From: David.Rice@ofa123.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Religion & Crime / "Satanic Conspiracy"
Date: 14 Oct 92 15:42:24 GMT
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Oct  1 1992

eligion & Crime / "Satanic Crime" Series #012   1 of 5
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Note to alt.athist subscribers. I live 13 miles from the courthouse
where this trial was held. I work less than one mile away from Dr.
Maas. Ever since I started looking into this topic, I have dearly
wanted to spend a few hours talking face-to-face with someone in
Dr. Maas' position, to round out and give equal time to those whom
propose the affirmative on the issue (i.e. ones who assert that
there -is- a large, silent, Satanic Crime problem). Alas, since
I am not demonically posessed, or fleeing a band of bloodlusting
Satanic fanatics, or otherwise a victim of The Conspiracy, Dr. Maas
and assosiactes will have nothing to do with me.
 
In series number 013 I will post an article on the actual trial.
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              COUNSELOR DEFENDS HIS PAST AND PRESENT
                   Satanic-trial [sic] Therapist
                      Has Critics, Supporters
 
                                By
                 Pat Brennan and James V. Grimaldi
 
                    The Orange County Register
                          April 14, 1991
                          Pages A1 & A26
 
 
 
    The  softly  lit  suite  of  offices opens into a waiting room
with  a  burbling  fish  tank and carefully layered stakes of news
and  nature  magazines.  But  behind  the  heavy  wooden  doors of
therapy  rooms,  clients  known  as "multiples" are switching from
one personality to another.
 
    They  are homemakers and parents, professionals and teen-agers
[sic],  and  some  are  recounting  tales  of satanic [sic] rites,
human sacrifice, group sex, torture and mutilation.
 
    Horrific  and  bizzare  [sic]  tales,  to be sure, but nothing
Timothy Hugh Maas hasn't heard before.
 
    Few  people  doubt  that  Maas'  clients  believe what they're
saying.  What  a  lot of them want to know, though, is whether the
accusations  leveled  against  him  in recent weeks in a Santa Ana
courtroom  are true: Is the defrocked [sic] Lutheran minister from
Huntington  Beach planting memories in his clients' impressionable
minds?
 
    The  case  centered  on  two  of Maas' patients accusing their
76-year-old  mother  of forcing them as children, and later one of
their  daughters,  now  11, to participate in bloody satanic [sic]
orgies, incest, cannibalism even murder.
 
    In  a  compromise  ruling Friday, a five-man, seven-woman jury
found  in  favor  of the plaintiffs, but awarded no money to them.
Jurors  voted  10-2 that the mother was only negligent, and did no
intentional harm.
 
    Jurors  raised serious questions about the methods of Maas and
his  Seaview  Counseling Inc., the Huntington Beach-based chain of
therapy centers he founded six years ago.
 
    "We  felt  Tim  Maas  and  his  whole  Seaview organization is
lacking--  lacking in professionalism," juror Richard Thieren said
after   the  verdict.  "He  seems  to  have  concluded  they  (the
plaintiffs)  were all multiple-personality syndromes based on just
nine hours of session."
 
    Maas'  testimony convinced juror Delores Thomas of Orange that
Maas was simply using the women for his own personal gain.
 
    "He  sees  it as a money opportunity for his Seaview clients,"
said  Thomas,  who  was  one  of  the two jurors who voted for the
mother.  "All  of  his  therapists  are  really  inexperienced. He
didn't even ask for medical records."
 
    It  was  when  Maas  was  treating the two Orange County women
that  they  first  realized they had formed multiple personalities
to  repress  more  than  three  decades  of satanic [sic] abuse by
their mother, a Mission Viejo resident, the women testified.
 
    But  Tom  R.  Allen,  their  mother's  attorney,  labels  that
nonsense.   Rather,  Maas,  a  certified  hypnotist,  planted  the
stories  in  the minds of the daughters now 35 and 48, Allen said,
and   encouraged   them   to  sue  so  he  could  win  fame  as  a
satanic-abuse [sic] expert.
 
    "I think he's scary," Allen said.
 
    Maas  denies  ever  suggesting  or pushing satanism [sic] on a
client.  He  is quick to dismiss the criticism, saying his methods
are sound.
 
<continues next post>

--- Maximus 2.00