The existence of ritual abuse has been one of the four places where so
called skeptics and false memory syndrome proponents have tried to attack the
credibility of child abuse survivors.
The second one is attacking the theory of recovered memory. However,
there is overwhelming scientific evidence that recovered memory exists as a
phenomenon and it has fairly high corroboration. There is also a lot of evidence
that those attacking the theory of recovered memory may have ulterior motives,
for example, they may have been accused of child abuse crimes or may have been
connected to mind control research in the past.
The third is that somehow therapists have implanted memories in child abuse
survivors. However, there is little evidence that this is possible and when it
has been claimed, so called retractors (if the victims even ever retracted) may
have had prior symptoms of trauma before these so called implantations
occurred.
The fourth is the questioning of the existence of dissociation and DID/MPD.
However, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that these diagnoses clearly
exist and that trauma contributes to the manifestation of these diagnoses.
By attacking these areas, some so called skeptics and false memory syndrome
proponents have worked to discredit all child abuse survivors and child abuse
crimes.
I will be focusing on why the support of the existence of ritual abuse by
all the child abuse movement is crucial to the protection of the child abuse
movement as a whole.
Ritual abuse crimes are often the most difficult to believe because of the
extreme nature of these crimes. Societies have a tendency in general to not want
to believe that horrible things can happen right next door or down the street
from them. Many of the atrocities that have happened throughout history have
occurred in populated areas. Yet members of societies have stated after the fact
that they did not know that anything was going on or that any atrocities were
committed.
This denial is at times encouraged by those that may have a vested interest
in society maintaining a high level of denial or they may simply have trouble
cognitively having an accurate world view, possibly due to their own
psychodynamic issues.
Catherine Gould stated:
“Not only do skeptics…choose to ignore eyewitness/victim accounts of ritual
criminal activity, they apparently also choose to overlook the significant
number of cases of ritual abuse in which perpetrators have confessed to their
crimes.” (Denying Ritual Abuse of Children – Catherine Gould – The Journal of
Psychohistory 22 (3) 1995)
“When we understand the fact that ritual abuse is usually perpetrated by
groups which are deeply involved in organized crime, the underlying incentives
of these cult/perpetrator groups become clear…How much money do these groups
actually generate, and is it enough to impact the culture at the level of, say,
media-created public opinion? This, of course, is the cloudy part of the
economic argument for why ritual abuse is as wide-spread as it is, in families
and in preschools, and why we as a society have been so slow to recognize and
respond to the seriousness of this problem. It is by definition difficult to
know who belongs to groups whose membership is highly secretive, especially when
many of the membership themselves are amnestic to their involvement.
Therefore, it is difficult to assess the degree to which members of these
groups influence media accounts of ritual abuse, derail ritual abuse investigations by law enforcement, are instrumental in getting children
complaining of interfamilial ritual abuse sent back to an abusing parent, or
hire officials to make public statements on behalf of a national law enforcement
bureau to the effect that no substantial evidence of ritual abuse exists.”
(Denying Ritual Abuse of Children – Catherine Gould – The Journal of
Psychohistory 22 (3) 1995)
“In my opinion, we in the United States deny the reality and seriousness of
ritual abuse, especially as it impacts on children, in part because it threatens
our images of ourselves as Americans. The thinking of the skeptic often goes
something like this: Hideous crimes involving torture and mind control “don’t
happen here.” (Denying Ritual Abuse of Children – Catherine Gould – The Journal
of Psychohistory 22 (3) 1995)
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/denying-ritual-abuse-of-children-catherine-gould/
It has been stated that incest is universal.
deMause discusses the universality of incest:
“In several hundred studies published by myself and my associates in The
Journal of Psychohistory, we have provided extensive evidence that the history
of childhood has been a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to
awaken. The further back in history one goes – and the further away from the
West one gets – the more massive the neglect and cruelty one finds and the more
likely children are to have been killed, rejected, beaten, terrorized and
sexually abused by their caretakers.”(The History of Child Abuse – Lloyd deMause
– The Journal of Psychohistory V. 25, N. 3, Winter 1998)
“That it is incest itself – and not the absence of incest – that has been
universal for most people in most places at most times. Furthermore, the earlier
in history one searches, the more evidence there is of universal incest, just as
there is more evidence of other forms of child abuse.” (The Universality of
Incest – Lloyd DeMause - Journal of Psychohistory 19 (2) Winter 1991)
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/the-universality-of-incest-lloyd-demause/
It has been stated that child pornography is a billion dollar industry and
there are frequent arrests around the world for crimes of its production and
possession.
“Billion-Dollar Black Market Industry – Child porn has emerged as a
multibillion dollar black market industry, though “average people don’t believe
it,” said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children. “The reality is, with the advent of the Internet, the
problem of child pornography has exploded,” said Allen…..“There’s a myth here,”
he said, “and that is the myth of the stranger.” Allen pointed to NCMEC’s data,
which show that most child sexual exploitation victims know the perpetrator of
the crime — at least 35 percent of them are the victim’s own parents and 70
percent are other family members or someone close to the child. “Overwhelmingly,
the people who are victimizing America’s children, photographing it and
distributing it via child pornography are close to the child,” he said. “Many of
them are their dads.” (Captured: 'King of the Child Exploitation Suspects' May
2, 2007 By PIERRE THOMAS, JACK DATE and THERESA COOK ABCNEWS)
The cover up of ritual abuse may be due to the potential financial losses
some of these groups may have if the children are believed. So the
perpetrators may have a financial motive to create a social situation where
children are not believed. The DSM-IV-TR states under its DID
diagnosis that the reports of patients suffering from DID are “often confirmed
by objective evidence,” and that the abusers in those situations may be inclined
to “deny or distort” these acts.
Tactically, perpetrators began to see the legal and financial ramifications
if their crimes against children were exposed. Cries of “witch hunt” and “panic”
were used to spin and cover up crimes against children. Those (like Anna Salter
and David Calof) that were working to expose these crimes or expose those that
were trying to cover up alleged crimes were harassed, causing some to stop
researching and advocating for children. Many presentations of child abuse
crimes, like ritual abuse crimes in the media and on the web carry only one
sided accounts of these crimes, minimizing or leaving out the victims’ and
prosecutors’ perspective, even in cases where convictions were found and appeals
were denied.
The media turned on child abuse survivors in the early and mid 1990′s and
began to in essence support those that had perpetrated crimes against children,
believing unfounded stories about so called “miscarriages of justice.” Due to
the extreme nature of ritual abuse crimes and the psychological need for the
public denial of these crimes, it became an easy sell to spin these crimes
against children for the public to believe the misstatements about falsely
accused perpetrators. After ritual abuse was discredited, then other child abuse
crimes could be more easily discredited.
Salter discusses this in “Organised abuse and the politics of disbelief” –
Michael Salter – Faculty of Law Faculty of Medicine – University of New South
Wales (Proceedings of the 2nd Australian & New Zealand Critical Criminology
Conference 19 – 20 June 2008 Sydney, Australia – Presented by the Crime &
Justice Research Network and the Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology
Network)
During a period in which women and children’s testimony of incest and
sexual abuse were gaining an increasingly sympathetic hearing, lobby groups of
people accused of child abuse construed and positioned “ritual abuse” as the new
frontier of disbelief.
The term “ritual abuse” arose from child protection and psychotherapy
practice with adults and children disclosing organised abuse, only to be
discursively encircled by backlash groups with the rhetoric of “recovered
memories”, “false allegations” and “moral panic”. Seeking to recast the debate
on child abuse according to an older politics of disbelief, these groups and
activists attempted to characterise sexual abuse testimony, as a whole, through
the lens of “ritual abuse”....
It does not take much effort to understand why people accused of child
sexual abuse may engage in a vigorous defence of their innocence, nor why they
might be joined by professional defence experts that make hundreds of thousands
of dollars a year defending them. What does bear explaining is the purchase that
their rhetoric found in the media, academia and the broader community.
Since the 1980s, disclosures of organised abuse have been disparaged by a
range of activists, journalists and researchers who have focused, in particular,
on cases in which sexually abusive groups were alleged to have behaved in
ritualistic or ceremonial ways...Whilst these authors claimed to be writing in
the interests of science and social justice, what has emerged from their writing
are a familiar set of arguments about the credibility of women and children’s
testimony of sexual violence; in short, that women and children are prone to a
range of memory and cognitive errors that lead them to make false allegations of
rape.
As survivors of child abuse, we need to rebut these arguments (of the
so-called skeptics). We need to know the facts. We need to fight against the
arguments that protect child abusers. Every time a statement is made in the
media against survivors of child abuse, the media needs to hear from hundreds of
survivors. Everyone needs to write an intelligent letter, backed by facts. Every
time a biased web page is created against survivors of child abuse, we need to
create several intelligent, well-written pages to counter these. We need to get
into the debate to tell our side of the story in every place we can. Wherever
there is an opening for our side of the story, we must be there to tell it. And
we need to say why we are telling this side of the story, to protect children
from being abused and to help those that have been abused. We need to start
getting published again in peer reviewed journals and start publishing
nonfiction books about this topic in major publishing houses.
I will close with a quote from Audre Lorde:
“I have come to believe over and over again, that what is most important to
me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised
or misunderstood…. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not
protect you…. and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of
fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are
here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge
some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes
us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.” Audre Lorde (The
Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Sister
Outsider).
