Cult of Madness

The movement was helped along by the media -- recovered memories of childhood abuse and multiple personalities became a staple of talk shows, TV newsmagazines, and newspaper lifestyle sections -- and by the sudden appearance of satanic ritual abuse, yet another improbable trend. In trying to discover the origin of the satanic cult phenomenon, experts again seized on the publication of a popular book, Michelle Remembers. Published in 1980, the book was written by a Canadian homemaker and her psychiatrist, who helped the woman recall being tortured at age 5 by a satanic cult.

Shortly after the book's publication, other women began reporting similar atrocities to their therapists. Clusters of parents around the country told police that satanic cults had horribly abused their children in day-care centers. So many people came forward claiming to have been victims of satanic cults that the FBI launched an investigation into more than 300 alleged crimes by organized cults. In 1993, the FBI announced that it found no corroborating evidence for any of the allegations.

To true believers, this was further proof that the government was in on the MPD conspiracy. Those mental-health experts who did speak out were branded anti-woman, anti-child, or a part of the cult conspiracy themselves.

Beginning in 1995, the MPD field began to retrench, no doubt because of the torrent of malpractice suits and multimillion-dollar settlements and the advent of managed care, which made a treatment requiring sometimes as many as 200 sessions a year financially infeasible.

In the last five years, the MPD society has lost two-thirds of its members. Several of its most prominent members have fallen into disrepute. One founding member was discovered to have fabricated research data; another lost his license for having sex with his patients and videotaping it; a former president lost his medical license in Illinois last week; another, who lectured society members that the MPD epidemic was actually created by Nazi mind-control experiments conducted by a Jewish doctor who went on to work with the CIA, simply disappeared from the scene.

In 1994, The American Psychiatric Association changed the name of the MPD diagnosis to dissociative identity disorder, a condition in which patients are considered to have a fragile sense of identity. The majority of mental-health professionals believe that if MPD occurs at all, it rarely occurs spontaneously, and that it is usually accompanied by one or more conventional psychiatric illnesses. Only a handful of special MPD units remain around the country.

By all reliable accounts, Martha Hurt's upbringing was numbingly ordinary. The seventh of eight children born into a Catholic family, Hurt spent the first seven years of her life in Abilene, where her father owned a rental-equipment business. In 1965, the family moved to Arlington. Faded snapshots show a typical suburban family that Hurt now recalls as close and loving.

Hurt was a straight-laced child, a Camp Fire Girl, a member of the Texas Girls' Choir, and an honor student. Friends were surprised when she fell for Bobby Gene Hurt, a remedial student who was rough around the edges. She dropped out of the University of Dallas to marry Bobby Gene in 1978 and settled in Arlington, where he was a plumber and she a secretary in a tax office. Money problems and Bobby's temper made the nascent marriage rocky, but they worked through their problems. Yet by the early '80s, Martha was beginning to suffer bouts of depression. For four years, she had unsuccessfully tried to get pregnant, and her doctor said that her prospects were bleak.

Hurt recalls that whenever she saw a pregnant woman, she would start crying. The couple decided to adopt.

Shortly after the first adoption, Hurt's doctor recommended she have a hysterectomy. Soon after, the Hurts adopted their second baby. The surgery, coupled with the physical exhaustion of dealing with two children, sent her into an emotional tailspin. She eventually was hospitalized for a month in 1984 at Millwood Hospital in Arlington. In addition to depression, doctors diagnosed her with having a dependent personality disorder. "It meant I was a people-pleaser," says Hurt. "I had trouble expressing my anger, and I wanted other people's approval."

If any of the doctors who treated her saw evidence of alternate personalities or symptoms of latent sexual abuse, they failed to note it in their charts. Hurt made a full recovery -- so much so, the Hurts went on to adopt a third child. For the next five years, life was good. Bobby had a good job at Vought. Hurt planned to become a court stenographer.

But their relationship began to fray sometime in 1990 as Bobby grew more irritable. When marriage counseling didn't seem to help, Hurt became more despondent. That's when the counselor referred her to Dr. Kathleen Stanley for antidepressants. In the course of taking Hurt's medical and personal history, Stanley asked her whether she ever recalled being inappropriately touched by any member of her family.