You might think that writing about the Harry Potter books or Halloween ‘Trick or Treating’ is a rather odd place to start when discussing ‘Satanist Ritual Abuse’ (SRA) but I think it will help in what is an extremely complex issue and not trivialise it.
Both Harry Potter and Halloween have been described by the Catholic Church, and others, as ‘Satanic’ and ‘occultist’
‘The Nervous Witch’ by Jack Chick
He [Gerhard Wagner] first attracted international attention in 2001 when he described JK Rowling’s best-selling Harry Potter novels as “satanism” and warned against the magical spells and formulas used in thenovels.
But in an article entitled The Dangerous Messages of Halloween, the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano quoted liturgical expert Joan Maria Canals as saying: ‘Halloween has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.’
But really, are they ?
I suspect that the overwhelming majority of people would say that it was absurd to suggest that they are but a majority is not necessarily correct just because they have numbers on their side. So, how can we decide whether the Harry Potter books or Trick or Treating are ‘Satanist’ and ‘Occultist’ or not ?
Plainly two groups have differing views based on their own religious, or non-religious, perspective. The only fair test I can see is to form a view based on ‘intention’. Was it J K Rowling’s intention to promote occultism or indoctrinate readers into Satanism ? Very few would argue that and I’m certain the answer is ‘No’. Is it the intention of parents to promote occultism or indoctrinate their children into Satanism when they dress them up as witches and warlocks on Halloween ? Again, I’m sure the answer is ‘No’.
Now, the issue of Satanist Ritual Abuse (SRA) is not as clear cut simply because the general public understand very little about it. The overwhelming majority of people will have no direct experience of it and what little understanding of it they have is based on very occasional media reports, often sensationalised.
Satanist Ritual Abuse is the sexual abuse of mostly children during Satanist rituals. Some people argue that is does exist while others maintain that it does not. So, who is right ?
Religious, or non-religious, perspective will often but not always, inform a persons viewpoint on SRA as much as direct or indirect experience does. What can be said with absolute certainty is that children are sexually abused by adults in rituals and I think the argument about whether this is ‘Satanist’ abuse or not means that that fact is lost. To a degree I think some like to focus on the ‘Satanist’ issue to muddy the water so that the evidenced issue of ritual sexual abuse is never taken seriously and it has a way of undermining all child sexual abuse in the public consciousness.
Ultimately, the two perspectives of the opposing sides on this issue do not inform us about whether the ritual sexual abuse is ‘Satanist’ or not. Those who believe that God, and therefore Satan, exists are more likely to believe that SRA is real while those that have a humanist/atheistic belief system are less likely to believe that SRA is real. The danger is that an issue that the media often like to sensationalise becomes a religious battleground over which the existence of God and Satan is fought and the issue of the ritualised sexual abuse of children is forgotten.
In the end the only fair way of deciding whether ritual abuse is ‘Satanist’ is to try and divine the ‘intentions’ of the abuser/s, whether they believe in Satan and whether the rituals are ‘Satanist’.
By this criteria, in my view, some ritual abuse is ‘Satanist’ while some is not. I believe all ritual abuse, like all child abuse, is evil but for me ‘evil’ is not synonymous with Satan, whereas for the religious it might be. As these are my ‘final thoughts’ on this issue, I’ll just say that the argument on this over the last 30 years has not helped victims of ritual child sexual abuse or child sexual abuse in general.
I’ll leave you with two different news stories regarding ritualistic sexual abuse of children. You’ll notice that in both the ritual nature of the abuse is not in doubt. Whether you believe the abuse is Satanist or not will depend on your religious perspective or whether you believe that the intentions of the abuser/s were Satanist.
A sex cult leader who brainwashed and abused children has been jailed and warned he may never be released.
Colin Batley, 48, was found guilty of 35 offences at Swansea Crown Court on Wednesday. Three women, including his estranged wife, were also imprisoned.
He moved from London to the small town of Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire, where the cult operated in a cul-de-sac.
He was given a public protection sentence with an 11-year minimum recommendation.
“That means, of course, you may never be released,” said Judge Paul Thomas QC.
Jacqueline Marling, 42, described as “Batley’s right-hand woman”, was jailed for 12 years, while Batley’s wife Elaine, 47, was jailed for eight years.
Shelly Millar, 35, described during the trial as Batley’s “sex slave”, was jailed for five years.
~
Two members of a Cornish white witch coven have been convicted of carrying out ritualistic sex abuse on young girls.
Peter Petrauske, 72, who claimed to be a high priest, and Jack Kemp, 69, donned robes and carried pagan artefacts when they attended ceremonies during which children were forced to strip and then abused. Police believe children as young as three may have been involved.
The abuse only emerged after Kemp was arrested on an unrelated charge, prompting victims of past offences to come forward.
The pair showed little emotion as they were led from the dock at Truro crown court on Friday. Petrauske, who described himself as the high priest of a white witches’ coven in St Ives, was convicted of one count of rape, one count of aiding and abetting an attempt to rape and one count of indecent assault.
theneedleblog 
@gojam – life moves on, your blog has moved on from here – this will probably be my last contribution to this thread. However, this may be the only posting in it of any real importance and I ask you to examine it closely.
@Tim Tate – in my opinion, I’ve been the one posting referenced quotes from academics and links to documentation. Your definitions of evidence and opinion seem somewhat self-serving, but let us apply them to a relevant recent case and see what emerges.
Gojam said: “I’ll leave you with two different news stories regarding ritualistic sexual abuse of children. You’ll notice that in both the ritual nature of the abuse is not in doubt”.
No true, my friend. I have no doubt that the abusive acts really did take place, but the “ritual nature” of the abuse in the Batley case is very much in doubt.
Few people understand what “a ritual” really is, or what it is not. There are no rituals described in the testimony of the victims, accessible to me through press accounts of the trial. What is described runs something like this; people put on robes, there was “a reading” from some Crowley publication, then people disrobed (“got skyclad”) and engaged in orgiastic acts. That’s not a ritual. That is simply people play-acting being witches or warlocks, magicians or perhaps “satanic cultists”. The sexual acts are not described to have occurred DURING the readings, even. There is no description of the victims being raped or sodomized on an altar while others in attendance were robed and adorned with occult symbols, performing recognized occult gestures and uttering recognized occult invocations. Is there? Please direct me to such descriptions if I missed something.
Rituals have titles, if only “Liber XVX”. There is no mention of any titles for any of the activities described by the victims. As the same activities were alleged to have taken place at regular “meetings” on a fixed schedule over many years, the victims could not have failed to pick up the title of any rituals they were allegedly involved in. That tells me these activities were impromptu, invented on the spot, and not scripted.
Ceremonial rituals have a specific structure. They are performed in strict accordance to a pre-prepared and rehearsed script. Every symbol, color and ceremonial tool in the room, and every word and gesture performed by the participants has meaning specific to the intended outcome of “the working”. There is no testimony of such meticulous planning and rehearsal, by any of the victims, is there? The “initiatory” rape of the girls doesn’t occur in such a context. The seduction of the teenage boy by Mrs Batley doesn’t occur in such a context. The prostitution of the girls doesn’t occur in such a context.
IN MY OPINION, there is a second narrative discernable from the testimony of one of the female victims. There is the master narrative that all the victim’s testimony seems to support, about their sexual exploitation by a group of adult perpetrators. Batley’s attempts to portray himself as being “in a cult” as an intimidation tactic, fit this master narrative. But there are snatches of another narrative, present in only one of the female victim’s testimony, about Batley running a “church”. That narrative seemed out of place, to me, at the time of the trial. If someone was running a Crowleyanity “church”, there is a specific ritual which would have to be very obviously front & center to the group’s activities, and that is Crowley’s Gnostic Mass. But this ritual isn’t mentioned or even described by any of the victims. It is very conspicuously absent from their testimony.
But after the trial, there were a sling of promo pieces in the UK press, for the “true life story” of Annabelle Forest: http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/The-Devil-on-the-Doorstep/Annabelle-Forest/9781471136689
And this book contains a full-blown account of the alleged Batley “church”, and here it is clearly a fantasy ans a fiction.
“Annabelle Forest” is allegedly a pseudonym for a victim of Colin Batley & his harem, who was a child when abused and therefore her identity “can’t be revealed for legal reasons”. Supposedly. She is portrayed in these promo pieces as the author, but then I find the book was co-written by a woman named Katy Weitz who runs a “national press agency that can help you sell your story to the press for cash…”.
“Next, we’ll go over facts of your story with you, answer any questions you might have and let you know if we think we can represent your story.
“Finally, we contact all the newspapers and magazines that we think will be interested in your story. Then when we’ve landed a deal for your story, we get in touch again. We write up your story and send it back to you to approve before it goes to the magazine or paper. After the story’s published, you get paid” .
Then I find the book is actually “AS TOLD TO” Katy Weitz, then I find a disclaimer asserting that Katy Weitz “claims the right to tell this story”. It looks like Weitz essentially bought the story from the victim along with the right to re-write it however she pleases. SO, it purports to be the true story of the victim, by the victim, but is in fact WEITZ’ story. The parts I’ve been able to view so far, it looks like Weitz preserves the woman’s trial testimony details fairly carefully, but embeds them into a complete fantasy tale of her life designed specifically to be faked evidence for the reality of SRA cults! Now get this – Weitz wrote interview articles and other publicity pieces for “Kim Noble”, who is Valerie Sinason’s star DID patient. Weitz, to Noble, to Sinason…
“Not true” ?
I deliberately left the question open for readers to make their own mind up. That was the entire point given the context and argument I was making. I didn’t proffer an opinion myself therefore I struggle to see how it can be “not true”
Slightly off topic, I’d say that I’m concerned about the current ‘media frenzy’ regarding a ‘murdering Westminster Paedophile ring’ which could have the same negative effects on child safeguarding as the SRA media ‘explosion’ which resulted in all ritual and non-ritual CSA cases being viewed with scepticism.
Abu Hamza al-Masri was sentenced to life in prison last week.
http://www.dysgenics.com/2012/10/07/lies-can-kill/
Watch the video at the end of that article.
Thank you both for continuing, most instructive. Tim, you mention “one case that I know of where a young man was convicted of homicide as part of a “satanic” sacrifice.” I am always interested in successful prosecutions, might you give the name, place, date etc (whatever identifying detail is already in the public domain) so that one can find more on this case? Many thanks in advance.
@Gordon. Yes: the conviction was at Shrewsbury Crown Court on December 9, 1987. The defendant, Andrew Newell, was found guilty of the murder of Philip Booth (this was later substituted with a verdict of manslaughter by the Court of Appeal).
The court heard that both young men were dabblers in a variety of occult religions including Satanism. Newell possessed a number of books on these religions and had stabbed Booth on a makeshift altar after writing out a manuscript relating to sacrifice.
Now, for absolute clarity, we need to record (as I did in my book) that this text was in fact a transcription of two verses of a heavy metal song – The Number of The best – by Iron Maiden. The last four of these lines were:
The ritual has begun
Satan’s work is done
666, the number of the beast
Sacrifice is going on tonight.
This cartoonish nonsense might have been less concerning had police (according to the senior investigating officer on the case) not discovered that below the words Newell had painted an inverted cross in human blood and inscribed the words “Lucifer”, “Belial” “Baphomet” and “Satan”.
The policeman concerned was Det. Chief Supt. David Cole, the most senior detective in West Mercia Police. I interviewed him – on tape – and reproduce below exactly what he said about the case (which matches what he had told the court):
“When I interviewed Newell he asked me specifically not to open a particular case which was in his bedroom: of course I opened it straight away. In it were a lot of books on the occult, some sort of cloth, a knife, candles and a manuscript.
“I suppose from that moment on we realised we were dealing with someone who was – to say the least – very interested in Satanism. Putting two and two together, I realised that the case – which was covered in Booth’s blood – had probably been used as an altar and that the candles, cloths, books and knives were accoutrements of that altar on which Booth was killed. One of the books described how a makeshift altar could be created.”
No-one has ever claimed (certainly I never did) that Newell was part of some secret Satanist conspiracy. All the evidence points to him being a foolish dabbler who got his ridiculous notions from books and/or the absurd song. But the fact remains that he stabbed and killed Booth four times in a precise grouping around the heart, in circumstances that a court heard was some sort of ritual. And the court found him guilty.
Hope this helps.
Best
@Justin Sanity
We’re back to the same old problem …
You are putting forward opinions and expecting that they be accepted as facts. That won’t do; it won’t do at all.
Specific examples:-
1. Crowley. You assert that his text on sacrifice is a coded reference to masturbation. You provide no factual justification for this claim, simply your opinion and that of an academic at Ohio University. Not good enough: Crowley’s text (which I regard as ludicrous, just as you do) is explicit about the ‘suitability’ of a male child as a ‘victim’ of sacrifice.
Even if he intended this as a metaphor (and I repeat that you have provided absolutely no actual evidence for this) it doesn’t address the suggestion I put forward as a possible explanation for the recurrence of child sacrifice claims in ritual abuse disclosures:- that some less intellectually-developed idiot took the suggestion at face value as the best way to conduct his black mass.
As for the statements of Yorke and Regardie proclaiming Crowley’s innocence of any child abuse (or advocacy thereof): (a) these are – once again – opinions only and (b) their origins would tend to invited the comment “they would say that, wouldn’t they ?”
2. Fear. You assert that you “don’t accept the thesis” that abuse during rituals produces greater fear than in a non-ritualised setting. Um, well, ok: you’re entitled to your opinion but simply stating that you “don’t accept” this does not in any way put forward any evidence to contradict what I (and others) have observed first hand.
I did ask you whether you had any experience of working with or even meeting child victims of sexual abuse and of alleged ritual abuse. You didn’t answer that. I have had no little experience in both areas and I can tell you that universally those children disclosing what appears to be ritual abuse are very, very much more traumatized than those who have endured non-ritualised sexual abuse. Dispute this if you will – but to do so you’ll need actual hard, first-hand evidence not simply opinions.
You also manage to underplay somewhat the fear-inducing elements in children’s ritual abuse disclosures, describing only robes, candles and strange chants. You manage to omit from that list the claims these children make about witnessing the killing and dismemberment of adults and other children alike. Empirically true or not, the children perceive these events to have happened – and, in the disclosures I have witnessed, read and/or listened to personally – are terrified by them.
3. Paedophiles. It is true that many paedophiles carefully groom their victims. It is equally true that others don’t. The data is sketchy – far too little good solid research is done into paedophilia – but it does seem to indicate that predatory or opportunistic paedophiles are considerably less common than the grooming variety. Does this in any way affect the debate on ritual abuse ? Nope. Not one bit.
4. The promulgation of “potentially inciting mythology”. A mixed bag here. It is a fact that evangelical Christians have promulgated stories which appear to owe much to their own spiritual fears and/or belief system. It is a fact that the press – both tabloid and broadsheet – has printed stories (from both sides of the argument) which they haven’t bothered to check in any detail before publication. And it could well be that professionals have likewise described what they have heard during disclosures.
I can’t comment on Valerie Sinason since my only contact with her has been to write a chapter on the media responses to organised child sexual abuse (of all varieties) in an academic book she edited for Routledge Press in 1994 (“Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse”). I saw the other posting about her on this thread and your response: I have no knowledge of the events referred to, but I would once again caution that what you’re proffering is other people’s opinions and allegations without any apparent attempt to investigate them – as opposed to just read about them – yourself.
However: the copies of the Guiborg Black Mass and the Crowley material (and much else of a similar nature besides) which I quoted in my book were published by self-defining “occult publishers”. Not Christians, not the press, and not Ms SInason or any other professional.
Facts. We need to deal in facts, not opinions (which famously are like a***holes: everyone has one). And the facts are these.
• Some children report sexual abuse in the course of religious or quasi-religious rituals.
• Those children typically express greater fear than victims of garden-variety sexual abuse.
• They also typically claim to have witnessed incidents which could not possibly have happened. This makes their evidence extremely difficult to use in support of criminal prosecution.
• There have, however, been a number of successful prosecutions for sexual abuse during “occult” rituals – and indeed at least one case that I know of where a young man was convicted of homicide as part of a “satanic” sacrifice.
• Some historic texts describe human (and child) sacrifice as part of satanic rituals. Whilst these may not be factual descriptions of what actually happened, they plainly advocate these crimes as part of some satanic rituals.
Can you put forward any actual evidence to disprove the above ? Remember: evidence is that which is either witnessed, experienced or investigated first-hand.
If not – and if all you can provide is opinions (yours or those of others) – then really is there much point continuing what you termed this “rock and roll” ?
All the best
And…about those networks I talked about at the beginning of this conversation – here is Caryn Stardancer talking about her network: “Survivorship”. Her description matches mine quite precisely, right down to the original newsletters created “at the kitchen table”:
http://members.tranquility.net/~rwinkel/CKLN/HTML2/transc25.htm
“I am a survivor myself, and when I was in recovery there really wasn’t anything being said about ritual abuse, cult abuse or mind control that I knew about. There weren’t any resources available, so when I finished my recovery, myself and another survivor began publication of a small newsletter that we were doing on my friend’s kitchen table and sending it out. Now we have an international non-profit. We have members in every state of the USA, and all the provinces in Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand. Our membership is made up of survivors and professionals who treat them”.
You probably remember Caryn Stardancer, Mr. Tate – you were in the 1996 “Better The Devil You Know” conference with her.
No: I don’t recall Ms Standancer – but then I have to say that I don’t have any clear memory of the conference you mention. Apologies for that – a symptom, perhaps, of me getting somewhat older … though whether anyone would be able to remember something like that 19 years later I somehow doubt.
But quite what the link you posted is intended to prove is beyond me. So there are small groups of soi-disant survivors who produce literature ? Well, yes: I think we all know this. Is this somehow proof that ritual abuse doesn’t exit ? Er, no: not at all.
We simply can’t ignore the successful prosecutions, can we ? Nor has anyone been able to provide solid evidence (as opposed to grossly irresponsible speculation) that the children in the Broxtowe case (for example) made their disclosures after being schooled or influenced to do so by people who had themselves seen, read or possessed the pamphlets to which you refer.
@Tim Tate –
But Tim – that passage from Crowley’s “Magick” really IS a coded reference. It’s a reference to masturbation and the use of his sperm ( “A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence”) as both “sacrifice” and sacrament. It’s a very distasteful subject – sex magic, but if you wanted a neutral academic analysis of what it was all about and what the coded references really mean, you’d find it in Hugh Urban’s work, here:
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeV/Unleashing_the_Beast.htm
I disagree vehemently with Urban’s conclusion that Crowley was ultimately a person of significance, for any reasons whatsoever. “Sex magic” is simply yet another ridiculous misinterpretation of the principles of causality, and persons who play with their sexual fluids under the delusion that they are engaged in some form of magical wish fulfillment are to be laughed at, mocked & ridiculed, not respected as heroic trangressors of social convention. Crowley ought to be remembered as a clownish historic oddity – instead, do in part to some of his fans but primarily because of his critics, preposterous caricatures of Crowley have become ultimate cultural icons for secret diabolist power and social corruption. I’ll come back to this…
I don’t accept the thesis that exposure to satanic or magical imagery, such as persons dressed in robes, the burning of candles, strange chants, etc. could or would produce greater terror & trauma in a victimized child. Yes, the largest portion of child sex victims are initially “groomed” – as you talked about in your work on pornography. Most child abusers initially entice children with POSITIVE treatment, seducing them into feeling comfortable and at ease with their abuser. They do not CULTIVATE terror & trauma.
But there are so many real life examples of torturous physical & sexual abuse of children. The children who endured horrendous beatings in Residential Schools, knowing this physical torture was just a prelude to molestation and rape, because these occurences were routine in their lives. Would they have been any more traumatized if their abusers wore black robes and chanted “Hail Satan?” . There was a particularly horrific case in the UK, one that I have a hard time even contemplating. Two older children attacked and abused two younger children, involving many horrific elements which are described also in alleged ritual abuse disclosures. The older boys ultimately broke one of the younger’s skulls with a concrete block, I believe, and he cried out: “They’ve killed me! Run!” That case – you remember? Would the surviving victim have been any more traumatized if the older boys were chanting and burning candles? It’s hard to imagine a more traumatizing experience, for any person, than what he survived – and yet the surviving victim managed to give a coherent account of what he experienced, uninfected with supernatural embellishments.
All human beings are capable of inducing a state of terror in themselves, of triggering the fight or flight reflex, simply by their own thoughts. Small children are particularly susceptible to this. Toddlers who work themselves into genuine states of terror by contemplating “the monster under the bed”. A child doesn’t need to be describing anything REAL, to be genuinely terrified by the thought of what they are relating (disclosing).
You have a point, that the fictional status of historic accounts of satanic abuse & sacrifice is somewhat irrelevant to the question of whether or not disturbed individuals might be acting out something similar today. But I believe it is relevant to ask – who has been promoting the idea that Aleister Crowley advocated & practised ritual child abuse, and who has been promoting the idea that wrapping yourself in occult trappings has been a successful formula for running little child abuse and prostitution cults. Specifically – where did BATLEY get the idea for his multi-family child abuse cult? People who actually knew Crowley, such as Gerald Yorke and Isreal Regardie, vehemently deny that Crowley was involved in or advocated child abuse. Every legitimate OTO body has publicly denounced these ideas.
You can read, in “Modern Occult Rhetoric” By Joshua Gunn, some of the historic process by which the diabolist caricature of Crowley was constructed over time, and who was involved in these public pronouncements. Joshua Gunn says:
“Although we expect this kind of mythologizing by newspaper reporters today, the most alarmist outworking of Crowley’s mythic status comes from presumably more careful scholars in the academy. Valerie Sinason, a respected psychotherapist…characterizes Crowley as the source of much abuse and torture” and then quotes Sinason:
“…men and women, dedicated to Alester Crowley’s guiding principle of “Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law”, worship satan as their god in private houses or in churchyards or forests….they practise every sexual perversion that exists with animals, children and both sexes…they are involved in pornographic films and drug dealing as a means of raising money. They are highly organized and successful in their secrecy…”
Evangelical Christians have not been the only source of this potentially inciting mythology, Tim. Many professionals who ought to know better have gleefully participated, and share the blame for successfully inciting Batley’s copycat crimes based on the mythology that they have publicly promoted.
Aleister Crowley and his coven carried out satanic abuse in a church at Prince of Wales Road at Chalk Farm, where black magic was regularly practiced.
After Crowley’s death the coven continued to operate and a number of well known people used to attend the satanic rituals. They came from different parts of the UK and the majority were in the entertainment and theatre wold..
Yat Malmgren a former priest from Sweden who was sacked from the priesthood and who became a dancer, actor and teacher, was one of the satanic circle’s main organisers, along with his partner and boyfriend David Christopher Fettes, an unsuccessful actor and male prostitute who was known as Christopher Fettes, having dropped his Christian name of David, due to his previous convictions.
David Christopher Fettes dropped his first name of David, after he was arrested on a number of occasions. He was known as Christopher Fettes and was the son of a high ranking army officer. Born in Scotland, (David) Christopher Fettes had much incriminating and scandalous information on the private lives of many rich and famous people, which he’d carefully collected when he worked with Joan Littlewood and Lionel Bart as an actor. Christopher Fettes and Yat Malmgren were able to use this information to collect donations with which to finance the Drama Centre London, after they were kicked out of the Central School of Speech and Drama for sexually abusing some of the drama students there.
The Central School of Speech and Drama organisers responded to the complaints from students who were being subjected to sexual abuse by the evil pair, but they didn’t want any scandal or bad publicity which might reflect on the drama school, so instead of contacting the police, they accused Yat Malmgren of creating neck tensions in students by his movement teaching, which was just an excuse to get him and Christopher Fettes out of the Central School of Speech and Drama, as quickly as possible.
However, Fettes and Malmgren had so much dirt on famous theatre people at every level and other bosses thy used the threats of exposure to protect themselves and gain support as well as donations and other resources.
They threatened to expose a number of wealthy people in high places, if they didn’t give financial and other assistance to the Drama Centre project.
Harold Lang an actor who had connections with several drama schools as a teacher played a major part in collecting financial help, but got too greedy and helped himself. He met an untimely death in Egypt, after he was found to be creaming off money donated to the Drama Centre from frightened famous and rich people.
This served as a frightening lesson to others already entangled in the web of sex and drugs.
Russell Brand describes the goings on at the Drama Centre during his student days there, where drug taking was rife amongst staff and students.
The satanic circle continued to operate . Tony Hardman who was an actor and stage manager, was involved and was a friend of Ian Brady who regularly visited the converted church at Chalk Farm as well as the with the Elm Guest House , which Yat Malmgren and Christopher Fettes regularly visited.
@Justin Sanity
Well, praise be ! We’re almost in agreement on most things. Almost …
The caveat is that the righteous indignation at the antics of the various hucksters (from both sides of the argument) we need to be careful not to throw the real baby out with the satanic bathwater.
And so … in answer to your point about satanic traditions:
There is a tradition with some forms of Satanism which specifically describes child sacrifice. From the Guiborg ‘Black Masses’ of 17th century France to Aleister Crowley in 1920s England, there are written records which purport to show that the killing of a child forms part of satanic ritual. Here’s what Crowley himself wrote in 1926 about (what he termed) ‘The Bloody Sacrifice’.
“The animal should therefore be killed within the Circle so that its energy cannot escape … For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly chose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim.’
Now: I personally believe that this is a pile of utter twaddle and that likewise all of the written accounts of historic child sacrifice are nonsense. I doubt very much Crowley’s own claim that he carried out “this particular sacrifice on average 150 times a year between 1912 and 1928’. Like all the absurd claims made by soi-disant Satanists, I strongly suspect that this was either a wilful self-delusion or (more likely) a straightforward lie. Ditto, the reports of confessions (largely gained under torture, naturally) from earlier centuries. (By the by: the claim by Crowley’s defenders that he was speaking in some way euphemistically is not borne out by the text)
But though I doubt that these sacrifices actually happened, what is beyond doubt is that they are neatly recorded in (available) printed versions of satanic masses. Here’s where we need to be careful.
I’ve argued for many years that the notion of an international satanic conspiracy is absurd. I don’t believe there is an organisation (or even several organisations) which conspire to order the abuse, torture or murder of children. But then, given human nature they don’t need to.
Individuals – mad or bad – are perfectly able to get it into their own daft heads that the Crowley or Guiberg Masses are the absolute bees knees for their own rituals. They don’t need instructing to do that: they just have to purchase their own copy of the masses on line.
Do they do so ? Hard to tell. No-one has really studied this. But given the appalling willingness of human beings to do the most unspeakable things to children (as well as adults) throughout the past century, it would be a brave man who ruled it out completely.
What’s more there do appear to be some isolated cases of killings carried out during what courts were told were apparently satanic rituals. I listed several in my book: I also showed that the perpetrators were generally individuals (or at most, very small groups) with no ostensible connection to anyone else. In other words: no conventional longitudinal conspiracy, but possibly (just possibly) a much more lateral phenomenon where (a) wants to carry out a ritual, buys himself a DIY black mass liturgy and abuses or kills (b) as laid out in the text.
And finally … the place where you and I clearly part company is the point where you suggest that there is no real difference between ritual abuse and what we might call (though wrongly) ‘ordinary’ abuse. The problem is that there IS a difference in effect on the victims. I don’t know if you have seen or heard disclosures from young children, but I’ve encountered both ‘ordinary’ and ritual abuse disclosures. What is tellingly different between them is the level of fear: it is typically much, much greater in ritual disclosures than in ‘ordinary’ abuse ones. That’s why children making these allegations need different treatment from those describing ‘ordinary’ sexual abuse.
And on top of that there is the very practical difficulty that – typically – the ritual abuse disclosures contain claims which simply cannot be true: they frequently contain descriptions of people flying, for example. What is an investigating police team to do with these ? If they are (as they must be) disclosed to the defence, there is absolutely zero chance of a conviction. But if they are hidden, the defendant has both a moral and legal right to feel that he is being cheated of evidence he should have to defend himself (and will, on appeal, have any conviction overturned).
This problem has never been addressed: and the reason is the idiotic public war between those who proclaim a worldwide satanic conspiracy and those who denounce a rival conspiracy of evangelical Christians determined to foist their fantasies on the world.
In the middle – unheard amid the noise and stupidity – is a very small number of factual cases where children have been abused in rituals.
Babies. Bathwater.
Happy New Year.
@Gordon – ! What do ya know, there’s someone actually interested in listening to us old goats babble at each other :)
A terribly tragic story, for all of the Felsteads. Carol’s family members are genuine heroes, however, for their principled determination to get the whole story of what was done to her, and to them behind their backs – and persistent effort to have someone held to acount. I don’t have any info about this case that the family hasn’t already made public, sorry, but I can add some ‘color commentary’ to the Guardian article.
The basic scenario – young woman get’s involved in therapy over relatively minor psychological problems; depression, eating disorder, relationship problems perhaps. Therapist or someone else in their life suggests that unresolved trauma from child sex abuse could be the root cause of their problems. The woman doesn’t remember any sex abuse, or remembers relatively minor inapproriate activity that didn’t upset them much at the time. “There’s more”, they are assured, and are “assisted” to apparently remember more…and more…and some pretty upsetting stuff…now terrible things…now unimaginable things!…now..how can I go on living with these memories? Maybe they are real memories, maybe not (in Carol’s case definitely not), in any case the woman’s mental health nosedives after awhile and their life falls apart. Eventually they are hospitalized, heavily medicated and placed into group therapy with other patients who are exploring memories of cult abuse together. If the woman didn’t have such memories before, she’ll develop them now. This could go on for months or years. Once she has self-identified as a ritual abuse “survivor”, she is advised to cut all communication and ties with her family of origin because they ARE the cult, and to resist all efforts by the family to reconnect. The woman begins to stabilize, meds are reduced, she “gets better”. She is encouraged to move away and move on with her life, perhaps reborn with a new name or a new boyfriend or husband. For her family and old friends, she simply vanishes.
This has happened far more than anyone imagines, I believe. Hundreds of women, and dozens of men, since 1980. Between the US, Canada and the UK, several thousands of persons perhaps. They aren’t “missing persons”, however, as their disappearance is voluntary. And their doctors know where they are, even if they refuse to tell the family.
This is very sinister: “Sinason insists she doesn’t use recovered-memory techniques. “I’m an analytic therapist,” she says. “The idea of that is someone showing, through their behaviour, that all sorts of things might have happened to them.” Signs that a patient has suffered satanically include flinching at green or purple objects, the colours of the high priest and priestess’s robes. “And if someone shudders when they enter a room, you know it’s not ordinary incest.”
That’s the type of behavioural diagnostics I talked about before – “diagnosing” events in other’s lives, events the patient may have no memory of themselves, through some chart of behavioural “indicators”. It’s not scientific, in my opinion, and dangerously subject to confirmation bias. The therapist will “uncover” whatever they wish to uncover. I’d imagine Sinason never fails to find signs of ritual abuse or cult mind control.
“Soon, we get to the actual satanism. Sinason talks of a popular ritual in which a child is stitched inside the belly of a dying animal before being ‘reborn to satan’. During other celebrations, “people eat faeces, menstrual blood, semen, urine. There’s cannibalism.” Some groups have doctors performing abortions. “They give the foetus to the mother and she’s made to kill the baby.”
This is a portion of the imaginary international SRA cult mythology. Over the course of 30-40 years, delusional SRA victims, “survivors” and their therapists have mutually imagined, expanded, corrected and refined a complex history, theology, rituals, criminology and cult dynamics for an ancient Satanic cult THAT DOESN’T EXIST AND NEVER EXISTED. Very little of it is even derived from satanic groups or organizations that really do exist or have existed in the past. Much of it is derived from pop culture. They all disperse knowledge of it throughout various populations and cultures in our society, and when they meet someone who repeats part of it back to them they go AHA! confirmation and validation that our cult is real – we don’g know each other, but you’ve had the same (imaginary) experiences that others have shared with me!
This “rebirth” ritual: “a child is stitched inside the belly of a dying animal before being ‘reborn to satan’ ” – didn’t come from any real satanic tradition that ever existed. It came from traditional tales about the life of Elizabeh Bathory “the woman who came to be known as the “Blood Countess”, born into Hungarian nobility in 1560″.
http://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/hungarian-countess-serial-killer1.htm
Elizabeth is alleged to have been insanely cruel and sadistic, torturing, sexually abusing and murdering young girls in her court. She is alleged to have bathed in their blood to keep her skin looking young. In some traditions, her family were satanists of the vilest kind and she may have practised magic of some sort.
In any case, here’s the origin of that “rebirth” fantasy: “Most historical analysis of the countess includes young Elizabeth as witness to a captured thief being sewn into the stomach of a dying horse and left to perish”. NOT a satanic rebirth ritual, not a ritual, not even satanic. Just a particularly cruel and torturous murder that Bathory is alleged to have witnessed.
@Tim –
1. Motivation – you’re wrong, but that’s ok because I think you misunderstood me. I’ll try to be more clear this time. Obviously, the phenomenon of Child Sexual Abuse offending and CSA offenders is very complex. But pedophilia, as a paraphilia or “sexual perversion”, would simply be: “a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children” – and that just is what it is, there’s no MOTIVATION involved. That’s what I meant when i said pedophilia and the other ‘philias “are their own motivation”.
Once again, here’s Pamela Hudson’s exact words:
“Sexual perversion – yes. Child pornography – yes. Sadism – yes. But why?”
I was mocking her quest to uncover an IDEOLOGICAL motivation behind “perversion”, and her apparent satisfaction when “satanism” was suggested. The idea that people sexually abuse children because they “identify with evil” is equally medieval – “I think that I’m an evil person doing evil things in service to an evil deity, so I guess I should rape some babies”. I could see Hudson promoting this cartoonish fantasy, I was stunned to see Finklehor endorsing it. The point isn’t religious predjudice. The point is that every definition for “ritual abuse” demands belief in obsessive social conspiracies to harm children, run by people who just want to “be evil”.
2. Diagnosis – again, I was not clear the first time. Of course we have the same responsibility to protect pre-verbal children. The concept of “diagnosis” is valid for physical injuries or psychological disorders, if you are qualified to make such assessments. There are well known behavioural clues that a child has been sexually interfered with, as you said. These things are not problematic. I’m talking about attempts to “diagnose” specific event experiences, such as; having attended a Black Mass, or witnessing ritual sacrifice, or participation in cannibalism – solely from their behaviour, drawings or play.
3. List of indicators – I wasn’t accusing you of anything, Tim. I thought that you or one of the RAINS people said something about you obtaining – whatever materials they might have been – from Ray Wyre, by way of explaining as Judith Dawson is quoted in “The RAINS Network in the UK”:
“we were not given the ‘indicators’ until we’d already heard the children’s stories”. I could be mistaken, it’s not important. My point was, Joan having two years worth of discussions with adult victim claimants would explain how the group could help other people understand the things that they were hearing, BEFORE the group was exposed to indicator lists or guest lectures from American visitors. The info about RAINS origins comes from “The RAINS Network in the UK” by Sandra Buck. “RAINS began in September 1989. Two social workers, a psychiatrist and a lecturer in social work met to discuss how to respond to the needs of people like themselves, who were coming across ritual abuse for the first time. The social workers were Judith Dawson…and Chris Johnston. Dr Joan Coleman was the psychiatrist and Eileen Reeves the psychiatric nurse”. There’s nothing “wrong” here, I just had the impression from elsewhere that the purpose of RAINS was to make sense of child disclosures – but they had none to discuss at that point.
4. The hit list – I don’t know Chris Bray. I knew of Sorcerer’s Apprentice way back then, circa 1988. I’d seen Lamp of Thoth. I understand that there’s basd blood between you, and why. I shouldn’t have used the link to SAFF for the hit list of allegedly “exposed UK satanists”, but it had the clearest copy (and explanatory notes!). Bray isn’t the original source. I saw it first on Chris Spivey’s site. Here’s another one:
http://aanirfan.blogspot.ca/2014/11/satanic-ritual-abuse-of-children.html
It’s all over the place. It’s clearly a load of crap, but it could pose a danger to innocent people listed on it. You have almost as many vigilante whackos in the UK as there are in the US.
I don’t agree with your assessment of Bray’s articles, but I’ll take it under advisement. I’ve been able to verify much of the information, on several subjects. I’m not really interested in what he says about you, at this time.
5. “What is to be done when a child (or children) disclose sexual abuse in the course of rituals…” The same things you’d do if they disclosed sexual abuse in the course of showering, or lying in bed, or during soccer practise. The abuse is what’s important – not the setting.
@Gordon
A word of caution, if I may.
The patient who was being seen/treated by Dr. Coleman was not Carole Felsted. I’m not sure from your post whether you believed that she was, but thought I should clarify.
As to her being the Patient Zero of what you term “the Satanic abuse business”: I’d very much doubt that whatever did (or did not) happen to Ms Felsted during therapy had any impact on children’s ritual abuse disclosures in (for example) Broxtowe. These are probably the most useful documents for anyone seriously examining the subject. There is absolutely no evidence that I’m aware of that anyone could have contaminated the disclosures.
However, even if you mean what others have termed “the Satanic panic” – ie: wildly inflated stories, published in the press without proper research or investigation – would you not have to show some evidence that Ms Felsted’s alleged statements were used and/or adopted by other practitioners, or were sufficiently widely published to be a possible source?
Absent that evidence, all you would have is the sort of non-forensic ‘post hoc, propter hoc’ argument which is what each of the competing ‘sides’ in this debate deploy, and which has made a nonsense of what should be taken very seriously.
No boredom here, don’t worry about that: I for one am very grateful for this extended exchange. It is very informative and long may it continue.
A side point: Tim Tate refers in his section on RAINS to “She and her colleague, Eileen Reeves, were working with a very disturbed adult woman (now dead) who, over a period of several years, made a series of allegations about being involved in a satanic cult.” This reminded me that there are currently a number of academics and others working on the case of the (now dead) Carole Myers/Felsted – for a basic outline see here:-
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/dec/11/carole-myers-satanic-child-abuse
(there is more in a barely literate but nonetheless useful book by the Felsted family “Justice For Carol” and on their associated website http://www.justiceforcarol.com)
Some are arguing that Carol was, so far as the UK in concerned, the Patient Zero of the whole “satanic abuse” business. Do either (or both) Tim T or Justin S have information on this case which could be usefully shared?
Correction: I (twice) stupidly misspelled the surname Felstead. Apologies.
@ Justin Sanity
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
There are so many inaccuracies and problems in your last two posts that it will take a fair old wodge of text to correct them. If anyone else is following this thread, my apologies for any boredom which ensues.
1. The “despicable hit lists”: you referred to these alleged lists by including a web link. This link is from SAFF – an organisation set up by, or on behalf of, Chris Bray. Mr Bray is the owner of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Bookshop. In 1988 he published a magazine – The Lamp of Thoth – which included (inter alia) an article by the head of the Temple of Set (a self-proclaimed satanic church) at a time when that person was facing child sexual abuse charges. Bray also posted a contact address for the Temple of Set.
In the same issue, Bray posted an article about The Process Church of The Final Judgement – a bizarre organisation with a history of violence. The article included the following statement from the Process: “Our advice in this matter is clear: any action that has seemed repulsive, reprehensible and vile to the individual should be acted-out and set free.” Once again a contact address was included.
During the course of the 1989 Cook Report on ritual abuse and satanic crime, we tried to ask Bray about the wisdom of these articles and – specifically – about giving the contact addresses. Bray’s reaction was to bombard me with (a) vast quantities of scribblings – utter garbage, all of it – and (b) to seek to prevent the programme referring to him or his magazine. He did not succeed in the latter, but after Roger Cook doorstepped him to ask whether the publication was responsible, Bray began an absurd campaign to denounce anything and everything to do with ritual abuse.
This is what SAFF publishes – and, having gone through it carefully, I’m happy to report that it bears little or no relationship to the truth. As but one – previously mentioned – example , it claims that I am responsible for the ‘fire-bombing’ of Bray’s shop by ‘Christian fundmentalists’. There was no firebombing – though there appears to have been a small fire; there was no evidence as to who might have been responsible – or even whether it was a deliberate act; and absolutely zero connection to me. None of that stopped Bray from publishing his malicious falsehoods. I’d strongly advise therefore that you approach SAFF’s claims of “satanic hit lists” with a sizeable portion of salt.
2. RAINS. As far as I’m aware no-one has ever suggested (as you imply) that RAINS was “inspired by child victim disclosures”. The organisation was initially founded by Dr. Joan Coleman whom I met in 1988. She and her colleague, Eileen Reeves, were working with a very disturbed adult woman (now dead) who, over a period of several years, made a series of allegations about being involved in a satanic cult. She further claimed that children were being abused and that murders had taken place.
Dr. Coleman (a perfectly rational and, to the best of my knowledge, non-religious person) behaved perfectly properly. She contacted the police to pass on the information being given to her (as she had a legal duty to do) and patiently recorded in written notes the continuing allegations made by her patient.
RAINS was formed when other professionals spoke with Dr. Coleman and discussed patients – both adults and children – they were working with who were making similar allegations. The ones I met were almost exclusively secular, non-Christian and resolutely rational. If there were evangelical Christian members they certainly kept their distance from me.
You allege that Dr. Coleman met with Judith Dawson and Christine Johnston, the senior social workers in charge of the Broxtowe case. I have no information about any such meeting, and nor do I believe that they jointly founded RAINS as you suggest. But if – as you claim – this meeting took place in 1989 you should be aware that the Broxtowe case was by then over. Maybe I’m being obtuse, but I can’t see what the problem is here ?
3. DIAGNOSIS OF SEXUAL ABUSE IN NON-VERBAL CHILDREN. I truly hope you stop to think about the very serious implication of what you wrote. If we only diagnose sexual abuse in children who are able to report it (even leaving aside the unfair burden this places on these children) you condemn pre-verbal children – ie: babies and toddlers – to suffering abuse without any attempt at intervention.
Paedophiles do abuse children from birth onwards. We cannot abdicate the responsibility to protect these children simply because they don’t have the power of speech. There are numerous physical, behavioural and psychological indicators which professionals use (and have done so for many, many decades) in cases of suspected sexual abuse.
4. LISTS OF INDICATORS OF RITUAL ABUSE. You allege that I solicited these from Ray Wyre. Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong – and yet revealing: this is precisely the false information put out by SAFF and Bray’s other pseudonyms.
The fact is that I asked a US psychiatric social worker who was examining the phenomenon of ritual abuse allegations to send me some of her notes. I showed these to Ray Wyre, with whom I had a close working relationship for 20 years. Ray had not come across the allegations before but quite properly kept an open mind.
The myth which has been propagated, that these alleged lists of satanic indicators were the source of all UK ritual abuse reports, is just sheer nonsense. Firstly they were not all lists of satanic indicators: they were documents about ritual abuse. Secondly some were obviously religiously-inspired junk – and were thrown in the bin straight away. And thirdly, other than discussing them with the Broxtowe social workers AFTER the children there had made disclosures to their foster parents, to the best of my recollection they sat quietly in my files and never went anywhere else.
5. MOTIVE. I fear you don’t understand paedophilia. The notion that there is a single motive (presumably sexual) for the abuse of children in whatever form is simply not correct. How do I know ? Because (unlike you, according to your first post on this thread) I have taken the trouble to interview very many paedophiles. I don’t claim to be unique in this – much less the fount of some great store of knowledge: Ray Wyre was the greatest such resource & sadly he is no longer with us. But to suggest that paedophilia “is its own motivation” is absurdly simplistic. In fact, paedophilia is rarely about sex itself (though that certainly plays a part) and is generally a very complex tapestry of often conflicting emotions, desires and impulses. Nor is the motivation of sexual sadism just sadism: it’s generally a much, much more complicated and deeper lying pathology.
You criticise – rightly in my view – the amateurs who have muddied the waters of ritual abuse. Please don’t add to the problem by amateurish dabbling in the hugely complex pathology of paedophilia. If you want to do something useful on this, listen to paedophiles themselves (as well as to their victims) – and do so for a very, very long time before rushing into print with your conclusions.
Finally: I agree with the apparent sentiment behind much of your lengthy postings. There should NEVER be any religious element applied to the investigation of allegations of any form of abuse. If it appears to be inherent in the abuse it should be noted down – but an investigator should NEVER bring their own religious views into a case. I have repeatedly argued, in fact, that where ritual abuse is suspected only secular investigators or social workers should be involved in handling the case.
But … none of what you posted addresses the fundamental questions. What is to be done when a child (or children) disclose sexual abuse in the course of rituals – and exhibit apparently genuine terror about this ? Who should take priority – the police and their criminal investigator, or the therapists with their duty to heal ?
Because there is so much stupidity, ignorance, prejudice and nonsense from evangelicals and their religious opposites like Bray; from hucksters and bunco artists (yes, of course they exist and have leaped on the bandwagon) and – perhaps most shamefully – from my colleagues in journalism, who run irresponsible, unchecked and sensational allegations without any though of proper investigation … because of this, the fundamental questions above are not discussed publicly. And that is simply wrong.
Happy New Year !
@Tim – I don’t want you to think that I’ve bypassed the gist of your last.
Finklehor’s apparently objective, descriptive definition for RA is – in “Nursery Crimes”, followed by a 3 part typology of allegations of ritualistic activity, (a problematically defined term, itself):
1) “True Cult Based Ritualistic Abuse” – “attempts to create a particular spiritual or social sytem through practices that involve physical, sexual and emotional abuse…Satanic religious organizations that practice sexual abuse…” THAT, is the Pazder definition reborn.
2) “Pseudo-ritualistic Abuse” – the ritualistic activity is simply a means to intimidate the children.
3) “Psychopathologic Abuse” – the perpetrators are simply, genuinely, NUTS.
These are not so objective anymore, they are in fact seriously speculative again. Worse, they are followed by the same type of misguided speculations about MOTIVATION that we saw earlier with Hudson: “Motivation For Ritualistic Abuse” – and THERE IT IS AGAIN…”the identification with evil” !!
I’ve been going through Sandra Buck’s “The RAINS Network in the UK”, which is chapter 10 in Noblitt’s “Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century”. Not meaning to offend you or your RAINS friends any more than I may have already, but I have some observations. Joan Coleman and Eileen Reeves had been “supporting” adult SRA victim claimants since 1987 – two years before they met with Dawson & Johnston to found RAINS. During those two years, their ADULT victim claimants had been “teaching” them all about; satanism, satanic cults, satanic cult abuse of children, what SRA child victims experience, how they react, how the cults hide the abuse, etc. Or rather, what they alleged about all of those things.
So, it’s NOT true to say that RAINS was inspired by child victim disclosures. It was inspired by adult victim claimant-informants. It’s NOT true to say that RAINS was originally a group of professionals so puzzled by child disclosures and clueless about the subject matter that they came together for mutual support. After Coleman & Reeves brought Dawson and Johnston up to speed on their adult informant’s “teachings”, they ALREADY believed that they possessed expertise in the subject. BEFORE you solicited lists of indicators from Ray Wyre, before they collected any of those materials. And the first child “disclosures” that this group attempted to analyze were not VERBAL statements by children. I quote, pg. 308: “…children who were trying to communicate terrifying things. They did this as children do, through their BEHAVIOURS, DRAWINGS and PLAY”.
I can tell, that many of your RAINS friends have great faith in their ability to “diagnose” child ritual abuse victimization from non-verbal indicators. I’m sorry, but that idea just isn’t valid. It’s not valid to attempt to “diagnose” events in another persons life, even if it should turn out that your premonition has some basis in fact. No matter how experienced you are, no matter how professionally objective you believe yourself to be, the danger of unrecognized confirmation bias is too great. Your friends need to let go of their investment in magical “diagnostic” detective work.
@Tim Tate – definitely one of the more rational discussions of this subject I’ve had for a long time – I thank you, for that!
Yes, there are dozens of definitions for “ritual abuse”, and at least half a dozen derivative terms; i.e., ritualistic abuse, extreme abuse, multi-perpetrator abuse, organized abuse – that encompass and de-emphasize but still endorse the term “ritual abuse”, if you were not aware of that.
Ritual abuse is sort of the ‘punk rock’ of CSA – everyone is invited to play, regardless of their ability (their degree of training or expertise), as long as they proclaim: “I believe in punk rock!” (If you don’t believe, you’re not invited to play…and if you insist on playing you will be publicly slandered, harassed and threatened. You might even appear in some despicable “hit-list” of “identified satanic cultists” generated by delusional SRA victim claimants and circulated by advocacy networks run by supposed “professionals”):
http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/colemanrains.htm
Dozens of adult RA victim claimants, self-professed RA investigators, RA academic researchers, RA therapists, RA advocates and their supporters have proclaimed their own definition for ritual abuse. That has always been part of the popularity of the term and the concepts it supposedly encompasses – victim claimants who might be “just plain folk” with little education and certainly no academic expertise in criminology, CSA or religious studies, have been treated as inherent experts in all of these fields by virtue of their alleged experiences, and have driven sympathetic professional’s understanding of SRA from the very beginning. But a term that can mean anything to anyone is effectively totally meaningless!
In Michael Salters “Out of the shadows: re-envisioning the debate on ritual abuse”, (Noblitt’s “Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-first Century”, pg. 155), he quotes Pamela Hudson: “It became apparent that neither I nor the combined experts od several local investigative agencies had previous experience with this particular form of multi-level/multi-perpetrator/multi-victim case…we understood the modus operandi but we did not have the motivation. Sexual perversion – yes. Child pornography – yes. Sadism – yes. But why?”
WHY? What does she mean – WHY? Pedophilia is it’s own motivation, as are paraphilias of all kinds, and the “motivation” for pornography is to excite such sexual obsessions. The “motivation” for sadism is – sadism! The idea that there must be some comprehensive, underlying IDEOLOGICAL motivation for CSA crimes, and the determination to identify such a thing, reveals a profound ignorance of basic forensic psychology and sex offender’s cognitive distortions.
Salter says of this misguided determination, that it has: “…positioned ritual as the primary, and eventually definitive, aspect of the experiences of multiperpetrator sexual abuse, which has driven the development of ritual abuse discourse…this emphasis on ritualistic forms of…abuse, and the consequent designation of perpetrator groups as “cults”, is problematic in that it presumes that the “ultimate end” or purpose…is perverse religious worship”. The Pamela Hudson quote, asking “why”, finishes with this: “Finally, a parent said – sounds like Satanism! I said – what’s that?”
That’s where this all began, with the mistaken assumption that pedophiles MUST be motivated by some religious or ideological devotion to evil, and that would mean – in our culture and particularly at that time (1980’s) – they must be satanists! (And with professionals like Hudson allowing non-experts like “a parent” to ‘educate’ them on the subject of satanism, which meant filling their heads with myth, urban legends, and pop culture fantasies). And so you get Diane Core running amok throughout the UK and Europe proclaiming: “Pedophile gangs are satanic cults! Pedophiles are pedophiles because they are satanists, and satanists are satanists because they are pedophiles!”
Ultimately, the term “ritual abuse” is an artificial, invalid and unnecessary attempt to construct a new category of sexual offenses. Batley’s victims were not “ritually abused”. They were, (and I do believe the convictions were valid), raped, sodomized and prostituted – by adults in their lives including family members. Calling what happened to them ritual abuse only DISTRACTS from the brutal and tragic reality of the abusive acts that they suffered.
@Justin Sanity
I think I see the problem. It’s that you’re using some very odd definitions of ritual abuse.
Whilst Pazder did indeed first coin the phrase, to the best of my knowledge his definition is not one which has really been used in the mainstream of child protection.
I think the best definition ( for reasons, see below) is the one put forward by Finklehor, Meyer and Burns in 1988.”[Ritual abuse is] abuse that occurs in a context linked to some symbols or group activity that have a religious, magical or supernatural connotation, and where the invocation of these symbols or activities, repeated over time, is used to frighten or intimidate the children”.
Here’s why I think this is the best definition (it was the one I used in my book on ritual abuse) – and, before that, why I think an accurate definition matters.
What purpose is served by a definition of a phenomenon ? What is the definition actually for, and what service does it actually perform ? If these questions seem either obvious or even unnecessary, I take the view that they’re amongst the most vital we need to ask.
A definition exists to encapsulate the most common aspects of a phenomenon. Sometimes the definition is a law – child pornography being an example: the law talks about “indecent or obscene images of children” and thus provides a clear description of child pornography.
Ritual abuse has never been defined by law: in my view this makes it all the more important to have a clear description of what it is.
A good definition is one which describes – impartially – what something looks and/or sounds like. A bad definition is one which adds or imposes on to this observation a layer of subjectivity by the observer. The definitions you quoted clearly do just that: they come from people who perceive a threat to their own spiritual belief systems ad have imposed that on what they have observed during disclosures.
By contrast, the definition by Finkelhor et al simply describes the common elements of a disclosure of ritual abuse. It does not add the patina of the definers’ own belief systems.
So where are all these people observing this phenomenon which they then try to define ? The answer is in the paragraph above: disclosures by children. (We’ll come to adults in a bit.)
It is a fact that there have been a number of cases in which children have made disclosures of sexual abuse during which they also described symbols or activity that have a magical, religious or spiritual connotation. They also exhibit great fear of these contextual elements – often greater even than of the physical pain of the abuse itself.
Frequently, the general response to these disclosures has been that in some way they were coached , or the result of ether leading questions or cross-contamination (ie: one child repeating what he or she knows another has already said). And in some cases there appears to be some evidence of some of the above.
However, in other cases it is clear that there has been no contamination, coaching or leading questions. In this country the most notable example is the Broxtowe case in Nottingham in the mid/late 1980s.
Much has been written about this case – and most of that is inaccurate. At its heart, this was classic case of intergenerational child sexual abuse: a man who abused his children for years, then went on to abuse his grandchildren, often with their parents joining in. There were a large number of very young children of the third generation: after being removed from the family, each was housed separately with foster-parents and had no contact with the others. What they said (“the disclosures”) was either tape recorded or written down verbatim by the foster parents. I had access to those disclosures – but never to the children or the foster parents.
In addition to the sexual abuse disclosures, some of the children (not all) made individual disclosures about events where multiple adults would abuse them in a variety of locations, in circumstances which plainly formed part of some kind of supernatural setting. Most obvious was the description of “witches’” parties at which abuse took place.
These children exhibited real fear about these circumstances, over and above that of the sexual abuse which they had unquestionably suffered.
The problem was that some of these disclosures also clearly contained descriptions of the physically impossible – people flying, for example – and of children being killed. This posed a major problem for police and social services. And it is that problem which I believe has never been addressed – and which lies at the heart of what we need to do about ritual abuse today.
Because some of the children’s disclosures contained a mixture of descriptions of sexual abuse and of the physically impossible (as well as of homicides that the police could find no physical evidence for). That the children believed these disclosures was absolutely clear: but for the prosecution of the extended adult family they could have been toxic. Under rules of evidence every single one had to be disclosed to the defence, and some were so clearly impossible that they could have undermined the credibility of the whole case.
At the same time, these children urgently needed psychiatric counselling for all they had endured, particularly the fear of the ritual elements. But to provide this would expose the social services and police team to allegations that the disclosures stemmed from contaminated or leading questioning.
What happened next is still the subject of claim and counter claim (and was also partly the cause of the libel action against my book). What is factually accurate is that the adult family members were convicted and sent to prison for very long periods – and that following there was an internal review of the case by Nottinghamshire County Council.
That review – known as the JET Report – interviewed me. Remarkably, the report managed completely to reverse my evidence to the enquiry: it stated that I did not believe ritual abuse existed at all, when I had said the complete opposite. It also put forward the idea that the children’s disclosures had only come about after I provided some written material on ritual abuse investigations in the United States to the two most senior social workers.
Since (a) what little material I did provide was handed over AFTER the key disclosures (b) contained almost nothing which resembled what some of the children were disclosing and (c) the two social workers concerned told me that they had no contact with the children or the foster parents, the JET Report seems to have been less than forensic.
Which is perhaps why the Council refused to publish it and why, when two controversial journalists (Anning & Hebditch – check out their book which praises the unpleasant world of the hard core pornography industry) publishished it on line, the council took legal action to remove it.
But the great dilemma – whether to prioritise prosecutions or therapy for those disclosing ritual abuse- has ever since been unresolved. In fact, the whole sorry Broxtowe saga made it very difficult for child protection officials elsewhere even to record disclosures of ritual abuse. These became politically (small ‘p’, there) unspeakable.
And finally: what about adult disclosures ? These tend to be the ones which make the most headlines in the tabloid press.
I have argued for 25 years that evidentially they are almost completely worthless. The scope for contamination of their recollections is so vast that, unless physical corroborative evidence can be found, there will never be a viable ritual abuse prosecution based solely on adult testimony.
Does that mean we should ignore them ? No: they, too have need for therapy. Nor should we miss the opportunity to record the names and places they claim to be identifying: that’s pretty standard intelligence work. But should we swallow wholesale the stories put forward by these soi-disant adult survivors ? Absolutely not. They could be accurate, they could be fantasy (or at least perceived reality rather than reality itself). But that’s the best you can say about them.
That my colleagues in the press publish these claims without any caveats (much less any actual investigation) is another major problem and one about which GoJam has allowed me to post previously.
I hope this helps ! Happy New Year.
The real “problem of ritual abuse”, is this – that phrase has no validity, not as a subcategory of sexual violence nor for any other purpose. “Ritual Abuse” and the derivative “ritualistic abuse” were invented, and coined by Canadian Psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, when he published the book “MIchelle Remembers” in 1980. Pazder’s definition for Satanic Ritual Abuse aka ritual abuse aka ritualistic abuse, was this: “ritual abuse of children is repeated physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual assaults combined with a systematic use of symbols and secret ceremonies designed to turn a child against itself, family, society and God.” Pazder further stipulated that “the sexual assault has ritualistic meaning and is not for sexual gratification”.
During his presentation for “The Emergence of Ritualistic Crime in Today’s Society”,conference at a “N. Colo.-S. Wyo. Detectives Association Seminar” in Ft. Collins, Colo., 9-12 September 1986, Pazder further delineates exactly what ritual abuse meant to him – the inventor of the term:
“The abuses may be repeated 100-1000 times! The assaults target the physical level first, then the emotional, mental and spiritual levels of the child. They are a planned, detailed program designed to turn the victim against itself, society, and God.
Every assault has a purpose. The sex-type assaults are not the ‘dog in heat syndrome for sexual gratification,’ but part of a process to degrade the child and produce guilt.
Careful planning and execution is required by the perpetrators and the process takes a long time with repeated contacts.
Every step is premeditated. The Motive: to remove the child from everything good, normal, healthy, Godly; to inculcate the child into the primary belief system of Satan. Ritualistic Abuse is an assault against innocence. The Ritualized Abuse process will warp the child totally, make it predisposed to accept the devil’s philosophy” later in life. Another purpose is to inculcate the child into the primary Satanic group. These children are literally time bombs planted in society!”
That’s what Pazder meant by “ritual abuse”. He meant that subjecting a toddler to a long-term, systematic regimen of rape and sexual sadism, would somehow make the child “turn evil” – by which Pazder means that the child will absorb “moral corruption” from the morally corrupt practices inflicted upon it (!) – transforming them from an unwilling victim of sexual perversion into an actively desirous participant, who would come to crave the ultimate perversion of being a wanton sex slave for Satan himself (yes, literally).
It should be obvious to everyone that Pazders SRA scenario is a fantasy derived from hollywood movies and horror fiction, one that could never be manifested in reality. But there are people who believe that ritual abuse as Pazder defined it, is real and pervasive throughout our society.
If you say that there is no doubt children are abused in rituals, and therefore that ritual abuse is a documented reality, do you mean that Pazder’s SRA is also ? If not, how could you prevent your endorsement of ritual abuse being exploited by believers in Pazder’s fantasy, as proof that SRA is a reality?
Here are some other definitions for ritual abuse/ritualistic abuse, taken from various academic & website sources:
“Ritual abuse is an extreme, sadistic form of abuse of children and non-consenting adults. It is methodical, systematic sexual, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse, which often includes mind control, torture, and highly illegal and immoral activities such as murder, child pornography and prostitution. The abuse is justified by a religious or political ideology”.
Note that this definition doesn’t actually include “abused in rituals”, at all! But if you say: “ritual abuse is a proven reality” you will also be endorsing this ritual-less ritual abuse. Some definitions use only a component or two from the above, saying any CSA involving pornography is ritual abuse, any CSA involving sadism is RA, any CSA resulting in murder is RA, even if no abuse in a ritual is involved. Would you endorse those definitions, also?
@Tim Tate – I appreciate your advice, I really do! [By the way, I was able to read a chapter from your book on pornography – via Ian Pace’s blog – it was very good]
There are several autobiographical reveals in my comment postings, here – too many and too much already probably. I’ve confided other things about my background to Gojam privately, and we had a brief discussion about online security – about the reality that dangerous persons might target any of us because of something we’ve made public online, about the possibility of Bad Guys we might have helped bring to justice in the past using our online presence to trace us, and about what measures we take to ensure our own security and that of our family members. I do have concerns. Gojam knows why, I don’t think anyone else needs to know..
I was quite serious before, though, when I said that I wouldn’t want anyone to take very much that I (or anyone else) has to say, “on trust”. I’d be disappointed if people DIDN’T make the effort to verify & validate for themselves, anything I’ve said which might seem important to them. In fact I’d be delighted if someone was inspired to research a subject, solely to prove to themselves that I’m full of sh*t about something I’ve asserted or suggested might be true.
If you’re trying to ask if I’m a Satanist…I’m an atheist rationalist. Science, reason and compassion inform my “worldview”. I’ve publicly confronted and spoken against superstitious and supernatural beliefs being used to justify predjudice and injustice, in my community, in the past. Nevertheless, I’ve also studied the major world religions, many smaller faith traditions, lots of obscure spiritual communities that came & went over the centuries, as well as kabbalistic/hermetic/occult beliefs and their practitioners, and modern neo-pagan movements – formally through university and independently. I have longstanding associations with Left-Progressive activism; fundraising and lobbying on behalf of Sexual Assault centers, women’s & childrens emergency shelters, Anti-Racist Action, environmental protection, community support and legislative reform for victims of violence, and justice for falsely accused/imprisoned persons. I’ve been a community activist/volunteer working with local law enforcement on cult and gang issues, LGBT issues and religious tolerance/anti-defamation issues, for 30+ years. That’s what you get to know, Mr Tate.
You are right, that I have not been my usual circumspect self in this thread. I’ve been feeling old and curmudgeonly. I’ve been so circumspect about so many things for so many years – the impulse to say what I’m really thinking has felt irresistible lately. As a young man, I interviewed many of the elders in my nation’s gay community about exploitation and victimization they experienced when they were youths. I was (and still am) determined to know the full truth about the historic relationship between self-professed “boy-lover” pederasts and the rest of the homosexually inclined population. NOT what the gay-basher’s propaganda claims, and NOT what the LGBT leadership thinks is politically prudent for people to know, but the truth lying behind both of those perspectives. I heard a lot of disturbing things, some of which I was subsequently able to verify and some of which turned out to be primarily rumor and gossip. Along comes all this open discussion about PIE and it’s lobbying and networking with human rights organizations, etc., in the Uk…and there are things about that which I STILL can’t allow myself to discuss publicly, because of all the concerns you’ve mentioned. I know the current identity used by one of the principal Better Life conspirators – a man who has theoretically been wanted for crimes against children since 1975, but I can’t talk about it publicly. It’s galling!
Can I prove that Bonacci viewed the videotapes of the other 3 Caradori informants, before making his own deposition? No. I believe that is the logical conclusion to make however, given all of the publicly available information about the Franklin case and about Bonnaci – before, during and after that investigation. I haven’t had access to everything you’ve had access to, about Franklin, but a vast wealth of material has been made public since the time you were working on Conspiracy of Silence.
You know that I believe the child abuse accusation against DeCamp and his wife to be a false one, and it’s not my intention to encourage anyone else to believe that accusation.
The Alisha Owen quote came from the franklinfiles.org forums. There have been a lot of disgruntled ex-members of that forum, some of whom were eager to circulate what they had heard and seen in that place.
@Justin Sanity
Your post highlights the difference between blogging and investigative journalism. Here’s why.
1. Your identity does matter. Anonymity – particularly in a matter as contentious as child abuse – is generally reserved for those for first hand witnesses for whom there is a genuine fear of reprisal should their be names be disclosed, or for whom there is a legal prohibition on naming them. Do either of these categories apply to you ?
2. Likewise your background and whatever baggage/agenda you bring to the debate. You seem to suggest that this is irrelevant, when surely it is not. For example: the reader has a right , in my view, to know if allegations emanate from, say, an evangelical Christian or, alternatively, from someone who belongs to a Satanic church (and yes, there are some). I’m not saying that you are either: but the principle is – I hope – clear from the example.
You also appear, implicitly to recognise this by referring to James Bevel and what you say was his championing of Paul Bonacci. I’ve never heard of, much less spoken, to this man and so, for the purposes of this reply, will take your word about his conviction. I do have some knowledge of Lyndon LaRouche’s organisation which has always struck me as having – at best – an accidental relationship with the truth. But if Bevel’s background – his involvement with LaRouche and his conviction – were not relevant information, why would you include them in your post ? They plainly are: and so logically is your own background.
That’s why when I began publishing on ritual abuse I specifically disclosed my degree in Theology and the fact that I don’t belong to, or have any patience for, any organised religion.
3. The need for full disclosure is even more vital when you make allegations based on what you claim to be “personally researching everything I’m concerned about”. As a journalist I could not print or broadcast allegations without disclosing the sources for, and the nature of, my research (with the caveats in (1) above). As a blogger, you appear to feel these fundamental rules don’t apply, and that you’re free to make allegations without adducing evidence, and yet expect the reader to accept the veracity of what you say on trust.
4. For the record, I asked you to provide substantive evidence for a number of allegations you made. Specifically your claim that Bonacci’s video testimony was contaminated by viewing previous video depositions; that there is “good reason to doubt” that Boner and Bonacci were abused; and that the Grand Jury was unable to “extract fact from fiction” and that this led to “genuine victims” being denied justice. I also asked if you had done as I did which was actually to read all the Grand Jury transcripts. You haven’t responded to any of that: unless and until you do, I don’t see how anyone can be expected to accept your claims.
5. Finally: your last post invited readers to judge John De Camp on the basis that he had been accused of abusing his daughter. You are aware, I know, that this accusation was never supported, much less proved. Again, no journalist could get away with such a blatant (and indeed unlawful) smear.
And so: whatever you choose to post from here on must I think, be taken with a pinch of salt. Unless and until you disclose who you are, what your background is and exactly what research you have actually done (including your sources), then all you are doing is putting forth opinions which can’t be assessed or verified.
I invite you to come out from your cloak of anonymity and also to justify your claims with evidence. I’d also suggest you bear in mind C.P. Scott’s memorable advice: “Comment is free, but facts are sacred”.
Best
@Justin Sanity
Well, I hope you feel better about getting that pile of bile off your chest.
As with much else you have posted here there is precious little in the way of fact and a great deal of invective. I’ll do my best to address the facts as I knew them when I made the film.
But first: it would, I think, be an idea for you to explain who you are and what – if any – involvement in actual research you have had on this case (and others). I appreciate that posters on blogs tend to use pseudonyms, but in something as tendentious as child abuse cases (and in particular the Franklin saga) it’s not terribly helpful or reassuring.
I post under my own name so that anyone who reads can know who I am, can research my background and work and, should they so wish, form conclusions about any agenda I bring to the debate.
On Franklin, my involvement is a matter of public record. But for clarity, I would remind you that I spent many, many months on the ground: I met and spent a great deal of time with all the people you have mentioned (except for Stan Sipple). I also examined and made copies of all the grand jury testimony (not legal, I grant you, but vital).
Have you done any of these things ? Or are you simply posting your own thoughts on the basis of what you’ve read ? Not a problem if you are: but you should, in my view, state this from the outset.
Next: the details of your last posting.
1. You say that I have called John De Camp a hero. What I actually said was “I don’t like the largely misleading concept of “heroes” in any event, but if I had to look for them in that story I would nominate John De Camp and Lauren Schmidt “ . That’s a rather different thing, altogether: one of the reasons I don’t like the term “hero” is precisely because most of us have both good and bad aspects to our characters and our work. John De Camp made that quite clear to me from the outset, being very frank – for example – about his involvement in very dirty deeds during the Vietnam War.
2. You compare John De Camp and Ralph Underwager, claiming that the only difference between them is that “Underwager discouraged belief in ritual abuse while John DeCamp supported and promoted belief in ritual abuse”. This is simply not true: whatever Underwager may have said about ritual abuse, the prime reason that he is viewed so harshly by anyone who cares about the protection of children from sexual abuse is that he publicly pronounced paedophillia to be ‘God’s Will’ and repeatedly sought to suggest that it did not harm children. Do check out his writings in Dutch paedophilia journals and, indeed, his testimony to the Cleveland child abuse enquiry if you doubt this.
3. Arguing that some people accused of child abuse are innocent, as you point out that De Camp did, is both reasonable and right. My friend and colleague, the late Ray Wyre – the best and most successful person in working with sex offenders AND in trying to raise public understanding of the problem – did just that if and when he came across cases which were simply wrong.
4. You say that there is “good reason to doubt” the claims by Bonacci and Boner that they were sexually abused. Could you please provide some substantive evidence for that ? I certainly never came across it during my research.
5. You posit the belief that Bonacci was shown videotapes of the depositions by Boner and Alisha Owens. Again: can you provide any substantive evidence for this allegation ? I never found any evidence of such contamination – and I spent months going through the Grand Jury testimony and the private investigative report files compiled by Gary Caradori, the investigator hired by the State of Nebraska and who carried out those videotaped interviews.
6. You allege that it was “thanks in large part to the lies told by Bonacci, Boney and King” the Grand Jury was not able to “extract fact from fiction and the possibility of justice was stolen from the genuine victims”. I would be fascinated to know where that conclusion comes from ? Did you read this in any of the Grand Jury files (because I never saw it there) ?
7. I make no comment on Alisha Owens’ remarks about John De Camp – for the simple reason that I haven’t spoken to her since making the film and because I’ve not seen the source of the quote. However, I would say that someone who appears to be Alisha has posted very supportive comments about the film on other threads.
Finally: as I have written previously, the film makes no reference whatsoever to ritual abuse. There is a simple reason for that: during the many, many months I worked on the film I never saw any evidence (as opposed to allegations) which I could put forward as reliable. By contrast, the Grand Jury files were absolutely stacked with very strong prime facie evidence of child sexual abuse. Just for clarity, the Owens/Boner/Bonacci claims about this were actually the second wave of such allegations: a number of youngsters had previously made (in secret) almost identical allegations about almost all the alleged abusers.
I hope this helps: before your promised next post, do think carefully about stepping out from behind your pseudonym.
Best wishes
@Tim Tate – Christmas is almost upon us, we will all be extra busy no doubt. So, I’ll try to put my second piece up tonight but the last may not appear until the very end of the month and you may have moved on to other things. If you bother to return & read it great, if not – kay, sarah & sarah!
Quickly, old business first.
I can’t say that I bother trying to divine “agendas” from other people’s blog comments. Nor am I much curious about whom they might be behind their screen names. I’m interested in what they have to say and have said, not much in who is saying it or why. But then I insist on personally researching everything I’m concerned about, and coming to my own conclusion & judgements on those issues or subjects, and when I’m doing that I’m not much influenced by the status or credentials of the sources I’m absorbing. I’m more interested in the verifiable validity of the information.
I want to encourage anyone who reads my words to do the same – never to take anything as truth because I’ve said it, or because you said it, or because “the greatest authority of all time” said it – rather to investigate for themselves and come to their own conclusions. I think that being focused on “who is speaking these words” discourages independent thinking, so I will continue with my pseudonym.
Underwager’s words and meaning in the Paidika interview are intentionally misrepresented of course, attempts to make him appear pro-pedophile. Not that it matters, really, since he was never accused of nor charged with abusing a child himself. Whereas, DeCamp WAS accused of abusing his daughter and Paul Bonacci WAS convicted of molesting little boys. Surely, actually being suspected or convicted of abusing a child ought to draw more condemnation upon a person than simply saying “Pedophiles can say, this is God’s will!” – ? The fact that there are dozens of webpages “exposing” and condemning Underwager simply for his WORDS, and dozens of webpages touting DeCamp and Bonacci as heroes, demonstrates that the criteria at play is this: if you promoted belief in ritual abuse you will be called a hero – even if you are a child abuser, whereas if you discourage belief in ritual abuse you risk being condemned as a monster – even if you’ve never harmed a child. This hypocrisy, of which there are so many examples, needs to be exposed and confronted.
By the way, when you were in Nebraska working on Conspiracy of Silence, did you meet Reverend James Bevel? He was there on behalf of Lyndon Larouche’s Shiller Institute, acting as a public advocate for Paul Bonacci and running petitions to have the whole case reopened. Another selfless, self-professed advocate for abused children with a particular concern for SRA survivor claimants. He was subsequently (2007) convicted of raping his own daughters.
@Tim Tate – so…I’ll post 3 replies to you. The first will deal with Conspiracy of Silence and the Franklin case. The second will address “the problem of ritual abuse” and the third will return to the subject of ritual abuse True Believer and victim claimant networks. OK?
You’ve called John DeCamp a hero, who lost everything he worked for on behalf of abused children. That’s not how John DeCamp himself tells it, in his “The Franklin Cover-up”. In Chapter 7, DeCamp claims that he lost everything he’d worked for – his seat in the State Senate and his political career – because of an allegation that he and his wife had abused their little girl. This occurred around 1984, long before the Franklin child prostitution investigation. DeCamp and his wife were not found guilty of this allegation, which I believe to have been false, but political opponents in his own party exploited the allegations and cost him his party’s nomination and his political career. That’s what HE says. DeCamp also talks, on page xxiii, about being the attorney for “The National Child Abuse and Resource Center”, an organization that defends parents against accusations that they abused their children. DeCamp says: “Just in the past year, I have overturned two felony charges against individuals in rural Nebraska, who were charged with abusing their daughters, based on allegations from the daughters. I was convinced the girls were not telling the truth. I successfully proved this in both cases, and the girls broke down and told the whole story as to why they had lied”.
This is remarkably similar to Ralph Underwager, who founded the Victims Of Child Abuse Laws (VOCAL) lobby group and provided expert testimony for parents who had been falsely accused of abusing their child – except that Underwager was never accused of abusing his own or any other child. I could care less what anyone thinks of Underwager, and the man is dead so he cannot care himself. Still, it is appallingly hypocritical that ritual abuse True Believers characterize Underwager as some kind of monster whilst proclaiming John DeCamp to be an unmitigated hero. And why? What’s the difference between them? Only that Underwager discouraged belief in ritual abuse while John DeCamp supported and promoted belief in ritual abuse.
Yes, that’s the litmus test for ritual abuse True Believers. You can be a chronic fantacist, a pathological liar and a convicted child molester named Paul Bonacci, but if you claim to be a victim of Satanic ritual abuse then you are a hero and a heroic whistleblower – and ritual abuse True Believers won’t give a damn about your own, proven, victims. But weren’t Bonacci and Boner victimized too? Well, there is good reason to doubt their claims about that. The videotaped depositions of Boner, Danny King and Alisha Owen were made first – Bonacci’s was made last and much later. Curiously, the depositions of Boner, King and Owen NEVER MENTION BONACCI at all. They are all asked specifically about other children at “the parties”, and appear to name and describe every victimized child they can think of, but they never name or describe Bonacci! Yet, Bonacci’s deposition places himself in the center of all these events along with the other three! It is obvious to me, as it was to the Grand Jury, that Bonacci was shown the videotapes of the other 3 and then falsely wrote himself into their story. But the fact that the others subsequently accepted that and supported everything Bonacci had to say casts all of their stories into doubt.
Yes, there were children victimized by adults in Nebraska, but thanks in large part to the lies told by Bonacci, Boner & King, the Grand Jury was unable to extricate fact from fiction and the possibility for justice was stolen from the genuine victims. Am I angry about that? Yes of course I am – and everyone else should be too. What might have happened between Alisha Owen and Robert Wadman is a separate matter, about which I make no judgement, but here’s what Owen has said in recent years about her lawyer, the heroic John DeCamp:
“John DeCamp was a very sharp double edged sword for me. I believe he did more harm than for at least me personally. It is my personal opinion that he plays fast and loose with the truth…check out the “facts” in his book…he didn’t even get my sentence correct, a very easy thing to verify…He wrote his book while he was my attorney of record and NEVER once asked if I was okay with that. After telling me that he would represent me pro bono (for free) he told me that he would require $5000 days before a crucial hearing so my husband and I took out a personal loan to pay him. We lost the hearing and when I was required to present myself for additional incarceration DeCamp was unavailable and did nothing further…it is all in the court record. I have the canceled check. To address Freejohnnygosch…why yes I am disturbed by people touting DeCamp as some kind of hero. You may not question him but I sure will. He took money from me and my family. As my attorney I gave him access to information that he used for his own personal profit at my expense no less! I worked 2 jobs and put myself through college level legal training so I could defend myself because I know John was all talk and very little actual work. Read the court record and you can see that Stan Sipple or myself actually did the legal research and wrote the filings. John DeCamp takes credit when he has no due. Last I heard he was in a bar in nowhere Nebraska less than sober hawking his book. I guarantee you that after years of prescription drugs his mind is less than sharp. I am not asking that anyone believe me. I never have. I just tell it the way it is and ask that others examine the evidence and decide for themselves. And please evidence is not just talk but actually examine documents and others behavior. Is there a single “victim” that has anything good to say about DeCamp. I personally would be happy to know that at least there is one person that was wronged that he actually helped with out thought of profit or prestige”.
I’d be happy to rock & roll with you, Mr Tate – providing that Gojam has no objection to his blog’s comment thread being used for that purpose, and that we agree to conduct ourselves in a gentlemanly manner. I do have to earn a living, however, so my replies may not be so timely.
@Justin Sanity
1. I have interviewed both abuser and the abused. Funnily enough, unless you listen to those who abuse children you will never understand how to stop them or protect children from them and their friends.
2. I find it odd that you focus your (evident) anger on Bonacci and Boner who were both victims and abusers, whilst completely ignoring those who abused them and then induced them to provide other children for abuse. A little perspective needed ?
I am not responsible for what chattering internet gossipers say about my film. That some claim it as proof of ritual abuse is bizarre since it never mentions the term (or anything like it). For clarity, I did not have anything to do with the posting of the film on line
3. On the subject of those who use the internet to misrepresent: both sides in this polarised debate are equally guilty. For evidence, I draw your attention to the claims by Chris Bray, owner of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Bookshop that I was responsible for the ‘fire bombing’ of his shop by what he pronounced to be ‘christian fundamentalists’. I was not, of course, have publicly said so and there is not a shred of evidence to support Bray’s ramblings – but that doesn’t stop him repeating the claim ad nauseam on the web.
4. Since you say you don’t have the evidence to back up your claims about an informal network of fraudulent victims claimants and therapists might it be responsible to avoid making the allegation ? To the best of my personal knowledge (I was a member of RAINS) it was not involved in any such fraudulent schemes. It was – at least as far as I was aware – a means for those who had encountered the problems of ritual abuse professionally to discuss it. As such it was no different to any other support group for professionals in the field of child abuse.
Finally – and most importantly. The origins of ritual abuse allegations lie in the disclosures of children – some very, very young indeed. Their descriptions of abuse in what appeared to be a ritualised setting started the whole issue.
I have seen and heard several of these disclosures. To my certain knowledge (and contrary to the chattering of those who seek to discredit them) they were neither the products of over-zealous social workers determined to seek out ritual abuse nor the result of leading questions.
These disclosures pose a fundamental problem for law enforcement and social workers alike. For the police they are a potential landmine which will explode under any prosecution since – as the defence would certainly point out – they often describe that which is physically impossible.
For social workers the problem lies in how to therapeutically work with these damaged children without ruining a potential prosecution of adult abusers.
That dichotomy has never been addressed. It needs to be – and the heat and recrimination which characterise the public debate on this problem simply make that careful, thoughtful examination impossible.
@Tim Tate – I didn’t say anything like this : “you say you don’t have the evidence to back up your claims about an informal network of fraudulent victims claimants and therapists” ! Wow. I’ve never experienced having my words twisted in Gojam’s comment threads before. I’m shocked.
I said that I no longer have the hard-copy of the earliest SRA claimant networking newsletters, and the decision whether to publish those or not is no longer mine to make. But I then named two of the earliest networks: Jackie MacGauley’s “Affirming Children’s Truths” and “TRANS”, and followed that with links to exposes of a “Society for the Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse” conference and a “Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today” conference. Then I gave an example of a UK network: RAINS. I did back up my claim, in spades I believe.
Justin
My apologies: I wrongly understood you to mean that you had donated all your material which proved the existence of an “informal networks of fraudulent SRA victim claimants and therapists who ‘treat’ them, and the massive behind-the-scenes influence they have exerted on law enforcement, psychiatry, journalists, and the whole field of CSA” and therefore no longer possessed them. I’m sorry I misunderstood.
Ot’s very good news that you do have this evidence: now let’s see it please ?
Because all you have done thus far to back up your claim is state the names of three organisations and provide links to other who make the same claim of conspiracy as you (one of whom appears to be the Process, a group about whom there have been counter-claims).
This simply doesn’t amount to proof of your assertions of an informal network of fraudulent victims, much less to them having a “massive” influence on law enforcement psychiatry and journalists.”
There is a vast difference between making an allegation and proving it: hence me asking for you to do so.
Your inclusion of RAINS within this conspiracy is – to my certain knowledge – absurd. It had little or no influence on anyone, though it did provide support to those who were dealing with the problem.
Finally, I note your lack of response on Conspiracy of Silence – and on the fundamental question of how the problem of ritual abuse is to be addressed.
On the subject of Tim Tate, here from the public record is the PA report from the time:-
Press Association
July 13, 1992
LIBEL DAMAGES FOR ABUSE INQUIRY CHIEF
A senior Nottingham police officer who headed a child sex abuse inquiry accepted “very substantial” undisclosed libel damages in the High Court today over allegations in a book that he concealed evidence and was responsible for a “dirty” campaign against social workers. Detective Superintendent Peter Coles led a 1988 investigation into allegations of abuse in the Broxtowe area of Nottingham. Ten adults were convicted and jailed, and the police were praised for their efforts. His solicitor, Mr Keith Schilling, said today that a book, “Children for the Devil: Ritual Abuse and Satanic Crime”, by Tim Tate, alleged the officer was responsible for deliberate concealment of evidence that wealthy individuals may have been involved in abuse. It said he was responsible for a dirty, dishonest and underhand campaign against social workers who were co-operating in the inquiry and for authorising surveillance of social workers’ private lives. As a result of his conduct, children remained trapped in the misery of ritual abuse. Mr Schilling told Mr Justice Drake: “The plaintiff was appalled, shocked and distressed to discover that the book contained such an outrageous attack upon his personal and professional reputation and that of his team of police officers. He was angered by the embarrassment caused to his family, friends and colleagues. Mr Tate and publishers The Octopus Group accepted the grave allegations were “utterly without foundation”. They retracted the allegations completely, apologised unreservedly and agreed to pay “very substantial damages” and all the officer’s legal costs. After today’s brief settlement hearing, Det Supt Coles refused to reveal the amount of damages, but said: “I am very pleased. It is all very satisfactory. One hopes that this will bring some reality back to the things that have been said about this case. “What was written was totally untrue. This has vindicated me completely.”
Gojam – I could refute what you have said in this posting, in great detail, but I will refrain from doing so because I have no doubt of your personal sincerity in composing and posting it.
I will, however, ask you to give very serious thought to this:
Who has been promoting the idea that there could be anything to be gained by raping children, or indeed by murdering them, in the context of a ritual – over the last 30 years?
The ritual abuse debunkers? Or the ritual abuse believers and victim claimants?
Gojam, a good thing you decided to focus on this arcane subject.
I come from a secular background with no particular axe to grind. I’ve merely read stacks of sources on this subject over the last 40 years despite which I am still regrettably largely uninformed.
I don’t think the generalized tag, “Satanic” is very helpful. Ritualised abuse of children and adults by a high priest class in pursuance of power and or wealth has been going on for thousands of years across all cultures and by its very nature it is hidden from everyday eyes. From the Latin, occult means simply “hidden.” The deities worshipped vary widely even within the same culture at the same time. The common unifying factor is ‘evilness’ – attempting to gain favour with the spirit world at the expense of innocent parties from our physical realm in the course of which said parties generally suffer extended great pain. Even this definition is problematic, given that many great philosophers like Nietschze hold firm that there is no such thing as ‘evil’ at all. I personally find this view utterly at odds with the evidence, but who am I to argue with a man of this calibre and others like him?
In short, it’s an extremely difficult thing to get a handle on for all sorts of reasons. But do I believe there’s something very sinister going on behind the scences? You bet! There is a picture emerging but it’s still as yet inchoate. In time we shall see it all clearly. The truth with out eventually. I only pray it’s not too ugly!
@Tim Tate – I’m not in the habit of spending months getting to know convicted child abusers and listening to the stories of their lives, regardless of how much they might CLAIM to have personally suffered. When I mentioned Bonacci, I wasn’t referring to him introducing other boys “to the sex parties”, I was referring to the victimization of little boys in his own family that he was CONVICTED of molesting. But as I said, this is not a personal attack, and “to each his own”.
I’ll take your word that it was not your intention to portray Bonacci and Boner as heroes, but that was certainly my impression from watching Conspiracy of Silence and that is definitely the impression that promoters of your video, from NIck Bryant to John DeCamp and his lunatic buddy Ted Gunderson seem to have come away with. You say that the film doesn’t refer to ritual abuse. You would be surprised to learn, then, that these networks – of fraudulent SRA victim claimants and their therapists – routinely cite Conspiracy of Silence as “proof” of the reality of satanic ritual abuse? Why do you suppose they would do that, Tim? Possibly because they obsessively mischaracterize all manner of media, criminal cases, CSA research studies and victim claimant narratives as “proof” of the reality of satanic ritual abuse, and have been doing this for 30 years?
The earliest manifestations of these networks were so informal that they didn’t even give themselves a title. They used privately printed little newsletters to network with each other. I had some of these, pre 1985 newsletters, but I donated all my hard-copy archives to some younger folks because I’m getting old and don’t expect to be around a whole lot longer. It will be up to those younger people to decide whether to publish them in the future or not. By 1985 there were groups formal enough to have titles. They are most visible through the conferences they ran. One was called “Affirming Children’s Truths” and was rfun by McMartin mom Jackie MacGauley, who was linatic Ted Gunderson’s girlfriend. Another early one was called TRANS, run by a fraud who called herself “Danielle Cote”.
You can read some expose of conferences run by these networks, here:
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/conspiracy_theories_and_paranoia_notes_from_a_mind-control_conference/
and here:
http://www.process.org/discept/2009/08/25/report-from-the-s-m-a-r-t-ritual-abusemind-control-conference-2009/
A notable one in the UK has been Joan Coleman’s “Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support” or RAINS.
Justin:
I’m not aware of the existence of “informal networks of fraudulent SRA victims, claimants and therapists”. Perhaps if you have this evidence you should put it forward for publication ?
I am aware of individual false claims. It would be surprising if these didn’t exist. However unpleasant, the nature of the human condition is that there are always those who lie and cheat in the hope of gain. I have not seen any evidence that these cases are linked or form, in some way, an “informal network”.
I am, by contrast, aware of a somewhat larger number of children who have made traumatic and painful disclosures which fit with what is (often badly) defined as ritual abuse. I am also aware that there is currently no safe or established process by which child protection staff can work to help them.
The existence of neither group proves, or disproves, the prevalence of ritual abuse. But that it exists is, I’m afraid, undeniable.
As to the film of mine you mentioned (“Conspiracy of Silence”). I’m not defensive about this in the slightest and it’s a fair point to make about the youngsters who Paul Bonacci and Troy Boner introduced to the sex parties. The film doesn’t, though, refer to ritual abuse.
However: I don’t think the film portrayed Paul or Troy as heroes in any way. (I don’t like the largely misleading concept of “heroes” in any event, but if I had to look for them in that story I would nominate John De Camp and Lauren Schmidt – both of whom lost all that they had worked for to help the victims of child abuse in Nebraska.)
I’d also gently point out that the film as it is viewable on the internet is unfinished. Because Discovery pulled the plug, we never finalised the script or the sequences. Would we have included in the final cut something pointing out Paul and Troy’s role in the abuse of others ? I can’t say for certain, but I think quite probably yes.
And finally: your categorisation of both Paul and Troy is, I think, very harsh. I spent many months with both of them and came to understand some of what directed their lives. With respect, before dismissing or attacking people who suffered greatly I think it might be wise (a) to have met them and (b) to have tried to listen to the stories of their lives.
Tim Tate said: “Ritual abuse – satanic or otherwise – is an issue which has been horrendously muddied by (a) (often well-meaning) Christian groups and (b) distinctly unpleasant false memory denial organisations. Both are to blame for setting up a ‘straw man’ chimera of an international satanic conspiracy: the Christians because they apparently believe it, the deniers because it’s a useful (if cynical) tool to debunk the very existence of ritual abuse”.
This is essentially what you have also said, yes Gojam?
There are three very important elements missing from this perspective.
1) The existence of informal networks of fraudulent SRA victim claimants and therapists who ‘treat’ them, and the massive behind-the-scenes influence they have exerted on law enforcement, psychiatry, journalists, and the whole field of CSA. In fact, this perspective you both have expressed is a narrative carefully constructed, refined and promoted by members of these networks over the course of the last 30 years.
I was recruited by my local law enforcement, as a volunteer advisor on the subject of “cult & occult crime”, and served as such from 1987-1992. Please note that this precedes the existence of FMSF. My involvement was strictly community service, I was not paid for any of this work nor have I sought or received compensations by selling articles or videos on this subject. These fraudulent SRA victim claimant networks existed at that time and in one form or another had existed since the early 1980’s. I’ve been tracking their evolving narratives and lobbying activities ever since.
2) There are two motivations for debunking fraudulent SRA victims that neither of you have mentioned. For one – the promotion of sensationalist, unverifiable claims against public figures by self-proclaimed whistleblowers, at the expense of genuine victims, needs to be confronted. Tim, please don’t take this as a personal attack, but I’m going to use one piece from your body of work as an illustration. Rather than get defensive about it, I ask that you please give this some sober thought. That video you made about the Franklin case, wherein both Bonacci & Troy Boner are portrayed as heroic whistleblowers and Bonacci’s unverifiable allegations of participating in child snuff and SRA are promoted. Where is the interview with Bonacci’s victims, detailing the impact of his offending on THEIR lives? You must understand that Troy Boner’s depostion is one long confession to having been a heroin addicted teen pimp, who recruited younger boys after having “sampled” the wares and then passing them along to adult pedophiles? What about BONER’S victims and their stories, Tim? What about the boys that Troy Boner introduced to heroin? Where is their story told? Not in your video. What impact do you think Troy Boner being publicly touted as a heroic whistleblower might have on the boys that he victimized?
3) A second motivation for debunking fraudulent SRA victims, is to mitigate the aggressive and continuous efforts of fraudulent SRA victim claimant networks to ENCOURAGE copy-cat crimes inspired by their false narratives. I’ll have more to say about that in a future posting.
The left hand path faiths are not about ritualistic abuse well not all. Firstly people need to understand that Satan and lucifer in historic terms are two completely different entities.
Also modern day satanism was written by a man called Tim la Vey and a lot of his theories are based on evolution. Other parts to his satanism are based around not being insincere and you are the god of your own destiny and not to believe in god
Separate to this is lucifarianism this is more likely where sacrificial rituals are placed. There are off shoots to this and other left hand paths or faiths. Some are harmless some are not. I practise no faiths but I am aware that La Veyan satanism is very popular and has been very influential in popular culture for at least 35 years
Satanist or pseudo Satanist the result is the same for the victims. Unfortunately, because of the sensationalist way in which these offences are reported, the victims are made out to be fantasists. Of course this suits offenders who will point to how ridiculous the charges sound. Even if the intent is not of a genuine religious nature, it will be used to intimidate victims who may take what they see to be absolutely real but may keep them silent even as adults due to the fantastic sounding nature of the events surrounding the crimes. A win-win for the offender. Only by looking at the offence itself and being less dismissive of victim’s storied can these paedophile rings be shut down. I truly hope that we are, at last, starting to believe victims and actually investigate allegations instead of dismissing them out of hand. Thank you for raising this, too often paedophiles are able to hide behind this.
The Catholic Church & other religious entities have caused more human suffering than will ever likely be understood.
They have completely failed to ‘give up’ their own child abusers believing them to be above mortal law.
Their shameful approach to womans rights, abortion & contraception has left a legacy of suffering across whole continents.
I suspect SRA does go on but to a much lesser extent that the abuse of alter boys & other vulnerable people in the ‘care’ of the church.
Thanks GoJam. I’m happy to clear that up.
The police officer complained about an inference some readers might draw from four paragraphs in the book.
I had never intended those paragraphs to be capable of that interpretation (and indeed, the very experienced libel lawyer who examined the manuscript prior to, and as a condition of, publication didn’t see them as a problem).
Unfortunately, inference – once raised – is a very difficult thing to deny. Almost by definition, if the complainant sees that inference as possible, then so may others. It was this (together with the refusal of a social services department to allow the usual pre-trial statements to be taken from its staff – who had given interviews for use in the book) which led the publishers’ lawyers to settle out of court.
I was quite happy to make clear that no such inference had been intended, and it would have been reasonable, I think, for the complainant’s lawyers to have agreed a revised text for a second edition of the book. Unfortunately, for reasons they did not explain they declined to do so. I draw no inference from that refusal: I merely regret it.
I agree with both Gojam’s thoughtful piece and some of the response from stardog.
That the sexual abuse of children within ritual circumstances exists is proven by a series of successful prosecutions in which the details were spelled out and (evidently) accepted by the jury.
Such prosecutions are rare (though this does not prove the either prevalence or the rarity of ritual abuse itself): almost all the ones I have researched include clear evidence – presented in court – that the rituals were conducted by adults identifying themselves as satanists (the remainder involving a rag bag of seemingly much less specific occult figures).
The distinguishing feature of ritual abuse – and the reason why it needs to be understood and treated differently to other forms of sexual abuse – is its effect on the victims. In particular, the victims’ perception of events is both traumatic and often seems to defy reality (stories of abusers flying, for example). This poses enormous challenges to both law enforcement and to therapeutic social work – and the question of which needs to take priority has never been satisfactorily resolved.
There is a reason for this. Ritual abuse – satanic or otherwise – is an issue which has been horrendously muddied by (a) (often well-meaning) Christian groups and (b) distinctly unpleasant false memory denial organisations. Both are to blame for setting up a ‘straw man’ chimera of an international satanic conspiracy: the Christians because they apparently believe it, the deniers because it’s a useful (if cynical) tool to debunk the very existence of ritual abuse.
Until serious, careful and non-polarised research is done (Note: La Fontaine’s report was none of the above) ritual abuse will continue to be a political football kicked between opposing groups of self-interested champions. And as the ‘football’, so the victims.
Full disclosure: I published a book on ritual abuse in 1991. A policeman sued for libel and the book was withdrawn by my publishers, who also settled his libel action out of court.
TIM TATE
Thanks Tim,
I heard from a source, who I won’t name, that the objection to your book concerned just one paragraph but the entire book was demanded to be withdrawn. I add that for clarity and I don’t ask you to comment on it as the source is trusted and you may not be able to comment further on that beyond the disclosure that you’ve already made.
a well thought out post and some fascinating comments.
if the general themes of the seemingly better informed writings on the history of ritual abuse in a “satanist” context are taken as substantially true sra does seem to have been both a means to an end as well as an end in itself ,i dont mean “demons were manifested” but i do mean that some participants were controlled with a mixture of rewards,blackmail and fear.
crowley studies is the road to madness but if one can untangle a few threads there are lessons to be learned,bryans studies is even more tangled but perhaps contains a lot of relevant threads,the two do seem to contain some of the same threads .
If a man can’t air his own thoughts on his own blog where can he!
A great post Gojam, as ever.
Thank you for these thoughts on this fraught issue.
For my part the existence of SRA was first confirmed to me by Sue Lacey of Kent County Council Social Services in the year 2003.
I did not know whether to believe what I had been told by this brave whistleblower who was trying quietly and desperately to get the word out.
That was until I researched the Manderson family and the links to Orkney.
In May 2014 I made contact with someone believed to hold a copy of the PIE Papers which formed a major part of August 1983 Dickens Dossier.
I am the man that was arrested by armed Special Branch on the afternoon of 7th July 2014 following a brief pursuit through central London.
I was directly threatened “Not to believe in a Conspiracy Theory”.
I had only just returned to the UK after leaving for another jurisdiction following receipt of a warning that Derek Laud and a group of Ex-Special Forces operatives had been tasked to take a ‘special interest’ in me.
The persons and companies involved were: Derek Laud; Russell Cook (Ex Royal Marines); Hawkwood Limited (‘Security’ & Private Investigations); The Pilgrims Group; Aegis Defence Services Limited.
I was able to blow open the existence of this plot to Michael Murrin in June 2014 whereupon I returned to the UK, shortly afterward the UK government was forced to announce the establishment of the Child Abuse Inquiry.
In August 2014 I received information which confirmed that the Home Office had been involved in a cover-up of paedophile activity in Westminster. This is one reason May could not deny it.
On 12 November 2014 I provided formal legal advice to Michael Murrin by way of a legal opinion that the announced Inquiry would not fulfill the child protection objectives he and other survivors sought.
In mid November 2014 I was able to reveal the links between Exaro and the establishment. I would like to thank the survivors, campaigners and those who have put in thousands of hours of research on the internet. In particular I would like to thank kaz, liz, gojam, murun and the hundreds who suffered the ultimate price. I could not have helped you if you had not helped yourselves. The British people owe you a debt of gratitude.
GOD Bless you all
The Long the Short and the Tall
GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
Men Scryfa – Rialobran
http://www.dux-bellorum.blogspot.co.uk
You should try doing some proper research into the role of the likes of Mary Whitehouse and the Evangelical Alliance who, by their asinine and childish petulant total self interest allowed the true abusers to vanish from the scope of investigation whilst they pedalled their agenda based towddle. That’s from the horses mouth from a friend of my ex who had to deal with the fallout of the whole sorry “Satanic abuse” mess. Sadly I lost touch with them some years ago however, I shall see If i can contact them and if they are willing, maybe they would be happy to put others right on this whole sorry mess.
I’m not one to pull rank however, I have nearly 40 years experience of dealing with conspiracies. I have mentioned more than once in the follow up comments to Gojam’s mostly sterling work that as yet, I have not seen one of the major venues/meeting places for “abuse” even rate a single mention even though, back in the late 70s it was a “infamous” in certain circles. Neither has anyone bothered to ask me where that venue was, which I find fascinating in itself.
where was the venue?
I would be happy to pass the name on to Gpjam, I am loathe to name on this open forum as it might prejudice investigations already in progress and maybe, it has not made the MSM or the net because of that. I’d hate to tip off certain parties, if that makes sense?
So, after moaning that no one has bothered to ask , when someone does you refuse to answer ? Why bother to mention it then ?
Because it is fascinating that , the likes of Spivey, Icke etc etc have NOT mentioned the venue once and yet, I know from personal experience it was a known meeting place. Furthermore, it is interesting that I have mentioned there is a place that was known and until now not one person has actually asked where it was. My personal suspicion is that, the venue I know of would proved a definite link to “members of the establishment” and as such it might well be that the name is being deliberately held back. One reason for that would be that, given the sort of people who visited there and probably didn’t have a clue what other activities were taking place, it would be a tad overkill to name it without risking serious fall out. Should the place remain anonymous in the greater scheme of things then yes, I shall see no reason not name it publicly however, for the time being, I shall give those investigating the various strands, the benefit of the doubt and hold fire.That doesn’t mean I am not willing to name the place in private, to those whose interest is deep and genuine one.
You are part of the problem Men, not part of the solution. Self-aggrandizing, exaggerating, fantasy and nonsense. How is any of that supposed to help the abused?
This is so naive dangerous, misinformed, inaccurate unhelpful, I really don;t know where to start.
For a start..Satanism and Witchcraft have absolutely nothing in common whatsoever on any level at all. Satanism is merely another form of Christianity, Witchcraft pre-dates both by several thousand years. Satanists, by default believe in God , Witches don’t, end of. In other words, they have absolutely nothing at all in common with each other. Witches believe all life is sacred and therefore have far more in common with say, Hindu philosophy, Satanists like Christians, believe they are top of the pile appointed by their deity.
Here’s a simple fact, without Christianity there could be no Satanism and vice versa, they are a closed loop. To even start talking about Harry Potter with regards to Satanism is grossly ill-informed and unbelievably bad mannered. Witches don’t hold Jihads, Witches don;t hold crusades there is not one historical episode where Witches murdered every last person in town or city because they weren’t “On message” religion wise.
Ritualised abuse exists without doubt and I’ve no doubt there’s those who choose to dress it up with religious accoutrements , the vast majority of those who do so will be practising Christians, Jews and Muslims. vie the power and rituals vested in them by their own communities. In truth, to equate Witchcraft with Satanism in any way shape or form probably, contravenes the “Religious Hate laws”.
Child abuse is child abuse be you Wiccan, Seventh Day Adventist, Methodist, Baptist, Sufi, Hindu, Zoroastrian Catholic, Islamic or Jedi Knight. All belief systems have their rogue elements who seek to adapt ritual to suit their own ends. The hazing many Rugby clubs use to indulge in, that often involved involuntary buggery, is “ritualised abuse”, so are many of the hazing rituals associated with entry into many of the world’s armed forces.
Satanism has very little (if anything) to do with Christianity. ‘Witchcraft’ may have been around for thousands of years but most of it is a recent invention.
Very little? Not sure I agree. Satanism is essentially the inverse of Christianity. It’s kind of like Christianty turned upside down in every aspect you can think of. There’s a great deal of ‘Inversionism’ going on today around the world. The people who practice it are typically what ‘normal people’ would regard as evil.
I disagree. If anything it is more inspired by gnosticism. I wouldn’t say ‘satanists’ are ‘evil’. Much is misconception from christian folklore (both traditional and modern) – in my opinion.