Susan Moreno of MAAP, Cassandra Cult Recruiter

Now that the hate group FAAAS has been quite thoroughly exposed on numerous Internet sites with regard to its nasty claim that autistics are unfit for family life, there hasn't been much obvious activity from its supporters in recent months. Unfortunately, that does not mean Cassandra adherents in the United States have come to their senses; it simply means that their propaganda efforts have gone underground, so to speak.

A conference entitled Knowledge is Power will be presented on October 10-11 in Kansas City by MAAP Services and the Autism Asperger Publishing Company. One of the scheduled activities is a "spouse workshop" by Susan Moreno, director of MAAP, and consultant Julie Donnelly. Autistic individuals will be excluded from this workshop, according to its description, so that "candid discussions" can take place.

Presumably Ms. Moreno thought that by avoiding any mention of Cassandra or Maxine Aston or FAAAS in the conference materials, she could entice unsuspecting spouses to sit through a presentation of their repulsive ideology, while also flying under the bloggers' radar. However, as we all know, a person's associations can be quickly searched with a few keystrokes. Take a look at this page on the FAAAS website detailing the content of a previous Moreno-led spouse workshop (as usual, it's a partial URL because I don't give active links to their hate site).

faaas.org/doc.php?40,288

After claiming that autistic people commonly cause our spouses to suffer "embarrassment and isolation," the description of the previous workshop went on to state explicitly that it was a Cassandra presentation:


Cassandra Syndrome, Cassandra Affective Disorder or the Cassandra Phenomenon was named to describe the symptoms of stress (low self esteem, depression, anxiety, often seen in partners of individuals with an autism spectrum disorder. Other symptoms partners may experience include lethargy, loss of libido, changes in mood and a weaken immune system. CAD was named after a mythical princess who was granted the gift of prophecy but cursed with the fact that no one would believe her even though she was right. Experts such as Maxine Aston feel it is brought on by emotional deprivation.

After highlighting the above issues in the presentation successful techniques and strategies to address these issues will be presented…


I've noticed that recruiters for the Cassandra cult always follow the same basic script. First, they lure non-spectrum partners into relationship workshops from which the autistic partner is excluded; after that, they lead a group whinefest complaining about all the faults, real and imagined, of autistic partners; and then they finish the presentation with a hard sell for Cassandra books and future workshops, which they claim are absolutely essential to recovering from the hideous depression and misery caused by living with an autistic partner. Never mind the pesky little detail that their marks weren't feeling particularly depressed or miserable before the Cassandra gang got them in its clutches.

This is pretty much the same modus operandi followed by exploitative cults of all sorts. Cult indoctrination tactics generally begin with deception of the potential recruit, such as by describing a workshop or other presentation in very bland and innocuous terms, so that he or she doesn't suspect there is anything out of the ordinary going on. The next step is isolating the person from family members, such as by holding an event in an out-of-the-way location where telephone use is not allowed, or (as with Susan Moreno's workshop) by specifying that family members may not attend. The group leader then encourages recruits to vent about their problems, for which the cult's ideology is presented as the only real solution, while becoming increasingly emotional about it. Because of the social pressure to agree with the group, the highly charged emotional language, and the isolation from family, the recruits end up being much more vulnerable to the cult's sales pitch than they might otherwise have been.

The way to counteract such groups' influence is, of course, to shine a very bright spotlight on their devious schemes and make those cockroaches go scuttling for cover. To any of my readers who might have been thinking about attending the conference, I suggest that you stay away; MAAP doesn't deserve a penny of your money. If you have a friend or family member who is considering going, warn them about the spouse workshop. And if you have already registered or have a specific reason to attend, well, then, you may want to stop by the spouse workshop for a few minutes and give Susan Moreno and Julie Donnelly some candid discussions of quite another sort.

After all… knowledge is power.

Turnabout

In my last post, I described a phone conversation involving a Cassandra group leader who saw nothing wrong with diagnosing a woman's husband with Asperger syndrome over the phone, based entirely on the wife's description of their marital problems and without ever talking to her husband, who was in fact not autistic.

There's more to the story. The husband separately contacted a Cassandra counselor, who was closely affiliated with the person to whom his wife had spoken. He described the problems in their marriage from his point of view. The counselor told him that she understood completely and that his wife's undiagnosed Asperger syndrome was clearly the cause of all the difficulties in the marriage. (In reality, she's not autistic either.)

The counselor invited the husband to attend a partner support group meeting to gain more insight into what he could do to alleviate his suffering from Cassandra disorder. Once there, he was encouraged to tell the group all about his wife's inability to understand how normal people felt, the misery that her affliction had brought upon him, and so forth. The group members told him that they had sympathy and compassion for him and that sharing his experiences was a necessary part of healing. Then they ranted about how incapable their own spouses were of giving them any emotional support.

And of course, nothing said could be disputed, no matter how hateful or absurd, as it was so important to validate the experiences of the poor Cassandra sufferers who had endured so many years of never being believed…

Cassandra Promoter Punked

I recently learned via e-mail that a Cassandra group leader was drawn into a long and very revealing conversation by way of a prank phone call from a neurodiversity supporter. The woman who made the call pretended that she thought she might be suffering from CADD because of her husband's undiagnosed Asperger syndrome. (In fact, he is clearly not autistic.)

She accurately described problems at various times in their marriage and her feelings of stress and depression. The Cassandra counselor assured her that all of her experiences were very typical of women in relationships with AS men and that there was no doubt her husband (whom the counselor had, of course, never met) had AS.

Like all such men, he was incapable of understanding his wife's feelings because of his disorder, the Cassandra group leader declared authoritatively. It wasn't his fault of course, but he had no empathy. That was the reason for all her suffering. To get on a path to healing, she would have to learn more about CADD and start taking back her life from the havoc caused by her husband's tragic disorder.

And of course, there would be many workshops, books, DVDs, etc., available to help her on this long journey, all quite affordably priced…

The Pinocchio Podcast

For my readers' amusement, I've put together a short list of famous lies in recent history:

-- Bill Clinton, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," 1998.

-- Richard Nixon's denial of any knowledge about the Watergate break-in, 1972.

-- Barry Bonds' claim that he never used steroids, 2003.

-- Tony Attwood, in Donna Williams' recent podcast, only slightly exaggerated for parody purposes: "I have never used the term CADD, and anyone who says otherwise is a militant extremist and jealous of my success, and it was just too hard for me to find Ari Ne'eman's very prominently posted contact information."

Gee Tony, do you think your nose will still fit through the conference center doors?

A Brief History of Cassandra

As Tony Attwood begins his US speaking tour at a conference in Hartford, Connecticut, where he is scheduled to appear tomorrow, autistic rights advocates from ASAN New England are making it clear that the bogus concept of "Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder" is discrimination based entirely on neurology and that the autistic community cannot stand for that.

Because some people are still wondering what the controversy is about, I'm providing a brief explanation of the history and nature of this purported disorder, directly from a primary source: The Asperger Couple's Workbook (Maxine Aston, Tony Attwood; Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2009).

Chapter 9 of the book (viewable in part through Google Books) explains that the term "Cassandra" comes from a Greek myth and refers to a prophet who was cursed with never being believed. You can find more information here about the Cassandra story and the actual characteristics that were attributed to Cassandra and Apollo in classical mythology. I've quoted a short excerpt (which is fair use under US copyright law) from the book below:


"This feeling of not being believed is typical of how many NTs feel when living with a person with undiagnosed Asperger Syndrome.

Over the years the terminology for the effect of Cassandra has changed. Before Cassandra it was referred to as the mirror syndrome by the Families of Adults Affected by Asperger Syndrome (FAAAS) and then referred to as the Cassandra phenomenon (Rodman 2003). Terminology has since progressed from Cassandra affective disorder and now more appropriately Cassandra affective. The Cassandra phenomenon was first made public at the Families of Adults Affected by Asperger Syndrome (FAAAS) conference in 2003 as Cassandra affective disorder (CAD) (Aston 2003b) and finally Cassandra affective deprivation disorder (CADD) (Aston 2007).

…CADD is the result of emotional deprivation due to the fact that one partner, affected by Asperger syndrome, is unable to provide the emotional support the NT partner needs to stay healthy within the relationship."


It bears repeating that no legitimate research has ever been conducted to support "Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder." Maxine Aston simply made it up. Although it's likely that she never would have gotten into print and would have been widely dismissed as a crank if she had made such claims on her own, her association with Tony Attwood over the years has enabled her to feed off his professional reputation and thereby gain an appearance of credibility.

And sadly, judging by Attwood's continued unwillingness to repudiate the crankery and bigotry of Aston and FAAAS, it seems he's a willing participant in their schemes.

Cassandra's Impact on Autistic Victims of Domestic Violence

Much of the criticism surrounding the faux Cassandra disorder invented by Maxine Aston, wherein she claims that being in a romantic relationship with an autistic person causes psychological harm to a non-autistic partner, has focused on the efforts of associated hate groups such as FAAAS to stereotype autistics as violent and unfit for family life. This false portrayal reflects a longstanding prejudice, recently addressed by ASAN President Ari Ne'eman, that people with disabilities are "inherently unfit as spouses or parents." To the extent this baseless prejudice is given credence by family law judges and social workers, it endangers the basic human right to marry and raise children. I received an e-mail just this morning, discussing the Cassandra scam and the harm caused by disability stereotypes, from a woman who wrote that "until I was 24 I wouldn't have been allowed to get married in many states in the USA. Why? Because I am epileptic."

Such stereotypes can be especially dangerous to autistic victims of domestic violence. Like other people with disabilities, many autistic people who are victims of abusive relationships are particularly vulnerable and may have great difficulty escaping from a life-threatening situation. If, because of the bigoted stereotype that the autistic partner is always to blame for family problems, an abused autistic's cries for help go unanswered, this could result in her death at the hands of her abuser. The feminist disability rights group F.R.I.D.A. points out that domestic violence against women with disabilities is widespread and that much more action needs to be taken to stop it. (For those of my readers who are in Illinois, there will be a F.R.I.D.A. rally at the State Capitol in Springfield on May 22, 2009, from 1:00 to 5:00 PM, addressing the issue of domestic violence against women with disabilities; please consider attending the rally to show your support if you can do so.)

I have reprinted below, with permission, a statement from an autistic woman who wrote of her struggle to escape a violent marriage and how difficult it was for her to explain the abuse to others. Fortunately, she was able to escape safely and to find people to help her. Others in her situation have not been so lucky.


I am having a very hard time explaining why I stayed so long, etc., because NTs do not seem to understand why a person with my apparent intelligence believed so many lies. I know this is a common thing among battered women, but trying to explain how an abuser would manipulate an intelligent woman's gullibility and social anxiety so well is very hard any time I have to deal with anyone who is not experienced with autistics or battered women in general. He is already using my inability to process information quickly to manipulate the court process by changing potential settlements at the last minute, while we are in court, so that I can't comprehend them in a meaningful way while I am on a time limit to sign. I have a very good attorney (legal aid turned us down so I had to pay for my own which is going to be very problematic financially since having a very good one is crucial and not cheap). We are very lucky to have one CPS finding against him and irrefutable evidence of infidelity (which is more useful than undocumented testimony about physical abuse, since he is of course lying about the extent of the abuse and trying to take advantage of the fact that the children are too young to go to court).

I am astounded by the lack of information on abuse against autistic partners right now and so saddened by the whole "cassandra" myth. My husband used my quirks as excuses for beating and cheating on me although from his perspective, having a wife who was afraid of conflict, absolutely faithful, very easy to lie to, easy to isolate so that no one else would know about the abuse and report it, and unable to conceal anything (including hidden bank accounts that I tried unsuccessfully to use to get out), was a huge plus. I have a friend who is a former attorney and battered women's advocate and is trying to help me communicate with my lawyer right now, which has been very difficult so far, but I am still very scared. Thankfully we have already gotten an agreement for no unsupervised visitation but it will still be very hard to endure the rest of the proceedings which may last a year or more.

The thing that gets me is that I know that as typical as I am of women on the spectrum in so many ways, I am sure there are a lot of people in my position who are suffering in silence. I was lucky that there are two staff members at the shelter with autistic family members who have helped advocate for me when the group living situation has become unbearable, but I don't know how it is in other shelters and suspect many other autistics in similar situations may not be so lucky.

I will have to look for that book next time I am at the library. It was a Gavin De Becker book that finally helped me read the nonverbal signs well enough to recognize the risk and get out quickly the day that I am sure I would have ended up dead or too injured to get the kids out in time. I continue to think the fact that I managed to find homes for the pets, get access to the car (I have never been allowed to have my own), and get the kids out of the house in less than two hours that day was a miracle.


Edit, June 27: Here is a link to a post by chaoticidealism on this topic, Cassandra's Opposite.

Tony Attwood and Isabelle Hénault, the World Is Watching

Clinical psychologists Tony Attwood and Isabelle Hénault have been very successful in book sales, speaking tours, and other presentations regarding autism. Unfortunately, they also are very closely associated with both Maxine Aston, inventor of the bogus Cassandra disorder, and the infamous Massachusetts hate group FAAAS, which has repeatedly claimed that autistics are violent by nature and abuse their family members. Both Attwood and Hénault are members of FAAAS' professional advisory board and presented at FAAAS conferences for several years beginning in 2000.


Conference photo, a.k.a. Tony Attwood's Hall of Shame

(l-r: Karen Rodman of FAAAS, Hénault, Attwood, Aston)


In March, both Attwood and Hénault gave presentations at a conference in Sydney, Australia, sponsored by a group called ASPIA, which claims to be a support group for people involved in relationships with autistics. Sound familiar? Yup, it's another hate group peddling the same old garbage. I posted a blog entry last month illustrating the hypocrisy, bigotry, and total lack of ethics in such groups and how they destroy relationships. Nonetheless, Attwood and Hénault have continued to appear at these events, no doubt because their association with the Cassandra cult has been very lucrative over the years. The Cassandra groups have provided them with buyers for their books, conference fee money, and increased name recognition. In return, the presence of credentialed psychologists at these events has given the Cassandra cultists an appearance of legitimacy, which has helped them to suck in new converts. Seems like a win-win situation—except for bothersome little details like integrity, decency, and the human rights of autistics and people with disabilities.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has posted an online petition calling on Tony Attwood and Isabelle Hénault to renounce their Aston/FAAAS/ASPIA connections and to make a public apology to the autistic community, as well as to the cross-disability community regarding FAAAS' insinuations that all people with neurological disabilities are likely to be abusive. This is not the first time members of our community have raised the issue with Attwood and Hénault. Several concerned people have tried to discuss it with them in private. However, their usual mode of response has been to make nice soothing sounds, wait for the pesky autistics to go away, and then go right back to consorting with Aston and FAAAS. Not surprising, given Tony Attwood's history of minstrel show attitudes toward autistics. Now that it is all out in the open, we'll see if they respond in a more meaningful way.

I have stated before on this blog that minority communities, such as the autistic community, have both the right and the responsibility to police themselves and to ensure that those who seek to exploit their people under the guise of providing services are not allowed to do so. As we have seen with other civil rights movements, minority groups who struggle against intolerance can exert significant economic power by refusing to patronize vendors who knowingly spread intolerance. When professionals claim to have expertise in meeting the needs of the community's members, but are in fact spreading harmful stereotypes for financial gain, the community would be well within its rights to say to them: You're fired. Whether that happens with Attwood and Hénault will depend on their willingness, now that their unsavory associations have become widely known, to change their ways and make a genuine apology for the harm caused by their associations.

Cassandra Cult Victim Speaks Out

I wrote a post in September discussing the phony Cassandra disorder invented by Maxine Aston and perpetuated by various hate groups. According to the Cassandra cultists, being in a relationship with an autistic person causes a depressive disorder. It's a convenient excuse for vengeful ex-spouses to blame everything in their lives on their autistic former partner, and quite lucrative for Aston and other unethical counselors who profit from allegedly treating the nonexistent disorder.

Recently, I received an e-mail from a woman who described in detail—from her own firsthand experience—the bigotry and hypocrisy of the Cassandra crowd, and the wreckage they cause to marriages and families. I have edited the letter slightly for clarity and to remove personally identifying details; otherwise, the letter as posted below has not been altered.


My marriage was broken up by a woman who runs an aspergers "partners support group." She convinced my husband I have aspergers syndrome and encouraged him to leave me and move in with her. He is suffering from Cassandra disease, she has told him. I had no idea he was involved with her in any way until he announced to me on the phone from her house that he had decided to end our marriage for a woman he claimed at the time to have just met, and move in with her. But it turns out they had a long term secret involvement.

I have NEVER had a diagnosis of aspergers, and have since been told by professionals that I do not have aspergers at all. Even been asked by professionals, "who on earth put that idea into your head?" But even if I did have, this behaviour is very very wrong. Before his involvement with her everyone, including me, thought we had an ideal perfect marriage. So you see why this turn around all came as such a traumatic shock to me. And why I'm so devastated by this adultery and family devastation. What has happened (and is still ongoing) is atrocious and caused me and our daughter so much pain and devastation.

They have even gone as far as to claim I left him. So many lies have been told about me in top of all the pain and the cruel betrayal. She is extremely manipulative and has an enormous amount of control over my husband. I find this woman's actions with my husband to be highly unethical. She claims he was a member of her partners support group and she was supporting and helping him to get out of his marriage due to aspergers.

We had NO marital issues that he had ever spoken of regarding me, before she convinced him I was "defective" and he would be better off with her being an "NT." She refers to herself and my husband as "NTs" and uses terms like "we" are like this, and "they" (people with aspergers) are like that. And "they don't understand how we normal people think" or "not normal like us."

She divorced her own husband after he had a new diagnosis of aspergers, breaking up a long-term marriage and separating the children from their father. He is now happily married to a woman who appreciates him just as he is and for who he is. From what I have heard he is a good man; however she says he wouldn't agree to the treatment she wanted him to undergo after she gave him an ultimatum. I think she found it shocking to suddenly know he was considered to be "defective" being a person with aspergers.

My heart is still so broken as is our daughter's, as even though this is terrible behaviour of my husband with this woman, I still love him very much as I always have. Our family and marriage are shattered. He told me on the phone when he announced to me about being with her, that she had "counselled him" to divorce me. She claims that she is not advising people to end their marriages... but THIS IS NOT TRUE! Privately she advises people to do such things.

She has gotten a lot of support from being linked to other sites, and people tend to find her and think she is some sort of expert, as she presents that way. She makes some very broad and sweeping unfounded statements and conclusions. I so believe this needs to be exposed for what's going on. This woman even advises partners of people with aspergers not to have children with their spouses, lest they bring "another one" into the world! I see her as not unlike Hitler, but you would never dream it from how she presents. Sounds so sympathetic to the aspergers cause, or "supportive" of aspergers marriages. Please believe me SHE IS NOT! She is a self seeking fraud and a very good actor with her own personal agenda.

Support groups should not be hate groups for NT "victims" who empower each other in abuse of and play cruel mind games with their unsuspecting partners. This woman encourages the "partners" in her group to NOT disclose to the spouses they are attending her hate groups. I know this for a fact, and believe encouraging deception and secrets between marrieds is dangerous to the marriage and detrimental to any real marital intimacy. She runs her group like it's a domestic violence victims group. Very unhealthy. I believe it's rather serious to treat a certain group of people as if they are subhuman or defective, and not even deserving of their own spouses, who loved them enough to marry them in the first place (you would think).

There's much more to this very sad story, than I can put here right now...

Maxine Aston's Cassandra Disorder Scam

Have you ever thought about how much fun it would be to invent a bogus disorder and to rake in the money from persuading gullible people that they were in dire need of your expertise and therapy? No, me neither. Most of us are ethical enough so that we would never consider such a thing. But Maxine Aston, notorious inventor of "Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder," evidently has no such qualms.

She was working as a marriage and relationship counselor in the late 1990s when she became aware of the new autism spectrum diagnostic categories and started thinking about how she could exploit that opportunity. There was just one little obstacle in the way of her scheming, which was her lack of autism-related experience. So she cooked up a clever strategy: Provide services to couples in which one partner had an Asperger diagnosis, and then leverage that experience into book contracts and a skillfully crafted public image as an Asperger expert.

Unfortunately, she didn't stop there. She also identified another potentially lucrative market: Women who recently had divorced or were divorcing Aspie husbands, and who would lap up a sympathetic counselor's assurances that they were not to blame for the divorce because autistic men were neurologically defective and unfit for marriage. To cover this blatantly unethical prejudice with a veneer of respectability, Aston proceeded to create "Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder," which she defined as a depressive condition caused by being in a relationship with an autistic person.

This so-called "disorder" has no medical or scientific legitimacy whatsoever. No professional association has recognized it, and there are no peer-reviewed studies of it. Aston lifted the "symptoms" straight out of the diagnostic criteria for Seasonal Affective Disorder. Although she maintains what she calls a research page on her website (maxineaston.co.uk/research), it contains only simple questionnaires that show no indication of compliance with institutional review procedures. Aston clearly lacks experience conducting formal research studies in an academic setting and is grossly unqualified to hold herself out as a psychological scientist.

Her shameless peddling of pseudoscientific rubbish and fleecing of emotionally vulnerable divorcees by purporting to diagnose them with a nonexistent disorder would be bad enough in itself, but that's not all. Aston has descended even farther into the depths of the ethical abyss through her long-term association with the Massachusetts hate group FAAAS, which repeatedly has urged social workers and family court judges to discriminate against autistic parents in child custody proceedings. Aston had full knowledge of this despicable agenda from the start, and she proudly touts her association with FAAAS on her website.

Although she asserts that as a member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, she abides by its code of ethics and professional conduct, a quick look at BACP's ethical code suggests otherwise. Knowingly inciting disability prejudice and discrimination clearly violates BACP's prohibition against bias:


"Practitioners should not allow their professional relationships with clients to be prejudiced by any personal views they may hold about lifestyle, gender, age, disability, race, sexual orientation, beliefs or culture."


Tossing together a few half-baked questionnaires, which was apparently done with complete disregard for the institutional review process and the rights of the study subjects, can hardly be said to meet BACP's requirement of conducting sound research:


"All research should be undertaken with rigorous attentiveness to the quality and integrity both of the research itself and of the dissemination of the results of the research."


And I won't even bother to list all the ethical rules violated by concocting and profiting from a phony disorder, as that might take all day. Frankly, I find it quite astounding that Maxine Aston hasn't yet been brought up on unprofessional conduct charges.