Post by Joanna on Nov 28, 2014 17:51:39 GMT -5
Satanic Child Abuse Claims Are Almost Certainly Based on False Memories
"EXCLUSIVE: Charities claim the Satanic abuse of children is rife" screamed the headline in the Express earlier this month. The piece reports two charities, Kilmarnock-based Break the Silence and Dundee-based Izzy's Promise, believe Satanic abuse to be rife in Scotland and has been for decades. They say children are forced to take part in Satanic rituals involving the sacrifice of babies and the making of snuff movies. According to Kate Short of Break the Silence, "Victims are so brainwashed they don't dare to speak out." These are obviously extremely serious allegations – but are they true?
A similar, although more detailed, story ran on the same day in the Scottish Express. Both stories point out that Police Scotland has said it is taking the allegations “incredibly seriously.” Following the Jimmy Savile child sex abuse scandal, it would be very surprising if the police had said anything else. We now know that many of Savile’s victims had complained of being abused at his hands at the time the abuse was taking place and were ignored by those in authority. That this happened is a disgrace and the result was that Savile was free to abuse dozens, possibly hundreds, more victims.
Have complaints of extreme Satanic abuse been routinely made over the years and similarly ignored or suppressed by the authorities? A comment from Short suggests otherwise. She is quoted as saying that “survivors often suppressed their memories of such harrowing childhood events and therefore the specific details are vague, meaning they can be written off as suffering from of ‘false memory syndrome’ or mental illness.”
Similarly, Joseph Lumbasi, project coordinator with Izzy’s Promise, states: “People who talk to us are relating us their experiences from when they were maybe just 8, 9 or 10 – kids really.” In other words, it appears highly likely that many of these claims are based on “recovered memories.” As I have written in the past in these pages, the use of various dubious techniques by therapists and counselors aimed at recovering allegedly repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse can often produce detailed and horrific false memories. In fact, there is a consensus among scientists studying memory that traumatic events are more likely to be remembered than forgotten, often leading to posttraumatic stress disorder. So despite widespread acceptance among the general public, legal professionals and those working in mental health, the very notion of repression as described by Short is doubted by the majority of memory researchers.
The sad truth is that we have been here before. On March 13, 1990, the headline of the Daily Mirror read, “Kids forced into Satan orgies.” The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had reported that Satanic abuse was widespread in the UK.
The details of the allegations made in the Mirror were remarkably similar to those being made now. It was alleged that at these Satanic orgies, children were forced to eat human body parts and drink blood and urine. Animals and babies were said to have been sacrificed. Most of the media at the time uncritically accepted the NSPCC’s claims and a Satanic panic ensued.
A few reporters, notably Debbie Nathan in the US and Rosie Waterhouse in the UK, examined the claims critically and found them to be entirely without foundation. In the oft-quoted words of Rosie Waterhouse, in her article “The making of a Satanic myth,” published in the Independent August 12, 1990, “Investigations have produced no evidence. No bodies, no bones ... no bloodstains. Nothing.” This negative conclusion was echoed four years later by Jean La Fontaine, emeritus professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. Her official inquiry into claims of Satanic abuse had investigated 84 alleged cases in the UK between 1987 and 1992, including the notorious cases in Rochdale and the Orkneys that involved social workers and police forcibly removing children from their homes in dawn raids. Convincing corroborative evidence was not found in even one case.
If the situation is different this time and there exists forensic evidence to support the claims, it is vital that such evidence is passed to the police as soon as possible. But this seems unlikely. As Lumbasi says in the Scottish Express, “In most cases, we can’t blame the police for not taking action. If they have no actual evidence such as names, times or places to go with, what can they do?”
Obviously, if it is claimed that snuff movies are a regular feature of the alleged abuse, a single copy of such a movie would provide strong supporting evidence. But, as the article in the Scottish Express acknowledges, “There has never been a proven example of a snuff film – where a person is murdered on camera – being made in Britain, although there have been an isolated number of cases where perverts have been caught with such footage made abroad.”
It is noteworthy that on Friday the BBC reported similarly unsubstantiated claims, albeit not of a Satanic nature, of the sexual abuse of children. These came from a man in his 40s referred to as “Nick.” The man, who had been undergoing counseling for 20 years, claims he and other children were the victims of a sex-ring that included prominent MPs and other powerful individuals. Exaro News has gone even farther, reporting Nick’s claims that two children were murdered by the group.
As the barrister Matthew Scott notes on his blog, such reporting carries serious risks. If the claims are true, the detailed descriptions aired publicly by the BBC and Exaro will serve to undermine Nick’s claims, as it could now always be argued by defense lawyers in a future case that any other witnesses who came forward were simply repeating what had already been made public. If the claims are untrue, broadcasting them is simply feeding the growing public hysteria about pedophilia. In other words, this does not help anyone, least of all genuine victims of abuse.
Sources: Chris French, The Guardian, November 18, 2014; and Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend by Jeffrey S. Victor.