I am a victim of Dr. Martha Welch's child psychological experiments in autism

 

I am a victim of Dr. Martha Welch (descended from the Welch's grape juice dynasty) and her child psychological experiments, see her Wikipedia article (here).  Welch is a child psychiatrist obssessed with autism.  In the 1980s my mother gave birth to me and my older brother who is non-verbal autistic.  My parents were desperate to cure my brother of autism and Marth Welch said she had the cure.  Welch convinced my parents that I too had some sort of emotional disorders at the age of 4 or 5 and so that she could help them with me too... maybe I too was mildly autistic. 

What was this cure for children with autism?  We were brought frequently to a private house in Greenwich, Connecticut where we would recieve treatment.  What I experienced there was the most disgusting form of psychological experimentation on children I have ever witnessed.  In 1988 Welch published a book called "Holding Time" in which she taught that parental touch and eye contact could help autistic children.  While this sounds benign, in practice is was abominable. 

Here is what I had to go through under Dr. Welch's direction.  Many parents and their children would arrive at the private house in the morning.  We were all brought into a small room.  At this time, the children were laid down on the floor and the parents would lay on top of the very young children with all of their weight in what seemed like a sexual position, crotch to crotch.  Our parents would wrap their arms and legs around us tight so we were immobilized.  This would cause great discomfort to the children.  Then we would be tormented.  Our parents would stick their fingers in between our ribs and stroke our hair so hard that it hurt.  They would lay with their heavy bodies on us so hard it was hard to breathe and we felt suffocated, they would hold us extremely tight so as to hurt us, they would grab our small hands much too hard to cause pain. The point of holding therapy is to cause extreme agitation in the child so that they have an emotional reaction, how this helps autism I have no idea.  

But it gets worse.  These sessions of torture would last about an hour.  In that period our parents would scream in our faces and we had to scream back into our parent's faces that we hated them.  I was 5 years old, I did not hate my mother.  We would have to admit to harboring all kinds of horrible emotions which we simply did not have.  All the children would be screaming and crying the whole hour, and over us would be Dr. Welch standing there with her hands on her hips surveying the entire thing.  Afterward, we were released and there was a calm down period.  Then Dr. Welch and another man would feed us all popcorn. 

Obviously, I hated these sessions and was terrified of them.  This was not helping me or my brother.  This was psychological experimentation on children.  I will be honest, people have told me that this was part of a larger program.  I would not be surprised as Dr. Marth Welch is now Professor of Psychiatry in Pediatrics and in Pathology & Cell Biology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and gets large government grants to study the links between autism and gut bacteria.  Some people say she works for government agencies who are interested in the special abilities that some autistics have.  Whatever the case, Marth Welch really hurt me and my relationship with my family and she does not deserve to be so highly praised and paid by the government and Columbia University.