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The Satanic Temple's petition focuses on Ellen Lacter, a therapist whom they say worked with Jordan and her son. Addressed to the California Board of Psychology, the petition claims that Lacter's licensure "arguably contributed to a recent high-profile death of an 8-year old child" because it allowed "the propagation of unscientific, discredited, and patently delusional ideas to the detriment of mental health care consumers." According to her website, Lacter specializes in helping survivors of "ritual abuse and mind control." On the same site, she links to articles about Satanism, "ritual abuse," and government-sponsored mind control."[Gigi Jordan] killed her child under the influence of this idea that she was preserving her child from future abuse by Satanic cult conspiracy," Lucien Greaves, founder of the Satanic Temple, told Broadly. According to CBS, Jordan testified in 2014 that Jude had learned how to communicate with her by typing on her BlackBerry, despite being nonverbal and around six years old at the time the "communication" first started.Read more: Why Satanists Are Fighting America's Restrictive Abortion Laws
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Lacter did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but she previously toldRaw Story that "neither Ms. Jordan nor her son was ever [her] patient." However, according to a 2014 Newsweek article, she did file a suspected child abuse report on behalf of Jude. In a report filed in 2008, which was obtained by Raw Story, Lacter wrote, "Ms. Jordan first contacted me, having found me through my website on abuse (www.endritualabuse.org), concerned that ritual abuse might explain her son's behaviors and the disclosures he had begun to make, Jude's behaviors and disclosures, reported by Ms. Jordan, were consistent with that of other victims of ritual abuse. Ms. Jordan retained me to provide her with consultation to help her to keep her son safe and to help him psychologically."[Gigi Jordan] killed her child under the influence of this idea that she was preserving her child from future abuse by Satanic cult conspiracy.
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But roughly two decades later, Greaves noted, "We still have people under the authority of professionals licensing within the mental health field who are able to put forward the most delusional, paranoid ideas, which are so self-evidently harmful to the mentally vulnerable who might come their way."According to Greaves, Ellen Lacter was associated with the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD). However, since the Satanic Temple's petition went online, her name has been scrubbed ISSTD's website—although the page for Ritual Abuse/Mind-Control Special Interest, which is Lacter's area of interest, remains. (The ISSTD did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)The Satanic Temple is publicly calling into question Lacter's credentials as a therapist. "Ms. Lacter's own professional materials are, in our opinion, self-evidently indicative of mental illness, and her incompetence as a mental health care professional insofar as her ability to act as an arbiter of rational truth claims are concerned," their petition reads. "It is our opinion that evidence strongly suggests that Ms. Lacter's mental illness contributed to the murder of an eight-year-old child, Jude Michael Mirra. We further contend that the very public nature of Ms. Lacter's delusional claims call into question the competence of the oversight processes that continue to allow her licensure."At press time, the petition has garnered 874 signatures, 126 away from their 1,000 goal. "I'm all for it," Rivera told Broadly when asked about the petition. "My understanding of the whole case is that all the therapists that Gigi Jordan encountered prior to Jude's murder helped either instill or helped encourage the delusions that Gigi Jordan already had. Why isn't our system doing something to protect people from therapists who aren't willing to help their patients?"People think the whole Satanic Panic is over, and this isn't an issue anymore, so this is the perfect case study to point people to show them what a depraved problem this is.