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     When I first started on this healing journey, I wasn’t sure what was in store for me. All I knew was that my childhood had left some pretty incredible, indelible marks on my psyche, and that I wasn’t sure how deep they were. I also knew that I was going to do whatever it took to get better. I didn’t like where I was, and I knew there was some place else that I needed to be, but I didn’t know how to get there, so I sought help. It’s kind of incredible how this journey goes…you don’t know where you’re going, but some how or other you’re always in the right place at the right time. I just think that’s a phenomenal thing.

     To begin with, I want to give you a little history of my family. Some of you have heard a little bit of it before, but actually in the last year I’ve had some incredible information passed my way that I had no idea about. So that’s why I’m back in therapy…OOOH! (laughter)

     First of all, my father came from a very strict Catholic French-Canadian family. They had traveled down the Mississippi River from Quebec, back in ancient history, and settled on Kaskaskia Island, which is just offshore from St. Louis. The history of that island is that it was settled by some Jesuit priests that came down from Canada. They were called the “Black Robes.” I thought that was real interesting. My father’s family went on shore and beyond St. Louis and settled in Festus and Crystal City, Missouri, which is just a small jump south of St. Louis. He had nine brothers and sisters, and I just wanted to give you a little bit of that background.

     His father was called “Jitney Bill.” He was called “Jitney Bill” because he drove a taxi during the Depression. He later started the Union at the Pittsburgh Glass Company there in Crystal City. He became very outspoken, and he did a lot of things for the government at that time in his position. As a matter of fact, when he died in 1966, a lot of – the governor and a lot of legislators came to his funeral. And they declared it “W. A. LaBrier Day.” It was a, you know, a general Missouri day.

     Then my Grandma and Grandpa had five girls and four boys, and they ruled with very strict, basically iron hands. They had a son who was deaf because of the abuse he received at the hands of his father. And he also (this deaf son) was taken from school at the age of 16 and put in Washington University in St. Louis. And was trained, he was very brilliant, he was trained to go from there to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to help develop the nuclear bomb.

     One of my father’s sisters also became the head of the Tennessee Valley Authority Nuclear Division.  I came from a very bright family. Another of his sisters, married a Marine Corps Captain, and apparently, from what I was told, and I have no memory of my family, really…these are things that have been told to me over the past year. Apparently he was supposedly as bad on his family as my father was on us.  And I thought to myself that they must really not know what goes on in my family. And then I thought, “Oh. Multigenerational abuse.”

     Another of my father’s brother’s fell in line and walked through the steps of my Grandpa and became the head of the Union that my Grandpa had started at Pittsburgh Glass. And he died in 1972 of an apparent heart attack (they’re really easy to get – to do). His daughter, who is also considered brilliant, was reading books out loud at family gatherings at the age of three.

     Another of my aunts became part of the American Heart Association and married a man who is a magician.

     One of my other aunts didn’t marry, but she became a professor of nursing at Baylor University, and then became the Department Head of Nursing at the University of Southern California nursing school. (I mean just catch how I went with this.)

     All the family thinks that I could be the twin of one my father’s sisters. I’m not giving any of their names at this point. She became a secretary and still lives in Crystal City with her husband, in my grandparent’s old home.

     My father never finished high school. He left home at approximately 17 and went into the Marine Corps, and he spent time in China and Korea. It was around the time of the Korean War. According to my mother, he was tested in the Marine Corps and ended up having a genius IQ. He later went on to graduate from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana – my alma mater – and took a Master’s degree in Business Education. He now is dying of congestive heart failure and emphysema. (poor guy) (laughter) Don’t wipe your eyes too bad, it mars the make up. But my young alters are now dealing with the vision in the photos that one of my siblings gave me because I didn’t go to his hospital bed. But she did go, and I asked her to take pictures so that I could know what he looks like now. Because she said, “He’s just an old man, he’s not harmful,” blah, blah, blah. And of course, I’m not about to go to this place because she said she didn’t want any confrontation between me and his power of attorney, so I asked her to take photos. And my alters are now dealing with this old, hairless, toothless, decrepit, fat man, as opposed to the virile powerful, all-consuming, abusive man that I knew as a child. That’s part of my therapy now.

     My mother, on the other hand, was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma, which is of one of the seats of some very large cult activity. She was born into a strict Southern Baptist home. My Granny ended up divorcing her husband because he ran off with another woman…abandoned her and her two children. In those days that was the only way you could get {married} (meant to say divorced). I don’t know how it is in the Southern Baptist church now, but that may still be the only way, adultery may be the only way they can get divorced.

     My mother was one of two children, she has a sister, who began a teaching career after some long hard knocks in the world and is living in Colorado. They live together now and they’re both old and frail and dying. My mother, however, after the divorce, became a nurse and she works in, worked in a hospital. One of her famous comments, that I will never forget took place in their home when I had returned from Mexico after an abortion. When I began bleeding profusely, she said that, “I don’t know why, but I like the blood and gore, and I don’t know why other nurses don’t.” So she was able to handle the hospital situations easily. I think I should have thought of that as a real sign at the time, but I didn’t.

     OK, so I’m the third of four children born into a Marine Corps family. My mother went into the Marine Corps after she went to junior college, which is also something that women didn’t do in those days. She went into the Marine Corps; I have no idea why. But my parents met there, and she started having children and left the Marine Corps, and basically continued the behavior. Kind of like an alcoholic family putting down the drink, but you continue the behavior, that’s what my family did.

     I did get my father’s Marine Corps records so that I could confirm where I had lived because there were many confusing things that were said to me about my background by family members. And I found out that he was stationed in Washington, DC and Marine Corps Headquarters in St. Louis. And at those times, I was nowhere near those places. So it’s obvious that there have been some things altered, and uh – that’s kind of funny to me. But anyway he retired at the age of approximately thirty-six at the rank of E-8, which seems rather strange when you start putting this together, because you think that a lower ranking person couldn’t be involved in some of the things that I’m alleging that he was involved in. But he was a recruiter/trainer and he had contact with a lot of people coming through those doors, trying to come into the Marine Corps. The trainer part of him was a drill sergeant, and he used the same kind of techniques on his children at home as he did on the Marine recruits that he had in his care.

     I myself was born on October 20, 1948, at China Lake Naval Weapons Station in California. That’s where the Navy and the Marines do all kinds of flight and radar testing, trying to get under the radar of other country’s. But they also do other things there. They bring in, under the use of drugs, they bring in soldiers from other countries, in the dead of night, they bring them in, and they put them in front of a panel of airplanes – you know, their deck. They tell them to look at it and find what’s wrong because they want to do an exact simulation of another country’s airline/airplanes. And then, before the person is awake, they take them back to their country and they never know that they’ve been there. So I know that these things happen, but over the course of years, it’s been affirmed to me over and over again, so it’s hard to deny.

     I have many alters who have unraveled a story for me and filled in the blank spaces in much of my life. I can’t remember a childhood time when I wasn’t being tortured or abused in some way. To give you an example of how it was to live in my household: every Saturday that I can remember was “Field Day." For any of you who have been in the military, “field day” is when you clean everything from top to bottom, including the yard. Every piece of gravel, every little stick or twig, has to be removed from the yard. You get on your hands and knees and crawl around. And if you’re the one inside who has to clean the house, every piece of dust has to be removed. Every wrinkle has to be taken out. Whatever you’re cleaning, has to be done correctly because afterwards, you go through white glove inspection. “White Glove Inspection” means your commanding officer, my father, goes through with his white gloves and he carries a rod with him, and if it’s not done right, all of you stand against the wall and you get your beating, and then you have to do it all over again. Not just the part that was done wrong, but all of it. And then there’s another white glove inspection, until it’s done correctly.

     According to my mother, by the age of approximately three I was making Marine Corps corners on my bed, meaning that he could stand in the middle of the bed, drop a quarter from three feet, and if it didn’t bounce, I had to make it all over again. The same routine, ritual, happened. He would grab the bed clothing from the head of the bed, pull it all the way back, including the mattress pad or anything else, it went to the mattress, drop it at the end of the bed and say, “I’ll be back in five minutes, it had better be done right,” after he went up and down my back and ankles. I never really knew what “right” was. I just kept doing it until I didn’t get beaten.

     So, another part of it was that we would stand at attention and say, “yes sir” and “no sir” whenever we were addressing our parents. “Yes, sir” “no, sir” “yes, maam” no, maam.” And then there were times, many times, when for hours we would stand at attention getting our “dressing-downs.” For those of you who have also been in the Marine Corps, or any service, you know what a “dressing down” is. It’s a technique that officers or sergeants use to intimidate and break down the character and the psyche of those that are under their charge, and re-form them – this is what I always love about those commercials that say “Be all you can be.” Well, no, be all we want you to be is what they really want. And so we would stand for hours, so that – I had already started splitting by then and I would leave part of me there because I had to be able to say “yes, sir” and “no, sir” or answer a question if he addressed me. So I would go away and part of me would stay there, and that one was called “Little Soldier.”

     But at those times, there were times also when we would be punished by, he would draw a dot on the wall, and we would stand at attention with our nose on the dot on the wall, until he told us that we could leave. There was no, you know, that was it. So that is kind of what I remembered about my life, other than the other part of it which was – my focus most of my life was to figure out how I was going to keep from getting raped that day. I’d been raped from the time that I was an infant, till I’ll tell you that I was 18 and left home. And then I was called back. And ended up going back for my 20^th birthday, when I got raped for the last time. But there were many techniques that he used and many ritualized things that happened, that basically conditioned me to know that if he made a certain nod like that, or if he did like this (oh I’m sorry – I’m very sorry) that it was time, and that I needed to go to wherever he had indicated that I should be, and I would be ready.

     So that is ritualized abuse because you know – there’s a definition of it that basically says that if the person knows that over a period of time that they’re going to be hurt, and – I have it here, I don’t know where I put it – and that they know that there’s something, what the end result is going to be of the signal over a period of time, that they’re…that’s called ritual abuse.

     I didn’t have friends in school. I didn’t take anybody home with me. I was very isolated. I didn’t really know how to do relationships anyway because my life was consumed with trying to keep a secret. And it was definitely, not only implied, but definitely told to me that this was not something that you talked about outside the family. That our family business was to be kept inside our home.

     I started realizing that I was being molested about the age of six. I finally got it that this is what was happening, but I really thought that everybody else in the world had this kind of life too. But nobody else was talking about it, so I wasn’t going to. I was also threatened with my life if I did talk. I knew at the age of 18 that I needed to leave home and get away from that. And so I did. I moved into a boarding house in the same town, just to get out of that house. I ended up going off to college from there.

     But, just take that lump right there and call that my daytime life because my nighttime life was pretty much different from that, but not too different. It was pretty bizarre.

    My nighttime life was filled with bizarre and inhuman acts of evil. I allege that both of my parents were involved at high levels in a cult with satanic overtones, that I believe was a cover for military activities that included brainwashing, a sex ring, and covert movement of information through me to Germany. I allege that most of these activities included murdering and torturing both children and adults and took place while I was either drugged or dissociated into another personality. And they took place from the time I was an infant to the time I was about thirteen, when I had a baby. I’ll go into that a little bit later.

    I want to read you a definition of a sex ring because a lot of people say that they were never involved in a sex ring, but I said I was involved in a sex ring before I realized that I was. You know, that there was really a definition. And I mentioned it yesterday because some people were questioning that. Back in 1988, when I started doing this, I found a document, that I didn’t know existed. But a therapist person, not my therapist, but another one, gave me this document. It’s about – there are two of them about an inch and a half thick. They were put out in 1988 from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and they are about treatment, detection and treatment of children who have been abused, and one of the things that they talk about is sex rings. There’s one about sex rings and the other is about sexual abuse. But I just want to read you this definition.

     They say that, “Sex ring crime is a term describing sexual victimization in which there are one or more adult offenders and several children who are aware of each other’s participation. There are three different types of child sex rings. The solo sex ring involves one adult perpetrator and multiple children. There is no exchange of photographs, nor are there sexual activities with other adults. By contrast, a syndicated ring involves multiple adults, multiple child victims and a wide range of exchange items, including child pornography and sexual activities. At a level between these two types of rings is the transition ring in which the children and pornography are exchanged between adults, and often money changes hands.”

     I mean, I’m not going to put anything into anybody’s head, but I’m saying that I know that one of my first memories, or I should say, a continual memory, because it never left me, and about every six weeks or so, I’d have this flash and have no idea why I was having it. And there were several of these little flashes that I would get throughout my life. One of them was that I was in shackles, and I was small, and someone’s hand was reaching out, and the other person was saying, “she’s yours for the right price.” And so that kind of memory, I guess you would call it memory or cognition, was with me my entire life. And there were several others. So when I saw that definition, I said, “Oh, that’s what that is. My father may have been involved in a sex ring.” And it didn’t occur to me that that couldn’t happen…because for one thing he had contact with a lot of people, and I just kind of, you know, I’m probably like other people here, who’ve said “when in the world did they have time to do all this…WHEN DID THEY HAVE TIME TO DO ALL THIS?  Is this all a fantasy or What??” And then I thought, “You know little kids don’t make up stuff like this. They make up princesses, wearing a tiara, playing in the mud. They do that kind of thing. They don’t talk about satanic rituals and murder, and all that.

     But I left home, as I said, at about 18. I went to college and got a degree. I graduated, which is interesting, because most of us have a real difficult time finishing projects, I’m sure. Or having any kind of success because we tend to sabotage ourselves along the way. But I did finish and that was the last thing I finished…No…only kidding. (laughter) I did have several (laughter) Yeh, I’ve got my own cheering gallery up here. >(laughter) I did finish college and I did have several life changing experiences with different jobs. A variety of jobs…I was a teacher, believe it or not. laughter) And I’ve been a CFO of a company. I’ve been an entrepreneur. I’ve been a public speaker. I been a cartoon drawer. And I’ve been a ritual abuse survivor all my life.

     And I married four men!! (LAUGHTER) I kept trying, Hey! (laughter) Give me credit here, you know. I kept trying, it just didn’t work out! Actually, I didn’t marry them because I loved them. I married them because they loved me and they wanted to give me something. Insurance, a stable environment, a child…I have a child…interesting concept. And I didn’t know how to deal with that because I really wasn’t connecting with anybody in my life, let alone the person I was married to. And by the fourth husband, I was really sick of it, so I entered therapy to learn how to become intimate. Intimacy doesn’t mean sex because, hey, I was having sex by the time I was approximately three. So sex isn’t intimacy to me. But being there when you’re having sex is probably pretty intimate. (LAUGHTER) I learned that!! And so after four husbands, I said, “hey, I’d rather be alone than try to do this again.” And I wasn’t looking for anything, but I’d also been struggling with my sexuality throughout my therapy because I have both male and female alters, I have gay and lesbian alters. And it was very confusing as to who was out, and why they were out, and who that core person is, what I wanted out of life, what I believe in and what somebody else had planted in my brain. So, I’m happy to say, I’m out and living as a lesbian, finally in my life, and I love it.

     I first went into recovery back in 1988, which I said already was for learning how to be intimate, and I was diagnosed almost immediately with chronic depression. I don’t know how she could have understood that. Anyway, I then was hospitalized for chronic depression into River Oaks Psychiatric Hospital. I don’t know, there are many people who have been there. I thought it was the first time in my entire life that I was safe. I went inside the door, they closed that door behind me. I went inside of another one, and they closed that one behind me, and I thought for sure something was going to happen. But nothing happened. I totally broke down right there and said, “Oh, my God. I’m safe.” And I thought they had some sort of electric, an electronic dome over the hospital that would keep “THEM” from knowing where I was. And I did a month of really hard work, where many times I was just crawling around on the floor because I had no strength in my legs. I had totally exhausted myself. But I did a lot of work, and in my book, I talk about those experiences of recovering memories, and the kind of therapies that I did that allowed me to get some of them. And how I was able to get peace, and not feel as if I was going to die if I expressed my anger…because I had a lot of anger. I thought that everyone around me was going to explode and die if I expressed any of it. And later I realized that the explosion program is in there really big time. And also the suicide program is in there big time. Anyway, my alters, one of the first things that they did – I’m just going to give you a smattering of what happened – Ok one of the first things that my alters did was start drawing. I’ve done, you know, a little bit of art here and there in my lifetime. It wasn’t like I was an accomplished artist or anything. But they kept drawing stuff that I kept saying, “Uhh, I don’t think so. No, not that. No, you’re not going to draw that.” I could not allow anyone except me to be out in front of anybody else because they were “handling” theirs a lot better than me, and I thought if they saw that I had no control over my alters, that they were going to lock me away and put away the key. And not take it out. And I was there voluntarily. I didn’t go in because somebody committed me. So, anyway, they started drawing these pictures, and of course my therapist wanted to know why I drew the pictures. And all of a sudden that kicked in a suicide program, and I was under what they call “constant watch.”

    Anyway, that happened, and also for those of you who may have had body memories, they do exist and I had, from the very first night I had body memories that included bleeding from the vagina, and I have had a hysterectomy. So, my body totally released some of the things it had been holding for most of my life. And I am so grateful that River Oaks exists, and at that time it was phenomenal for me. It was the first time in my entire life that I knew what safety felt like. So, and I had some excellent therapists.

     From there, I was told, once I left the hospital, that I really needed to go to some 12-Step programs. Because I think they did not know about the alters, I didn’t tell them…like they didn’t know, right? (laughter) But they did know about the alleged satanic abuse. So they advised me that 12-Step programs would be a place where I could get some help, as far as talking about the alcohol abuse. And this is really kind of ironic because my father never drank at home to my knowledge. He never drank. There was never any alcohol in the house. And so I didn’t think he was an alcoholic. But when I was in the hospital, I told one of my siblings that they were telling me I needed to go to 12-Step programs. She says, “Well, yeh. Father was an alcoholic, what do you think?” I go, “Uhh, why didn’t anybody tell me?” And she said, “Well they talked about it.” And I realized that I was so concentrated on keeping from being raped, and trying not to tell a secret, that I didn’t really have any idea what the rest of my family was doing. I didn’t know when their birthdays were. I didn’t know what colors they liked. I didn’t know if they liked animals…or if they liked me. You know. Most of us didn’t because we were not allowed to sit and talk to each other. If we were four kids in the same room, it was a very quiet room most of the tim Because if we talked to each other, we got the third degree about, “What did you say? Why did you say that? When did you…Where did you go then? What did you…” You know, it was a constant barrage of questions. So we basically didn’t talk. And if we did, there were times when we were cornered into making a statement. Like the Vietnam War people who made wartime confessions. (Laughter) That’s basically how it was in our family. Then the rest of us got punished for what somebody said just to get out of being punished. I mean it was a real interesting wartime home life. But anyway, I left the hospital and I began saying, “Hi, my name is deJoly and I’m an adult child of an alcoholic.” And I did a 60 day 60 meeting program in about … two weeks. (LAUGHTER) Hey, I was determined! I wanted to get better, right? So… But I found some safe meetings where I could go and just vent and rage and do whatever I wanted. There was no cross talk because I tell you, somebody would have been taken out if they’d cross talked on my stuff. I was ready to blast anybody that said anything to me. (Laughter) Like, “Oh, you shouldn’t feel that way. You should forgive them because, you know, they’re only perps. That’s OK.” But anyway… (Laughter) So, I did that, and of course after leaving the hospital the first time, I had a flood of memories that felt like Niagara Falls. Then I said well I really need to get into therapy with someone who really knows how to deal with cult abuse. And I did. I went to a woman who was on a list, who was with the ISSD, who was on a list, who was capable of handling satanic cult abuse. And I was with her for five years. Out of no where, she was feeling dizzy one day, went to her doctor and he put her into the hospital immediately, and within three weeks she was dead. Nobody got to go and see her in the hospital because she had a rare brain tumor that ate up all of her systems and she was shutting down day by day. So I really haven’t gotten over the entire grief on that one. But I did see another therapist and we worked on some of it. It just happened to be her best friend…my therapist’s best friend. So we kind of grieved together, but I didn’t do a lot of work with her because she wasn’t trained in any of this.

     But Harriet had given me the gift of encouraging me to write my story. And I went to a conference in 1997 in Atlanta. (Laughter) Some of you know which one I’m talking about!!! (Acknowledgement & Laughter) One of the things I got from that conference, besides torture… But, uhh, one of the things I got from that conference was that there isn’t enough material out there for survivors that has been written by survivors. Encouraging material…that you can get through it…blah, blah, blah. But any material. There was just a complete lacking. Besides it being very triggering at some points, it was very informative, and I did make some progress. I went home. I wrote a book that my alters had been writing for like five years by that time. And we produced that book. It’s called Diary of a Survivor in Art and Poetry. I have only a couple more copies left so, they’re available if you want one. And later I wrote a second book, which you can’t see…no…just kiddingIt’s called DISCONNECT, and I have it at a publisher right now, so I’m selling it as a book that’s in a three ring binder. I don’t want to have it out there too much because the editors don’t exactly like it when you outsell them before it’s actually published.

     Anyway, I had to learn about parenting skills. I had to learn about the fact that I would never get parented like I didn’t get when I was a child. That person would never exist. So I had to realize that I didn’t have a mother or a father that took care of me, and that I would have to take care of myself. So I learned how to honor the needs of my alters and take care of them and make sure they were safe. I promised them that I would never put them in an unsafe situation again, and I had to learn about their stories, which was horrific. I won’t kid you, there were some pretty hard times in this healing process. But there have been some good times too. I feel fortunate to be able to say that I’ve had some really good therapists, and only a smattering of bad ones. They helped me get through the stories, the art, the memories connected with the cult and military abuse. And they helped me sort out my “selves,” to find out who “I” am. And I’m pretty well “there.” But what I found also is that as I would uncover one layer of alters, it was really interesting, because when I went to the hospital the second time, again River Oaks, they asked me to draw what it was like to be inside of me. So I did. I thought everybody did that, you know. And I took it back to her and she said, “This is amazing.” I said, “Why?” And she said, “Well not everybody has this system.” So I said, “So it’s smaller? Or larger? Or what?” And she said, “No, it’s NOT. It isn’t. There is no system.” I said, “How do you function? My God!” (Laughter) “Who dresses you in the morning?” (More Laughter) “Who fixes your breakfast? Who drives your car?” (Laughter) "My God, aren’t you lonely?”

     So, it was pretty incredible when I found out that not everybody had this system, you know. And I couldn’t figure out how they functioned at all (laughter). I know. I’m sorry you “onesies.” But I decided that I was going to get as much detail about everything as possible. And I thought I did. And once that layer of alters was satisfied, happy and sleeping comfortably in their safe places, another layer would pop up. And then as those got calmed down, another layer would pop up. So basically, I’m getting into another layer right now, that’s why I’m back in therap I wasn’t OUT of therapy, I just couldn’t FIND a therapist because where I live, we have basically a desert zone of therapists, and when you talk about mental disorders or mental health, they think you’re talking about needing an aspirin, you know… “Take an aspirin, go to bed, call us in the morning.” But anyway, I got through that and I got a new therapist.

     Eventually I began speaking out – it wasn’t too long into my therapy that I began speaking out. In fact probably I was speaking out long before I went into therapy – about the abuses of military people, and government officials…encouraging people to question their authority. But after I got into all of the ritual abuse with the satanic overtones and the sex rings, and all that stuff, I began speaking out quite a bit… going around the country at different conferences and workshops and that kind of thing. And I even got on FOX-TV on an interview program in Tampa Bay. It was pretty interesting because it was a call-in program, and there were a lot of questions that people couldn’t ask. But some that did get through, I thought they were pretty intelligent questions from the standpoint of when people don’t know what they’re talking about. The Fox TV thing was real encouraging to me because other people were interested and other people had actually heard of Multiple Personality Disorder, and they were seeing someone on TV whose head wasn’t spinning on her shoulders, that wasn’t demonic… from the standpoint of I wasn’t talking about demons and being possessed and all that. I wasn’t one of those like on Three Faces of Eve, “Hi I’m Miss White.” So they saw a more level-headed, high-functioning person sitting up there talking about it. Because I had been in therapy for a while and had done a lot of work. All of those “dressing downs” that I got, kind of gave me and idea of how to talk. So, my father gave me a gift.

     So, anyway because I’ve put my life – myself on the line to talk about these kinds of crimes against children like myself, I’ve had to answer many questions, both from survivors and non-survivors. I don’t believe there are any dumb questions. And most of the groups I’ve spoken to are highly respectful and attentive. People really want to know about these things, even if they don’t know they do at the time they are listening to me (laughter).

     So I’ve gathered up some of the questions that I’ve had to answer, and I want to encourage you at the end of some of these, if I haven’t answered your question, be sure and ask because I really do enjoy answering questions.

     Some people have no idea what ritual abuse is. When I first start talking about it, they’re going, “What in the world are you talking about? What is ritual abuse and/or mind control? So I’m going to tell you that there are several definitions, but basically they say that “ritualized abuse is repeated, systematic, sadistic, and humiliating trauma to the physical, sexual, spiritual, and/or emotional health of a person by someone with either real or perceived power over the person. It’s usually perpetrated on children and/or adolescents, and they’re basically people in vulnerable states of mind, who have, as in my case, shown a propensity to “split.” It doesn’t matter what gender you are, they know no boundaries. Sometimes it’s done by organized groups, such as churches, the Marine Corps, and others. But it also can be a small group of people or even just one person.

     I’ve been asked over and over, what about your siblings? Did this same thing happen to them? How many of you have gotten that question? Uh-huh. Any of you with siblings, you know, everyone wants to know, were you the only one? Why were you picked out? (laughter) Well, I know that we were all mentally, physically, sexually and emotionally abused. Know why? Because during part of my recovery I wrote my father a letter confronting him, and he answered that letter. I could not believe it. And he confirmed all that. And this was before I had memories of any the ritual, satanic and military stuff. I was just basically trying to do a step of my recovery. And I sent that to my other family members – rebel rouser that I am. (laughter) Anyway, I don’t know if they’ve gone through the same things otherwise that I have because, to my knowledge, none of them have gotten into therapy and are willing to do the painful work that it takes to know – Where you get these phobias? Why you have these fears? Why you can’t do certain things? Why do you never finish a project? Why do you self-sabotage? Why do you have an eating disorder? Why do you do drugs? Why did you go into the military? So, to my knowledge, none of them have done the work… I guess for some reason I was driven to do the work. My brother has a six inch oval on the back of his head which is completely bald because my father beat him when he was approximately two years old with a flyswatter, to teach him not to say “no. And I was there, so I learned real quick not to say “no.” But he doesn’t talk about it…my brother doesn’t talk about it. And he did go into the military. All of the girls in my family have been in multiple relationships, not that they are multiple, but they have been in multiple… (laughter) only kidding… I went through learning about my eating disorders, my sleep disorders… How many of you have “other” disorders? We all have a variety of little disorders.

     Another question was, when did you first know that you were a multiple? When I first learned that I was multiple, I didn’t know that it was multiplicity. I thought I was just like everybody else. I was on the playground in first grade and I asked Butch to catch the ball because I knew that I wasn’t good at it. Now Butch is another alter. So basically, I just stepped back like this… and Butch caught the ball and everybody liked him. So I let him play ball, you know. So I guess you could say that I knew about it before first grade, but that was the first time that I consciously, right now, can remember that I was split. It wasn’t until a long time after that that somebody called it multiplicity, and that I didn’t feel crazy. I felt crazy when I found out that nobody else was that way.

     Another question, one that was asked a lot last year, what about integration? My feeling is that you have to let yourself…I had to let myself learn about my alters first. I had to let them tell me their stories. I had to learn that they weren’t bad because they did things that weren’t good – weren’t fun – and may have even been harmful to other people. Even though I hated some of them, I had to learn that they were only doing what they were told to do, and that I wasn’t a big person when this happened. In my earlier therapies, I kept seeing myself as an adult who had plenty of options, who could have run away, who could have told, blah, blah, blah. I almost want to gag over it all. But through my therapy, I learned to honor them. I learned to say, “oh, you were the one who took that particular tape…that particular circumstance.” And so, about integration, I feel that once they’re ready, they’ll start integrating, if they ever get ready. And if they consider themselves a good functioning unit of cooperative alters, then why push it? I can remember when I spoke in front of the ISSD Chapter of Tampa Bay. I said…you know they were asking me about integration, and I said, “but I said, can you draw me your system inside? Can you tell me what it’s like and how much I can benefit from living like you? Well, why would I want to do that if you can’t draw it and you can’t tell me? What makes you think that your lifestyle is better than my lifestyle? Etc. etc. So I think that as we learn about our alters and they feel safe and they want to do whatever it is that they want to do, they may integrate. I know that there’s a lot of fear about that because for me, from the very moment I even thought about integrating, there was a lot of confusion, and hatred, and anger, and fear inside of me that they were going to be done away with. Well that didn’t happen. But I think it’s something to understand that there may be a time when they feel comfortable and they want to integrate.

     What kind of therapies did you do and did you ever do any drugs – legal drugs? I went through a number of therapy styles. I went through art therapy because that was the way they first chose to start telling their stories. They started drawing all kinds of pictures. And at first – I signed and dated everything I ever did – but in the beginning I always signed it as “left.” Because somehow or other, during my learning, I also found out that if I drew with my left hand, that would eliminate the mental – my intellectual style, and I could get more of a clear understanding. I didn’t tell anybody that “left” meant Sadie, or it meant Little One, or it meant Jodie. I just said “left.” After they discovered – or I had to reveal that I was multiple – they started signing their own names to the pictures. I also did music therapy, and meditative therapy. I went to movement therapy and anger therapy. And I practiced probably my entire life self-hypnosis, because that was one of my trainings. So we did a variety of therapies that have absolutely been very beneficial for me, and those are things you can try. But I also describe them in my book.

     I did a short stint with Prozac and Trazadone. I would like to tell you about the Prozac. I had an alter named Ginger. She was 70 years old and she was suicidal. She was very depressed. She had taken on all of the depression, and the morose and dark bitterness of my mother. She decided that she needed to die. And we were hospitalized…Baker-Acted. Meaning that my therapist put me in the hospital because I was “of danger to myself and/or society.” Can you believe that? I mean come on! Well, anyway, Ginger went into the hospital. Well, we ALL went into the hospital. Harriet said, “How would the system feel if they let Ginger go? If she went ahead and died?” That was like the first time that concept had ever come up because I thought if one died they all died. We discussed it for another couple of days. And then we had a funeral for her. My child alters drew cards for her that said good-bye. And we had a funeral for her right in the hospital. We put paper over the door so we could do this in private. Harriet brought in flowers and Ginger’s favorite nightgown. She brought in the Bible and we read the Twenty-Third Psalm…and played music…and Ginger died. It was from that point forward that I never had to do Prozac again because it was really Ginger who was taking the Prozac. That was a new and interesting concept to me, and I felt like Harriet was a blessing for me from the very beginning, but that was the best. And it was just a month later that she died…Harriet died. Ginger died in the hospital…Harriet died later.

     I’ve gotten this question from college students at IU. Do you think that being raped by those men made you a lesbian? Anybody been raped by a woman? OK… How many of you are lesbians? No…you don’t have to… (laughter) only kidding… But if it was the case, we would all be confused sexually. We would all be disoriented in that way because we were raped by both men and women. So I’ve really had to educate people about sexuality, but because we’re also multiple and we have so many other alters inside, it took me a long time to decipher who was what and why they were and everything else, and finally get to my core self and say… “I’m a lesbian.” I like that. It’s from the cellular point. It’s not something I learned. That’s why I never connected with the men, obviously, but also I was never taught to connect with people anyway. I was conditioned not to connect.

     So that’s kind of where I wanted to drop off my presentation and go forward with questions from you all. Also, let me tell you that I will probably repeat the questions into the mic for the people that are going to listen to these tapes in their homes. I’ll try to answer whatever you ask.