will be candid with a parent or relative, but will be quite reticent with a professional. If this problem is anticipated, it may be possible to have those persons whom the child has told tape record the child's statements at home where the child feels less threatened. It is also a good practice to have such a person present during the interview, but some time will be needed alone with the child. In certain instance a child may feel less free to talk with a trusted adult because she does not want to upset that person, or because she does not want to make that person angry at the perpetrator.
Was there any attempt to listen to Ron's account of what his daughter had told him, or was he judged a bitter ex trying to get back at his fil and thus dismissed?
"It's a little like the Confederate Constitution guaranteeing the freedom to own slaves. Irony doesn't exist for bigots or fanatics." Maksutov
Res Ipsa wrote: Like I said upthread, Karren reminds me of Smith. I'm glad we agree on something.
Footnote: I know we don't agree on this. I just thought it was a funny coincidence...
So it is. When you consider all the huge egos in the LDS corporation floating around, between GA their family members, those related through marriage, and offspring... is it any wonder you get all sorts of personality disorders at odds with each other?
Mr. Karran's family history traces back to the earliest church pioneers, probably not so different from the GA family he married into. There is/was a lot of intermarriage going back to the early years of church history.
Pioneer ancestry precedes any church history of course. But Karran does not strike me as someone who is off his rocker. He seems grounded enough to know right from wrong and that two wrongs don't make a right.
He's another whistleblower in my opinion. That is what he is doing by telling his story. One more to add to the list of many for exposing the sins of the elders of Zion and the hypocrisy of those who occupy its throne.
It's another way of shattering the myth that people have made them more than they are: mere mortals who are as fallen as the rest of the world - but who fancy themselves gods in embryo - the ultimate narcissism.
Mary wrote:RI, the article linked is about whether children lie about being abused. Short answer. They don't.
As for the psychologist, she was an expert witness in battered woman's syndrome. ( Bias there perhaps). And yes. I read her impressive list of qualifications. I also found a Deseret News article on the couple. We can all demonise people. http://m.deseretnews.com/article/585120 ... tml?pg=all
It's not about lying vs. not lying, it's about asking leading questions and getting children to say what you do and/or don't want them to say. Children are easy to manipulate and control.
So, in case I'm confusing anyone who knows who I am when I say i'm not a psychologist.... here's the scoop: i''m an all-but-thesis master's candidate at a well-known university. I"'m workign on my thesis right now. Psychology is a Ph.D. level field and my degree was very interrupted by Mormon drama a few years back. I have decided not to pursue the Ph.D. and to do something that will make me more money and get me away from the human services. i believe I was attracted to the human services for the wrong reasons. I think I used psychology to understand my Mormon experience and that I've worked through that part of my life now. I'm finished my transition out of Mormonism and am now transitioning out of care-taking roles. I'm going to do something completely different with my life now.
This means that I will have a research-oriented degree when I get my diploma next spring and that I'll hang it on my wall and point at it and say, "Wow, isn't it cool that I did that once?" but that I will be doing something completely different with my time. Thus, I can say whatever I want about the topics that interest me on message boards and you all can take it or leave it. I will never have the responsibility or the authority to diagnose. I wouldn't mind educating people about autism, though, because I do think that a lot of families are suffering.
So, I'm an official armchair psychologist. Take it or leave it. Whatever you want.... of flame, i'ts up to you.
(And apologies for any confusion I may have caused by not beign more specific.)
______
Here's what I see as the difference between Joseph-Smith-type manipulation and what I see in Karren:
Individuals with autism have impairment in their abilities to immediately and pre-cognizantly (before thinking) understand how others are feeling and what others intend when they take actions. When a typically developing person observes another person taking an action, some of the same motor neurons fire in the typically developing observer's mind as were fired in the brain of the observed person takign the action. As a result, the typically developing person experiences the action fo the person he or she was observing at the same time the person took the action. This allows typically developing people to quickly and effortlessly understand the intentions of others' actions. It means that when a typically developing person observes another person smile or cry, the typically developing person feels their own face smile or cry and immediately has a personal understanding of the meaning of the other person's emotions. For typically developing people, then, empathy is immediate and embodied.
The brain of a person with autsim, however, will not (to be simplistic) fire some of the same motor neurons that were fired in the brain of the person the person with autism is observing. This means that a person with autism will not have an immediate understanding of what it is like to experience with another person his or her smile and will not immediately understand what another person may be iintending when she or he takes a particular action. People with high-functioning autism do not have the same language delays or intellectual impairment issues as people with other forms of autism and they use their intellectual skills to, by the time they are adults, develop compensatory strategies that allow them to interact socially with apparent normalcy. They still lack the neurological ability to simultaneously experience someone else's emotions or actions. They can have compassion and empathy, but they must access it through formal cognitive thought rather than through the quick neurological mirror functioning.
So: let's talk Joseph Smith.
My guess would be that Joseph Smith had a very high understanding of others' emotions and perspectives. He knew how to make friends (and lose them, but that's another story). He was charismatic and knew how to get people to follow him. If I had to guess, he used his smile and his tone of voice to gain trust. He told people what they wanted to hear and he knew what they wanted to hear because he could use his highly functioning typically developing brain to predict their actions and their intentions and then adjust his actions to extract from them the result he wanted. He would speak to his audience's emotions and get them swooning and believing. He likely used smiles and flattery to seduce women. He used offers of prestige, power and friendship to seduce men. He was able to manipulate many people because he could use hsi typically developing brain to strategize to get the responses he wanted. This is classic manipulation. (Not sociopathic, I'd think, as he probably had a lot of compassion and heart, too, but manipulation for personal gain nonetheless.)
Now let's talk high-functioning autism:
A person with HFA is, in many ways, the opposite of a Joseph Smith in regards to people skills. This person has little to no access to an immediate understanding of how others' feel or what others' intend through their actions. Depending on the level of impairment, this person may have almost no ability to manipulate others the way Joseph Smith did because this person does not have access to an understanding of others' emotions and desires. This person doesn't know how to flatter, smile and use tone of voice to gain trust because this person may not fully understand how his or her own actions evoke a reciprocal reaction from the person she or he is trying to communicate with. This person may not know what others are lookign for when others are trying to decide if they can trust and so this person won't easily be able to act in a trustworthy way in order to manipulate a reaction from the person they want to influence. This person would be a terrible sales person. Without an emotional understanding of the others, this person's manipulations (if this person is manipulative) are very different than Joseph Smith's manipulations likely were.
Of course, not all typically developing people are highly manipulative and I would assume that it is also true that not all people with high-functioning autsim are highly manipulative. That said, all of us use the skills we have to try to influence others. The extent to which we use these skills in a manner that harms others and brings ourselves personal gain may be the extent to which we might be considered nefariously manipulative.
So, let's look at Karren. He's trying to get his audience to believe a story that doesn't add up. He wants us to see the world his way enough that he will tell us the facts as he says he sees them despite the fact that his facts contradict each other. He seems like he is beign manipulative because he is able to evoke emotional reactions from some of his audience members that, for whatever reasons, seem to cause some to believe him despite his reasoning errors. But, I don't think he is succeeding at manipulating people because he is skilled at understanding emotions and how to get emotional reactions. Rather, he is skilled at using criticism and attacks that overpower his victims and he is speaking to the anger his proponents understand and feel. I think he's succeeding with some because they have a vendetta. He is succeeding with some because there really is a child abuse problem and there is anger about that problem. People want the child abuse problem resolved and will follow someone who is taking on the fight.
As far as his many reasoning errors, in my experience, people with high-functioning autism (wihtout access to a lot of the environmental social information that is immediately available to typically developing individuals through their functioning mirror neuron systems) seem to get lost in their own reasoning. They somehow seem to really believe that what they are saying adds up. If they say it with enough confidence, and many of them do because they often really believe it (as far as I can tell), those who hear truth in confidence will be convinced. That said, sometimes their reasoning is so poor and their facts so misaligned, that I am convinced they are also simply lying and they believe their untruths are justified because they feel they have been unjustly controlled and manipulated by the typically developing people around them who seem to act on information that doesn't (to the person with autism) exist in reality. Sigh... I shoud try to explain this better, but I'm running out of time.
This is what I see in Karren (in addition to his writing style and his interaction style which align with HFA). Also, as he's smart, he may be covering something up as well, but isn't aware enough of others' perspectives to realize how much of himself he is revealing in his cover. That is a weakness of autism. If one can't perspective take and can't see one's own arguments from an outside perspective, one will very confidently state all sorts fo things that a person with critical thinking skills can see right through.
Joseph Smith might have also known how much he was revealing of himself in his errors, but it didn't matter because he had the social skills to swoon people into following him and basking in his power anyway. He could predict others actions and read their intentions allowing him to strategically take actions to get the response from others that he wanted. An adult with HFA can't replicate that kind of manipulation, but may very confidently and stubbornly assert poorly reasoned facts that don't add up over long periods of time, sometimes attacking people brutally along the way.... just like Karren.
For the reasons stated above, we know that children do not make up stories asserting they have been sexually molested. It is not in their interests to do so. Young children do not have the sexual knowledge necessary to fabricate an allegation. Clinicians and researchers in the field of sexual abuse are in agreement that false allegations by children are extremely rare [7]. Further in those unusual instances where they do occur, there is usually some serious malfunction in the family.
A bitter divorce *may* be categorised under serious malfunction. The psychologist may have believed this was one of those very rare instances where the abuse was fabricated or perhaps exaggerated to please the father. I doubt it. As an adult the daughter maintains that she was abused. She hasn't changed her mind. At this point it would be beneficial for her to do so, in terms of the relationship with her grandfather. All of the kids to some extent have suffered for sticking by her. One of the brother's is told he can't serve a mission because of all this, right?
Often a child will be candid with a parent or relative, but will be quite reticent with a professional. If this problem is anticipated, it may be possible to have those persons whom the child has told tape record the child's statements at home where the child feels less threatened. It is also a good practice to have such a person present during the interview, but some time will be needed alone with the child. In certain instance a child may feel less free to talk with a trusted adult because she does not want to upset that person, or because she does not want to make that person angry at the perpetrator.
Was there any attempt to listen to Ron's account of what his daughter had told him, or was he judged a bitter ex trying to get back at his fil and thus dismissed?
The psychologist was very careful to explain her role as therapist for the children. She wasn't hired to evaluate the truthfulness of the daughter's statements about the grandfather. She was there to make recommendations to the divorce court and to the parents for the mental and emotional well being of the children. At no point does she give any opinion as to whether the grandfather had molested the daughter.
The psychologist met with both parents after the intake interviews with the kids. Ron certainly had ample opportunity to inform her of anything he wanted to. Here's the thing, though. Ron's present description of the timing of the daughter's disclosure to him is inconsistent with the evidence that is closer in time to the relevant events. Ron's current story is that the daughter first talked about the molestation in January '08. He then describes the process of finding a therapist to get help for the daughter.
However, when I look at the documentation Ron has provided, the first time Ron mentions the daughter's story is after the daughter has begun seeing the therapist. The sequence in the documents created closest to the events is something like this:
1. Ron calls therapist Stringham. Her notes make no mention of him saying anything about his daughter's story. Her notes indicate that Ron told her the court needs an evaluation of where the kids will live permanently and that their mother is abusing them. Therapy is scheduled for all three kids. 2. The therapist has an intake session with the daughter. There is no mention of her grandfather molesting her. 3. Ron meets with the therapist shortly after the intake interview. Don't know what was discussed. 4. Daughter has a therapy session. No mention of molestation. 5. Almost three weeks after he first contacts the therapist, Ron speaks to the therapist and asks if the daughter had reported her grandfather's abusing her. He indicates that the daughter had told him a week before and he had instructed the daughter to tell her in their next session. 6. The daughter has a therapy session the next day. She does not say anything about the molestation until the therapist asks if there is something her father had asked her to talk about. She also says she told her father about a week before.
The first time I can find documentation of Ron claiming that the daughter told him about the molestation before the kids were seeing the therapist is in his complaint to the licensing authority, about four years after the kids saw the therapist. Even then, some of what he says in that complaint is more consistent with the daughter first discussing the molestation after she was in therapy.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
I honestly believe you to be over analysing Ron, Rosebud. A simpler explanation for his behaviour is that he truly believes that his daughter (and wife if you read between the lines) were victims of abuse by grandpa. I don't spot any defect in his ability to empathise, particularly with his daughter. He also is able to reflect on how his behaviour has affected others. Again, he is quick tempered and admits as such, he is stubborn, he is angry and hurt, but he is also a father fighting for the justice of his daughter in a state which reveres and defers to leaders. His imperfect and laborious posts indicate someone trying the heck to work it out.
The quick dismissal of the daughter's claim to have been sexually abused by the psychologist is very problematic. The CPS response was problematic. If you believe your child was telling the truth in her discussion with you, and I believe Ron sincerely believes his daughter, (which is probably why she trusted him with more detailed information), then you are going to be supremely frustrated that she is being dismissed and you might even see it as your job to fight for her.
The article I linked to does concentrate as RI pointed out, on younger children, but it also details the behaviours of older children. The daughter appears to fit the profile of a sexually abused minor. If the mother completely dimisses the daughter rather than take her seriously, then isn't that puzzling? I am puzzled by that.
"It's a little like the Confederate Constitution guaranteeing the freedom to own slaves. Irony doesn't exist for bigots or fanatics." Maksutov
Mary wrote:Doc. Are you reading the documents? He didn’t find out about the specifics of the abuse until his daughter told him, when she was 12? And he immediately acted on it.
I thought he said his wife confessed over the phone when the kid was 6, or was it when Mickelsen said the girl was being promiscuous with him at age 6? There's too much to pour over and too much to keep track of, frankly.
It might be helpful if there was a timeline?
- Doc
Mine's 11 pages long, so it's still TL/DR.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Aren't all the allegations based on Mr. Karren's word? Has the court docket been released? Have we heard from the allegedly abused daughter? Frankly, if it is all comes from a single source and given the family court background, it's simply hard to believe.
His story where he recounts when his daughter allegedly tells him about how she knows what's going on, when they were supposedly driving in the car is too detailed with the non-essential elements of the case. He supposedly remembers insignificant details about where he was, etc. Memory doesn't work that way. We remember generalities. The specifics make it seem like he is exaggerating a bit and harm his credibility. Also, why the slow reveal? What not just lay it all out at once? Why the sensationalism?
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
Ron states the daughter told him about the abuse in January 2008. His phone records indicate he starts phoning around the next working day. The letter to the court from the psychologist with commensurate date's in February, wherein he recalls a February date for the abuse discussion with daughter do not add up. There is date discrepancy there - which needs explaining. Did the conversation in the car with the daughter occur in January or February?
Was the impetus for counselling sparked by the daughter's in car discussion with Ron or by the wider divorce case. My basic timeline
Micklesen phonecall 2002- daughter 6 Mum walk out 2006 - daughter 10 Car discussion January 2008 - daughter 12 Divorce finalised 2009 No of affidavits filed and video made 2012 Wife remarries 2013
"It's a little like the Confederate Constitution guaranteeing the freedom to own slaves. Irony doesn't exist for bigots or fanatics." Maksutov
Mary wrote:I honestly believe you to be over analysing Ron, Rosebud. A simpler explanation for his behaviour is that he truly believes that his daughter (and wife if you read between the lines) were victims of abuse by grandpa. I don't spot any defect in his ability to empathise, particularly with his daughter. He also is able to reflect on how his behaviour has affected others. Again, he is quick tempered and admits as such, he is stubborn, he is angry and hurt, but he is also a father fighting for the justice of his daughter in a state which reveres and defers to leaders. His imperfect and laborious posts indicate someone trying the heck to work it out.
The quick dismissal of the daughter's claim to have been sexually abused by the psychologist is very problematic. The CPS response was problematic. If you believe your child was telling the truth in her discussion with you, and I believe Ron sincerely believes his daughter, (which is probably why she trusted him with more detailed information), then you are going to be supremely frustrated that she is being dismissed and you might even see it as your job to fight for her.
The article I linked to does concentrate as RI pointed out, on younger children, but it also details the behaviours of older children. The daughter appears to fit the profile of a sexually abused minor. If the mother completely dimisses the daughter rather than take her seriously, then isn't that puzzling? I am puzzled by that.
Hmmm...... the perspective taking and empathy deficits are glaring. He's throwing a 20-yo abuse victim to the wolves of media and referring to his ex-wife's "crotch" online. I don't know how much more evidence of lack of empathy you want. I'm starting to wonder if you're trolling.
I don't feel I'm analyzing as much as pointing out that his long-winded writing style, decision to release over long periods of time, inability to put his thesis first and then provide evidence, high-conflict divorce patterns, highly emotional responses to and fixation on divorce-related topics even though the divorce was ten years ago, extreme misinterpretations of social situations he adamant insists are evidence of a crime, and the other things I've pointed out all align with high-functioning autism. Yes, the stubbornness you mention aligns too. He knows he's right despite any objections he receives.
(But that doesn't also mean that everybody with HFA acts like this or that my assessment is correct. Some people with the disorder are much more gentle.)
I have a question for you: if all psychologists know that every time a child says something about abuse that happened in the past, all the details a child gives are 100% accurate because children don't lie about abuse (not implying I agree with the use of the word "lie" here), what is the point in psychologists being trained to evaluate children's accuracy of reporting? By your reasoning, all qualified psychologists knows the answer before they speak to children.
Yes, it is true that not all psychologists are trustworthy and honest (a LOT of them are not) or that CPS always provides valuable services. There are many problems with "the system." But with that said, we don't have enough information or evidence about what happened and in this case the person who is providing us information and evidence has enough obvious reasoning errors that what he offers isn't valuable. There's not much to talk about here related to the case, in my opinion, because he doesn't have much of a case. Instead, he's acting, frankly, like someone with high-functioning autism and possibly some other comorbid disorders who has access to Internet publishing and is bent on revenge.
And of course it's also possible that the above assessment of K is accurate and that M still abused K's daughter. But K might have abused his own daughter as well. We just don't know..... and that's the point. K has already dug himself enough reasoning holes that whatever he writes in the future will lack credibility. Frankly, the information he has given makes him look like a disgruntled co-conspirator to me. But I don't have enough information. It's a mess.
His poor daughter just needs help and this is what she's got for a family. I think she needs to run away from all the people in her life now that she's old enough to get out.
