by Bruce Perry
America had discovered an epidemic of child abuse, much of which was real and deserved genuine exposure and attention. One of the reasons abuse was being discussed in the news and on talk shows was the popularity of the “recovery movement,” which had encouraged Americans to find their “inner child,” and help it recover from wounds inflicted on it by negligent or abusive parents. At this time it was hard to read a newspaper or turn on the TV without coming across some celebrity discussing her (or, occasionally, his) history of being sexually abused as a child. Some self-help gurus claimed that more than 90 percent of families were dysfunctional. Some therapists eagerly propagated the idea that most of their clients’ problems could be traced back to childhood abuse, and then set about helping them dig through their memories to discover it, even if they originally claimed no recollection of maltreatment. As some people searched their memories with the aid of certain poorly trained and overly confident therapists, they began to recall ugly perversions that had been perpetrated upon them, even as these “memories” became increasingly divorced from any plausible reality.
The second trend was a rise in evangelical Christianity. Converts and adherents warned that the devil must be behind these widespread sexual atrocities. How else to explain the soul sickness that could lead so many people to perform such violent and profane acts on innocent children? Soon moral entrepreneurs made a business of the problem, selling workshops on how to identify children who were survivors of what came to be known as Satanic Ritual Abuse. As unlikely an ally of the Christian right as the feminist flagship Ms. magazine would feature on its front page a first person account by a “survivor” of such abuse in January 1993. The cover declared “Believe it—Child Ritual Abuse Exists,” and inside, the magazine told the story of a woman who claimed she’d been raped with crucifixes by her parents and forced to eat the flesh of her decapitated infant sister.
The CPS caseworkers and foster parents involved with the Vernon case were immersed in this cultural confluence at its peak. Around the time these children were taken into care in 1990, the foster parents and the caseworkers who supervised them had attended a seminar on “Satanic Ritual Abuse.” When the local DA recused himself from these cases because he had previously represented one of the defendants, the CPS caseworkers convinced a local judge to appoint a special prosecutor. This special prosecutor ultimately brought on board two special “Satanic investigators” to help make their case for the existence of a devil-worshipping cult, lead by the Vernon family, operating in Gilmer and practicing child sex abuse and human sacrifice. These “investigators” were reputed to be experts in uncovering cult crimes. One was a former Baptist minister from Louisiana; the other was a gym instructor for the Texas Department of Public Safety. Neither had experience with police investigations.
None of the material related to Satanic Ritual Abuse or “recovered memory” therapies had been scientifically tested before it became widely popularized. The “recovered memory” therapists and workshop trainers taught that children never lie about sexual abuse, even though there was no empirical evidence on which to base such a claim. They also told adult patients who weren’t sure whether they’d been abused that “if you think it happened, it probably did,” and that the presence of conditions like eating disorders and addictions, even without any memories of abuse, could prove that it had happened. The checklists for determining the presence of “Satanic Ritual Abuse” were based upon even flimsier evidence, yet they were propounded as diagnostic tools during hundreds of workshops conducted for therapists, social workers and child welfare officials.
If these methods had been tested, as they were later, the studies would have found that memories recalled under hypnosis, and even during ordinary therapy, can easily be influenced by the therapist, and that while many people have strong feelings about their childhoods, this does not necessarily mean that they were abused or that all of the events they recall are literally true. While children rarely lie spontaneously about sexual abuse (although this, too, can happen), they can readily be led to concoct tales by adults who may not be aware that the child is simply telling them what they want to hear. Overt coercion is not needed, though, as we shall see, it can certainly make matters worse. The “Satanic” checklists, like similar checklists that circulated around the same time for incest survivors and for “codependents” who had addicted loved ones, were so vague and overinclusive that any adolescent with even the most minor interest in sex, drugs and rock-n-roll—in other words, any normal teenager—could qualify as a victim. And any younger child with nightmares, fears of monsters and bedwetting could as well.
Another dangerous form of quackery was also being widely touted at this time and was unfortunately inflicted on these foster children. It came in various forms and had a number of different names, but was most commonly known as “holding therapy,” or “attachment therapy.” During this “treatment,” adults would tightly restrain children in their arms and force them to look into the eyes of their caregivers and “open up” about their memories and fears. If the child did not produce a convincing story of early abuse, he would be verbally and physically assaulted until he did. Frequently practiced on adopted or foster children, this was supposed to create a parental bond between the child and his new family. One form, invented in the early 1970s by a California psychologist named Robert Zaslow, involved several “holders,” one assigned to immobilize the child’s head, while the others held down their limbs and dug their knuckles into the child’s ribcage, moving the knuckles roughly back and forth. This was supposed to be done with enough force to cause bruising. Zaslow’s “technique” was picked up and elaborated on by a group of therapists originally based in Evergreen, Colorado. Zaslow, however, lost his professional license after being charged with abuse. Evergreen-associated therapists, too, would ultimately be charged in several child abuse deaths associated with their “therapy.”
“Holding” therapy was intended to go on for hours, with no breaks to eat or use the bathroom. Meanwhile, the adults were supposed to verbally taunt the child to enrage him, as if the torture being performed on the small body wasn’t enough. “Releasing” his anger in this way was supposed to prevent future explosions of rage, as if the brain stored rage like a boiler and could be emptied of it by “expressing” it. The session would end only when the child was calm, no longer reacting to the taunts and seemingly in thrall to his caregivers. To end the assault he would have to declare his love for his tormentors, address his foster or adoptive parents as his “real” parents and display complete submission. The Lappes and a woman named Barbara Bass who housed the Vernon children used this version, improvising their own additions, such as making the kids run up and down stairs until they were exhausted and crying before beginning a “holding” session.
This is one of the many cases where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Supporters of “holding” believe (unfortunately, some are still around) that traumatized children’s problems result from poor attachment to their caregivers due to early childhood abuse and/or neglect. In many cases, this is probably true. As we’ve discovered, early deprivation of love and affection can make some children manipulative and lacking in empathy, as in Leon’s case. “Holding therapy” advocates also believe, in my view appropriately, that this missing or damaging early experience can interfere with the development of the brain’s capacity to form healthy relationships.
The danger lies in their solution to the problem. Using force or any type of coercion on traumatized, abused or neglected children is counterproductive: it simply retraumatizes them. Trauma involves an overwhelming and terrifying loss of control, putting people back into situations over which they have no control recapitulates this and impedes recovery. This should go without saying, but holding a child down and hurting him until he says what you want to hear does not create bonds of affection but, rather, induces obedience through fear. Unfortunately, the resulting “good behavior” that follows may look like positive change a
nd these youth may even appear to be more spontaneously loving toward their caregivers afterwards. This “trauma bond” is also known as Stockholm Syndrome: children who have been tortured into submission “love” their foster parents the way kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst “believed in” the cause of her Symbionese Liberation Army captors. Incidentally, children’s “love” and obedience also tend to fade over time if the abuse is not continually repeated, as did Hearst’s commitment to the radical politics of the group once she was freed.
The east Texas foster parents apparently knew nothing about the potential for harm inherent in “holding therapy,” nor did the CPS caseworkers who monitored their care and sometimes participated in the holding sessions of the Vernon children. The ideology of “holding” fit easily into the families’ religious beliefs that children who were spared the rod would be spoiled and that children’s wills must be broken in order for them to learn to avoid sin and temptation. The foster families and caseworkers were convinced that the widespread abuse and incest in the children’s biological families could only have resulted from involvement in a Satanic cult. Besides, the children had all the symptoms they’d been told to look for at the Satanic Ritual Abuse workshop. One of them even reportedly told a caseworker that “Daddy said that if we go into the woods, the devil would get us.” Of course, the same warning could have come from a parent who practiced almost any religion, but no one considered this alternate explanation.
So, in order to “help” the children “process” their trauma and to bond with them, both the Lappes and Barbara Bass began “holding.” It was here that another pernicious belief came into play, one that unfortunately is still widely held in the mental health field. I call it the “psychic pus” theory. This is the idea that, like a boil that needs to be lanced, certain memories are toxic and must be excavated and discussed in order for people to recover from trauma. Many people still spend hours in therapy searching for the “Rosetta stones” of their personal histories, trying to find the one memory that will help their lives make sense and instantly resolve their current problems.
In fact, memory doesn’t work this way. The problem with traumatic memories tends to be their intrusion into the present, not an inability to recall them. When they intrude, discussing them and understanding how they may unconsciously influence our behavior can be extraordinarily helpful. For example, if a child avoids water because of a near-drowning experience, talking it through when he is about to go to the beach may help him safely begin to swim again. At the same time, some people heal by fighting their fears and never discussing or explicitly recalling their painful memories at all. For people whose memories don’t negatively affect them in the present, pressuring them to focus on them may actually do harm.
It’s especially important to be sensitive to a child’s own coping mechanisms if they have a strong support system. In one study we conducted in the mid-1990s, we found that children with supportive families who were assigned to therapy to discuss trauma were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than those whose parents were told to bring them in only if they observed specific symptoms. The hour per week that the children assigned to therapy focused on their symptoms exacerbated them, rather than exorcised them. Each week, in the days prior to their therapy session, these children would begin thinking about their trauma; each week the children would have to leave school or extracurricular activities to travel to the clinic for therapy. In some cases children became hyper-aware of their normal stress reactions, keeping tabs of every blip so they’d have something to say to the therapist. This disrupted their lives and increased rather than decreased their distress. Interestingly, however, if the child did not have a strong social network, therapy was beneficial. It probably gave them somewhere to turn that they did not have ordinarily. The bottom line is that people’s individual needs vary, and no one should be pushed to discuss trauma if they do not wish to do so. If a child is surrounded by sensitive, caring adults, the timing, duration and intensity of small therapeutic moments can be titrated by the child. We observed this in practice with the Branch Davidian children and we feel the same principles hold for all children dealing with loss and trauma living in a healthy social support system.
Believing that you cannot recover unless you remember the precise details of a past trauma can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It can keep you focused on the past rather than dealing with the present. For example, some studies have found that depression can be exacerbated by ruminating on past negative events. Because of how memory works, such rumination can also lead you to recall old, ambiguous memories in a new light, one that, over time, becomes darker and darker until it eventually becomes a trauma that never actually occurred. Add the coercive, physically assaultive practice of “holding” to the malleability of the memories of young children, and you have a recipe for disaster.
During “holding” sessions the foster parents and sometimes their caseworkers and the “Satan investigators” would interrogate the youth about their devil-worshipping parents. They would ask lengthy, leading questions and dig their knuckles into the child’s side until he agreed with their version of events. The children soon learned that the “holding” would stop a lot sooner if they “disclosed” their parents’ cult involvement and described its rituals. Rapidly, they confirmed the tales of sacrificed babies, cannibalism, devil masks, hooded figures circling fires in the woods and Satanic altars, all originating from the questions and prompts of the interviewers, confirming the foster parents’ ritual abuse “diagnosis.” Soon, the children were saying that they had been videotaped for child pornography in a warehouse and had witnessed numerous murders. When the foster parents began to ask about whether other children were being abused by the cult, in desperation to escape the “holding,” they began to give up the names of their friends. As a result, two other children were taken from their parents, and many more were named as possible abuse victims.
Fortunately, many of these “holding sessions” and related “interviews” were audio or videotaped. As awful as they were to watch and hear, they allowed some incredible facts to emerge as we tried to figure out which children had actually been victimized by their parents, and whose parents had been accused because the Vernon children needed to name new names to please their interrogators. One thing became clear right away: if the caseworkers knew and liked the families who were accused (remember, this was a very small town, so most people knew each other), they would dismiss the Vernon siblings’ accusations and ask for other names. If they didn’t like the family, however, the parents would be investigated and their children taken.
That was how Brian came to be among the sixteen children in “therapeutic” foster care. Brian was a bright second-grader with a crew cut and a conscientious nature. He enjoyed watching the news, so before the sheriffs came to arrest his parents for sexually abusing him and his younger brother, he’d heard about the Vernon case on TV. The Vernons lived across the street from him and he was also friends with their children, so he had heard plenty of local gossip as well. From the media and from what neighbors were saying, Brian’s parents figured out that they were likely to be the next family targeted as Satanic sexual abusers. On the day CPS came to take him away, Brian was playing outside and saw the sheriff’s cars approaching, so he ran in and warned his parents. Unfortunately, he could do nothing but watch as caseworkers jolted his one-year-old brother awake from his nap and his parents were taken away in handcuffs. Brian was permitted to take one beloved item from home with him; that he chose a Bible and not a toy should have been an early clue that he was not a being raised in a Satanic cult.
Unfortunately, from the news, Brian had also learned about another horrifying local crime. Seventeen-year-old Kelly Wilson, a wide-eyed, blonde cheerleader out of central casting, had abruptly disappeared on January 5, 1992. She was last seen leaving work at a Gilmer video store. Today, neither her remains nor any signs of her continued existence have been found. The of
ficer on duty when her parents called about her disappearance, Sergeant James York Brown, was assigned the case.
By all accounts, Sergeant Brown worked it diligently, placing posters about the missing girl all over town, even working through the following Thanksgiving when a report (later found to be false) came in that her body might be in a local field. He convinced a local business to fund and erect a billboard requesting any information the public might have about Wilson’s whereabouts. Brown rapidly identified the most likely suspect: a young man whom the cheerleader had dated and who had a prior conviction for an assault with a knife. That man’s car had mysteriously been sold days after the girl’s disappearance. Even more suspiciously, when the vehicle was finally located, a giant piece of its interior carpeting was missing. But the car had been washed thoroughly, inside and out, and no definitive physical evidence could be found.
That suspect, however, wasn’t of interest to the social workers and the special prosecutor in the Vernon case. The ex-boyfriend had no connection to the Vernons. If he had killed Kelly, it would be just another case of a teenage love affair gone wrong, not a body that could be linked to the tales of human sacrifice the Vernon children were telling. The Vernons and their Satanic followers, the investigators were sure, must be guilty of more than beating and raping a few children and sacrificing some animals. But no one could find any bodies, nor had any local people been reported missing. Until Kelly Wilson.
The case workers and “cult crimes” investigators became convinced that there must be a connection between the Vernons and the young girl’s disappearance. They subjected seven-year-old Brian to an entire day of “holding” to find it. Brian’s intelligence meant the stories he was forced to produce were far more coherent than those of the others. When nine adults surrounded him, held him down and shouted at him until he was so terrified that he soiled himself, he came up with the story that would lead to Sergeant Brown’s indictment. He reported seeing Wilson victimized at the Vernon’s Satanic rites. He said that “a man in a blue uniform” was there, and he made remarks about police officers being “bad.”