Nelsons daughter and son-in-law accused of sex abuse

[_Rosebud]

Theory of repressed memory? I'm unaware of that term. Dissociation is a normal facet of the human mind. Without dissociation, none of us would be able to drive or walk. We must be able to focus only on the conscious activity of our brains while our minds still take care of activities which we are not focusing on.

Dissociative disorders begin on page 291 of the current DSM (2013) where it reads, "The dissociative disorders are frequently found in the aftermath of trauma." "Dissociative amnesia" is also mentioned on that page. Dissociative Identity Disorder begins on page 292.

This has Dissociatuve Identity Disorder written all over it.

I can't give you direct evidence of what you ask for. Only questions and many data points. I like to follow patterns of data points in the absence of direct evidence.

I do believe that the Miles' response to the suit is characteristic of a defense strategy used by real predators. That is not, of course, evidence that they are predators. It is, however, a data point. It could also be that they are innocent and the children were convinced to believe something false.

Do you have evidence that the only therapists who where discredited were guilty of what you say? Or evidence that those who were discredited are only guilty of quackery and were not good individuals trying to figure out what was going on in a new field in the 80s and 90s? Do you have evidence that they aren't doing better work today? Barbara Snow's practice is open and her clients seem to feel she is a leader in the field and one of a few people who hasn't abandoned victims of extreme organized abuse (based on the online reviews I quoted in the post above).

What Mormons were falsely imprisoned? What families were devastated by therapists implanting false memories? The John and Jane Does in this suit seem to believe they were devastated by the abuse, not the therapists who tried to help them.

It's impossible that the church is true. This is not impossible.

[_Rosebud]

Found it:

http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref ... ci_5051155

Another Trib article. 2007. It doesn't appear that Snow lost her license and this article reads like it is intended to discredit her. Data points.

A judge upheld a conviction even while noting Snow's involvement..... not that what judges decide means much about reality or truth. They're usually sitting on the bench trying to figure out who the biggest liar is. The court system doesn't work very well.

[_Amore]

I believe sexual abuse happens by church members and some with ties high up in leadership. But I think it’s not as common as some would claim... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p3gZn8-aMRc

The main point is that no matter if it’s family or part of the church - people should be held accountable, and receive help when needed.

[_Res Ipsa]

I believe sexual abuse happens by church members and some with ties high up in leadership. But I think it’s not as common as some would claim... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p3gZn8-aMRc

The main point is that no matter if it’s family or part of the church - people should be held accountable, and receive help when needed.

Yeah, given the odds, I suspect you’re right.It happens in other organized religions and there’s no reason Mormons would be immune. And I think your bottom line is dead in.

[_Rosebud]

And that the church should use a child protection policy that works.....

[_Rosebud]

I also found this book: Muliple Identityes and False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective (1996)

http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=1 ... F10216-000

"Multiple Identities and False Memories" presents a . . . critique of the assumed connection between multiple personality disorder (MPD), now classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) as dissociative identity disorder, and the recovery of repressed memories of childhood physical and sexual abuse. Spanos argues that MPD is not a naturally occurring mental disorder but rather a social construct that exists in a particular cultural and historical framework.

Spanos contends in this volume that current concepts of MPD are tied to inaccurate "altered state" theories of hypnosis. He provides a critical exploration of the nature of memory and defines the relationships among MPD, hypnosis, and childhood memory repression and recovery. This book examines the complex issues surrounding the reported recovery of memories of abuse during therapy, as well as the role of the therapist in the generation and maintenance of MPD. Spanos also posits that parallels can be drawn between MPD and a number of historical and sociocultural phenomena such as demonic possession, witchcraft, glossolalia, and hysteria. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

I don't really have a too much to say about this title except that it was written in 1996 and is a "sociocultural" product about a "sociocultural" perspective. I tend to try to keep context in mind when evaluating books and reports of anything. The book was written just after the height of the "mass hysteria" and looks at the phenomenon from an academic perspective. I put its existence in my bucket of data points.

I'm not sure I'd spend the time to read it (when there are so many more interesting books around to read!) because it's impossible for a book regarding a theoretical perspective to negate all the other data points, the multiple victim reports that continue to come, and the reality that the brain really does section off traumatic memories. No cultural context or therapist-client relationship can change that functioning of the brain.

The hardest part of this for a lot of people, from what I've seen, is the necessity of keeping contradictory observation in mind and believing that they might be true at the same time.

It can be true that sometimes therapists implant false memories AND that sometimes people have false memories without therapists implanting them AND that sometimes people make false accusations based on false memories AND that young children forget traumatic events AND that sometimes adults remember traumatic events from childhood and want therapists to help them AND that it's unlikely that many old memories can be completely relied upon AND that whether or not memories can be completely relied on doesn't have much to do with whether or not the abuse actually happened -- either it did it it didn't.

Either we have perpetrators around who know what's going on and victims who are trying to manage and recover or we don't. If this has any foundation on reality, no doubt the perpetrators are working hard to discredit victims and cover their behinds so they won't be held accountable. All actions that look like attempts to discredit victims, harm therapists who are trying to help and use media to assist in these actions are important data points and major red flags.

I also don't really know what a "naturally occurring mental disorder" might mean. Does it matter of it's "naturally occurring"? Either behaviors are observed or they aren't. All mental disorders would be sociocultural because they are all classifications that are a product of humans within their own social and cultural contexts looking for ways to define and categorize what they observe for the purpose of research and treatment.

That's why the National Institute of Memtal Health is trying to move towards a more empirically sound classification system than the DSM.

I wonder what research has been done on individuals managing abuse from their childhoods as adults. Theoretical treatise like this book offer a viewpoint through which to consider examining a subject, but they don't replace empirical research or the many observations that go into classifying patterns of human behaviors.

While the DSM most certainly is a "sociocultural" product -- in its entirety -- It is still founded in empiricism. And while there is a lot of room for improvement in the profession, it is still a very valuable work.

You can't debunk dissociative disorders and forgotten childhood traumas with a book.

It''d be fairly ridiculous to claim that because someone wrote a theoretical book about the sociocultural context of diaaociatuve identity disorder in 1996 we know that kids don't forget trauma and that all the victims claims are bunk.

So, anyway, having spent enough time around research psychologists my response is, " Okay, data point." And, "What are the other data points"? My respomse is not "repressed memory theory has been proven false."

[_Meadowchik]

Yeah, given the odds, I suspect you’re right.It happens in other organized religions and there’s no reason Mormons would be immune. And I think your bottom line is dead in.

It does happen everywhere. However, there will be some social structures that are less likely to deal with sexual abuse allegations responsibly. And there are some structures that may even promote abusive behaviors including sexual abuse.

Consider, the historical church structure was built while perpetuating sexual abuse, it's version of polygamy. Men and women were convinced by divine decree that they must break their marital vows, or that they must participate in the violation of someone else's marital vows, and enter into a sexual arrangement.

What level of obedience would be needed, expected, and enforced in order to maintain this abusive structure?

One answer is what we see now in the church.

Good members build their lives completely around the expected pattern. From childhood, the individual member meets personally to report their worthiness to authority. from childhood, they are expected to publicly profess their allegience and demonstrate their obedience. As the leave the parental home, they are expected to serve full-time missions for the church, then marry someone else equally committed in the temple, then begin the same process they underwent but now by producing children of their own.

We are seeing it right now, with women being asked to fast from social media, or Utah citizens being guided on how to vote. Good members are expected to follow a life pattern and also obey more specific, instantaneous requests.

[_Rosebud]

Data points:

A culture of hiding family sexual secrets and believing that one was hiding them for religious reasons and out of loyalty to God was developed surrounding polygamy from the beginning and became even more complex during post-Manifesto polygamy.

Families worked together to hide polygamy -- as families.

Abuse is generally a family phenomenon that passes multigenerationally; families already involved in secrecy would be ripe for exploitation.

Leaders were often asked/expected to practice polygamy.

Michael Quinn (the below is Part 2 section Ii):

http://www.lds-mormon.com/quinn_polygamy.shtml

The 1890-1904 period is only the middle section in a complex history of plural marriage among the Latter-day Saints from 1830 to the present. Understanding this history is complicated by the illegality of plural marriage, by the resulting secrecy connected with its practice, by the fact that polygamy has been the center of a sectarian battleground throughout Mormonism’s history, and finally by the problem of the meaning and application of "truth" in Mormon theology and practice as they relate to plural marriage. Although my primary emphasis here is on the 1890-1904 period, dimensions of the Manifesto that have been overlooked or only partially recognized emerge only by reviewing earlier sections of my complete study.

With the exception of a fifteen-year period during Brigham Young’s presidency, the solemnizing of plural marriages and the resulting polygamous cohabitation among the Mormons have always been illegal wherever and whenever practiced. In Illinois, Joseph Smith and trusted associates performed dozens of polygamous marriages during the 1840s and cohabited with their wives who were pregnant with polygamous children as early as 1843.35 An 1833 Illinois state law provided two years’ imprisonment and a $1000 fine for the married man who married another woman and one year’s imprisonment and a $500 fine for the unmarried woman who knowingly entered into a marriage ceremony with an already married man. Illinois statutes defined the resulting sexual cohabitation in such an unlawful union as a continuing offense, with six months in prison and a $200 fine for the first offense that "shall be sufficiently proved by circumstances which raise the presumption of cohabitation and unlawful intimacy; and for a second offense, such man or woman shall be severally punished twice as much as the former punishment, and for the third offense, treble, and thus increasing the punishment for each succeeding offense."36 Better known is the fact that the Congressional Morrill Act of 1862 outlawed bigamy in U.S. territories, ending the quasi-legality enjoyed by Mormon polygamous unions in Utah and other territories since the departure of the Mormons from Illinois in 1846. After the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Law constitutional in 1879, all new polygamous marriages in Utah and surrounding territories were in violation of both Congressional and Constitutional law. Moreover, the U.S. Constitution and statutory law had already extended the jurisdiction of federal law (and therefore all anti-polygamy laws) to any persons and activities aboard U.S. vessels traveling on the high seas.37 But new polygamous marriage ceremonies continued to be performed under the direction of the First Presidency.

Not long after these U.S. Laws were enacted, polygamy and polygamous cohabitation became illegal in both Canadian and Utah law. Polygamy had been illegal in the western territories of Canada since 1878, and the prohibition was specifically reaffirmed in a new statute after the Mormons established settlements in what’s now Alberta.38 A Utah territorial statute of 1892 outlawing polygamy and polygamous cohabitation was reaffirmed in the Utah Constitution of 1895 and in state statute of 1898.39

Although most people have a general awareness of these legal prohibitions, a persistent myth among Mormons maintains that polygamy and polygamous cohabitation were not in violation of the laws of Mexico, where the First Presidency established a polygamous refuge in 1885. On the contrary, since 1884 Mexican federal statutes (which were adopted in the states of Chihuahua, Sonar, and Oaxaca where Mormon colonies were established) prohibited marriage between persons where one partner was already legitimately married, defined children of such a union as "spurious," and also refused to recognize as legitimate any marriage performed outside Mexico unless it was "valid according to the laws of the country in which it was celebrated."40

Church leaders were aware of this situation from the beginning of the Mormon colonies in Mexico, as indicated by John W. Young’s letter from Washington, D.C., in May 1885 to Apostles Brigham Young, Jr., and Moses Thatcher who were in Mexico City to negotiate with government officials or the establishment of the colonies in northern Mexico. Young warned them that he had been advised by a member of the Mexican Congress not to raise the question of the polygamous marriages of the Mormons who would be entering Mexico "as there was a very plain congressional law [in Mexico] on the subject."41 In practical terms, Mexican officials agreed to turn a blind eye to polygamous Mormons, as indicated in May 1885 when the two apostles asked the federal Minister of Public Works, Don Carlos Pacheco: "If a man came into this country with more than one wife and used prudence would he be interfered with? Not unless the wife complained, was the answer."42 Five months later the new Mormon colonists got a scare when authorities of the state of Chihuahua, who apparently had not received the message from the Federal District in Mexico City, "Seemed to be determined not to allow Polygamy in the state of Chihuahua."43 Four months after Wilford Woodruff announced the Manifesto, editions of the Deseret News published Apostle Brigham Young’s denial that the Mormons had established a polygamous refuge in Mexico: "The Mormons are a law-abiding people; they have found stringent laws in Mexico, prohibiting the practice of polygamy, which laws they have respected and obeyed in every particular"; and as Utah neared statehood in 1895, the anti-Mormon Salt Lake Tribune reminded the Mormons that there was nowhere in North America where they could legally practice polygamy.44

Because polygamy and polygamous cohabitation were illegal everywhere the Mormons might have chosen to go, secrecy characterized these relationships from the beginning. The best statement of that problem was given by Stake President Nephi L. Morris as he was about to excommunicate a man in 1911 for marrying plural wives the previous year:

As a people, we have been in an awkward position for a long time. The practice of plural marriage was indulged in secretly almost from the commencement of the history of this Church. The civil laws enacted against it were evaded, in order that brethren might do what they thought was the Lord’s will. The Church has now declared definitely against further plural marriages, wherever they may occur. Those who act contrary to that declaration must suffer the consequences.45
This firm though sympathetic statement was fraught with irony as a preface to excommunicating a recent violator of the Manifesto. Morris’s own sister had entered plural marriage in Salt Lake City in 1901 with a member of the Church’s Sunday School General Board and had already given birth to three children.

As a further complication, polygamy has been the focal point of a four-way sectarian battle that has had several phases throughout Mormon history. At certain times, LDS Church leaders have been willing to violate the law to promote plural marriages, but they have at the same time struggled to defend the institution of the Church against the attacks of anti-Mormons who knew about or suspected the clandestine polygamy. Anti-Mormons for their part have often had little, if any, direct evidence about polygamous practices and therefore have not only depended upon but have also embellished the rumors surrounding the practice. The RLDS Church defined an official position that not only opposed polygamy among the Mormons of Utah but also denied that Joseph Smith ever encouraged or authorized polygamy in Illinois. Lastly, when LDS Church authorities conscientiously prohibited new plural marriages, some Mormons were willing to challenge Church authority in order to continue the practice. It is a commonplace saying that the first casualty when war comes is truth,46 but amid the sectarian warfare involving Mormon polygamy, truth has often simply been a negotiable commodity.

The illegality, secrecy, and self-protection of the individual and the institution all contributed toward the final complication in the history of polygamy among the Mormons: the meaning and application of "truth." In an 1833 revelation dictated by Joseph Smith, the Lord said: "All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself...." (D&C 93: 30). None of the official or semi-official commentaries on Joseph Smith’s revelations has pointed out the strong implication of these words that truth ultimately is relative, rather than absolute. But Joseph Smith’s own teachings in connection with polygamy in 1842 explicitly denied that there were ethical absolutes: "That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said, ‘Thou shalt not kill;’ at another time He said ‘Thou shalt utterly destroy.’ This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted—by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire."47 Forty years later, Apostle Abraham H. Cannon gave some instructions about polygamy that indicated one dimension of this question: "It is good to always tell the truth, but not always to tell the whole of what we know."48

If failure of full disclosure were the only manifestation of relative truth in the history of Mormon polygamy, the problem would be comparatively simple. But the situation has been compounded by Mormons giving specialized meaning to language that has a different (if not opposite) denotation in conventional usage and by instances of emphatic statements about historical events or circumstances which can be verified as contrary to the allegations. In 1886, a Deseret Evening News editorial presented a particularly significant argument in favor of a specialized approach to truth with regard to polygamy, and B. H. Roberts further popularized the argument in a biography of John Taylor published in 1892. Stating that the secret practice of polygamy was the context, both publications argued that if apostles (and by implication, any Latter-day Saints) were under a divine command or covenant of secrecy which one of the apostles violated by telling others, that those who maintained the sacred covenant of secrecy would be justified in, even obligated to, denouncing the disclosures as false.49

Data points are not evidence of anything.

In this case, as prevention of child abuse and supporting real victims is of paramount importance, I believe it's important to collect data points and chew on them.

Otherwise, whomever owns media and public favor can advertise whatever "truth" they want in confidence that they will be believed and the public will go on with their busy lives.

This is too important of a subject to sit back and relax about, believing whatever we are fed. The data points become important.

[_Rosebud]

I know we've got media attacks of Barbara Snow, but do we have her own words on record anywhere as to -why- she believes victims that come to her and -why- she continues to help them (in their words from the online reviews, not mine)?

Of course the Deseret News will take the Church side (and has from the beginning of this conflict). But why the Trib, too? What traditional media is reporting the other side?

None?

[_Rosebud]

Maybe a reporter from the Trib will pick up the phone and interview Barbara. I imagine she might decline to talk to them at this point, but maybe. Or maybe we'll look at the Trib's report of her declining to speak with them and then we can examine the tone of the article.

Or maybe the Trib could interview some of her current clients? They're putting their full names on the online reviews now (although I didn't copy names here for privacy reasons). It doesn't seem like people in 2018 are as scared as they were in the 90s.

Or maybe the Trib will continue to work to discredit Barbara completely.

I guess we'll have to see what the newspapers do......