The dangerous, illiberal witch-hunt being peddled by the left-media in their unconscionable pursuit of Attorney-General Christian Porter has been correctly labelled a threat to democracy and the most basic principles of the rule of law. But there is an even more objectionable aspect of the Press Gallery’s trial-by-media which has mostly been overlooked: their unconscionable exploitation of the mentally ill.
The anonymous letter – or, more correctly, auto-da-fe – which detailed the unsubstantied allegations and set off the whole firestorm, was first published by the ABC. The taxpayer-funded broadcaster did so against the express wishes of the woman’s family. Tellingly, the letter acknowledged that her family were concerned that the woman “may have confected or embellished the allegations due to her mental illness”.
The sad fact is the woman at the centre of the allegations was very, very ill.
According to reports, the woman in question, who had accused Christian Porter of raping her in 1988, suffered bipolar disorder. If the reporter spent any time reviewing the experiences of people who suffer from bipolar he would not have asked such an asinine question.
Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is a diagnosis bestowed upon those who experience sweeping mood swings that range from depressive lows to manic highs. Those who suffer from bipolar are often clever, as this poor girl was reported to be, however they must stick to a strict routine of strong medication to prevent slipping into a psychotic state. When they do, it is routine to experience a recurrence of false memories of a violent and sexual nature that become embedded in the brain, only to reappear when another episode occurs.
This is not to say that people with bipolar are compulsive liars, of course. What it does mean, though, is that people who are suffering intense bipolar episodes can suffer intense, if completely imaginary false memories.
As one bipolar patient puts it:
I had false memories of violent and sexual nature during my most severe manic episode. The details were SO vivid, and it took a while for me to realize what was real and what wasn’t. Unfortunately, I now question every memory I have. I believe there is a word for it, but I forget. It has to do with delusions.
I had memories of being kidnapped, raped, and finally that I’d had a suicide pact with a friend when I was 17. In my ‘memory’ she shot herself in front of me during a standoff with the police. I failed to follow through and here I was, 37 years old and believing she was ‘on the other side’ waiting for me. All I had to do was to fulfill my promise to her and kill myself, then we would both be happy forever.
Luckily, my therapist realized I was bit ‘off’. Other memories during this episode that weren’t true were having multiple personality disorder and being studied secretly by doctors at a university, there was a police manhunt, stabbings, my friend shooting a cop, oh, and I was manipulated into a sexual sadomasochist relationship, but was incompetent because of the multiple personality disorder.
These things never happened but I was POSITIVE they had.
Quadrant
This is a horrifying state for any person to experience. It seems fairly reasonable to suspect that the unnamed woman’s suicide shortly after she made and then withdrew a complaint to police (who, as an aside, concluded that Porter had no case to answer) strongly indicates that she was suffering a debilitating episode.
The suspicion that the woman’s accusations had more to do with her debilitating illness than a supposedly monstrous teenage boy are deepened by a document that her supporters have released to the media. Apparently a handwritten account of the woman’s experiences, something is immediately obvious.
“Hypergraphia”, a condition thought to be related to bipolar disorder as well as other mental illnesses, is characterized by a compulsion to write or draw. Hypergraphia is characterised by “linguistically correct but semantically loose” writing – and, sometimes, writing in nonsensical patterns including writing in a centre-seeking spiral starting around the edges of a piece of paper.
Finally, another condition sometimes associated with bipolar is Compulsive Lying Disorder, in which someone suffering an intense episode may not realize at the time that what they said was untrue.. This is not, however, to be confused with pathological lying. Compulsive liars cannot help themselves; pathological liars do it on purpose.
Like the media and politicians.
It’s bad enough that someone suffered so badly from an awful mental illness. It’s even worse to think that they are being posthumously exploited by unscrupulous, unconscionable media and politicians.
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