Protecting Children from Ritual Abuse and Mind Control December 1995
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Cultural and Economic Barriers to Protecting Children
from Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
How are we to understand the phenomenon of ritual abuse
in the 1990's? Throughout the Western world, increasing numbers of
therapists and other helping professionals are hearing
accounts from children as young as two and adults ranging into
the ninth decade of their lives describe mind-numbing accounts of
abuses consisting of sexual sadism and pornography, physical
torture, and highly sophisticated psychological manipulation
which, taken together, we have come to refer to as ritual abuse.
The evidence is rapidly accumulating that the problem of
ritual abuse is considerable in scope, and extremely grave in its
consequences. Among 2,709 members of the American Psychological
Association who responded to a poll, 2,292 cases of ritual abuse were
reported (Bottoms, Shaver, & Goodman, 1993). In 1992 alone, Childhelp
USA logged 1,741 calls pertaining to ritual abuse, Monarch Resources
of Los Angeles logged approximately 5,000, Real Active Survivors
tallied nearly 3,600, Justus Unlimited of Colorado received almost
7,000, and Looking Up of Maine handled around 6,000. Even allowing for
some of these calls to have been made by people who assist survivors
but are not themselves survivors, and for some survivors to have
called more that one helpline or made multiple calls to the same
helpline, these numbers suggest that at a minimum there must be tens
of thousands of survivors of ritual abuse in the United States.
Evidence also continues to accumulate that the ritual
abuse of children constitutes a child abuse problem of
significant scope. In 1988, Finkelhor, Williams and Burns (1988)
published the results of a nationwide study of substantiated
reports of sexual abuse in day care involving 1,639 young child
victims. Thirteen percent of these cases were found to involve
ritual abuse. Other studies of ritually abused children have been
relatively small. Kelly (1988; 1989; 1992a; 1992b; 1993)
reported on 35 day care victims of ritual abuse, Waterman et al.
(1993) reported on 82 children complaining of ritual abuse in
preschool, Faller (1988; 1990) studied 18 children who had
disclosed ritual abuse in their preschool, and Bybee and Mowbray
(1993) from the Michigan State Department of Mental Health
identified 62 children alleging ritual abuse in their preschool
and 53 children who reported seeing others be ritually abused.
Snow and Sorenson (1990) studied 39 children reporting ritual
abuse in five neighborhoods in Utah, and Jonker and Jonker-Bakker
(1991) reported on a total group of 98 children, at least 48 of
whom were believed to be victims of ritual abuse. The latter case
is the only one cited here which was conducted outside of the
United States.
Unfortunately, these statistics tell us little about the
actual prevalence of child ritual abuse. Much more telling are the
data these researchers have collected regarding the effects of ritual
abuse on child victims. In Faller's (1994) review of the literature
from which these studies are drawn, most of the studies which were
selected included a control group of children with sexual abuse
histories but no reports of ritual abuse. It is very telling that in
every case in which the symptomatology of the ritually abused children
was compared to the symptomatology of the sexually abused children,
the ritually abused children showed considerably more symptoms of
trauma.
In the Finkelhor et al. (1988) study, ritually abused
children showed significantly more symptoms of trauma than did
sexually abused children. Kelly (1988; 1989; 1992a; 1992b; 1993)
showed that ritually abused children had significantly higher scores
on the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist than did sexually abused
children, indicating more severe symptomatology on the part of the
children who had been ritually abused. Waterman et al. (1993) found
that both therapists and parents rated ritually abused children as
showing more behavioral symptoms on the Achenbach than sexually abused
children. Other assessment instruments used in this study found
ritually abused children to function less well at the time of
termination from therapy than did sexually abused children. Faller
(1990) found that more ritually abused children than sexually abused
children suffered from sleep, emotional, and behavioral problems, as
well as phobias and problems with sexual acting out.
A great deal of literature has been amassed on the often
extreme and debilitating effects of child sexual abuse on its victims,
effects which may last a lifetime. To have four
comparative studies as methodologically sound as the ones
presented above all illustrating that ritual abuse causes even
greater effects on child victims than does sexual abuse should
give us as a nation serious pause. The data reflecting the grave
consequences of ritual abuse on children has been coming in for
over five years now. Yet we, a nation with mandated child abuse
reporting and computerized accounts of numbers of children
reported to have been sexually, physically, and emotionally
abused each year, still have no systematic means of collecting
data on numbers of children reported to have been ritually
abused! We could, relatively easily and for minimal expense,
obtain statistics on the number of cases of ritual child abuse
being reported in the United States each year simply by adding
one additional category on the child abuse reporting forms which
mandated reporters must complete when they file a child abuse
report.
Given the accumulation of data illustrating not only
that children reporting ritual abuse are profoundly negatively
impacted by those experiences, but that they are even more severely
impacted that are child victims of sexual abuse, how can we give any
weight at all to the skeptical position that ritual abuse memories are
no more that screen memories for incest
experiences that are actually worse, suppressed from awareness
and replaced by accounts of impossibly bizarre rituals? If
children claiming to be ritually abused were in fact sexually
abused only, then clearly their symptomatology should be similar
to and no more serious than that of sexually abused children.
The psychological condition of ritually abused children
matches the accounts they give of what has been done to them not only
in the severity of their symptomatology, but also in its particulars.
That is to say, not only do ritually abused children appear more
disturbed than sexually abused children on
traditional instruments like the Achenbach, they also demonstrate
symptoms which relate in direct and obvious ways to the abuse
experiences they describe. For example, because ritual abuse
usually involves traumatic confinement, ritually abused children
often fear elevators, closets, and other small spaces. Because
these children have often had urine and feces smeared on their
bodies and put in their mouths, they may smear themselves or
others with urine or feces, or develop phobias of the bathroom.
Because many of these children have witnessed torture and
killing, and have been threatened with death of themselves and
their loved ones, they often fear that they or their family
members will be killed. And so on. (See Gould, 1992 for a more
complete account of the symptomatology that characterizes
ritually abused children). The nature as well as the severity of
ritually abused children's symptomatology gives eloquent and
tragic testimony to the fact that ritual abuse does indeed exist,
in all the horror described by its victims, both young and old.
Perhaps no skeptic has done more to obfuscate the issue
of ritual abuse than Kenneth Lanning of the FBI, who for years has
maintained that no substantive evidence exists for the
reality of ritual abuse (Lanning, 1991). (As investigative
journalist Civia Tamarkin has noted, for decades the FBI also
told the American public that the Mafia did not exist in the
United States (1991)). "No bodies...No adult witnesses," as
Parenting magazine put it so succinctly, and so erroneously in
their March 1994 article "The Satanism Scare" (Ruben, 1994).
And why do accounts like the ones given by the 37 ritually abused
adults in the Young et al. (1991) study, and the 14 ritually
abused families in the Kelly (1992a) study, of group sexual
assaults, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism and the like not
constitute eyewitness accounts to so-called experts like Lanning?
I am personally aware of scores of adult survivors with
memories of ritual crimes (contrary to the position of many
skeptics, most of these memories were retrieved without hypnosis
or chemical assistance; many were in fact retrieved outside of
therapy) who have made concerted attempts to bring these crimes
to the attention of law enforcement. The vast majority of these
survivor accounts have been met with absolute indifference and
inaction on the part of local law enforcement agencies, as well
as the FBI, who might reasonably be expected to investigate the
charges of interstate trafficking of children and pornography
which are commonly made by ritual abuse survivors.
Not only do skeptics such as Lanning 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. In the Bottoms et al. (1991; 1993) study of 2,292
cases of ritual abuse, perpetrators in 30% of the child cases
confessed to abusing one or more children, and perpetrators in
15% of adult cases confessed to perpetrating as well. In the case
studied by Snow and Sorenson (1990), two adolescent perpetrators
admitted to charges of abuse. Both of these sets of data require
further analysis to determine which acts of ritual abuse were
confessed to by what number of perpetrators.
Corroboration and eyewitness accounts offered by
children should also be given serious attention when therapists and
investigators can demonstrate that no contamination of the
children's disclosures has taken place. In the case studied by
Jonker and Jonker-Bakker (1991), children from different schools
and different locales gave accounts of perpetrators, abuse
locations, and abusive acts that were mutually corroborating.
Accounts of tunnels under the McMartin preschool given by
children claiming to have been ritually abused at the school were
fully corroborated when the existence and location of the tunnels
were documented by a professional team of archaeologists (Summit,
1994).
If it were not enough to have a substantial amount of
data from well-controlled studies demonstrating the grave
psychological impact which ritual abuse has on children, to have
eyewitness accounts of significant numbers of adult and child
survivors, to have perpetrator confessions of ritual abuse
crimes, and to have a whole variety of types of corroboration of
children's accounts of ritual abuse, the number of ritual abuse
cases in which criminal convictions have been obtained should
certainly put to rest any remaining questions about the existence
of ritual abuse. It has become fashionable in the last several
years for the media to minimize and even dissemble about the data
which so strongly support the existence of ritual abuse.
Amazingly, this has happened even in relation to ritual abuse
cases in which criminal convictions have been obtained. Parenting
magazine (Ruben, 1994), for example, asserted that "far more
cases (of ritual abuse) end in acquittal" than in conviction.
In fact, 58% of the ritual abuse cases in the Finkelhor
(1988) study that went to trial resulted in convictions. In the Kelly
(1992b) study, convictions were obtained in 80% of the ritual and
sexual abuse cases combined; since there were no significant
differences between the rates of criminal conviction in these two
groups, we can surmise that convictions were obtained in approximately
80% of the ritual abuse cases Kelly studied. Finally, and most
significant given the thousands of cases studied, convictions were
obtained in 11% of all ritual child abuse cases studied by Bottoms et
al. (1991; 1993). All three sets of data need to be further analyzed
to determine in which cases acts of ritual abuse other than child
sexual abuse per se were entered into the court record, and on which
charges the perpetrators were convicted.
It is because ritual abuse cases are being seen in
greater numbers in courtrooms across the United States, and
convictions are being obtained, that one by one states are
passing laws against crimes that occur virtually exclusively
within the context of ritual abuse. In September of this year,
California became the sixth state in the country to pass a law
against specific acts of ritual abuse.
How can it be that, with significant numbers of criminal
convictions of perpetrators of ritual abuse and laws against ritual
abuse on the books in a growing number of states, with the clinical
data amassed by thousands of therapists in the United States and
internationally, with physical evidence like the tunnels found under
the McMartin preschool corroborating
children's reports of abuse, that we cannot reach a consensus
that ritual abuse constitutes a serious problem for us as a
nation, and demands to be addressed? Why is it that media
accounts of ritual abuse are often filled with so much
obfuscation that the public is left wondering whether ritual
abuse might not in fact be the "urban myth" or "mass hysteria"
that certain skeptics have made a virtual career out of saying
that it is?
I propose that there are two major factors at work in
this elaborate national dance of deception and denial. The first is
economic, and the second sociocultural. The economic reasons for the
denial and minimization of ritual abuse are in one sense obvious.
Survivors of ritual abuse, especially those far enough along in their
recoveries to have moved through the horrific memories of group sexual
assaults and bloody sacrifices, usually find that underneath those
traumatic ritual memories is a previously dissociated knowledge of
having served the cult/perpetrator group in ways that are
unambiguously economic. For example, women survivors often discover
that they have served as prostitutes for the cult, sometimes since
childhood, and frequently for little or no financial compensation.
Within the frame of the cult-created Multiple personality disorder
(Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID, in the new diagnostic
nomenclature) from which most ritual abuse victims suffer, the core
personality in such a survivor usually knows nothing of her cult
involvement or of her cult "job". In other words, her core personality
does not wonder why her work as a prostitute never earns her any
money, because she has no idea that she (or, more accurately, one of
her alters) is prostituting. The alter who works as a prostitute does
so because she has been programmed to function in this manner, usually
from early childhood, with extreme torture, and knows no other way of
life. (See Neswald, 1991 and Gould & Cozolino, 1992 for a more
complete description of how ritual abuse deliberately creates alters
programmed to serve particular cult functions).
Survivors of ritual abuse who I have treated, or on
whose cases I have consulted, have also discovered that they have
worked for the cult/perpetrator group as bookkeepers and money
launderers, as drug dealers and couriers, as pornography
subjects, as programmers/torturers of children, as computer
programmers, as investment specialists, as legal advisers, and
even as government agents, always outside the conscious awareness
of their core personalities. Rarely has a case come to my
attention in which the survivor was well paid for her
contributions to the financial advancement of the
cult/perpetrator group which she (unconsciously) served. Most
often as the survivor accesses the memories that are buried under
countless layers of torture trauma, she has to contend not only
with the rude awakening that since birth she has lived a life of
unspeakable pain and horror outside her conscious awareness, but
also that she has been literally enslaved to a perpetrator group,
since her activities have been dictated by others and enacted
outside her own free will, with little or no financial
remuneration. In fact, survivors who have generated sometimes
millions of dollars for their perpetrator groups, often are
virtually penniless when they come to therapy, and are treated
for very low fees.
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 becomes
clear. 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 amnestic to their cult
activities, these ritual abuse victims pose little threat to their
controllers. Without extensive therapeutic help, cult victims are
usually unaware that they work for the cult/perpetrator group and are
therefore incapable of contemplating quitting their cult jobs. Neither
can they turn higher-ups in to the authorities for their criminal
activities, since they have little or no conscious access to
information about what activities they or their superiors are involved
in.
Clearly, the groups who create these unpaid subjugates
have considerable economic incentive to do so. 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
widespread 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 intrafamilial 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.
No doubt it will take serious, well-coordinated efforts
on the part of local and national law enforcement to gather the data
that will be needed to know how powerful and deeply entrenched these
ritually abusing, criminally involved groups actually are. In the
meantime, we as a nation must examine how deep our commitment to child
protection really is. Mothers Against Sexual Abuse (MASA),
headquartered in Los Angeles, continues to find, despite vigorous
efforts at change, that judges across the country are more likely to
award custody to fathers than to mothers, even when the child has
complained of
abuse by the father and those complaints have been substantiated
by psychological or medical findings. I am personally aware of
dozens of cases across the United States in which a child has
disclosed severe maltreatment in the form of ritual abuse in a
preschool, and the case has never been properly investigated,
other parents with children in attendance at the school have
never been notified, the school has not been closed down, and no
charges have been filed. Organizations like Believe The Children
of Chicago are aware of cases like these numbering well into the
hundreds.
In both intrafamilial and extrafamilial child abuse
cases like those described above, the more extreme and ritualized the
abuse, the less likely the child is to be granted protection and the
perpetrators are to be apprehended. Clearly this has to do exclusively
with cultural bias, not what is in the best interests of the child,
since, as the research makes amply clear, the negative impact of
ritual abuse on the child is extremely grave.
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 mine control "don't happen here." They happen in
third world countries, which do not have the freedoms "guaranteed" by
our democratic form of government. There would be no purpose served by
having a fascist type of group torture United States Citizens, as this
kind of terrorization is designed to overthrow an existing government,
and ours by its very design cannot be overthrown. And certainly there
would be no purpose served in torturing children. Since they don't
vote and don't form coalitions of any kind, extremist groups would
have no interest in coercing them into socio-political compliance.
What this argument misses is the fact that, when mind
control is put into place with very young children, through the
torturous programming that is the essence of ritual abuse, then
reinforced and further developed as the child victims get older, by
the time those children reach adolescence and adulthood they have
become valuable resources for the perpetrator group to exploit. That
exploitation may or may not be political, but it is certainly
economic. To fully grasp this at a cultural level requires the general
public to come to grips with a level of understanding of human nature
still barely comprehended within the mental health community; that is,
that the normative response to severe trauma, especially in early
childhood, is dissociation and amnesia for the traumatic events, and
that this response can be manipulated by sociopaths and programmed
cult members to create individuals amnestic to both their traumatic
histories and their behaviors in the world of abuse and criminality
into which their alter personalities have been indoctrinated.
Until law enforcement personnel, public policy makers,
the judiciary, the child protection system and others who are involved
with the protection of children and the betterment of society come to
understand this new paradigm, ritual abuse is likely to continue to be
minimized in both its scope, its impact, and the insidious way it has
of multiplying when left unchecked. The paradigm shift which will need
to take place in order to provide truly effective treatment for ritual
abuse victims, and in order to successfully curb this extreme form of
brutality in our culture is certain to be a difficult one to achieve.
(See Gould & Graham-Costain (1994a; 1994b) for an
account of treatment guidelines for ritually abused children). It
calls into question not only the belief most Americans have that
systematic brutality on a large scale does not and cannot exist
in this country, but also our belief that we operate from our
free will, and that that freedom of thought and action is
inviolable.
To become fully aware of just how vulnerable to utter
violation and manipulation that free will really is when
sociopaths and programmed cult victim members are allowed access
to children demands that we put far greater efforts into
safeguarding our children's welfare than we ever dreamed would be
necessary. The price tag emotionally and financially for putting
that awareness into practice will be very high indeed. But the
price of ignoring or minimizing the impact of ritual abuse on our
children and on our society will surely prove intolerable.
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By Catherine Gould, Ph.D.