Doug Mesner reviews Twenty-Two-Faces at Dysgenics

At Dysgenics, Doug Mesner pens the most thorough review, to-date, of Judy Byington's Twenty-Two Faces, noting the book "offers insight into psychological disorder, just not in the way the author intended." [1]

Instead, writes Mesner, Twenty-Two Faces

falls within an outdated genre of prurient Satanic Panic supernatural-erotica-sold-as-a-true-story pulp novels which enjoyed a certain popularity throughout the 80s and 90s ... even placing the book Satan's Underground by Lauren Stratford in the bibliography, despite the fact that this book was so thoroughly discredited as to be withdrawn from publication, with the author changing her name and running off, abandoning her claim to Satanic cult abuse to instead pose as a childhood victim of the Holocaust.

Of course, even the old MPD/DID narrative is dubious enough, to put it nicely. The most recent research from out of Harvard finds that, despite claims to otherwise, those diagnosed and demonstrating MPD/DID do not actually suffer amnesia between one personality state to the next. Nor has the notion of traumatic repression -- the likes of which is described in “case studies” like the Jenny Hill story -- stood up to scientific scrutiny in the course of the past 20+ years since MPD/DID enjoyed its Sybil-fueled faddish rise.

But, to argue against the credibility of Twenty-Two Faces by invoking current progress in brain research, or even arguing against the existence of wide-scale secretive Satanic cult mind-control plots, is to give the book far too much credit. Twenty-Two Faces doesn’t merely beggar the imagination in its over-the-top conspiracist description of MPD/DID.... [it also] defies scientific credibility altogether by being a supernatural tale.
To wit, the book includes:

    • Prophecy: The protagonist’s birth is foretold by her uncle in exacting detail.
    • Extra Sensory Perception (ESP): apparently believing that child abuse can prove beneficial to the victim, author Judy Byington describes that the protagonist, Jenny Hill, was able to break through certain subliminal barriers, not in spite of, but because of, early humiliations
    • Divine guidance: desperate and in prayer, Jenny Hill hears “a soft, yet thundering voice”, which urges her to “continue to write down your life experiences, for one day a book will be written.”
    • Divine intervention: In the midst of a Satanic ceremony in which she is bound to an altar, Jenny Hill is spared from sacrifice by a bare-footed “white-robed male personage, surrounded in a glorious White Light”. (Had this “personage” taken a little effort to arrive just a moment earlier, he could have spared the unlucky girl next to Hill, who is said to have been decapitated... but I’m sure His schedule is as busy as His Ways mysterious.)
    • Spirit Possession: Making clear that possession isn’t merely a more primitive cultural interpretation of DID, Byington describes that Hill suffered both DID and spirit possession, the latter being cured by the prayers of LDS church officials

"The antagonist of Twenty-Two Faces," writes Mesner, "is the quintessential villain of conspiracy folklore, managing membership in several scheming cabals which may appear paradoxical or mutually exclusive to the untrained paranoid."

Not only is he a God-less Jew, but 'turncoat' Nazi Jew who worships Satan. His name is Dr. Greenbaum, and his legend precedes this rambling and dissonant tome within the fringes of hysterical recovered memory-derived folklores, best explicated by a Dr. Corydon Hammond in a speech he gave in 1992 titled Hypnosis in Multiple Personality Disorder: Ritual Abuse.

Mesner also notes that Twenty-Two Faces sports a forward written by Dr. Colin Ross and an endorsement from Joyanna Silberg, Ph.D., Past President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), which, "if anything," writes Mesner, "says something negative about the ISSTD more than it tells us anything substantive about Byington’s book...."

In sum, Mesner calls the book

truly offensive, as it hijacks children’s rights and attempts to create human shields of real victims as protection against criticisms directed at patently absurd claims. In the proper context, Twenty-Two Faces is a helpful book, as it illustrates this problem clearly for those who may doubt the magnitude to which conspiracists have over-run the study of Dissociative Disorders. Byington does not simply misappropriate the condition of multiple personalities as a plot device for her ridiculous book, she shows the condition for what it largely (if not entirely) is: a collaborative therapeutically-created delusion. In trying to expose a Satanic conspiracy, Byington unwittingly exposes a foul movement that exploits vulnerable mental health consumers. Let’s hope the licensing boards and professional associations eventually move to erase such embarrassments from practice.

Read Mesner's full review.

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[1] Douglas Mesner, "When Therapists are Lunatics: A Review of 22 Faces by Judy Byington." Dysgenics. September 27, 2012 http://www.dysgenics.com/2012/09/27/when-therapists-are-lunatics-a-review-of-22-faces-by-judy-byington/

KCPW Radio Interview

KCPW Radio in Utah interviews Judy Byington, who states that all abused children disassociate, and that repressed memories -- a term Byington confuses with decades-long amnesia -- are a "common" reaction to trauma.

Patheos review of Twenty-Two Faces

At Patheos, Fred Clark, former managing editor of the Christian magazine Prism, reviews Judy Byington's Twenty-Two Faces of Jenny Hill.

Clark's article -- "Utah charlatan attempts to revive Satanic panic" -- pulls no punches, calling the book "brazen bullshit" and "the same familiar stew of blood libel, Jack Chick, Vincent Price, Alice Cooper and Mike Warnke served up yet again.... For someone so determined to live in an imaginary world, Byington has a dreadfully unoriginal imagination."

It’s as old as the original blood libel and as contemporary as the latest radio broadcast from the American Family Association. The Satanic baby-killers may be a figment of our imagination, but that hasn’t stopped us from reshaping American Christianity in opposition to them....

It reads like a flashback to the Satanic panic of the 1980s. The delusion and paranoid fantasizing in this story might be comical, unless you remember Michelle Remembers, or the West Memphis 3, or the thousands of other lives ruined during that period of transitional mass-hysteria.[1]

Clark is also stunned by Utah Daily Herald — "a newspaper with, apparently, no editors or ethics" — for the paper's unblinking reportage on Byington's dubious claims, credentials, and motives. "Byington is an authority on Satanists," the Herald reports, "and as a clinical social worker she spent years helping others heal from wounds...."

“This is a huge breaking story validating the existence of human sacrifices of children in our society,” Byington told The Daily Herald.

To which Clark responds,

No. No it isn’t. This is a huge steaming pile of nonsense validating nothing other than that Judy Byington is a self-righteous fool seeking other self-righteous fools so that she can separate them from their money.

And later:

Part of what’s most disturbing ... is that both Byington and the Daily Herald staff are so cheerfully titillated by all of this. They know they’re just playing make-believe, so they’re able to enjoy the thrills that come from imagining such things.
Others, however, haven’t had the luxury of a life so far removed from real evil that fantasies of Satanic baby-killers seem gleefully exciting....

For Byington, this brazen bullshit is just part of the game. For her it’s nothing more than a source of self-righteous titillation and, she hopes, lucrative royalties.

But as we learned in the 1980s, this game is not harmless.

Read Clark's entire article at Patheos.

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[1] Fred Clark. "Utah charlatan attempts to revive Satanic panic." Patheos. August 7, 2012. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/08/07/utah-charlatan-attempts-to-revive-satanic-panic/

Review at Backward Messages

At Backward Messages, Beth Winegarner (author of The Columbine Effect) reviews Twenty-Two Faces, cautioning readers: "Just when you thought we were safe from the 'Satanic ritual abuse' moral panic," Judy Byington "resurrects the disproven ideas of multiple personality disorder and Satanic ritual abuse ... a syndrome many believe is actually the result of brainwashing by therapists."

According to Byington, “Satanic mind control programming" created 22 personalities in Jenny Hill. "Well," sighs Messages, "at least [Byington]’s right about the 'mind control' part." [1]

Many believe that these false memories are ... exploited by therapists, who claim it will take many years of treatment for people to heal — thus ensuring a steady, paying client base for the therapist.

Messages also notes that Byington is the founder of the "Trauma Research Center" (which appears to exist as a website only).

There, she sells copies of her books and offers for-pay “webinars” on dissociative identity disorder/multiple personality disorder and other topics..... According to a guest post over on She Writes, she has another book on the way, Saints, Sinners and Satan, “a first person account of her own experiences with multiple personality survivors and Occult crime.”

Messages is careful to point out the offense Byington gives actual sexual assault victims and the mentally ill. "We do need outlets for legitimate sufferers of trauma," writes Messages. Byington instead offers up a mix of the exploitative, the prurient, and the ridiculous.

But does Byington think she can really sell this idea in 2012, when most people are pretty skeptical of Satanic-abuse claims — and with good reason? Is society tipping back to a place of superstition and fear?

Read the rest at Backward Messages: "Retired therapist invents 22 ways to make money, and all of them involve 'Satanic ritual abuse"

[1] "Retired therapist invents 22 ways to make money, and all of them involve 'Satanic ritual abuse.'" Backward Messages. 30 July 2012. http://backwardmessages.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/retired-therapist-invents-22-ways-to-make-money-and-all-of-them-involve-satanic-ritual-abuse/

Daily Herald review and interview

"This is a huge breaking story validating the existence of human sacrifices of children in our society," Byington tells reporter Cathy Allred in her June 2012 feature, Surviving Satan Worship: Author helps victims heal.

Writing the book wasn't easy, and Byington still encounters resistance from the most formidable of opponents. "I know it's Lucifer. I know it's his minions," Byington tells Allred, who at no point evinces skepticism, even as she reports that Jenny Hill

escaped sacrifice by a miraculous intervention -- a light so bright that those performing the ceremony to take her life after raping, desecrating and torturing, could not raise their black sword against her.

"The book has become Byington's mission," writes Allred, "to bring forth the truth and save innocents...."

Salt Lake Tribune Interview

Judy Byington is interviewed by Salt Lake Tribune reporter Ben Fulton, who does not follow up on Byington's claim that she was told by Utah Attorney General’s Office "as recent as [2012]... there are active covens, or groups of men, with one woman as their witch" -- coven who, Byington implies, are not worshiping the earthmother but are responsible for unknown numbers of felony crimes against children, including sexual assault, torture, and murder.

"The biggest problem of victims is that no one around them believes them," Byington tells Fulton

They’ve been tortured, seen children murdered, and know ritual abuse first-hand. Their biggest problem is society’s denial.

Promotional Interview

In a form interview at BrooWaHa, provided by a unnamed "PR Specialist and Tour Coordinator with Pump Up Your Book Promotion," Judy Byington repeats her claims to work "as a consultant on Occult crime with the Utah Attorney General’s office"--a claim that the Utah AG's office has denied.

Twenty-Two Faces isn't just a book, says Byington.

It is a mission. Each year there are an estimated thousands of children born to parents who worship Satan and thus most likely are forced to endure entire childhoods filled with torture.

Article at She Writes

With the help of her PR person, Tracee Gleichner, Judy Byington gets space at She Writes. Readers learn little that is new, but a few points are worth noting:

In addition to being Director of the Provo Family Counseling Center, Byington was also worked at Alberta Mental Health and as Utah Child Welfare worker.

Rather than "consulting for" the Utah Attorney General's Office--which the office has since denied--Byington now says her experience was "in running certain information to the Utah Attorney General Office of Special Investigations," as any concerned citizen might do.

She also provides some insight into the formation of her clients "memories." Buyington says she had "many a client who couldn't remember" any abuses in their childhood. But after working with Byington, they came away changed indeed:

In the safe environment of therapy, away from perpetrators, these dissociated women brought forth repressed memories of unbelievable abuse during childhood. Often the recall started in bits and pieces of nightmares, that were more and more detailed as memories came to the surface. Other times something as simple as a red flashing traffic light, or a man in black clothing, would bring up torture long buried in their past.

As we've discussed elsewhere, Byington maintains that her book was divinely ordained, heralded when Jenny was a child. In Twenty-Two Faces we read

Once again a soft, yet thundering voice plumbed to the depths of her heart, "Continue to write down your life experiences, for some day a book will be written."

But in the She Writes article, Byington also makes clear that God directed the psychologist as well. "Only God could give me answers," writes Byington, "one of which was to write Jenny's biography."

Even with God's direction, however, there were difficulties--not the least of which was demonic possession. "There were a few instances with the dark side and evil spirit takeovers," writes Byington, "though prayer always cleared things up."

Salt Lake City Weekly Article

SLC Weekly's Stephen Dark almost expresses skepticism in reporting Judy Byington's version of Jenny Hill's story, in which Hill's multiple personalities are the result of "mind control experiments," and in which Hill "was tortured on an altar and forced to watch the murder of a 6-year-old by a satanic coven, only to be saved by the intervention of an angel."

Dark notes that Hill was diagnosed in the care of one Weston Whatcott, between 1984 and 1985, at the Utah State Hospital, where Westcott--who has also run West-Sands Adoption agency in Utah for decades--decided that "Hill's multiple personalities were a result of childhood trauma, 'namely repeated sexual assaults coupled with ritual abuse.'"

To Dark, Byington also repeats her claim of working with the Utah Attorney General's Office--which the AG's Office denies--although in this version, Byington's role seems more limited, merely that she "talked to a special-investigations unit at the Utah Attorney General's office in 2006."

Byington also repeats her claim that "an FBI agent who looked at Hill's medical records told Byington that there was confirmation that horrendous torture had occurred," but reasons that are anyone's guess, "wouldn't open up a case."

Article at The American Chronicle

At the American Chronicle, which touts "5,000 contributors, over 100,000 articles, and over 11 million visitors annually" as of 21 July 2012, Tracee Gleichner secures Judy Byington a "guest" article, wherein Byington continues to claim that she has acted since 2006 "as a consultant on satanic crime for the Utah Attorney General's Office of Special Investigations"--a claim that the Utah AG's Office has denied.

Readers also learn that the licensed counseling social worker has touched the lives of "hundreds" of women whom Byington has labeled survivors of "ritual abuse."

According to Byington, the subject of her book Twenty-Two Faces, Jenny Hill, suffered as a child "months of abuse by a group of black hooded-robed men in painted white faces directed by a Nazi master mind-control programmer known as Dr. Greenbaum."

According to Colin A. Ross, M.D., founder of the Dallas-based Colin Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma, who provided a glowing foreword to Byington's book

clients from different areas of the country have purported this "Dr. Green" was a Jewish turncoat who worked under tutelage of Nazi doctors experimenting on children in concentration camps. Greenbaum was believed brought into the U.S. after World War II by the CIA for their Project Paperclip mind-control program.

Buyington also mentions the work of Corydon Hammond, Ph.D., of the University of Utah Medical Center Family Practice Clinic, who joined 18 other therapists to conduct an eight-year probe on their ritually-abused clients' backgrounds, concluding that "75% claimed torture under direction of a Dr. Greenbaum." Interestingly, Hammond was also one of the self-proclaimed experts on satanism who consulted for Dr. Allan Tesson, who was sued for $650,000, in 1996, for implanting false memories of satanic ritual abuse and child pornography in one of his adult patients.

Also notable is the mention of Weston Whatcott, Ph.D., M.S.W., L.C.S.W., who treated Jenny Hill at the Utah State Psychiatric Hospital 1984-1985, and who states

Jenny's multiplicity was a result of childhood trauma: repeated sexual assaults coupled with ritual abuse. Her background as so eloquently portrayed in Twenty-Two Faces is congruent with what I observed at the hospital including narrative of her alters [sic] personalities.

In addition to being an expert of covert organized child sexual abuse, Whatcott also founded West-Sands Adoptions in Provo, which for decades has flown-in to Utah children from Asia to Africa, for placement in private homes and various orphanages.

Lastly, Byington claims that Jenny Hill knows the fate of Kathleen Shea, who disappeared in Pennsylvania in 1965 at the age of six, and for whom relatives still grieve, in a case that remains officially unsolved. Although neither law enforcement nor Shea's family have commented on Byington's claims, she maintains that on June 21, 1965, Jenny Hill "was taken to a 'Black Temple' rite in Garden Grove, California where [Jenny] was strapped to an alter [sic], tortured and forced to watch the murder" of  Shea, which Byington describes in graphic detail in her book.

Blogcritics Review

In a BlogCritics "review" penned by Tracee Gleichner, PR Specialist at Pump Up Your Book Promotion (whose services Byington has contracted), readers learn that "even at age five Jenny Hill had learned how turning to prayer subconsciously" helped her to utilize "alter personalities" to "compartmentalize abuse at the hands of a master mind-control expert from Nazi Germany." But even with the help of prayer and twenty-two separate personalities,

blank periods resulting from the competing alters taking over her mind and body caused the confused child to lose minutes, hours, days even months of time while they experienced for her, the pain and memory of rapes, tortures and extreme stress of being forced to view a human sacrifice ceremony.

"After Heavenly intervention saved the child from certain death," readers learn, "men in hooded robes no longer contacted Jenny, but were ever-present in her nightmares."

Nor were Satanists the last of her problems: Jenny's father "continued to pursue his salacious bedroom activities"; one of Jenny's personalities suggested she take a different route on her way home, into "an alley where she was gang-raped by a dozen older boys"; after which Jenny fell into prostitution, drugs, and smoking cigarettes.

"Meanwhile," the review continues, the "core personality" of Jenny Hill--that is, the person whom the rest of the world new as Jenny Hill--

completed army medic training, was crowned a beauty queen, graduated from college, prepared for a church mission, worked as a nurse and gave birth to sons, all while Jenny was unaware of her multiple personalities and their takeovers.

With some grammatical confusion, but also free of actual psychological jargon, the review concludes that "Twenty-Two Faces is a journey into the ever-evolving human psyche from which can uncover not only long-term affects of child abuse so severe it results in multiplicity, but new insights into the mind's thinking patterns."

Video of Jenny Hill and Judy Byington

According to Jenny Hill's son, his mother has been mentally ill for as long as he can remember. After receiving the "help" of various Utah psychologists and social workers, such as Judy Byington and her collegaues, who purport to be experts in "occult crime," Jenny came to believe that she suffered brain-washing, rape, and torture, and witnessed child sacrifice, at the hands of an intergenerational global cult of Satanists. Here, alternately crying and laughing and apologizing for using the phrase "hurt like hell," Jenny Hill describes being anally raped with a foreign object (described in Byington's book as a red-hot fire poker) and then watching a child sacrifice.

Interview at “Review From Here”

Review From Here, a division of Pump Up Your Book, interviews Judy Byington.

No apparent fact-checking was employed regarding Byington's assertions that she "works as a consultant on Occult crime with the Utah Attorney General’s office"--an assertion that the Utah AG's Office has since denied. No skepticism attends Byington's claim that "Divine intervention" saved Jenny Hill from a "human sacrificial ceremony," and that Byington's book was indeed divinely pre-ordained. "As a child in prayer," Byington explains, "Jenny was told to write down her life experiences 'to help yourself and others, for some day a book will be written.'"

Readers also learn that Byington, as CEO of Provo Family Counseling Center counseled other women who, she claims, had "repressed memories" of "ritual abuse" in their childhood, including "torture and murder of children and the brainwashing techniques can traumatize a child’s developing brain and cause separation of thinking patterns," and this "mind-control" is "most often done by close relatives who, in honor of Satan, practice codes of the ancient mystery religions."

This "insidious mind-control techniques" were "culled from Nazi Germany," Byington explains, and is a daily reality for "thousands of children across the globe unfortunate enough to be born into families practicing these aberrant religious rites."

These aberrant religious rites provide the clues, Byington explains, to

esoteric secrets or “Hidden Knowledge” on inner workings of sinister cults hidden within our global society, such as their use of Secret Combinations, Backward Language Talk and the infamous Mark of Cain.

Tate Publishing Press Release

"Utah Woman Escapes Human Sacrifice" headlines the press release for Judy Byington's alleged nonfiction book, Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities.

Provided by Tate Publishing's Terry Cordingley (phone: (888) 361-9473 email: terry@tatepublishing.com) the rest of the release continues in no less sensational a fashion. Readers are to believe that Jenny Hill was ritually sexually abused as a child

by a group of black hooded-robed men in painted white faces directed by a Nazi master mind-control programmer known as Dr. Greenbaum. According to Colin A. Ross, M.D., author of the “Twenty-two Faces” Foreword and 17 books on multiplicity or dissociation, clients from different areas of the country have purported this “Dr. Green” was a Jewish turncoat who worked under tutelage of Nazi doctors experimenting on children in concentration camps. Greenbaum was believed brought into the U.S. after World War II....

Readers are also to believe that Byington has, since 2006, "acted as a consultant on satanic crime for the Utah Attorney General’s office of Special Investigations" -- a claim that the Utah AG's office has flatly denied.

The press release also notes the involvement of Weston Whatcott, who in addition to founding West-Sands Adoptions decades ago, was first to treat Jenny Hill back in 1984, at the Utah State Psychiatric Hospital, where Westcott promptly determined 

Jenny’s multiplicity was a result of childhood trauma: repeated sexual assaults coupled with ritual abuse. Her background as so eloquently portrayed in ‘Twenty-Two Faces’ is congruent with what I observed at the hospital including narrative of her alters personalities [sic].

Most disturbing is Byington and Tate Publishing's claim that Jenny Hill witnessed the ritual sacrifice of a six-year-old who has been "identified" as Kathleen Shea. The young girl’s unsolved disappearance from Tyrone, Pennsylvania, in 1965, remains a source of grief to her surviving relatives, and Shea's alleged "identification" by one of the multiple personalities of Jenny Hill is of no use to law enforcement, to say nothing of Shea's family.