I think I stumbled across a conspiracy

A long time ago around when I was first researching conspiracies and other such topics online, I started to look up cases of "Satanic Ritual Abuse" on wikipedia.

What I found that was bizzare was that there was odd spam left on the page for Lauren Stratford by somebody who claimed to be her niece. This person left the messages back in 2006, and they are now removed. But they way they were typed up makes me think that she was really who she claimed to be.

The person said that she was "Tristie Johnson". I googled this name along with Lauren Stratford, but didn't get any results. Then, when I googled "Lauren Stratford's niece", I actually got a result. On the site, a man that knew her talked about attending her funeral and meeting ner niece "Tristie". So, it appears that it was really her.

Now, where it gets odd is the message she left, and what the name on that website wrote. I think that the page where the man talked about meeting her and the odd things that happened around her death was posted in 2002, but the message on wikipedia was 2006.

I have links to the old wikipedia revision where she left her comment, and I also have the site of the man that met her and knew Lauren Stratford. I would like people to read through these and tell me what the heck this is all about. It looks like something really strange to me.

The comment on wikipedia

The profile that posted it

The page where Lauren Stratford's death is mentioned, and Tristie's name comes up

I know her book has supposedly been exposed as a bunch of lies, but this is truly bizzare.

Interesting. I had never heard of Lauren Stratford till now.

The account of her niece's abuse is quite sickening.

wow thats sounds like she has had a very bad life, and it sounds like her aunt had anouth of the family and fakeing her death was the only awnser

maybe you should check into the cornerstone mag and there tv station and the people

Jon Trott, Bob and Gretchen Passantino and check them out check for any mason links and so on and so on

i have just had a quick lok into it and some thing doenot sit right about this 3 people

but i could be wrong

i thenk you do have a real conspiricy on your hands here so good luck

heres a link that might intrest you

www.rickross.com...

reply to post by NamelessMonster


I'm not sure what your thinking is on this. I don't know anything about these people, what is your theory? That Lauren faked her death or she was murdered by the people debunking her? I'm just not following where your taking me :-)

reply to post by immortalcamel


Read up on Lauren Stratford first.
I should have posted that link in my first post.

To me it looks like there might have been a cover of what actually hapened to her, impying that there were many big names that didn't want that information to get out.

I personally find it quite disturbing, because I did read the expose on her and originally wrote her off. A lot of her story has to be fabrications, and she was most likely slightly delusional. This doesn't mean that some sort of strange abuse or expirimentation wasn't done to her.

reply to post by NamelessMonster
I'm intrigued exactly who is she?and whats the back story and how did she die?

Originally posted by NamelessMonster
I personally find it quite disturbing, because I did read the expose on her and originally wrote her off. A lot of her story has to be fabrications, and she was most likely slightly delusional. This doesn't mean that some sort of strange abuse or expirimentation wasn't done to her.

I read your thread earlier today and have been reading up a little about her since. I tend to agree with you, something isn't quite right.

reply to post by TWILITE22


I linked to her wikipedia page in the post I made right above yours. I'm sot sure how she died, but I'm sure a google search would say.

I didn't know Laurel/Lauren personally, but I'm familiar with the subject enough to provide a voice of reason.

Laurel/Lauren was indeed a fraud. I don't think she was an intentional swindler but rather was mentally ill. This woman displayed paranoid and delusional behavior typical of Paranoid-Schizophrenia, Disassociative Identity Disorder, or even quite possibly Borderline Personality Disorder. As such, she may have earnestly believed her delusions of trauma were real and had no conscious understanding that they were illusory. The self-deprecation, the cutting, and attempted suicides are common symptoms for all three of these disorders.

To be unique and different is a common desire in all humans. As children we fabricate all kinds of stories and myths about ourselves to set ourselves apart from other children. However, as we grow older, at some point during our teenage years, normal people discover themselves and become more confident in being unique for being who they really are, or to what they do, or with whom they affiliate. It called self-identification. Those that are unable to achieve social acceptance from family, friends, or any surrogate peer-group, or achieve a sense of belonging during this stage of self-actualization will begin having problems distinguishing imagination with reality and can, especially in instances of predisposition towards mental illness, develop into delusional behavior.

For those who experience delusional behavior, what is clearly discernible as fictitious to a normal person isn't as obvious. Delusion tends to be a self-perpetuating condition where the person will attempt to explain and justify their delusions as truth through sometimes elaborate explanations that would make a Conspiracy Theorist pale in comparison. They often genuinely believe their delusions and for every person they believe they have convinced only reinforces their delusions all the more.

After the publication of the book Michelle Remembers back in the early 1980's the "Satanic Conspiracy" was at it's height among the sensational media such as the Geraldo Rivera Show by the mid-1980's that turned the subject into a veritable Cottage Industry lucratively fed on the revenue of the gullible and paranoid. Lauren Stratford jumped on the bandwagon with Satan's Underground and found fertile soil in which to reinforce her own delusions.

Thankfully things took a turn towards reason when Kenneth V. Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent for the F.B.I. at the Behavioral Science Unit at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico, VA published The Lanning Report in 1992 that debunked the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria after a 15 year investigation and study on the subject. Further findings were released a few years later in a second followup report.

Even without the Lanning Report, the Christian Community itself had already exposed Laurel/Lauren as a fraud. Her allegations and stories could not hold up under scrutiny and could not be collaborated or verified.

Laurel/Lauren Stratford/Willson/Grabowski seemed to be a name of a distant past that most people who may have recognized the name were ashamed to admit they fell for her fraudulent claims.

It is odd seeing a name from the past come up once more.

However, after reading the deleted entry on Wikipedia, it sounds to me that Laurel/Lauren's delusions hit a resonant chord with someone equally as delusional who self-identifies their self as a relative. It almost reads at times as though she is confused as to whether Laurel/Lauren was her estranged mother or an aunt. The writing style shows someone who clearly has some associative problems as well as an inability to focus clearly. It could have been a sympathizer fabricating a story of their own to self-identify with, or someone equally as delusional and mentally disturbed as Laurel/Lauren was.

A curious find indeed, but not a sign of a conspiracy. There is simply no evidence of a widespread conspiracy to coverup Satanic Ritual Abuse, where especially in this Information Age where everything is documented would be nigh impossible to coverup and hide. It would be a shame to dredge back up hysteria caused by mentally ill people who were taken advantage of by predatory groups, media, and publishers all looking to cause a sensation to raise significant amounts of profit.

reply to post by fraterormus


Well, the last link I posted did point out that she has a neice named "Tristie". But she could have just stumbled across that "Educate-Yourself" page that was made in 2002.

Originally posted by fraterormus
However, after reading the deleted entry on Wikipedia, it sounds to me that Laurel/Lauren's delusions hit a resonant chord with someone equally as delusional who self-identifies their self as a relative. It almost reads at times as though she is confused as to whether Laurel/Lauren was her estranged mother or an aunt. The writing style shows someone who clearly has some associative problems as well as an inability to focus clearly. It could have been a sympathizer fabricating a story of their own to self-identify with, or someone equally as delusional and mentally disturbed as Laurel/Lauren was.

Which would be to be expected if they had suffered abuse to the extent that they claim to have. I am not saying that I believe the account given in the deleted comment, but I do disagree with your analysis of it.

Originally posted by fraterormus
A curious find indeed, but not a sign of a conspiracy. There is simply no evidence of a widespread conspiracy to coverup Satanic Ritual Abuse, where especially in this Information Age where everything is documented would be nigh impossible to coverup and hide. It would be a shame to dredge back up hysteria caused by mentally ill people who were taken advantage of by predatory groups, media, and publishers all looking to cause a sensation to raise significant amounts of profit.

Although I agree with you that the Satanic Ritual Abuse was hysteria, it was a significant cluster that happened in a particular time frame. There is a long tradition of using mental illness to cover up familial problems, of one kind or another, a means of sweeping 'uglies' under the carpet, locking up those who couldn't keep their mouths shut. In the case of Lauren, I think that some of that may be at play. I read the first 36 pages of her book. I doubt much of it, but there is something about the account of the rapes by the itinerate workers that rings true, the first one was particularly vivid and she was clearly avoiding constructing too detailed a picture, she even had to hide from it when writing about it. I would take some convincing that she wasn't telling the truth about that. Beyond that, the stuff about her mother, I wasn't convinced and I felt that she was fabricating after that, or embellishing perhaps, there is terrible guilt attached to this kind of abuse, it is part of the abuse. Children often lie and embellish because they feel they have to exonerate themselves, they are made to feel it is their fault. I personally felt that these men had selected their victim precisely because the Mother was seemingly quite detached herself and they were therefore able to convince the child that her mother had 'consented' to the rapes. That they chose laundry day, a day when Mother was occupied and surrounded by noise, probably going into the garden to hang out the clothes is telling. These men are predators, they would have known eactly how long it took Mother to hang out the load of washing and that she wasn't going to hear the screams. I also kind of wondered, because the Mother does seem to have had 'issues' whether they may have been due to her own repressed sexuality, or her own abuse as a child, either way, I wondered if they had told the Mother that the girl had exposed herself to them or in some way behaved sexually towards them, actively increasing the divide that they already perceived between Mother and Daughter.

The conspiracy is why Cornerstone went all out to discredit her, if as you say, her version of events is so ludricrous and the result of hysteria?

This lady pretended to be a holocaust survior when she clearly wasn't. That makes her lose all credibility. Why would you believe anything this woman says? Very gullible behavior.

Originally posted by mnmcandiez
This lady pretended to be a holocaust survior when she clearly wasn't. That makes her lose all credibility. Why would you believe anything this woman says? Very gullible behavior.

Just because she wasn't, doesn't mean she didn't think she wasn't. If she didn't know she was telling a lie, was she telling a lie?

I think that she might have been abused by some group. Not a massive Satanic conspiracy, but some bigger peopel could have been involved. But she thought it was because she was mentally unstabe. And Cornerstone might have missed this fact because they were busy taking her down for her insane stories adding to the Satanic panic.

Of course, I do find it odd that this "Tristie" person claims to be abused as well. I wish I could contact her and ask her about it.

I sent a message to the person who said he was at her funeral, and am gonig to ask if he can get me in contact with her.

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout
Which would be to be expected if they had suffered abuse to the extent that they claim to have. I am not saying that I believe the account given in the deleted comment, but I do disagree with your analysis of it.

That is precisely the reason why many of these people suffering from Paranoid-Schizophrenia or Disassociative Identity Disorder are often misdiagnosed as having PTSD as if they had really suffered abuse. Many of the symptoms, on the surface, seem to be the same. It takes a psychologist that is smarter and more experienced than their patient to properly distinguish many of these cases (especially BPDs which are so adept at manipulating others into their delusions that many psychologists end up falling for their delusions themselves).

For me, where it becomes apparent that the author is delusional is:

Most likely Lauren - was born when her parents were in the camps. They were fashioned - after the concentration camps in Germany, some were even set in - places that looked like Germany. I remember as a child long after the war, being strapped to a chair so I could not move and being forced to view the horrible things that happened in a Nazi German camp and was drugged so I would hallucinate while being poked with needles and other sharp things so it felt like I was in that camp.

We can easily rule that the statement about Lauren being born in an American Concentration Camp in WWII as being fictitious. Executive Order 9066 which was enacted in retaliation to the Japanese bombing on Pearl Harbor in 1941 did not go active until February 19, 1942, 10 months after the birth of Laurel/Lauren.

Either this person claiming to be her niece wanted to apologetically explain the second string of delusions of Laurel/Lauren Willson/Stratford/Grobowski where Lauren Grobowski fraudulently claimed to be a Polish Holocaust Survivor, or to give credence and reinforcement to her own delusions of supposedly being tortured in the same manner as a Nazi German Concentration Camp, or simply doesn't know how to use a calendar very well.

It sounds like the author of this entry was unclear herself whether she believed she lived in these same American Concentration Camps undergoing the same tortures as Laurel/Lauren or whether she believed she was subjected to such calculated torture at the hands of her parents afterward in her Nuclear Family in Suburban America. Notice again how she can be absolutely accurate on some details (copied verbatim from another Wikipedia article no less!) and can go into explicit detail about the abuse they have suffered but then become amazingly unclear and vague when it pertains to other details they had not anticipated would be deemed important by others reading their tale.

Acts of plagiarism aside, either she's wagging the dog or she's a nutter. At this point I think it can be safe to assume her story was fictitious...the only question is to whether it was intentionally fictitious or whether she is delusional and it was unintentional as she earnestly believes her statements to be true.

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout
Although I agree with you that the Satanic Ritual Abuse was hysteria, it was a significant cluster that happened in a particular time frame. There is a long tradition of using mental illness to cover up familial problems, of one kind or another, a means of sweeping 'uglies' under the carpet, locking up those who couldn't keep their mouths shut. In the case of Lauren, I think that some of that may be at play. I read the first 36 pages of her book. I doubt much of it, but there is something about the account of the rapes by the itinerate workers that rings true, the first one was particularly vivid and she was clearly avoiding constructing too detailed a picture, she even had to hide from it when writing about it. I would take some convincing that she wasn't telling the truth about that. Beyond that, the stuff about her mother, I wasn't convinced and I felt that she was fabricating after that, or embellishing perhaps, there is terrible guilt attached to this kind of abuse, it is part of the abuse. Children often lie and embellish because they feel they have to exonerate themselves, they are made to feel it is their fault. I personally felt that these men had selected their victim precisely because the Mother was seemingly quite detached herself and they were therefore able to convince the child that her mother had 'consented' to the rapes. That they chose laundry day, a day when Mother was occupied and surrounded by noise, probably going into the garden to hang out the clothes is telling. These men are predators, they would have known eactly how long it took Mother to hang out the load of washing and that she wasn't going to hear the screams. I also kind of wondered, because the Mother does seem to have had 'issues' whether they may have been due to her own repressed sexuality, or her own abuse as a child, either way, I wondered if they had told the Mother that the girl had exposed herself to them or in some way behaved sexually towards them, actively increasing the divide that they already perceived between Mother and Daughter.

I totally concur that "Mental Illness" is as overly convenient as an excuse as "Weather Balloons". Psychology has been used as a means of control, over women especially, for a good number of years. The abuses of playing the "Mental Illness" card, especially at the end of the 19th century until the second half of the 20th, are far too numerous to catalog. Once upon a time it was too easy to sweep familial problems under the rug and keep the skeletons safely hidden away in the closet by sending one's daughter off to the sanitarium for "hysteria".

However, genuine Mental Illness is far more common than many would care to admit too. We seem to regard the Mentally Ill as extremes like in "One Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest" when in reality many lead very functional lives, even the delusional ones. Everyone has an odd uncle or aunt or cousin that is a benign nutter. You know they aren't playing with a full deck but they aren't a threat to anyone, least of all to themselves, so people around them learn to live with it and love them nevertheless. Mental illness isn't really a problem until the person becomes a threat to either themselves or to others, or they become dysfunctional. Regardless, there is no shame in having Mental Illness or having a relative or friend with a Mental Illness.

I think you make some good points though, and this expresses precisely the reason why it can be so difficult even for a psychologist to distinguish perceived realities and delusions of their patients:

As before, her symptoms down to the running away, the suicide attempts, the self-deprecating behavior, and the cutting/slashing are typical of Disassociative Identity Disorder but it is also typical for young girls who had been raped. She very well might have been raped and her mother was entirely clueless, or in denial, or even down-right ashamed. However, young girls also develop those same symptoms when they are neglected and unable to obtain acceptance from their parents. We might never know if that part of the book was based on reality or delusions, but I think it does go to show that the relationship between her and her mother was most definitely estranged emotionally. I personally think it is safe to assume that the divide between mother and daughter was quite real and not imagined.

Originally posted by KilgoreTroutThe conspiracy is why Cornerstone went all out to discredit her, if as you say, her version of events is so ludricrous and the result of hysteria?

It's one of those things where if you were active in the Evangelical community at the time of the late 1980s you'd understand all too well. Lives were being destroyed because of the hysteria surrounding supposed Satanic Ritual Abuse. In some fundamentalist communities it was very much like the Salem Witch Hunts part 2. It was putting brother against brother, children against parents, and frankly, giving Christianity a bad name. (Ironic, isn't it!) For the same reasons you personally weren't able to completely believe many of the accounts of her book, there were those in the Evangelical community who doubted the veracity of her accounts as well. After several of the "abuse victims" she counseled came forward to denounce her and question the credibility of both her methods and her accounts, Cornerstone decided to investigate and ended up exposing her.

To be honest, it was better for the Evangelical community to expose one of their own as a fraud rather than say 20/20. It helped restore faith in the Evangelical community to those who were turned off by the manner in which it behaved for almost a decade. It kept the Evangelical community from being part of a nationwide PR scandal. As she was already exposed, there was no need for 20/20 or any other investigative news to broadcast it. It took the sensationalism right out of the media's sails.

Although in retrospect most level-headed people can look back at the Satanic Ritual Abuse Scare and recognize it as hysterical, at the time good, decent people were falling hook, line, and sinker for it. She didn't seem so obviously delusional to anyone who was willing to hear her talk, or was willing to take her book at face value, even if in retrospect those very same people feel like credulous fools for having done such.

reply to post by fraterormus


Did you ever look at the last link I posted in the opening post?

The man that attended the funeral said that Tristie talked there, and mentioned most of the details that the message on Wikipedia menioned

Lauren's niece Tristie spoke about her Aunt, the only person in her family, she said, who had love. This was the niece that had not met her Aunt Lauren until AFTER the Cornerstone article; a niece who had been abused by Lauren's abusers; a niece who had a court order to keep Lauren's family away from her son. The same relatives Cornerstone painted as innocent victims of Lauren's "fabricated story." I am thankful Lauren had one relative to come forward and say, "I believe you because they did it to me too."

So it was most likely the same person, and she is most likely a little off in the head.

Originally posted by fraterormus
That is precisely the reason why many of these people suffering from Paranoid-Schizophrenia or Disassociative Identity Disorder are often misdiagnosed as having PTSD as if they had really suffered abuse. Many of the symptoms, on the surface, seem to be the same. It takes a psychologist that is smarter and more experienced than their patient to properly distinguish many of these cases (especially BPDs which are so adept at manipulating others into their delusions that many psychologists end up falling for their delusions themselves).

I am actually of the opinion that no single discipline, especially not psychology, should be permitted to qualify what is or isn't mental illness and certainly when there is suspicion of DID. There have been far too many cases of therapists getting over excited and not realising the 'pull' of transference and the need of the patient to please. Sybil is a prime example of this. DID is a form or expression of PTSD, in my opinion, but one that is particular to repeated trauma during formative periods in the brains development. The pre-pubescent brain has not, sadly I should add, yet, been conditioned to cope with repeated trauma, it adapts by compartmentalising the experience, and depending upon imaginatie capabilities, creates identities that exist only in those compartments. Depending on how long those experiences, or identities manifest themselves past pubescents, will depend on whether they are again needed. That is, if the 'trigger' isn't pulled, they may disappear altogether, but if it is continuously pulled, the adult may experience unexplained time loss, this is generally the only time that the condition is diagnosed.

Originally posted by fraterormus
For me, where it becomes apparent that the author is delusional is:

Most likely Lauren - was born when her parents were in the camps. They were fashioned - after the concentration camps in Germany, some were even set in - places that looked like Germany. I remember as a child long after the war, being strapped to a chair so I could not move and being forced to view the horrible things that happened in a Nazi German camp and was drugged so I would hallucinate while being poked with needles and other sharp things so it felt like I was in that camp.

We can easily rule that the statement about Lauren being born in an American Concentration Camp in WWII as being fictitious. Executive Order 9066 which was enacted in retaliation to the Japanese bombing on Pearl Harbor in 1941 did not go active until February 19, 1942, 10 months after the birth of Laurel/Lauren.

Either this person claiming to be her niece wanted to apologetically explain the second string of delusions of Laurel/Lauren Willson/Stratford/Grobowski where Lauren Grobowski fraudulently claimed to be a Polish Holocaust Survivor, or to give credence and reinforcement to her own delusions of supposedly being tortured in the same manner as a Nazi German Concentration Camp, or simply doesn't know how to use a calendar very well.

Again, I am not saying that it is true, but this is ATS, we have heard of Projects Bluebird and Artichoke, MK Ultra and, less plausibly, possibly, but maybe not, Monarch. We know also that the US Military, in conjunction with Standard Oil, at least one, recreation, in perfect detail, of an area of Berlin. Is it really so outlandish that they may have been employing mind control techniques on internees? Now again, I am not saying that the neice is the neice, or that what she is recounting of her 'aunt' is true, but I'm also not so keen to throw the baby out with the bath water either.

Originally posted by fraterormus
It sounds like the author of this entry was unclear herself whether she believed she lived in these same American Concentration Camps undergoing the same tortures as Laurel/Lauren or whether she believed she was subjected to such calculated torture at the hands of her parents afterward in her Nuclear Family in Suburban America. Notice again how she can be absolutely accurate on some details (copied verbatim from another Wikipedia article no less!) and can go into explicit detail about the abuse they have suffered but then become amazingly unclear and vague when it pertains to other details they had not anticipated would be deemed important by others reading their tale.

Because it is the abuse that is important, and clear within the memory. Everything else is blurred. They know they were abused, but they only have vague recollections of the details. Suggests the use of drugs to me. Amongst other things. Possibly, as I said I am not entirely convinced, but in cases like this, I'd rather be wrong.

Originally posted by fraterormus
Acts of plagiarism aside, either she's wagging the dog or she's a nutter. At this point I think it can be safe to assume her story was fictitious...the only question is to whether it was intentionally fictitious or whether she is delusional and it was unintentional as she earnestly believes her statements to be true.

Which is why I wouldn't be so liberal with the judgements.

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout
I totally concur that "Mental Illness" is as overly convenient as an excuse as "Weather Balloons". Psychology has been used as a means of control, over women especially, for a good number of years. The abuses of playing the "Mental Illness" card, especially at the end of the 19th century until the second half of the 20th, are far too numerous to catalog. Once upon a time it was too easy to sweep familial problems under the rug and keep the skeletons safely hidden away in the closet by sending one's daughter off to the sanitarium for "hysteria".

It was used to conceal rape and incest in the same way as the Priestood was used to conceal paedophilia.

Originally posted by fraterormus
However, genuine Mental Illness is far more common than many would care to admit too. We seem to regard the Mentally Ill as extremes like in "One Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest" when in reality many lead very functional lives, even the delusional ones. Everyone has an odd uncle or aunt or cousin that is a benign nutter. You know they aren't playing with a full deck but they aren't a threat to anyone, least of all to themselves, so people around them learn to live with it and love them nevertheless. Mental illness isn't really a problem until the person becomes a threat to either themselves or to others, or they become dysfunctional. Regardless, there is no shame in having Mental Illness or having a relative or friend with a Mental Illness.

I am more than aware of the spectrum of mental illness, and of it's organic and inorganic nature. My Mum's best friend, as with her brother and two sisters were sexually abused by two male members of that family. Their children were subsequently abused by the same men. That family is wrecked by drug and alcohol abuse, two of the elder syblings already haing succumbed to the bottle. My Mum's friend developed Munchausen's, and would basically spend her entire tine coming up with illnesses and getting admitted to hospital. For the care and attention. After a while your card is marked and you can't get in, unless ofcourse it is an emergency. She reached a point where she could 'will' herself to have an epileptic seizure, and would do so whenever she wasn't getting her own way. Now she is epileptic and can't control it at all. I'm trying to make a point, but it's subtle.

Originally posted by fraterormus
As before, her symptoms down to the running away, the suicide attempts, the self-deprecating behavior, and the cutting/slashing are typical of Disassociative Identity Disorder but it is also typical for young girls who had been raped. She very well might have been raped and her mother was entirely clueless, or in denial, or even down-right ashamed. However, young girls also develop those same symptoms when they are neglected and unable to obtain acceptance from their parents. We might never know if that part of the book was based on reality or delusions, but I think it does go to show that the relationship between her and her mother was most definitely estranged emotionally. I personally think it is safe to assume that the divide between mother and daughter was quite real and not imagined.

Although I see where you are coming from, and I haven't read the whole book, so this may be a point that someone can clear up...from reading only the first 36 pages, I didn't even get any suggestion that she had DID. I self harmed and I don't have DID. I was never raped either incidently. Self harming is not unusual in adolescents or in those whose development has been arrested in some way, it isn't normal, but it is not necessarily indicative of anything more than depression.

Originally posted by fraterormus
It's one of those things where if you were active in the Evangelical community at the time of the late 1980s you'd understand all too well. Lives were being destroyed because of the hysteria surrounding supposed Satanic Ritual Abuse. In some fundamentalist communities it was very much like the Salem Witch Hunts part 2. It was putting brother against brother, children against parents, and frankly, giving Christianity a bad name. (Ironic, isn't it!) For the same reasons you personally weren't able to completely believe many of the accounts of her book, there were those in the Evangelical community who doubted the veracity of her accounts as well. After several of the "abuse victims" she counseled came forward to denounce her and question the credibility of both her methods and her accounts, Cornerstone decided to investigate and ended up exposing her.

To be honest, it was better for the Evangelical community to expose one of their own as a fraud rather than say 20/20. It helped restore faith in the Evangelical community to those who were turned off by the manner in which it behaved for almost a decade. It kept the Evangelical community from being part of a nationwide PR scandal. As she was already exposed, there was no need for 20/20 or any other investigative news to broadcast it. It took the sensationalism right out of the media's sails.

Although in retrospect most level-headed people can look back at the Satanic Ritual Abuse Scare and recognize it as hysterical, at the time good, decent people were falling hook, line, and sinker for it. She didn't seem so obviously delusional to anyone who was willing to hear her talk, or was willing to take her book at face value, even if in retrospect those very same people feel like credulous fools for having done such.

Yeah, I can see that, and I remember, many years ago reading about the Kern County case...where the main protagonists in the hysteria were the so called 'professionals' who by all accounts used methods of persausion that were unbelieeably inappropriate for the age group and can be held almost entirely responsible for the explosion of reports. Talk about putting ideas into kid's heads!

However, my point was more the way in which Cornerstone handled it. It was very, very little more than a character assassination. And the point that the neice made remains, they went straight to the family, which makes me wonder, who initiated the contact. I am not saying that the Evangelical movement is rife with satantic abuse, but I am also not particularly willing to rule out that one of those case may have some basis in truth. The articles do not really say anything other than that she was troubled and desperately needed to feel secure, she doesn't seem to have left them that bitter by the experience, that doesn't come across. I would guess that the reporter turned up to the door, and surprised them with the allegations and then went with the response, some will have slammed the door, some will have loved the chance for a gossip. The rest meated out with 'un-named' sources. Very convenient.

What I did wonder about...conspiracy wise...with the itinerant workers and the time frame...is whether she could have been a victim of Kinsey's research. It was pretty much proven that much of his data, especially on paedophilia, was gained via going into prisons, and that his 'researchers' were paid for any report of an 'act' that they filed. Kind of ends up being, for the ex-con, scraping-by a little like selling blood. Which it really isn't the same at all, heinous, but there you go, it happened.

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout
However, my point was more the way in which Cornerstone handled it. It was very, very little more than a character assassination. And the point that the neice made remains, they went straight to the family, which makes me wonder, who initiated the contact. I am not saying that the Evangelical movement is rife with satantic abuse, but I am also not particularly willing to rule out that one of those case may have some basis in truth. The articles do not really say anything other than that she was troubled and desperately needed to feel secure, she doesn't seem to have left them that bitter by the experience, that doesn't come across. I would guess that the reporter turned up to the door, and surprised them with the allegations and then went with the response, some will have slammed the door, some will have loved the chance for a gossip. The rest meated out with 'un-named' sources. Very convenient.

Cornerstone actually did the same with several other people, it wasn't just her that was singled out.

They actually had a lot of motivation to do so, because the Christian community was flooding with ridiculous claims that were causing everyone to panic, and people were starting to turn on them. I can see the motivation for them going out of their way to expose a lot of the frauds. Still, I wonder if some cases got misreated due to that.

reply to post by NamelessMonster


And was it over a specific time frame, do you know? Is there any precursor to Lauren's book, other accounts of 'Satanic Abuse', that predate hers? Even I'm wondering, was she the bandwagon or was she just jumping on? Do you know whether she herself makes any claims in the book to having MPD or DID?