Accusations Against Me (Part 4)

Part 1 

Part 2

Part 3

Danu Morrigan/Tracy Culleton, operator of the website Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, after banning dozens—if not hundreds—of vulnerable women from her site’s forum without explanation, got wind of the fact that not all of these callously rejected women crawled off into dark little holes to lick their wounds. some of them decided to fight back by publishing their experiences with her on the web, a fact that apparently sent her scrambling to do damage control. Ultimately, she published a rebuttal http://www.daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com/accusations-against-me.html to the accusations she found on the web, a rebuttal that was laced with subtle and not-so-subtle untruths, and which left no space for disagreement, correction, or comment.

Herewith, the truth about Tracy’s rebuttal to the truths published on the web about her:

(My remarks are in violet, Tracy's quotes from SoaringDove’s blog are in blue)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are so many other women who have walked in your shoes. Women who are angry and wish they could expose this fraud for who she is.

It's true that there are many women who have been banned from the forum and are angry about it.

That’s it? No, “I’m sorry if being banned hurt or upset them,” no comment at all? Is this dismissive or what? Dozens—perhaps hundreds—of women are angry and upset and think Tracy is a fraud…including at least one person who worked inside the organization…and she thinks she can sweep it under the rug with a curt, one-sentence dismissal? These women were hurt by her actions, some of them deeply. One person comments about her reaction to being banned: “…It was the proverbial last straw, during a hell of a time of intense, horrible recent loss and abuse. I became suicidal. My husband took me to the hospital emergency room. I was put on an antidepressant. The day I went to the hospital was June 26, almost 4 months ago, and I am just now beginning to be able to live again…” (Comment by outofthecrazycloset http://dealingwithtoxicpeople.blogspot.com/2010/05/buyer-beware-unsafe-forum.html)

A lot of bad things happened on Danu's watch. A forum member committed suicide. It was hushed up, because Danu/Light didn't want the members to get upset. This woman was someone that Danu had "befriended" on Dr. McBride's site. This woman had had a horrendous childhood and had already been hospitalized for a previous suicide attempt. Danu believed that she could cure her with EFT.

This is such a misrepresentation of the truth that I gasp to read it.


It is true that a forum member committed suicide, that I met her on Dr. McBride's site originally (and she had come to the new forum) and that she had had a horrendous childhood and had been hospitalised.


It is not true that I “befriended” her in quotes. I did befriend her and I venture to suggest that I was a good friend to her. I did offer to do some EFT with her (EFT is excellent at helping with trauma) but she didn't want to and that was fine.

Some friend… “Oh, I’m sorry your life has been such a wreck and you are in so much pain…open your wallet and I’ll perform some useless mumbo jumbo over the phone and save you from having to actually get up, get out, and do something proven to help depression, like a doctor, some therapy with a licensed and trained practitioner and some antidepressant meds to keep you going until you feel stronger…that’s it, open wider…wider…wider now, I still can’t get my hand to the bottom of your purse…” Remember, no bona fide independent study supporting the efficacy of EFT for any condition exists. None. Nix. Nada.

Her suicide had nothing to do with her membership of the forum, and the insinuation that it was is totally erroneous. She had not even been on the forum much (or at all, as far as I know) in the last few months of her life.

Ever known a narcissist to take responsibility for anything? Tracy cannot know if the woman’s membership in the forum had anything to do with her death or not, but she is sure pretty quick to disavow any connection, isn’t she? What, did this woman send her a note saying “I’m going to kill myself now, but this has nothing to do with you.”? There are sins of omission just as there are sins of commission, and by failing to refer this fragile woman to competent, qualified help may well have had some bearing on her choice to end her life. We don’t know—and neither does Tracy. For all we know, Tracy callously banned her without explanation like she has done to so many others and this poor lady wasn’t taken to the emergency room in time.

And it is true that we didn't allow her death to be announced publically on the forum. This is for two reasons. The first - and biggest reason - is that, since she hadn't been on the forum much at that time, most of the current members didn't know her and so it felt sensationalist and drama-seeking to speak of her death in this way. Those of us who knew her spoke of her and mourned her behind the scenes.

Oh, puhleeeze! Tracy was doing damage control, nothing more. If word got out that one of the members of her site committed suicide, it could do untold damage to the membership, not only in terms of women abandoning the forum and taking their precious dollars with them, but new women being wary of joining. But it didn’t stay a secret, it just became one more thing nobody was allowed to talk about. It happened before I joined the forum and it was one of the first bits of gossip I picked up and people were still whispering about it when I was banned months later. The secrecy and the fact that it was verboten to speak about it surely gave it a longer life than it would have had if Tracy and Light had not tried to hide it from everybody.

The second reason is that we didn't want to upset the members - it's a fact that speaking of suicide can contribute to it.

And that gives Tracy the right to censor adult women from the truth? Isn’t that a little high-handed and smotherish? For heaven’s sake, suicides happen all the time, they are on the news, they are spoken of in hushed terms in offices and on public transport, they are published in newspapers and magazines…what kind of forum infantilizes its members by keeping a truth from them under the guise of protecting them from it? Not one run by a person who views the members as adult human beings, that’s for sure.

The term 'hush-up' is another loaded term, insinuating that we had something to hide about it. This was not so.

If you had nothing to hide, then why not be honest and treat your members like the adult women they are?

Another friend of mine was bullied into doing EFT with Danu, the subject being the woman's molestatation [sic] by her father. It is stated on professional EFT sites that it is best to leave the deeply traumatized to the care of a therapist, and to use great caution in opening up really deep wounds. Danu strong armed my friend into agreeing to the EFT and then proceeded to stomp on her soul with hobnail boots. The friend ended up in severe emotional distress and told Danu that she did not want to continue. She was strong-armed into another session, and then hounded to write up "testimonials" for the DONM forum website and for Danu's EFT website. Despite the women's expressed worry about her abusive family finding it on the internet, Danu posted the "testimonial" with the woman's full name and location.

This is another misrepresentation.

No, it is not. I have first-hand knowledge of this because Tracy posted the testimonial on not one, but two of her websites (she has at least ten of them), one was simply signed with the woman’s initials, the other gave her full name…and I was able to find the woman and make contact with her when we were setting up our FaceBook group, to invite her to join us. We had several chats over email and in the group and, straight from the horse’s mouth, what Kate says above is absolutely true.

This woman was already in severe emotional distress due to huge abuse. I encouraged her to go for therapy or to a local EFT practitioner, but she had no money to do either of these things. I therefore offered to do EFT over the phone with her, for free, on my own expense of international phone calls, and she agreed. I did say to her that this was far from ideal - as I said, the ideal would have been one-to-one personal therapy with a local EFT practitioner, and she told me she understood that. I did ask her that if she got good results I would appreciate a testimonial from her, and she agreed to this. I dispute entirely that I ‘hounded’ her at all.


She did get good results on the two or three sessions we had, as best as I could judge. By which I mean that she came to the call with a particular memory which was really upsetting her, and by the end of the session that particular memory no longer bothered her at all. And she wrote me testimonials to indicate this. She put her real, full, name and general location on them, and I double-checked if she was happy with that (most people just use their initials). She said she was, and on that basis I put them up.


She never expressed any worry about her family finding it - not to me anyway. And when she wrote asking me to take down the testimonials I didn't do that as they were honestly and freely sent at the time (I have done so since), but I took her identifying details away immediately upon receiving that.

OK, can we say “invalidating”? If Tracy goes on the web using a fake name ostensibly to prevent her family from knowing what she is doing, how can she not have empathy for someone who asks that her name not be used? So what if it was “freely sent” at the time? Even if they were, circumstances may have changed and she needed her anonymity back. But, truth be told, the woman told me that Tracy badgered her into writing the testimonial even after she told her...repeatedly...she was not inclined to.

I dispute entirely that I strong-armed her into anything, and when she said she didn't want to continue I accepted that immediately.

Not according to the woman’s comments to me—and obviously she told Kate the same thing long before I even knew about the situation. How’s Tracy’s credibility holding up now?

Next: Part 5