The Truth and the Lies Behind QAnon: A Trauma Therapist Speaks
THE POLARITY
A vast majority of Republicans believe that QAnon is a patriotic source of information designed to liberate the world from the hands of sadistic pedophile networks and that the good guys are the Republican politicians who will spearhead this rescue operation.
A vast majority of Democrats do not believe in organized pedophile networks and believe that their leaders would definitely tell them if such a thing were going on in the world.
Both sides are convinced they are right. Neither side presents much convincing factual evidence to support the totality of their assertions.
Sadly, neither of these scenarios are true. How do I know? Because I am in the business of helping sex trafficked people understand their own histories and recover from unimaginable abuse. I am networked in with over 200 therapists who do the same kind of work I do around the world and have spent 25 years researching the underbelly world of mind controlled children who are used in sexual slavery, often starting in infancy, by organized networks of criminals.
WHAT IS THE REALITY?
Because the world of organized crime is so vast and highly networked, getting reliable statistics is extremely difficult. This is part of the problem. The gaps in reliable information get filled in with a mixture of propaganda and fantasy, leading to silly ideas such as that pizza parlors in Washington DC are the problem. Children can be trafficked anywhere. I have heard more stories about church basements than pizza parlors, but, also, why not pizza parlors? A child can be trafficked anywhere.
I have treated dozens of ritual abuse survivors, mind-controlled adult survivors of trafficking and victims of pedophile networks. The vast majority of these patients are sane, highly traumatized and eager to heal. They are surprisingly undramatic in their presentations most of the time due to the amount of trauma that they have endured. Some of them have won court cases against their abusers; some are still figuring out their history. I have also sought out dozens of hours of professional and peer consultation, been on an active listserv with a prominent professional organization and read dozens of books and articles including first person accounts from therapist survivors of these networks.
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM PRIMARY RELIABLE SOURCES
Pedophile networks are, in fact, extensive, organized and lead to the highest corridors of power all over the world.
QAnon has this right. However, no one party or group of people is responsible for or immune to this behavior. The famous saying, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” seems to be true in the world of child sex trafficking. Some of my clients have recognized and been triggered by their abusers from news broadcasts on television. Others have family members who are involved in highly prestigious institutions or the government or have been trained and trafficked by those people. And, yes, Hollywood is involved, but so are Ivy League colleges, the military, alphabet government agencies (e.g. CIA) and anywhere else that power and money comingle.
Children can be sold into networks in various ways.
Some children are given in exchange for positions of power or criminal immunity for pedophile relatives; some are born into intergenerational slavery; some vulnerable children are identified by networked neighbors, teachers, dentists or priests and “recruited”. In some cases, parents do not know what is happening to their kids. In other cases, the whole family has been creating mind controlled children for generations for purposes of power and control of society. Some of these families refer to themselves as “illuminati”, “satanic” or “masonic”. Some just want power and money.
Churches are deeply involved in networked pedophilia.
The famous Pace memorandum from the Mormon (LDS) church was allegedly buried by church elders when Bishop Pace, tasked with investigating allegations of widespread abuse, presented his shocking findings. The Catholic Church is filled with pedophile priests, as has been in the news. Many more church organizations than these famous examples are involved. The more fundamentalist they are, the more likely, it seems, that they have ties to systemic pedophilia, which makes sense when you think about how deeply invested fundamentalist systems and cults are in controlling their members.
Every region of the country is involved, and Indian reservations are especially vulnerable.
In my practice, I have had clients involved in networked pedophile groups from thirteen states and all sectors of the United States. Thirteen! If I add in reports from reliable colleagues that number easily triples. And activity is not confined to the US; I have also heard reliable reports from England, Australia, Switzerland and Canada. Indian reservations have had high rates of disappearing children for decades. I have had at least one client who was an eyewitness to the mass murder and trafficking of native children, and I have a colleague who is fighting this battle for the protection and recovery of trafficked people on a reservation right now! Of course, recently evidence has emerged in the media that indigenous children have been sold and trafficked for decades.
There seems to be a common “playbook” for the training of mind-controlled child sex slaves.
One year, I had three different clients from three different states report to me their conditioning to be confined in very small spaces (boxes) for long period of time as young children. They reported a coffin like container either in the house, or the woods, as part of a ceremony or not. Later they reported being drugged and trafficked in crates or similar small containers in boats, buses and in the back of military type Humvees as older children. It makes sense. As one client put it, “trafficked kids smell like urine and gasoline”. This conditioning of young children is too efficient, too consistent and too effective to be trial and error. Somebody or some group is training people to do this. There have been reliable reports of these trainers using pseudonyms such as “Dr. Green” and “Dr. Black”.
The numbers are staggering.
According to the FBI, about 400,000 children a year go missing in the United States. A child is abducted every 40 seconds. But those numbers are low. Why? They do not account for familial trafficking. Of all my clients over the years, only one ever came to court attention. None of my other clients were ever reported missing. I told one client that I had been hearing numbers like 1 in 100 people were trafficked and/or mind controlled. They scoffed and said, “well, maybe if you don’t count the sleepers”. (Sleepers meaning people who are mind controlled but have not yet been called up for action or are awake to their condition.) They thought it was easily three times that amount. They have clear memories of every single child in their public school in another state being taken out for abuse and conditioning starting in kindergarten.
You know someone connected to this world, and that’s why you don’t know.
People are terrified to think that these networks could touch their neighborhood, their church, their family. But they do. So many of us have ‘creepy neighbors’, a ‘funny uncle’, or ‘an inappropriate babysitter’. But it is too painful to live with a daily sense of unease; it creates too much cognitive dissonance and fear. So we go into denial. It is natural. Jennifer Freyd’s brilliant book, Blind to Betrayal, shows us how little we actually see of the worst of human nature around us.
HOW DOES QANON FIT INTO ALL THIS ?
I believe that QAnon is one of the most brilliant psychological operations in history. It operates with the classic Problem, Reaction, Solution method of behavioral shaping. Present a believable or even true problem: Pedophile networks are extensive and extend into government. Reaction: foment a reaction of fear, disgust and horror through sensationalization and weird details (pizza parlors). And then present the Solution. This is where the mind control aspect of QAnon reveals itself. Their solution is that their guy (Trump, or whoever they want in power) is on the side of good and will save people. The Solution is the biggest lie based on an earlier lie or suggestion that the networks exist only in one party or group of people.
This strategy works because we cannot bear the reality that both sides of the system may be “dirty”. Just as a child will fight to have at least one “good” parent, so will citizens fight to believe that their side (parent) is “good”. They will fight to the death for that belief in some cases. If both sides are involved, the world seems hopeless and bereft. We feel orphaned, just as we would if we found out that both of our parents were terrible people – an impossible realization for most people.
So, one side goes into denial about the problem (Democrats). And one side feels that their side will save humanity (Republicans) and identifies with the aggressor. Brilliant propaganda. But evil. And untrue.
WHAT IS THE ANSWER TO THIS HORRIBLE PROBLEM OF PERVASIVE ABUSE AND TRAFFICKING IN SOCIETY?
You must do your own internal work and due diligence. Heal your own traumas and fears. People with unhealed traumas are extremely easy to mislead and manipulate. The sad truth is that people you love and admire could possibly be perpetrators, and your judgment about them may have initially been wrong. Be willing to change your mind! Surrender your tribalism and sense of rightness about your position while engaging a clear-eyed curiosity about horrible things in service to the truth. Be willing to accept what previous generations could not see and accept but do this without falling into despair and nihilism.
Moving through stages of shock, horror and grief has taken me, my colleagues and my clients a long time. It is the work needed to fully address the sad truth of humanity: that evil does and has always walked among us, that children need more protection than they get and that people addicted to money, sex and power are highly motivated to destroy other people’s lives.
IS THERE ANY GOOD NEWS HERE?
YES! What we know about we can heal. What we see, we can take action against. When we take back our defenses against this information (“pedo networks don’t exist” or “my side is the only good side”) we can JOIN TOGETHER! We need both wings of the bird to fly. Imagine what could happen if we all came together: Republicans and Democrats to fight this great evil in a clear-eyed way. What if all the networks were stopped and psychopaths identified? What if all the children could be rescued and adult survivors got appropriate treatment? What might the future look like then?
Here’s a little known fact about trauma: an experience of extreme stress or trauma always ruptures a sense of connection and secure attachment in the world. 