Gazing Into the Abyss pt.2: a Therapist's Tale

The cold reality of Ritual Abuse and Mind Control in the 21st century

Note: This SubStack builds on a previous post by Badlands Media titled “The Deep States Sinister Core”

The focus of this SubStack will be to highlight how cults and military/intelligence-affiliated groups have perfected the art of mind control.

Disclaimer:

This work takes a deep look at some of the darkest occurrences in human experience and some of the most traumatic survivor testimony and clinical notes ever recorded.

If you are the type of individual who would prefer not to know how bad things really are, then this article might not be for you. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the information contained in this work could have a profoundly negative effect on your emotional well-being.

Additionally, if there’s even the smallest part of you that believes you may be a survivor of ritual abuse or mind control, this work is NOT FOR YOU. If you KNOW you are a survivor and have done considerable recovery work already, this work is NOT FOR YOU.

I’ll provide the same two reasons that clinical psychologist Alison Miller provides in the introduction to Healing the Unimaginable (2011):

1 - You do not want your memories to be contaminated by reading the details contained on these pages about what ritual abusers and mind controllers do. Genuine survivors have difficulty in any case believing their memories, and it is easier to believe what comes up from within you if you do not have other people’s information to confuse you.

2 - There are some graphic details of abuses here, and they can trigger flashbacks or trained behaviors in people who are actually survivors of such abuses. This can be unpleasant and destabilizing for you.

This information is primarily recommended for therapists, psychoanalysts, those who believe that ritual abuse isn’t real, and Badlanders who believe they can handle the absolute worst of the worst.

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We went over the general definition of Ritual Abuse in the SubStack post linked above, so for the sake of saving space and not making this post too long to read, I’m going to jump right into the material.

Brushing up against the reality of Ritual Abuse can be jarring for the average individual, to say the least. A knee-jerk reaction will be to convince yourself that a victim’s story is all made up, a reaction that perpetrator groups count on.

It is very real, and it always has been.

This reality isn’t reserved for far-away places like the Belgian town of Sars-la-Buissiere, where Marc Dutroux tortured and killed children (#), or the French town of Angier, where 45 children were raped and sold into prostitution by their own parents (#), or the forests surrounding Milan, where children were ritually sacrificed (#), or in London, where a child’s torso found in the Thames sparked an investigation by Scotland yard (#), or in Portugal, where more than 600 cases of sexual violence against children occurred at a state-run institution for the education and support of poor children and under-age orphans (#).

No, I’m afraid this happens right in your own backyard. If not in your immediate neighborhood, then almost certainly in the nearest metropolitan area.

For psychotherapists, the victims of Ritual Abuse will be by far the most challenging patients you’ll encounter. Not only have these patients endured the worst abuses imaginable, but in many cases, they themselves have been forced to participate in the torture, rape, and murder of others as part of their own abuse.

Clinical Psychologist Alison Miller, the author of two incredibly helpful clinical works, Healing the Unimaginable and Becoming Yourself, effectively describes what it’s like for a therapist at the beginning of this sort of work. She describes it as a “hit the ground running” period of time where they (the clinician) must endure disclosures that force them to confront horrific realities for the first time, realities that will immediately demand new skills and knowledge.

In The Deep State’s Sinister Core, we outlined Dr. James Randal Nobblitt’s initiation into this terrifying world. To kick off this post, I’ve decided to include a shortened version of Alison Miller’s introduction to this type of work.

Alison Miller’s Introduction to Ritual Abuse

Dr. Miller had been working with a patient named Lorraine, who was one of her first clients with what was then called MPD, or multiple personality disorder.

Lorraine was crippled with severe osteoarthritis and was forced to use a wheelchair. When she was Lorraine, she was a sweet-natured, gentle, considerate, laughing, roly-poly woman who loved to read and sew. When she was Big Susie, she was a playful five-year-old who had a collection of giant dolls and a huge stuffed gorilla. Lorraine sewed clothes for the dolls. When she was Little Susie, she was a terrified, mute three-year-old.

A few weeks before Lorraine’s death, she asked Dr. Miller, “Is it a mortal sin if you kill yourself?” to which Miller replied, “No,” knowing full well that she was giving her permission in a sense.

I had told the parts of her that wanted to die that if they killed the parts that did not want to die it would be murder. They kept taking an internal vote, and each time more of them wanted to go. I never told them not to. (#)

Author’s Note: The terms “parts” or “alters” are used in the context of Ritual Abuse and Mind Control to describe fractured, compartmentalized aspects of the primary or “host” identity that have taken on a life and memory of their own. This usually occurs when a person is subjected to a trauma so harsh that the host identity would no longer be able to function if they maintained awareness of the trauma. (#)

Dr. Miller had gotten to know Lorraine because she was the best friend of another patient of hers named Teresa, who also suffered from DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Author’s Note: The name change (MPD to DID) reflected the revised view that someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder was one fragmented person rather than a lot of different people sharing one body, as suggested by the term Multiple Personality Disorder. But most who have the disorder feel more as if it is MPD.

Dr. Miller, determined to treat her MPD/DID patients, began a quest for answers at a time when answers were still quite scarce.

I read the few existing books on the condition, attended a workshop at the Justice Institute, and used some sexual abuse prevention money to organize a workshop where therapists could exchange information and educate each other about dissociation. There, I learnt something that I found really shocking. Many people suffering from MPD had been severely abused throughout their childhood years by organized groups, including Satanic and other “dark-side” religious cults. Moreover, quite a few of them were still involved in those groups, although they were not aware of their involvement, because it was other “personalities” —dissociated parts of them—who went off to the groups’ rituals. I was skeptical, to say the least. (#)

Her skepticism was soon to wane.

Not long after she began working with Lorraine and Teresa, Dr. Miller would acquire two more MPD clients: a supposedly schizophrenic young man named Tony and a teenage girl named Jennifer.

Tony had a child alter that frequently emerged, as well as alters representing each of the members of the band Guns’n’Roses. Jennifer was a teenager who had been removed from her home because she had disclosed sexually abusing her younger brother.

Soon, strange occurrences would begin to allude to something unusual lurking behind these patients.

It started when Jennifer, who had been placed into foster care, divulged that her mother, whom she was not supposed to have contact with, would regularly show up out of nowhere at random places whenever she was away from her foster home. Dr. Miller didn’t really think much about this until Tony confided that he’d “woken up” one night at midnight standing on the corner at the gas station near where he lived, apparently waiting for a ride.

Dr. Miller recounts an afternoon when she gave Teresa a ride home from treatment.

One day, I gave Teresa a ride home from treatment. Her ancient grandmother was at her apartment helping her pack her things for a move. By this time Teresa had disclosed sexual abuse by her father as well as both her parents being alcoholics. I took this opportunity for a confrontation, as people did in those days. I said to the grandmother triumphantly, “Teresa has told me all about what happened to her!” “Oh?” the old woman said in a creaky voice. “And just what has she told you?” “Alcoholism and sexual abuse!” I proclaimed triumphantly. The grandmother breathed what appeared to be a sigh of relief, and said, “Oh, I’m just an old woman, I wouldn’t know about those things.” It was a very strange response.

Then another strange thing happened. Teresa was the single parent of a very young child, and had been seeing me about her parenting difficulties. Her child was in and out of foster care. One day, she called both me and the child protection worker and said she could not handle the little girl any longer and had to give her up for adoption. She was determined to sign the papers and give her up, but I was mystified by it, because Teresa’s parenting had improved considerably and I knew she really loved her daughter. I would not be able to make sense of these mysteries until I had learnt all about the lives of the rest of my “first four.” (#)

As if MPD/DID wasn’t weird enough, strange occurrences seemed to haunt each of her new patients: whether it was the now-estranged mother appearing periodically in Jennifer’s life as if she somehow knew where Jennifer was going to be, or Tony coming to while standing on a street corner at midnight with no recollection of how he got there, or Teresa’s suspicious grandmother and the sudden urge to be rid of her daughter.

Eventually, the story connecting these various oddities began to come into view and brought with it a nightmare world that Dr. Miller has had to contend with ever since.

Gradually, the story came out.

Teresa mentioned that she had known Tony in junior high school. It turned out that she still knew him—he was part of the cult group she still attended, along with her family. So was Jennifer (and her family). And Lorraine, whom at that point I had only been seeing for a short time. Tony’s mother was the cult’s high priestess, his stepfather was a kind of regional manager. All four of these clients not only had been abused by the same people, mostly their family members, but they were still being abused and forced to take part in abusive rituals. So, of course, was Teresa’s little daughter, until Teresa gave her up permanently. It was not until Teresa gave up the child for adoption that she began to disclose her own ritual abuse. (#)

Alison Miller’s initial enthusiasm about working with this relatively new diagnosis was beginning to diminish. But despite the cold, sobering reality, she remained determined to help her patients.

Unfortunately, Dr. Miller would soon learn that she was not the only one working with them; the cult was on to her and working to counteract any positive effect she may have had on the four.

According to Miller’s notes, members of the cult would lurk outside of her office building waiting to abduct her clients, taking them somewhere to abuse them further as punishment for talking to her. Somehow, the cult knew that the four had mentioned the ritual abuse in their sessions and they were not happy about it.

They would set off “programs,” or conditioned responses which her clients’ child parts had been trained to perform, such as falling asleep in session, calling them and reporting what they’d talked about, being suddenly unable to understand English, cutting themselves, or even trying to harm Dr. Miller.

Apparently, the cult had a regular “pick-up system” for their members outside of the mental hospital. Members who were currently admitted would be overcome with the urge to smoke at a precise time each night (post-hypnotic triggering, see Hypnotism, G.H. Estabrooks) where they would be approached by a cult member who would either threaten them or activate certain programs to facilitate future abductions.

Dr. Miller took a month’s leave to vacation in Europe with her youngest child; upon her return, she would learn that Lorraine had been in the psychiatric emergency ward almost the entire time that Miller had been away. When Dr. Miller visited her, Lorraine divulged that the abuse had ramped up considerably in the doctor’s absence.

She told me that she had been picked up on the street by some cult people, who had told her that if she did not kill herself properly this time, they would kill me, her psychiatrist, her sister in a neighboring city, and her sister’s children. Most parts of Lorraine were children, and they believed this threat.

Dr.Miller tried to have Lorraine held at a hospital but the powers that be decided she was too much trouble, and that she would be transferred to housing in another city. Dr. Miller, certain that Lorraine would kill herself once discharged, wrote a note in the ward’s book for hospital staff, saying, “Do not discharge her until I’ve had a chance to see her again. If you do, she will kill herself.”

The psychiatrist called me that night. He had read my note and believed me. He said that he would not be able to keep Lorraine in hospital until I could see her the next week, and asked whether it would make a difference if he discharged her on Thursday or Sunday. I said no, she was not safe either way.

He discharged her on Thursday. Early on Saturday morning, he called to tell me that Lorraine had fallen, or jumped, out of the window of her apartment to her death. There was no investigation. She had been suicidal for many years, so it was assumed to be suicide, not murder.

But to me, it was very suspicious. The bathroom window Lorraine had gone out of was a tiny one, and almost impossible to open, let alone to squeeze through, as it was quite high up from the floor. Lorraine was fat and had no muscle tone; I could not imagine her doing it alone. Her apartment door was locked.

Lorraine had no relatives in town who cared about her. She had grown up ina group home, where her original cult abuse had happened, as the group home parents were cult-involved and used the children they looked after in the cult rituals and other evil activities.

…there was a brief memorial service at the funeral chapel. I was one of the people who spoke about Lorraine and Susie to those who attended, including several suspicious-looking people. I was sad, but not as sad as I had been when Lorraine was alive and constantly being re-abused and tortured by people who were not acknowledged to exist. At least she was no longer subject to this lack of safety. It was over. She could not go through that any longer. I made it clear to the cult at the memorial service that on this subject at least I agreed with them.

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AI-generated image of “Ritual Abuse”

The above story alludes to many things and leaves us with more questions than answers. This is what it’s like when a therapist is pulled into the dark world of ritual abuse and mind control.

The above story is indeed very sad, but it doesn’t always play out that way. Two of Dr. Miller’s “first four” eventually reintegrated their alters, recovered from their trauma, and are living productive lives far away from the cult’s grasp.

The fact that victims of ritual abuse and mind control can actually heal suggests that humans, with enough determination and compassion, can heal from just about any psychological wound. If you are a therapist, it is essential that you know there is hope for success. Additionally, it is often the case that healed victims of ritual abuse become powerful allies in the fight to both raise awareness on the subject and facilitate the healing of those who still suffer.

However, it would be a lie to suggest that there are no risks involved.

According to Alison Miller, The first generation of therapists doing this work were told by their clients that the one massive cult was everywhere, knew everything, had access to state-of-the-art technology, and was willing to kill both clients and therapists to stop the information from getting out.

When I worked with my first ritually abused clients, I was constantly hearing threats to my life. Teresa, in particular, would come for an appointment and relate in great detail how the cult high priest (whose identity I knew) was going to lie in wait in the hallway of my office building and how he would kill me. The worst threat was when I found out from one of these first four clients that the cult leaders had taken them all in a van to the driveway of my home, had them abused while drugged by a woman impersonating me, and then told them my address and instructed them to go there and set fire to my house while my children and I were asleep. This event was corroborated about a year later by another one of these clients.

Another major stressor for the therapist working with these clients is isolation and peer pressure.

It was particularly bad during the “memory wars” of the 1990s. The diagnosis of dissociative disorder was not widely accepted, and an organized political group, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, along with other similar groups, took up the task of informing the media that unethical therapists were suggesting to helpless clients that they had been sexually abused, or worse, by family members. A leading journal, Treating Abuse Today, was forced out of business by picketers representing supposedly innocent accused parents.

Leading therapists in the field of dissociative disorders, such as Bennett Braun and Judith Peterson, were targeted for lawsuits and, in Peterson’s case, even criminal charges. Insurance companies chose to settle most lawsuits out of court, giving the impression that the therapists were guilty. (#)

VIDEOS

Alison Miller’s presentation at Survivorship Conference 2017

Ritual Abuse in the 21st Century: Featuring Randy Noblitt, PhD (April 25, 2009)
-poor audio -

60 Minutes Special on Ritual Abuse:

Mary Knight Interview:

Ted Gunderson Presentation: RUMBLE LINK

Survivor testimony: