A while back, I wrote a couple of articles on near-death experiences: The NDE delusion and Near-death, rehashed. It’s a topic I’ve been following off and on for quite a few years.
So I was quite surprised to see this name popping up in the news lately: Melvin Morse. Morse is one of those gullible paranormalists who has a couple of sloppily breathless books out about NDEs — he gets mentioned a couple of times in this nice article debunking a couple of well-known cases. His specialty is describing NDEs in children.
Yeah, children. Which adds a little extra disgust to the news.
He has been arrested for waterboarding his own daughter, punishing her by holding her head under a running faucet so she couldn’t breathe.
The daughter told police she “could never understand what she did to be punished” and felt scared, court documents reported. Once, she said, her father told her he “was going to wrap her in a blanket and do it so that she could not move.” In another instance, she said Melvin Morse told her that “she could go five minutes without brain damage.”
…
After her father did these things, the girl said she would “go outside and cry,” prompting Melvin Morse to come outside and then “hold her nose and mouth with his hand,” police said in court records.
“He would tell her she was lucky he did not use duct tape,” police said in the documents. “He would not let go until she lost feeling and collapsed to the ground.”
It sounds like he was trying to do a little “research” on his own child. There’s good money in almost-dead children
I saw the headline but didn’t realize it was the same dude.
Sam Harris doesn’t see a problem with this.
As repugnant as Harris’ views are, I bet he’d have a problem with this.
Oh? Because he knows for sure that she doesn’t have life-saving information that she wouldn’t otherwise give up?
I trust he has been charged? Where was Mom?
You need a trigger warning on this post. No kidding.
I wasn’t even a victim of child abuse and this quite literally took my breath away.
Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker. What is wrong with these people?
If she were a terrorist, though…
Well that’s….. wow…. just wow….
Exactly.
Oh, I followed the link. Turns out both the Morses are white, and it’s likely the little girl is too.
I retract my earlier comment. Harris would probably be upset by this.
The mom was charged also. She apparently stood by and watched.
http://wtvr.com/2012/08/09/pediatrician-accused-of-waterboarding-11-year-old/
What exactly needs to be wrong with you that allows you to sit back and watch your child being tortured?
I’m unsure I want to know what’s wrong with someone who tortures their children.
This puts my brain in the red zone. Going for a walk around the pond.
I second the trigger warning comment.
… have to go look at pictures of Greta’s cats now.
I think I’m going to throw up.
What an arsehole.
What the hell is wrong with this guy?
If Daddy Morse wants to learn more about near-death-experiences by controlled drowning, why doesn’t he take the place on the waterboard and have his loving wife and daughter handle the mechanical end?
I can’t imagine being that detached or rage(?)-filled or simply psychotic to be able to do that to my child.
Hopefully, both of these “parents” will never have the opportunity to have another child.
Double-plus, I hope their existing kid(s?) get lots and lots of quality therapy.
I’m fucking gobsmacked at the placid response from law enforcement and the “experts” interviewed in that piece.
First… 1st-degree reckless endangering, endangering the welfare of a child, felony conspiracy [what’s that about?] and 3rd degree assault? That’s it? How about something more severe–I don’t know the law code in Delaware, but there’s got to be something.
Second…
You don’t say? Well that sounds kinda, I dunno, maybe “not advisable” or something.
I mean, what the fuck? How about, it’s entirely inappropriate to do to anyone period, you fucking asshole?
Third…
Really? No shit? You can’t think of a single instance where it might be okay to drown your kid, drag her across gravel, beat her, drown her, terrorise her about drowning her and then drown her some more? It must have been pretty difficult to come up with some effective parenting tools that are less harmful to children, coward.
What’s wrong with these people?
Holy crap.
Someone needs to cauterize these parents’ naughty bits, immediately if not sooner.
They cannot be permitted to reproduce again.
And, of course, wealthy, which of course means that while this is one of the minority of crimes in which such a cold-blooded indifference to human rights and human life has been demonstrated that there is a good argument for euthanizing the perpetrator like any other rabid animal, there’s absolutely no chance it will happen.
This is so insane and awful to do. I would say that Morse might be going through some kind of mental illness. Because belief in close-to death experiences can’t explain that someone would do this to his own daughter (or any person, really).
Neither would the overwhelming majority of mental illness manifestations.
I had a near death experience.
I was hit by a truck, had a TBI (skull fracture) and spent a few weeks with anterograde amnesia.
That’s the amnesia where you can’t form new memories. Step into my sight and I’d say “hi dad!,” step out of my sight and then back in later and I’d say “Hi dad!” etc.
No new memories formed meant that although I was fully conscious and conversing and interacting (so they tell me) although not making much sense. I was “alive” only in little, quickly forgotten split-seconds.
What was that like? It was exactly like all that part of my life that occurred before Oct 1965, when I was born.
I was talking, alive, interacting, but from my perspective I did not exist. I didn’t begin to exist until that part of my brain that allowed new memories to be stored started in fits and spurts to work again. Once that happened, I had a stream of consciousness again and although confused and distorted, I once again existed (from my point of view).
That small part of my brain functioning versus not functioning was the difference between a life where I was not aware of myself, of my own existence, where I had no “me,” no identity, where it was exactly like the years before I was conceived… and who I am today now that it IS (more or less) functioning.
Now, I’m no brain surgeon, not a philosopher, not a neurologist… but I figure it is pretty likely that that part of my brain that temporarily stopped functioning when I had my brain injury will AGAIN stop functioning once I die.
I think it’s reasonable to conclude that after my death when that part of my brain once again stops functioning that my experience will be similar to the first time around – that it will be just like my experience of all of those years before 1965 when I was not alive.
I feel fairly certain that I experienced what death is like. In fact I think others have all experienced (if that word can be used) what death is like, in those same years that occurred before THEY were born.
Only difference in my case is that in my case I got a reminder.
Oh, I did see bright white lights. That’s what they use in hospitals. I also saw the image of Christ. It was the first thing I remember seeing when things started to “stick” again.
I saw Christ right there hanging on a cross on the wall of Mercy Hospital. Turns out EVERY room has a Jesus there.
That also explains why the rest of my first memory was of being asked (for the millionth time, though the “first” for me) if I knew where I was, and I with great confusion answered “church?”
This made my blood boil. I am pretty pacifistic and consider violence a last resort but if I saw someone doing this to a child, I would likely intervene in the child’s defense as violently as possible.
I cannot and would not abide a torturer of innocent children.
Whoops, sorry for not having read the article. I assumed it was just another generic “I saw the light” story rather than an account of child abuse. :(
Sorry for the self-centered derail.
Stories like this make me have no confidence in the human race.
I third/fourth/eighty-seventh the trigger warning – please PZ.
Among all the fucked-up things in the world, there are few that poke my inner vigilante harder than people abusing kids – especially their own.
As bad as what this kook did, there is no excuse for this line from the article:
“Dr. Melvin L. Morse, 58, and his 40-year-old wife Pauline, of the XXXXX (my edit) block of Lewes-Georgetown Highway”
There is no reason you should ever publish someone’s private address in an article, especially when it is something that will very likely get someone else mad enough to “do something” about it.
Noting the block he lives on, as opposed to his specific address, isn’t much better; in fact, it might be worse as now someone might go to that area, mistakenly think they figured out what house he lives in and “do something” to a completely unrelated/innocent person.
….. I’m having a set of urges. That child needs to be taken from that family and placed somewhere with people who have empathy.
I wish I could volunteer.
Since he knows so much about the “five minutes and no damage” I think we should let him try it on himself (I imagine research assistants could be found) over and over and over again.
He might learn something.
PS – I believe every advocate of torture should undergo the same treatments he advocates – to the limit of actual physical damage. This would shut those arseholes right up, and really give him 1st hand experience.
@ kraut #34
I understand the rage, but I disagree with the solution. Sorry, but more torture is never a solution to torture.
It’s what my father, a failed Trappist monk, used to do when I was little, probably somewhere between when I was 5 and 12. Although the most recent events where probably a bit less than 40 years ago, I will never forget the pain, the vomiting, the sheer terror, the feeling of my resistance flowing away.
When I went through it, it was a different time and place. Children were not something to be loved and protected, but rather some inferior type of pet, a cumbersome by-product of marriage, so I never really hated my parents for it, but I most definitely have never thought this was appropriate or acceptable behaviour and I most certainly do think that parents who do this to their children should not be allowed to keep them.
Although the most recent events w
here …Obviously.
“@ kraut #34
PS – I believe every advocate of torture should undergo the same treatments he advocates – to the limit of actual physical damage. This would shut those arseholes right up, and really give him 1st hand experience.
I understand the rage, but I disagree with the solution. Sorry, but more torture is never a solution to torture.”
I would have agreed with you in the past. But the acceptance of torture practices in the last few years in some “western” countries as an acceptable method of interrogation means that those defending the practice need to be taught what the breaking of someones spirit really involves – and if you advocate it: experience it.
Hitchens was the only one of the former “advocates” of the necessity who underwent a “session”.
“It’s what my father, a failed Trappist monk, used to do when I was little,”
the benefits of a religious education no doubt. One feels the xtian love.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele #36
Thank you for speaking out.
It is humbling to me how many people there are who have survived such abuse and who can still speak out so people understand such things happen far more than is supposed. Times were different back then. I am 60, so I recall those days, too. Things were done by parents then, that are considered wrong now. But what you dealt with was far more than most. It is horrible that you had to grow up with that.
Please accept my respect.
I’m not defending/advocating torture, so your prescription does not apply.
I know this. It was an effective demonstration that drowning people are prone to panic. What does this have to do with your point?
I hate to quibble, but that caveat of yours I’ve bolded means that by definition they are NOT undergoing the same treatments they advocate.
I can’t even conceive how a parent can do that to their child – the danger of lasting, potentially deadly physical damage, combined with shattering beyond repair the confidence in the very people who should care most about you.
Way to wreck a child’s life. I hope her parents will never be given the opportunity to lay another finger upon her.
Or any child, I hasten to add. Or people in general, even.
I’m the big person, much bigger than you, and so I can do whatever I want to you just because I can.
Give it 6 months, if that, and the turd, and or the dutiful wife, will be guest appearing on Fox or probably several of a dozen other day time brain dead ‘chat shows’ complaining about authoritarian interference with his ‘parenting skill’ and how the the child was wanton and in severe need of reprimand and they were the most ably equipped to deal with it…yadda yadda yah!
And the majority of the audience will sit at home comatose to reality and will sagely nod their heads and fervently agree that government has no business harassing the god fearing and wise on how to discipline ‘naughty’ children, or pontificate on gun ownership even, cos apparently that is where society has gone wrong, to much snooping in private family affairs and usurping their Constitutional rights while not advocating enough adherence to biblical wisdom, then they will go out and buy his tacky bullshite books on a subject that ostensibly seems to verify, if not outright support, their banal ‘spiritual outlook’ on life after death…or some similar dimwitted maudlin sensationalist claptrapped bollix.
What this utter prig of a failed human being practiced on his own daughter is not a 100 miles from where most xians believe should be their right as a god fearing upstanding pillock of society should think and do!, above all really actually do, cos that is what jeebus wants apparently.
It will all be forgotten in a year and matey will go back and write more’ scam ’em while ya can’ books, wifey will be dutiful and supportive and all is green and pleasant in fucking sadodumbvilleland…nothing will change!
Absolutely abhorrent. This turns my stomach
First, I’d like to remind people that we have no evidence of a correlation between Morse’s ‘field of expertise’ and his despicable behaviour towards his child (which is actually his stepdaughter, which makes absolutely zero difference). It seems convenient to link delusional attitude towards the afterlife to heinous crimes against a child, but until we have any sort of confirmation, I remain cautious as to draw this connection.
Which brings me to my second point: I hope this worthless pile of disgusting human garbage and his enabling spouse will be hit by so many clue-by-fours in court that they can make good use of the (hopefully) long sentence. I hope they will get a chance to think about what they have done, long and hard. I hope it will make them miserable to the core when they realize how utterly abhorrent it was what they did. And I hope that the victim and her sister get all the help they need, and find a loving, welcoming, caring family to look after them.
Lastly, I cannot imagine how hard it must be for all the people involved in bringing those scumbags to justice, especially if they have children of their own. Not many things would be worse than those shitstains walking free because one officer couldn’t keep his calm.
This man is a pediatrician, and he was doing these things to a child (his stepdaughter). If he was some random idiot it would be bad enough, but his profession is caring for the most vulnerable of children; to me that makes it even worse. I hope he never has another chance to be near a child, much less be responsible for the care of one. I don’t know whether his wife was so abused that she was terrified to intervene, that seems possible but it doesn’t let her totally off the hook.
Stepdaughter? That explains a depressing lot of it.
This is tricky, since US Attorney General Holder has taken the position that waterboarding is not illegal.
really?
That’s pretty telling IMNSHO about what the motives were.
When you’re firmly convinced that the worst that can happen is the child goes to eternal paradise….
Blech. Thank goodness the ‘Son of Sam’ law applies*.
*Assuming, of course, that Morse is found guilty.
Horrific, insane, moronic. The idea that he should share in the experience as note by several earlier commenters is a very good one.
On a much needed lighter side of NDEs is Connie Willis’ Passage. Good writer.
Fuck. I can’t even cope with really, truly thinking about this. Can only hope that this man is never, ever able to get anywhere near any vulnerable person again. And that the children are found a loving home with people capable of helping them recover from this horrendous abuse, and never have to have any contact whatsoever with their abusers/their abuser and their either cowed or complicit parent.
He waterboarded his own daughter?! What a sick fuckhead! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!! Where’s CPS when they’re really needed?
And as much as I dislike Sam Harris, I think it’s inappropriate to drag his name into this, unless he weighs into the issue himself. Let’s stick to the real culprit here, shall we?
Fuuuuuuck.
Depressing thought, from what I see in the article, there are independent witnesses only to spanking.
Only the child, the shitstain, and the mother witnessed waterboarding.
Expect a “willful child” defense, they only ever spanked her, she is lying about the waterboarding etc… And a jury might even buy it. With full support from advocates of corporal punishment.
Unless the mother flips and testifies… In which case the defense claims mother and daughter cooked it up in order to soak him in a divorce. MRA’s jump in to defend him etc…
About the only way this asshole is sure to be convicted is if it was part of his “research” and he took notes or recorded the sessions, and the police find that evidence.
I believe every advocate of torture should undergo the same treatments he advocates – to the limit of actual physical damage. This would shut those arseholes right up, and really give him 1st hand experience.
Actually, I suspect most of the people who advocate torture would wear their own torture as a badge of honor, use it as proof that they’re tougher than the peacepussies, and loudly assert that they’ve EARNED the right to keep on advocating torture (and then, of course, deny it’s torture, it’s nothing if you’re man enough to handle it, which we Americans are and our effeminate cowardly terrorist raghead enemies aren’t).
Seriously, if you think torture will have a positive effect here, then you’re making the same mistake as the torture-advocates are.
Horrible news. I saw it elsewhere some hours ago. There’s no excuse for this kind of behavior.
Ok, everyone in the thread about the letter to the gay son and whether or not love is unconditional, you’ve won. If my kid did something like this to my grandkid, I’d be hard pressed to feel the same about her. I’d also wonder how the fuck I raised such a psycho, but that’s a different issue. Yuck. Just…yuck. I don’t advocate torturing Morse, but I do think he needs to be gotten out of society and into a maximum secruity prison, for the rest of his life. He’s just broken beyond repair as a human being.
I suspect most of the people who advocate torture would wear their own torture as a badge of honor, use it as proof that they’re tougher than the peacepussies, and loudly assert that they’ve EARNED the right to keep on advocating torture (and then, of course, deny it’s torture, it’s nothing if you’re man enough to handle it
And if they can’t “handle it” (whatever that means in this context), they’ll have a million excuses for why it was horrible for THEM, but not so bad for other people. Their inability to resist would be evidence of their being special flowers, others’ inability would be evidence of their being wimps.
“Seriously, if you think torture will have a positive effect here, then you’re making the same mistake as the torture-advocates are.”
You could be right, but how to teach someone that interrogation though torture is worthless, and that under torture you will say anything in the end to make the pain stop.
I am not talking about those who advocate torture at the coffee table to experience it, I am talking about the lawgivers and opinion makers to experience it, so they really know what they are talking about. That where Hitchens put his pain where his mouth was.
Some of those like Harris, who contemplate the advisability of torture, would imho benefit to be driven to the edge of personal endurance to the state where he starts pleading with the interrogator – then there will be no badge of honour, just the knowledge that your spirit can be broken quite easily and that you have lost in this contest – as with only a few exceptions the vast majority will.
“to be driven to the edge of personal endurance”
actually, to beyond. And that can be done without physical damage to your body.
@58: The dragging the child across the driveway by her ankle was witnessed. But even that might not convince the right jury.
What a nightmare.
Mormons are neck deep in NDE woo. See http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=2&num=1&id=16 This paper, “Nigh unto Death”: NDE Research and the Book of Mormon, lauds the work of Melvin Morse.
Carolyn Jessop testified about fundamentalist mormons who disciplined children with the “waterboarding” technique Melvin Morse used.
Link.
So just what is Melvin Morse’s religious affiliation?
@Lynna- Wow. The paper you linked to is scary.
Morse is clearly into erotic asphyxiation (not auto-erotic, obviously,) and hiding his abusive pedophilia behind the veneer of paranormal or “spiritual” research. I hope he loses whatever medical licenses he has.
This faucet waterboarding of children is part of fundie xian’s toolkit of physical abuse to “train up the child” and “break their spirit”, as Lynna noted in msg. #67.
I suppose they assume children are like horses or dogs and need to be broke and trained. Although I would treat an animal like they treat their kids.
It can be fatal. In the last few years, at least three children have died of fundie xian torture murder. Cthulhu knows how many have been permanently mentally scarred for life.
And of course. Did you know all morality comes from god and jesus loves you? Yeah, I’ve never seen it either.
Should be, Although I would not treat an animal like they treat their kids.
I forgot “Preview” is your friend. Really, I’m not a xian.
Fuck everything about this. Why is it the people who think such supposedly high-minded things do such awful things?!
This person, if he actually is a Spiritist and not just some demented researcher, should know that HIS afterlife will be unpleasant for a good long while thanks to this. According to the woo I’m guessing he subscribes to, he’s going to be tormented with the appearance of his daughter (even if she’s not dead; spirit world has no barriers to one’s conscience) for years to decades to centuries until he truly realizes the errors of his ways, and may need to reincarnate or spend a long time in a type of spirit remediation.
Seems a long way to go for research, doesn’t it Doc? The fact that he’s a pediatrician makes this an order of magnitude worse, as he’s trusted to care for and heal the most vulnerable young ones, exactly like his abused stepdaughter.
First the blogs on TF, and now this. The internet is making me very sad today. I need to go away and sit in the sun or hug somebody.
Having been taught to smim by a father who did the “drop the kid in water deeper than she is tall but where I can stand, then fish her out and scream at her for a couple seconds and submerge her again” method, I am horrified that people actually advocate water boarding their children as discipline, My inner Walton is having some trouble keeping my baser impulses from making themselves heard…
The worst part of my torture was that it was witnessed by community members among whom I still live, and not a single person said or did a thing despite my screaming and begging for it to stop. It’s been more than 40 years, but I still hate getting my face wet, even in a shower.
Swim, dammit. Preview, even when it hurts…
I’m just… going to go over there and try desperately to forget I even read this. Wow.
Holy shit this is fucked up. Poor kid.
I was recently extremely irritated by an episode of Criminal Minds (Series 7, Episode 7) in which super-genius and rationalist Spencer Reid claimed he had no explanation for the manifestations he experienced while suffering a Near Death Experience.
Why must these hard-science-evidence-based (ish, I appreciate this is fiction) shows flirt with woo on a regular basis? It’s very annoying.
They’ve done it before in Criminal Minds: they had a psychic who apparently was actually able to give them an important clue in a case.
Ugh, I know what you mean, Skimble. Of course, bear in mind that on TV shows, writers can vary greatly, which is why not every single episode of Star Trek: TNG is worth watching.
Yes indeed. I suppose I just hope for a bit more editorial consistency in the themes tackled. This was particularly egregious because it was so out of character for Spencer Reid.
@68:
He has had his license suspended in his current state (Delaware). His Washington license had lapsed before he moved.
He used to be Shadowling’s doctor before he left his Washington practice. When we were taking “The Kid” in for checkups, Morse had been fairly well regarded.