Ritual Story
Ritual Story
Fallacies of The Sra Conspiracy
Logical examination of these ten “proofs” quickly reveals their fatal flaws. First, while conspiracies are certainly secret, they cannot continue to exist and function in an open society without leaving a trail. For example, the FBI may not have known how extensive the Mafia’s network was until years of painstaking investigation and the confessions of some members revealed the truth, but the Mafia left plenty of physical evidence in the form of homicides, gun battles, arson cases, beatings, and a host of other illegal activities. No one has found Teamster’s
Satanic Ritual Abuse Ritual A teenage girl, who was impregnated during a satanic ritual, is forcibly delivered of her nearly term baby and then made to ritually kill the child and eat its heart as cult members watch. Another girl, a small child, is sewn inside the cavity of a disembowelled animal and “rebirthed” by her cultic captors in a grotesque ceremony. A preschool class is systematically abused — sexually, emotionally, and physically — by members of a nationwide, nearly invincible network of satanic paedophiles and pornographers. A young girl is thrown into an electrified cage with wolves and ritually
The History of SRA Reports
Until the early 1980s, law enforcement officials, the media, religious researchers, and sociologists recognised four main categories of contemporary Satanism: (1) teenage self-styled, or dabblers; (2) adult self-styled; (3) religious or public; and (4) small group.
Before this time, the idea of a widespread, almost invincible, multi-generational satanic conspiracy was not entertained any more seriously than ideas of UFO abduction conspiracies. During the early 1980s, however, several factors combined to provide fertile ground for the growth of SRA reports.
First, cohabitation and divorce rates skyrocketed, producing fragmented family units, single-parent families, families “blended” by divorce and remarriage, and many families with no daytime adult supervision of children.
This situation provided pressure toward dysfunctional behavior (e.g., neglect, abuse, incest) in intact families. It also created the setting in broken families for a significant rise in custody disputes, child abandonment, spouse and even child accusations against the non-supportive spouse, and other manipulative actions.10
Second, in the eyes of many people, the mental health community became an authoritative “discerner” of truth. This community also expanded during those years to include many different kinds of counsellors, including licensed therapists, social workers, lay counsellors, peer counsellors, support group members and leaders, and pastoral counselors, as well as psychiatrists and psychologists. Many people assumed that any of these counselors, no matter what their training, should invariably be able to tell if a client is telling the truth.
Third, an increased interest in women’s rights issues and in religious activism caused a greater awareness of, and vigorous opposition to, both pornography and the physical and sexual abuse of children. While women’s rights advocates and evangelical activists frequently opposed each other’s goals and beliefs, they united to protect the victims of pornography and child abuse.
This heightened concern generated special interest groups and experts who — usually with the best of intentions — still needed to find a danger of sufficient depth and breadth to warrant large commitments of time, legislation, and funding for their causes
Fourth, a significant segment of American evangelicalism developed a complex satanic end-times view, combining the 1970s “deliverance” ministries with “newspaper prophecy” theology. While the end-times speculators of the 1970s pointed primarily at the rebirth of the nation of Israel as a sign that Christ’s Second Coming was near, the speculators of the 80s also emphasized the rise of destructive occult activity as a sign that the end was imminent.
In Mike Warnke’s testimony of his purported former involvement with Satanism, The Satan Seller, he claimed that in 1965 he led a group of 1,500 Satanists in a desert area of Southern California, and that he was “part of a deep and widespread organisation, operating not only in the U.S., but all over the world
Each of these four developments — family disintegration, diffusion in the mental health community, activist opposition to victimisation, and an evangelical expectation of increasing occult activity — provided the nutrients for the development of SRA reports in the 1980s.
The first publicised case was that of Michelle Smith. An emotionally dysfunctional woman at the time, Smith claimed to discover — with the help of her therapist (and later husband) Lawrence Pazder — previously repressed early childhood memories of horrible physical and sexual abuse. The abuse was inflicted in a bizarre secret satanic cult whose members included her immediate family.
No corroborative evidence for this shocking account was obtained, said Smith and Pazder, for a variety of reasons. First, by its very nature, a conspiracy’s activities are secret and unknown. Second, the cultists planted disinformation, such as wrong dates, in her memory.
Third, the almost invincible cult destroyed the evidence of its crimes. And fourth, some of the very people to whom Smith could turn for help were themselves involved in the conspiracy. Nevertheless, the couple claimed that Pazder’s therapeutic expertise established Smith’s story as true.
Types of Abuse. SRA includes emotional abuse (terrifying threats, deliberate heightening of fear, etc.), sexual abuse (incest, mutilation of genitals, etc.), other physical abuse (beating, cutting, etc.), and spiritual abuse (taunts that God has rejected them, He won’t forgive them, Jesus is defeated, etc.).
The ritual elements of the abuse are always satanic or occultic. Features of satanic ceremony folklore — such as the black mass, human sacrifice, drinking of blood, and satanic symbols — are common. However, victims typically cannot recount the intricacies of occult rituals beyond what is commonly found in satanically oriented material available in general bookstores, or what they have heard from other victims or therapists.
SRA Disclosure. Usually adult SRA stories are disclosed during counselling or some other therapeutic setting. The adult victim generally begins therapy for a seemingly unrelated problem, such as a sleep or eating disorder, depression, or marital difficulties.
During the course of treatment, either the therapist or the client raises the possibility of repressed memories of SRA. With sensationalistic reports of SRA scattered throughout the media, few clients or therapists have not heard something of SRA and its horrors.
At first the client may deny a past history of SRA, or may not remember anything, or may have fragments of almost meaningless images that might somehow relate to SRA. However, after long-term, intensive treatment by a therapist committed to believing the client no matter what he or she discloses, the alleged adult survivor gradually pieces together a complex personal SRA history.
Ordinarily, the therapist decides that the repression was facilitated by the dissociative state known as multiple personality disorder (MPD).
After further long-term, intensive therapy and support group involvement, including “abreacting” (see glossary) or “reliving” each of the traumatic “memories”, the client may become emotionally well.
Discussion
Any professional evaluating victims’ allegations of ritualistic abuse cannot ignore the lack of physical evidence (no bodies or physical evidence left by violent murders), the difficulty in successfully committing a large-scale conspiracy crime (the more people involved in any crime conspiracy, the harder it is to get away with it), and human nature (intragroup conflicts resulting in individual self-serving disclosures are likely to occur in any group involved in organized kidnapping, baby breeding, and human sacrifice)
Hard Facts about Satanic Ritual Abuse
A teenage girl, who was impregnated during a satanic ritual, is forcibly delivered of her nearly term baby and then made to ritually kill the child and eat its heart as cult members watch. Another girl, a small child, is sewn inside the cavity of a disemboweled animal and “rebirthed” by her cultic captors in a grotesque ceremony.
A preschool class is systematically abused — sexually, emotionally, and physically — by members of a nationwide, nearly invincible network of satanic pedophiles and pornographers. A young girl is thrown into an electrified cage with wolves and ritually tortured to deliberately produce a “wolf personality,” part of her multiple personality disorder (MPD; see glossary).
These are but a few of the thousands of horrifying stories circulating throughout the United States and abroad. Some true believers (see glossary) in satanic ritual abuse (SRA) say that more than 100,000 “adult survivors” have undergone therapy and “remembered” these horrible abuses. Others more than double this number.
These terrifying accounts are linked to the current public concern about child abductions by strangers, which true believers claim number in the thousands annually.
True believers say the conspiracy is almost invincible, covers the nation (if not the world), and involves key power players in the courts, education, politics, religion, and society in general. True believers provide unconditional support to alleged adult survivors whose therapeutically recovered “memories” typically implicate their elderly parents in heinous crimes, including murder, cannibalism, sexual torture, incest, and bestiality.
Some alleged victims bring their cases to law enforcement officials, hoping for criminal prosecution. Some obtain restraining orders barring their parents from seeing them or their grandchildren. Some cut all ties with family and simply disappear.
A few begin new lives as television and radio talk show guests, sharing their gruesome stories from coast to coast during after-school television time. Almost all are in the midst of long-term, intensive therapeutic counseling.
Many undergo dozens of psychiatric hospitalisations and take part in almost daily therapy sessions and support group meetings. Tragically, small children are sometimes snatched from their parents’ custody on the whisper of a suspicion that the parents may be SRA participants
True believers among therapists, alleged adult survivors, law enforcement officials, journalists, and Christian leaders unanimously call for the public to believe the stories, to change the justice system so recovered “memories” alone can bring convictions in criminal court, and to rise up against this astonishingly powerful satanic conspiracy. If the alleged victims’ allegations are true, then such reactions are to be expected.
If they are false, then countless families and reputations are being destroyed for nothing, truth is being ignored, biblical standards of evidence and testimony are being discarded, “survivors” are being trapped in long-term, destructive therapeutic situations, and Satan is getting more credit than he is due. In this article we will move beyond sensationalism and emotionalism to take a serious look at SRA stories and theories
SRA Reports
Typical SRA stories display certain essential elements that remain uniform whether the story is “discovered” by a therapist, a social worker, or a parent, and whether the victim is an adult or a child.
The Victims. The adult victim15 is commonly a white woman between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five who has a history of nonspecific psychological problems (which may include suicide attempts).
She is herself either intensely religious (usually evangelical or charismatic Protestant) or comes from an intensely religious background. The typical adult victim is often highly suggestible, intelligent, creative, and well-educated, albeit not necessarily in a formal sense.
The victim first seeks counselling help for a problem seemingly unrelated to occultic abuse. From our own conversations with dozens of alleged adult survivors, we feel comfortable in affirming that the vast majority of them sincerely believe their stories, although sincerity cannot determine a story’s veracity.
Child victims are not so easily characterised, though most are highly motivated to please adults, intelligent, and loyal to the supportive parent. Perhaps this lack of a consistent profile is because children’s disclosures of SRA almost always follow questioning by worried parents or mental health workers. (It is noteworthy that the supportive parent often has characteristics in common with the typical adult victim.)
If the child discloses SRA inflicted by an immediate family member, it is typically in a divorce or separation situation where the accused is the nonsupportive parent or one of the nonsupportive parent’s relatives.
The Victimisers. The alleged adult survivor’s immediate family members are usually identified as the perpetrators — even if the victim may see them as former victims turned satanic victimizers due to their own trauma. When the immediate family is not involved — as in many of the children’s stories, but almost none of the adult survivor stories — caregivers in regular custody of the victim are seen as the perpetrators (e.g., preschool teachers, day-care workers).
Importantly, the hypothetical psychological profile of the SRA perpetrator actually contradicts the most common features of known physical and sexual abusers, psychotics, sociopaths, pornographers, and serial killers — creating serious doubt that such a perpetrator exists
Suffering Children
The child who discloses an SRA story almost always does so at the prompting of a parent or mental health professional.21 Such disclosures most often come after frequent, prolonged questioning. And most frequently the child identifies the perpetrator as a day-care worker or other regular, nonfamily care giver. When family members are accused, they are most likely the parents of the spouse other than the one reporting the abuse, or a parent or stepparent who is estranged from the family.
Accusations against public officials, entertainment personalities, neighbors, or other, more distant adults usually come only after the case has been sensationalized and the child has been questioned incessantly about “the others” involved in the abuse. Children are much less likely to be diagnosed with MPD. The common presumption is that they are terrified to tell their stories, not that they have repressed their memories of SRA.
Adults who suspect that they or their children may be SRA victims are urged by true believers to seek help and affirmation from therapists, friends, support groups, and family members who will believe them unconditionally. Whether their accounts are true or not, this reinforcement and isolation from critical thinking intensifies the victims’ beliefs concerning SRA
The SRA Conspiracy
The typical SRA story includes strong commitment to a conspiracy theory of history. That is, the victimization is seen not as the isolated action of a psychotic or sociopathic individual, but as part of a widespread, multigenerational, and nearly omnipotent satanic conspiracy. This conspiracy involves anywhere from thousands to millions of cultists — many of them in the very highest levels of society, including government, law enforcement, mental health institutions, and even religious leadership.
We have heard SRA stories accusing famous televangelists, police chiefs, FBI agents, the Pope, CIA leaders, U.N. diplomats, millionaires, philanthropists, pastors, school teachers and principals, psychiatrists, and others. Such a conspiratorial view accomplishes two critical objectives: (1) it accounts for the absolute lack of corroborative evidence of SRA; and (2) it accounts for several popularly assumed social ills, such as thousands of missing children and rampant child sexual abuse in day care centres.
