Diagnosis

Amy Smith left Houston in 1994 to return home to Edinburg, where she is working full-time as a veterinarian's assistant. She is saving money to return to school at the University of Texas. "I want to be a nurse -- not a psychiatric one," she says. She did not pursue legal action against Spring Shadows Glen.

Smith no longer believes she has multiple personalities, was ever in a cult or that her father abused her, but occasionally she still has nightmares about the dissociative disorders unit at Spring Shadows Glen. In retrospect, she says, her experience there was like being in a cult.

"It was like a process of gradually becoming convinced of these crazy beliefs in a closed environment. We were always discussing cults, and at the same time we were behaving like a cult. We had our own rituals and really exotic beliefs, and we were separated from our families."

Kathyrn Schwiderski is now divorced; she lives in Dallas and her ex-husband lives in Houston. One of their daughters once reported herself to the Harris County Sheriff's Department, claiming she murdered three people in a "fetus factory" in Colorado. Her whereabouts are now unknown.

Mary Shanley, according to her attorney, has lost all contact with her husband and son. They still believe she is in a satanic cult, the lawyer explains. Shanley, meanwhile, is virtually penniless and works in a department store in Chicago.

Lynn Carl's attorney says she lives in a halfway house in Baltimore and is unable to see her children because they and her husband still believe she belongs to a cult.

Alison Roome says she's back to the functioning stage -- with the help of an MHMR therapist -- and is working part-time. Roome, too, no longer believes she has multiple personalities or was ever involved with a satanic cult.

Judith Peterson, by all accounts, continues her private practice in Houston. Some of her time, however, is devoted to depositions and court appearances for the six lawsuits here in which she is a defendant.

Peterson has responded to the suits by denying the plaintiffs' allegations, and on one recent morning, walking into a hearing at the county courthouse, she stared directly into a photographer's camera and declared, "I'm innocent."