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

Patricia Delaney, Survivor and Lawyer

In her professional life, Patricia Delaney, 35, was a hard-nosed corporate lawyer whose aggressive courtroom tactics made her a respected Ohio litigator. To her three sisters, however, she was a vulnerable survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Delaney retrieved her memories through dreams, journaling, and therapy over a year and a half. Although she had not accused either of her parents, she was bitter about her alcoholic mother. “I'm very resentful of the lack of supervision that allowed this to go on.” Gradually, she retrieved memories that George, the son of her mother's favorite drinking companion, was her primary abuser. Unlike many Survivors, Delaney did not find The Courage to Heal particularly useful, but Renee Fredrickson's Repressed Memories helped her considerably.
I remember watching an Oprah program years ago. At the end of the show, she said, “There are people who have been sexually abused, and there are others who don't know whether they've been abused or not.” That kind of sparked something in me.

When my sister got married in 1990, I brought up the subject of sexual abuse over lunch with all my sisters. I had begun to wonder whether my low sex drive and lack of sexual fulfillment might stem from forgotten abuse. But I didn't really pursue it until a year and a half ago, when I started having bad dreams.

The memories started to come back early in 1993. My first dream involved George, who was one of my best friend's older brothers when I was a child. He's about five years older than I am. In my dream, I was in a white bathtub, which ran perpendicular to the entryway, and it was set against the far end of a wall. George was coming at me, moving these long fingers in a haunting sort of way, like Edward Scissorhands. I was curled up in a little ball and trying to hide myself behind my hair. And as a small kid, I didn't have long hair. Then the dream just stopped. I don't remember him touching me; I just see him coming at me.

I had a friend who had remembered sexual abuse, and she referred me to Rhonda, her therapist, who had a masters in counseling, and who had a reputation for incorporating spirituality into her work with survivors. I am a devout Catholic, so that was important to me. I ended up seeing Rhonda for three months, but I was never really at ease with her. I wanted to explore whether anything had happened, and I felt her pushing me to accept that something definitely had happened. I would relate to her what I wrote in my journal about my dreams, and she would ask, “What happened next? What happened next?” I felt she was forcing me to find the ending of a story when I didn't have one. At the same time, I really felt sure that something had happened.

At first, I suspected absolutely everybody. Originally, I thought maybe it was George's father. He had a heart attack and died in 1993, which triggered some of my memories, I think. Also, my oldest son was just turning seven, the age when I think I was abused.

When I first started getting these memories, my husband was skeptical. He had read about how some therapists might be fostering false memories. I worried about that, too. I kept thinking, “This is all in my head.” As an attorney, I felt I had to have some kind of reliable, legally admissible evidence to back me up.

Then one night when I was writing in my journal, I had this incredible feeling that George was right there in the room with me. Everything just started tumbling out faster and faster. I wrote really fast, almost like not writing at all, but reliving it. It came flooding out. I had this vision of being on a bed in George's sister's room on the second floor of their big colonial house in Glencoe, this exclusive Chicago suburb, across the street from our house. I was lying on the bed, and one of George's friends was there. Someone was kneeling, with one leg up. When I wrote in my journal, I would sometimes write with a child's vocabulary, almost speaking like a child. In that memory, I looked up and saw this white fleshy tummy, and a patch of black worms. I assume that was pubic hair, and a penis was being forced into my mouth.

Starting about ten years ago, I've had inexplicable gagging episodes. Now I think they were body memories of oral sex, but I never identified them as such until recently. The gagging sensations would come in the middle of the day, just out of the blue.

After I saw the flash of white tummy and the black worms, I just flew out the window to this peaceful place. I went to this big tree and tiptoed on the most tender, delicate edges of the leaves. That's because I felt very close to God up there. I felt like I had flown into heaven and was safe. I don't remember flying back. I felt light and clean and feminine, almost like Tinkerbell. I finished writing about one in the morning and was so shaken up that I called my sister Fran and read it to her. She's a therapist who specializes in ACOA [Adult Children of Alcoholics] issues, and she explained that when I felt myself fly out the window I had been dissociating, taking my mind away with a defense mechanism. When Fran said that, I remembered how I would dissociate when I was a kid. I could be walking in the woods with my friends, and I could see my feet, but I just didn't feel like I was there.

I was still uncomfortable with Rhonda, my therapist. I asked her to hypnotize me to make sure of these memories, but she refused, saying that hypnosis was unreliable. I do credit her, though, for suggesting that I go to a woman's group for sexual abuse survivors, which was literally the best thing that could have happened to foster my recovery. We continue to meet, even though we were supposed to stop after ten sessions. We have a wonderful facilitator, Jodie, who was also my individual therapist during the most difficult part of this process.

Another terrible memory had to do with this area on the third floor, a big attic space where George's room was. My best friend, Carol, was George's little sister, and we used to play on the right side of the attic, a wonderful spot. But the left side was like hell. I have this incredible memory of a brown shag carpet and a brown couch on that side of the attic. I remember feeling the rug on my face and feeling this bouncing. And I remember feeling wet, and that I just wanted to sink down into the dirt of the floor, where no one would ever see me again. I call that dirt under the floor in the attic “The Pit.” When I told my group about this, I kept telling them that it felt like part of my childhood self.

Part of me wonders whether it was anal sex. One of the things that really bothered me, in terms of not trusting my memories, was that I bled the first time I had intercourse. So I thought, “This must be all in my mind. I couldn't have been raped, it couldn't have happened that way.” If it was anal sex, though, that would explain it. The funny thing is, I don't feel like I have to know now.

I was in incredible turmoil, and really paranoid that George would somehow reappear to attack me. I had a difficult time focusing at work. One day, I was getting ready to go into a meeting with the CEO of a major corporation, and I was a complete mess. I told myself, “Patty, you're 35 years old, you're a professional, you know what you're doing. There's a time for looking into this abuse, but now you need to go into that meeting.” And I did, but it wasn't easy.

About six months ago, soon after I called my sister at one in the morning, my three sisters and I got together with a therapist to sort out issues raised by our mother's alcoholism. We didn't want it to become an intergenerational problem or harm our relationship with one another. As part of that session, the issue of my abuse came up, how Mom didn't exercise proper supervision. I opened up to all my sisters completely for the first time. I asked for their help in going back to the house in Glencoe where the abuse occurred. I told them I needed to retrieve the abused part of me from The Pit.

It was really hard to tell my sisters about this. I had to wear a blindfold to do it. I wrapped a plastic garbage bag around my head. It helped me focus, and I didn't have to look at anybody. It hid the shame. Then I took off the blindfold and said, “I'm afraid I'm making all of this up.” And one sister looked straight at me and said, “Why in the world would you?” And I laughed and thought, “That's right, why would I?”

We put together a plan for me to shake out that demon. My sister Joan, who still lives in Chicago, set up for me to go back to George's room in the attic with her. She told the family that lived there that there were certain things I needed to settle from the past. They were a little reluctant, but they agreed. I chose Joan because she's the rebel of the family, and I thought she could protect me. I felt that George could just jump out at me from anywhere. I would sometimes panic, thinking he knew that I was telling people. I thought he would hire a hit man and kill me. I know it doesn't make much sense, but that's how I felt.

I flew out in the spring of 1994. Joan and I went over to the house one morning, and I had her bring a little bag with a toy rifle in it. I made her wear a sheriff’s badge, and I called her “Rambo.” I know that's bizarre, but it made me feel much safer. I couldn't have gone into the house without her. I also brought my special childhood doll with me. During the previous year, I had suddenly developed a strange aversion to the doll. My therapist, Jodie, really forced me to look at that. As preparation for going out to Glencoe, I realized that the doll didn't have any clothes on, and her nakedness was the ultimate vulnerability. So when I got to Chicago, Joan and I went out and bought the doll some nice clothes, wrapped in a warm blanket sent by another sister, and I brought her with me.

When we got to the house, I was expecting to feel very angry. I had told Joan I wanted to borrow the gun and shoot around George's room. But I didn't feel the need to do that at all. I just had this incredible feeling of peace come over me. When we got to the attic, I took my doll in my arms, and told her she was safe. She was out of The Pit and would be part of our family. Then I saw the bathroom . . . just like in my dreams, with the entrance and the white tub against the wall. Nothing any therapist could have said would have given me that reassurance. The whole memory scene hinged on the way George was approaching me there. I couldn't have made that up.

What had been driving me until then was the need to know every detail of what had happened to me. Now I knew that something really had happened, but I'll never know exactly what. Now I can put it behind me.

When I came home, my husband was wonderful. He told me how proud he was of me, and how courageous I was, instead of saying, “Oh, you poor thing, what you had to go through.” He was very reassuring, telling me that I could move ahead with real strength.

After I went back to confront my past in Glencoe, another sister, who happened to be George's real estate agent, abruptly informed him that she would no longer handle his business. He never questioned why, because he knows. Now I know he knows. When I first began to get my memories, I really wanted to confront George, but I don't feel the need any more. For one thing, I would still be very scared of him. I feel that I've confronted the issue and have identified the consequences of the abuse. That's all I want. I have all the support I need to keep my feelings under control, because I couldn't do it alone. I applied what I had learned from my ACOA 12-step background—that I was powerless over the situation, and that has helped me to realize that it wasn't my fault, and I don't need to be ashamed of asking for help.

I think this will always be an on-going process. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I'm doing much better, though. Yes, the abuse had specific consequences. But you can either go through life and be a victim and be stuck in that role forever, or you can acknowledge it and grapple with it and use it as a strength and move ahead.

Looking back at the last year and a half, I'd say that the memories came back because I was prepared to deal with them, and because I dealt with them my own way, surrounded by people I loved. I was fed up with the way things were going, and I wanted my sex life to be different. Now, it's much better. I remember going out to lunch with a friend toward the beginning of this process and saying I wasn't really sure about my memories. Much later, she told me, “Patty, I knew it was going to start for you, because you said you were really ready.” And I guess I was.

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Angela Bergeron, Multiple-Personality Survivor

Angela Bergeron held a bachelor's degree in sociology. A slightly built, polite 43-year-old housewife with glasses, she was convinced that she was a survivor of prolonged sexual abuse by her grandfather, who purportedly belonged to a satanic cult. As a result, she believed she had developed multiple internal personalities—as many as 40 or more. As she talked about her various “alters” and their behavior, I was amazed that the violence she described could inhabit such a mild exterior. Halfway through the interview, she explained that the reason she wore a cast on her right arm was that Hugh, the “network chiropractor” who elicited her memories, had broken her thumb when one of her “dark alters” tried to attack him during a session. “That man has put his life on the line to help me,” she immediately added, “and I couldn't be more grateful.”
About three years ago, I started having nightmares. I found myself crying and scared, and I didn't know why. My whole daily life was falling apart. I was so nervous I couldn't answer the door or sleep at night. I felt like I wasn't myself, like this wasn't me. It was a feeling of unreality. Sometimes it would be 8 a.m, then 3 p.m., and I really didn't know what had gone on in between. That was scary.

All my life, I'd thought it would be interesting to go to a therapist. When I found myself putting items from a store into my pocketbook without paying, I knew I was in deep trouble and needed counseling. So I opened the phone book and picked the first name under A, Frank Adams. Frank was terrific, very supportive. He never mentioned abuse, he just let me talk. After two months, I started to have what he called spontaneous regressions. My body would just start doing things in his office like curling up on the floor. I'd scream and convulse, and a lot of times I wasn't even aware of it. It would get real intense and go on for a couple of hours. He always made me the last appointment of the day. Apparently these were what they call body memories.

That went on twice a week for eight months, every single time I'd go, and I'd remember something different. Sometimes I'd just be reliving the trauma. It started to get into ritual abuse memories, right here in Connecticut. This was about torture, brainwashing, electric shock, programming, body sacrifices, blood, children dying, children in cages. I had never heard of this before. I didn't know where it was coming from. I don't watch horror movies and had never read about this kind of stuff. I know that he did not lead me or suggest anything. I had never thought about terms like incest. Since then, of course, I've read all those books.

It was my grandfather who brought me to those places. I had always remembered that he exposed himself to me and wanted me to fondle him when I was five. I was born on his birthday, and that made me his, special to him. There was a shed outside his house. I remembered in therapy how my granddad used to keep me in there, one time for five days straight, chained, and there was a wild, hungry raccoon tied in there, just far enough away so he couldn't get to me, but he would lunge at me.

Then it got frightening to Frank, because I wasn't necessarily conscious to myself when I talked to him. He believed it all, but he had a difficult time with the evil concept of it. So one day I got a phone call from him telling me never to come back. It was devastating. This man used to hold me in his lap after those episodes—nothing sexual, but he felt like he needed to heal my inner child. He used to encourage me to make phone calls to him, because I would be shook up the next day. He was a very spiritual person, and I think he became afraid of the demons or devils in me. It got very bad at the end. He said I would try to bite him, snarl, spit at him, my whole voice changed, very dark and sinister. One time, he threw a bucket of water at my head. Many times, he had to slap me really hard. I didn't think it was wrong for him to hit me. If he hit me, it meant he loved me.

[When Frank terminated with Angela, he insisted she go for a month to an in-patient psychiatric facility, where she was diagnosed as MPD. When she got out, she returned to the stairwell of his building, reverting to a childlike state. He found her and called the police. Later, after attending a local conference on ritual abuse, she worked with a local female therapist. “But I can't work with women therapists,” she explained, so she quit for a while. Then, she hurt her back and found Dr. Hugh Harrington, a network chiropractor.]

I told Hugh during our second session that there were others inside me. He said it wouldn't bother him. Since then, he has met a flood of people because of the depth of his touches. He worked on the nervous system, and it got very intense. He's told me since then that he never saw anything like this before. He started to find dark alters. They've attacked him with glass, knives, scissors, their bare hands. Bless his heart, he's never been afraid. He said once, “It's clear to me you were programmed by a professional cult. I can see it in your body, your cells.” One time in his office, I was reliving electric shock treatments from the cult, and they were in regular clusters, 6, 6, 6. There were 18 of them in all, then a big massive one. 666 is the number for the Beast. Oh, there's a lot of really deep programming.

Hugh started realizing he couldn't do enough contacts to clear the body, because it always involved a physical fight. I suggested, “Why don't you just tie me to the stupid table?” So he started doing that, and it has really worked very well, given me a lot of safety. I care so much about him, but he's getting in really deep. They're very strong and can almost rip the restraints off. So now I have my own room at Hugh's office that no one else uses.

There are alters on the light side and on the dark side. Hugh has a relationship with an 18-year-old male named Talbot. He calls on him when I first walk into the office. I've become co-conscious of some of the alters and their voices. I can feel Talbot, who fights to hold back the others. At first, Talbot was thinking of joining the dark alters, but he and Hugh have man-to-man conversations, they both have guts, and they've built a solid relationship. Talbot protects one of the children, 11-year-old Jasmine. Actually, Jasmine created him, an alter of an alter. I can hear Talbot, but he doesn't think he's in the same body as me. He'll scrunch up in a ball, but there's a big booming Talbot voice. Hugh once asked him if he had a penis, and he said, “What the fuck do you think?” [laughs] It's very intriguing.

There's a 19-year-old fun-loving alter, Denise, who flirts with everyone. She's having an affair with Talbot. They're making love inside. It's probably the perfect incest, I don't know. [laughs]

[Angela told me that she traveled to Texas that past October to a unit specializing in ritual abuse MPDs. “There were dark alters all over the place, people being restrained, screaming.” She explained that it was 'frightening but validating” to find others like herself but that she was disconcerted by the fundamentalist approach, which sought to exorcise demons. “I don't believe in Jesus,” she said. Still, she was confused. “It's dangerous to exorcise alters, but you may need to do so with demons.” A transpersonal psychiatrist told her the past summer that she might have “low-level discarnate entities,” a fancy phrase for demons who could come in and out of her body. At any rate, she left the Texas unit after a month, just before Halloween, and Hugh insisted that he stay with her for an all-night session to protect her from ritual programming.]

When I was in Texas, I saw a new alter inside who called himself Doctor Doctor, a little man with a bald head. I told a therapist friend about him, and she drew in her breath. She had just gone to Europe for a ritual abuse conference, and some former Nazis came and explained how they could put themselves into people. They went by three names, and one of them was Doctor Doctor. That was terrifying to me. He's like an introject, goes in and out. Now, my light alter has made a room of light inside. Some Dark Ones are kept there, and Doctor Doctor, too.

It gets really crowded inside. I got really angry once at Hugh when he deliberately created a new alter, Melissa, who was supposed to protect Jasmine in case anything happens to Hugh, to keep her from committing suicide. See, Jasmine calls Hugh all the time at home, and it's disruptive of his family life, so he's told her to stop doing that. When he created Melissa, I felt angry, violated; I wasn't asked. It was a message that I wasn't strong enough. Also, Melissa took up space, she was new, and nobody in there wanted her. And she's powerful, so it was a major adjustment.

Hugh finds out a lot about what's happening from the Center. That's a sort of core alter that's never supposed to talk to people, but Hugh can communicate with it. He explained it's like the Center of my being, an internal self-helper. It told him that when my mother was pregnant, they tortured the embryo, and it caused a split before I was even born. But my Center would make sure every time I was abused that a new split would occur to balance the evil with a good alter. After some really intense sessions, Hugh has to call for the Center to explain the memory. He'll call, “Is there a space?” over and over before there's room for the Center to come.

I think I was abused in the crib, but I don't have specific memories. When I was four, I've had memories of being in a cage with wild, hungry cats and snakes, naked and cold and hungry and terrified. They poked something real hot, like a red hot poker, in the cage. Then when I was five, I was tied upside down and lowered over a fire until it started to singe my hair, then they would put it out. Very frequently, I was tied on some sort of metal table and given electric shocks. They would push as far toward death as they could without killing me. The abuse went on until I was 12, when there was this huge ceremony. I think they stopped when I was 14, but then my grandfather taught me to be bulimic. He didn't want me to be any bigger.

There were sexual orgies all through there. I'd be lying on the altar naked, with my legs spread. The cult members were disguised as demons, and they'd put knives in my vagina, hot sticks and electrodes inside and outside. They'd lick blood and stuff off me, or I had to do that to other people. I had to abuse other children. It was about power, not sexual pleasure. I think my Mom was involved, but I don't remember seeing her there at the cult meetings. Of course, in a lot of the memories I was in a drugged state. I remember injections, a lot of needles. I still have a horror of needles, won't have a blood test.

Nobody could make up this stuff. I told Hugh once, “I think I made this up.” He said, “Your body can't make this up. It's always consistent, everyone has their own personality. You'd have to be a genius, you'd make mistakes.”

What did I think my childhood was like before these memories surfaced? I thought it wasn't particularly happy or affectionate. My parents didn't hug me. If you got a B, you should have got an A, like that. No one talked to each other. We were pretty dysfunctional. I knew I had been spanked. My father was assistant manager of a grocery store. My Mom didn't work She was a cold person. Both were high school graduates. They grew up in Hapeville, this rural town, and stayed there. It's a very closed-minded place. My mother is domineering, wiped my father out, squelched anything in him. I feel nothing for my parents. My father is dead. When I told my mother, who is 78, that I was going to a therapist and remembering abuse by her father, she cried and fell apart. She thought mental illness was a secret, didn't want anyone to know it. I've been told not to keep in touch with her for safety reasons. I get callbacks. People in the cult have put in trigger words. If I hear a certain beep on my answering machine, it makes me want to go back to Hapeville. I think, “Gee, I should go home this weekend, got to go by myself.” There may be alters in me who are still participating.

My husband, Leonard, is a former Catholic priest. He doesn't want to believe in my multiple personalities. He doesn't talk about it, never asks what I do in therapy. A couple of weeks ago, he said, “Why does your voice always change?” I said, “You know why, Len.” He supports me financially, and he loves me, but he doesn't want this to be true. I haven't even told him about the ritual abuse, because I don't think he'd believe me. I didn't marry him, that's the problem. One of my alters did. I have an alter named Donna, she's the Suburban Housewife. She has nothing to do with Hugh. My children are 11 and 13. They know I was hurt as a child, but they live mostly with Donna. When they need me, I switch right away from Jasmine to the adult Donna. They get lots of hugs and affection from her. Often a cult will program a functional alter into you, so no one will ever suspect.

I like to think of what I have as multiple personality response, not disorder, or multiple personality “dignity.” This word “integration,” it terrifies me. I couldn't live without my alters. We're working toward community living, everyone agreeing they can have their time when they need it. They had to fight to survive, but they can find a better job and function now. I can't imagine being integrated, being a singleton.

It does show you the power of the human psyche. Jasmine can leave her body, travel to other worlds, and she has been able to say who is in every room. She walks across the ceiling. She talks about going to the Blue Land, and I have a sense of it. I wonder if, when you switch from one body to another, the body doesn't change chemically? I went for a mammogram a while back, and I switched, and the doctor said, “This can't be the same person,” when he saw the x-rays.

Oh, you'd like to talk to Jasmine? Wait a minute.

[Angela closed her eyes a few moments, then opened them. She snatched off her glasses and then plucked off her earrings. She spoke in a childish voice, timid but flirtatious.]

I don't wear these glasses. You can't hurt me, because Talbot's right here. I could hear what Angela was saying. I don't like those things [referring to earrings]. A lot of people don't think I'm real, but I don't care if they do. It's okay for you to write stuff down, because Angela says it's okay. I have my baby doll and pictures, my blanket, and Bouncy the Bunny. And I have a red light to keep me safe, like blood, when I go to the woods. I love Hugh very much. I go to the Blue Land, where the wind blows a lot, and bells make sounds, and people teach you things without saying a word. Hugh doesn't tie me up—he just ties the Dark Ones.

[I asked to speak to Angela again.] You want me to go away? [She seemed hurt, but was willing to leave. She closed her eyes, then put on her glasses and earrings, wiping her eyes and regaining composure.]

I'm OK. She's a good kid, she's brave. I heard her.

The experience on Hugh's table is hard to describe. He works on the nervous system, which carries your whole history. When he touches the right nerve, it's so real that it's frightening. These are light, small touches where the spine attaches to the neck, and at the tailbone. He just reads the body. Once he was touching me, and I said, “Hugh, you've got to stop.” And he had let go a long time ago, but that spot was just burning, bringing the memory.

I must be up to 30 or 40 alters, maybe. Also, there's a whole second system, probably with just as many in it, but I don't know much about it yet. Let's say we get the ones in this system calmed down and in order, but there are layers, and another layer might kick in. That's why suicide is a very possible thing. I've had one who just really wants to die. It's a hopeless feeling sometimes, there seems no end to it. But there has to be an end, because why am I doing this otherwise? I think it will be at least another ten years of work, though.

I think I'm a lot healthier now. But when I walk out of a session with Hugh, it's very difficult, because I feel the anguish of a lot of alters inside who've been exposed, had memories. He's insisted I get a therapist, so I work with John now, too, but I don't really trust him. I resist John, though he's a nice guy. It sometimes feels like Hugh is trying to give me away to John.

I asked Hugh once, why does he do it. “Because I can,” he said. I like that. He once told me he didn't have any limits. I think if Hugh moved away right now, I'd be dead.

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