Psychiatry’s Reign of Terror in an Age of Fear

THE REAL AGENDA | MARCH 25, 2013

We live in the very picture of a modern society.

Seemingly secure. Seemingly safe. Seemingly happy.

But life isn’t always as it appears.

Psychiatry’s history of atrocities can be found everywhere.

But nowhere can we see them more clearly than in psychiatry’s very birthplace—Germany.

Drawing from extensive research and interviews with psychiatric experts and victims, this shocking documentary reveals the sordid story of psychiatry from its earliest beginnings to present day.

It is a seldom-told tale of false claims, damaging treatments, and the ultimate in human cruelty.

Filmed in Germany and Austria, The Age of Fear: Psychiatry’s Reign of Terror, draws from over 80 interviews of psychiatric experts, historians and survivors. Containing shocking personal testimonies and stark inside footage, the documentary tells the true story of psychiatry’s sordid history and current practices, revealing how its reliance on brutality and coercion has not changed since the moment it was born.

“If some doctors harm—torture rather than treat, murder the soul rather than minster the body—that is, in part, because society, through the state, asks them, and pays them, to do so.

“We saw it happen in Nazi Germany, and we hanged many of the doctors. We see it happen in the Soviet Union, and we denounce the doctors with righteous indignation. But when will we see that the same things are happening in the so-called free societies? When will we recognize—and publicly identify—the medical criminals among us?”

—Dr. Thomas Szasz, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus

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U.S. Administration Supports Indecent Vatican’s Paedophilia Immunity

AFP

The Obama administration in a brief to the Supreme Court has backed theVatican’s claim of immunity from lawsuits arising from cases of sexual abuse by priests in the United States.

The Supreme Court is considering an appeal by the Vatican of an appellate court ruling that lifted its immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest from Oregon.

In a filing on Friday, the solicitor general’s office argued that the Ninth Circuit court of appeals erred in allowing the lawsuit brought by a man who claims he was sexually abused in the 1960s by the Oregon priest.

The unnamed plaintiff, who cited the Holy See and several other parties as defendants, argued the Vatican should be held responsible for transferring the priest to Oregon and letting him serve there despite previous accusations he had abused children in Chicago and in Ireland.

The solicitor general’s office, which defends the position of President Barack Obama’s administration before the Supreme Court, said the Ninth Circuit improperly found the case to be an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 1976 federal law that sets limits on when other countries can face lawsuits in US courts.

“Although the decision does not conflict with any decision of another court of appeals, the Court may wish to grant the petition, vacate the judgement of the court of appeals and remand to that court for further consideration”.

The case, which was filed in 2002, does not directly address questions raised in a separate lawsuit in Kentucky alleging that US bishops are employees of the Holy See.

But the Vatican plans to argue that Catholic dioceses are run as separate entities from the Holy See, and that the only authority that the pontiff has over bishops around the world is a religious one, according to Jeffrey Lena, theVatican’s US attorney.

In recent months, large-scale pedophilia scandals have rocked the Roman Catholic Church in a number of countries, including Austria, Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany and the United States.

Senior clerics have been accused of protecting the priests involved by moving them to other parishes — where they sometimes offended again — instead of handing them over to civil authorities for prosecution.

The pope, who has himself faced allegations implicating him in the scandal, has repeatedly said priests and religious workers guilty of child abuse should answer for their crimes in courts of law.