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Excerpt: Adoption Forensics "Adopted Child Syndrome."
From: Steve O'Keefe
Excerpt: Adoption Forensics & Joel Rifkin I have permission from Juneau Press to distribute an excerpt from the new book, "Adoption: Uncharted Waters," by psychologist David Kirschner, Ph.D., well-known for his work concerning Adopted Child Syndrome or ACS. The excerpt finds the author in prison with New York's most prolific serial killer, Joel Rifkin. Kirschner prepared a psychological profile of adoptee Rifkin for the defense and spent an unprecedented 110 hours interviewing and examining the man who murdered 17 women. Kirschner has been involved in over 20 homicide cases, most notably Joel Rifkin, "Casino Killer" Jeremy Strohmeyer, and serial wife-and- mother poisoner, Steve Catlin. He also provides an in-depth chapter on adoptee and multiple murderer David Berkowitz -- the infamous "Son of Sam." This book provides a rare, inside look how psychology and the law mesh in murder trials. Kirschner is a staunch advocate of opening birth records, which he sees as a human and civil right of adoptees. In his book, he shows how secrecy, lies, and sealed records can lead adoptees into a fantasy life that sometimes explodes in deadly rage. You can find the excerpt on Joel Rifkin at the following URL -- or email me and I will send it as a text file: http://www.authorviews.com/authors/k...er/excerpt.php - Excerpt ADOPTION: UNCHARTED WATERS A Psychologist's Case Studies...Clinical and Forensic Issues by David Kirschner, Ph.D. INTRODUCTION In Adoption: Uncharted Waters, renowned psychologist David Kirschner, Ph.D., opens his case files showing the connection between adoption and murder. Kirschner has prepared psychological evaluations of numerous murderers, including "Casino Killer" Jeremy Strohmeyer, serial wife-and-mother poisoner Steve Catlin, and New York's most prolific serial killer, Joel Rifkin. There's also an in-depth chapter on adoptee and multiple murderer David Berkowitz -- the infamous "Son of Sam." The author takes no prisoners in telling his side of these famous cases. He rips into Dr. Barbara Kirwin, the defense witness who botched the Rifkin case, and slams famous attorney Alan Dershowitz, whose book "The Abuse Excuse" attacked Kirschner's "Adopted Child Syndrome." "Adoption is a lifelong process, not a one-time event," says the author, a staunch advocate of opening birth records, which he sees as a human and civil right of adoptees. Kirschner shows how secrecy, lies, and sealed records can lead adoptees into a fantasy life that sometimes explodes in deadly rage. The excerpt below describes the author's first encounter with Joel Rifkin, New York's most prolific serial killer. My First Encounter With Serial Killer Joel Rifkin by David Kirschner, Ph.D. With [Joel] Rifkin in custody and the number of murders he confessed to mounting [17 in all], the police knew that a media circus was in the offing when the doors were flung open to the press. It was not often that they had in tow a suspect who was confessing to crimes faster than they could count them, and so they were eager to keep the press at bay for as long as possible. However, Jeanne Rifkin, [Joel's adoptive mother], knew that something was amiss when she arrived home at around three o'clock that afternoon and found policemen swarming all over her yard and around her house. When she learned the reason for their presence, she phoned her estate lawyer, who then called Robert Sale, a highly regarded defense attorney. Sale notified the police and the district attorney's office that he was representing Rifkin and that all questioning was to cease immediately. He advised Jeanne that police would soon be arriving with a search warrant and she would have to let them look for evidence in any area of the house that was used or shared by Joel. He told his client that Joel was scheduled for an arraignment the following morning in Hempstead District Court. He would be charged with the second-degree murder of Tiffany Bresciani. Other charges would follow in Suffolk County and in other jurisdictions. Rifkin was finally paraded before the press that night when he was led from the station house to his jail cell. More than one reporter would note that he looked none the part of a maniacal serial killer. He did not have the crazed look in his eye of the Unabomber or Oklahoma City bombers or the overgrown beard and unruly mane of a Charles Manson. Even in his hooded jump suit, wearing chains on his feet and his hands manacled, Joel Rifkin looked like a shy, tight lipped accountant with his neat little mustache and broad, gold rimmed glasses. At the same time, police who were searching the Rifkin home turned up a large collection of mementos he had assembled to commemorate his conquests, items such as lace panties, pantyhose, lipstick containers, bracelets, and necklaces that were taken from the bodies of his victims. Not surprisingly, given his confession and the abundance of physical evidence that had been collected, Rifkin's attorney decided to go for an insanity defense. With his down-home kind of country style and low-key manner, Sale had been there before. He had won an acquittal by reason of insanity of a man who had killed and dismembered his wife and three children with a bayonet. He had also won a number of other difficult cases, including a successful entrapment defense for a New York City police officer and his brother who were caught as they tried to pull off an armed robbery, and the dismissal of armed robbery charges for Malcolm X's bodyguards. Sale had spent eight years at the Legal Aid Society in Nassau County, during which time he put together a string of sixteen straight trial victories, a feat that has never been equaled, according to a senior trial lawyer with the society. He was elevated to bureau chief in charge of felony cases at Legal Aid before entering private practice. He would need all of that and a bit more in defense of Rifkin, however, for no serial killer had ever been found not guilty by reason of insanity. ~ Preparing Rifkin's Insanity Defense ~ I first read about the Rifkin case while I was on vacation in Sante Fe. It captured my attention because Rifkin was precisely the type of subject -- an adoptee killer -- I had been studying and he came from my immediate Long Island neighborhood. Soon after I returned from Sante Fe, Sale contacted me, told me of his plans to mount an insanity defense, and gave me psychological reports from Joel's childhood and teenage years in East Meadow. Early in my career I had worked in the East Meadow school district, and two of the reports Sale gave me were written by close friends and school psychologists I had worked with -- Edna Dublirer in the junior high school and Norm Pollens in the high school. I was especially interested to note that both reports stated that Joel had been troubled by memory problems, a finding that could be crucial to an insanity defense based on dissociative identity disorder, commonly referred to as multiple personality. During my discussions with Sale, I also discovered that I knew the psychotherapist, Joseph Nemovicher, who had treated Joel in twenty-five sessions from May 1977 to January 1979. As it developed, Nemovicher had documented Joel's learning difficulties and memory problems but had never considered the effects of adoption on his psychological profile. In my first face-to-face meeting with Sale (which, as it turned out, would also be my last) I told him that the reports from Joel's school psychologist would be valuable in supporting his defense strategy since they documented a pre-existing childhood history of emotional disturbance, mental illness, and severe memory loss. I also suggested getting additional reports from neurologists that might reveal some organic brain condition that could contribute to a mental-status defense. Most critically I recommended that we begin a search for his birth mother immediately. A genetic predisposition toward violence has been documented with growing authority by a number of researchers, most notably Dr. Sarnoff Mednick, who has been studying the relationship between adoption, genetics, criminality, and violence in Denmark, where precise and thorough adoption records are kept. I made arrangements to meet with Joel and do a thorough psychological evaluation. Over the course of the next twenty months we met for more than 110 hours, and the result was perhaps the most complete psychological profile of a serial killer ever developed. ~ My First Meeting With Rifkin ~ My first meeting with Joel took place on September 9, 1993, just over two months after his arrest. His recollection of events and how he felt was still fresh at that time, uncolored by subsequent tellings and retellings, by accounts rendered by others involved in the case, and perhaps by suggestions of how to frame his story for the optimum legal effect. I met with him in the Nassau County Correctional Center (NCCC) just a few blocks from his alma mater, East Meadow High School. Coincidentally, East Meadow High is the school district where I had worked as a young psychologist. A maximum security institution, NCCC was a forbidding granite structure that had recently been enlarged, renovated and modernized so that it now looked like a high tech control center with banks of TV monitors and video cameras recording every move in every corridor. When I walked through the thick steel front door, I was asked to present my credentials and authorization letter from an attorney. The correction officers on duty had me empty my pockets, searched me with metal detectors, and finally led me through a maze of corridors. As each metal door clanged shut behind me I felt a sense of foreboding that it might be easier to enter than it would be to exit. My destination was a small cubicle, eight-by-eight feet, that was glass enclosed and looked out onto a large, central visitors' area where prisoners met with their families. I waited for about ten minutes, seated at a small metal table, with a writing pad open to take notes as we talked. Finally Rifkin was brought in. Rifkin initially appeared to be timid, passive, and somewhat distracted as he sat across from me, looking down or off into space, rarely making eye contact. He was, however, not at all shy about talking. It was apparent that he enjoyed being the center of attention, people hanging on his every word. In fact, Rifkin's problem was not talking, but listening. As our sessions continued, I would often say to him, "Joel, shut up and listen for a change." What struck me most about him in that first meeting was the *duality* of his nature, abruptly shifting from a timid, passive, nonagressive type to an assertive, egocentric, grandiose personality. I was also interested to note his failure to display any real emotion. He never came across as angry or hostile, and certainly not as violent. Even when he described the seventeen gory "events," as he referred to them, he showed no emotion -- neither rage nor regret nor remorse. It was as if he were describing acts committed by someone other than himself. Copyright ©2007 by David Kirschner. All Rights Reserved. Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this file as long as the contents are not changed and this copyright notice is intact. Thank you. Re posted By FX From alt.support.foster-parents |
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Excerpt: Adoption Forensics "Adopted Child Syndrome."
Interesting story. I'm pleased to know that only adopted children turn
out badly. Who'd a thought. Any day now the birth rate should plummet given the logic presented here, if applied to reality....where birth child turn out this badly often had a little help in early life by parents. By the way, if you knew anything about adoption these days, you'd know the argument here has been met in many states, if not all. Records aren't sealed, and lies are not told to children about their origins. The one area that is still pretty sensitive is with the child that is the product of incest. Tough one that. Got any ideas how that should be handled? I can go back at least 15 years, and I know the concept was around before that, that one does not lie to a child about their birth parents....in fact an album is created with the child, for the child, for life, on all their prior adoption history...parents, warts and diamonds and all. It's only you folks that lie and claim otherwise. This story, even the interview event, began September 9, 1993 Joel Rifkin was born January 20, 1959. He would have been 34 at date of his interview. 1959 was 48 years ago last January. Much of the author's argument are long responded to. Nevertheless one cannot predict how any child will turn out as an adult with certainty they will not be a serial killer. We THINK we know, but inevitably people who knew him well never suspected. Oh, they will say they did, but others wills strongly contradict them. Adoption is no more dangerous in this regard than making a baby yourself. You can't predict your spouses dealing with the child, or others that come into his or her life, nor the genetics that would predispose the child one way or the other...though on the last we are getting a little better. No one does an in depth study on a child about to be born, or much afterward...but an adopted child, through the state, has gone through a great deal of background and information gathering. So your print a story, about a child 48 years ago, and pretend adoption had a significant role, or are you trying to scare people away from adoption so children will languish in the system? Yer kinda missing a little info: D2 Press- True Crime Corner-Joel Rifkin-Prostitute Killer Joel Rifkin was the butt of all jokes for his entire childhood. Taunts, pranks, cruel nicknames and ridicule followed him wherever he went. ... http://www.doubledarepress.com/2004/...mecorner.shtml - 16k - Cached - Similar pages And here's a little piece to entertain you if you thought you were doing children a service: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:44:13 -0700, fx wrote: From: Steve O'Keefe Excerpt: Adoption Forensics & Joel Rifkin I have permission from Juneau Press to distribute an excerpt from the new book, "Adoption: Uncharted Waters," by psychologist David Kirschner, Ph.D., well-known for his work concerning Adopted Child Syndrome or ACS. The excerpt finds the author in prison with New York's most prolific serial killer, Joel Rifkin. Kirschner prepared a psychological profile of adoptee Rifkin for the defense and spent an unprecedented 110 hours interviewing and examining the man who murdered 17 women. Kirschner has been involved in over 20 homicide cases, most notably Joel Rifkin, "Casino Killer" Jeremy Strohmeyer, and serial wife-and- mother poisoner, Steve Catlin. He also provides an in-depth chapter on adoptee and multiple murderer David Berkowitz -- the infamous "Son of Sam." This book provides a rare, inside look how psychology and the law mesh in murder trials. Kirschner is a staunch advocate of opening birth records, which he sees as a human and civil right of adoptees. In his book, he shows how secrecy, lies, and sealed records can lead adoptees into a fantasy life that sometimes explodes in deadly rage. You can find the excerpt on Joel Rifkin at the following URL -- or email me and I will send it as a text file: http://www.authorviews.com/authors/k...er/excerpt.php - Excerpt ADOPTION: UNCHARTED WATERS A Psychologist's Case Studies...Clinical and Forensic Issues by David Kirschner, Ph.D. INTRODUCTION In Adoption: Uncharted Waters, renowned psychologist David Kirschner, Ph.D., opens his case files showing the connection between adoption and murder. Kirschner has prepared psychological evaluations of numerous murderers, including "Casino Killer" Jeremy Strohmeyer, serial wife-and-mother poisoner Steve Catlin, and New York's most prolific serial killer, Joel Rifkin. There's also an in-depth chapter on adoptee and multiple murderer David Berkowitz -- the infamous "Son of Sam." The author takes no prisoners in telling his side of these famous cases. He rips into Dr. Barbara Kirwin, the defense witness who botched the Rifkin case, and slams famous attorney Alan Dershowitz, whose book "The Abuse Excuse" attacked Kirschner's "Adopted Child Syndrome." "Adoption is a lifelong process, not a one-time event," says the author, a staunch advocate of opening birth records, which he sees as a human and civil right of adoptees. Kirschner shows how secrecy, lies, and sealed records can lead adoptees into a fantasy life that sometimes explodes in deadly rage. The excerpt below describes the author's first encounter with Joel Rifkin, New York's most prolific serial killer. My First Encounter With Serial Killer Joel Rifkin by David Kirschner, Ph.D. With [Joel] Rifkin in custody and the number of murders he confessed to mounting [17 in all], the police knew that a media circus was in the offing when the doors were flung open to the press. It was not often that they had in tow a suspect who was confessing to crimes faster than they could count them, and so they were eager to keep the press at bay for as long as possible. However, Jeanne Rifkin, [Joel's adoptive mother], knew that something was amiss when she arrived home at around three o'clock that afternoon and found policemen swarming all over her yard and around her house. When she learned the reason for their presence, she phoned her estate lawyer, who then called Robert Sale, a highly regarded defense attorney. Sale notified the police and the district attorney's office that he was representing Rifkin and that all questioning was to cease immediately. He advised Jeanne that police would soon be arriving with a search warrant and she would have to let them look for evidence in any area of the house that was used or shared by Joel. He told his client that Joel was scheduled for an arraignment the following morning in Hempstead District Court. He would be charged with the second-degree murder of Tiffany Bresciani. Other charges would follow in Suffolk County and in other jurisdictions. Rifkin was finally paraded before the press that night when he was led from the station house to his jail cell. More than one reporter would note that he looked none the part of a maniacal serial killer. He did not have the crazed look in his eye of the Unabomber or Oklahoma City bombers or the overgrown beard and unruly mane of a Charles Manson. Even in his hooded jump suit, wearing chains on his feet and his hands manacled, Joel Rifkin looked like a shy, tight lipped accountant with his neat little mustache and broad, gold rimmed glasses. At the same time, police who were searching the Rifkin home turned up a large collection of mementos he had assembled to commemorate his conquests, items such as lace panties, pantyhose, lipstick containers, bracelets, and necklaces that were taken from the bodies of his victims. Not surprisingly, given his confession and the abundance of physical evidence that had been collected, Rifkin's attorney decided to go for an insanity defense. With his down-home kind of country style and low-key manner, Sale had been there before. He had won an acquittal by reason of insanity of a man who had killed and dismembered his wife and three children with a bayonet. He had also won a number of other difficult cases, including a successful entrapment defense for a New York City police officer and his brother who were caught as they tried to pull off an armed robbery, and the dismissal of armed robbery charges for Malcolm X's bodyguards. Sale had spent eight years at the Legal Aid Society in Nassau County, during which time he put together a string of sixteen straight trial victories, a feat that has never been equaled, according to a senior trial lawyer with the society. He was elevated to bureau chief in charge of felony cases at Legal Aid before entering private practice. He would need all of that and a bit more in defense of Rifkin, however, for no serial killer had ever been found not guilty by reason of insanity. ~ Preparing Rifkin's Insanity Defense ~ I first read about the Rifkin case while I was on vacation in Sante Fe. It captured my attention because Rifkin was precisely the type of subject -- an adoptee killer -- I had been studying and he came from my immediate Long Island neighborhood. Soon after I returned from Sante Fe, Sale contacted me, told me of his plans to mount an insanity defense, and gave me psychological reports from Joel's childhood and teenage years in East Meadow. Early in my career I had worked in the East Meadow school district, and two of the reports Sale gave me were written by close friends and school psychologists I had worked with -- Edna Dublirer in the junior high school and Norm Pollens in the high school. I was especially interested to note that both reports stated that Joel had been troubled by memory problems, a finding that could be crucial to an insanity defense based on dissociative identity disorder, commonly referred to as multiple personality. During my discussions with Sale, I also discovered that I knew the psychotherapist, Joseph Nemovicher, who had treated Joel in twenty-five sessions from May 1977 to January 1979. As it developed, Nemovicher had documented Joel's learning difficulties and memory problems but had never considered the effects of adoption on his psychological profile. In my first face-to-face meeting with Sale (which, as it turned out, would also be my last) I told him that the reports from Joel's school psychologist would be valuable in supporting his defense strategy since they documented a pre-existing childhood history of emotional disturbance, mental illness, and severe memory loss. I also suggested getting additional reports from neurologists that might reveal some organic brain condition that could contribute to a mental-status defense. Most critically I recommended that we begin a search for his birth mother immediately. A genetic predisposition toward violence has been documented with growing authority by a number of researchers, most notably Dr. Sarnoff Mednick, who has been studying the relationship between adoption, genetics, criminality, and violence in Denmark, where precise and thorough adoption records are kept. I made arrangements to meet with Joel and do a thorough psychological evaluation. Over the course of the next twenty months we met for more than 110 hours, and the result was perhaps the most complete psychological profile of a serial killer ever developed. ~ My First Meeting With Rifkin ~ My first meeting with Joel took place on September 9, 1993, just over two months after his arrest. His recollection of events and how he felt was still fresh at that time, uncolored by subsequent tellings and retellings, by accounts rendered by others involved in the case, and perhaps by suggestions of how to frame his story for the optimum legal effect. I met with him in the Nassau County Correctional Center (NCCC) just a few blocks from his alma mater, East Meadow High School. Coincidentally, East Meadow High is the school district where I had worked as a young psychologist. A maximum security institution, NCCC was a forbidding granite structure that had recently been enlarged, renovated and modernized so that it now looked like a high tech control center with banks of TV monitors and video cameras recording every move in every corridor. When I walked through the thick steel front door, I was asked to present my credentials and authorization letter from an attorney. The correction officers on duty had me empty my pockets, searched me with metal detectors, and finally led me through a maze of corridors. As each metal door clanged shut behind me I felt a sense of foreboding that it might be easier to enter than it would be to exit. My destination was a small cubicle, eight-by-eight feet, that was glass enclosed and looked out onto a large, central visitors' area where prisoners met with their families. I waited for about ten minutes, seated at a small metal table, with a writing pad open to take notes as we talked. Finally Rifkin was brought in. Rifkin initially appeared to be timid, passive, and somewhat distracted as he sat across from me, looking down or off into space, rarely making eye contact. He was, however, not at all shy about talking. It was apparent that he enjoyed being the center of attention, people hanging on his every word. In fact, Rifkin's problem was not talking, but listening. As our sessions continued, I would often say to him, "Joel, shut up and listen for a change." What struck me most about him in that first meeting was the *duality* of his nature, abruptly shifting from a timid, passive, nonagressive type to an assertive, egocentric, grandiose personality. I was also interested to note his failure to display any real emotion. He never came across as angry or hostile, and certainly not as violent. Even when he described the seventeen gory "events," as he referred to them, he showed no emotion -- neither rage nor regret nor remorse. It was as if he were describing acts committed by someone other than himself. Copyright ©2007 by David Kirschner. All Rights Reserved. Please feel free to duplicate or distribute this file as long as the contents are not changed and this copyright notice is intact. Thank you. Re posted By FX From alt.support.foster-parents |
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