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Monday, December 5, 2011
Woman: Psychologist implanted horrific memories (AP)
ST. LOUIS ? The memories that came flooding back were so horrific that Lisa Nasseff says she tried to kill herself: She had been raped several times, had multiple personalities and took part in satanic rituals involving unthinkable acts. She says she only got better when she realized they weren't real.
Nasseff, 31, is suing a suburban St. Louis treatment center where she spent 15 months being treated for anorexia, claiming one of its psychologists implanted the false memories during hypnosis sessions in order to keep her there long-term and run up a bill that eventually reached $650,000. The claims seem unbelievable, but her lawyer, Kenneth Vuylsteke, says other patients have come forward to say they, too, were brainwashed and are considering suing.
"This is an incredible nightmare," Vuylsteke said.
Castlewood Treatment Center's director, Nancy Albus, and the psychologist, Mark Schwartz, deny the allegations. Albus pledged to vigorously fight the lawsuit, which was filed Nov. 21 in St. Louis County and seeks the repayment of medical expenses and punitive damages. As in repressed memory cases, which typically involve allegations of abuse that occurred during childhood, the outcome will likely hinge on the testimony of experts with starkly different views on how memory works.
Nasseff, who lives in St. Paul, Minn., stayed at Castlewood from July 2007 through March 2008 and returned for seven months in 2009. She was struggling with anorexia and as a resident of Minnesota, which requires insurers to cover long-term eating disorders, she could afford to stay at the center, which sits on a high bluff in the suburb of Ballwin overlooking a park and meandering river. Most states, including Missouri, don't require such coverage.
In her lawsuit, Nasseff claims Schwartz used hypnotic therapy on her while she was being treated with psychotropic drugs, and her lawyer says Schwartz gave her books about satanic worship to further reinforce the false memories. She says she was led to believe she was involved in a satanic cult whose rituals included eating babies, that she had been sexually abused and raped multiple times, and that she had exhibited 20 different personalities.
Vuylsteke said the trauma was too much to bear, and that Nasseff tried to get hold of drugs to kill herself during her stay.
"Can you imagine how you would feel if you thought you had participated in all these horrible things?" Vuylsteke asked.
Eventually, Nasseff learned from other women treated at Castlewood that they, too, had been convinced through therapy that they were involved in satanic cults, Vuylsteke said. And, he said, those women were also from Minnesota, allowing insurance to pay for their treatment.
"It seems like quite a coincidence that all of this cult activity was in Minnesota," he said.
Nasseff returned to Minnesota, where she works part-time in public relations and has her eating disorder in check, her lawyer said.
In her lawsuit, she claims Schwartz warned her in October 2010 to return to Missouri for additional treatment or she would die from her disorder. She says he left a phone message this October warning that if she sued, all of her memories of satanic rituals and abuse would be revealed.
Schwartz, reached by phone at the center, where he is its clinical co-director, denied any wrongdoing but declined to discuss the case further because he hadn't hired a lawyer yet. He previously told ABCNews.com that he never hypnotized Nasseff, that they had never discussed satanic cults and that she never told him she had committed criminal acts.
Albus didn't respond to requests for comment, but she told Courthouse News Service that Castlewood "strongly believes that all of these claims are without merit and we intend to defend these claims vigorously."
Some experts, including University of California, Irvine, professor Elizabeth Loftus, question the validity of repressed memory cases, which became more commonplace in the 1990s.
"Where is the proof you can be raped in satanic rituals and have absolutely no awareness of it, then reliably recover those memories later?" she asked.
However, neither Loftus nor Jim Hopper, a clinical instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, would speculate about whether Schwartz may have implanted false memories. Both agreed people can have memories of events that didn't really happen and that the power of suggestion can play a role in producing false memories.
Loftus cited several medical malpractice cases won over memories that proved to be false.
Hopper said he believes memory is complex.
"Something that happened years ago can be encoded in the brain in various ways, and various combinations of those memory representations may be retrieved, or not, in various ways, for various reasons, at any particular time," he said.
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Ubisoft dances through holiday sales season (Reuters)
PARIS (Reuters) ? French video games maker Ubisoft said it was well-positioned for the Christmas season after Thanksgiving sales proved better than last year, helped by a dance game featuring pop group the Black Eyed Peas.
"Our sales at Thanksgiving were exceptional in the United States," said Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, at the Reuters Global Media Summit in Paris.
"We don't know what December will bring, but the first signs we have are good. For now, we have not seen any impact from the euro crisis."
Ubisoft, the third-largest game publisher by revenue, is best known for its top-selling Assassin's Creed franchise and its Just Dance game, which it has put out in multiple versions including one built around Michael Jackson's hits.
Guillemot added that Microsoft had sold nearly 1 million games consoles around the Thanksgiving holiday and Nintendo half a million Wii consoles.
"People are ready to buy new hardware at the right price," he said.
Guillemot also told the Summit Ubisoft was seeking to do more film tie-ups with its games, as well as develop merchandising such as toys of its best-known characters.
The company is in talks with Hollywood studios for a film version of Assassin's Creed, which follows the exploits of Desmond Miles, a bartender descended from a line of killers.
Guillemot said he hoped the negotiations would be finalized within six months and a movie released in 2014.
"In terms of creating memorable characters, the video game industry is becoming just as powerful as the film industry," he said.
(Writing by Leila Abboud; Editing by David Holmes)
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Sunday, December 4, 2011
Iowa Republican Voters Still Mixed One Month Away from Caucus (ContributorNetwork)
The Iowa Caucus is only a month away, and I still don't know who I'll be voting for. I asked a few of my Republican friends (and loyal caucus attendees) who they like, don't like and why. The responses were interesting. It seems it could be any candidate's caucus.
"Newt [Gingrich] is my number one guy as his leadership follows his words. He is not afraid to do what needs to be done. And at this point he has nothing to lose. Rick Santorum is my number two guy as he is a solid fiscal and social conservative. Perhaps the two will complement each other well as a team... one older with Washington savvy and [Ronald] Reagan experience and the other younger from a swing state with an outstanding record on social issues. I cannot in any way support Mitt Romney even if he is the nominee. He will go to great lengths just to get elected and has the most unprofessional staff. I would also add that I cannot support Michelle Bachman. Anyone who exploits their Christianity for political gain is so fake. Sorry. Bringing the biggest, newest Bible and reading out of it at church was so not real. Plus, I feel strongly about her staff always wanting to quit working for her...What does that say about her? I probably will not support Herman Cain but I must admit that he is the only one that could call Obama out without making things turn into a race issue (as far as the media is concerned)." -- Emma Rittgers, stay-at-home Mom, Des Moines
"I like Rick Santorum. He's a solid fiscal, social and national security conservative. I'm not a fan of Ron Paul, Herman Cain or Mitt Romney." -- Shane Vander Hart, youth worker, communications director and blogger, Pleasant Hill
"I'm a Ron Paul fan, have been for quite a number of years. He is strict constitution and pro-life all the way. His views have not been changed by years in the House and he stands on them even in his medical practice. They never even took Medicare money. [They] just treated the [patients] and figured it would balance out in the end. And it has. I still have Santorum as a fall-back number two [choice]. [I] have watched him for many years in the Senate. If Romney or some other RINO (Republican in Name Only) gets the nomination, then I will probably go Constitution Party again as I have four out of the last five elections. I voted for George W. [Bush] once. It doesn't bother us to vote for any party affiliation as long as the person has integrity and is responsive to their electorate. And I don't mean form letters! [I] haven't considered the other candidates for any great amount of time, about as long as it took to read their position papers." -- Elizabeth Winkelman, farm wife and homeschooler, Lohrville
"I like Herman Cain. I supported him back in the Ames Straw Poll and still like him to this day. I think it is terrible what the media is saying about him. As soon as he started gaining in the polls, they started attacking him. I plan on supporting Herman Cain at my caucus... I just hope he stays in the race for the next month." -- T. Bolton, grocery manager, Ames
"I like [Romney]. I volunteered on his campaign back in 2008 and I like what he stands for. I will, once again, be supporting Mitt Romney in the 2012 Iowa Caucus." -- Mary Smithson, retired, Waukee
"The only one I know who isn't feeding us a line of dodo is Michelle Bachmann!" -- Terry Waterland, retired, Melcher-Dallas
"I haven't made up my mind. There are still too many people and too many issues for me to sort through. One of those quantities needs to go down before I'll firmly commit. Ask me again after caucuses." -- Julia McGuire, homeschooler and blogger, West Des Moines
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Is Nevada recovering? Depends who you ask (AP)
LAS VEGAS ? Donna West could once name the homeowners on her affluent Las Vegas street. Then came the recession, the vacant homes, and the parade of anonymous renters.
"To me, the recession hasn't ended," said West, a 55-year-old retired state worker. "We have more foreclosures happening in my neighborhood than a year ago."
Across this hardest-hit Western state, a battle of perceptions is being waged over whether Nevada is on the edge of recovery, or still falling four years after the collapse of its mighty housing, tourism and construction industries.
It's a story unfolding across the nation, only in Nevada, it is worse because the state depends heavily on money spent by people from elsewhere. Nevada continues to top the nation in unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies rates.
"We are like somebody who is wearing a lead weight. We have jumped off the dock and finally stopped sinking, but that just means we are at the bottom of the sea," said Elliot Parker, an economist with the University of Nevada, Reno.
The tepid return of the gamblers and revelers who drive Nevada's economy has drawn cheers from government and business leaders, including Gov. Brian Sandoval. They point to rebounding convention attendance numbers and hotels rates as cash-bearing tourists from healthier states return to the Las Vegas Strip. The jobless rate has dipped slightly and unemployment benefit claims are down.
But the housing market remains in a free fall and workers are either fleeing the state or dropping out of the work force altogether. Half of all homes are now purchased with cash. The average home price in Las Vegas fell to $118,213 last month, down from $329,720 just four years ago.
Nationwide, the recession ended in 2009. But the recovery has been weak. Consumers are more reluctant to spend, banks are not lending as readily as before and developers have shied away from risky construction projects. All have combined to depress Nevada's tourism-dependent economy.
"Nevada is about a year behind the rest of the country or even more because we had much deeper, much bigger problems," Parker said. "We had a steep decline and we have a long way to go to get out of this."
Even so, some signs suggest the turnaround has begun.
Passenger counts at McCarran International Airport, one barometer of the city's success in attracting visitors, reached 3.7 million people in October, a 4.5 percent jump from the year before.
New unemployment claims more than doubled to 30,190 from January 2007 to January 2010. In all, more than 300,000 Nevadans received jobless benefits last year. The claims have since fallen to nearly 17,000 new applicants in September and 143,500 overall.
"Nevada is on the move again," Sandoval told business leaders recently. "We are seeing signs, some large, some small, of economic improvement."
Nevada's unemployment rate has improved from above 14 percent to just above 13 percent in the past year and new jobs have sprouted in the hospitality sector.
But the declining jobless rate can also partly be explained by the state's shrinking work force. Nevada had nearly 200,000 fewer workers in 2010 than it did in 2007, and that's despite a soaring population during those years.
"The dramatic losses that we saw throughout 2007 to roughly 2010 are behind us," said Bill Anderson, chief of the state employment office's research bureau. "Now we are at a point where we have essentially stabilized."
At CityCenter, an upscale retail, hotel and casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip, sales are up 27 percent at Crystal's, the city's latest upscale retail center, with its Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu and Versace outposts. Roughly 14 percent of the property remains vacant, with two Dolce & Gabbana stores slated to open there next year. The mall flanks Aria and Vdara, both upscale resorts.
"Aria continues to emerge as a premier destination for convention business groups," Robert H. Baldwin, president of CityCenter, told investors last month.
Hotel rooms and bar tabs are also up compared with a year ago, but they are nowhere near the rollicking levels of 2007, before tourism dropped and hotels across the Las Vegas Strip closed or filed for bankruptcy.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board recently estimated that casinos statewide made $53.8 million less from gamblers in September than they did a year ago, a 6 percent drop. In northern Nevada, which has struggled to fight off the rise of Indian casinos in California, some casinos saw revenues drop 14.3 percent.
The people who are hitting the casino floor are shunning the upscale table games that keep casinos flush and are instead sticking to less profitable slot machines. That hurts people across Nevada, even those who aren't directly tied to the industry, because casinos that make less money pay less in taxes. Casino-generated taxes were down 9 percent in October from a year ago.
State demographer Jeff Hardcastle said the latest Census figures won't be made public until later this year, but driver license data suggests some people are still moving to Nevada, "but it's not to a magnitude that it would offset the people moving out."
For unemployed Nevadans, the state hitting bottom offers little encouragement.
Jim Rogers, 49, has had trouble sleeping since he lost his construction job three years ago. He has been living off of his 401 K.
"There are no jobs," he said. "The casinos are operating on a meager staff. Where they used to have 10 people, they now have six people doing the work."
For those who do have jobs, a sense of security remains distant.
Evangelina Rodeiles works the night shift at the cafeteria at the Venetian casino-hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. Her house value has dropped from $155,000 to $80,000 in the past six years. Her husband is an underemployed construction worker.
"I want to believe things are getting better, but I don't see it," she said.
West, whose idyllic neighborhood has been overrun by foreclosures in recent years, said there is no bright side.
"We are losing our community," she said.
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Encourage Children to Earn Money for Digital Items Through Entrepreneurial Actions [Parent Hacks]
Personal finance weblog Man Vs. Debt author Adam Baker's young daughter wanted to buy extra virtual tokens for a kiddie-MMO, Baker responded by asking what she think she could do to earn a little extra spending money. Turns out the kid loves to make paintings and her dad and her worked out a plan to sell several of her paintings to relatives at six quarters each. The girl painted five or six paintings, an activity she enjoys, and sold all of her paintings to relatives who were eager to add her work to their refrigerator.
Whether it's a lemonade stand, cookies, or even finger paintings, encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit in your children will teach them about the work that goes into earning money and they may even decide not to spend their hard-won quarters on frivolous downloads. Baker's daughter has yet to spend the quarters she earned painting.
Raising Entrepreneurial Kids | Man Vs. Debt
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