From Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA: Annette Morales-Rodriguez accused of cutting the fetus from a woman has a new defense team undecided about using the insanity defense of multiple personality disorder for their client.
The trial, now set to begin Sept. 17, a second time.
Retrieved 05/24/12. Full Story http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/new-lawyers-in-fetal-abduction-case-unsure-about-insanity-defense-q15hbf6-153209405.html
Questioning Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personalities, and Plurals 
Altus
/ 05/28/2012Looks like Anne for all her WI expert witnessing is actually out of Georgetown. I wondered how Georgetown could call her a professor of psychiatry when she has no medical training. Turns out she did some study on the trauma of abortion so that might fit in with Georgetown’s beliefs since it is Catholic. Still, why employ someone with a social science degree as a professor of psychiatry when her credentials don’t allow her to speak in court? I mean Georgetown has a big law school…you think such things would matter. In addition how can students look at her website and take this woman seriously?
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jeanettebartha
/ 05/28/2012Hey, the woman is making a living – evidently enough people take her seriously. Probably those who have had enough of Western medicine. Still, she has a responsibility to be honest about her education and degrees. The court is asking for educated experts – easy as that. She doesn’t cut it.
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Altus
/ 05/28/2012I wondered if Speckard the expert witness, who endorses clairvoyance, had pitched for the ISSTD…yup. ISSTD: McLean, Va. (2003). …. “Addressing Attachment Dynamics in Trauma Treatment” (presented with Anne Speckhard, Ph.D.).
ISSTD looks like it has been trying to clean up its act in recent years. They are trying, trying, trying to get legitimate research published and show researchers financial ties, they also question the use of suggestive therapies at least on paper. However, it remains to be seen how many researchers they will attract outside of the people they have links with at Towson. The fact that Colin Ross whose also testimony was also bounced out of a recent DID defense trial is so embraced by that organization makes me wonder. The jury just about laughed the testimony out of the Harris trial where Ross did the diagnosis, it was so obvious it was fraudulent yet Ross said “I don’t think he is faking.” This is from one the leading experts of DID and winner of all sorts of ISSTD awards and publisher of papers in their journal. If Ross can’t tell an obvious non-case of DID that the average Joe or Jane can see right through, where does this leave the diagnosis?
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jeanettebartha
/ 05/28/2012Yes, the ISSTD is trying to revamp their image. Too bad they are not trying to curb their nonsense or their therapeutic interventions. Anyone can rewrite a website. It takes guts and fortitude to admit mistakes were made and we are changing our approach to treatment. That would be a tall order for the egos that comprise the ISSTD.
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Altus
/ 05/28/2012Here is some head-spinning prose off of the expert witnesses site in the case:
“scientific studies carried out by researchers affiliated with top universities (Princeton, Stanford, etc.) and funded by US government bodies establishes that remote viewing, telepathy, intuitive knowledge, clairvoyance, healing intention, and even remote healing may all be within our reach.”
WHHHHHAATT?????
Forget the fact that Anne Speckard has been bounced as an expert witness TWICE in federal courts…the fact that she is treating people (most likely women) in Wisconsin with these beliefs is VERY concerning.
http://www.annespeckhard.com/Anne_Speckhard/Energy_Healing_-Narrative_Medicine.html
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jeanettebartha
/ 05/28/2012Ah Gees, I made another comment but it flew away…
Speckard must be reading Colin Ross and Richard Kluft. Those therapies may have some merit, but not in the place of science. Or in conjunction with science. Thankfully the judge has his/her head on straight.
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Altus
/ 05/28/2012Re: . Oh my Morales-Rodriguez Thank goodness the courts are calling into question the qualifications of people who have no background in science or medicine yet call themselves “experts” in DID. For the 15th billionth time—social work and social science have no relationship to medicine or the the scientific method. Ms Speckhard’s, the expert witness, has a website is new age mixture of mumbo jumbo, pitching for speaking gigs, and concerning approaches to trauma (she endorses debriefing when debriefing is shown to make trauma worse.)
From the case:
“…. Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams questioned her qualifications, noting her doctorate is in family social science, and that federal judges in Wisconsin have declined to recognize her as an expert in two other cases.”
From her website: Energy Healing – Narrative Medicine. Dr. Speckhard maintains an academic interest in the practice of energy healing, narrative medicine and medical intuition.
This is the kind of pseudoscience holistic wooo-wooo thinking that pervades non-scientific, non-medical based, whacky therapies that social workers (and their patients) are all to often victims of. (Again, WI is huge place for this alternative….your story is valid no matter what it is, mindset.) The sad thing is, Ms. Speckhard probably thinks of herself as a researcher and sees no difference between her love of “medical intuition” which probably has more in common with astrology and shamanism than real medicine and real medicine (which is light years from her.) She has no clue that her website screams pseudoscience by the very therapies she embraces because and her clients take her seriously and that is all that matters, just like in most narratives…but the courts and the medical establishment have standards and clearly she does not meet them. If only potential patients understood this…if an “expert” witness can’t convince a court to let her speak why are you buying her story and letting her mess with yours?
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jeanettebartha
/ 05/28/2012Why let her mess with yours? Oh what a good question!
Thanks for the Daubert case, experts need to prove themselves. They are not experts just because they say so. Thankfully, there is precedent that the courts can use to get these quacks off the witness stand.
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