As part of the PLANS myth already formulated at the start of its public anti-Waldorf campaign in 1997, that
"Anthroposophy is a satanic religion" and "Waldorf schools practice and teach the pupils witchcraft",
Debra Snell, president of PLANS has supported yet another myth:
"Waldorf teachers perform voodoo, after school, on wool dolls made by the children".
In the spirit of PLANS' anti-Waldorf campaign, this myth was developed in May 2000 as an allegation on the PLANS mailing list.
When someone criticized the myth, Debra Snell defended
it as fully reasonable, described the person criticizing the allegation
as a member of a Waldorf "cover-up committee", and implied that practicing
voodoo was part of anthroposophy.
As a follow-up, Mr. Dugan recounted a "weird" incident some years earlier, when a girl who was withdrawn from a Canadian Waldorf school received back by mail a wool doll she had made at school, after apparently having forgotten it at the school when leaving. The doll was sent by her class teacher.
Mr. Dugan recounted how the doll was sent in the mail in a box, "covered with 6-cent stamps".
When someone asked Mr. Dugan what was "weird" about getting the doll back by mail in a box, he said that the girl's parents had interpreted the package with the doll as "covered with '66666666' ", and reported it to the police. (Note: the number 666 signifies the devil in the Christian Book of Revelations.)
The discussion of this story is included by PLANS as part of its "education of the public about Waldorf education".
In 2000, when the president and vice president of PLANS, Debra Snell and Lisa Ercolano, set up a separate mailing list, called "Waldorf-survivors-only", they seem to have found reason to put up a special warning to potential newcomers to the list in its description, saying that they, as owners of the list
"are NOT mental health professionals and cannot offer *real* [mental health] counseling!".
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by "PLANS Inc."
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