Oral History Interviews of Therapists, Survivors, the Accused, and Retractors. Also available in print in

Francine Boardman, British Retractor from Deliverance Ministry

Francine Boardman and her daughter, May, had always been very close -- too close, according to some members of the Liverpool Baptist church they attended in 1989. The vicar and several elders had attended seminars at Ellel Grange, a Christian healing center in Leicestershire, where they learned about “deliverance ministry” and how to identify and exorcise demons. Unbeknownst to her mother, 29-year-old May went for church counseling and became convinced that her mother was a witch. Distraught over her daughter’s inexplicable distance, Francine sought out her vicar. . .
I went to Vicar Tom Raseford and told him, “My family is falling apart, I don’t know what’s happening. Help.” But he didn’t seem interested in that. All he wanted to know was about my childhood. I told him that I couldn’t remember much. My mother died when I was seven. I just didn’t remember all that much, that was all there was to it. I said I came from a large family, a father and five children. My childhood was not especially unhappy. My older stepbrother was a bully, that was the only problem I could think of. He was 12 years older than me.

Tom Raseford didn’t say much. He prayed a bit, then looked at me in a very strange way, and said, “Who are you?” I had no idea at the time what he was talking about, but it scared me to death. I nearly fainted. It was if he knew that it wasn’t Francine speaking. The room went black, I went dizzy, and if I hadn’t been sitting down, I would have passed out. Then it clicked with me that he was talking about demons. He got his wife Phyllis with him. She said the name of the demon was Malice, and they proceeded to try to cast out this demon. They held their hands up and said, “In the name of Jesus, come out.”

I started coughing. A doctor told me since then that when you’re frightened, your throat dries up. But Tom and Phyllis thought it was the demon coming out. The more I coughed, the more demons they thought I had. And the more frightened I got, the more I coughed. I was there for three hours that night, got exhausted, cried a lot, and got terribly upset. I was shocked and didn’t quite know what to make of the whole thing.

As soon as I left the vicar and his wife the first time, I started getting pictures in my mind, hallucinations. They had suggested to me that there was witchcraft in my family. They probably knew that May thought I was a witch. I started having hallucinations of witches in the family. I had probably seen a TV program or movies, I’m sure that’s where I got my fantasies from.

My imagination just went to work on it; I came up with this terrific story. Week after week, it got more lurid. It’s hard to describe why I got into all of this. All of a sudden, I had this childhood background that nobody else had. All these stories of witchcraft were coming out.

I thought it was exciting in a way, I really did. This couple were giving me all their attention. They were basically pandering to whatever I said. They agreed with me, supported me, encouraged me to keep on bringing these things up, because they were convinced they were real memories. They sympathized with me. There were a lot of incest stories, so they prayed for me. I kind of became regressed into being like a child. I didn’t think I could function without Tom and Phyllis as parents, and I became totally dependent on them, which they encouraged.

In these stories, my mother was a high priestess; my father wasn’t really my father at all. My biological father was a local doctor, a satanist who had an affair with my mother. I was conceived specifically for devil worship. They operated a coven from the crypt of the local village church. I was born during the war and had been brought up specifically for child prostitution. When I reached the age of four, my assignment was to service the American Air Force personnel who were stationed in the Lincolnshire Airfield. I was given male semen to drink as part of the ritual. I was raped by the devil in the shape of Anubis, an Egyptian dog-god.

Where did I come up with these things? Well, I’m fairly well read, but I only read a book on satanism after all of these “memories” came up. Child prostitution was very common in Europe a few thousand years ago, and I probably had read about it.

Over time, the stories became even more elaborate and grotesque. I was laid in a coffin full of snakes with my mother and buried underground for a couple of hours, to prove that I was the devil’s child and couldn’t be killed by snakes. I really believed these things. It’s rubbish, isn’t it? They just came into my mind. You have to understand that I was in a terrible mental state, not calm and stable. I didn’t sleep much for two years. I’d sleep about an hour a night. Somehow, I managed to hold down my job as a typist.

I wouldn’t get visions during the sessions with the vicar and his wife. I’d usually get them in the middle of the night. They would happen just when I was going to sleep or waking up. I would be relaxing, just about to go to bed, when pictures would wake me up. They were quite vivid. On one occasion, I had the picture of this doctor who was supposed to be my father, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Sometimes I actually saw witches and black cloaks outside the house at night.

I would go see Tom and Phyllis every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., and I’d be there until 5 p.m. They did more than exorcisms. They would cut “soul ties.” They would try to cut you off from your family and pray that God would cut the bond between mother and child, because they thought that would cut off the demons that came from me. This was for May’s own good. But May kept seeing me anyway. I kept telling May this story, and she believed it. We found it quite a talking point. She said it actually made sense when she looked at her own deliverance.

The vicar and his wife were terribly interested in my sexual habits, and they asked questions and encouraged me to tell them all about my sexual exploits. For each one, they’d say there was a demon of intercourse or sex. Every person you’ve been to bed with, you have a soul tie, so they make an enormous meal out of it. I was divorced, which was a sin to start with. They wanted to know about sex before, during, or after my marriage. I wasn’t having sex with anyone during the time of my counseling. I wasn’t particularly interested in men at the time.

One day when she was sitting in church, Phyllis had a vision that I had a demon of murder. They then proceeded to exorcize this demon in a little room at the side after the service. When they exorcized this demon of murder, I got a picture of having murdered a baby. The satanic rituals were sacrificing babies to Satan, and they came from the female prostitutes having children by the U.S. Air Force men. After being murdered, their bodies were burned.

This went on for one and half years. I finally stopped it. I reached a stage when I was in terrible mental anguish. I would freak out, would try and scream because I felt so bad about everything, but nothing came out. If you’ve ever experienced real mental pain, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This went on day after day after day. I started to turn away from Tom and Phyllis. I hated Phyllis. She was quite cruel. She always spoke to me as a demon. She never treated me like a human being.

I was aware of others who had been through exorcism, but I was their prize pupil. They told me that I would have to see them for about five years, and that was when I decided, no, I would not. I got some strength from somewhere. I rang them up and said, “I’m not coming anymore.”

They came to see me and just sat there looking at me, watching me. They asked how I was; I said I felt really ill. They said they would pray for me. I told them to get out of the house. They wouldn’t go. I went into another room; they followed me. I again told them to leave, and they eventually went after a half hour.

When I told them to go, it was in June of 1991. Gradually, I realized that all of my stories were just stories. None of it was true, but I was still frightened and confused. I went to see a doctor in October. By this time, I had given up work. It became impossible to function. I was terrified everywhere I went. I was terrified of shopping, of speaking to people. I stayed at home all the time, just sat and watched Clint Eastwood movies on TV. The state was pushing me to go back to work, so I went to my doctor. I told him what had been going on, and he was wonderful. He sent me to a psychiatrist. She said I had been so badly hurt that I had become unbalanced, and she gave me drugs to make me sleep and for depression. They really helped, but that’s how I lost my faith. The logic in my brain started working overtime. I haven’t been to church since then.

The ironic thing is, May left her husband in June, and we bought a house together, and she was with me through all of this, coming out of the church, and she agreed with me. We decided it was all a load of rubbish and threw away our Bibles.

Tom and Phyllis get absolute power out of this. They are incredibly arrogant, and they have power over people. If you tell people they have demons and they are Christians, they will be horrified. The vicar and his wife say God tells them that there are demons inside people. I firmly believe that Tom’s intention from the beginning was to split our family up. He felt we were too close together.

I take absolutely no responsibility whatsoever myself for what happened. I lay the blame at the vicar’s door. The only part I played was, I was extremely vulnerable and unhappy. Me and May and her daughter live together. I’m 52 now. I am still taking medication. I live on invalidity benefits, long-term sickness benefits. I have difficulty with relationships to a certain extent. I don’t want to get too close to anybody. I won’t let them get close to my inner thoughts.

– • –

Leslie Hannegan, Christian Retractor

As a child, Leslie Hannegan suffered from a severe stutter. Lonely and imaginative, she lived, as she put it, “in my own world,” even though she had two younger brothers. Her father was often deeply depressed, while her mother was frequently ill. “I grew up Catholic, and that helped get me through,” she remembered. Whenever the other school children's taunts got to her, she'd listen to the choir sing “Be Not Afraid,” and she felt the Lord's comforting presence. She suffered from the same depression as her father, however, from the third grade on. “The only thing that gave me joy were ballet classes.” Still feeling awkward and lonely at 24, Hannegan met a man in 1991 who broke her heart. In the stressful wake of that disappointment, she attended a church function at which a Christian incest survivor spoke. It changed her life.
I met Ray at a dance performance. He was involved in dance, drama, and singing. He was gorgeous and he was a Christian. We just fell in love with each other. A week later, he was calling, telling me I'd be his wife, wanting to know if I felt the same way. Oh, yes! He swept me off my feet.

[But when Hannegan visited him two months later, he acted completely cold. The visit was a disaster. She cried the entire flight home.]

A week after I turned 24, he sent me a card saying, “You're not the one for me. I'm not going to marry you.” That's when I started to hear this voice inside of me. I believed it was God's voice, telling me that Ray was going to be my husband. This could have been just my desires talking, but it seemed like a real voice to me. So I believed it. I kept hoping and hoping.

Because of this, I was very unhappy with myself. I started searching for what was the matter with me. I attended a large interdenominational Christian meeting here in Texas. The woman speaker was an incest victim from Washington state. She said, “There are women in the audience who don't remember any abuse, but their lives show it.” She said, “You're going to start to remember it.” It was just like a little light went off inside of me. I thought, “She's talking about me.” It's kind of funny, but I finally felt special. It made me feel better, because it wasn't my fault why Ray didn't want me.

My mother went with me to this meeting, and I told her afterwards I felt I had been sexually abused. She asked, “Who could have done this to you?” At first I thought it was a 12-year-old babysitter when I was two. I went to the Christian bookstore and bought Freeing Your Mind From Memories That Bind, by Fred and Florence Littauer.^32 They go around the country and give lectures and pass out a quiz asking, “Do you have these kinds of feelings?” They tell you that three out of four people were abused but just don't remember it. They take people through age regression and say that the Holy Spirit is leading them back through time. This is all described in the book.

Because they wrote that the Lord had told them this truth, I trusted them. I put all my faith in what they told me to do. I also read The Wounded Heart, by Dr. Dan Allender, which encourages you to write stuff without thinking about it. So I did a lot of that.

Ever since I was little, I've had paralysis in my dream state, where I feel like I'm awake, but I can't move. I would see things, like another realm opening up to me. There would be incredible fear with it. It always seemed that something came into my room and touched me. This got more intense after I converted to evangelical Christianity when I was 19. After I accepted that I was an abuse victim, it got much worse. It was constant, almost every night. Most of the time, I was frozen. I couldn't even scream. Things would be flying into my room, getting on top of me, molesting me. Some were evil-looking inhuman things.

I told my mother about these episodes. When this happened to me, when I could finally get up, I'd run sleep with her, because I didn't want to be alone. Dad had taken early retirement by then and was away at a church retreat for a month. I put two and two together and thought that these dream experiences must have been memories of torments, maybe satanic.

My anger and fear were getting worse and worse, but I didn't know where to direct them. I had this dream two nights in a row, of this dragon. The second night, it had my father's face. And I just knew the dragon's name was Incest. Something inside me screamed, “Daddy, Daddy, why did you hurt me?” I felt so betrayed. The horror and shame came flooding in right then, in the middle of the night. I was in shock.

Prior to this time, I did have a hard time with my father. We were both depressed and living at home. I had a hard time talking to him but couldn't figure out why. Now the pieces started to fit together.

I didn't tell my mother right away. I wanted to deal with it and get healed. I thought the Lord was helping me and would bring the past up and let me be healed. That's what these books were telling me. So I just trusted myself to the Lord. After two weeks, though, I told my mother, because it hurt so bad. I don't know if she believed me at first. I just know I sure needed her. We called Sharon Purcell, a Christian social worker with a private practice. I told her I was an incest victim and needed help. I said I didn't have clear pictures, and she said, “We'll work on those.”

Sharon would pray and lead me into age regression. She'd bring me back to the womb and I'd go from there. Anything painful we came across, she'd bring Jesus into it, so the Lord would be there for this painful time. Only nothing ever surfaced during the sessions. It was always on my own. She encouraged me to journal more, so I did. And she wanted me to look at old photographs. Dad has taken so many great pictures of us. There was this one picture of me as a little girl by my parents' bed, with a pocketbook on my shoulder, that really triggered me. I'm so uncomfortable about the story that got built around this picture, I'd rather not talk about it.

I got a lot of body memories. One day when I was journaling, my head got thrown back and I was gagging and could not breathe. It was almost like I was choking. That's why I assumed that he forced his penis into my mouth and I was remembering it.

I was so convincing. I would beat myself, scratch my arms, hit my legs, and try to pull out my hair. I hated myself so much. It was hard to believe that nothing had happened to me. The betrayal I felt seemed to indicate it was someone close to me who had done this.

After a month of therapy, Sharon told me I was healed and that the next step was for me to write to my father, so my family would get better and come to counseling. So I wrote him a letter, telling him I forgave him for the incest. I truly believed it would take a load off his shoulders, and we could be a family again. I wasn't trying to get back at him. I saw my father as a hurting person who had been abused himself. I felt compassion for him.

He was crushed. He cried hysterically and told the other people at the retreat about the letter. He told my brothers, and I didn't want them to know about it until he admitted it. My brothers were really angry at me. I became more of a mess. My father came back home. He went to see my counselor and said he was very concerned about me.

Then Sharon met with me and said she wasn't sure he did it. That was the ultimate betrayal. She had committed me to writing something so horrible, something you can't back away from—when she wasn't even sure herself. I was amazed and hurt. I left her.

So I went through agony for another year without counseling. After a year, I went to another Christian counselor, a blind woman in her late 40s, and she was wonderful. She said, “Well, what do you remember about this abuse?” I said, “Not much.” She asked, “Are you sure this really happened to you?” I felt angry at first that she didn't believe me, but she was just asking questions. Finally she said, “We're not going to go into your past. We're going to help you get strong again, to be able to get out of bed every day.” She didn't say, “I don't believe you.” She just said, “Let's help you to cope.” She prayed with me. I really started feeling God's love again. For a while I was angry at Him for letting me go through this.

I was sick of trying to look at my past. I just wanted to get on with my life and forget about it. I was still going to the Christian Church of God, an evangelical, charismatic nondenominational church. My pastor does not believe that psychiatry offers any permanent solution. He believes that only the Lord heals. When I told him at the beginning of all this that my father had done this to me, he didn't say anything to me. One weekend, my pastor and his wife saw a newscast on false memory syndrome. They realized that the Holy Spirit was telling them that what I was remembering was false. They prayed on that.

The following Monday night, just before Good Friday, my pastor gave a sermon, saying many of the same things as usual. “We're a new creation. The old one is gone. We're born again, and we don't have to look into our past.” Then he said something that was directed straight at me. “There is a deception, an evil spirit from the pit of Hell, crossing the earth, causing false memory syndrome.”

I couldn't believe my pastor was saying this. I was shocked and hurt. I made an appointment to see his wife to show her that God was healing me. I brought my journals in, but she didn't want to hear them. She was very strong with me. She said, “Leslie, you are having a nervous breakdown. We care about you so much, and we don't want this to happen to you.” A couple of times I almost got up and left, I was so angry. But after an hour, it was like a wall coming down around me. I suddenly realized that it wasn't that terrible if I was wrong. I've always wanted to be perfect, to stay in complete control. But at this point, the fear and pride left, and it wasn't that bad to be wrong. I realized how selfish I had been, how much I had hurt my family. Being a Christian, I needed to release my father. I felt so awful.

I waited three days and wrote him a card on Good Friday of 1993. When he got it, he cried for joy. I was afraid he'd be angry, that he would never speak to me again. But we all embraced—my father, my mother, and me, and started the healing. It was wonderful.

Ever since I came out of this, it's incredible how rapidly I've been healed. I don't listen to that voice any more. I've come to realize it was different from the Lord's voice. It had a selfish intent, focused only on me. To be honest, I do actually believe it was an evil spirit.

Now I am a whole, productive human being. I'm doing well at my job in human resources at a major corporation. I love myself now. I'm coordinator of a Christian dance team, too. Someday, I want to have a good relationship with a man. I'm looking forward to having a husband and kids.

I speak out now about what happened to me. I'm particularly concerned about the misuse of Christianity. These Christian therapists say, “Get the anger out at your parents.” But Jesus never said that. He said, “Don't let the sun go down on your anger.” When you're angry, you're sinning against someone. I'm concerned that the Christian church is being deceived. These therapists truly believe the Lord is showing them this and that it is a real healing process. If they believe the Lord is telling them, they won't listen to anyone else. There's a stubbornness there.

Maybe if they hear from another Christian, they might listen. I am going to write to the Littauers and to the first speaker who led me into this deception.

– • –

Nell Charette, MPD Retractor

Nell Charette, a 35-year-old Canadian cleaning woman, believed until recently that her alcoholic father had violently sexually abused her during her childhood. Her numerous interior alter personalities told her so during therapy sessions and in her copious journal entries. Yet something inside her resisted confronting her parents, and she eventually rebelled against the diagnosis—and against Milt Kramer, her therapist, a charismatic American expatriate with a master’s in counseling who convinced many of the women in this 5,000-person town that they possessed multiple personalities which only he could cure. Nell first visited Kramer after work in an ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) group. She had already read John Bradshaw and watched his videos, and she had heard that this new American therapist did wonderful inner-child work . . . .
I liked Milt from the beginning. He seemed to be one of the nicest men I'd ever met. Very kind, very understanding of anything I said, no matter how off the wall it was. If I did something totally irresponsible at work, he would turn it around so I was the victim in the situation. It felt good. He's about 42, very attractive, with a mustache, a very kind face, sort of like a left-over hippy-type look. Laid back. He made you feel like he very much believed in feminist ideals, that women have been so wronged.

At first, Milt just gathered basic information about my childhood. My Dad is a recovering alcoholic, and we talked about that. There were many times I couldn't remember in detail from my childhood— nothing major, no giant gaps, I just couldn't remember every incident. Milt asked me a lot about abuse. He said I was definitely emotionally abused, and he wondered about physical and sexual abuse. I remembered Dad spanking me, though not very often, but no sexual abuse. So Milt left that alone for a long time. But he encouraged me to read The Courage to Heal. I must have read that book about eight times.

Then, after about six months of weekly sessions, we started doing what he referred to as mild relaxation technique, which I've since learned was really hypnosis. We created together a safe spot. At first, I didn't know what that was, but he helped me to find this place in my own head that I could go to. I would close my eyes, and I would walk up some steps, and by the time I reached the ninth step, there would be a door, and when I went through, there was my safe spot. It was a wooded area with water, trees, and what-not. It was weird. I was always amazed that it seemed so real, so very real. You don't usually see your thoughts so clearly.

The first time, I met my inner child, which he referred to as “Little Nellie.” She was a pathetic little thing, very real, like looking at a real eight-year-old. This was the wounded me, he told me. I could hardly bear to look at her, and there was so much pain in her voice. I didn't want to be around her. She had memories of my childhood, he told me, and I was to embrace her and tell her that I was there for her and to trust me. We would work together, and whatever memories she had, she would safely release them to me.

I don't remember feeling that bad when I was eight. But I wasn't real happy with my childhood, had some anger toward Dad, because he just was never there. But Mom was wonderful—she picked up the pieces. Dad and I were too much alike—we rubbed each other the wrong way. I was cold toward him, and he has a hard time showing his feelings. He's a laborer for the town he lives in.

I eventually got so I could just close my eyes and be in my safe spot without going up the steps or anything. Milt was always talking in a soothing voice. Around the third time I went to the safe spot, lo and behold, there's two more parts of me, one a boy of fourteen named Pete, and the other a one-and-a-half-year-old baby. Milt was just thrilled that I would come up with these other two. No, he didn't suggest them to me. They were just there. He would often say to me about Little Nellie, “Are you sure she's the only one?”

I had no idea of multiple personalities at the time. We had talked about dissociative disorder, but I had no idea what it was. Milt explained that it was parts of me that had taken trauma or pain as a child, so I split off in my own head. I was really upset about that idea, and I said, “What are you talking about, like Sybil?” He laughed and said, “No.” I said, “Well, if there's something wrong with me, I want to fix it.” Oh, yes, I guess I did know about multiple personalities, I'd read about Sybil and Eve. But I never, ever dreamed it would be something I had.

That was a weird session, with Pete and The Baby. I was really upset after it, blown away. One inner child I could handle, but a couple more scared me. So I began to keep a journal. Milt told me to let my inner children write it. I had to go to my safe spot and use my left hand if I was having difficulty.

I began to write the most horrifying things you can imagine. This Little Nellie said my Dad repeatedly sexually abused her, beat her, just horrible things. I was writing it all down. I was thinking I was nuts. I brought it to Milt and said, “This is all garbage, you might as well call Watkinsburg [the local provincial hospital]. I need to be there, there's something wrong with me, none of this is true.” That's when he started talking MPD talk. He said, “You're angry, you're in denial. These aren't your memories, they're your alters'.” That was the first time that word came up. I was really blown away. I thought, “My God, what am I doing? This is nuts.” But I kept going back to see him.

I kept writing these notebooks. I couldn't understand why I was writing this crap. I mean it was horrible, it was pornographic. In the next two years, I filled 15 notebooks. And that's nothing, one girl in our MPD group has 75 notebooks filled with poetry, artwork, and stuff. I was really freaked by this alter stuff, so that's when Milt integrated Pete. He just said, “Pete will walk through your back.” I didn't really feel much.

But lo and behold, the next session, I go to my safe spot, and there's a whole slew of them, coming out from behind trees. It was terrifying. This started about nine months before I left therapy. All these alters—one named Flo, she was 21 maybe, the tart in me; June, she was the spiritual one; Fred, who wanted to die; Sarah, who was a child about 11; Herbert, who was this paranoid little thing. They told me their names and I told Milt. This was all frighteningly real to me. And each and every one remembered all the horrible things my Dad did to me.

I never confronted Dad, but I started alienating myself from my parents, and I kept asking my mother for information from my childhood, at Milt's suggestion. I asked her about hospital visits I had, certain times in my life, what did we do, where was Dad, was she working then? We were pretty close prior to this. I stopped visiting home. I couldn't talk with her about her memories of the past, because I thought she was in denial. I'd say, “Why talk about the past? You don't remember it in reality anyway.” She didn't understand what I was talking about. Milt wanted me to confront my father, say, “I know what you did to me,” and see how Dad would handle it. But I didn't really buy into it. I knew a girl who did bring her father in. He was just outraged, told the therapist, “You're off the wall, what are you doing to her?” She was devastated and didn't have a family any more. I mean, these were all alters' memories, not mine. It wasn't a real truth to me yet. But I did start to take on the feelings of a Sexual Survivor.

Meanwhile, I joined this group of MPDs, all being treated by Milt. It seemed kind of weird that all of us had alters, but he said, “You know, you do attract your own kind.” This was all very culty, in retrospect. I didn't know these gals other than to say, “Hi, how are you,” before this group. Then I became very close to them.

We all became really ill. I went for three months before I left therapy. It was really sick. Milt only attended the first session, then said it was our group. We shared our journals, talked about our work, our feelings, our alters. Now I see that those of us who were in longer, who accepted MPD, were teaching the ones just coming in to be it, to live it. It was like we fed off each other, and the sicker we were, the better. It was sort of like, “Who can top this?” with the journals. Milt said, “If you accept it, and stop denying, we can deal with it.” There was a lot of jealousy in that room about him. Somebody would say they spent three hours with him, another went for a walk with him, and we were like cats. I'd think, “Why not me?”

There was a lot of what they call transference going on. You kinda start liking him for more than a therapist, and he fed off it. He'd take me for drives in the country, and we'd talk. He didn't charge for that. I even went to his house a couple of times and cleaned it, I'm embarrassed to say. We'd have coffee. He lived alone, and he told me how lonely he was, how hard it was to meet people in a small town, and how people always expected something from him. I found out later that he was having sex with one of his patients, and another one thought he was going to marry her.

I became really ill through this. At the end, I was hallucinating, seeing myself as other people. I'd look in the mirror and it wouldn't be me, it would be one of my alters. I was just a mess. I wasn't sleeping, running on an hour of sleep a night. I wrote in my journals at all hours. I started eating compulsively, crazy things like bags and bags of popcorn. I always had headaches, and I started mutilating myself, really disgusting. I started pulling my toenails off, and I'll tell you, I didn't feel anything. I would rip the whole nail right off, blood all over the place.

Milt said it was one of my alters in pain, and they were trying to get my attention. If I didn't get into this abreactional work, they would turn on me. I was terrified of abreaction work, where you relived your trauma, and I wouldn't do it. I had seen one woman in my group who was black and blue from head to toe after a three-hour abreaction session. Her nose was bleeding, her breast was bruised, the middle part of her back, and supposedly her alters were doing this to her. I think now Milt did it to her. My God, the shape I saw that woman in!

We all started showing signs of satanic ritual abuse. Upside-down crosses started to show up in pictures, lots of blood. And in my safe spot, I had a black shadowy sort of figure in a robe with a priest's hood and couldn't see his face. A lot of the other girls had grown up here in town, and they started to remember a lot of the same abusers. Milt asked one girl to get a list of the priests around here. Oh, yeah, he was working on it.

I became really worn down and exhausted, and because I do have a lot of good friends, they said, “You're looking like shit, not making any sense, what are you doing?” I finally met with Milt one day outside the office and said, “I can't handle it right now, I'm going to stop for a month, give myself a break.” He said, “By all means,” because I wasn't planning to leave permanently.

During that month, I started noticing how goddamn sick we all were. I wasn't writing in my journal, and things started to become clear. One girl was suicidal, another's relationship was breaking up. I thought, “Something is really wrong here.” The longer I stayed out of therapy, the more I started seeing it for what it was. The voices started disappearing from my head, that was a biggie. Before that, there were constant conversations going on in my head. Even making a cup of coffee was a major ordeal. One alter drank coffee black, one regular. There were eight different people telling you what to do. My headaches started going away. I was sleeping again.

I decided to get a second opinion and met with the director at Milt's health clinic, a psychiatrist. Before that, I was terrified to see a psychiatrist, because Milt had told me that they treated MPD with shock treatment and drugs. Instead, Milt had me see a woman who specialized in MPD, and of course she confirmed the diagnosis, since she's on this kick, too. Anyway, Milt's boss was blown away by what I told him. He gave me a paper on false memory syndrome to read, to take home. He told me he didn't think I had MPD, that it was being created in me.

I finally got the courage to talk to another MPD group member. She got out for a couple of weeks, and we started comparing journals and sessions, how we felt about Milt, our safe spot. It turns out we all had the same safe spot, all had a shadowy hooded figure. It was like waking up from a bad dream and thinking, “What the hell have I done?” That was sort of the end of the beginning for me. I went to see an independent psychiatrist, took a bunch of tests. He said I'm fine, that I did not have MPD, never did.

My marriage was ruined by my therapy. All along, Dick, my husband, thought it was really sick, wanted me to get out of therapy. As a sexual survivor, I had stopped having sex at all with him. I wasn't able to function in that area. Dick didn't understand this dependency I had with Milt. He thought I was probably in love with this man. I was horrified that he would think that. But I was really dependent on Milt. I couldn't even go for a ride in my car without his permission. But I felt my husband didn't support me. Milt often told me that Dick was emotionally abusive to me, and that he was sexually abusive if he insisted on having sex. He told me to leave Dick towards the end and suggested a lawyer I should see.

We separated after I left therapy. There was too much already destroyed. I have three children -- 12, 8, and 2 years old. They're with me. We've been separated a month and a half. Now I have a real fear of counselors.

My Dad knows now that I thought he sexually abused me. I had to tell him, because I'm involved in a civil suit against Milt. Mom and Dad have both been really understanding. Now they have an explanation for my behavior over the last couple of years. Dad has a really warped sense of humor. He said, “Didn't anybody ever tell you that some shrinks are crazier than we are? They hang around too many nuts; it rubs off on them.” Mom got together different eight-millimeter films from my childhood for me to watch and got records of all my hospital visits. None have anything to do with sexual abuse. Everything that the alters wrote in those journals—it was all lies.

I can't really explain those journals. Maybe Milt gave me some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion. A lot of times—in my safe spot, I don't really remember what he said, but I know he was talking. We all just lived and breathed MPD. Oh, I functioned, took care of my children. I had a high-functioning alter, that's how Milt put it.

Yes, in a way being MPD made me feel special and creative. The bottom line is, I do have a lot of talents in me that I probably wouldn't have known about, but they're my talents, not my alters'. I'm creative, but it doesn't mean I'm MPD. When you have three children, you don't usually sit down and draw, but I've found I'm pretty good at it.

No, that discovery certainly isn't worth what I've been through and my ruined marriage. The hunt for sex abuse memories is the con of the '90s. If you don't want to take responsibility for your problems, what better way than to blame it on an alter? I've learned now to be responsible. But it was a road through hell and back again. I feel humiliated and stupid to have been so gullible. I hear “inner child” now and I cringe. What's the point of dwelling in the past? I have a hard time with the concept of repressed memories in general. I have a pretty good memory—I can remember my teachers' names. Who cares? It's like you're digging and you're digging, when it's all a lie. And I think this is taking away from dealing with actual sexual abuse. I know gals who really were sexually abused, and they have always remembered it, maybe not every detail, but why would they want to? Life does go on, and they don't obsess over it.

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