=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Memorial held for sarin victims; bitterness lingers
2. Sarin gas victims press for state help
3. Group urges state to aid survivors of sarin gassing

=== Falun Gong
4. Sect ban pressure is denied by Tung

=== Falun Gong - China's Government-Controlled Media
5. Reports from China's government-controlled media
6. Religion, cult different terms

=== Scientology
7. Cruise Dogged by Scientology Split Rumors
8. Columbine Counselor's Teen Sex Abuse Prompts CCHR's New Website Tracking System of Mental Health Criminals

=== Islam
9. Call to spread Islam's message on tolerance
10. Taliban Bans New Year's Celebration

=== Catholicism
11. Report: Priests, Missionaries Sexually Abuse Nuns
12. Reports of abuse

=== Mormonism
13. Mormons' Long, Strange Trip to the Mainstream

=== Hate Groups
14. Judge Sentences Supremacist Pastor in Abduction of Grandchildren.
15. Racist church heads to court
16. Calif. Supremacist Pleads Guilty
17. Brown Students Steal Univ. Paper
18. Brown Protest Targets Ad
19. State House passes hate-crimes measure
20. Germany Won't Stop Yahoo! Auction

=== House of Prayer, Atlanta
21. Pastor, 5 followers arrested in child beatings
22. Defendants have criminal records
23. Church faces abuse probe over whipping of children

=== John and Carrie Davis
24. Jailed father found dead
25. Torture suspect 'upbeat' before his death

=== Recovered Memory Therapy
26. New trial ordered in recovered-memory case
27. Brain: Some choose to lose memory

=== Other News
28. End Near For Ex-Devil Church
29. Some in Egypt shun religious freedom panel
30. Three held for distributing Christian literature

=== Science
31. Skull may alter theory of human evolution

=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations
32. Convicted Killer is Freed After His Sister Finds DNA Evidence
33. Judge bans use of electric chair

=== Noted
34. Worshippers in Paris flock to Afro-Christian cults
35. Exorcism thriving in Australia
36. A Herd of Psychics on Larry King
37. When a body can be worth $220,000

=== Books
38. Sects, death and the spirit of the age
39. Mainstream Publishers Get Religion for Christian Audience
40. Take a Web site test on religion

=== Recovered Memory Therapy

26. New trial ordered in recovered-memory case
Boston Globe, Mar. 21, 2001
http://www.boston.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Signaling doubts about the validity of ''recovered memory,'' the state's highest court yesterday ordered a new trial for a Middlesex County man convicted of raping a teenager who did not recall most details of the assault until five years after it allegedly occurred.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court said William Frangipane is entitled to a new trial because the expert witness used by prosecutors to discuss the effects of trauma on memory strayed too far from her expertise.

The court, in a 17-page ruling written by Justice John M. Greaney, said the prosecution's expert witness presented tainted evidence by testifying to the neurology of how trauma victims store memories in the brain. That evidence should have come from a medical doctor, not a psychotherapist, the court said.
(...)

The concept of a ''recovered memory'' has been controversial for years in both medical and legal arenas, spawning fervent supporters and critics.

Proponents believe physical and emotional trauma, such as being sexually assaulted as a child, causes victims to block out the events until years afterward. Often, the memories are ''recovered'' through therapy.

Critics, however, say medical studies supporting the theory are flawed. They also contend that what some treat as actual memories are in fact imagined events planted in the minds of emotionally fragile people by therapists.

The SJC ruled that there is enough disagreement on the issue among mental-health specialists that it would be appropriate for a judge to review the issue before allowing it to be used in a criminal case.

The SJC's stance brings the court in line with appellate courts across the country, according to an article in last summer's Journal of Psychiatry and Law.
Appellate courts in Rhode Island, Texas, California, Maryland and elsewhere have concluded that the science of recovered memories is too uncertain to be admissible in court, according to the article.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


27. Brain: Some choose to lose memory
Nature News Service, Mar. 15, 2001
http://www.nature.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
We can block out some unwanted memories - if we try really hard not to think about them, a new study suggests. The research, from the University of Oregon in Eugene, and published in this week's Nature, should help us to understand the memory loss people suffer after traumatic events.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, claimed that we can deliberately forget or 'repress' unpleasant memories; thus, abused children may forget harrowing past events. A century on, whether or not we can really choose to lose memories remains a controversial question. Traumatic memories are wrapped up in human emotion, which is difficult to study in the lab.

Now Michael Anderson and Collin Green have come up with a new way to explore memory repression. They asked college students to learn pairs of words loosely linked in meaning (such as 'ordeal-roach'), so that when shown one, they could remember the other.

The students then practised remembering or forgetting the second word: some had to think about the paired word and say it aloud, whereas others had to try not to think about it ('no-think').

A short time later, the students found the no-think words much harder to remember - even when offered money to get them right. ''People can push memories out of awareness and cause them to be forgotten,'' says Anderson.

It is possible that abused children use a similar strategy to deal with their shocking memories, says Anderson. Children abused by someone they know are more likely to report having forgotten it than those abused by a stranger. Anderson thinks that this could be because each time the child sees the abuser they have to force down the difficult memories - which eventually makes them forget.

These new findings may stir up the already heated debate over 'recovered' memories of childhood abuse, which pressure groups of accused parents claim are false. ''No-one knows if these memories are real or not,'' says Chris Brewin of University College London. ''But this work strengthens the argument that they could be real but suppressed.''

Next, Anderson plans to test how long the suppression effect lasts - and whether suppressed memories can be recovered after a delay.

The new technique is also a powerful way to start tackling psychological illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in which people constantly relive terrible memories.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


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