The Cult of Little Audrey Santo: Victim Soul or Fraud?

[nausicaa]

Just now, Howl said:

These are called lachrymatory bottles, unguentaria, or unguentarium, among other things.  Creepy indeed.  Over the years, has it become clearer why your mom was so attracted to this?

My mom can be a bit naive. And that's an understatement. And while she isn't particularly conservative (she's essentially pro-choice, definitely pro-birth control) she has this sort of knee jerk reaction to anything in the Church being "good" and something to aspire to. So while she doesn't cover her head in church, if she sees another woman doing it she thinks how wonderful that woman must be and if only my mom could be more like her.

I guarantee the idea that this could be a scam did not enter into her head. 

[violynn]

9 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

The discussion on how Mother Angelica actively wanted to suffer in her last moments on earth got me thinking about this case, which I don't think has been discussed before. Audrey Santo was a young woman who died in 2007, almost twenty years after she fell into a swimming pool as a young child and suffered severe brain damage. That alone is a tragic story, but there's more to it, in that her mother claims that Audrey became a "victim soul," who suffered on behalf of the world's sinners, and was capable of working miracles for others even though she couldn't heal herself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Santo

http://www.littleaudreysantofoundation.com/ (Official website, including the drive to have her canonized)

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/miracles_or_deception_the_pathetic_case_of_audrey_santo (Skeptical Inquiry's take)

I'll say right off that I think this whole "victim soul" routine was a pious fraud on the part of Santo's mother. I don't think Linda Santo was/is actively trying to scam people so much as she was projecting her own religious beliefs on her daughter to make sense of the tragedy that had befallen her. She probably does think her daughter was a miracle worker who brought people closer to god, even if she or some other family member was the one faking the weeping statues and pictures. The way in which Audrey was treated during her lifetime was grotesque, especially having the window cut into her room so pilgrims could gawk at her, and having her wheeled out into the stadium with 10,000 onlookers. Treating a disabled person with dignity doesn't mean turning them into a sideshow display. The whole idea of a "victim soul," which isn't found in mainstream Catholic theology, is also grotesque, and makes god out to be a sadist who enjoys torturing sick children. At least the Catholic hierarchy hasn't endorsed the Little Audrey cult, and hopefully she won't be canonized, because this sends all kind of wrong messages on a variety of issues.

 

Here I go down a new rabbit hole, so truly, thank you @Cleopatra7.  You bring so many topics to my attention, and your views on so many issues are so reasoned and well thought out.  I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate what you bring to the FJ experience.

[Antimony]

So, the oils were tested for their content. On the website set up by her parents, they have testimony from Bugoslaw Lipinski.

He says he works at Joslin Diabetes Center and publications indicated this is true. He does, also though, have a Retraction Watch citation (http://retractionwatch.com/2014/02/11/blood-retracts-two-red-cell-illustrations-that-could-have-misled-readers/) and no longer seems affliated with Joslin Diabetes Center.

AND HE WAS ON ANCIENT ALIENS.

[nausicaa]

45 minutes ago, violynn said:

Here I go down a new rabbit hole, so truly, thank you @Cleopatra7.  You bring so many topics to my attention, and your views on so many issues are so reasoned and well thought out.  I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate what you bring to the FJ experience.

Seconded. I'm kind of a @Cleopatra7 fangirl. 

[Koala]

7 hours ago, lilwriter85 said:

Unsolved Mysteries did a segment on her and the claims about the oils from the statues healing other people. 

There's a blast from the past.  I remember watching Unsolved Mysteries and Rescue 911.

Oh- and I am squarely in the "what a crock" camp on the original topic.  What they did to that little girl was criminal.

[Rowan]

This reminded me of a book I read in one of my history classes in college. No idea what the book was (it was very difficult to read), but it was about the concept of the lamed-vavs, the holy Jewish men who bear the suffering of the people. There was this whole thing about the specific number and they weren't to recognize each other but deal with it alone their entire lives. What I remember doesn't really match up with here, but I think the book I read was The Last of the Just, which is mentioned at the bottom.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzadikim_Nistarim

 

The idea reminded me a little of the insistence of Audrey's mom that she was a victim soul and what that entails. 

[Ungodly Grandma]

7 hours ago, Four is Enough said:

I'm a cradle catholic and I've never heard the term "victim soul" until now.

I never heard of it either. This reminds me more of the term scapegoat.

[violynn]

So I'm a little confused by this victim soul concept being applied to this comatose little girl.  Her mother is claiming her 4 yo willingly volunteered to suffer for others benefit...so were all those who came asking for Audrey's intercession and healing willfully placing their suffering on to this child's shoulders in hopes of healing!?  That's beyond f'ed up.

[violynn]

I was looking at Audrey's website:  it says Audrey's coma was caused by a doctor giving her too much phenobarbitol, and that a physical therapist broke her legs and dislocated her shoulder?  The hell?!  How is that not mentioned in any of the articles?

[Khan]

Wtf?  It's been many moons since I attended a mass but didn't JESUS suffer and die for their sins already? Why would the Virgin Mary ask some comatose 4 year old to suffer for the sake of others?  This smells like a way to get money to pay for medical care and other expenses that ballooned insanely. 

I must admit, though, with the Catholic ideas of suffering for your faith it must appeal to the mother.  A purpose for her daughter's loss instead of just Tragedy Happens when you leave small children unattended by a pool.

[DaffyDill]

5 hours ago, NeverAFundie said:

And even waaaaaay longer.  Mother Teresa died in 1997; almost 20 years ago.  The Vatican recently announced that they have JUST "recognized" her required "second miracle," and her official canonization is scheduled for September.  And this is Mother Effing Teresa we're talking about. 

It takes a loooong time to become a saint. We had a nun in Australia, Mother Mary MacKillop, who founded the Order of Josephite nuns. She's admirable, even though I am not remotely religious or Catholic, because she and her nuns took vows of poverty, and dedicated themselves to educating the poor of Australia. 

Mother Mary died in 1909, and in 1925 the Josephites began the process to have her declared a saint. She was beatified in 1995, and canonised in 2010. So it took 85 years. Can't accuse the Catholic Church of acting hastily on that one.

[Antimony]

1 hour ago, violynn said:

I was looking at Audrey's website:  it says Audrey's coma was caused by a doctor giving her too much phenobarbitol, and that a physical therapist broke her legs and dislocated her shoulder?  The hell?!  How is that not mentioned in any of the articles?

Probably because almost anything that her mother said happened, didn't actually happen or at least not as she said. Some accounts I looked at say her legs were broken after the vision/apparitions, some say before. Nobody observed this physiotherapist break both legs -- they only brought her in weeks later to discover the legs were broken. The phenobarbitol thing could be true (an overdose could cause a coma) but the lawsuit was dismissed. Phenobarbitol, though, by itself is unlikely to be the cause of suck profound brain damage -- an overdose mimics brain damage but is reversible. 

Wikipedia said that she took only wafers orally. However, the source they link to only ever says that the mother takes those wafers into the house to her. No suggestion that anybody ever saw Audrey swallow one. (Doubtful she could swallow, and it would be extremely dangerous to try to mouth feed somebody who can't swallow. I have no doubt the mother took that wafer and ate it herself, or dropped her own blood on it whilst oiling her knick knacks.)

The whole thing is so strange to me because prior to this, the mother seems to have been by all accounts I can find, pretty normal. And then she's (as far as I'm concerned), collecting human blood to brush on wafers and oilings her knick knacks. (One report says even the tacky ones ooze oil --- Christ does not discriminate!)

The only themes that are consistent are
1) The Doctors are always Wrong and cannot do Anything Right and the family is more Caring and more Godly
2) Nobody ever saw anything start to ooze oil or blood but you have to believe on Faith (or...just....cause.) 

[Bethella]

11 minutes ago, DaffyDill said:

It takes a loooong time to become a saint. We had a nun in Australia, Mother Mary MacKillop, who founded the Order of Josephite nuns. She's admirable, even though I am not remotely religious or Catholic, because she and her nuns took vows of poverty, and dedicated themselves to educating the poor of Australia. 

Mother Mary died in 1909, and in 1925 the Josephites began the process to have her declared a saint. She was beatified in 1995, and canonised in 2010. So it took 85 years. Can't accuse the Catholic Church of acting hastily on that one.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) took 785 years! They began the canonization process in 1227 and she was referred to as St. Hildegard for centuries but it wasn't until 2012 that she was officially canonized by Benedict. Hildegard was an interesting woman- she would chastise the powerful men of her time, including a couple of popes and Henry II of England, saying that God was telling her to pass the message along. I wrote a major research paper on her in college.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen#Beatification.2C_canonization_and_recognition_as_a_Doctor_of_the_Church

http://www.abtei-st-hildegard.de/?p=3902

[Cleopatra7]

3 hours ago, Antimony said:

So, the oils were tested for their content. On the website set up by her parents, they have testimony from Bugoslaw Lipinski.

He says he works at Joslin Diabetes Center and publications indicated this is true. He does, also though, have a Retraction Watch citation (http://retractionwatch.com/2014/02/11/blood-retracts-two-red-cell-illustrations-that-could-have-misled-readers/) and no longer seems affliated with Joslin Diabetes Center.

AND HE WAS ON ANCIENT ALIENS.

Scientists and doctors aren't always the best people to investigate supposedly paranormal happenings, because they tend to take what they see at face value (although Lipinkski sounds rather sketchy independent of the Audrey Santo connection). Magicians who are skilled in the arts of deception and sleigh of hand are better at detecting these sorts of fakes. Joe Nickell, the author of the Skeptical Inquiry piece I linked to has a magic background and does a lot of paranormal investigating, and I would recommend his books if you want to learn how "miracles" are faked.

[Antimony]

Just now, Cleopatra7 said:

Scientists and doctors aren't always the best people to investigate supposedly paranormal happenings, because they tend to take what they see at face value (although Lipinkski sounds rather sketchy independent of the Audrey Santo connection). Magicians who are skilled in the arts of deception and sleigh of hand are better at detecting these sorts of fakes. Joe Nickell, the author of the Skeptical Inquiry piece I linked to has a magic background and does a lot of paranormal investigating.

Oh, I'm 100% certain he's sketchy. He's devout (so he's already biased) and his information appears to tend to be unreliable. I'm a chemist and his assessment of what he saw immediately struck me as unreliable. (I also believe it's possible he was financially coerced.) It looks like he used to do good work and has since fallen off. 

Also, well aware that I'm starting to veer into Expert in Everything Terriority, but before I was a chemist, I was a magicians assistant! (High school and early college gig.) Me and my co-worker loved Penn & Teller and their Bullshit! is where I first heard about this case. (Also I swear having this one my resume got me at least one summer job because the interview for that opened with, "We just have to ask about this magician's assistant thing on your resume...")

[NachosFlandersStyle]

3 hours ago, Khan said:

 

I must admit, though, with the Catholic ideas of suffering for your faith it must appeal to the mother.  A purpose for her daughter's loss instead of just Tragedy Happens when you leave small children unattended by a pool.

I think this is right on. A lot of the Victim Soul rhetoric involves reliving the passion or becoming like Christ. It's kind of touching that a pious Catholic can consider the quiet and banal sufferings in their own life to be linked to a more cosmic and transformational kind of struggle. But of course that would probably be best accomplished in private contemplation, and not as a media hustle that you drag a severely disabled child through.

[Johanna25]

I think a lot of young adolescents go through a super-religious phase, especially if you were brought up Catholic and have heard all the tales of holy saints and martyrs. I know I did. I remember reading Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and recognizing young Stephan Dedalus's fervent Catholicism as something I'd gone through. 

Young men and women in earlier times no doubt went through similar things and some of them got caught up in it permanently. Some of the young women were our earliest anorectics.

 

[Inthemadhouse]

That poor child.  I have to say, though, I'm not surprised about the broken legs/dislocated shoulder.  We had a family member suffer birth trauma and severe brain damage, ending up in a state that seems similar to Little Audrey.  As she aged and her body grew more deformed (despite the best efforts of her parents and a team of physical therapists), she too suffered broken bones. 
Her femur, the strongest bone in the body snapped in half as she was being lifted from her bed for a bath.  This happened on camera, and there was no suggestion of any wrong doing by her nurse.
Once the brain is that severely damaged, the body becomes very fragile.  And if the child  can not communicate that they are in pain, the break can go unnoticed.

[samira_catlover]

OK, in a pinch, I can accept that folks (any faith) might support the cause of someone who they thought had Saintly Qualities. (You know: majored in charity and compassion, did a lot about forgiveness in the face of evil, who stood up for their particular beliefs, etc.) We can definitely USE great role models, IMNSHO.

At the risk of being all contrarian and revolutionary: may I politely suggest that there are a whole LOT of unrecognized saints/holy people (all denominations)? You know, folks who worked for peace and justice, people who wanted to share the love of the Deity, who actually READ Micah 6:8 and believed it?

[Terrie]

I've always had a hard time with this idea that religious suffering is somehow special. Okay, so Jesus suffered and died. So did the two guys crucified along with him. And all the people crucified on other occasions. And people who died horribly in other ways. 

I suppose there's a reason I call myself agnostic.

[Cleopatra7]

3 hours ago, Inthemadhouse said:

That poor child.  I have to say, though, I'm not surprised about the broken legs/dislocated shoulder.  We had a family member suffer birth trauma and severe brain damage, ending up in a state that seems similar to Little Audrey.  As she aged and her body grew more deformed (despite the best efforts of her parents and a team of physical therapists), she too suffered broken bones. 
Her femur, the strongest bone in the body snapped in half as she was being lifted from her bed for a bath.  This happened on camera, and there was no suggestion of any wrong doing by her nurse.
Once the brain is that severely damaged, the body becomes very fragile.  And if the child  can not communicate that they are in pain, the break can go unnoticed.

Something that surprised me when I read Teri Schiavo's autopsy last week was how almost every part of her body was compromised in some way, from her bones to her reproductive system to her other vital organs. She got pretty good care, but the body is simply not meant to bedridden and supported by machines for years and years. Since the patient can't speak, it's difficult for doctors and caretakers to know that problems exist.

[Jingerbread]

On 4/12/2016 at 7:58 AM, nausicaa said:

On the little Audrey site they have a gift shop and all proceeds go towards funding her canonization process. There's also a full size brick and mortar gift shop. 

Some of the things in the shop are creepy.  A rosary that was placed in her room.  A candle that they'll light for you with her face on it.  Funeral images.

You can also request some oil from crying paintings.  This is free.

http://www.littleaudreysantofoundation.com/request-mystery-oil/

21 hours ago, bea said:

Believe it or not, my father's second cousin was one of these quasi-saints. She died when she was 10, from leukemia, and my father's aunt (a religious fanatic) began a drive to have her canonized as a saint. Her parents did not support this drive, but a local order of Catholic priests became involved and the petition made it all the way to Rome. This was in the forties, when people were more willing to believe this sort of thing.

Anyway, in order for the petition to go any further, they had to verify that her body had not decomposed, for some reason. Despite her mother's objections, the order of priests and the local Bishop prevailed, and my father's cousin Jane was disinterred. I don't know what they found. The family claims that her body was not decomposed, but who knows what the actual situation was. The one that verifiable thing that happened is that Jane's mother spent the rest of her life in a mental institution, unable to get over the fact that her daughter had been dug up under the coffin opened. My father told me that Loretta, Jane's mother, was unable to get the sound of the dirt sliding off the coffin out of her head for the rest of her life.

So, hey, that's creepy. Anyway, this sort of story is not actually all that unusual. What's unusual is that it is happening right now, and not in the thirties or forties.

So the process she started ultimately drove her to literal insanity.  Wow.

[season of life]

This is so creepy and disturbing. I get that some people grieve in different ways, but I can barely begin to fathom the idea of putting out your child for the world to gawk at. I am suspicious of all those claims of blood and miracles as well.

[Rubaiyat]

18 hours ago, Antimony said:

So, the oils were tested for their content. On the website set up by her parents, they have testimony from Bugoslaw Lipinski.

AND HE WAS ON ANCIENT ALIENS.

To the bolded: THIS!  This is the single best thing I've read all day.  Now I need to finish the kids' school, and pack them off to play in the great outdoors so I can watch me some Ancient Aliens.  Did you know that the pyramids made part of an ANCIENT INTERNET!??!  It might even have been interplanetary!!!!  I'd say you can't make this shit up, but clearly, you totally can.  

Bless you, excellent poster.  You have made my day.  

[anjulibai]

15 hours ago, Antimony said:

Probably because almost anything that her mother said happened, didn't actually happen or at least not as she said. Some accounts I looked at say her legs were broken after the vision/apparitions, some say before. Nobody observed this physiotherapist break both legs -- they only brought her in weeks later to discover the legs were broken. The phenobarbitol thing could be true (an overdose could cause a coma) but the lawsuit was dismissed. Phenobarbitol, though, by itself is unlikely to be the cause of suck profound brain damage -- an overdose mimics brain damage but is reversible. 

Wikipedia said that she took only wafers orally. However, the source they link to only ever says that the mother takes those wafers into the house to her. No suggestion that anybody ever saw Audrey swallow one. (Doubtful she could swallow, and it would be extremely dangerous to try to mouth feed somebody who can't swallow. I have no doubt the mother took that wafer and ate it herself, or dropped her own blood on it whilst oiling her knick knacks.)

The whole thing is so strange to me because prior to this, the mother seems to have been by all accounts I can find, pretty normal. And then she's (as far as I'm concerned), collecting human blood to brush on wafers and oilings her knick knacks. (One report says even the tacky ones ooze oil --- Christ does not discriminate!)

The only themes that are consistent are
1) The Doctors are always Wrong and cannot do Anything Right and the family is more Caring and more Godly
2) Nobody ever saw anything start to ooze oil or blood but you have to believe on Faith (or...just....cause.) 

Guilt made her irrational, is my guess. She let her 3 year old be outside without supervision, near an uncovered pool. She probably felt like the whole thing was her fault.

She had to find a way to justify the whole thing, so she turned to religion and things snowballed. 

I imagine the father leaving for a time didn't help, either.