US abduction video: Amanda Berry's mother and the fraudulent psychic
By Jake Wallis Simons World Last updated: May 8th, 2013
Amanda Berry's mother, Louwanna Miller
The strangest aspect of the very strange story of Amanda Berry, the abducted woman who freed herself and her fellow prisoners after a decade of incarceration, involves an unpleasant character called Sylvia Browne. This woman is a television psychic, paranormal radio host and author, and was a regular on the Montel Williams Show for 10 years around the turn of the millennium. She also happens to have been convicted of fraud and theft.
It will come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that Ms Browne has developed something of a reputation as a charlatan. So inaccurate have her psychic messages become that one YouTuber made a short, somewhat amateurish video about it. The user appears to see the funny side: personally, I find it difficult to raise a smile. The people she is dealing with are clearly in terrible distress, and her laissez faire treatment of them is appalling. Judge for yourself; here is the video:
The extent of the seriousness of her behaviour is apparent from a second video, below. It follows the case of Terri Pflanz, whose son Mark was fighting cancer. She attended one of Browne's live shows, and laid her soul bare, asking for a prediction.
"What I want to know," she asked, "is there any way they will be able to save him?" Without hesitation, the psychic replied: "Yeah, they will save him".
She went on to advise the woman to leave her son at the hospital, rather than taking him home to die with palliative care. In that way, she said, he would "start regaining strength even at the end of this month". In a breathtaking show of arrogance, she added: "I don't give a damn what the doctors say. Your son will survive."
Two days later, Mark passed away. He had died in the hospital, not at home, as he had wanted.
Despite repeated examples of this throughout her career, Browne continued to be given a slot on prime-time television. Which brings me to Amanda Berry.
In 2004, Amanda's mother, Louwanna Miller, appeared on the Montel Williams Show to ask Browne whether her daughter was alive or dead. "She's not alive, honey," came the psychic's response. "Your daughter's not the kind who wouldn't call."
Two years later, Mrs Miller – who told a newspaper that she believed Ms Browne "98 per cent" – died of heart failure. Her absence yesterday, when her daughter finally gained her freedom, is one of the most tragic and ironic parts of the story. At the time of writing, Sylvia Browne has not commented on her tragically mistaken prediction.
It gets worse. Amazingly, Ms Browne did almost precisely the same thing in 2003. After teenager Shawn Hornbeck disappeared, the psychic told his parents that he was dead. Speaking again on the Montel Williams Show, she claimed that his body could be found near "two jagged boulders". Four years later he was found alive, and Browne was widely criticised for the heartache she caused. Yet in spite of all this, and in spite of a website dedicated to stopping Sylvia Brown, she was continually offered airtime.
Quite self-evidently, parents of missing children are among the most vulnerable people in society. The fact that a fraudulent psychic was allowed to take advantage of them, and people in similar states of distress, for so many years, in full view of the public, is inexcusable. It speaks volumes about how in modern society, popular appeal has been allowed to ride roughshod over moral principle.
One can only hope that this high-profile case will finally mark the end of Sylvia Browne's horrid career, and create a greater vigilance against her kind in the future.
US abduction video: Amanda Berry's mother and the fraudulent psychic – Telegraph Blogs
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jakew ... t-psychic/
Silvia Brown Victim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... _sdyTZU_nI
Amanda Berry Silvia Brown Wrong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 9WvBxOBkrc
Psychic Sylvia Browne Wrongly Tells Missing Boy's Parents He's Dead - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... yzz8vaZgE8
Sylvia Browne Fraud Montage - World's Worst Psychic - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... KyzBe0CA2Q 