22 Faces author Judy Byington caught lying?

Judy Byington, author of the hideous, nonsensical, Satanic Panic supernatural horror pulp-porno book, Twenty-Two Faces -- the implausible "true story" of Jenny Hill, an alleged Satanic-Jewish-Nazi ritual murder survivor -- seems to make claims that are hard to reconcile with known facts, believe it or not.

To wit, Mrs. Byington's press kit claims: "Since 2006, Byington has acted as a consultant on satanic crime for the Utah Attorney General’s office of Special Investigations."

About a month ago, I had posted an open letter to Dr. Phil in regards to his decision to film an interview with Mrs. Byington for broadcast. I outlined a number credibility issues related to Byington's claims, after which a reader took it upon herself to see if she could verify Byington's work as a consultant for the Utah Attorney General. She emailed the office a link to the Press Kit. The Attorney General's office didn't take long to reply:

Tin-Foil Hats & Diminutive Super-soldiers: S.M.A.R.T. conference EMF shield hats

In the disturbed perception of the paranoid there is the ever-present suspicion that the contents of the mind are neither impermeable from the outside, nor secure within from prying diabolic machines or devious telepathic voyeurs. Private thoughts escape uncensored into the ether while coercive voices and influences attempt to infiltrate from without. This condition, of course, defines the “tin-foil hat” paranoid: those whose delusions of persecution and covert surveillance run so deep, that not even the subjective experience or private thoughts are secure from Invasion of Privacy, and action must be taken to firewall them against encroaching agents.
As a pejorative descriptor, “Tin-Foil Hat” has found its way into the mainstream culture, a way to designate somebody’s ideas as crackpot or delusional, whether the mocked parties actually appear in public wearing head-gear meant to preserve their personal cranial authority or not. Thus, one describes the conspiracy theory fringe as the “tin-foil hat crowd”, and overly speculative suggestions of sinister plots may be dismissed with a remark of, “lose the tin-foil hat”, “Take off the tin-foil hat and join the real world.”
Nearly everybody knows what this means.

Open letter to Kimberly Nelson, News Anchor ABC 4, UT regarding the scheduled airing of delusional panic-mongering

Dear Kimberly Nelson,

It has come to my attention that you, Kimberly Nelson, will be airing an interview with Judy Byington, author of a book entitled Twenty-Two Faces which purports to be the true story of one Jenny Hill, an alleged victim of the bizarre and controversial psychiatric condition known as Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID] (formerly listed as Multiple Personality Disorder [MPD]).

However dubious the legitimacy of DID, this diagnosis is by far the least of the problems with Byington’s book. Twenty-Two Faces is openly rife with archaic demonologies, and paranoid conspiracy theories being presented as root causes to the disturbances in Ms. Hill’s troubled mind. That Jenny Hill -- a former drug addict and prostitute with a history of mental illness -- is troubled seems indisputable, but Byington’s book seeks to expose an alleged satanic government plot behind Hill’s mental malaise that is tantamount to speculation upon who, exactly, is beaming voices into the heads of schizophrenics. Such an ignorant approach to therapeutic practice is harmful to mental health consumers, and your endorsement of such can hardly be of any positive value to your viewers.

Open letter to Dr. Phil: "a public mental health menace"

Dear Dr. Phil,

I write this letter to you with little hope of conveying information of which you were previously unaware. Rather, I write this letter so that the general public may be made aware of what you should already be well aware of, in hopes that they may appropriately measure your credibility following your scheduled broadcast of October 31st -- an episode which promises to be full of misinformation, delusions, harmful false accusations, and lies. ...READ THE FULL LETTER

Repeal the Opinion Entitlement: how the 'right to an opinion' cripples debate

Somewhere lurking amongst middle-American fears of local Al-Qaeda operative cells, satanic cults, and White House-hatched Socialist coups is the specter of the anti-American “entitlement”. Entitlements -- or “hand-outs” -- coddle the weak, foster a culture of dependency, and discourage healthy self-reliance. They mock the American ideals of hard work, independence, and self-determined grit.
...Or so we’re told by those who believe that they are entitled to their opinion on the matter. I believe, however, that this entitlement, too -- the Opinion Entitlement -- should also be questioned for the deleterious effects it has had upon those whom it is meant to protect.  Read the rest...

Lies can kill: Radical Islam and the mythology of Satanic Ritual Abuse

By: Plain Speaker, author, Dysgenics.com

In the past, I have written about domestic (North American) extremist groups exploiting Satanic Ritual Abuse lies & conspiracy fantasies to incite hatred of and violence against innocent persons in our society.
Today, I’m going to expose the reality of international extremist groups including Al Qaeda exploiting the same vile lies. Specifically, the fact that convicted Al Qaeda terrorist operatives have used the Satanic Ritual Abuse related lies – about America and other Western nations supposedly being controlled by satanic pedophile child-killers – to incite hatred and murderous violence. ...Read the rest...

Replies to '22 Faces' Claims: Hard Questions for Author Judy Byington

Recently, I was charged with the unfortunate task of reviewing a hysterical piece of supernatural horror crime-genre pulp "literature" entitled 22 Faces by Judy Byington. This proved to be an infuriating task. The book -- poorly written, poorly plotted, bloated with repetitious events, contradictions, and intellectually insulting cartoon-like caricatures -- claimed to be a work of non-fiction, though defying all reason with its consistent references to supernatural events. The protagonist of the book, Jenny Hill, is described as having been born under the auspice of prophecy, is claimed to have been saved from ritual murder by way of divine intervention... she has suffered demonic possession, dabbled in "levitation", possesses ESP, and has personally heard the guiding voice of God.
Naturally, my review expressed skepticism.

When Therapists are Lunatics: A Review of 22 Faces by Judy Byington

Twenty-Two Faces. By Judy Byington. Tate Publishing, Oklahoma City, 2012. 978-1620240328. 428 pages. Softcover, $19.95.

Book Review by Douglas Mesner

Twenty-Two Faces by Judy Byington falls within an outdated genre of prurient Satanic Panic supernatural-erotica-sold-as-a-true-story pulp novels which enjoyed a certain popularity throughout the 80s and 90s. It tells the story of one Jenny Hill, a former prostitute and drug abuser who, upon submitting herself to psychiatric attention, learned that she had Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) (now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID]). Surely, this diagnosis must have come as quite a relief, as it promised that Hill herself need not bear any of the responsibility for her own actions, which the book describes as, at times, being outright psychopathic. The book makes quite clear that every foul thing Hill ever did -- from slashing her sister with a razor blade out of mere curiosity of the consequences, to allowing herself to be pimped by a husband she met whilst working with sex offenders (he was one) -- was actually the mischievous doings of personalities that resided within her, and without her own conscious awareness. Unfortunately, this ultimate absolution came at a predictable cost: in accepting the MPD/DID diagnosis, Hill would also have to necessarily accept that she was harboring “repressed memories” of traumas which she would need to recall in the course of reintegrating her fractured mind. Fortunately for Hill, however, nobody required of her that the heartbreaking story of traumatic abuse that she would “recall” need make any sense, and the fact that it doesn’t seems to have completely escaped her biographer, Judy Byington.

Ted Gunderson: Death of a Public Paranoid

Former Special Agent Ted Gunderson suspected he would be “taken out” eventually. As a whistleblower disclosing crimes of the highest order, Gunderson would attest to suffering endless harassment and attempts on his life, from operatives entering his home to sneak poisonous liquids into the wall heaters[1], to phone tapping, personal computer hacking, and years of surveillance by “groups and individuals” in ground vehicles, helicopters, and on foot.[2] Agents of his undoing were everywhere. Law enforcement were worse than helpless… they were complicit.

“I just don’t understand it”, Gunderson stated in an interview from “an undisclosed southwestern city” while on the run from his would-be assassins. “I thought they (the FBI) would help me. Instead… they’re trying to destroy me.”
The FBI, Gunderson asserted, was assisting in having him silenced for exposing the collusion between a satanic cult and the United States Army in a high profile triple homicide — ritual murder, by Gunderson’s account — involving a mother and her 2 daughters at Fort Bragg United States Army installation in North Carolina.
It all sounded unbelievable, but what separated him from countless other suspected delusives of the paranoid kind was that Gunderson, a private investigator, himself was a 27 year veteran of the Bureau who had headed three regional offices, serving three directors from J. Edgar Hoover to Judge William Webster. He was, in fact, an impressively credentialed G-man whose retirement party in 1979 had drawn an elite crowd of over 600. His book, How to Locate Anyone Anywhere, included endorsement blurbs from Johnny Carson and even President Gerald R. Ford, who took the opportunity to publicly congratulate Gunderson on “his fine career.” … Continue reading

Mass Hallucination, Hysteria & Miracles

When “mass hallucination” is said to be the scientific counterpoint to any claim, it is worth asking, By which scientists? Where? What other explanations have been proposed? and, of course, “Mass hallucination” meaning what, exactly? Upon inspection, we find that the idea of mass hallucination as the fall-back end-all “scientific” position toward the inexplicable is, in itself, nothing more than a desperately crafted mass delusion... a bullshit argument -- attributed to rational arguments against bullshit -- that is meant to make said rational arguments look like bullshit. 

                                                          *********

Sound thinking and critical reservations were abruptly cast aside in New Delhi during the early morning hours of September 21st, 1995. Statue idols, it seemed, had taken to drinking milk being fed to them by spoon. By what bizarre urging the first pilgrim to report this phenomenon was compelled to test whether a milk offering would pass the lips of a statue is unclear, but the idea rapidly took hold, devolving into a frenzy. The World Hindu Council hastily declared it a “miracle”, and by noon hopeful herds across North India stampeded to the temples leaving trampled bodies wounded underfoot. Police reinforcements were deployed by necessity to restrain outbreaks among the fevered milk-bearing mobs. Faithful conviction ruled the day.

....READ THE REST

Media race to the bottom with witless cannibalism coverage

With a rare statistical cluster of several cannibal-related stories within the span of one week -- from a face-gnawing frenzy in Miami to a Maryland college student snacking upon his roommate -- media nationwide have predictably made a race for the bottom, positing asinine theories and invoking doom & gloom "zombie apocalypse" scenarios. Never mind that these stories (the details of which have been so over-exposed that exploring them here -- even in basic summary -- is unnecessary) are only possibly related at only at the most superficial thematic level. A disgruntled Baltimore Sun reader notes in a letter to the editor, that the once proud paper has delighted in "over a solid week" of pointless "coverage": "While gory details are hashed over continuously and delicious new ones slipped in, very few new or for that matter, explanatory, aspects are introduced", he wrote. ...Read the rest here

Reminiscent of 1692: A Modern Missouri Witch-hunt

The following article was submitted to Process.org by “J. Bean” – a false memory expert who has been closely following the Mohler cases and attending the hearings….

Western Missouri Condemns Without Trial

By J. Bean (A Skeptic in Kansas City)

“[For law enforcement officers] the level of proof necessary for taking action on allegations of criminal acts must be more than simply the victim alleged it and it is possible…. We need to be concerned about the distribution and publication of unsubstantiated allegations of bizarre sexual abuse.”- Kenneth Lanning, FBI
Dressed in orange jumpsuits and shackled at their wrists, ankles, and waists, six members of the Mohler family shuffle past local television news cameras and into a courtroom. Tethered together, they resemble fish on a stringer with the proud authorities displaying their catch.  On-the-spot reporters read the charges against them,“Forcible rape of a child; Deviate sexual assault; Use of a child in a sexual performance…”  Newspaper accounts are perhaps even more harsh: The men’s booking photos are posted beneath headlines such as “Incest Allegations Shatter Public image of Church-Going Clan”, [1] or “Child-Raping Missouri Family May Have Bodies in Yard”. [2 ] Posted on the internet  beneath these stories  are reader  comments reminiscent of 1692; judgments of guilt  and cries for harsh punishment along with suspicions cast upon any who question the charges dominate the boards.
The men are 76 year old Burrell Mohler Sr., his four sons, Burrell “Ed” Jr., David, Jared, and Roland, and Burrell Sr.’s 72 year old brother, Darryl Mohler. The arrests were made in November 2009, by Lafayette County, Missouri authorities based on accusations of ritualistic crimes against Ed Mohler’s (now adult) children from 1988 to 1995. The charges against the men involve numerous alleged child rapes, sodomies, and bestiality. They are also publicly accused of kidnapping, various murders, producing child pornography, breeding then slaughtering babies, performing forced abortions on minors, and holding an unwilling sex-slave for years in the family basement, although there have been no charges filed for those allegations.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Santorum and the Superbowl: symptoms of a homosexually repressed nation

Looking, with an outsider’s eye, at the American political debates -- rife with anti-homosexual fear-mongering -- and at the enshrined annual tradition of the Superbowl -- for all its primal enthusiasm directed toward tights-wearing men rollicking about an open field, piling upon one another in sporting competition, exchanging impassioned caresses upon each other’s buttocks at the sidelines -- one can’t help but conclude that repressed homosexuality is a driving force (perhaps thee driving force) behind modern American Culture.

It has long been recognized that anti-homosexual outrage -- homophobia -- is often itself a symptom of repressed homosexual desire. In fact, in 1996, researchers put this idea to the test and found that of men divided into categories of “homophobic” and “non-homophobic”, “Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli”. Based on the profiles of their subjects, the researchers concluded, “Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.”*

Consider Rick Santorum and his frenzied anti-gay rhetoric. Clearly ‘light in the loafers’ himself, it hardly takes a PhD in Psychology to discern the repressed longings that torment Santorum’s shame-filled sleepless nights (Read the rest...)