SNAP says church unduly influenced state Sen. Jim Sullivan

Sen. Jim Sullivan

WAUWATOSA — Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) questioned Thursday whether state Sen. Jim Sullivan allowed his Catholic faith to influence his legislative actions on a measure concerning child victims.

The Wauwatosa Democrat described the allegation as groundless.

The measure at issue is the Child Victims Act, a bill that would have made it easier for victims of clergy sexual abuse to file lawsuits. The now-dead measure, first introduced in 2008, would in part have erased the statute of limitations on civil lawsuits against child sex abusers. That could have led to a flood of lawsuits against several Wisconsin churches.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests alleged that the reason Sullivan opposed the measure was because he feared that his church would deny him communion, a sacred Catholic rite.

As proof, SNAP distributed a Dec. 16 e-mail that lobbyist Joe Strohl had written to a colleague. In it, Strohl wrote of a conversation he had with Sullivan the previous day about the lawmaker's opposition to the bill.

"As he said, 'he still takes communion every Sunday' and wants to be able to keep doing that," Strohl wrote.

Sullivan confirmed with The Associated Press that he made the comment, but said it was being misinterpreted.

"Never, ever has anybody ever threatened to withhold communion or any other sacraments from me or my family," the senator said.

He said he opposed the Child Victims Act because statutes of limitations are fair and important protections for defendants accused of having committed a crime decades earlier.

"You have to be able to weigh the needs of those seeking justice with the need to mount a vigorous defense," Sullivan said.

Strohl, the lobbyist and a former Democratic Senate leader, told AP he wrote the e-mail after a client had asked him to solicit Sullivan's stance on the Child Victims Act.

When Sullivan made the communion comment there was nothing in his tone or body language that suggested he was being threatened or pressured to oppose it, Strohl said.


Comment by "schmenz" :

"Where do I begin to comment on this amazing article?

Let's begin with the Holy Communion issue: Senator Sullivan should be denied the Sacrament absolutely, for his open support of both pro-abortion and pro-homosexual policies. He is a disgrace to the Church and as he receives this Sacrament unworthily so he shall be judged - as will the priests who give it him, knowing his actions.

The statements that he would be denied the Sacrament for voting on this victim's rights issue, and that he was pressured by the Church, are absolutely, positively ridiculous. Sullivan knows he would not be denied Communion for that, and so should the writer of the article. Since over 90% of the abuse cases involve homosexual preying on adolescent boys the real reason Sullivan is voting that way most likely has to do with his support of the sodomy lobby.

Sullivan is perhaps the worst mealy-mouthed wardheeler of the bunch. He wouldn't be influenced by any church, least of all his own."

Comment in regards to Harvey Milk and his connection to Jim Jones

Comment left here but it was pending moderation by the blog author.

Milk and Moscone. Both assassinated
right  after the Jonestown Massacre

"The People's Temple didn't murder themselves. And Jones enjoyed much support even having personal visits and friendships with Rosalynn Carter, Governor Jerry Brown and many more. Why is there a character assassination on Milk for supporting Jones? This is plain stupid. There is way more to Jones than many of us realize. I just wish people would scrutinize everything instead of just swallowing hook line and sinker the propaganda given to us about Jonestown. I still want to know why all those Americans were murdered in cold blood out there in Guyana. It's already on record that Congressman Leo Ryan saw that NONE of the people cited by "concerned relatives" wanted to leave Jonestown and that most of the people there were happy. Strange how as he was leaving Jonestown he was assassinated by Larry Layton who is free now. How does a man, the only one convicted in partaking in the murder of a Congressman end up getting paroled at all?

There are too many holes in this "official" Jonestown story. Way too many. There was a lot going on in Guyana at that time as well. I believe the secret lies with the Jesuit Order, to be more specific, Fr. Andrew Morrison SJ who was the Vicar General of the Jesuits in Guyana at that time and ran the Catholic Standard newspaper. The only newspaper not controlled by the government which had just gained it's Independence in 1966 from Great Britain. Not only that, Jonestown was built on land that Venezuela stated was their's. This is just a little info. It's even way more complicated than this. And there's a lot more stories that don't add up like how it's been said Liane Harris "cut her own throat" the night before the "mass suicides" in Jonestown (This story is reported as fact in Fr. Andrew Morrison SJ book "The Struggle for Democracy in Guyana 1952 - 1992"). And funny how these stories were being pushed by this Deborah Layton Blakey about mass suicide in the first place. Sorry, but if you have seen footage of the People's Temple the DAY before the MURDERS you would know that they were not a bunch of people about to kill themselves. I hate hearing all these lies. They're insulting to all common sense."

More Jonestown Info

Jonestown - Jesuit Connections

Read about how so many people fought for Larry Layton's release from prison. Why do so many people care about this former Jonestown "fanatic" who was "the only man convicted on criminal charges arising from the events of November 18, 1978"? Let's not forget who his father was and who his sister is.

Another Comment  posted HERE (awaiting moderation as well)

"I read the article Harvey Milk and Jonestown 25 years later and saw the article about Vernon Gosney in there who happened to be the main voice that convinced the parole board to let Larry Layton be released. He was the only person prosecuted for the run way shooting that left a congressman dead. I thought it was ironic to have those two articles in one issue of a magazine. there seems to be a strange pattern of those who propagated the "mass suicide drills" allegedly going on there. i don't believe that is actually true. I believe the people who alleged these things were part of the plot somehow. Another propagater of the mass suicide drills was Larry Layton's sister, Deborah Layton who was the daughter of a powerful army officer and was married to someone else who was alleged to be CIA (Blakey). Another oen who propagated the mass suicide drills was a jesuit priest, Fr. Andrew Morrison SJ out of Guyana. He ran a newspaper there and was the most powerful catholic in Guyana."

Cult Member = Heretic and that's what the Pope Considers ALL

"She (the R.C. Church) has ever considered as heretics (cult members) or schismatics all who refuse to submit to Papal authority." "Uncle Sam or the Pope Which?" page 94

The word "Heretic" (a study)

Margaret Singer began her work by interviewing "a number of Jesuit Priests"

Excerpts from Cults In Our Midst

By Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer

"One of the leading experts in the field of coercive persuasion is Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and emeritus adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In her career, she has counseled and interviewed more than 3,000 current and former cult members and their relatives and friends.

Dr. Singer is the author of the book "Cults In Our Midst," which summarizes fifty years of work on the subject. In the 1950s, as a senior psychologist in the laboratory of psychology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, she worked with Dr. Robert Jay Lifton and others who were studying prisoners of war from the Korean War.

It was there that she first encountered the forms of coercive persuasion, or thought reform programs, that not only prisoners of war but also civilians in a variety of milieus had been exposed to in the Far East. She also interviewed a number of Jesuit priests who had been exposed to thought reform processes while imprisoned in mainland China.

http://www.factnet.org/singer.htm

Margaret Singer spent a lot of time championing this theory of mind control. Her testimony regarding this subject was rejected by the Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) of the American Psychological Association. Check out some astounding information on Margaret Singer (CIA connections).



"It is now well known that the premise that 913 people there committed suicide on orders is false. Rather than a “mass suicide” it is, at least substantially, an unsolved mass murder. (See My Jonestown Page)

But regardless of the tomes of documented information available to show that a “mass suicide” never happened, West, Singer, Ofshe and Hassan continue to tell the public that it did."

ICSA - "The Masons, the Jesuits, Opus Dei and the Military are NOT CULTS"

The International Cultic Studies Association says "the Masons, the Jesuits, Opus Dei and the Military do NOT qualify as "CULTS"

http://www.dreichel.com/Checklist_of_Cult_Characte.htm
http://www.icsahome.com/infoserv_articles/...sdei_en0502.htm
http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/marine_def.htm

"Aren't the Jesuits or other monastic religious orders a cult?

No.

While cults, military organizations, and legitimate spiritual groups share some superficials, they are fundamentally different.

They share an indoctrination process, strict codes of behavior and ethics, uniform dress, restricted diets and exercise regimens.

Where they differ most is deception. Anyone signing up for bootcamp has no doubt in his or her mind that he will be going through a severe mental, emotional, and physical trial meant to improve their physique and sharpen their mind. There are no secrets.

Whether a curious person attends an introductory seminar for Transcendental Meditation, the Church of Scientology, the Moonists, or smaller cults, the speaker will conveniently forget to mention that new members will undergo what the California Supreme Court has called "brainwashing, thought reform, or mind control," may end up "donating" hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their lives to the cult.

It should be pointed out also that legitimate organizations like the Marines and Jesuits care for their members with health care, food, lodging, clothing -- and that when members leave they will have been trained in a trade, received an advanced degree, or received other value."

"Aren't the Marines a Cult by Your Definition?

--adapted from Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives, by Margaret Singer and Janja Lalich, Jossey-Bass, 1995. Reprinted with authors' permission.

I have had to point out why the United States Marine Corps is not a cult so many times that I carry a list to lectures and court appearances. It cites 19 ways in which the practices of the Marine Corps differ from those found in most modern cults....

Cults clearly differ from such purely authoritarian groups as the military, some types of sects and communes, and centuries- old Roman Catholic and Greek and Russian Orthodox Orders. These groups, though rigid and controlling, lack a double agenda and are not manipulative or leader-centered. The differences become apparent when we examine the intensity and pervasiveness with which mind-manipulating techniques and deceptions are or are not applied.
Jesuit seminaries may isolate the seminarian from the rest of the world for periods of time, but the candidate is not deliberately deceived about the obligations and burdens of the priesthood. In fact, he is warned in advance about what is expected, and what he can and cannot do....

Mainstream religious organizations do not concentrate their search on the lonely and the vulnerable.... Nor do mainstream religions focus recruitment on wealthy believers who are seen as pots of gold for the church, as is the case with those cults who target rich individuals....

Military training and legitimate executive training programs may use the dictates of authority as well as peer pressure to encourage the adoption of new patterns of thought and behavior. They do not seek, however, to accelerate the process by prolonged or intense psychological depletion or by stirring up feelings of dread, guilt, and sinfulness....

And what is wrong with cults is not just that cults are secret societies. In our culture, there are openly recognized, social secret societies, such as the Masons, in which new members know up front that they will gradually learn the shared rituals of the group....

In [cults], there is deliberate deception about what the group is and what some of the rituals might be, and primarily, there is deception about what the ultimate goal will be for a member, what will ultimately be demanded and expected, and what the damages resulting from some of the practices might be. A secret handshake is not equivalent to mind control."

from Steve Eichel Web site

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Eichel

Jesuit Law Professor is President of ICSA

Current Faculty at the Jesuit Santa Clara Law School serving as Professor of Law

Seal of Santa Clara Law

Jesuit Schooled and Taught at Two Jesuit Universities is now the current President of the International Cultic Studies Association (Formerly American Family Foundation -AFF) The biggest "Anti-Cult" organization in the World.


Alan W. Scheflin

http://www.scu.edu/etal/fall2005/faculty.cfm

Professor Alan W. Scheflin prepared for publication the following book chapters: “Forensic Uses of Hypnosis,” in A.K. Hess and I.B. Weiner (editors), Handbook of Forensic Psychology, Third Edition (John Wiley & Sons); and “Mercy and Morals: The Ethics of Nullification,” in James Levine and John Kleinig, Jury Ethics: Juror Conduct and Jury Dynamics (2005).

He participated in a workshop, “Forensic Hypnosis: Skills and Building a Practice,” at the 47th Annual Scientific Meeting and Workshops on Clinical Hypnosis of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis in St. Louis, Mo. in March. He currently serves as president of the International Cultic Studies Association (Formerly American Family Foundation -AFF) and participated in its July conference in Madrid, Spain.

He also serves as vice-president for law of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence and as ethics consultant to the Center for Justice and Accountability, a non-profit group that brings lawsuits against human rights abusers. He is the forensic editor of the Journal of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and he will serve as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.

http://law.scu.edu/faculty/profile/scheflin-alan.cfm

Biography
Alan W. Scheflin holds a B.A. with High Honors in Philosophy from the University of Virginia. a J.D. with Honors from the George Washington University Law School, an LL.M. from the Harvard Law School, and an M.A. in Counseling Psychology from JESUIT Santa Clara University. He has taught in the Law School and the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University, and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California Law School.

Professor Scheflin's second book, The Mind Manipulators (1978), was published in several countries. Trance on Trial (1989), his third book, received the American Psychiatric Association's 1991 Manfred S. Guttmacher Award as the year's most outstanding publication on forensic psychiatry. His fourth book, Clinical Hypnosis and Memory: Guidelines for Clinicians and for Forensic Hypnosis (1995), received the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis Arthur Shapiro Award for "Book of the Year" for 1995.

Professor Scheflin's fifth book, Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law (1998) received the American Psychiatric Association's 1999 Manfred S. Guttmacher Award, the Arthur Shapiro Award from the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, and the International Society for the Study of Dissociation's 1998 Distinguished Merit Award. Law and Mental Disorder, his sixth book, was published in 1998. He has authored more than fifty articles, book chapters and book reviews on psychological, psychiatric and legal issues.Professor Scheflin provided testimony to Congress and the California legislature.

He has been judicially recognized in federal and/or state courts as an expert on legal ethics, memory, suggestion and suggestibility, hypnosis, and mind and behavior control. He has delivered more than 100 invited addresses and workshops at all of the major American professional hypnosis organizations, at many international hypnosis organizations, at the American Psychiatric Association, the American Orthopsychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Family Foundation, and other professional mental health and legal organizations.

In 1999 Professor Scheflin was voted a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. Professor Scheflin is an Advisory Editor of the Cultic Studies Journal, an Advisory Science Editor of the Journal of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and has been a Guest Co-Editor of the Journal of Psychiatry & Law. He is currently the Chair-Elect of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law & Mental Disability. Professor Scheflin is the recipient of the following Awards: 2002 - International Society for the Study of Dissociation, Morton Prince Award for Scientific Achievement.2002 - Santa Clara University School of Law, Distinguished Scholarship Award.2002 - Santa Clara University, Sustained Excellence in Scholarship Award.2001 - American Psychological Association, Division 30 (hypnosis), Distinguished Contribution to Professional Hypnosis Award. 2001 - American Board of Psychological Hypnosis, Professional Recognition Award. 2000 - Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Arthur Shapiro Award. 1999 - American Psychiatric Association, Manfred S. Guttmacher Award. 1998 - International Society for the Study of Dissociation. Distinguished Achievement Award.1998 - American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, Award of Merit. 1998 - American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, Presidential Award. 1996 - Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Arthur Shapiro Award.1993 - American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, Irving I. Secter Award. 1991 - American Psychiatric Association, Manfred S. Guttmacher Award.

Prior Appointments:
He has taught in the Law School and the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University, and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California Law School.

Areas of Specialization:
Law and psychiatry, legal profession, and forensic persuasion seminar.

Courses Taught:
Legal ProfessionPersuasion and AdvocacyLaw and Psychiatry SeminarEthical AdvocacyOpening Statements and Closing Arguments