Thursday, August 24, 2023

Dr. Joy Silberg - what is her role in the Sanhedria Murchevet Satanic abuse hysteria?

updated below with review of 22 Faces - about Satanic abuse which was endorsed by Dr. Silberg

After exchanging a number of emails with Dr. Silberg, I think it is important to try and clarify her role in this hysteria.

She has written to me that she has seen zero evidence that there is any ideological abuse. That means no Christian or Satanic ring.

However, she has up until now refused to issue a public statement saying that point. She did respond to my request for a public statement with a statement for publication. However it did not include this critical observation of hers (despite my request to say so) but it also omitted saying that one should go to the police if you suspect your child has been abused. This omission is very problematic. Aside from the fact that only the police have the resources for a proper investigation and only the police have the legal ability to arrest and give a suspect over to be tried - it implies that she does not trust the police? Why?

 Is this related to the bizarre rumor by those claiming that there is Satanic abuse - that the police are complicit and are actively concealing the evidence for abuse? In fact there is no evidence for a cover up - but this rumor seems to have persuaded parents not to go the police - but instead to go to certain therapists who believe and promote the theory that there is a Satanic abuse ring.

It is important to note that she has trained and endorsed the two therapists who have been major figures promoting the claims that there is a Satanic ring operating in Sanhedria Murchevet and also benefiting from having the alleged victims referred to them.. Neither of them is a psychologist and one of them is a speech therapist! Why?

In short, she has not disavowed the Satanic ring theory. She trained and apparently still endorses the main therapists who have been getting referrals based on the Satanic abuse theory. She is not advising parents to go to the police  or to involve them in the investigation of these abuse cases - according to her public statement.  

Her public statement was an embarrassing collection of statements which basically called for collection of data and withholding judgment until the data has been analyzed. But who is collecting this data? And who is analyzing it? We are talking about allegations of satanic abuse for over two years. Rabbi Berkowitz has already publicly stated it is Satanic abuse. Where did he get his conclusion from? It apparently was not from his own investigation - since he has no training in either police work or abuse. Which professionals did he rely on and trust that told him it was a Satanic cult? Was it from the two that Dr. Silberg trained and still endorses?

The fact that Dr. Silberg after several years is still calling for withholding judgment obviously means that she is in fact open to the fact that there could be a Satanic cult! This despite that she has stated she has seen no evidence of it after two years and the police after extensive investigation say they have found no evidence?!

What is she waiting for? How many years is this hysteria going to continue until conclusions are drawn to either support or reject the existence of a Satanic abuse ring? Why is she claiming scientific neutrality on the one hand when she is apparently deeply involved in the  support of those who are the main proponents and beneficiaries of the claims that there is a Satanic abuse ring?

I am calling on her to categorically state three things without any qualifiers

  • 1) She does not support the claims of Satanic abuse and has not seen any evidence for it.
  • 2) She supports the Jerusalem police in their investigation of the matter and tells people to report all cases and suspicions to them
  • 3) She is not endorsing and referring people to the two therapists she trained and are the major proponents of the Satanic abuse ring
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Update: It is helpful to be aware of a book - 22 Faces - which Dr. Silberg has endorsed. This book has received searing reviews - SEE   Where the witch hunters are and
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 When therapists are lunatics
The book also contains an endorsement from one Joyanna Silberg, Ph.D., Past President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) which, if anything, says something negative about the ISSTD more than it tells us anything substantive about Byington’s book. Silberg claims that she and her peers “are all too familiar with the kinds of crimes and disorders described in 22 Faces.” Indeed, this year the ISSTD is hosting a conference which will feature a lecture on the topic of Ritual Abuse given by one Ellen Lacter, whose website offers helpful (if hardly coherent) tips such as “Pray a perimeter of protection against everything of witchcraft”, and discredited British therapist Valerie Sinason.
====================
Twenty-Two Faces by Judy Byington falls within an outdated genre of prurient Satanic Panic supernatural-erotica-sold-as-a-true-story pulp novels which enjoyed a certain popularity throughout the 80s and 90s. It tells the story of one Jenny Hill, a former prostitute and drug abuser who, upon submitting herself to psychiatric attention, learned that she had Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) (now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID]). Surely, this diagnosis must have come as quite a relief, as it promised that Hill herself need not bear any of the responsibility for her own actions, which the book describes as, at times, being outright psychopathic. The book makes quite clear that every foul thing Hill ever did — from slashing her sister with a razor blade out of mere curiosity of the consequences, to allowing herself to be pimped by a husband she met whilst working with sex offenders (he was one) — was actually the mischievous doings of personalities that resided within her, and without her own conscious awareness. Unfortunately, this ultimate absolution came at a predictable cost: in accepting the MPD/DID diagnosis, Hill would also have to necessarily accept that she was harboring “repressed memories” of traumas which she would need to recall in the course of reintegrating her fractured mind. Fortunately for Hill, however, nobody required of her that the heartbreaking story of traumatic abuse that she would “recall” need make any sense, and the fact that it doesn’t seems to have completely escaped her biographer, Judy Byington. 

Invoking the specter of sinister, underground secret societies dedicated anti-human Evil (as well a the comparatively petty-minded abuse of Ms. Hill) Twenty-Two Faces pays homage to debunked Satanic Panic literature of years past, even placing the book Satan’s Underground by Lauren Stratford in the bibliography, despite the fact that this book was so thoroughly discredited as to be withdrawn from publication, with the author changing her name and running off, abandoning her claim to Satanic cult abuse to instead pose as a childhood victim of the Holocaust. [...]
And here we have a real problem: therapists hiding their most unhinged paranoid fantasies under a veneer of scientific credibility derived from case studies and surveys applied to those whom they’ve previously infected with their conspiracist ideas. Never mind that Past Life Regression and Alien Abduction narratives, too, are derived from “recovered memories”; to question the bizarre claims put forward by Byington or the perpetually panicked ISSTD faithful is to invite criticisms that you, in fact, have an “agenda”. To doubt the truth of recovered memory narratives is to support child abuse.
This tactic of argumentation is truly offensive, as it hijacks children’s rights and attempts to create human shields of real victims as protection against criticisms directed at patently absurd claims. In the proper context, Twenty-Two Faces is a helpful book, as it illustrates this problem clearly for those who may doubt the magnitude to which conspiracists have over-run the study of Dissociative Disorders. Byington does not simply misappropriate the condition of multiple personalities as a plot device for her ridiculous book, she shows the condition for what it largely (if not entirely) is: a collaborative therapeutically-created delusion. In trying to expose a Satanic conspiracy, Byington unwittingly exposes a foul movement that exploits vulnerable mental health consumers. Let’s hope the licensing boards and professional associations eventually move to erase such embarrassments from practice.
[to be continued]

14 comments :

  1. It seems that no professionals involved nor any Rabbis other than yourself are willing to come forward and clearly state that there is no organized abuse ring!

    If all is so clear cut to those who are informed and not naive, then why is there absolute silence?

    ReplyDelete
  2. people are afraid to take responsibility and will whisper to you what they think - as long as you don't tell anyone else. There are consequences professional and financially for sticking out.

    Same thing is happening with the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter. It is widely accepted as wrong but because of the consequences in our tightly knit community - no one wants to stand up and say the Gadol has no clothes!

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  3. You posted many letters from Rabbis strongly denouncing that heter once they looked into it. In this case however nobody is coming forward.

    If this really is a hoax that would mean that these children's stories have presumably been created subconsciously in their minds due to the hysteria of the parents, Rabbis and professionals. Therefore by keeping a silence against the many who say it is true, they would be allowing this quiet subconscious hysteria to continue, damaging many children severely.

    Surely if Rabbbis and professionals felt this was all a hoax they would not allow that kind of damage to continue?

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  4. who said the stories are being created subconsciously in their minds. Read the history of the witchhunt in America. Children were questioned and pressured until they gave the right answer. This has nothing to do with subsconcious thoughts

    The professional and police involved in America were certain that they were right and that they were looking for the truth.

    Read the history of repressed memories - therapists were convicned that they were heroically uncovering the truth

    In short - in withch hunts most are convinced that they are correct and that they sincerely believe in what they are doing. The only question is what is the truth

    ReplyDelete
  5. She is "against divisiveness". There is your answer. She is apparently not going to make statements that contradicts someone else's statement. I think we have to respect her for being straightforward and saying she is not going to be straightforward. On the other hand, no need to respect her for her role in essentially promoting conspiracy theories by her being against "divisiveness".

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  6. "...that the police are complicit and are actively concealing the evidence for abuse...."

    John Belushi, the great comedian, performed a routine on "Saturday Night Live" that illustrated what we're up against.

    It was a parody of the technique U.S. soldiers supposedly used in WWII to weed out German spies. The U.S. soldiers would ask the suspected spy (who was thought to be portraying himself as a U.S. soldier) a simple question every soldier should know, such as: "Who plays first base for the Yankees?"

    In the routine, Belushi's character, a tank commander weeds out the "spies" from his unit when the men he challenges can't answer the baseball question.

    Then, one of the remaining soldiers asks Belushi -- out of curiosity, not suspicion -- "Hey, Sarge! Just who DOES play first base for the Yankees...?"

    When Belushi realizes he's stumped and doesn't know, he turns his gun on himself!

    Are we to begin suspecting ourselves that we are part of "ideological" abuse cult?!That would be absurd, but apparently there are some who might be privately harboring thoughts that we've gone over to "the other side" for the very fact that we discount the possibility there is an "ideological" abuse cult.

    Now we understand why we can never win. According to those in the grip of the conspiracy theory, to deny the conspiracy is to join the conspiracy. A jailed man cannot free himself.

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  7. As a concerned parent, I am bothered less by the fact that she won't clarify the nature of the abuse (satanic, ritual, missionary, et al) and bothered much, much more by the fact that she won't share what she knows to clarify the rumors about where and how this abuse is taking place and how widespread it is. I can leave the treatment after the fact to the therapists but the rest of us would like to know what measures we need to take to protect our children!

    If this is happening on hasaot, parental supervision on hasaot is in order. If this is happening on the way to and from school or at the park or on the way to the makolet, closer supervision at these times and places is in order. These measures are commonsense and straightforward in any case. But if this is happening wholesale at school, more intensive and extreme measures like multiple security cameras in every school, security guards, parent rotations and strict rules about children leaving during school hours need to be implemented. And if the allegations by people claiming to be parents, and repeated by R' Berkowitz, are true, it might even be wise to close the schools!



    So which is it? And how many victims are there? What is the risk? Where is the risk? How great is the risk? And most importantly, what should we be doing to mitigate the risk?

    ReplyDelete
  8. The point is that if there truly are Rabbis who believe that this is a hoax they must come forward before other children are severely damaged by the therapists or whatever. If the kedushei taus heter was a good enough reason for them to put themselves on the line then surely more so over here!

    If a bachur is taken by the army for being on vacation in Eilat when he should be learning and we make a whole big ruckus with protests and its all over every media outlet. Here hundreds of kids are being damaged and everybody is quiet other than Rav Berkowitz and yourself?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Au contraire! If there are Rabbis and bonafide professionals who believe that there is a nefarious religious cult that is operating in Sanhedria and other neighborhoods, then they must come forward before other children are severely damaged, or whatever. They must come forward so that we can "repair" the children who became agents of satan by having them confront their "repressed" memories.

    So far we have Rav Berkowitz on tape. Who else? Signs are worthless, as they don't seem to have been authenticated. It is very easy to video the rabbis and professionals who feel that there is satanic abuse going on. Please provide us with a video compilation. I'm sure that it wouldn't take more than a day and half to get a bunch of well-respected rabbis and professionals recorded for this vital mission (pun halfway intended). Please do it. Thank you.

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  10. So instead of her abetting the problematic attitude, she is its root ....

    ReplyDelete
  11. “Twenty-Two Faces is a helpful book, as it illustrates this problem clearly for those who may doubt the magnitude to which conspiracists have over-run the study of Dissociative Disorders. Byington does not simply misappropriate the condition of multiple personalities as a plot device for her ridiculous book, she shows the condition for what it largely (if not entirely) is: a collaborative therapeutically-created delusion. In trying to expose a Satanic conspiracy, Byington unwittingly exposes a foul movement that exploits vulnerable mental health consumers. Let’s hope the licensing boards and professional associations eventually move to erase such embarrassments from practice.”
    I apply this to the Greenblatt-Kamenitsky heter and similar. Susan’s book on her 30 years work with Mendel Epstein is a helpful book. It illustrates the problem clearly for those who doubt the magnitude to which the feminists have over run Jewish divorce issues in America, outside of Israel. I suggest for the coming reply briefs of Mendel Epstein et al --- to say they were victims, particularly of Ralbag, Schechter and Goldfein---the 3 government witnesses that convicted them. Mendel Epstein et al should express regret. They should say that they erred, in following rabbi leaders and active feminists in America, instead of rabbi leaders in Israel. Mendel Epstein et al should focus on sentence reduction, looking for precedents. I pray that the appeal court reduces all their draconian sentences, that everyone repents and moves to Israel.

    ReplyDelete
  12. You do not have to look to hard to find prominent English speaking rabbis who live in Israel who will openly tell you there is no evidence of an organized abuse ring.

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
  14. מרכיבי הפגיעות הטקסיות - ritual abuse in nachalaot



    https://mega.nz/#!U0ZWjKZb!-SbT9zWRhZd-Rywz-a3WiUBAGPxNL1whbFYRE0m29_Q

    ReplyDelete

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