by Phillip Day
“Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, towards our elected officials, towards his parents, towards a belief in a supernatural being, and towards the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future.” - Psychiatrist Chester M Pierce, Harvard University, addressing teachers at a 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” - Thomas Jefferson
“If you tolerate this, then your children
will be next.”
- The Manic Street Preachers
The sleepy September day in Greenwood, South Carolina, meandered peacefully as James Wilson loads the small .22 calibre shells into his rifle and works the bolt, driving the first tiny bullet into the breach. Minutes later the 19-year-old walks into the elementary school cafeteria and begins shooting screaming children and a teacher before working his way through the school, systematically selecting his targets. He kicks open the door to a girls’ restroom where he shoots another teacher, moving next to a third-grade classroom where he shoots more children. Two children die and seven are wounded in the killing spree.
James’ senseless and chillingly unemotional act shocked the world. How could someone do such a thing? Schoolyard shootings, increasingly bizarre and horrifying street murders and drug violence had been increasing since the 1970’s in America, and people were at a loss to know why. Was the primary reason for such outrages really lack of responsible gun control when such incidences were virtually unknown before the seventies? Wasn’t there something other-worldly and, well, frankly demonic about such a scene of carnage, set in the heart of one of the safest zones in society – our schools?
THE CIRCUS SPECTACLE
Violence in society is of course nothing new. Back in Nero’s day, the popular sport was setting light to Christians or watching them torn apart by wild animals in the arenas. Hangings, impalings, crucifixions and various executions down through the ages drew large crowds. The French Revolution was extremely popular for those women who used to knit in front of the guillotines as the heads plopped off. Yet, although violence perpetrated by rulers in the past was ubiquitous, it is interesting to note that private citizens were generally not taking each others’ lives in the way we are seeing today, even though the weapons to do so were widely available. In America during the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, for example, guns were commonly owned, even as they are today, yet school shootings and road rage incidents were unknown. The concept of right and wrong prevented explosions of personal violence in the main, and punishment was swift and harsh for those who disobeyed the law.
But today, four decades after ‘progressive education’ was introduced into classrooms aimed at eroding this same concept of right and wrong, everything has changed. When examining shooting incidents like James Wilson’s, we can note some common denominators:
Ø Often the shooter has given warning signals of impending violence
Ø The shooter has previously displayed evidence of a blurred understanding of right and wrong
Ø The shooter often commits suicide after the event
Ø The shooter has a history of psychiatric drug treatment
Ø The incidents occur in societies where psychiatric drugs are commonly prescribed
Ø These
psychiatric drugs themselves have an extremely well documented history of
altering perceptions, inciting hostility and violence, and dissipating
inhibitions
James had been taking psychiatric drugs for years, prescribed to him by Greenwood psychiatrist Willie Moseley. These included Xanax, Valium, Vistaril, Mellaril, Thorazine, Tofranil and Halcion. James Crossen, program director of the Chemical Dependency Recovery Unit at the Medical Center of North Hollywood, California, gives his considered opinion on what could have caused the 1988 shootings to happen: “That that young man should have been on drugs all his life since he was fourteen is ghoulish. The drugs would be a major contributing factor in such a surprising and sudden act of violence – a major contributor.”[1]
Four months after James’ rampage, Patrick Purdy, 26, entered a Stockton, California schoolyard and opened fire, killing five children and wounding 29 more, including a teacher, before killing himself. Purdy had an extensive psychiatric drug history.
Two years previously, on 20th November 1986, 14-year-old Rod Matthews had gone on the rampage in Canton, Massachusetts, beating a classmate, Shawn Ouillette, to death with a baseball bat in the woods near his home. The academically gifted Matthews had been taking the psychiatric drug Ritalin since he was nine, and was withdrawing from his medication at the time of the killing.[2] Matthews had told a teacher in the weeks before the killing that he had an urge to kill somebody. The teacher had merely replied that murder was a felony.
Nine months previously, young Timmy Becton, aged 10, had used his 3-year-old niece as a shield while wielding a shotgun at a sheriff’s deputy, who had visited the Becton residence with a truant officer. “I’d sooner shoot you than go to school!” Timmy reportedly yelled. The month before, he had been taken to see a psychiatrist to help him with his hatred of school. The psychiatrist prescribed Prozac. His parents described that their son had suffered personality changes when the dosage of the drug was increased. They reported violent mood swings, during which Timmy would get ‘really angry’.
The first of the school shooting incidents had occurred on 20th May 1988, when Laurie Dann, 30, walked into a school in Winnetka, Illinois, with three handguns and opened fire, killing one and wounding five. Laurie then fled the school and killed a man in a house nearby before committing suicide.
In 1995 in Illinois, Brian Pruitt, 16, fatally stabbed his grandmother in her bedroom and then laid in wait, killing his grandfather when he returned home. Brian had a history of psychiatric drug treatment.
In July 1996, two boys, aged 15 and 16 stabbed a high-school student after they had been taking sedatives, which they later told police made them feel ‘invincible’.
In 1997 in New Jersey, Sam Manzie, 15, attacked and raped 11-year-old Eddie Werner, who had called on the Manzie home selling items door-to-door for the local PTA. Sam strangled Eddie with an electrical cord after the assault, photographing him with the cord still wrapped around his neck. He then threw away his victim’s clothes and possessions in a rubbish bin next to the psychiatric facility where he had been receiving regular treatments, including the drug Paxil. His mother reports that Sam had told her: “I wasn’t killing that little boy, I was killing [my psychiatrist] because he didn’t listen to me.” [3]
On 25th May 1997, 18-year-old Jeremy Strohmeyer raped and murdered a 7-year-old girl in the ladies’ room of a casino one week after commencing the drug Dexedrine.
On 21st May 1988, 14-year-old Kip Kinkel began his brief rule of terror. Kip’s problems began when he was diagnosed with dyslexia and placed on Ritalin. His problems persisted. He attended ‘anger control’ classes and was additionally prescribed Prozac. Kip later went bezerk, entering his Springfield, Oregon high school and opening fire, killing two and injuring 22. He had also shot both his parents to death.
On 20th July 1987, two horrified parents walked into their garage to find their 16-year-old son swinging from the ceiling. After nine years on Ritalin, and undergoing withdrawal from the psychiatric drug, the tormented young man had hanged himself with water-skiing rope.[4]
In October 1993, 15-year-old Gerard McCra shot his parents and sister to death. He had been taking Ritalin since the age of six. While this explosion of violence shocked Massachusetts, the Boston Globe was keen to begin its story, not in lamenting the tragedy to the family and the neighbourhood, but citing a quote from a medical spokesman incongruously attempting to cover himself: “There is no scientific evidence indicating that Ritalin causes, or in any way triggers violence in children who take the commonly prescribed medication for hyperactivity.” [5]
That this ridiculous statement is allowed to be published is all the more unsettling since the manufacturer of Ritalin itself, CIBA Pharmaceutical Company, had published the following public warning about its drug eight years before in 1985:
DRUG DEPENDENCE: Ritalin should be given cautiously to emotionally
unstable patients, such as those with a history of drug dependence or
alcoholism,
because such patients may increase dosage on their own initiative. Chronically
abusive use can lead to marked tolerance and physic dependence with varying
degrees of abnormal behaviour. Frank psychotic episodes can occur,
especially with parental abuse. Careful supervision is required during drug
withdrawal, since severe depression as well as the effects of chronic
over-activity can be unmasked.
Gerard McCra was reportedly abused by his parents while on Ritalin. Note that, by the admission of the manufacturers themselves, the purpose of Ritalin is to ‘mask’ the symptoms of ‘over-activity’, not cure them.
On 14th
September 1989, Joseph Wesbecker marauded through a Louisville, Kentucky printing works, blasting eight former co-workers to death,
wounding 12 others before turning the gun on himself. One of his surviving
victims shudders: “I looked up into the
face of who was holding the rifle. He was completely gone. There was just
nothing there of what makes a person a person. He was gone. And I thought that,
soon, I would be even more gone than he.” An autopsy later showed that Joseph
had ‘therapeutic’ levels of the anti-depressant Prozac in his
blood at the time of the killings.[6]
Prozac has a
long and infamous history of dangerous side-effects. Regulatory agencies around
the world consistently receive a string of adverse reaction reports on the
drug. Even Valium, a known, highly addictive anti-depressant, only garnered 7,000
adverse reaction reports in the US over 20 years. In just 10 years, Prozac had
amassed a stunning 40,000 complaints, including mass murders, suicides, mutilations and more than 2,30o deaths.[7]
On 20th
April 1999, Eric Harris, an 18-year-old senior at Columbine High
School in Colorado, went on his murderous killing spree. Both
Eric and his partner, Dylan Klebold, committed suicide after
the event. Blood samples confirmed that Eric had been taking Luvox, a mind-altering drug in the same class as
Prozac. Luvox (fluvoxamine) and Prozac (fluoxetine)
are known as ‘selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors’ (SSRI’s), so-named because they block the
brain’s absorption of the neurotransmitter serotonin, responsible for mood stabilisation. Luvox’s
manufacturers even warn that Luvox is ‘sometimes fatal’ to those who take it,
and can activate mania and impair judgment and thinking.
Nicholas Regush, producer of medical features for ABC News,
stated: “This is a widely recognised
feature of antidepressants, as documented by their very own manufacturers.
These drugs are also associated with bouts of irritability, hostility and
aggression.
Exactly how all this behavioural change is processed in the brain and how
long-lasting it might be is poorly understood. Contrary to the big shows of
knowledge by psychiatrists, there is a whole lot of guessing going on.” [8]
Eight years before the shootings, Columbine High
had been the subject of a 1991 ABC 20/20 documentary
for its controversial ‘death education’ class, in which students discussed such
macabre topics as how they wanted to look in their caskets. Both Eric and Dylan
had a well-documented obsession with violence, Satanism and
weapons, both having been arrested for burglary in 1998 and placed into an
‘anger management’ program. Both were fans of the infamous pop-star, Marilyn
Manson. Eric’s web-site alone should have had the
alarm bells ringing. Warning statements abounded, such as “I am the law. If you don’t like it, you die!” and “You all better… hide in your houses because
I am coming for EVERYONE soon, and I WILL be armed to the … teeth, and I WILL
shoot to kill and I WILL… KILL EVERYTHING.”
DEATH IN THE PLAYGROUND
Today,
children routinely threaten their teachers with extreme violence - so much so
that in America, a special school police force patrols the campus to
confiscate weapons and keep an eye on things. When I was at school, threats of
that kind, while maybe entertained after a public humiliation, were never articulated. Even to breathe a
threat to a teacher would have ensured a punishment so swift and solid, our
feet would not have hit the ground.
Fifty
years ago, children almost never killed. Today it is commonplace. Apart from
the above, cases such as those involving James Bulger, the Menendez brothers and Damilola
Taylor have horrified
the world. Gil Garcetti, District Attorney for Los Angeles County, remarks: “It’s incredible, the ability of the very
young to commit the most horrendous crimes was unthinkable 20 years ago.” [9]
Incredible?
Today, robberies are carried out by conscience-deadened youth drug-addicts.
Murders, tortures and sadism are practised with Satanic ritual to a degree that
was unheard of prior to the advent of the drug culture. Judge Susan Winfield of Washington
DC comments: “Youngsters used to shoot each other in the
body. Then in the head. Now, they shoot each other in the face.” [10] But still the 1980 Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry
persists with its nonsense: “…taken no
more than two or three times a week, cocaine creates no serious problems.” [11]
And now Virginia Tech and Cho Seung-Hui.
32 dead.
The shooter wearing a smile but with empty eyes.
“Investigators believe Cho at some point had been
taking medication for depression. They are examining Cho's computer for more
evidence.”
Adapted from Phillip Day’s award-winning book, The Mind Game, published by Credence Publications.
[1]
“Prescription for Murder –
Psychiatric Drugs Create Killer”, Freedom,
November/December 1988, pp.16-17
[2]
CCHR, Psychiatry – Betraying and Drugging our Children, Los Angeles,
2002, p.17
[3]
“The Hidden Hand of Violence”,
Freedom, Vol.31, Issue 2, Los
Angeles, CA
[4]
Wiseman, Bruce, op. cit. p.286
[5]
Bennet, Philip & Bob
Hohler, “Boy, 15, held in killings of father, mother, sister…”, Boston Globe¸12th October
1993
[6]
Daniels, Robert, “Deadly Shell
Game”, Freedom magazine, Vol. 30,
issue 1, Los Angeles: 2002, p.16
[7]
Ibid.
[8]
“The Hidden Hand of Violence”,
Freedom, op. cit. p.8
[9]
Wilkerson, Isabel, “2 Boys, A
Debt, a Gun, a Victim: The Face of Violence”, The New York Times, 16th May 1994
[10]
Lacayo, Richard, “When Kids Go
Bad”, Time, 19th September
1994, p.61
[11]
Kaplan, Freedman and Saddock,
3rd Edition, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, MD: 1980