Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) is a phrase coined in the 1980's to refer to well publicized accounts of extreme child abuse allegedly organized by a satanic cult in the USA; these accounts are controversial, some believe in their veracity while others deny their existence. These typically comprise allegations of extreme and sadistic sexual, psychological or physical assault on another, perpetrated by one or more Satanists in a specific ritual. It is similar to the terms ritual abuse, sadistic ritual abuse and organized sadistic abuse.

There is no dispute that some psychotic murderers have called themselves Satanists, or that there have been some people who sexually abuse children, using rituals and perhaps references to the Devil to manipulate them. There are also some "pseudo-satanic" juvenile delinquents. However, in the late 1980s, widespread media accounts portrayed Satanism as a worldwide conspiracy behind such crimes as child sexual abuse, ritual murder, and cattle mutilation , precipitating what has been called a "moral panic". These claims started to appear rather suddenly; the first "survivor" account was published in 1980 in the best selling book, Michelle Remembers, after which accusations and rumors spread rapidly thereafter in the USA during the early 1980s and then declined rapidly during the early 1990s. Michelle Remembers was purported to be a factual account, but was subsequently discredited by several investigations. After its publication, therapists in the 1980s reported a flood of accounts of cases of multiple personality disorder in which the person had memories of involvement in a destructive Satanic cult but objective validation of these memories was seldom forthcoming, and in several cases collateral history proved that the claims of ritual abuse were false. No law enforcement agency or research study found the kind of physical evidence needed to support accounts of SRA. In 1994, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service of the UK reported that an estimated 242 cases of organized abuse occur each year in the UK, of which about 21 involve allegations of ritual or satanic abuse. Thus organized abuse accounts for a small minority of all cases handled by child protection teams. However, no evidence was found that the sexual and physical abuse of children was part of rites directed to a magical or religious objective. In the three substantiated cases of ritual, not satanic, abuse, the ritual was secondary to the sexual abuse.

What is very much in dispute is whether there is a vast Satanist conspiracy or extensive networks of "ritual abuse" practitioners, and whether there are have been any cases in which Satanic belief systems have contributed to abuse. The issue is hard to resolve because of deep difficulties in diagnosis - behaviors that may be mistaken for ritual abuse include repetitive psychopathological abuse, sexual abuse by pedophiles, child pornography portraying ritual abuse, distorted memory, false memory, false report due to a severe mental disorder, pseudologia phantastica, adolescent behavior simulating ritual abuse, epidemic hysteria, deliberate lying, and hoaxes.Children who have experienced extreme abuse develop coping strategies that include anxiety, denial, self-hypnosis, dissociation, and self-mutilation, and nurses who care for such children recognize that some of their reports must be discounted as false memories because they emerge from fantasy, distortions, innocent deceptions, false beliefs, lies, or adult coaching.

"People sometimes fantasize entire complex scenarios and later define these experiences as memories of actual events rather than as imaginings. This article examines research associated with three such phenomena: past-life experiences, UFO alien contact and abduction, and memory reports of childhood ritual satanic abuse. In each case, elicitation of the fantasy events is frequently associated with hypnotic procedures and structured interviews which provide strong and repeated demands for the requisite experiences, and which then legitimate the experiences as "real memories." Research associated with these phenomena supports the hypothesis that recall is reconstructive and organized in terms of current expectations and beliefs." Spanos NP et al. in a 1994 review article in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnotherapy

Not all cults are Satanic, and not all sadism is ritualistic or even a group activity. Whether or not a given ritual is abusive is also dependent on context: eating pork is commonplace to billions of people, while forcing a devout Muslim or Jew to eat pork would be abusive. Some cultures believe male circumcision or female genital mutilation are quite appropriate, and neither Christianity or Satanism may have anything to do with their beliefs.

In the interest of precision, therefore, this article addresses abuse that has a specific association with Satanic belief or symbols, and refers readers to the articles on forms of abuse that do not involve Satanic belief or symbols.

Gould, whose paper on ritual abuse said "The evidence is rapidly accumulating that the problem of ritual abuse is considerable in scope and extremely grave in its consequences," only addressed Satanism with the comment "While ritual abuse is certainly an integral part of some kinds of Satanism, it is most likely that the deeper reason for the prevalence of ritual abuse is that, simply put, it reliably creates a group of people who function as unpaid slaves to the perpetrator group. Because their core personalities are amnesic to their cult activities, these ritual abuse victims pose little threat to their controllers. "..

Young's study does, in the available abstract, "Thirty-seven adult dissociative disorder patients who reported ritual abuse in childhood by satanic cults are described" but there is no further detail on the specifics of the Satanic symbolism or validation beyond patient accounts..

One article has termed the Wikipedia article on the subject a promotion of pedophilia, while others regard it as a moral panic or as a subversion ideology.

A 1992 report by Kenneth V. Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent, Behavioral Science Unit, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Federal Bureau of Investigation said "Most people today use the term to refer to abuse of children that is part of some evil spiritual belief system, which almost by definition must be satanic." Williams observes that the definition is especially difficult for law enforcement. Ritual with a child is not necessarily abusive; rites of passage such as First Communions, Bar Mitzvahs, and other coming-of-age ceremonies are ritual by definition.