A pretty bold statement? How about this one: It is not possible to experience horrible abuse over the course of several years, such abuse including being forced to participate in rape, murder and cannibalism, completely forget about it and then, with the help of a therapist, support group or instruction book, suddenly remember it in shocking detail. Those who claim this scenario is possible ignore both scientific research and the fact that those "recovered" memories, while full of lurid sexual and other abuse, neglect to include details that could prove that the events took place. Current research on the brain, and memory, simply does not support the idea that a person could forget years of hideous experiences and remember them later. Some of these "recovered" memories have also contained information that is possible to disprove, for example remembered abuse set in the attic of a house that does not have an attic.
As far as "satanic ritual abuse" by Devil-worshipping cults goes, a study funded by National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN), completed in the fall of 1994, asked 6900 psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, and 4655 district attorneys, child protective services and police organizations, how many cases of the satanic ritual abuse they had ever found. While they reported over 12,000 accusations, not one actual, proven instance that even slightly approached the stories reported by "survivors" turned up. There were a few cases of individual criminals who claimed their crimes were satanically inspired as part of an argument that they were not responsible for their crimes, a few instances of gangs of drug dealers led by individuals who used what they claimed were satanic rituals to control the gang and supposedly protect it, one case of a married couple who practiced what might be considered magickal/sexual rites involving themselves and their underage son and quite a few incidents of vandalism and minor crimes committed by small groups of teenagers who were doing the usual teenage rebellious stuff. The study found no evidence of any sort of organized ritual abuse networks, intergenerational groups or international groups. A similar study in Great Britain of 84 cases of child sexual abuse spanning three years that involved accusations of satanic abuse also found zero evidence of the existence of any sort of satanic activity.
The existence of satanic child abuse cults, like the "alligators in the sewers" and the "Kentucky fried rats," is an urban myth, a story widely believed to be true that is not. Such stories serve to externalize societal fears and teach people what to guard against. To date, there is absolutely no evidence for satanic ritual child abuse cults. However, it is impossible to prove that something that did not happen, did not happen.
Repressed and recovered memories
I will mainly address satanic ritual child abuse and the current sexual and moral panic in our society in this article, but keep in mind that this satanic ritual abuse panic, and the thousands of accusations against families, daycare centers, schools, churches and neighbors, could not be happening without a belief in both "repressed" and "recovered" memories.
Repressed and recovered memories do not exist in the form suggested by these stories. While it is possible to forget individual childhood or adult events, even very traumatic ones, it is not possible to forget years of rape, beatings and murder. There are many instances of individuals not labeling experiences that happened to them as abuse that now would be considered such. But just as much of what is now considered date rape was simply how sex often happened in my teen years (the 1950s), some of what was then considered ordinary discipline would now be considered child abuse.
I have no intention of minimizing rape and assault, trivializing excess punishment of children, excusing parents who treated their children badly or negating the pain most of us carry from our childhoods. At the same time, I invite everyone to consider their own memories. Don't you have quite clear memories of the traumatic events in your early years? Twenty years of research done by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus at the University of Washington show that memory is quite malleable and that repressed memories of the type described, that is, years of unspeakable horror and abuse, do not exist.
What I find the most interesting about the subject of satanic child abuse is that so many people's minds are already made up, often without having done even the slightest amount of research, or after having studied only one point of view or listening to one story. It is not difficult to find material on this subject. Numerous books have been written from every possible point of view, and national newspaper, medical, legal, social science and other databases are available. One thing all those sources say, even those who most fervently believe in satanic child abuse, is that there is no "hard" corroborating evidence. All that exists are verbal reports from the alleged survivors, none of which have been verified by physical evidence, and some of which have been proven factually wrong,. Usually the "memories" appear after the "survivor" has been hypnotized, participated in a survivors' support group or read a survivors' self-help book such as The Courage to Heal or The Right To Innocence. The previous, by Beverly Engel, advises in the introduction, "If you have ever had reason to suspect you may have been abused, even if you have no explicit memory of it, the chances are very high that you were." Really? Is there any other aspect of life to which this standard of reasoning applies?
It is a good idea to read books and articles from several points of view before deciding what you believe. And that includes this article.
The history of satanic and sexual panics
Guess who said each of the two quotes below, and what group they each referred to:
No. 1: "This cult is worthy of the customs from which it sprang. As for the initiation of new members, the details are as disgusting as they are well known. The novice himself, deceived by the coating of dough (covering a sacrificial infant), thinks the stabs are harmless. Then _ it's horrible! _ they hungrily drink the blood and compete with one another as they divide his limbs. And the fact they all share knowledge of the crime pledges them all to silence. On the feast-day they foregather with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of either sex and all ages. Now, in the dark, so favorable to shameless behavior, they twine the bonds of unnamable passion, as chance decides. Precisely the secrecy of this evil religion proves that all these things, or practically all, are true."
No. 2: "There is evidence that the cults perform human sacrifices, burying of children underground in animal carcasses, sexual acts with children, drinking of human blood, eating human flesh and torturing animals and humans."
Perhaps these are obvious because of the language used. However, it may come as a surprise to some readers that No. 1 is from Roman writer Minicus Felix in the first century A.D. He was referring to the upstart Christian cults that were seen as a threat to traditional Roman values. Quote No. 2 is from Jacquie Balodis, an expert in alleged satanic brainwashing techniques, printed in The Edge of Evil: The Rise of Satanism in North America, by Jerry Johnson.
In both instances, and in a multitude of other examples that fall between the two in time, the societies involved were under tremendous pressure. One way of life, one set of beliefs, was metamorphosing into what came next. Change equals stress for human beings, and even desirable changes require a period of disequilibrium before the new balance is reached. So change is seldom welcomed. Whenever the social changes taking place look like they might drastically shift power from one person or group to others, or when the amount of change becomes so great as to be frightening, those who stand to lose, and those who fear change, fight against it with all their resources. We human beings want scapegoats to blame for our fear and anger. That is what is happening now. One means of doing so is to create an enemy, however spurious _ satanic cult ritual child abusers _ and fight it.
The dangers of childhood _ abuse and power
The vast majority of child abuse, sexual or other, takes place within the child's immediate circle of family, caregivers and acquaintances. Most of this abuse, sexual and other, is done by one individual, with a small minority of it being done by two adults, usually a couple. Most child sexual abuse is seduction rather than rape or other violence. In my opinion, the current hysteria over sexual abuse rings in daycare centers and Bible study groups is almost all the product of the fevered fantasies of the accusers and/or prosecutors running amuck. Some just want to make a name for themselves as being "tough on crime"; others are therapists or bureaucrats whose job is to find evidence of child abuse. Many of these people really believe in what they are doing. They are usually acting from laudable impulses, trying to protect children, but they have gone overboard. Parents fear for their children's safety and are frightened by these terrible stories, often not knowing what to believe. The results are often lucrative for those specializing in this field. While these people undoubtedly believe they're helping children, are they?
All one has to do to see that some of these wild accusations cannot be true is to really examine what is being said. The numbers do not hold up. In the case of satanic abuse, claims are made that between 50,000 and 2 million children are being sacrificed in satanic rites each year. If that were true, most of us would have lost a blood relative. It is estimated that 300,000 children are missing each year. (Their pictures are on milk cartons.) So what happens to these children? Around 200,000 are taken by non-custodial parents in divorce fights, 100,000 run away or are thrown out by their parents and approximately 200 per year are kidnapped by strangers. While even one child being kidnapped and murdered is one too many, it does not require the existence of a vast, secret, international conspiracy of satanic cults to explain how these children disappear.
The "crimina excepta" of our time
In Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, dozens of people were accused of practicing witchcraft with only "spectral" evidence: signs of hysteria in their accusers and reports from dreams and visions. The only ones executed were those who continued to deny their guilt. All who admitted it were fined or otherwise lightly punished and then released _ except for the two dogs who were executed. It was impossible to discern how they pled, but they were convicted via "spectral" evidence, as were all the others. The Devil in Massachusetts, by Marion Starkey, details the execution of 19 women and one man during that wave of satanic panic. As soon as the court ceased to accept spectral evidence, the trials ended.
Then, and during the Inquisition, normal rules of evidence and proof were ignored or superseded. This practice was named "crimina excepta" and was used for crimes considered so horrendous, and so dangerous to society, that all restraints upon legal procedures should be suspended. The crimes in that category during the Inquisition were heresy, treason and witchcraft. Now, they are sexual crimes with children and the sale of illegal drugs.
Social change and the urban myths of the times
We all know that children are physically, emotionally and sexually abused in our society. Many are also neglected. About 2100 children per year are killed by their parents or caregivers. Given that so many horrible things are actually happening to children, what might cause people to believe that satanic or occult ritual child abuse cults exist or that ordinary people could forget years of vicious abuse and then remember it?
In my opinion, it is because the forces of change are so scary, and so impersonal, that they must be personified as something and someone. In a society such as ours, which both adores and hates sexuality, which uses sex to sell everything but tries to deny that it is doing so and which is going through so much major social change, the stress is overwhelming. We are fascinated by sex and want and need sexual information, but we don't approve of our own wants and needs.
Many people fantasize about the "good old days," before the Pill, when there was not so much teenage sex. But there were no such good old days. There may not have been as much sex; however, I and all my close girlfriends got pregnant before we were married. About half of us got married; the other half slunk away in shame to not very secretly have babies and give them up for adoption. It's easier to think that was great if you were not there.
Now, there are several layers of media presentation of sexuality in the United States, of varying levels of respectability. These layers include: sex education material; sexually explicit media; scientific and research material; material abut sexual minorities, that is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transvestite and sadomasochistic (SM) literature and so on; the major "men's" and "women's" magazines; romance novels, which make up the single largest genre in the fiction market and often feature stories of forced or semi-forced sex; movies; television entertainment, music, plays and other "cultural" media, which commonly have sexual themes; true crime magazines; tabloid newspapers and television; and lastly the mainstream newspapers, news magazines and television news presentations.
While the frankly sexually explicit in other words, pornographic media seldom contain violence coupled with sex, sexualized violence is the main focus in much of mainstream entertainment. "Respectable" or mainstream news media seldom contain openly sexual information; instead, they sexually titillate us by reporting on the bizarre, the criminal and the scandalous.
Given the content of all these media, it's clear we want sexual information. But we won't tolerate what we consider to be child pornography: It is outside the protection of the First Amendment. However, if a story involving children and sex is presented as factual or as part of mainstream entertainment, particularly if it is violent, it is permissible and can be read or viewed even by people who would never allow themselves to look at ordinary sexually explicit media, let alone that featuring children. A mainstream movie such as The Prince of Tides, with Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, can contain the brutal anal rape of a nine-year-old boy as its key scene without it being even mentioned in the reviews.
As a nation, we are obsessed with sex. Unfortunately we also fear it, and repress our own interest in it, so it must be disguised and made unpleasant or violent to quiet our fears that watching it might arouse us, and to make information about it something a respectable person needs to know. I feel that this erotophobia, fear of erotic pleasure, is beneath at least some of the impulse behind both writing and reading the "satanic abuse" stories, and their popularity. Just as this type of story in mainstream media has allowed and encouraged respectable people to read about and discuss sex, so the intensity of the attacks against pornography, "the gay-lesbian menace," sex education and "child sexual abuse" has created an audience for that media.
As an unintended result, members of the general public are becoming a great deal more knowledgeable about their own interests and desires, the gay and lesbian communities are becoming more and more known and accepted and bisexuality, a label generally unknown just a few years ago, is becoming an accepted sexual identification.
In my analysis, this American obsession, and fear, regarding sex illustrates our inner conflicts between our intellect and our deeper drives, fears, hopes and dreams. These conflicts are written out in the popular literature, particularly the urban myths, of the times. We project our fears, and our desires, onto some "other" who is not like us; our urban myths tell us who the current other is. Right, now our other is satanic, homosexual, criminal or alien _ note that UFO abduction stories usually include sexual examinations.
When something is labeled as forbidden and dangerous, it is easy to wonder if it could possibly be all that bad. Furthermore, the urge to take at least a peek is very strong, particularly if one is raised in a belief system that labels any sexual impulse as very dangerous. So not only does the reading of satanic child pornography, along with other types of sexual media, become permissible, it becomes almost an obligation to gain information to protect children and society. I believe that a similar shocked, yet titillated, voyeurism fuels the current pop fascination with sadomasochistic imagery.
Social myths of the past
A type of urban myth began appearing about 1909 in the form of books and pamphlets decrying white slavery. These contained allegedly true stories of innocent young blond women, barely pubescent, being lured and forced into a life of degrading prostitution by a huge, secret and powerful conspiracy. This myth appeared at a time when thousands of young women were leaving the farms and small towns to go to work in big cities and prostitution was the "social vice." Then, as now, there were complex and difficult social changes taking place, and many yearned for a return to simpler times.
This literature, which many accused of containing not an iota of truth, served several purposes. It warned of the dangers of the big city. It mourned the loss of most of a generation of farm children to life in the cities. It described how a young woman could move to the city safely, the places and companions she should avoid and the pitfalls of leaving home. It allowed everyone to have a peek into the sordid life of prostitution and the red light districts, giving extremely graphic accounts of what took place there without readers ever having to risk going to such places. And it blamed these evils all on dark and unsavory foreigners.
A previous iteration of this genre was the "white woman captured by the Indians" stories that circulated during early colonial times, in the 17th and 18th centuries.
And do not forget the McCarthy Communist witch hunts of the Fifties, the hundreds of years of persecution of the Jews or the multitudes of genocides around the world and throughout history in the name of mythical race, religion or ideological purity.
The interval between these panics and waves of persecution is part of the key to their cyclic nature. Each one builds as fewer people who experienced the last one are alive to warn against repeating this type of social folly. Except for those who have made a particular study of McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, only people over age 60 would have much memory of how terrible the Communist purges were. If you go to the library and read about the hearings, it will remind you quite a lot of the flavor of our current panic.
Many of these types of stories also are a projection of the racial and ethnic fears of their intended audience. The stories usually show the "evil, sexual and dangerous" ones to be darker skinned, more savage, less civilized and more highly sexed. That theme is played out to this day, even in Disney films like the "Little Mermaid" with the evil seductress being darker, bustier and obviously sexier than the sweet, innocent, and ultimately triumphant blonde princess. I wonder if the evil ones are blond in darker-skinned societies?
Social forces and current urban myths
I believe these current satanic ritual child abuse stories are part of a generalized panic our society is experiencing, pushed by an interesting combination of forces. The amount, and the pace, of change taking place now may be unprecedented. To get a perspective on what we are living through, you can read Marshall McLuhan, Alvin Toffler or a fairly new book, The Saturated Self, Dilemmas of Identity in Modern Life, by Gergen. In my opinion, the human species is attempting to coalesce into a world society, and we haven't a clue how to do it. Over 99 percent of our DNA is over 12 million years old. Until about 100 years ago, the average person never traveled over 25 miles from his or her place of birth and met only 200 other people, face to face, in his or her whole life.
For a long time, we could pull together because we had to outgun the Russians. Now we watch as their society disintegrates, and what enemy is left to organize against? If we do not have a real enemy, perhaps we have to make one up to satisfy the demands of a nervous system honed on over 12 million years of struggle.
And do not forget that the millennium is almost upon us. The folklore and urban legends about the significance of this particular flip of the calendar page are dire. When 999 was approaching 1000, much of Christianity freaked because they believed in the prophesies of that time, which also said the end of the world was near. When the world did not end in 1000, a backlash occurred, some groups became even more extreme and religious minorities were attacked anew.
The strongest force behind the satanic ritual child abuse panic is people who fear, distrust and want to get rid of any religion other than their own version of conservative Christianity. Added to this is a major industry that "educates" far right Christians, and any of the general public who get sucked in, regarding Satanism, feminism, pornography, the homosexual menace, paganism, the New Age, meditation, sex education in schools, yoga, other world religions and the New World Order. The Christian far right and their allies are horrified that so many women are leaving the home to go to work, and that divorce is an option. What better way to convince them to stay home and stay married than to create a panic about daycare and other dangers to children? Most parents are uncertain about how much sexual information a child should have, and most would like the world to be safer.
The more extreme faction of this religious group sees the world in black and white terms and wants to return to an imagined earlier time when life was simpler, the roles of the sexes were distinct and separate and fewer people questioned the status quo. Any sexual information other than that which they provide their own children is objectionable to them.
Christian fundamentalists fight satanic hysteria
Not all Christians feel like this. Many responsible Christian groups are struggling with the issue of how to support members of their faith who make these bizarre satanic abuse claims, and who obviously need help of some kind, while not fueling the hysteria such claims create. For example, Satan's Underground: The Extraordinary Story of One Woman's Escape, by Lauren Stratford, the pen name of Laurel Willson of Tacoma, was withdrawn by its publisher after Cornerstone, a evangelical Christian magazine published by Jesus People USA, exposed it as fraudulent.
Lauren's story raises an interesting question: Books which would be a felony to publish, sell, buy or perhaps even possess, because of their graphic content of children being raped and forced into nearly unspeakable sexual acts, are tolerated because they are said to be true. Would Satan's Underground now be considered child pornography, since it has been proven to be fiction, albeit poorly written fiction?
Cornerstone, in an effort to refocus Christians on real child abuse rather than side-tracking into sensationalism, also researched Mike Warnke, who wrote The Satan Seller and who lectures on the satanic circuit claiming to be both a Satanist high priest and a member of the Illuminati before he was born again. Cornerstone also exposed him as a fraud. For a wealth of information on how responsible religious people are working to expose the frauds in their midst and reduce social panic, visit the World Wide Web sites listed at this article's end. Keep in mind that for doing this work, these people have suffered satanic accusations themselves.
Other forces behind the panic
The next strongest social force behind the satanic ritual child abuse panic consists of therapists, police or former police officers and others who lecture, write books, consult, or lead workshops and training for therapists, police groups and concerned citizens, or who act as expert witnesses in trials and investigations. These leaders teach people to help identify, treat and counter the supposed threat from the forces of darkness. Therapists who have either had this training, or invented it on their own working one-on-one with clients, have convinced perhaps 50,000 clients that they have been satanically, ritually or otherwise sexually abused as children.
Now, these were individuals who had no memory of childhood abuse before being exposed to the media or therapies that support these ideas. Nothing I am stating here should be taken to suggest that I do not believe that there are many survivors of childhood abuse with continuous memories. I know they exist and, in fact, fear that the current hysteria over spectral evidence will be used to distract society from dealing with the actual problems of abused children.
Meanwhile, there is a significant growth industry in the area of satanic abuse, with desktop publishing pumping out titles like "I Was a Priest for Satan" and "How to Identify and Treat Survivors of Ritual Abuse Who Don't Know What's Wrong with Them" (I invented these titles, but they capture the flavor of the real ones). A huge bureaucracy has grown up at all levels of government around investigating families, identifying abused children and dealing with it.
The third force driving this panic is a less-than-responsible mainstream news media that puts accusations and suspicions of satanic crimes on Page 1, and when the facts come out a few days, weeks or months later, usually give them a two-inch mention on Page 27, if at all. While there has been responsible reporting of child abuse, there has also been an unfortunate amount of tabloid-type coverage, with much less emphatic follow-up when the truth comes out. At times, the mainstream media appears to go into a feeding frenzy in its search for lurid accusations. The press has usually given a great deal more coverage to the prosecution point of view than that of the defendant accused of ritual abuse.
Daytime TV talk shows also feed the frenzy. Geraldo Rivera has produced several specials on Satanism. He considers himself an investigative journalist, but when interviewing Richard Ramirez, the "Nightstalker," a serial murderer in prison for killing several people, he listened wide-eyed to Ramirez's explanation for his crimes. "I killed for the Dark Lord.... He promised me dominion over 10,000 souls if I killed for him," the criminal raved while holding up his hand to the camera, showing a pentagram tattooed on his left palm.
A responsible investigative journalist might have asked a question or two, such as "What does having dominion over 10,000 souls get you? Do they type? Do they have a plan to get you out of prison? How can you tell that you have dominion over 10,000 souls?" But not Geraldo. He just stared in awe at the jerk he was giving national air-time to, as if he believed this guy was actually something other than a self-serving psychopath who felt like raping and killing some people and did.
In another "special," Geraldo interviewed some obviously mentally ill women who claimed they had been used as "breeders" for satanic cults. He never mentioned whether he asked any of them to be medically checked to see if they'd ever been pregnant. Geraldo also raved on and on about the "proof" he had of the international satanic conspiracy. His proof _ almost everyone he spoke to told him it didn't exist! That's proof, don'tcha know, either that the interviewees are in on it or that they are too afraid of those satanic folks to even talk about them.
Mainstream publishers have also behaved irresponsibly by publishing books from alleged survivors of cult abuse, and those written by therapists who treat them, either without doing the necessary background research to evaluate the claims or by simply accepting that recovered memories are a valid source of factual information with no physical evidence to support it.
These abuse stories are compelling! They are so awful, and so dramatic, that they can suck one right into their emotional center. However, they also sound a great deal like the spectral evidence used to convict witches in Salem, Massachusetts.
Fundamentalist feminists and sexual panic
Let us not forget the fourth force behind the satanic ritual child abuse panic, the reactionary branch of the women's movement, personified by Ms. Magazine and personalities such as Andrea Dworkin and Katherine MacKinnon, who appear to believe that most of women's problems are caused by men looking at pictures of naked women. The issue of Ms. with a child on the cover and the caption "Ritual Abuse _ Believe It" was, in my opinion, a support of spectral evidence. Dworkin and MacKinnon, who enjoy a great deal of status and support within the feminist fundamentalist point of view, are against any sort of sexually explicit media; MacKinnon has written "If pornography is part of your sexuality, then you have no right to your sexuality," and Dworkin has written "Lesbian-written pornography... is an expression of self-hatred."
There is a huge battle going on within feminism around sexuality and personal identity for women. As the battle rages, more and more of the public dismiss feminism as irrelevant. Just as the earlier women's movement lost its focus on changing the status of women and sidetracked into the temperance movement, the current branch of the women's movement that gets the most press coverage and support has sidetracked into fighting smut and changing laws to "protect" women. Feminist organizations such as Feminists for Free Expression, the Northwest Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce and even several of the larger state NOW organizations have publicly taken stands against the MacDworkinites, but they get much less press coverage that the smut-chasers.
How did it happen that a movement begun to assist women in achieving status and opportunity equal to men went bonkers over dirty pictures? It was simple. An alliance was formed between religious fundamentalists, who wanted to get rid of all sexual media, and feminists, who wanted to get rid of sexual media they felt degraded women. The combination enabled both groups to be taken much more seriously by the mainstream press, so they got a lot more coverage as each legitimized the other. Furthermore, both groups were obsessed with sex and sexual media, which while entertaining to argue about will never change the real balance of power. The hubbub also diverted public attention from any focus on real social change. This alliance with the far right has changed feminism much more than vice versa and has moved fundamentalist feminism further from the concerns of most Americans.
There are a number of women, however, Susie Bright, Laura Antoniou, Dorothy Allison, Pat Califia, Carol Queen, Sallie Tisdale and Annie Sprinkle just to name a few, who are reclaiming their sexuality and declaring that sexually explicit media, porn if you prefer that term, is good in itself, and they refuse to apologize for writing it, enjoying it and defending it.
What is going on here?
In reading the writings of the antipornography feminists, and the far right Christians, I am puzzled by their obsession with collecting examples of explicit depictions of disgusting sexual practices while claiming they are decrying other people's interest in explicit depictions of disgusting sexual practices. There is something very strange in the fundamentalist religious and feminist collections of sexually explicit media. Like the Meese Commission on Pornography, they appear to obsessively collect that which gives them the least pleasure and which upsets them the most. They claim they do it to protect others from the negative effects of this type of media.
The perfect example of this is child pornography. Only a very small number of adults find explicit depictions of young children having sex erotic. A much larger group of adults find explicit depictions of teenagers having sex erotic, and until recently most states considered teens from around age 15 or 16 capable of consenting to sexual activity and marriage. In the name of protecting "children," which most of us would think of as the very young, from being sexually abused, explicitly depicted or being exposed to sexual information, the religious and feminist forces of conservatism have pressed for and succeeded in having the age of consent raised to age 18 in many states, including Washington, and in making sexually explicit media more difficult to obtain. Now this indeed creates more "child sexual abuse" and "child pornography," since sexual behavior and explicit media that were legal under the previous statutes are now illegal, and teenagers and adults now have less access to sexual information that they may feel they need to make life decisions.
Since child pornography featuring young children is very rare, as there is such a small market for it, to find anything other than fantasy stories one would have to search relentlessly. So for years the U.S. government has been reproducing the child porn in its collection, and spending endless time and tax money to try to entice people to buy it, so it can then arrest the buyers.
The current media uproar of the moment is over "cyberporn." Quotes such as "At the click of a mouse button, explicit pornography is available to children" would be laughable if they were not fueling the attempt to control and censor the Internet. I invite anyone to jump aboard the "Information Superhighway" and see if you as an adult can do anything "at the click of a mouse button." It takes real expertise to find and display those naughty pictures, few of which are any different than what is available in most print media. But in their war for the public attention, sex and danger sell a lot of magazines, newspapers and air-time.
Have these changes had any positive effect on the safety of children? Not in my opinion.
These forces, and the contradictions in all our feelings regarding sexuality, feed the generalized fear that we have for the safety of our children, ourselves and for the future of society as we know it. Like Desert Storm, and for some the O.J. Simpson trial, the satanic ritual abuse stories draw our attention until we cannot seem to look away or think clearly. They also create an instant stardom of a sort for those who come up with the most spectacular stories, and an acceptable reason ("I was abused as a child") for any sort of personal irresponsibility a person wishes to indulge in.
The real victims of satanic abuse
Many of those who speak out against the sexual/satanic panic are accused of being callous toward the suffering of women and children, of participating in their abuse by defending such things as the First Amendment to the Constitution or of being part of the satanic plot themselves. Most of the people who are prosecuting individuals and groups, pressing to have laws changed and learning to work with abused individuals would say that they are doing it to protect women and children. However, a look at the facts will show that it is mainly women and children who are being abused, and/or jailed, by the current hysteria.
Of the 132 people on a list of accused, naming only defendants in the bigger cases that get some public attention where there is very good evidence that no crime occurred, at least 55 can be identified as women; as some names are gender-neutral, the number of women may be larger.
As for the abuse of children, when an accusation is made that a child has been sexually abused, the child is interviewed 20 to 30 times. When the accusation includes ritual or satanic abuse, the number of interviews can double or triple. This interviewing could be considered a form of child abuse, particularly in those cases where it is probable that no abuse had actually occurred.
It is not that children should not be protected. It is absolutely necessary that children be protected. But are the actions being taken protecting children? Please do not think that such accusations could not happen to you. If recovered memories come to be widely accepted as proof in courts of law, anyone could be accused of anything, and since it is practically impossible to prove that something did not happen, what defense would be accepted?
The question is, who gains and who loses from these prosecutions, particularly the big scandalous ones that get a lot of press? And who is victimizing the children?
Many states have laws making it impossible to recover damages from false accusations of child abuse, even if the accused can prove that the prosecution, or anyone, deliberately withheld information that would have cast doubt on the charges. Even if an accused person is acquitted, they seldom can recover either their reputation or their expenses. In Satanism in American: How the Devil Got Much More than His Due, by Carlson and O'Sullivan, it is estimated that by the late 1980s over $200 million had been spent by various levels of federal, state and local government and law enforcement to attempt to find evidence of satanic child abuse cults. Guess who is really picking up that tab?
Why do people make up these stories? Why would anyone publish a book saying it is true when it is fiction? The writers of the satanic and recovered memory fiction won't say. Undoubtedly, some believe their stories to be true. As for the others, fame and fortune could be two reasons. Another reason is that factual work need not be as well written as fiction in order to sell. I would be less concerned about this whole issue if these satanic abuse accusations and recovered memories were not destroying people's lives, including those who believe it happened to them.
Possibly everyone has a fantasy "other" whose fault it is that the world is not going right. Have you stopped to think who yours might be? Maybe it is the Christians, or the feminists, the multinational corporations, the militia, the Democrats or Republicans, the immigrants, welfare recipients, the government _ who do you blame for the problems of the world?
The next few years will probably see increasing craziness as all these forces build to the millennium. I fear many more people will be falsely accused and imprisoned before a return to rational standards is demanded in accusations and trials. We humans do not know how to get along respectfully in multicultural groups. Yet we are moving toward a world society. What are we going to do?
Anyone who would like copies of my database searches to look up articles on their own may contact me through the paper. Below are some sources of information and education about our current child abuse witch hunt.
For a transcript of the tape of the show Divided Memories ($10), contact:
Journal Graphics
(800) 825-5746
These are some good books:
Victims of Memory
Mark Pendergrast
Satanism in America
Carlson and O'Sullivan
Satanic Panic
Jeffrey S. Victor
Groups to contact:
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation
3401 Market St., Suite 130
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 386-1865
http://www.vix.com/pub/mem/falsereport.index.html/
VOCAL
Victims of Child Abuse Laws
Local contact Vernina Bergin, (206) 878-5135
VOCAL is an international organization of people who are fighting child
abuse accusations. They have a great deal of material available and
estimate that there are 10,000 people in jail from false accusations of
child abuse.
Internet Resources:
An e-mail list is available for people interested in discussing and learning more about this social controversy. To subscribe to it, send e-mail to listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with no subject line, and in the body of the text type: subscribe witchhnt yourfirstname yourlastname (that is, inserting your name in the indicated places).
You can also visit the World Wide Web site http://parc.power.net/users/aia/ The site contains a wealth of information worth reading. Another Web site worth visiting that has factual information on "satanic abuse" and other areas is http://www.kosone.com/people/ocrt/ocrt-hp.htm/
Editors' note: This article was excerpted from a much larger work. We would have liked to be able to print the original in its entirety, but space was limited. If you are interested in having the whole article, it is available from NightOwl, who may be contacted care of Widdershins.
Author's note: I would like to particularly thank Matt Love, a journalist in Olympia; Debbie Nathan, a journalist from Texas; those on the witch hunt e-mail list; and others who have so graciously assisted me with this article.
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