Laurel Rose Willson

Laurel Rose Willson , aka Lauren Stratford or Laura Grabowski (born August 18, 1941 in Washington , † April 8, 2002 ) was an American singer, piano player and writer.

Life

Willson was as an infant by a doctor Frank Cole Willson and his wife, the teacher Rose Gray Willson adopted . She was musically talented and learned to play the piano, clarinet and flute. After graduating from college, Willson worked as a teacher in a music school. She later lived in Bakersfield, California and worked as a singer and piano player for a number of Protestant churches.

False identity as a victim of satanic abuse

Willson wrote three books under the pseudonym Lauren Stratford . The best known was Satan's Underground . In this she claimed to tell her true life story as a victim of child abuse and later as a victim of a satanic cult . Research by the Christian magazine "Cornerstone" revealed that the information in the book did not match Willson's actual life story. They also revealed that Willson had made multiple false abuse allegations against various people and was known for telling lies to arouse pity.

False identity as a Holocaust survivor

In 1999, Willson assumed a false identity as a Holocaust survivor. She claimed to be Laura Grabowski , an Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor . Under these names she raised several thousand US dollars from charitable organizations that were actually intended for Holocaust survivors. As Grabowski, she became friends with Binjamin Wilkomirski and claimed to know him from the concentration camp. It later emerged that Wilkomirski was neither Jewish nor a concentration camp survivor, which helped expose Willson as a fraudster.

Individual evidence

↑ Bob and Gretchen Passantino with Jon Trott: Satan's Sideshow. The True Lauren Stratford Story . In: Cornerstone 18, No. 90 (1990), pp. 24-28, cited in Bette L. Bottoms, Phillip R. Shaver and Gail S. Goodman: An analysis of ritualistic and religion-related child abuse allegations . In: Law and Human Behavior. 20/1 (1996), p. 30 ( online (PDF; 1.0 MB), accessed on August 15, 2013).

personal data
SURNAME	Willson, Laurel Rose
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Stratford, Lauren; Grabowski, Laura
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American singer, piano player and writer
DATE OF BIRTH	August 18, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH	Washington
DATE OF DEATH	April 8, 2002

[1] Bob and Gretchen Passantino with Jon Trott: Satan's Sideshow. The True Lauren Stratford Story . In: Cornerstone 18, No. 90 (1990), pp. 24-28, cited in Bette L. Bottoms, Phillip R. Shaver and Gail S. Goodman: An analysis of ritualistic and religion-related child abuse allegations . In: Law and Human Behavior. 20/1 (1996), p. 30 ( online (PDF; 1.0 MB), accessed on August 15, 2013).