National Post (National Edition)
SEX ABUSE CASE WON’T GO AWAY
IT BEGAN WITH THE ‘RECOVERING’ OF MEMORIES BY AN EDMONTON PSYCHOLOGIST AND NOW INCLUDES ALLEGATIONS AGAINST A DEAD U.K. POLITICIAN
IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE DID TAKE PLACE. HOWEVER, MANY OF THE SO-CALLED RETRIEVED MEMORIES SEEM MOST LIKELY TO FIT FALSE MEMORY RECALL ASSOCIATED WITH THE SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE SCANDAL OF THE 1980S— U.K. CONSULTANT’S REPORT
Acontroversial police investigation into suspected sex abuse of children by the late British prime minister Edward Heath, with related claims of Satanic rituals and murders, originated in Edmonton in 1989, when a Canadian psychologist hypnotized a woman and helped her “recover” suppressed memories, according to a confidential police consultant report obtained by the National Post.
Cheryl Malmo, an Edmonton psychologist who retired in 2016, hypnotized a woman to treat her for depression, which she suspected was related to abuse from her childhood in Wiltshire, England, according to the report.
What followed was a litany of horrific tales, seeping slowly from the woman’s memory, growing in lurid detail over time, “guided and influenced” by Malmo’s hypnotherapy, according to the consultant criminologist.
They include stories of helping her mother kidnap a boy, who was raped by her father on a church altar, then suspended from a rope, as the woman’s mother cut his penis with a knife and drained his blood into a gleaming metal bucket. After apparently suppressing these memories all her adult life, the woman, then in her late 40s, told stories of rape, candlelit black magic rituals, cannibalism, child murder and bestiality — stories that were initially about her parents, but in time grew to include one of the most powerful men in the world.
“It is quite possible that childhood sexual abuse did indeed take place,” the expert report concludes. “However, many of the so-called retrieved memories seem to me most likely to fit False Memory Recall of the type associated with the Satanic Ritual Abuse scandal of the 1980s. Some of the extreme ritual abuse and ritual murder scenes, in particular, strike me as crossing the boundary into flights of fancy.”
The report recommends “no charges are brought in cases where evidence relies solely or mainly on the recovery of alleged memories under psychotherapy, especially where hypnosis is employed.”
It is also skeptical of evidence from the woman’s sisters, three of whom eventually made similar claims of serial rape by their parents and others, including Heath, which the report says are clearly influenced by each other. Another of those sisters had also moved to Canada.
“I think there’s definite cross-contamination,” said the report’s author, Rachel Hoskins, in an interview. Whether this was honest confabulation, or dishonest fabrication, the memories are not backed up by corresponding official records, such as police investigations or missing person reports, Hoskins said.
Her report has thrown a wrench into a sprawling police investigation that so far, 28 years after it started, has not resulted in any criminal charges.
The Edmonton woman’s allegations were first brought to police back when they were recovered in 1989, but they were focused on the sisters’ parents, not Heath, and no charges resulted. One sister returned to police a few months later, to say more memories had arisen. “I now believe that both of my parents were practising members of the Occult,” she reported.
The case was resurrected only in the last year or so, with the added detail of Heath’s alleged participation in some of the abuse, but not the Satanic rituals. One sister told police she had seen his face on the news and “trusted my gut.” This crucial recollection came at a time when the police response to historical sexual abuse claims about public figures was in dramatic flux, in Britain especially.
Jimmy Savile, for example, a beloved British television performer, had been posthumously revealed as a pedophilic monster with more than 500 victims. The resulting panic led to a police investigation that took down big names — Gary Glitter, Dave Lee Travis, Max Clifford, Rolf Harris. But several widely publicized arrests of high-profile men were not followed by prosecution, such as pop star Cliff Richard.
In one case, a former MP died without learning that police cleared his name months earlier. Other prominent politicians, including a former defence chief, may deserve compensation for false accusations about pedophile rings, according to the head of the Metropolitan Police.
These investigations changed the national tone in Britain, and prompted fears that the woefully belated legal response to child sex abuse was morphing into a witch hunt.
Even Robert Buckland, Britain’s Solicitor-General, has privately raised concerns with Wiltshire’s police commissioner about an expensive “fishing expedition,” according to the Sunday Times.
In this context, Heath is a big fish, but he died in 2005, so any criminal charges would be against others. He served as Conservative prime minister in the early 1970s, and his term is remembered largely for economic turmoil, labour unrest, and strife in Northern Ireland.
He is mentioned scornfully in the Beatles’ song Taxman, in the backing vocals “Haha, Mr. Wilson, Haha Mr. Heath.” (Harold Wilson, Heath’s Labour Party rival, was prime minister both before and after him.)
Hoskins, the author of the report, is a registered expert criminologist for the U.K. National Crime Agency, and a specialist in faith-based violence such as witchcraft, paganism and Satanism. Hired by police to explain this arcane subculture, she was given access to diaries, police statements, and interview transcripts, mainly about the sisters.
Their father worked at Wilton Barracks, an army facility that was closed in 2010. It was used by the United States Army in the Second World War, and became a strategic command centre for British forces afterwards. Many of the sisters’ allegations involve being forced into sexual abuse in the barracks by military men, some of whom are likely still living.
Wilton Barracks is in Wiltshire, near Stonehenge, and the image of neo-Pagan ritual plays largely in the controversy. Heath had a home nearby in Salisbury, where police held a press conference to solicit complainants.
Malmo, a psychologist focused on childhood trauma and sexual violence, has been a court-recognized expert witness in Canada on cases about, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder.
She was also profiled in the documentary When The Devil Knocks, about a woman whose dissociative identity disorder seemed to stem from childhood abuse, and left her with more than 30 distinct personalities, each unknown to the other. Malmo treated each as a distinct patient.
Reached by email, Malmo said she could not discuss patient matters, nor confirm the identity of a patient. About Hoskins’ report, she wrote: “these false memory claims she seems intent on were disposed of in North America years ago by solid research and sound critique by many experts.
It appears that just as the issue of child sexual abuse did not arise in Europe (except perhaps in the Netherlands) until decades after it was recognized in North America, the lack of substantiation of so-called false memories and the critiques of this position are slow to reach some professionals (this particular criminologist)."
Malmo said her own records are destroyed after 10 years.
“Whilst it is quite likely that a prolific pedophile would serially abuse all his daughters, the sequence by which the sisters retrieved their memories cannot be considered investigatively pure,” Hoskins concludes in her 150-page report.
Wiltshire Police have taken unusual steps to rebut Hoskins’ report, calling its leak “a significant breach of confidentiality and trust,” and threatening unspecified “pro-active action” in response.
Chief Constable Mike Veale said he was “duty bound” to investigate Heath, and is “very concerned and profoundly disappointed” about speculation that he is leading a witch hunt, which he fears could undermine confidence in police, or threaten any future prosecutions.
“This is not a ‘fishing trip or ‘witch hunt,’” he said. There are many allegations about a “significant number” of people, and the specific allegations about Satanism do not relate to Heath himself, he said.
Rather, according to Hoskins’ report, two of the sisters report memories of Heath participating in their rapes, recalling him shirtless, with a “grotesque” face and “an element of cruelty.”
“If the force had received allegations of non-recent child abuse against a former prime minister and done nothing, what would the reaction have been?” Veale said.