Sisters Were Coaxed Into Recalling Satanic Rites, Psychologist Testifies

Two women who have accused their mother of subjecting them to years of abuse using satanic rituals may have been unwittingly encouraged by their psychotherapist to distort reality or to recall incidents that never actually happened, a psychologist testified Monday.

Dr. Trula Michaels LaCalle, a psychologist specializing in multiple-personality disorders, told the Superior Court jury that patients exhibiting multiple personalities can often be unintentionally coached into creating inaccurate memories that they then accept “as their own reality.”

Meanwhile, a couple who haveknown the mother for more than 40 years testified that the 76-year-old Mission Viejo woman enjoys a “very high” reputation in the community and at a hospital where she is a volunteer.

The sisters who have brought the civil lawsuit, now 48 and 35 years old, have accused their mother and father (now deceased) of having physically and sexually abused them from infancy to young adulthood as part of bizarre satanic rituals.

Both sisters have testified that they developed multiple personalities to cope with the abuse and repressed dark memories of incest, rape and murder until they began seeing a psychotherapist a few years ago.

The lawsuit, now in its 10th day of trial, also alleges that the older sister’s 11-year-old daughter was abused by her grandmother. It is alleged that the grandmother joined other satanic cult members at one point, forcing the girl to drink human blood during rites held in a secret cave.

Under a special arrangement, the two women were allowed to use only their initials in the lawsuit, in part to protect the 11-year-old girl. The grandmother is being referred to in court proceedings under a pseudonym.

Monday, LaCalle testified that patients afflicted with multiple-personalty disorders are susceptible to suggestion and encouragement from their therapists as they switch from one personality to another while under hypnosis or in a trancelike state.

She said the encouragement does not have to be intentional or imparted verbally.

On cross-examination, the psychologist said that 95% of patients who suffer from documented multiple-personality disorders are known to have experienced some form of sexual abuse as young children.

Throughout the trial, the mother’s attorney, Tom M. Allen, has contended that psychotherapist Timothy Maas introduced the idea of cult abuse to the sisters during their sessions with him in 1988 and 1989.

Maas, director of counseling at Seaview Counseling Inc. in Huntington Beach, told the jury at the start of the trial that he believes ritualistic child abuse has existed for centuries.

R. Richard Farnell, the attorney representing the sisters, dismissed accusations that the women were somehow coaxed into providing their accounts.

“There’s no evidence of any suggestion,” he said outside the courtroom. “It’s just rubbish to say that somebody could suggest to somebody else something like this and that they would create a whole scenario and a complete history.”

In other testimony Monday, a psychologist who examined the mother said the woman did not match psychological profiles of known female sex offenders, often described as “loners,” emotionally dependent and of subnormal intelligence.

Dr. Martha L. Rogers, a Tustin-based clinical and forensic psychologist, told the court that while the woman “certainly hasn’t had a perfect life . . . the testing and the history (are) not reflective of the cases that I’ve seen.”

“She appears different,” Rogers said.