Monday, July 13, 2009

When Justice Fails the Children: FAQ and SYNOPSIS, Kristy's Story by Debra Sanders

When Justice Fails The Children:

Quick Synopsis, clarifications and answers to FAQ

What readers have learned thus far:

1) In 1992, while working as an educational psychologist, a 13 yr. old student named Kristy (not her name at the time) came to my attention. She was extremely oversexualized, acted out in extreme and inappropriate ways and was identified as "emotionally disturbed." We connected quickly and easily and her behavior rapidly improved.

2) As she grew stronger, her parents behavior became increasingly bizarre and hostile toward me, so much so I began to fear for my safety (and I am not easily rattled). Finally, they pulled her out of school and said they were going to home school her and she effectively disappeared from the community.

3) Two years later, she resurfaces with an accusation that I sexually molested her in my office during the time we worked together and this was followed by an intense three month investigation which ended with the case being closed due to provable documentation that her claims were false.

4) Again for two years there is no sighting of her in the small community in which we lived; however in 1996 I, the police and the school district received a handwritten letter from her painfully asking for my forgiveness and stating that she was forced into making that accusation by her parents. At the time of this writing she stated they no longer lived in XXX, she was pregnant with her father's child and had been removed from the home.

5)Twelve years later, in the summer of 2008, Kristy finds me via my then-just-set-up website and tells me that she has been looking for me all these years. She tells me that she suffers tremendous challenges due to the years of extreme abuse and that she is identified with a Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Ten "others" in addition to herself live inside her, ranging in age from infant to forty two. Kristy herself is twenty nine, about to turn thirty.

6) The girl that I had worked with is known as K (name changed for legal liability purposes)and Kristy explains that due to intense abuse that only got worse after she was pulled out of school (she never did receive any schooling after that) K "disappeared" at the age of sixteen and that is when Kristy took over as the main "host" or personality.

7) Kristy had written a brief autobiography of her life up until the age of sixteen (actually K and Kristy wrote this together) and it is included in full in PART IV and painfully describes the details of her childhood.

8) When Kristy first contacted me last summer, she told me in a very early email that she had been working hard with a therapist and hoped to "integrate" (i.e. merge) the personalities as she wanted to prosecute her parents (whom she chose only to refer to as, "the Assholes," and not by name. At the time of this writing she had recently moved to another state and had not yet found a therapist who was experienced in DID (multiple personality disorder), but she was looking for one.

9) I explained to Kristy that because she was contemplating prosecution of the parents at some point, it was imperative that all, that every bit, of our communication be in writing. This was for her protection as well as mine so that in no way could her testimony be discredited by the parents stating that I had coerced her into making these accusations in retaliation for what occurred fifteen years earlier. For this reason, all of our conversations took place either through emails and/or through Instant Messages.

10) I have, now locked away in an attorney's office, several hundred pages of her written testimony and feelings about the pastor and his wife who adopted her at age four and proceeded to ritualistically, systematically and continuously rape, beat, isolate and intimidate her.

11) Part VI of the story ended with the emergence of the personality I am referring to as S, who has commanded me to stop corrupting K and Kristy, stating that they need to learn to obey and honor thy father and thy mother.


Answers to the most frequently asked questions to date:

Q:
I don't get the multiple personality thing. I mean, did she live alone? Was she able to ever work or take care of herself? I am confused, is K the same person as Kristy or are they two different personalities/people?

A:

Dissociative Identity Disorder is a complicated and elaborate defense system that is occasionally developed in very intelligent individuals who have been subjected to ongoing and extreme abuse. While it differs from person to person, it seems that a common thread is that there is an "inner system" that has been established. In some people they are not aware of the others (sometimes called Alters). In Kristy's case, there is a levels system which is about to be explained in the next part of the story.

Prior to moving to the state in which she was currently living, Kristy had worked two jobs--one at Walmart and one at a brain and spine rehabilitation facility. Over the years she had lived both alone and with a partner--a woman she was still very close friends with, but no longer involved with in a romantic way.

Kristy's stability and ability to manage this disorder varied greatly, and was highly dependent upon her having ongoing therapy with a skilled clinician. Because she had no such therapist in her current living location, she was in and out of the hospital due to severe self injury issues. There were some of the personalities which were very punitive and Kristy's body bore not only the scars of her parents abuse, but the scars of her own. The picture you see on the video is of a self-inflicted burn on her arm.

The next chapter will identify her various personalities and the system within which they functioned. One thing I will say here, that no doubt I will repeat with frequency, is that while Kristy most definitely suffered from a mental illness, in no way was she crazy.

As you will come to see, there is a stunning difference between someone being crazy and incapable of functional living, thought and patterns of thinking and acting and someone having to manage an emotional disorder that challenges the way they live, but does not necessarily mean living a relatively normal life is an impossibility.

Q:

How come all those teachers just disappeared? Why didn't anyone help her?

A:

Well, I can't answer this question definitively, but I can make some educated guesses. These were very, very intimidating people who seemed used to getting their way. The reason, Kristy wrote me, they hated me so much was because I was the first person they could not intimidate-- that would not capitulate to their demands, and who stood strong as an advocate for her. I can certainly see how each time a teacher started getting close to Kristy, how these parents might raise threatening issues and demand that she be removed from that class and placed in another one--one with a less compassionate or less personally involved teacher. In Kristy's words, they referred to me as a "nosy c..t that they were not about to let land them in jail."

Another important thing to keep in mind is that all of us over the years--all the teachers, the psychologists, the principals--all of us had been introduced to the children of this family as children that the pastor and his wife had rescued out of a ritualistically sexually abusing cult situation and told that this is why not just Kristy, but all the children, were so disturbed. We had no reason whatsoever to question this. These cults exist; as educators and psychologists, we knew this (much as we preferred to wish otherwise). That Kristy would be terribly damaged from having been raised her first four years in such a setting seemed a reasonable explanation.

Even though I so strongly suspected that she was being abused in the pastor's home, it never once occurred to me that they in fact, might be the ritual abusers and that the kids had not come out of that situation, but rather had been adopted into it. It wasn't until I started hearing the rest of the story (beginning last summer) that this hit me.

I do have many questions myself as to why she was not removed from the home prior to the age of 17 (as did she), however, only a competent and very thorough investigative reporter will be able to unravel that part of the story. I have all the names, dates and places of the various teachers, social workers, psychologists, mental health workers, etc that filtered through Kristy's life. It will take an investigative reporter who has a passion for the truth and for justice to do the digging and the interviewing and the questioning that needs to be done to really understand how it is that this child remained in the home and the parents remained untouched by the law.

2 comments:

  1. I am amazed how this kind of thing slips through the cracks - it's a sad state we live in where innocent children are being hurt, sexually, emotionally, physically & spiritually and "most" grown ups are fearful of getting involved - It hurts my heart - Debra I am so grateful that you are willing to bring this to peoples attention - something needs to be done - Blessings

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  2. Thank you for writing this...it's good to know this is being seen, being read and that there is support in my efforts to bring this to people's attention. It is not an easy thing for me to do; it sure is not a therapeutic one. But I do believe it must be done.

    Much appreciate the comment.

    D

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