Cult of Madness

If confronting a patient about the truth of her memories was damaging, not challenging them was equally traumatic. While hospitalized, Hurt twice attempted to cut herself, with her watch and with a paper cutter.

While hospitalized at Millwood, Hurt confronted her parents and several of her siblings with her memories of sexual abuse, specifically that her father used to rape her in the bathtub while they played a game called horsey.

"Dr. Stanley told me what to say, and I regurgitated it," Hurt says. "She had me write out the information, a list of all the memories and how I expected them to support me. I was shaking and crying while I was reading it. One of my sisters started yelling that it wasn't true. My other siblings told me that someone was putting this in my head. My parents were in shock. They had no idea what I was talking about. All they could think was that this wasn't Martha."

Hurt says Stanley had prepared her for her family's response: "She said they would either accept it or they were in denial. There was no third option -- that it might not be true." The therapist, says Hurt, convinced her she should not have contact with her family members if they remained in denial.

After Hurt was released from Millwood, she attended a weekly incest survivors' group at Stanley's office, an individual therapy session with Stanley, and marital counseling. Isolated from her family and depressed about her past, she lost her proofreading job and withdrew from friends.

Then, in early fall 1991, a woman in Hurt's incest survivors' group started talking about how her children were involved in a cult that handled snakes. Each session ended with a relaxation exercise in which patients were encouraged to close their eyes and envision themselves in a safe place. When Hurt did this, she suddenly had a memory of being in a pit of snakes.

She told Stanley about the memory and about a letter with a picture of a snake on it that she had sent her grandparents when she was a child. Stanley suspected that Hurt may have been involved in satanic ritual abuse, and the letter, she hypothesized, may have been Hurt's attempt to reach out and tell her grandparents what was happening, Hurt says.

Hurt also told her of a memory in which she was a girl and watched as another girl was killed and her heart was cut out. Although a scene almost identical to this is described in The Courage to Heal, Stanley was alarmed by the possibility that Hurt had been abused by a cult.

Stanley referred Hurt to Stephen Ash, a Richardson therapist who had more experience dealing with the issue of satanic cults.

In their first session in late 1991, Ash suspected that Hurt suffered from multiple personality disorder, because both Hurt and her inner child, Mawsa, answered questions during the therapy session. Ash had Hurt complete several diagnostic tests, which he claimed confirmed the diagnosis.

Other experts in Hurt's case allege that there is no scientifically valid test for MPD. Moreover, psychologist William Grove claims that Ash misinterpreted the test results. When he re-evaluated the test, Grove concluded that Hurt suffered from "major depressive disorder," not MPD. Grove goes on to say that her depression could likely have been treated successfully using established techniques in a short time.

Ash told Hurt it would take years of work to unlock all the memories held by the different alters.

"I was kind of in shock," says Hurt. "I didn't know how to tell my husband the prognosis. I didn't feel in control of anything. I didn't know from one minute to the next whether I was going to be dead or alive. If you aren't depressed before, you are now. You put all your trust in doctors, because that's all you have."

Ash quoted Scripture to her to provoke what he believed were demon alters and tried to cast the demons out. This terrified Hurt, a Catholic. She started feeling suicidal, and Ash had her admitted to Charter Hospital in January 1992. Ash told her about Colin Ross, an expert in MPD who had just opened a unit there. "Dr. Ash said it would be an excellent opportunity to go and get help," says Hurt.

During the three months Hurt was hospitalized at Charter, she tried to run away. She carved an upside-down cross on her breast, burned her ankle and wrist with a lighter, and beat a belt against her back.

"You just would rather hurt physically than deal with the emotional pain," Hurt says. "You just can't handle it."

At Charter, Hurt was given a copy of a satanic calendar that listed important satanic holidays. If Hurt was having a particularly bad day, she was told that it might be because the date corresponded with a specific satanic holiday during which she had, in the past, been violated. If there was no specific holiday that matched her mood, she was told it might be a holiday that was peculiar to her family's own cult.