Satanic Ritual Abuse - fundie horseshit or troof?

[ViolentPanda]

You are awful, but I like you.

Let me know if you're ever in Kreuzberg or some cognate locale in the near future. I'd like to meet up, if only to see what you look like.

Imagine, if you will, a cross between Rob Brydon and Robert Picardo, now add a perma-flushed countenance and a pair of budgie-smugglers.

 

[ViolentPanda]

An hour south, in a little Stadt no one's ever heard of, even in Germany. And I've not yet been to Kruezberg - the Ku'damm is more my scene. We could drive down the avenue, but we haven't got a car. . .

I'm getting mental images of a leprechaun-looking fella sneaking around the aisles of KaDeWe, shoplifting packets of Tatoes.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm getting mental images of a leprechaun-looking fella sneaking around the aisles of KaDeWe, shoplifting packets of Tatoes.

bloody good selection of vodka at the kadewe

 

[Greebo]

Imagine, if you will, a cross between Rob Brydon and Robert Picardo, now add a perma-flushed countenance and a pair of budgie-smugglers.

That's a tad unfair. Just be thankful that I've never posted a picture of you at your worst.

 

[Greebo]

bloody good selection of vodka at the kadewe

Thanks for the tip - if they've got Krupnik (the brand of unbelievably smooth plain vodka, not the honeyed vodka) I'll be very happy.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Mr. Geoffrey Dickens (Littleborough and Saddleworth) - <snip> We need a chance to discuss the working of witchcraft and how it can be controlled in this country. [Laughter.] People laughed when I spoke nine years ago about child abuse. Those people are now listening, and I am warning the House that witchcraft is sweeping the country.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) - It is in Downing street

 

[phildwyer]

Imagine, if you will, a cross between Rob Brydon and Robert Picardo, now add a perma-flushed countenance and a pair of budgie-smugglers.

Sorry to be the bearer, but you have nothing to boast of in this department.

 

[phildwyer]

...Apart from taussig says no such thing

Oh yes he does. As do hundreds of other anthropologists--Peter Geschiere, the Comaroffs etc.

It's pretty obvious anyway. What else could be causing the current epidemic of witchcraft?

 

[Buckaroo]

Sorry to be the bearer, but you have nothing to boast of in this department.

You always seem to have something to say about that department.

 

[phildwyer]

You always seem to have something to say about that department.

It's my department.

 

[friedaweed]

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.

Bang on the Jimmy Nail

 

[Greebo]

Sorry to be the bearer, but you have nothing to boast of in this department.

FTR VP has never claimed to have anything to brag about when it comes to appearance, search as long and hard as you like.

<snip> It's pretty obvious anyway. What else could be causing the current epidemic of witchcraft?

Ever heard of a little thing called misdirection?

Yet again on this thread, I implore you to avoid using "satanism" and "witchcraft" as if they're interchangeable when they're not.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Sorry to be the bearer, but you have nothing to boast of in this department.

You're right.

Much to my chagrin I certainly can't boast of ever owning or wearing a pair of budgie-smugglers.

And I've always been upfront about my resemblance to Shrek.

 

[ViolentPanda]

That's a tad unfair. Just be thankful that I've never posted a picture of you at your worst.

Why would you do that? You'd have to be some sort of psychopath, probably married to a tyrannical...oh.

 

[Greebo]

Why would you do that? <snip>

Because.

 

[phildwyer]

And I've always been upfront about my resemblance to Shrek.

The Yeti more like.

 

[Greebo]

The Yeti more like.

So you have heard of misdirection then.

 

[toggle]

I'm not talking about Satanists or occultists, I'm talking about people who professed to be such - the douchebags (I can find no kinder description) who sold themselves as "experts" to various social services depts. You may or may not have noticed that most genuine occultists kept their heads down during the Satanic panics, excepted for a few disturbed or publicity-seeking individuals.

the witchfinder whose career has been made on peddling evidence free opinion and above is the fanatic - the MP above who shows up nicely the kind of rhetoric of someone who is somewhat obsessed with discussing 'evil'.

that and he is certainly using whatever evidence there may be of child abuse to increase the influence of his particular version of christianity. get the people out of the libraries where there are bad books and back under the care of the priests.

and are 'hundreds of letters' 1988s equivalent of 'PMs of support'?

 

[Dillinger4]

I posted this on the other thread:

At two points in the memoir Ward proceeded, without naming names, to describe parties devoted to masochism and sadism. 'I remember one dinner party,' he said 'where all round the room were girls and men tied and gagged in various attitudes and they so remained during the entire meal. Suffering was an essential part of their enjoyment. No cruelty was done - I myself never saw any cruelty, though I certainly heard of it being practiced...

'It is a kind of ritual sado-masochism,' Ward explained 'One of the most noticeable things about these people is the high standard of intelligence among them... rather like an intellectual cocktail party. The ceremonies usually start as follows - a large collection of chairs, straps and apparently fierce instruments would be produced and laid out in a formal manner on a low table. A beautiful girl would come forward and remove her clothes. The master, as he would be called, would sit on a kind of throne. The girl would kneel before him and kiss his feet... finally she would be dressed in a wide, studded black leather belt, high heeled black shoes, and straps around her wrists, neck and ankles, and each time they were offered to her master a ritual punishment was administered. Finally, long bars were fastened to hooks in the straps... in such a way that the legs would be widely separated... and a gag was placed in her mouth. Drinks would now be brought and the secured girl would be left lying or standing while guests stood around discussing the finer points... when this was over everyone looked normal again... there we were back at a normal cocktail party again.

Then there were the satanic rituals: 'At one such part in Kensington, there was a huge and obscene priapic emblem in the middle of the room. All the girls, and there were about a dozen, knelt down around it and made obseisance... the spontaneous way in which this was done made me realize they had all done it many times before...'

Who were these people? According to Ward they were 'quite normal' individuals. 'Of necessity, most of them are attractive... the men tend to be older than the girls who are all very beautiful... Many of them are rich and many famous - many faces seen in public life and on television. If their public could only see them like this!

That is from the book about the Profumo Scandal by Stephen Dorrill pp53-54. It is the only mention in the book of anything 'satanic', and it it meant in a very loose sense. There are plenty of other descriptions throughout the book of other such parties, such as the infamous 'man in the mask' party, at which to gain entrance the attendee would have to whip a man in a gimp mask tied up by the front door, who was rumored to be someone very powerful.

Of course this only relates in a very broad sense. It names the names of a lot of powerful people who were all in this milieu in the early 60s. There are few suggestions of anything non-consensual, although the girls involved were often very young. Mandy Rice Davies was only 15-16 when she first became involved.

But this thread is about 'Satanic Ritual Abuse'. I think first of all, we must make a distinction between 'satanic' and 'ritual' abuse. They are different things and to conflate the two only leads to confusion. 'Satanic' abuse is a smokescreen, as I will show at the end of this post. But ritual abuse, I think, is a real. But it is not quite what is made out to be.

Before this thread I was convinced of the existence of ritual abuse. But I began to question myself as to what evidence I have to have come to believe this. The reason I believe ritual abuse is real is from extensive reading of the Dutroux case in Beligium, particularly the X-Dossiers and the Beyond Dutroux article on the IGSP archive.

There is a lot to read there and to summarize the case is impossible. I am going to quote in full the part in the Beyond Dutroux article that deals with 'satanic ritual abuse'. I am going to quote it in full in the following post because it is quite long

 

[Dillinger4]

Of course, the most controversial explanation for the abuse has hardly been discussed yet: Satanism. Especially outside Christian circles this highly foreign (and silly) topic is generally associated with, if anything, fairytales from the US countryside and maybe a handful of deranged teenage black metal fans. Satanism is a bit more enigmatic than that, however. For starters, there have been a huge amount of reports about Satanic and-or ritual abuse (the latter not necessarily the same as Satanism) since the late 1970s in both the US and UK. Going through newspaper archives will show that especially since the late 1980s the accusations became epidemic with estimates that anywhere between 10,000 to 20,000 survivors of such abuse were getting treatment (317). As usual, the gatekeepers in the press and psychology community refused to take the topic serious and soon came up with the accusation that the therapists were the ones responsible for this "hysteria". Although reports never dried out, the media hardly addresses this issue these days.

Besides the more well known LaVeyan Satanism, which is a basic "spiritual" philosophy for the self-absorbed and mentally disturbed, there's also a more ritual-based Satanism, aka Luciferianism, which is intrinsically linked to the numerous ritual-based mystery cults of the ancient Middle-East and Europe. Without going in the religious details, it's possible that some of the more abominable practices have survived, even if only used in a practical (for recruiting) and symbolic way. Just remember Col. Aquino's Satanic hobbies or what DeCamp wrote about "Dr. Green" being influenced by Cabalistic magic.

Luciferianism, a deceptive and dark form of gnosticism, can still be found in the Memphis Misraim Rite of Freemasonry (34º-99º) (318) and the even more low-profile Martinist and Synarchist Order (319). If these two organizations have any political influence is a good question; as virtually nothing has been written on them we just don't know. It's only because of the internet that a little bit of information can be pieced together. So it appears that Licio Gelli, the former notorious head of the fascist P2 lodge, is a 99º 'grand hierophant' and honorary international head of the Memphis Misraïm Rite in Italy (320). In 2004, there were rumors in Spain that the newly nominated head of the Guardia Civil (equivalent of the Belgian gendarmerie) was picked because of his membership in the Martinist and Synarchist Order (321). Allegedly, the royal house of Serbia, which in 2004 hosted a meeting of the private intelligence group Le Cercle, is also involved in Memphis Misraim and Synarchism (322).

This is about all the information available on membership in these two gnostic organizations. It might be a coincidence, but Gelli (323), Arruche (324) and the royal Karageorgevitch family of Serbia (325) appear to represent a distinctly extreme right-wing milieu, which has not only been highlighted in this article, but also in the article on Le Cercle. In Belgium this milieu has largely been represented by the Vatican and US intelligence-linked right wing of the PSC, and coincidentally, besides numerous accusations of child abuse against PSC members, some have also been accused of ritual abuse and Satanism, albeit largely through Opus Dei.

First up are the claims of Jacques Thoma, who once was a treasurer of the PSC youth division. His boss was the notorious CEPIC member Jean-Paul Dumont, the alleged child abuser (326).

"Jacques Thoma was at a restaurant with Sara de Wachter (01/10/55) when he broke down in tears. He participated in 1985-86 in several satanic sessions close to Charleroi."

"He is very afraid. He was a treasurer of the youth section of the PSC. He often met with Michel Dewolf, Philippe Sala and Jean-Paul Dumont. They tried to direct Thoma toward Opus Dei what they considered Nec Plus Ultra [Latin for "nothing further beyond"]."

"Under the pretext of initiation tests for Opus Dei he was brought to a Black Mass with sexual acts. He mentions the presence of girls from a country in the East (13-14 years)... He was drugged before being taken into a room with masked people who had dressed in black robes. The participants drank blood. He was placed in the presence of a naked little girl laying down on an altar - she had died."

"He encountered the grand master, Francois-Joseph, who told him that he was a police informant and that he had to be careful... Francois-Joseph is a notary implicated in the trafficking of girls for prostitution from the East."

"He wanted to leave but was drugged again. He woke up the following day in his car. He left the party [PSC] and made a declaration to the BSR [Special Investigations Unit of the gendarmerie] in Charleroi." (327)

X4, who also claimed to have been taken to Satanist black masses, fingered Paul Vanden Boeynants, Dumont's boss, as a violent abuser and added that Opus Dei members (like these) had belonged to her most sadistic clique (328).

Psychotherapist Pascal Willems had information on another PSC member, Melchior Wathelet, who together with his mentor Paul Vanden Boeynants was named by X1 as a child abuser (329).

"Since 1992, Brassine was in contact with Pascal Willems, a fellow-psychotherapist. Willems looked after two children (8-10 years) who were victims of child molesters and Satanists... The children would have participated in a combined feast and orgy organized by Melchior Wathelet in a castle located in the region of Verviers. The castle belongs to a private association. Willems would be in the possession of an invitation... This [abuse] went on until the children were put to death. The children came from a children's home with a complicit director."

"At the time, Willems spoke about the affair to the adviser of the SAJ [Les Services de l'Aide à la Jeunesse, or youth support] of Verviers, who told him to keep quiet. He has been intimidated or has been threatened by telephone by the boss of the judicial police in Verviers and by the advisor of the SAJ, and by an anonymous person. Contact between Brassine and Willems in October-November 1995 and at the end of 1996. Brassine speaks of it to Denayer (judicial police in Namur). Following that, Willems was threatened with "suicide" [by a superior of Mr. Denayer]... The 2 files of the SAJ would have disappeared... Willems hid the relevant documents in a safe place at this office..." (330)

The last PSC member to be accused of "sectarian or satanic" activities is Jean-Pierre Grafe. Until the early 1980s, Grafe used to be a board member of CEPIC, alongside Baron de Bonvoisin, Paul Vanden Boeynants, Jean-Paul Dumont and others (331). In 1982 and 1984, shortly after the demise of CEPIC, he was accused of pedophilia and came under investigation. His brother, Jacques, was later convicted for these facts and ended up in jail (332). Besides the prominent but fraudulent Oliver Trusgnach case, there were other unreported charges of child abuse against Grafe (333). As for the Satanist charges:"Sectarian or satanic activities at the Valmont castle in Merbes-Le-Chateau [Chateau de la Roquette]. Owner of the chateau = Pierre Ferbus (07/01/42). Homosexual - banker BBL [Banque Bruxelles Lambert]. Di Rupo and Graffe would have been seen at these parties... A report of the Police of Lobbes [nearby town, to the north] received the same information concerning Jean-Pierre Graffe... A rapport of the BSR [Special Investigations Unit of the Gendarmerie] in Thuin [another nearby town] contains approaching information." (334)As you can see, it's not unreasonable to keep an open mind that there could well exist a Satanic abuse cell somewhere within the earlier-mentioned black network. Like with any intelligence project, it would only be necessary for a few ritual and-or occult practitioners of, for example the Memphis-Misraim rite or the Martinist and Synarchist Order (or apparently Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta), to be initiated into this black network while all the rest of the staff and membership of these organizations would know little or nothing about these depraved practices. As for Opus Dei and Knights of Malta, the P2 lodge affair provided evidence that at the highest level these two Catholic organizations were in control, together with US intelligence (335).

[Update: In the past we took it a little further in this section. We slowly found out, however, that the sources of this information really weren't reliable. And to be honest, we continue to advise eveyone to remain skeptical of any claims about high level satanism.]

link

Please bear in in mind that is a very small part of an enormous well researched body of work about the Dutroux case. Please read the last sentence in the quote.

I am going to continue this in the next post.

 

[Dillinger4]

I found an interview with Regina Louf, AKA X1, who provided the bulk of the testimony to the X-Dossiers about the Dutroux Case. About 'Satanic Abuse', there is the following:

In an interview given in 1998 to reporters Annemie Bulté and Douglas de Coninck Louf gave support to the hypothesis that Satanism could act as a theatrical form of mind control that served to disorientate and confuse the victims so that they doubted their own powers of recollection and objective recall. This does not preclude the presence of satanic networks that are far removed from the description that follows, but supports the historical veracity of organized Elite power and their many methods of self-protection starting with the natural buffering of the lower tiers. Louf described the mechanics involved:

XI: “An amusing subject at last! (She poses as a governess). Alright then, Satanism. Put yourself in the torturers’ shoes. When they received new victims into their network, it was extremely important that they shouldn’t speak to anyone about what had happened to them. That’s why they organized ceremonies. They took the victim to a heavily guarded house and convinced her that it was her party.

There would then be a great performance with masks, candles, inverted crosses, swords and animals. Rabbits were disembowelled, the blood was poured on naked girls, and some men and women worshipped the devil. We, the experienced girls, were doubled up with laughter when we saw them busy with their carnival masks.

They’ve got their vampire costumes on again, we would say. I don’t think the torturers got much pleasure out of it. They preferred to be completely naked rather than going round in latex costumes. The only aim of these rituals was to totally disorient the victims. They plagued these kids with a load of nonsense – Now you are the wife of Satan… and also gave them coke, LSD or heroin.

I can assure you that after that you feel completely outside the real world. That was the aim that the victim herself should begin to doubt the fact that all this had really happened. The result was that the victims didn’t dare speak to anyone.” [9]

link

 

[Dillinger4]

I do not have any evidence of 'ritual abuse' in the UK. What I have is convincing evidence of it in the Dutroux case, and parallels between the Dutroux case and what is beginning to unfold in the UK. The nature of 'ritual abuse' is that even if it is real, it will always remain on the outer fringes of these stories, at least in part for the reasons mentioned by Regina Louf in the post above.

 

[Frances Lengel]

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.

What I was trying to say a few pages later.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> What else could be causing the current epidemic of witchcraft?

Fundies banging on about it and using their resources to provide pre-conceived models of it to social services and cops around the world in the form of propaganda, seminars etc.

That pre-conceived model comes with such a wide choice of possible evidence for 'satanism' that the C4 Dispatches team, by uncritically accepting the fundies ideas on 'evidence', managed to "expose" a Derek Jarman film as SRA.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I do not have any evidence of 'ritual abuse' in the UK. What I have is convincing evidence of it in the Dutroux case, and parallels between the Dutroux case and what is beginning to unfold in the UK. The nature of 'ritual abuse' is that even if it is real, it will always remain on the outer fringes of these stories, at least in part for the reasons mentioned by Regina Louf in the post above.

Sure, but wasn't Dominique Kindermans vindicated due to a complete lack of evidence?

I mean, I'm probably not up to date on this case, but didn't it turn out that there was zero evidence connecting Dutroux to Abraxas or Abraxas to child murder?

Was that stuff in Regina Louf's testimony under oath?

I got the idea, perhaps incorrectly, that it was just a case of some journalists and conspiracy researchers getting over-excited because there were a bunch of neo-pagans, including a few self-identified satanists, just up the road from Dutroux.

 

[Greebo]

Sure, but wasn't Dominique Kindermans vindicated due to a complete lack of evidence?

I mean, I'm probably not up to date on this case, but didn't it turn out that there was zero evidence connecting Dutroux to Abraxas or Abraxas to child murder? <snip>

The trouble is that if there's no hard evidence, those who insist that there is such a thing as satanic ritual abuse will claim that it just goes to prove how unnaturally cunning and evil the abusers are, to successfully hide all the incriminating traces.

 

[JHE]

Here's a recent article from Beatrix Campbell on the subject of child abuse.

http://www.beatrixcampbell.co.uk/tag/child-abuse/

I've only skimmed it, but three things strike me.
1. The supposedly Satanic nature of the alleged child abuse is pretty much ignored
2. She writes as if the question of believing the children was key, but...
3. A really key point for her is the medical evidence

To what extent has she changed her position on alleged Satanism? I'm not sure - quite a bit, I suspect - but the Satanism angle strikes me as a red herring anyway. If someone is accused of committing a horrible crime while in fancy dress, the fancy dress is not really an important point.

The medical evidence, if I understand correctly, was from doctors who had examined the anuses of children and had come to the conclusion that they had been buggered. Were the doctors mistaken? I remember at the time there was some debate about it (with the suggestion that gaping anuses might have other, innocent, causes), but I don't remember if the debate was ever settled.

 

[Idris2002]

I'm getting mental images of a leprechaun-looking fella sneaking around the aisles of KaDeWe, shoplifting packets of Tatoes.

Me Taytoes. Oi wunts me taytoes.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The trouble is that if there's no hard evidence, those who insist that there is such a thing as satanic ritual abuse will claim that it just goes to prove how unnaturally cunning and evil the abusers are, to successfully hide all the incriminating traces.

The issue with testimony like this is typically corroboration, after all we know it's quite possible that such testimony is fantasy but that's why corroborating it is vital.

Trouble is that suspicion about corrupt cops, spook intervention etc can provide an alternative interpretation when such stories lack corroboration

I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of this if the uk inquiry into high level abuse ever happens

 

[Greebo]

Here's a recent article from Beatrix Campbell on the subject of child abuse.

http://www.beatrixcampbell.co.uk/tag/child-abuse/

I've only skimmed it, but three things strike me.
1. The supposedly Satanic nature of the alleged child abuse is pretty much ignored
2. She writes as if the question of believing the children was key, but...
3. A really key point for her is the medical evidence <snip>

1) The supposedly Satanic nature of the abuse was something which social workers obsessed about when questioning children for days and repeatedly telling them that they wouldn't be allowed to go home until they'd said what had really happened. AFAIK these days questioning even a mentally competent adult like that would be regarded as dangerously close to interrogation. At the time any sexual abuse, indecent assault, or sex with minors was a prosecutable offence. There was no need to spice it up with lurid details of Satanism etc, as long as you exclude the gutter press and pressure from fundamentalist Christians.

2) Believing the children was key, as long as the children came out with what adults wanted to hear. If a child repeatedly said that nothing had happened, it was discounted as the child being too traumatised to speak, or having blocked out everything bad. A child drawing a man in the centre of a circle of people and calling him "the ringmaster" was questioned about the picture until he eventually said that the ringmaster was a bad man, at which time it was taken as gospel truth. The fact that watching a circus or hearing about others going to the circus was quite a normal part of childhood at the time is neither here nor there.

3) Medical evidence which even at the time was disputed - it was bad enough when parents whose children repeately got oral thrush were accused of unspeakable acts (although thrush can be an STD, it's often possible to get it without sex); worse when the emphasis changed to anal dilation, for which the test is arguably as upsetting for the child as what it was trying to detect. The upsetting nature of the test would be bad enough if only it were accurate; IMHO using that test, with a high rate of false positives, should be classed as child abuse.