From: David.Rice@ofa123.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Religion & Crime / "Satanic Conspiracy"
Date: 14 Oct 92 15:44:24 GMT
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Oct  1 1992

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    "If  they  weren't  accurate  and they weren't helpful then we
wouldn't have more and more people coming in," Maas said.
 
    Seaview  Counseling,  a  tax-exempt, Christian-oriented center
with  six  locations and 23 therapists, now treats about 50 ritual
abuse  clients  a  week,  and  typically  signs  up two new ones a
month,  Maas  said.  Ritual abuse, he adds, now accounts for about
20 percent of his business.
 
    Maas'  colleagues  at  Seaview say the criticism being leveled
at  him  is the result of misunderstanding how he helps victims of
satanic [sic] rituals overcome years of abuse.
 
    Seaview   staff   members   believe  Maas  heals  patients  by
carefully guiding them through their long-repressed memories.
 
    "He's  a  good teacher," said Seaview therapist Judy Possnack,
a  former  Los  Angeles  County sheriff's deputy, who testified at
the  trial. "He shows us how to just be with somebody, and not try
to lead them in any way."
 
    There  is  nothing weird or mystical about the kind of healing
Seaview  practices,  said  Colleen  Yoder,  an  intern-trainee who
joined  the  center  about seven months ago. And certainly nothing
suggestive.
 
    "I  have  absolutely zero doubt that these clients are telling
the  truth  (about  ritual  abuse),"  Yoder said. "I think it's so
bizzare  [sic]  and  so  awful  it's really beyond what people can
take in."
 
    Maas  said  he usually tries to determine whether any physical
pain  his  patients feel is caused by a repressed memory. The idea
that  physical  symptoms  are  precursors  to emerging memories is
common in psychology, he said.
 
    Few  psychotherapists  in  Orange County and elsewhere know of
him.  Those  psychologists  who  are  critical  of  him decline to
comment  publicly, citing an unwritten rule that therapists do not
openly criticize other therapists.
 
    Orange  psychologist  Pamela A. Reagor, who also treats ritual
abuse  patients,  said  she  differs  with  Maas  over some of the
treatment methods he uses.
 
    Reagor  says  she  uses  a  battery  of psychological tests to
determine  whether her patients have multiple personality disorder
[MPD],  which  is caused by severe child abuse in most cases. Maas
acknowledges he normally does not administer such tests.
    Multiple   personality   disorder   "got   dramatically   more
attention  in  the  early 1980s," Reagor said. "That means we have
to  counter  anything  (suggesting)  fads  or  that  sort  of cult
phenomenon  (among therapist). We just have to be real careful not
to diagnose it when it is not there."
 
    Since  the  so-called  "Satan  trial" began last month, two of
Maas'  former  clients  have alleged that he suggested memories to
them that they later realized were false.
 
    A  man  identified in court as Greg D.-- the former husband of
the  35-year-old  plaintiff in the case-- testified that Maas once
suggested  during  a marital therapy session that he may have been
molested as a child.
 
    When  he told Maas he had a cold, the man said, Maas suggested
to his that it could be the sign of a hidden memory.
 
    Maas said he did not know the man's past.
 
    Maas'  ex-wife,  Robin,  said  her former husband also was her
therapist  at  one  time  and  interpreted her dreams as revealing
satanic   [sic]  abuse.  She  said  he  hypnotised  her  and  also
suggested  that  she  had been molested as a child by her parents,
which she said is untrue.
 
    "He  told me I sat in this throne thing, with this black cape,
and  I watched baby sacrifices," Robin Maas said. "It's worse than
a cheap book."
 
    Maas  declined  to comment on his wife's claims citing doctor-
patient confidentiality rules.
 
                               # # #
 
    Maas  first  encountered  tales of satanic [sic] ritual abuse,
he  said, in 1983 when he was a minister working as a marriage and
family counselor at Lutheran Social Services in Garden Grove.
 
<continues in next post>

--- Maximus 2.00
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc