SATANIC PANIC
Justice for Carol
By Rosie Waterhouse
THE damage caused to vulnerable mentally
ill patients and their families by therapists
who treat them as survivors of Satanic
ritual abuse is revealed in the shocking and
extraordinary case of Carol Felstead.
Carol (pictured), later known as Carole Myers,
was found dead in mysterious circumstances in
her flat in Wandsworth, south London, on 29 June
2005 aged 41. She was naked from the waist down
and surrounded by medication. A post mortem
examination found no dangerous levels of drugs
in her system, however. The cause of death was
"unascertained" and an inquest recorded an open
verdict.
In a six-year battle to uncover the truth, the
Felstead family, from Stockport, Cheshire, have
unearthed a scandal surrounding Carol's treatment
over 20 years by a medical profession and a
therapy industry using high doses of medication
and dubious "recovered memory" and mind
control techniques.
It is another indictment of the recovered
memory movement of doctors and therapists who
believe in the long-debunked notion that people can
recover buried memories of Satanic ritual abuse
(see Eyes passim). Between them, practitioners
who are "believers" claim to have treated
hundreds if not thousands of adult survivors
since the Satanic panic reached the UK
from the US in the late 1980s.
Using the freedom of information act
the Felstead family have obtained limited
access to Carol's medical records. All
notes from the first 21 years other life are
missing as are all the counselling notes by
four key therapists who treated her as a victim of
Satanic abuse.
From the records that do survive, the family
have pieced together horrifying details of a
tormented life. As they have sought official
investigation into her death, they have encountered
obstruction, impotence, lies and cover-up.
Carol drifted away from home after qualifying
as a nurse, aged 21, in September 1985. She kept
casual contact with her family through birthday
and Christmas cards but eventually moved to
London and disappeared from their lives. The
estrangement was heart-breaking for her parents.
Carol died after almost 20 years of "treatment"
in psychiatric hospitals and private clinics by a
succession of doctors, psychiatrists, psychotherapists
and unqualified counsellors who implanted the
notion - and then perpetuated a false belief- that
she had been a victim of Satanic ritual abuse.
Her parents were supposed to be the High
Priest and High Priestess of a Satanic cult who
dug up graves and performed ritual sacrifices,
including murder.
Carol's medical records reveal that these
therapists included Dr Fleur Fisher, a former
head of science and ethics at the British Medical
Association; Valerie Sinason (see Eyes passim),
then a child psychotherapist based at the
Tavistock Clinic in London; Dr Rob Hale, a
consultant psychotherapist, psychiatrist and adult
psychoanalyst, based at the Tavistock; and the late
Vera Diamond, then a Harley Street self-styled
psychotherapist who specialised in mind numbing
relaxation therapy and deprogramming brainwashed
cult victims.
Carol met Dr Fisher in 1985 when Fisher was
working in the family planning clinic at Carol's
GP's surgery in Macclesfield, Cheshire. [SAFF: See here for Manchester SRA links]
In August 1985 she was referred to the
Withington Hospital, Manchester, where she was
given "relaxation training and thought stopping
procedures". After receiving two sessions Carol
was diagnosed as a victim of extensive physical and
sexual abuse. Recent police inquiries, instigated
by her family, into the allegations against them -
which they only leamt about after Carol's death
- established they were demonstrably false. In
2009 Del Supt Grant Lander of Wandsworth police
wrote to Carol's father, Joseph: "The relationship
Dr Fisher developed with Carol in my opinion was
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misguided. There is absolutely no evidence that
I have obtained in my investigation that showed
Carol ever suffered abuse by yourself or by any
members of your family."
The medical records show Carol did suffer
from "urinary tract" problems which required
surgery. But the first reference to Satanic abuse
in the records comes in a letter dated 25 April
1991 after Carol was admitted for three months to
Parkside Hospital, Macclesfield, a former Victorian
mental asylum, where Dr Fisher was the manager.
A letter from one consultant psychiatrist to
another said: "As you are aware, the original
referral was made through Dr Fleur Fisher
because Carole (sic) was experiencing a great
deal of emotional distress because of the work
she was doing with the Police in re-living
distressing details of the alleged satanic ritual
abuse she suffered as a child." The Felsteads have
established there was no such police investigation.
In June 1992 Carol was sectioned under the
mental health act and placed on the Mental Health
Register. From October that year she was treated by
Sinason and Hale at the Tavistock Clinic in London
where Carol had relocated. Letters from Hale
and Sinason confirm they had diagnosed her as a
survivor of "chronic sadistic abuse" and
"Satanist abuse".
Carol, who changed her name to
Carole Myers in November 1992, was
Sinason's first such patient in the UK.
Sinasonhas since said in an interview
that over the next two years she and Hale
treated 51 "ritually abused patients".
In October 1994 Carol was referred to
Vera Diamond, who had achieved publicity as a
"psychotherapist" specialising in ritual abuse.
Three years later, in a letter to Dr Frances
Raphael, a psychiatrist at Springfield psychiatric
hospital in Tooting, south London, where Carol,
now Carole Myers, was being treated, Sinason
reveals her tormented state of mind. Sinason wrote
that while being treated by Hale and Sinason Carole
was "often in trance states", suffered flashbacks
(recovered memories) and nightmares; that she had
multiple personalities, one of whom threatened to
kill Carol, and suffered from Dissociative Identity
Disorder.
Sinason recommended Carol should be
referred to the Henderson NHS Hospital, a
therapeutic community for psychiatric patients in
Sutton, Surrey, where, she wrote: "Dr Norton has
worked with MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder)
and ritual abuse."
From 1998 to 2005 Carol was under the care
of Central Wandsworth Community Mental Health
Team and given continuous psychiatric input. The
notes reveal that she was hospitalised on numerous
occasions as she suffered from depression and
had suicidal thoughts which led to her taking
overdoses. She also self-harmed and had alcohol
problems. Her family never knew.
Out of the blue Carol sent her parents a
Christmas card in December 2004 saying she
would visit soon. Then, in the last week of her life
she twice spoke with her brother Richard and said
she wanted to come back to Stockport to be near
her family. In the week she was due to visit, Carol
was found dead in her flat following a 999 call to
the Met Police by Dr Fisher while she was on a
train to Manchester.
Carol's family were not notified of her death
until two weeks after she died. In the meantime
Fisher had told the police, Battersea Coroner's
Office and the housing association which owned
Carol's flat that she was Carol's next of kin and
executor, and she started to arrange her cremation.
The Felstead family are determined to secure
the release of the 999 call Fisher made to police
and are planning to seek exhumation of Carol's
body to confirm her identity. They want to hold to
account those who treated Carol for more than 20
years for "ritual" abuse which never occurred by a
Satanic cult which never existed.
www.justiceforcarol. com
Eye 1302: 25 November 2011
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