蜜芽传媒

The promise of healing

Documentary maker Grace Hughes-Hallett has been investigating what these women told her about Anne Craig, who described herself as a personal development coach, but who appears to have been offering something different - “the promise of healing”.

With normal therapists, Grace explains, “You trust them to help guide you through the labyrinth of your own mind and experiences, and in the end, you hope you might emerge changed for the better.

“But with what Sarah was telling me about her daughter, the relationship between client and healer sounded very different.”

Fipsi, a friend of Sarah’s daughter, had a similar experience with Anne Craig. They first became aware of each other in Florence in the mid-2000s. Fipsi was studying at a painting school and Anne Craig’s daughter was taking a different course.

“Friends of mine had been recommended [Anne Craig’s] services, if you will, by her daughter,” she says. “Anne Craig, was a sort of healer-slash-counselor. From what I heard, it was all positive: ‘She's amazing. She's spiritual, and she can see things in us which we can't even see in ourselves’. It sounded magical and alluring.”

After leaving Florence and returning to her family home in London, Anne Craig took a very deliberate step into Fipsi’s life. At the time, Fipsi was struggling with her sexuality, trying to convince herself that she was straight, but the feelings were becoming harder to push down. Fipsi knew she needed help.

A friend of Fipsi’s was seeing Anne Craig, who in one of her healing sessions mentioned Fipsi. She was worried about her, and Anne listened. Then, Anne apparently had a dream about Fipsi, and Anne told the friend to pass the message on about the dream. And so Fipsi decided to pay her a visit.

The pink room

In 2009, Fipsi travelled to Camberwell in south London for her first appointment in a smart-looking townhouse. She was greeted by a tall, slim, neatly dressed Irish woman with coiffed hair. Fipsi remembers big brown eyes and a warm, motherly presence when they went inside.

She took Fipsi upstairs to her therapy room. The walls were a soft, muted pink. They began to talk mostly about Fipsi’s background. The session lasted several hours, but it wasn't typical talking therapy.

“She told me she worked with the spirit world, and that she could see words floating above her clients’ heads that would be prompts for her from the spirit world, and inform what we would be speaking about. For example, it was not unusual for her to fix me with those big brown eyes and say, ‘Today we're going to talk about your mother, Fipsi’. And that was it.

“The first time I left Anne Craig's house, I felt a sense of hope and joy that I hadn't felt for ages,” Fispi says. “I thought, when I'm ready, this woman is going to be the person I tell everything to, and I cannot wait.”

Fipsi’s secret

Soon, they were seeing each other every couple of weeks.

“We would talk for at least two hours, while I would scribble onto this very large bit of paper. She would have me use my left hand, even though I'm right handed, because [the left hand is] connected directly to the heart. And she would prompt me with questions: what do you think your father thinks of this, Fipsi? Or do you remember anything in your early life about this, Fipsi?”

After the sessions, the healing continued. Anne told Fipsi, “You will email me your dreams in between [sessions]. If you have 30 dreams a night, you tell them all to me.”

Whatever the dream or whatever Fipsi wrote down, Anne always had concerns. “The sessions were always about the trauma that members of my family would be carrying in their DNA, like all humans in the whole world. This was her ethos. My family, like everybody, was carrying darkness in their DNA. And so the endless aim was to try and unburden ourselves from this trapped trauma.”

“I must have spent about 12 hours with her when I finally felt safe enough to reveal to her that I was struggling with my sexuality.”

Fipsi told Anne her secret that she was struggling to understand her feelings. “She was completely calm and kind, entirely unjudgmental. She could probably tell this was a really big deal for me.”

Eventually, Anne told Fipsi, “you're not gay”, and presented Fipsi with an alternative theory for why she might be questioning her sexuality. “She started to suggest in our sessions that I might be the victim of sexual abuse. I would say, from that moment on was really the beginning of the brainwashing into her entire belief system.”

The investigation begins

In 2016, a story about young women who had gone missing from their families landed on the desk of Mick Brown, a journalist at The Daily Telegraph. Mick decided to investigate further, and he ended up interviewing Anne, her clients and their families, who were making serious allegations about Anne.

They alleged that in the course of these sessions, Anne Craig was implanting false memories of these girls having been abused. Two of the girls ended up accusing their parents of having sexually abused them. The girls had cut themselves off from their families and friends, with completely disastrous consequences.

In the past, Anne Craig has issued categorical denials of any wrongdoing. She has denied responsibility for mentally abusing or psychologically manipulating clients. She has said she is the victim of a campaign of harassment.

The investigation unfolded over years. Fipsi was not the only one, but for every woman, their story always started the same way – in that soft pink room in Anne Craig's house.

To hear the full story, listen to Dangerous Memories on 蜜芽传媒 Sounds.