Marion Zimmer Bradley controversy - Trigger Warning

[Nick Soapdish]

No, you really can't say that. She could very well believe in the ideals of feminism, while still doing what she's alleged to have done. Those things don't run counter to feminism so much as they run counter to just about everything in our society. Her feminism is about as "beside the point" as it can get.

Yep. People can have terrible beliefs in one respect and admirable ones in another. They don't have to be linked or a cover for each other. Madison Grant was an ardent conservationist who helped save the American bison and was instrumental in saving the redwoods forests, to the point of having a plaque in his name (and two others) which aroused some outrage from one viewer because Grant was even more noted as being an eugenicist and wrote a book which Hitler credited as being profoundly influential. (I'm reading a book that mentioned him just a few chapters earlier.)

[Tonamelt]

Selling a product that contains ideals you don't truly believe is hipocresy and just pure money-grabbing.

A "feminist" that raped her own daughter and other little girls... pffft, yeah, sure.

[Indigo Al]

So, doing some more research on this, I came across this article/write up:

http://www.teleread.com/writing/mari...says-daughter/

There is a commenter in the comments section named "Ichi" who I happen to agree with. MZB is certainly highly guilty of neglect and of enabling Walter Breen's crimes. And I see clearly why Moira Greyland would feel abused by her mother. She was. But the sadistic sexual assaults directly from MZB herself don't ring quite right. The Elizabeth Waters testimony relates that Moira told her of one possible incidence, and that MZB's son Patrick Breen once claimed to have been molested by MZB and her friends, and not Walter Breen. (In other words, Lisa Water's didn't witness or experience anything directly).

Then, in that same testimony, there's this:

Q. Are you aware of what the term "satanic ritual

abuse" means?

A. I believe so, yes.

Q. Has Moira Breen ever told you that she believes that she was a victim of satanic ritual abuse?

A. Yes.

Q. What do you understand satanic ritual abuse to be?

A. People who worship Satan who, as part of their ritual, abuse children or, I suppose, adults would count too.

Q. Have you ever worshipped Satan?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever observed any satanic rituals?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever participated in any satanic worship services?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever practiced Wicca?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever practiced black magic?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever practiced paganism?

A. I have attended some pagan rituals, and I was active for a while in the Dark Moon Circle. I was sort of tagging after Marion while she was doing research for Mists of Avalon.

Q. Did Moira Breen ever indicate to you that she felt that she had been the victim of satanic ritual abuse?

A. Could you give me a time frame?

Q. Ever.

A. Yes.

Q. When?

A. After all of the investigation with Kenny.

Q. After or during?

A. After the investigation with Kenny started.

Q. Can you give me an approximate time frame when you had this discussion with Moira?

A. I think it was while he was in the hospital, with the CPS in Laguna Hills.

Q. Could you please tell me what Moira Breen told you about her belief that she had been a victim of satanic ritual abuse?

A. She said that some men in white robes tied her up and hung her on the wall and poured hot coffee on her and spilled, I think, spilled hot wax on her skin and killed a baby in front of her and killed a grown-up in front of her and gave her something to eat and told her -- something to eat -- some funny meat and told her it was her baby brother, and she has never had a baby brother. She said a lot of stuff, and none of it made sense.

SRA was all the rage in the 80's and early 90's and there's never been one shred of evidence to support it, and plenty to debunk it.

Again, I'm not saying Moira is lying, I am in no way blaming her for anything. I believe she's suffered abuse and MZB is complicit in that. I believe what she's gone through CAN (BUT NOT "DID") lead to conflated and confused memories - and if this was the case it would not be her fault in any way. But to fully believe that MZB herself directly and repeatedly sexually abused her daughter and other girls, there would need to be a bigger smoking gun in the room; for example, definitive testimony from Patrick Breen.

[Schwarzchild Radius]

So, doing some more research on this, I came across this article/write up:

http://www.teleread.com/writing/mari...says-daughter/

There is a commenter in the comments section named "Ichi" who I happen to agree with. MZB is certainly highly guilty of neglect and of enabling Walter Breen's crimes. And I see clearly why Moira Greyland would feel abused by her mother. She was. But the sadistic sexual assaults directly from MZB herself don't ring quite right. The Elizabeth Waters testimony relates that Moira told her of one possible incidence, and that MZB's son Patrick Breen once claimed to have been molested by MZB and her friends, and not Walter Breen. (In other words, Lisa Water's didn't witness or experience anything directly).

Then, in that same testimony, there's this:



SRA was all the rage in the 80's and early 90's and there's never been one shred of evidence to support it, and plenty to debunk it.

Again, I'm not saying Moira is lying, I am in no way blaming her for anything. I believe she's suffered abuse and MZB is complicit in that. I believe what she's gone through CAN (BUT NOT "DID") lead to conflated and confused memories - and if this was the case it would not be her fault in any way. But to fully believe that MZB herself directly and repeatedly sexually abused her daughter and other girls, there would need to be a bigger smoking gun in the room; for example, definitive testimony from Patrick Breen.

The problem with that testimony is it is from a hostile witness, Elisabeth Waters, who was MZB's secretary and lover and who is now the major beneficiary of MZB's royalties and book profits.

Ms. Waters is giving hearsay about MZB's daughter in the course of telling the questioner about her own activities. Elsewhere in the testimony Ms. Waters relates that Moira told her that MZB groped the child sexually in the shower and Ms. Waters did nothing about it. She also relates that Moira told her that MZB and her husband had both sexually assaulted their own children and she did nothing about that either.

Moira is not the person speaking here. The person speaking is a person who was in a position of authority, was told about the abuse, and kept silent about it.

The Satanic ritual story is an odd one, but it does not come from Moira.

I would go so far as to say it comes from a person with a vested interest in discrediting Moira.

Moira's actual accounts of her sexual abuse at her mother's hands fit with the pattern established in the household of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen, and fit in exactly with undeniably witnessed activities sworn to under oath.

I would think that there already is a heavy preponderance of evidence that something was horribly, horribly wrong in the Bradley-Breen household.

That Moira herself has come out publicly this last week and said it outright is surely smoking gun enough.

[Baron Samedi]

Always thought there was something weird about that woman.

She can't write a damn book without rapes in it.