Satanic Ritual Abuse - fundie horseshit or troof?

[Bernie Gunther]

I'm a bit concerned that the mostly excellent 'high level paedophile ring' thread is in the process of being derailed into a discussion of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) and possibly also David Icke etc.

The UK SRA cases (e.g. Nottingham, Rochdale etc) were primarily focussed on council estate families, rather than on members of parliament or the security services, close friends of Mrs Thatcher and Prince Charles (or even on middle-class Daily Mail readers.)

Arguably also the SRA witch-hunts of the late 80's and early 90's were a prototype for elements of the "demonise the underclass" propaganda that we see today.

Hence, because I think it's a separate and worthwhile subject in its own right (as long as we can avoid things getting too lizard-infested) I'd like to request that, if we are going to have a discussion of SRA (or indeed of any of its more colourful relatives like the Icke/Project Monarch stuff) we do it here in a separate thread.

My view and one which I'm very willing to argue here, is that SRA allegations were fundie horseshit imported from the US that got rapidly propagated in the UK between late '87 and the early 90's like some sort of unpleasant virus, due to a combination of different agendas; ranging from those of UK based fundie nut-jobs, various kinds of "culture-warriors", fad psychotherapists, professional sensationalists like Roger Cook and Geoffery Dickens and some fairly nasty class-based stuff from the gutter press, along with some well-meaning but misguided attempts to protect children from almost entirely fictional SRA, whatever the potential for collateral damage and injustice.

I'd also argue that SRA panics may even have acted as a smokescreen for the actual abuse that we now know Cyril, Jimmy and the chaps were engaging in at the time, by making it easier (once the frequently ludicrous SRA accusations all fell apart due to lack of evidence, leaving a rump of obviously mental true believers screaming 'conspiracy') for the establishment to ignore or intimidate witnesses coming forward with stories about the care home system being used as a child brothel by various toffs, with the active collusion of spooks etc.

If anyone does want to have an evidence-based discussion of SRA though, rather than just shitting up the other thread, I'm game for doing so on this thread.

 

[bluescreen]

Jimmy Savile had a coffin-shaped table (Louis Theroux documentary).
And he was born on 31 October.
Erm, I think that's all we've got.

Snark aside, there may - just possibly - be people out there who have suffered from this. Must be very hard for them to get taken seriously. It's been hard enough for those abused by toffs to start being heard. "Extremely disturbed," remember? Maybe we should lay aside the automatic disbelief. And keep an open mind, but not so open that our brains fall out.

Nothing else to add to this thread.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Sure, I'm all for evidence-based discussion.

So if someone can produce any evidence for actually existing Satanic Ritual Abuse then we can have some discussion of it ...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

For those who didn't follow the cases at the time, or weren't even born then, here's some contemporary reporting from the Indy's Rosie Waterhouse from around the time when the SRA accusations started falling apart.

http://www.skepticfiles.org/rumor/is071090.htm

http://www.skepticfiles.org/rumor/is160990.htm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...gations-rosie-waterhouse-reports-1420013.html

 

[StoneRoad]

SRA - This is going to ignore the 1 in 50 (according to pope francis) peado priests, then.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

SRA - This is going to ignore the 1 in 50 (according to pope francis) peado priests, then.

I'm pretty sure there already is a thread for that, although you might have to use search to find it.

 

[angelraven]

I just found this FBI report which is quite old (1992) and long, but very balanced I thought:

http://www.cultwatch.com/satanicabuse.html

The author believes that the ritual element has been exaggerated in the vast majority of ritual abuse reports, but there may have been a few instances where something was going on.

The most interesting bit for me is where he quotes a San Francisco police profiling of different types of 'occult' offenders, including the 'dabblers':

"For these practitioners there is little or no spiritual motivation. They may mix satanism, witchcraft, paganism, and any aspects of the occult to suit their purposes. Symbols mean whatever they want them or believe them to mean. Molesters, rapists, drug dealers, and murderers may dabble in the occult and may even commit their crimes in a ceremonial or ritualistic way. This category has the potential to be the most dangerous, and most of the “satanic” killers fall into this category. Their involvement in satanism and the occult is a symptom of a problem, and a rationalization and justification of antisocial behavior. Satanic/occult practices (as well as those of other spiritual belief systems) can also be used as a mechanism to facilitate criminal objectives."​

This is really what I was getting at in the other thread. Watkins seems like a prime candidate for a dabbler to me. I didn't realise this idea would be so controversial, which is why I got a bit defensive. FWIW I find it highly unlikely that thousands of UK children have been victims of truly ritualised abuse, over the last few decades. A figure in the low hundreds seems more plausible. So there was clearly some inflation of the panic: I wasn't questioning that.

What is difficult to work out is the extent to which these 'dabblers' may have formed networks with people who shared similar interests, over and above the networks of 'ordinary' child abusers. Perhaps the Haute La Garenne report will shed light on this next year. It does seem that there may have been something going on there that went a little beyond 'ordinary' childhood sexual abuse.

Having found the document above that sets out a comprehensive position that I can largely agree with, I don't feel like doing any more research on this for the time being, but am certainly willing to engage in civilised discussion on this thread.

 

[Corax]

Load of attention seeking bullshit IMHO, and potentially a damaging diversion. It's not about "satanism", it's about fucking young boys in the arse.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

http://www.cultwatch.com/satanicabuse.html

Seems like a good article, although the US perspective on these things has important differences, especially in respect of the social class of the typical accused.

Off to lunch now, more later.

 

[dylanredefined]

Load of attention seeking bullshit IMHO, and potentially a damaging diversion. It's not about "satanism", it's about fucking young boys in the arse.

As far as we know the ritual satanic child abuse was and is fundie horseshit. No real evidence except for recovered memories of a dubious nature. The hysteria tore up families and ruined innocent people.
Now if real abuse got tied up with this nonsense or someone likes his kiddie fiddling mixed up with satanic nonsense who knows?

 

[angelraven]

Load of attention seeking bullshit IMHO, and potentially a damaging diversion. It's not about "satanism", it's about fucking young boys in the arse.

But it's actually a lot worse than that. There are plenty of allegations of child murder and 'disappearances' as well as sexual abuse by these rings, including at Haute de la Garenne. The latter care home was linked to Edward Paisnel who certainly had an unhealthy interest in the occult, to say the least. (Bernie Gunther, note that Paisnel came from a wealthy class background.)

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/feb/26/childprotection.ukcrime

After 2008 the Paisnel / Haute de la Garenne link was apparently played down by police. But with all these coverups, we can't really be 100% confident in this de-linking, can we?

I was with you guys, I thought SRA was a load of nonsense until I read about Paisnel. Now suddenly I'm not so sure. It's all a bit scary really.

 

[bluescreen]

<snippage>
I was with you guys, I thought SRA was a load of nonsense until I read about Paisnel. Now suddenly I'm not so sure. It's all a bit scary really.

Really, I think we need to separate the facts of abuse (if it happened) from the alleged motivation. It's when the focus lands on the motivation that things get distorted.

 

[Brainaddict]

Really, I think we need to separate the facts of abuse (if it happened) from the alleged motivation. It's when the focus lands on the motivation that things get distorted.

I think this is a really good point. I suspect that if what you really want to do in life is rape children, you'll find a way to justify it to yourself. If it isn't 'as an act of obeisance to the Prince of Hell' it will be some other reason. Not sure it really matters much does it?

 

[angelraven]

Really, I think we need to separate the facts of abuse (if it happened) from the alleged motivation. It's when the focus lands on the motivation that things get distorted.

Agreed. In fact I think my use of the word "satanism" last night was not helpful, as it seems more neutral to talk about "ritualised abuse". Then what intrigues me is how big a subset the networks engaging in ritualised abuse (if any) were of the networks engaging in any kind of organised abuse. I suppose a big problem here, alluded to in the FBI report I cited earlier, is that "organised" and "ritualised" can very easily blur into each other, if the same pattern of organised, secret activities are repeated regularly over time.

 

[bluescreen]

SRA horseshit: It's when the abuse becomes about the stories people tell - satanism, wealthy paedophile club, whatever - rather than about the abuse itself. Control the story and you control the situation. It ends up with victims telling about the story, rather than what happened to them. Maybe nothing did. Maybe it did, but the overarching(TM) story is so incredible it discredits the individual testimony. We need to be very careful here.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Most of the stuff about Paisnel being into some sort of occult stuff seems to trace back to his wife's book, ghost written by fleet street reporters (I think from the News of the World) Maybe the police found some evidence though, I haven't found anything that looks like a reliable source for that allegation, but let's suppose it's at least partially true.

What these sources mostly seem to be claiming boils down to a suggestion that Paisnel's fantasy life and rape MO incorporated some ritual and/or occult elements. After all, it's hardly unusual for these kinds of criminal to have very active fantasy lives and for those fantasies to relate to their crimes, so claims that Paisnel jerked off to Dennis Wheatly or stories about Gilles de Rais don't seem particularly far-fetched.

That doesn't make him a satanist by any reasonable definition, nor provide any kind of evidence of the existence of SRA of the sort that was being promoted by fundie nut-jobs a quarter of a century ago, for the concept of SRA that caused the FBI source being quoted above to say the following ...

... in some cases, individuals are getting away with molesting children because we can’t prove they are satanic devil worshippers who engage in brainwashing, human sacrifice, and cannibalism as part of a large conspiracy.

http://www.cultwatch.com/satanicabuse.html

 

[ViolentPanda]

Load of attention seeking bullshit IMHO, and potentially a damaging diversion. It's not about "satanism", it's about fucking young boys in the arse.

To be fair, the original "cases" from which the SRA scare was constructed in the USA were about fucking children, regardless of gender, regardless of orifice.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Once again, I'll draw posters' attention to Robert D. Hicks' "The Pursuit of Satan", an excellent piece of analysis of the cases which started off the SRA meme in the US.

 

[8115]

Where was that massive case in the 80s where a load of children were adopted after suspicions of satanic abuse but I think it was widely felt afterwards that there was no basis to this. It was extremely well known at the time but the place name escapes me.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Where was that massive case in the 80s where a load of children were adopted after suspicions of satanic abuse but I think it was widely felt afterwards that there was no basis to this. It was extremely well known at the time but the place name escapes me.

Post #4 is intended to cover that sort of question, at least in respect of the UK.

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threa...ndie-horseshit-or-troof.325799/#post-13280927

ETA not being difficult here, just can't tell which of several cases discussed in the links I've pointed you to that you might have in mind.

 

[bluescreen]

Orkney? Followed the Sunderland story.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/orkney-child-sex-abuse-scandal-1099361
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_child_abuse_scandal

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Just to be clear, I think 'satanist' could mean one of several things.

1) A member of e.g. Church of Satan, Temple of Set, Radio Werewolf, Order of Nine Angles or some similar actually or previously existing organisation which subscribes to some sort of admittedly satanic belief system, usually mixed up with some extreme libertarian and/or neo-fascist ideology. E.g David Myatt's ONA stuff has a strong flavour of "Political Soldier" to it.

2) Someone, usually some sort of occultist, that an xtian doesn't like. This might be justified by saying e.g. 'all occultism is the devil's work, so wiccans and people who do yoga are all satanists whether they claim to be or not' etc.

3) Wholly or largely imaginary highly networked and organised satanists, generally from scummy council estates or remote rural communities, for whom little or no plausible evidence exists, but who according to Diane Core (one of the key promoters of the Satanic Panics) 'sacrifice 4000 babies a year in the UK' as part of a vast shadowy conspiracy.

I don't think it's particularly interesting to show that an individual rapist or murderer has some sort of occult elements to their fantasy life or ritual elements to their MO. That only makes them type 2) or if they actually are ONA nutters or whatever, type 1) at best. It doesn't do anything to demonstrate the existence of type 3)

 

[bluescreen]

Just to be clear, I think 'satanist' could mean one of several things.

1) A member of e.g. Church of Satan, Temple of Set, Radio Werewolf, Order of Nine Angles or some similar actually or previously existing organisation which subscribes to some sort of admittedly satanic belief system, usually mixed up with some extreme libertarian and/or neo-fascist ideology. E.g David Myatt's ONA stuff has a strong flavour of "Political Soldier" to it.

2) Someone, usually some sort of occultist, that an xtian doesn't like. This might be justified by saying e.g. 'all occultism is the devil's work, so wiccans and people who do yoga are all satanists whether they claim to be or not' etc.

3) Wholly or largely imaginary highly networked and organised satanists, generally from scummy council estates or remote rural communities, for whom little or no plausible evidence exists, but who according to Diane Core (one of the key promoters of the Satanic Panics) 'sacrifice 4000 babies a year in the UK' as part of a vast shadowy conspiracy.

And, TBH, I don't think it matters a jot. It's an issue if one is going to start looking at one of these cults to see if child sexual abuse is a common theme. That's basically a fishing expedition. But otherwise, as I keep boringly insisting - and why I think this thread is irrelevant, though compelling - it's what actually happened to children, not why they think it did.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I think analysis of 3) is important, because of the way I think it's acted as a smokescreen for plausibly existing toff/spook child rape conspiracies, by focussing public outrage and then public scepticism on imaginary satanic child abuse conspiracies on council estates, instead of on the actually existing conspiracies allowing Cyril, Jimmy et. al. to use the care system as a child brothel for the privileged classes.

For reasons that may be obvious, it also makes me suspicious of attempts to conflate 3) with 1) or 2) and any of them with Cyril, Jimmy and their enablers.

 

[bluescreen]

I think analysis of 3) is important, because of the way I think it's acted as a smokescreen for plausibly existing toff/spook child rape conspiracies.

K.

 

[8den]

One of the better analysis of the phenomenon.

http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2001/the_devil_in_the_nursery

Peggy McMartin Buckey, who died on Dec. 15, at 74, was the paradigmatic victim of ritual-child-abuse hysteria: a middle-aged woman who worked in a day-care center run by her family and who had, until the day she was indicted, led an uneventful and unobtrusive life.

Buckey's ordeal began in 1983, when the mother of a 2 1/2-year-old who attended the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, Calif., called the police to report that her son had been sodomized there. It didn't matter that the woman was eventually found to be a paranoid schizophrenic, and that the accusations she made -- of teachers who took children on airplane rides to Palm Springs and lured them into a labyrinth of underground tunnels where the accused "flew in the air" and others were "all dressed up as witches" -- defied logic. Satanic-abuse experts, therapists and social workers soon descended on the school and, with a barrage of suggestive, not to say coercive, questioning techniques (lavishly praising children who "disclosed," telling those who denied the abuse that they were "dumb," introducing salacious possibilities that children had never mentioned), produced increasingly elaborate and grotesque testimonials from young children at the school.

 

[Idris2002]

Question for Bernie and anyone else who might be interested. One of the most bizarre features of the original Satanic Panic of the '80s was that it was assiduously promoted by Eurocommunist Beatrice Campbell, and in the pages of Communist Party theoretical mag Marxism Today, no less.

What's your take on that part of the puzzle? It seems a rather odd for even that bunch of political renegades to take. . . or was it just a case of once people stop believing in something (in this case Lenin's Beard and all that went with it) they will fall for anything?

 

[bluescreen]

This:
David Blunkett, Labour's health spokesman, said: 'It is crucial we do not lose sight of the fact that many of the children involved had been sexually abused. Children must be protected from all sexual abuse - the fact that ritual abuse was ruled out here must not undermine that imperative'.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...gations-rosie-waterhouse-reports-1420013.html

 

[angelraven]

Most of the stuff about Paisnel being into some sort of occult stuff seems to trace back to his wife's book, ghost written by fleet street reporters (I think from the News of the World) Maybe the police found some evidence though, I haven't found anything that looks like a reliable source for that allegation, but let's suppose it's at least partially true.

I'm surprised that you say that because the occult stuff seems to have been exhibited at his trial and pretty openly reported at the time; e.g. original cutting here:
http://spotlightonabuse.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/mail030971.jpg

I do get what you are saying about SRA being used as a smokescreen, but I am just concerned in case the pendulum swings back too far the other way, and victim reports start being treated as fantasy just because they contain an occult element. Dangers on both sides I think.

 

[free spirit]

On a similar, though not precisely relevant note I have been idly curious about allegations of satanism. I haven't seen that mentioned much (if at all) on urban75 forums - though I only came to them recently - but elsewhere I have heard tell of allegations from at least one of Savile's victims that they saw him in robes and mask officiating in some kind of ritual. This has made me wonder if the "Satanic Panic" of the late 80s / early 90s was quite as overblown as people have generally assumed, or if there might not have been a kernel of truth to it.
I mean, as a professional psychologist it strikes me that if one is a serial violent child molestor, perhaps even child murderer (and as we know there are plenty of allegations of kids being thrown off boats etc.), then with the inversion of typical morality required to have that lifestyle, perhaps in one's head it is not all that far to satanism. Perhaps satanism might even provide a way of legitimating what one is doing (humans do seem to have this weird need to do this). Just throwing the idea out there really. In fact I'm assuming it is likely to have been addressed already somewhere on these forums and would appreciate a pointer for the n00b.

if you were a bunch of well connected members of an ancient satanic order that liked to sacrifice virgins on special occasions, then I suppose the best way to ensure your cover wasn't blown would be to frame a bunch of uninvolved families and create a satanic abuse scandal around them that then imploded to end up discrediting the entire notion of it.

So I'd put it in the 'anything's possible' bracket, but haven't seen any particular evidence to support it, and the other thread is an evidence based thread so feel free to dig up and post up some evidence, otherwise you would appear to be doing something pretty similar to the psychologist involved in the original case. It almost reads as if you need to convince yourself they must be satanists to do this sort of thing............ which conveniently ignores the vast amounts if evidence of huge numbers of christian priests etc abusing kids for a hell of a long time.

So to a lay person it looks a bit as if you're projecting because it fits with your world view and where satanists should fit into it, while ignoring entirely the very significant role played by Christian based organised religious organisations in facilitating and covering up widespread paedophile activity.

Tbh though, I'd place this type of cod psychology well outside the standards associated with the vast majority of actual evidence based science, but thanks for the illustration of how such rubbish came to pass in the first place.