My Reasons.........

Now that I put my opinion out there Are Multiples Responsible? , I guess it might be appropriate to share how I got to that opinion in the first place. After all, I didn't just take a leap of into oblivion to get there. I have life experiences that contributed to these feelings of mine.

The first time I really remember the subject of multiplicity as a legal defense was back a number of years. I think the case was a man named Billy Milligan. If I remember correctly he raped someone and MPD was his defense.

There was a book written about his case, The Minds of Billy Milligan It's been a long time since I read if but I remember correctly the man had something like seven alters. In the writing the author used the reference "minds" to indicate the beliefs and behaviors of those alters.

What I remember most about that book was that each alter seemed to manifest symptoms of being an offender. There wasn't one part without some sort of behavior that spoke loudly to this person's proclivity to manipulate his way through life, not ever being responsible for his behavior and screaming loudly how he was the victim here. When I put those characteristics all down on paper, it looked like a list you'd use to diagnosis an offender.

His lawyers argued he was just a victim. Most parts had no control over what happened and it would be a crime to lock the other parts up for what one had done. To me it looked like all the parts fulfilled the purpose of the whole, getting through life preying on others and always coping out to being a victim.

On the other side of the coin, I have personal experience with a couple of multiples who did bad things in their lives but probably never would have had they known they had another choice.

The first of these was a woman I met at the counseling center we both used. It turned out this woman was not only a cult survivor, she was a cult enforcer. She made people pay by either torture or murder for going against the cult's rules.

I can't tell you at what point I knew she had an alter than was an enforcer. It certainly wasn't right from the start but I developed a relationship with this woman. I cared about her and her safety. Guess I didn't think much about mine but that might be because I always felt I was safe with this woman. The thought she might hurt me just never crossed my mind.

At one point some strange things began happening. There was a break in at the counseling center. There was also a fire set in the dumpster outside. They thought it was cult activity of some kind.

Shortly after these things began, this woman disappeared. If I recall correctly, I knew she was fleeing but I didn't know the details except that it was for her to stay alive.

Many months later I met up with this woman for a while. It was then I learned the reason she had fled is because the cult had ordered her to kill me. I was doing lots of interviews and appearing on television shows and they wanted me silenced.

Despite those orders and the fact she was a multiple with memories walled off and little if any co-mingling of thoughts or feelings at the time, this woman put her own life at risk to save mine. I think the reason for that was at the core of her existence she knew I was truly her friend and the thought of killing me rocker her to the core.

Somehow she managed to subvert her programming to protect me and keep herself alive. At the time I met up with her she was doing extensive therapy to get free of the cult once and for all. By then other parts of her knew terrible things had been done over the years and they were trying to resolve the internal conflicts that were a result of doing things that were foreign to their beliefs but necessary for survival.

This was not my only experience being targeted by cult programming. There was a time I went to a hospital in Colorado to finish up my deprogramming. The first night I was there I met a woman who was also a cult survivor.

That woman had been in therapy for seventeen years with a psychiatrist at the hospital. He was considered to be the leading expert on satanic abuse in the country at the time probably because he had this woman as a patient.

Sitting down to dinner that night, the high priestess personality of this woman threatened to kill me if I didn't quit talking. I remember being more concerned maybe this doctor had no clue what he was doing than I was worried about being killed by this woman. After all, she was locked up in the hospital to keep her safe from this particular personality.

The woman got out from time to time. Then there would be some indication that this high priestess was up to her old tricks and the woman would put herself back in the hospital. I don't know how much time she was spending outside those walls but I do know she was determined to control the behavior of that one personality. The woman willingly gave up her freedom to be sure other alters were not doing bad things.

What I learned from both of these women was that a multiple can still be true to her/his core values without really knowing or understanding what other parts are doing. When those core values were compromised in a big way (we're talking about murder here as well as torturing people.........not little things like telling lies), somehow these multiples figured out a way to stay true to themselves.

To be continued...................