30 September 2024
During our “very special” episode of the Yeah…Nah podcast with Anke Richter, Anke referred to an anti-cult organisation that was taken over by Scientology. The group she was referring to was the Citizen's Freedom Foundation / Cult Awareness Network (CAN), which was founded by Ted Patrick in 1978. Although he had no formal education or training, Patrick was a pioneer of deprogramming, which he developed in response to the expansion of various cults and religion movements throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Deprogramming was always controversial, but seen as a necessary evil by many parents who paid Patrick and others like him to return their (often adult) children to them. Methods employed by Patrick and others included abduction, sleep and food deprivation, emotional abuse, desecration of symbols of the detainee's faith, and sometimes physical violence.
16 October 2023
I popped into the High Court last week to sit in on a court case where the Jehovah's Witnesses are attempting to argue that they should be exempt from the current Royal Commission enquiry in Abuse in Care. Sara Passmore and I (we're both NZ Skeptics committee members) visited for an hour, and we seem to have accidentally sat on the “wrong” side of the courtroom. Having sat down, we looked around and realised that our side of the room was mostly men in suits (including, I think, Alfred Ngaro - more on him in the article below), whereas the other side of the room was mainly women, including one with bright pink hair.
7 August 2023
In part 2 of this study into the secretive group most commonly known as the Two-by-Twos (TBT), I'll give an overview of the current state of the sect and the numerous controversies it has faced in recent years.
10 October 2022
This week brings a welcome decision from the Supreme Court, in a case that the NZ Skeptics have been
10 January 2022
This week it's been reported that University of Auckland scientists Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles and Professor Sean Hendy have taken a case to the Employment Relations Authority. They're claiming that their employer - the university - hasn't done enough to protect them from attack by people upset with their science communication and public comment on COVID-related issues. They describe their attackers as “a small but venomous sector of the public”.
2 September 2018
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a report last week, detailing credible accusations of child abuse against over 300 priests in the state, with over 1,000 victims. Shapiro doesn't think they found all instances of abuse.
2 September 2018
An upcoming edition of the Watchtower from the Jehovah's Witnesses is recommending that church members should consider staying with an abusive partner, even if they feel their life is in danger. Of course, this flies in the face of recommendations from professional organisations the world over who deal with victims of spousal abuse.
27 August 2017
It looks like the book has finally been closed on one of the most famous Satanic Panic cases in the US - that of the Kellers.
1 November 2014
A new group set up to counter ritual abuse and satanic worship has applied for almost $40,000 from the Government and the Lottery Grants Board to set up an office and send members to a conference in the United States.
1 November 2014
It's about 25 years since I joined the NZ Skeptics, and eight years since I took on the editorship of this magazine. It's been fun, but it's time I handed the NZ Skeptic on to other hands, so this will be my last issue as editor. Thank-you to all who have contributed over the years; together we've covered a lot of ground. I thought I'd indulge myself a little here by looking back over past issues and some of the material in them.
1 August 2012
George Gwaze was first cleared of the murder of his adopted daughter Charlene Makaza on 21 May 2008. At the time I wrote in NZ Skeptic 88's Newsfront that it had taken since the first week of 2007 for him to be acquitted of a non-existent crime: Charlene had died from a massive Aids:related infection. Little did I realise the Crown would retry the case - the only time a Not Guilty verdict has been overturned in a New Zealand court - and Gwaze would have to face another four years to clear his name.
1 February 2012
ACC's best-practice guidelines for identifying cases of sexual abuse are not credible.
1 February 2009
Today, gonorrhoea infections in young girls are taken as certain evidence of sexual abuse. Yet there is an extensive but now-forgotten literature showing that this is not necessarily the case. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2008 conference in Hamilton, September 26-28.
1 August 2005
The ACC-sponsored conference Many Faces of Abuse (Auckland, 10-12 August 2005) features a plenary speaker, Anne McDonald from Melbourne, who cannot talk, walk or feed herself. Her minder, Rosemary Crossley, is the inventor of Facilitated Communication - a technique whereby a facilitator supports the hand or arm of a severely disabled person and thereby enables that person point to letters of the alphabet. This technique gives severely disabled people the miraculous ability to spell out words, sentences and even whole paragraphs of astonishing, unlikely and often wildly pornographic prose. As a result of Facilitated Communication, hundreds of families and caregivers worldwide have had their lives and careers destroyed by devastating and subsequently-discredited allegations of sexual abuse. Among responsible organisations and individuals concerned with mental and physical disability there is now widespread agreement that Facilitated Communication is nothing more than a powertrip for manipulative therapists who prey on the vulnerability and dependence of the severely disabled.
1 November 2003
Justice Minister Phil Goff has won the first-ever Bent Can Opener Award from the New Zealand Skeptics, for "refusing to open the can of worms that is the Christchurch Civic Creche case".
1 May 2003
Estimates of world poverty are grossly exaggerated
1 November 2002
This article is based on an address to the Skeptics Conference 2002. A condensed version has also been produced for the NZ Listener.
1 May 2002
Damian Thompson argues that a tangle of folklore and urban legend, allied to a particular horror of paedophilia, has blinded many to the scientific facts
1 February 2002
John Welch finds that the sexual abuse industry rolls on unabated.
1 February 2002
It was sad to see - two shelves of Lynley Hood's A City Possessed, heavily discounted at Whitcoulls.
1 February 1999
This is an abridged version of Professor Hill's presentation to the 1998 Skeptics' Conference.
1 August 1998
Chair-entity Vicki Hyde responds to a letter from a member who resigned from the society over the Skeptics' donation to the Peter Ellis Defence Fund. We reprint her letter as a clear statement of the Society's position on a controversial issue.
1 November 1996
At the AGM, and in a subsequent letter from a member, the question was raised "what are we saving money for?". Certainly the Skeptics bank account is a reasonably healthy one, after ten years of frugal saving on the part of Treasurers past and present.
1 February 1996
Walter C Clark, Chuck Bird and Nicky McLean criticise Hitting Home for not investigating women's violence towards men, that is, for not being another piece of research altogether. When biologists can produce papers about the hairs on the legs of one species of fruit-flies, this does not seem excessively specialised. One reason that that was not done is simply money. To have achieved the same accuracy would have required interviewing 2,000 women, doubling the cost.
1 November 1995
We have made a big mistake. Hitting Home is careful, thorough, mainstream scientific research. It may be alarming, but it is not, as we said, "alarmist". It is a serious attempt to measure men's attitudes towards, and the extent of, their violence. It is social science, not "hard" science, but it has done its best to attach figures to subjective psychological statements. If it can be criticised, it is for accepting the men's reports of their own violence at face value, when the biggest problem associated with men's violence is men's denial. ("I just gave her a bit of a tap" -- and she spent three weeks in hospital.)
1 November 1995
My feeling after having read the report is that when it was ready for the printer, the authors had in fact reached the point where they were about ready to consult with people experienced in such research, as a necessary preliminary to the main investigation. I would have suggested a smaller pilot sample. This should have disclosed the pitfalls that lay in wait for them. By taking such steps they could have avoided the traps that they later fell into.
1 November 1994
In a landmark case on September 30, a 59-year-old man, Bill1, was acquitted by a jury in the Auckland High Court on charges of sexually abusing three of his daughters about 20 years ago. The complainants alleged sodomy and rape, and indecent acts such as the insertion of a coat hanger in the vagina causing bleeding and loss of consciousness. The women claimed they had suppressed the memories which had only resurfaced in later life. All three daughters had attended therapy and made claims for damages from the ACC before they laid the criminal charges against their father. Two of the daughters reported memories of events happening in their cots when aged one year old or less. Bill was defended by Mr Peter Williams, QC, who dismissed evidence based on "recovered memories" as dangerous and fallacious.
1 November 1993
There is a worldwide epidemic of satanic child abuse allegations. Are they true? Has satanic child abuse happened here in New Zealand?
1 November 1993
In the years since the Skeptics' beginnings in 1985 we've seen paranormal and pseudoscientific fads come and go. The Shroud of Turin was big back then, till carbon dating did it in (except in the minds of the hard-core Shroud Crowd, who now claim that rising from the dead involves an emission of neutrons which increases the atomic weight of the carbon in your winding cloth). Uri Geller is more feeble than ever, UFO sightings are in decline, and Bigfoot has made himself even scarcer than usual. But quackery in the name of "alternative" medicine still flourishes, and cold readers (such as the lamentable James Byrne) periodically meander on stage.
1 August 1993
Do you ever feel dirty or ashamed? Do you have no sense of your interests or goals? Do you sometimes feel powerless, like a victim, have phobias, arthritis, or wear baggy clothes? According to two recent books, The Courage to Heal, (over 500,000 copies sold) and Secret Survivors, if your answer to any of these questions is yes, you may well be a victim of incest.