I heard back from Doug Mesner

I am very glad that I heard back from Doug Mesner. I have cut and pasted his response below.  I think his response was more cordial then I expected it to be. That may have been because of my bias of feeling I had to be on the defense because of my research into the the debunking of SRA. It was a nice surprise and I learned more about why he is skeptical of SRA. He states a concern that there will be some within the "SRA echo chamber" that will not want me to talk to him. In an email to him I have explained that I have worked very hard in my life to get to the place I am. That I will not ever be controlled by any one or any thing again and that I will make decisions that affect my life. This is a touchy subject for me. Part of my survival and moving forward in my life was to learn to take control of my life and not allow anyone to control me ever again. This has been to the determent of relationships because of how touchy I am on this subject and because it is a trigger for my PTSD.

I did respond to his response to my post. I didn't cut and paste my response here because it goes into graphic detail of one of the things that happened to me and this can be a trigger for some. I felt I had to give graphic detail in order to answer his concern over whether or not I survived his definition of RA. To be honest I went on a tangent of sorts. I also answered a response from someone named Gaiain Guy. His response to my post on Doug Mesner's site was of the tone I was expecting from someone who is more interested in debunking then being skeptical. I felt he had a very argumentative tone to his response and came across at times very condescending. Something I despise in people. Another of my triggers. I don't plan on interacting with people in an argumentative condescending way. I would like to have a mature, honest, intelligent, open dialog with people. I have made my agenda known to him. I explained in my response to him that my agenda is to be taken seriously about what I have survived.  Gaiain guy's response is why I posted the article from Donald Michael Kraig at http://www.llewellyn.com/blog/2011/05/true-skepticism-vs-debunking/. I couldn't believe it when I came across his article while I was doing research into true skepticism vs debunking.

I decided to do some research into what Gaiain could mean and found this definition on http://www.crosscurrents.org/Gaia.htm. Gaia hypothesis, succinctly, suggests that the Earth is a self-regulating, self-sustaining entity, which continually adjusts its environment in order to support life. Though a scientific theory, the Gaia hypothesis has, since its initial articulation in 1969, sparked a swirl of religious, New Age, and philosophical reflection, and challenged certain long-held assumptions about evolution, the importance of the human in determining environmental change, and the relationship between life and the environment. Interesting, I learn something knew every day have a great evening blessings, Rosie

1. doug November 28, 2011 12:42 pm
   Thank you, Rosie, Jeanette, GaianGuy –
   I am pleased that Rosie has stopped by, and her willingness to accept any type of skeptical analysis puts her a cut well above most of the echo chamber isolated SRA crowd. I applaud her for reaching out, and I have emailed her offering to speak with her at some point in the near future. I have no doubt, though, that certain members of that die-hard SRA echo chamber will discourage her from speaking to me at all. I only hope she continues to question all the answers and doesn’t dismiss any skeptical analysis that runs contrary to a prescribed SRA narrative as “agenda-based research”. Unfortunately, claiming “agenda” has often been used in lieu of cohering arguments against actual facts… facts that are confirmable facts (in fact), regardless of source.
   That said (and reiterating that I do indeed look forward to chatting with Rosie), I am not entirely certain that hers is a scenario that overlaps with the topic here. I have not scrutinized her blog yet, but on her comment above she claims continuous memory of abuse and makes no mention of Multiple Personality Disorder. She speaks of abuse suffered from an occult-obsessed mother. Of course, if this is all she is claiming, I would never suggest that this would be impossible. The alternative religions certainly have a lot of catching-up to do if they are to ever prove as much a danger to children as Christian (particularly Catholic) child-rearing often does, but I would never suggest that a crystal gazing, ouija board consulting, dippy new-ager need necessarily be a good parent.
   The question of contention could be whether or not this qualifies as “Ritual Abuse”. The intentionally evasive and not-terribly-informative definition of Ritual Abuse posted by organizations that claim to be “expert” in this field are of little help, so it is necessary to understand what one means whenever one chooses to invoke the term.
   To me, Ritual Abuse implies much more than a deranged parent abusing a child while in the throes of some religious frenzy. It implies religious/occult practices that intentionally incorporate child abuse as an explicit matter of procedure. It is not individual fantasies being deformed into a religious or occultic context. This is why, despite their horrendous record as a criminal paedophile organization, I reject “Ritual Abuse” as a descriptor for what has taken place within the Catholic Church. There is no evidence of a secret doctrine within the Church which actually calls for the abuse of children in the context of ritual. Rather, the organization is filled with individuals (attracted to it for more-or-less obvious reasons, I believe, but reasons I won’t explore here) who use it to conceal fetishes that they hold, but were not indoctrinated into.
   One may argue that in the case of the Catholic Church, mine is an irrelevant splitting-of-hairs, and that the end result is the same: children are abused. But it isn’t, and how we understand the issue of child abuse makes a world of difference regarding how we combat it. The idea of a secret doctrine of abuse suggests the hope that once this doctrine can be rooted-out and exposed, this internal cult of paedophiles revealed, then the problem of the abuse can be solved. While we’re exploring this false avenue, the very real problems of systemic dysfunction are ignored.
   Ritual Abuse implies that instances of child abuse within a single household are related to a broader regimen of abuse being carried out by secretive organizations toward some (usually Satanic) end. This scenario summons forth widespread conspiracies and cover-ups, and this is the scenario that I am highly skeptical of…