On Witness Intimidation - The Debunkers' Basic Weapon by Budd Hopkins

After decades of dealing with debunkers' attacks upon anyone reporting
UFO abductions, I am still amazed at the ill-informed and often cruel
nature of these published assaults. I am not referring here to
diatribes against investigators like myself, because, as Harry Truman
pointed out, to be in the kitchen involves a certain amount of heat.
Instead, I mean attacks against the abductees themselves, the innocent
men, women and children who have dared to report their suspicions of
ongoing UFO experiences.

I believe there is a reason why debunkers have chosen these
experiencers as their primary targets. If abductees can be regularly
ridiculed and demeaned, fewer will dare to give their accounts
publicly, and those higher up on the socio-economic scale will be even
less inclined to expose their identities. Thus, their valuable
credibility, the authoritative weight of their testimony, will be
denied to those of us trying to make as strong a case as we can that an
extraordinary phenomenon, such as this, demands an extraordinary
investigation. This debunking ploy deflects objective scientific
inquiry because some of the most important evidence necessary for
informed judgement will have been effectively suppressed.

As evidence of this campaign of witness intimidation I would like to
present a composite picture of the typical abduction experiencer as
assembled from a number of debunking efforts over the past few years.

First, the abductee is "mentally ill". Who can forget the late Carl
Sagan - no psychiatrist he - suggesting on "Nova" that while there is
outer space, there is, more importantly also inner space, which he went
on to describe as involving "hallucination and delusion," thereby
conjuring up other such major psychological problems. Sagan subtly
implied that severe mental illness - not merely neurosis - was central
to abduction reports. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the
words of this world-famous scientist was that abductees were to be
regarded as sick and their accounts were not to be taken
seriously. No mention was made of the work of even skeptical
psychologists such as N. P. Spanos and Elizabeth Slater which clearly
demonstrated the absence of mental illness in abductees. On TV, before
a large viewing public, the astronomer reversed the facts and trumped
the psychologists.

Second, these "mentally ill" abductees are also, in the words of
another emminent debunker, "little nobodies". Not scientists, police
officers, Ph.D's, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, successful business
people, government officials and, engineers such as I have worked with.
To this debunker they are just "little nobodies", pathetic souls whom
we can all look down upon. and demean with ease. The cruelty of this
smug assertion is self-evident.

Third, according to a recent debunking book, these "mentally ill little
nobodies" are also mostly gay and lesbian. (Even, presumably,
prepubescent abductee children). The authors of this book provide no
clue as to where they obtained this startling information. I know for a
fact that they never asked David Jacobs, John Mack or myself if we,
with over fifty years of research experience among us, had any
statistics about the sexual orientation of the hundreds upon hundreds
of abduction experiencers we have worked with.

Most researchers I know - which is most of those active in the field -
would probably say that the percentage of gay abductees roughly equals
the percentage in the population as a whole. And this apart from the
fact that no researcher I'm acquainted with routinely asks his or her
clients about their sexual preferences. (Privacy issues are of
paramount concern in this beseiged field.) But the authors of this
debunking book surely understand that, by branding the abductee
population as 50-60% gay, they are providing yet another reason for a
potential abduction witness to refuse to come forward and make his or
her name known.

Fourth, these "Gay, mentally ill little nobodies" are also publicity
hounds who make up abduction stories just to gain attention. In the
words of one of our favorite debunkers, they are all "just trying to
get on television." Apparently they are so dim as to believe that it
will add to their personal luster and fame to appear on TV a - let's
remember the aura assigned to them - as "gay, mentally-ill little
nobodies."

Of the nearly seven hundred abductee experiencers I've worked with over
the past quarter of a century, I still have only a handful - roughly a
dozen - who will appear on TV, giving their names, showing their faces
and presenting their personal accounts. Many TV producers have told me
of their frustration in trying to persuade abductees to come forward
and present their UFO experiences. Obviously, the witness-intimidators
have been effective in making this a club no one wants to belong to.

However, despite the debunkers' success and our inability to present
the public with the full range and power of witness testimony, we will
continue to offer what we can in order to alert the people, the press
and the scientific establishment to the presence of alien intelligence
on our planet. In what I regard as a momentous societal struggle, our
greatest debt is to those courageous abductees who have risked both
reputation and livelihood by daring to make their harrowing experiences
public. They have stood up to the ridicule and outright cruelty visited
upon them by militant debunkers, and have told their stories. To the
intimidators they are nothing more than "Gay, mentally ill,
publicity-seeking little nobodies." To me, they are heroes.