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Ellen Lacter and endritualabuse.org

Ellen Lacter, and her website, contributed to the death of Jude Mirra, a nonverbal autistic child who was killed by his mother Gigi Jordan, who later committed suicide. Jordan described her killing of her son as an "act of mercy," claiming that she killed him to prevent her son from being further abused his biological father. Jordan believed that her son was being ritually abused, including being forced to injest feces, being sodomized, stabbed by needles, choked, and orally penetranted. Her belief that her son was being abused was unsubstantiated, Jude was examined for sexual abuse by a hospital and there was "no evidence of any sexual assault of any kind" (Page 16). It is believed that Jordan's beliefs that her son was being ritually abused were due to paranoid delusions. She attempted suicide immediately after killing her son, but failed. Jordan was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 18 years in prison. After her bail was revoked while seeking a new trail, Jordan committed suicide.

Ellen Lacter and her website, endritualabuse.org, directly contributed to Jordan's delusional beliefs, which led to Jordan killing her son. Jordan became concerned that "ritual abuse might explain her son's behaviors" after reading Lacter's website, endritualabuse.org. Jordan retained Ellen Lacter to provide her with consultation and to provide psychological help for her son. Despite the fact that reports from others in contact with Jordan say that she was speaking in a "very excited" and "convoluted" manner, "jumping around to different topics," and was borderline incomprehensible (Page 9), all of which are known symptoms of disorganized speech as seen in schizophrenia, and the fact that Jordan has been identified by other mental health professionals to have a "fixated focus that presented itself as almost delusional and and had a paranoid realm to it," (page 61) Lacter failed to identify and treat Jordan's delusions, and instead endorsed and fed into Jordan's delusional beliefs that her son was a victim of ritual abuse, stating that Jude's symptoms were "consistent witht hat of other victims of ritual abuse" based on what Jordan told her of his "disclosures" (which are now known to have involved facilitated communication, a known pseudoscientific and harmful practice). Lacter also falsely claimed to child protective services that Jordan was released from a mental hospital having been found "credible and sane," when in actuality she was released "against medical advice" (page 64) and the hospital was concerned she needed "additional psychological or psychiatric treatment" (page 64).

It is undoubtable that the conspiracy theories spread on Lacter's website, as well as Lacter's irresponsible behavior in her treatment of Jordan and Jude, significantly contributed to Jordan's paranoid spiral, which led to Jordan's killing of Jude Mirra and Jordan's later suicide.

Ellen Lacter's website endritualabuse.org hosts misinformation and conspiracy theories. For example, on her list of web resources Lacter lists Svali, and on her list of books, she lists works by Alison Miller and Wendy Hoffman. If you'd like to read more about these conspiracy theorists, they are all discussed on Alison Miller's SSCT page.


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Pub: 01 Jan 2024 01:08 UTC

Edit: 01 Jan 2024 17:49 UTC

Views: 216