Psychics may face regulations that help tell which is witch
POSSIBLY they saw it coming, but after decades of lenient regulation,
British mediums, psychics and healers will this month find themselves
subject to tougher consumer protection laws. These laws leave them
open to legal action if they don't provide a series of disclaimers
before performing their services. Motivated by concerns that some
spiritualists prey on the vulnerable, inducing or prolonging
emotional suffering, Australian sceptics are calling for a similar
toughening of legislation here. Seventy people have contacted
Consumer Affairs Victoria over the past year seeking advice or
lodging complaints about psychics, clairvoyants and fortune tellers.
Lynne Kelly, Melbourne author of The Skeptics Guide to the
Paranormal, says regulating spiritualists is difficult, but the
damage they may do, intentionally or unwittingly, can be immense.
"Psychics say they're helping by bringing closure, but often they're
keeping the wound open," says Kelly, who practises the faux-psychic
art of Tauromancy, pretending to read fortunes from sticks and
trinkets, but in fact basing her statements on the way customers
respond to her questions. She cites a recent example of a Hurstbridge
woman whose husband had committed suicide. "For two years she paid
$80 a week to a medium who claimed to be contacting her husband.
Every single thing that happened to her, she took to be some sort of
sign from him, and she was unable to have any physical contact in a
new relationship." In the case of the Beaumont children, who
disappeared in Adelaide in 1966, Dutch clairvoyant Gerard Croiset
famously offered his services to help locate their bodies. Twenty
years after his psychic pronouncements, his followers were still
excavating a factory site in Adelaide that he nominated, but still
the children's bodies were not found.
Don Spiers, whose daughter Sarah disappeared in Perth in 1996, has
also complained about the pain clairvoyants caused. "They have been a
huge torment to myself and my family in giving cryptic clues as to
where Sarah might be," he told the ABC's Australian Story. Nicholas
Johnson, a Melbourne sceptic who, like Kelly, specialises in
imitating psychic powers to show how easily people can be tricked,
says psychics should be able to prove they can perform the services
they claim �?or admit that they're merely offering entertainment. "If
I offered to do a job and charged $100, and then didn't do the job,
you'd feel you'd been scammed. What we need is legislation that makes
it clear psychics are providing an entertainment, like fortune
cookies." Spiritualists provide a degree of self-regulation. The
Australian Psychics Association has a seven-point code of ethics,
including a requirement that "at no time should professional members
promise to be 100% accurate" and stipulating that the association
will not tolerate any members asking for exorbitant sums in return
for services that fall outside the normal psychic advice.
Natasha Watkins, vice-president of the Tarot Guild of Australia, says
members of her guild go through an extensive accreditation
process. "They have to do several readings before professional
committee members, and fill out a paper on our code of ethics, which
is very strong." Terry Kelly, president of the Victorian Skeptics,
says that self-regulation is inadequate. "I'm a social worker, I've
done a lot of grief and loss counselling and run grief and loss
groups. You get people who go off to see these psychics who claim to
be speaking directly to the dead person. There are plenty of tricks
the psychics can use, and the result is that the grieving person
isn't actually dealing with the death at all." Kelly says the bottom
line is that if psychics can speak to the dead, why has nobody
claimed the $110,000 prize offered in Australia and the $US1 million
($A1.07 million) that James Randi is offering in the US, to anybody
whose psychic claims can stand rigorous scientific testing?
Psychic laws, though, can be slow to change. The British Fraudulent
Mediums Act of 1951, being repealed this month, superseded the
Witchcraft Act, which was drafted into law in 1735. Consumer Affairs
Victoria advises that consumers are protected by the Fair Trading Act
1999, which applies to all Victorian traders, including those
providing psychic and occult services, and says the Government has no
plans to introduce new regulations |
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