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Talk of the Devil: Repressed Memory & the Ritual Abuse Witch-Hunt
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 30, 2018
Interesting book about how society was caught up in a modern day witch hunt in the 1990s. When repressed memories first began to be publicised, more and more folks came forward ... a LOT more ... until even the professional 'experts' began to take a closer look at just how this was happening.
Synopsis from the back cover.
"They said I was a bad girl... They must cleanse me and purify me. Grandpa stood over me holding a large knife... I heard him say something about 'the lamb that was slain'..."
In the past decade a bizarre phenomenon has swept Australia: hundreds of people have remembered unspeakable, long-forgotten sexual crimes committed against them by their parents and other family members.
Are repressed memories reliable? What is ritual abuse? Does it exist in our society in the form of satanic rites, mind-control programs and widespread brainwashing?
In this absorbing, controversial and disturbing book, Richard Guilliatt examines court records and documents to trace the wildfire spread of repressed memory therapy and ritual abuse accusations in Australia. He looks in detail at how therapists, social workers, police, lawyers and juries have responded to these explosive claims.
Talk of the Devil is a brilliant account of public hysteria and zealotry, of an escalating witch-hunt that has destroyed families and raised deeply troubling questions about our child protection system.
3 Stars = I'm glad I read it.
Synopsis from the back cover.
"They said I was a bad girl... They must cleanse me and purify me. Grandpa stood over me holding a large knife... I heard him say something about 'the lamb that was slain'..."
In the past decade a bizarre phenomenon has swept Australia: hundreds of people have remembered unspeakable, long-forgotten sexual crimes committed against them by their parents and other family members.
Are repressed memories reliable? What is ritual abuse? Does it exist in our society in the form of satanic rites, mind-control programs and widespread brainwashing?
In this absorbing, controversial and disturbing book, Richard Guilliatt examines court records and documents to trace the wildfire spread of repressed memory therapy and ritual abuse accusations in Australia. He looks in detail at how therapists, social workers, police, lawyers and juries have responded to these explosive claims.
Talk of the Devil is a brilliant account of public hysteria and zealotry, of an escalating witch-hunt that has destroyed families and raised deeply troubling questions about our child protection system.
3 Stars = I'm glad I read it.
October 4, 2017
This is one of the most disturbing books I have read. It documents a phenomenon that swept Australia in the 1990s, whereby hundreds of people began remembering unspeakable and long-forgotten sexual crimes committed against them by their parents and other family members.
It is a sensitive and emotionally charged subject to write about, as author Richard Guilliatt well knew, having reporting on recovered memory therapy extensively for The Sydney Morning Herald in the lead-up to writing this. Of he and his colleagues' interest in the subject, he acknowledges that "the media [...] had found a story which irresistibly combined lurid sensationalism with moral outrage."
Importantly, though, on the second page, he writes: "This book does not seek to minimise the devastating damage and suffering that can be caused by incest. Sexual abuse of children is widespread, its victims frequently suffer in silence, and the people who devote themselves to eradicating it are pursuing one of society's most laudable and difficult goals."
Central to the narrative is the 1994 criminal trial of a Western Australian man, whose two adult daughters underwent recovered memory therapy and then accused their father of monstrous sexual assaults dating back to their early childhood. "Clive Moore's daughters had searched within themselves and reconstructed their memories of their father and their past," Guilliatt writes near the beginning. "In the process they had set in motion a chain of events which would lead to a criminal trial that became celebrated as the first 'repressed memory' prosecution in Australia."
While reporting on that trial and documenting how the phenomenon first spread across Western psychotherapy, before becoming popular among Australian therapists – despite the fact that recovered memory therapy had already begun being discredited elsewhere – Guilliatt remains an objective and impassive observer. It's not until right near the end of the book that he breaks with this approach by writing from his own perspective.
"I scan the room, taking in the other seventy-odd therapists around me," he writes on page 256. "They are a casually dressed bunch, mostly women but a handful of men, their faces fixed in similar expressions of furrowed concern as they stare at the painting of the young girl hooked up to the mysterious mind-control apparatus." He eventually comes to realise that the group who believes in this (since widely discredited) form of therapy are themselves not unlike a cult.
I found this book disturbing because it shows how therapists and other so-called experts were allowed to feed off a media-led hysteria that had little basis in reality. As the central criminal trial shows, the accusations of the two adult daughters caused a deep and seemingly irreparable rift in that family, and caused nothing but pain for all involved. "If nothing else, the events of the past decade should sound a warning about such misguided zealotry," Guilliatt concludes. "Hysteria has only ever harmed the cause of protecting children. Every false allegation of child abuse absorbs the resources of a system which is already struggling to protect children in genuine danger."
It is a sensitive and emotionally charged subject to write about, as author Richard Guilliatt well knew, having reporting on recovered memory therapy extensively for The Sydney Morning Herald in the lead-up to writing this. Of he and his colleagues' interest in the subject, he acknowledges that "the media [...] had found a story which irresistibly combined lurid sensationalism with moral outrage."
Importantly, though, on the second page, he writes: "This book does not seek to minimise the devastating damage and suffering that can be caused by incest. Sexual abuse of children is widespread, its victims frequently suffer in silence, and the people who devote themselves to eradicating it are pursuing one of society's most laudable and difficult goals."
Central to the narrative is the 1994 criminal trial of a Western Australian man, whose two adult daughters underwent recovered memory therapy and then accused their father of monstrous sexual assaults dating back to their early childhood. "Clive Moore's daughters had searched within themselves and reconstructed their memories of their father and their past," Guilliatt writes near the beginning. "In the process they had set in motion a chain of events which would lead to a criminal trial that became celebrated as the first 'repressed memory' prosecution in Australia."
While reporting on that trial and documenting how the phenomenon first spread across Western psychotherapy, before becoming popular among Australian therapists – despite the fact that recovered memory therapy had already begun being discredited elsewhere – Guilliatt remains an objective and impassive observer. It's not until right near the end of the book that he breaks with this approach by writing from his own perspective.
"I scan the room, taking in the other seventy-odd therapists around me," he writes on page 256. "They are a casually dressed bunch, mostly women but a handful of men, their faces fixed in similar expressions of furrowed concern as they stare at the painting of the young girl hooked up to the mysterious mind-control apparatus." He eventually comes to realise that the group who believes in this (since widely discredited) form of therapy are themselves not unlike a cult.
I found this book disturbing because it shows how therapists and other so-called experts were allowed to feed off a media-led hysteria that had little basis in reality. As the central criminal trial shows, the accusations of the two adult daughters caused a deep and seemingly irreparable rift in that family, and caused nothing but pain for all involved. "If nothing else, the events of the past decade should sound a warning about such misguided zealotry," Guilliatt concludes. "Hysteria has only ever harmed the cause of protecting children. Every false allegation of child abuse absorbs the resources of a system which is already struggling to protect children in genuine danger."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews