Psychics may face regulations that help tell which is witch

John Mangan
May 4, 2008

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.