Liz Mullinar is a London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

-born former film casting consultant, best known in Australia as one of the founders of Advocates for Survivors of Child Abuse and the Mayumarri Healing Centre; and for promoting beliefs in recovered memories and the practice of satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse refers to the abuse of a person or animal in a ritual setting or manner...

 within the community.

She was awarded the A.M. (Member of the Order of Australia) in the 1997 Queen's New Years Honours List for her services to the performing arts and entertainment as a theatrical and film casting consultant and to the community.

She was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal in the 2001 Queen's New Years Honours List for her services as co-founder and advocate for ASCA. In 2011, she was a State Finalist in the Australian of the Year Awards.

Film casting director

Liz Mullinar was born Elizabeth Laura Hopkinson. She was a casting director in the Australian film industry for more than 25 years. She worked as a consultant in the early careers of actors including Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush. Her company was responsible for casting such films as Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1967 drama and mystery novel by Australian author Joan Lindsay. She wrote it over a four-week period at her home Mulberry Hill in Baxter, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. It was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was released in...

, Shine

Shine (film)

Shine is a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Nicholas Bell, Chris...

and Babe

Babe (film)

Babe is a 1995 Australian-American film directed by Chris Noonan. It is an adaptation of the 1983 novel The Sheep-Pig, also known as Babe: The Gallant Pig in the United States, by Dick King-Smith and tells the story of a pig who wants to be a sheepdog...

.

Advocate for survivors of child abuse

After an aura reading, Mullinar was told by a psychic that she had been sexually abused as a child. She then proceeded to undergo sessions with both a body therapist and a hypnotherapist, with whom she claims to have recovered memories of the alleged abuse. Subsequently, she went on to form the Australian Association for Recovered Memories in 1995. The organization later changed its name to We Remember, then Advocates for Survivors of Child Abuse. In 1997, she co-founded The Mayumarri Healing Centre with husband Rodney Phillips. The centre promotes itself as providing affordable effective healing for survivors of all forms of childhood trauma. According to Mayumarri's financial records, the centre received more than $1 million between 2003 and 2005, of which nearly half was in the form of government grants. The centre has been the subject of a number of complaints to the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission.

Recovered memories & satanic ritual abuse

Mullinar is on record as advocating belief in two social phenomena that are considered controversial, namely the veracity of recovered memories, and the widespread practice of satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse refers to the abuse of a person or animal in a ritual setting or manner...

 in the community. Regarding recovered memories, she states that "Anyone who recovers memories, who has flashbacks, their child is telling the truth. The child at the age it happened to them is telling the truth of what happened to them. A therapist cannot create the truth…" However, professional peak bodies such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Royal College of Psychiatrists

The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom responsible for representing psychiatrists, psychiatric research and providing public information about mental health problems...

 have advised their members to avoid use of any "memory recovery techniques", citing a lack of evidence to support the accuracy of memories recovered by such methods.

Based on her own experiences, Mullinar strongly advocates the use of hypnosis for the recovery of memories of child sexual abuse. This is contrary to the Code of Ethics of the Australian Hypnotherapists' Association. According to her organization's published research, 8% of Mayumarri clients claim to be victims of SRA. Satanic ritual abuse is now widely considered to be an example of a moral panic

Moral panic

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...

.