No doubt, new experiences can broaden our
perspectives. It is therefore not
surprising that in a 1991 informal survey, 93% of APA therapists who have
personal experience with adult SRA survivors stated they believe the memories
of SRA are accurate. Contrary to accusations, many have been skeptical at first
(Young, et al, 1990; Friesen, 1990; Calof, 1994), but: 1) The quality of therapists’ experiences
with their clients was sufficient to broaden their criteria for the existence
of this crime; 2) There are extensive
similarities in the accounts from both young children and adults throughout the
country, many with minimal therapist suggestion and minimal cultural exposure;
and 3) There is corroboration in some cases, yet for therapists to file reports
with law enforcement would endanger the vital trust-based relationship and
would not be in the client’s best interest for safety or privacy.
It is for these and other reasons described herein that I
suggest considering a broader scope of acceptable “evidence” to also include
qualitative and statistically quantitative aspects of the available clinical
information. These definitive contexts
(thoroughly available to those within the clinical realm or personally
associated with survivors) are foundational to a proper understanding of such
reports.
Critical
thought demands that our conclusions not be limited to the believable or the
intuitive, but to the data, itself. Neither does critical thinking require that
ambiguity be maintained in the face of indicative data, but rather a commitment
to the indicated reality.
For this reason, the position of this paper is boldly
apparent in a critical examination of all the data, including the qualitative
and statistically quantitative data along with corroboration and “false memory”
considerations.
At the same time, we must acknowledge that survivor
accounts may comprise a continuum from entirely false to entirely true. There may be some who have falsely concluded
an SRA survivorship with, or perhaps without significant memories, and some
overzealous non-victims may promote a satanic panic which skeptics use to
discredit all survivorship (Wright, 1993).
Yet others with little or no
exposure to the obscure consistencies they share with many others, recall
incredibly similar details and with similar symptoms (For instance, compare the
surveys of Young, et al, 1990 with Hudson, 1990; see table included on pages
11-13).
It is vital to understand that either side can present a
convincing argument, with some documentation in support of that side. For instance in the Spring 1994 issue of the
Journal of Psychohistory, David Lotto’s (1994) article apart from the article
that follows by Roland Summit (1994), would thoroughly convince an uninvolved
party that SRA is a rumor-based social phenomenon. The mass media is notorious for airing such single-sided
perspectives, omitting an accurate portrayal of the victims’ actual life
context
(demonstrating the importance of professional journals).
Confirmation Bias.
Central to the nature of belief is the confirmation bias, a natural emphasis on
the information which confirms one’s own position along with a de-emphasis on
that which doesn’t. We are naturally
biased as a psychological defense mechanism for minimizing cognitive dissonance -- an incompatibility between one’s world view
and certain concepts (Tavris & Wade, 1993), such as SRA. Because of our drive to reduce dissonance,
we struggle with the resulting affinity for all-or-nothing thinking, such that
we either tend to dismiss all SRA or
we might be overly suspicious on the other hand. Without personal acquaintance with alleged victims or alternately
the accused, one will likely remain consistent with his or her existing world
view. Acknowledging this bias will help
us assure the necessary case-by-case mentality on this subject.
So, we maintain our beliefs on a platform of certain
information, selectively assembled through our own confirmation bias. We thereby require time to assimilate new
especially challenging information.
Denial.
Another component of the nature of belief is denial, which can be conscious or
unconscious. We can best approach
denial by understanding the implication-sensitive nature of denial. As Sandra Bloom (1994) has noted in her
article, the willingness to believe in SRA is a process of incremental acceptance of human cruelty and sadism, more
than a sudden conversion to a belief in the unbelievable. She describes how denial (including her own)
is a “potent and universal defense, protecting us from being overwhelmed by an
unacceptable internal or external reality” and that everyone--from survivors to
supporters--lapses into denial regularly, based not on evidence, but on the
personal implications.
Thus, the nature of belief is anti-objective, since first,
no one can believe more than the sum of their information, which is filtered
selectively via one’s confirmation bias and then maintained through
denial. Beliefs can and do gradually
change, but are subject to these forces.
A recent poll showed that 9% of Americans, a sizable
minority, aren’t even sure the Holocaust ever happened and that 2% feel certain it did not occur (Kagay,
1994). In this light, we can accept
that a much larger percentage of people won’t believe SRA occurs, regardless of evidence.
The following professionals have made powerful statements
regarding the lack of official evidence for the reality of SRA:
A.
NO OFFICIAL EVIDENCE
George K. Ganaway
“...in nearly 12 years of
extensive investigations by law enforcement agencies at local, state, and
federal levels, virtually no independent corroborative evidence has surfaced to
support claims that such a multigenerational conspiratorial ‘megacult’ exists...
” (Ganaway, 1992, p. 202)
David J. Lotto
“We have seen that
in the cases in Manchester, the Orkneys, the Country Walk and McMartin
preschools . . . that there are some very real victims, innocent of any
wrongdoing, who have suffered traumatic consequences from being caught up in a
net of hysterical accusations. . . Unfortunately, the therapists who are too
eager to believe the outlandish tales told by their patients bear some degree
of responsibility . . . One is stretching the meaning of neutrality to maintain
[an] agnostic stance in the face of mounting evidence that there is no
corroboration for the reality of these events.” (Lotto, 1994, p.391-392)
Bob & Gretchen Passantino
“Let’s suppose there are 100,000
adult survivors [of SRA] who represent only a small subgroup of the
conspiracy. They are the ones who were
not killed; eventually escaped the cult’s control; got into therapy;
‘remembered’ their abuse; and were then willing to tell others about it. . . .
If we conservatively peg the average number of abusive events per survivor at
fifty, that would give us 5,000,000 criminal events over the last fifty years
in America alone. And not a shred of
corroborative evidence?” (Parrott and
Perrin, 1993).
Martha L. Rogers
“What I have
experienced as most disturbing in this pressure to accept SRA premises and
conspiracies is the defensive explaining away as to why hard evidence should
not be expected...there is absolutely no criminal evidence to be found, not a
body, not a hair, not a drop of blood, not a trace of bodily
fluid--nothing. They never leave a
trail. The conspiracy is so tight that
no one ever tells. They never make
mistakes. The police and FBI are simply
stupid or else part of the cover-up...” (Rogers, 1992, p. 180).
When information like this is one’s primary source, it’s clear that one won’t
believe SRA exists. Either way, these
statements demand adequate responses.
By referring to a composite of corroborative and contextual information
on the existence of SRA, I hope not only to address these concerns but to
counter these statements with equally demanding questions and observations from
the other perspective. For the sake of
objectivity, I hope professionals in the future will temper their statements
both with the corroboration and the contextual considerations in this paper.
Ganaway
necessitates some form of a “megacult” to accept the widespread similar reports
of SRA. While many believers do suggest that cult networks exist, they probably
do not intend this as Ganaway portrays.
To what degree a centrally organized “megacult” exists in the bizarre
ways we might envision is not as important as would be the existence of
numerous such groups who abuse in similar religious rituals. Obviously, one network does exist to
maintain the estimated $3 billion dollar per year child porn market in the U.S.
alone (Raschke, 1990). It is therefore
of considerable importance to examine the correlation between the consistent
claims of photography and consistent claims of ritual abuse and the significant
overlap in accounts. The fact that
photography is one of the most common elements cited in SRA accounts, aside
from corroboration is sufficient cause to delay a broad dismissal of cult
networking.
A larger system
of cults also seems likely from evidence described in the survey by Young, et
al (1990). Patient photographs of
alleged cult members were shown to other patients from a similar geographic
region. Four patients independently
identified, by name and cult roles, the individuals in the photographs. Neither group of patients were in contact
with the other during their treatment when these independent identifications
were made. Although not the central theme of his paper,
Summit (1994) describes similar independent corroboration from children for a
larger cult network in the Los Angeles area (described later).
Passantinos. However, as the Passantino’s note, millions
of bodies of cult murder victims have not been located and identified as such
over the past half-century. Martha Rogers suggests that by “a
defensive explaining away as to why hard evidence should not be expected,” it
is inappropriate to consider any
explanations for this anomaly. On the
contrary, we must consider these claims in their time, space, and social
contexts to even understand how, or if, these statements on “no official
evidence” have significance.
B.EVIDENCE IN
CONTEXT
Relative Context
Let’s consider these numbers in the larger picture of time
and space. For estimating purposes,
since most reports involve more than one victim per ritual, we could probably
reduce the Passantino’s estimate to 2,000,000 criminal scenarios over the past
50 years, or about 40,000 per year. For
comparison sake, from the Source Book for Criminal Justice Statistics for
1991, there were around 3,000,000 violent crimes of all types in the U.S.
in the year 1991 alone, excluding all
violence against children and excluding all robberies. Thus, 40,000 ritual child abuse crimes per
year is only about 1.2 percent of only the violent crimes committed against
adults and would be a lesser percentage of criminal violence toward all
ages.
It’s important to keep these numbers in perspective. Since 100,000 victims is still less than 1 in
25,000 Americans, we can enjoy each others’ company, with little worry that any
one of our acquaintances could be a satanic cultist. There is no need for a “satanic panic” to still accept that SRA
exists on a limited but very real scale.
To further place these numbers in context, if the
estimated 100,000 survivors seems an outrageous number, consider the fact that
700,000 copies of the Satanic Bible have been sold (Rittenhouse, 1992). Although the Satanic Bible does not promote
ritual abuse, it wouldn’t take a very big subset of the people who purchase the
book to legitimize the large estimate of SRA survivors.
Although aggressive efforts have been made to walk in on
rituals as well as turn up other undeniable evidence, we must consider how
evidence can ever be discovered for crimes authorities don’t even know
happened. There are few possible
indicators that this type of crime has occurred. By definition, there would be no calls made to police, no burglar
alarms set off, and no balance sheet discrepancies. No search for evidence will be initiated for crimes authorities
are not aware of, and evidence will not be found if it is carefully hidden, at
the same time that there is no awareness of its existence. To expect to find such evidence might be like
going home from work early on an arbitrary day, expecting to catch someone breaking into your house; or perhaps to
discover faulty wiring just as it
starts a fire, simply because your wiring is old. It is very difficult to track this type of crime, because it is
impossible (and unethical) to monitor everyone at all times.
Numerical Context: The product
of several small fractions is a much smaller fraction.
Further, we must acknowledge the multiple hindering
factors influencing the discovery and identification of evidence. The effective
multiplication of these three major evidence-reducing factors produces minimal
evidence.
(%Overcoming
Motivated Secrecy)
x (%Corroboration) x (%Official Recognition)
= Minimal Evidence.
% Overcoming
Motivated Secrecy. Child SRA
victims would not initiate contact with the law because they virtually always
report that their lives or the lives of loved ones were threatened, confirmed to them by the murders and
tortures they recount. It is in this context that Hudson (1991) describes
how the incremental and progressive disclosure of a ritually abused child may
take a year or more, beginning with the less severe molestation and progressing
gradually to increasing degrees of horror.
Before and after every major
disclosure, the child experiences a severe anxiety period lasting from one to
several days.
In their college (General) Psychology textbook, Carol Wade
and Carole Tavris (1993), describe the entrapment
process (social psychology chapter) by which all cult-type groups successfully
achieve mind control and motivate secrecy in their members. This same entrapment process is often
described by child and adult SRA survivors. Adults and children alike share a strong
reluctance to disclose the more horrific details, due to both a fear of
threatened harm from the cult and the fear of disbelief and rejection. An important observation is that patients
happen to mention both the threats and deceptions consistently as a peripheral
to the main content of their memories.
% Corroboration. Of these children who overcome confirmed
threats to maintain secrecy, we must consider what percentage could produce
irrefutable corroboration, without slipping in an element of the impossible,
included by abusers to discredit their story, should the victim break silence.
Not only is deception commonly reported, but it would
increase uncertainty, augmenting the fear of rejection and subsequent
punishment by the offenders in any child considering disclosure, thereby
further motivating secrecy. Further, it
would be sloppy and thereby out of character for successfully secretive cults
to bury actual bodies in the presence of children (who have reported witnessing
burials, where bodies were later not found).
Rather, if those who periodically initiate sacrificial murders do exist,
they would necessarily incorporate
fail-safes such as deception to discredit any potential reports, and would
dispose of the bodies in a traditionally proven manner.
I know it may resemble circular logic to attribute all impossibilities
to purposeful deception, such as a child’s report of sexual abuse by a lion as
an adult in a lion costume, but if we are going to openly examine this issue,
we must at least remain consistent with victim’s descriptions of perpetrators,
of which secrecy motivated by confirmed threat and deception are nearly universal. McMartin whistle blower, parent
Judy Johnson
reported to Summit that her son, contrary to accusations, didn’t like to talk about the abuse, and mentioned such things as
being sodomized by a lion. In 1984,
such reports were unheard of and/or ignored, and it wasn’t until older less
credulous children began reporting around the world (Netherlands in 1987,
England in 1988, and North Carolina in 1989) that these wild animals had zippers
on their costumes.
% Official
Recognition. Regardless, some claim
that plenty of hard evidence has been submitted, but it is officially
unrecognized, both because it is prosecutorially unwise for law enforcement to
link molestations with SRA and because of the enormous ramifications in the
existence of “official documented SRA evidence.” Besides, to say there is absolutely no evidence is very different
than to say there is no officially
documented evidence. Along these lines, it is interesting to note that a
law enforcement friend of Friesen’s, witnessed SRA evidence being intentionally
misplaced in the law enforcement office where he worked, implying some degree
of cover up (Friesen, 1991, p.96-97).
The Result. As a hypothetical calculation of this
effect, let’s assume that out of all children ritually abused who thereby are motivated to secrecy, say 5% would
initiate disclosure of their involvement and trust their legal acquaintances to
keep them safe (see Friesen, 1991, p.95-98).
Out of these cases, if we assume 20% could produce sufficient corroboration, to warrant an
investigation, and then out of these pieces of SRA evidence, 10% would be officially recognized in (or out of)
court, we would have 0.05 x 0.2 x 0.1 = .001 = 0.1%, or one out of a thousand
ritual crimes is even acknowledged as evidence. I know this is very hypothetical and perhaps simplistic, but
since any adults would be long-time perpetrators and/or extremely motivated to
secrecy, how else could evidence be discovered than specifically through a
child’s account at that time?
The definition of “equation” is that both sides are
equivalent. The multiplication of the obstacle fractions on the left side of
the above equation implies a very small value on the right side (“Minimal
Evidence”). If one insists on
substantial evidence--a larger right hand value--then we better see to it that
the factors on the left side of the equation are dramatically increased. It would be an appropriate area of study to
better approximate the values of these (or other) factors. The result in a more realistic equation
could be larger or smaller, but the effect is the same: Evidence is minimized severely.
C. CORROBORATIVE
EVIDENCE
The definition of
“evidence” used herein to support the existence of ritual abuse is . . . The
presence of the following multiple independent indicators: a) Disclosures with post-traumatic
presentation, b) Profound similarities between such disclosures in which
the similarities outweigh the normal occurrence of conflicting details, c)
Occult objects found at the scene consistent with such disclosures, d)
Structural or decorative details consistent with disclosures, but unknowable
outside the reported abuse scenarios, and/or e) Victim descriptions of the
video and/or still photography of abuse scenarios alongside the accused’s
significant preoccupation with video production and photography, sometimes
including a discovery of child pornography.
The reader must be the judge in each of the following
cases as to how persuasive such evidence is.
Although this level of evidence rarely provides a criminal conviction,
it is more than sufficient for 93% of the professionals who have personal
experience with those making such disclosures to conclude ritual abuse exists.
In any case, more than "a shred of corroborative
evidence" has surfaced:
McMartin Preschool. This case is often quoted as proof of the
suggestibility of children to confabulate SRA allegations. The case began with Police telephoning 5
parents to notify them of the potential molestations and asking for their
assistance in gathering information for this case. At least one of them called the preschool, alerting the suspects
(Gorney, 1988).
One of the most unbelievable claims children had made was
that they were led through tunnels beneath the preschool. Parents eventually became indignant about
the official ambivalence and commissioned a back hoe in 1985, at which time the
district attorney responded by commissioning a limited and fruitless survey of
the building--the tunnel claims were "officially disproven". Even though all of this digging was outside of the building, with no attempt to cut through the slab floor
of the preschool itself, the officials declared there were no tunnels on the
site, hence the tunnels were and still are commonly cited by skeptics as
non-existent.
1)
Tunnels. Nevertheless, five
years later (in 1990) McMartin parents hired an archaeologist, Gary Stickel,
Ph.D., to bring some closure to the persistent, consistent reports of
tunnels. In contrast to the D.A.'s
limited survey, Dr. Stickel and his crew did cut through the concrete slab in
several places and found spaces beneath the building that had been filled in
with dirt after the investigation opened, verified by an unearthed plastic Walt
Disney bag with a copyright mark of 1982.
The tunnel floorplan matched that of the children's pre-dig
descriptions including the location of tree roots "that brushed your
face", a pipe across the tunnel ceiling ("I liked to stop and swing
on the pipe"), a slight arch underneath the foundation wall between two
classrooms--worn smooth only where the tunnel passed underneath it, the
"secret room" approximately the same dimensions described by the
children, and four large containers (two enameled iron pots, a crockery jar,
and a cast iron cauldron) placed vertically and side by side directly
underneath the foundation arch and
halfway up the loose fill dirt, and much more. This not only confirms the children's claims of the tunnels, but
also lends strong credence to mischief, for if there had been no wrong-doing in
these spaces, there would have been no need to fill them in near the time of
the investigation.
The best representation of findings would
come from a first hand account. Dr.
Roland Summit personally examined the tunnels and later wrote the article, “The Dark Tunnels of McMartin” (Summit,
1994). The following is an excerpt:
At least one child had a voice in the archeological
project. Time was running out before the
bulldozers would obliterate the site and there seemed to be no trace of the
children’s secret room. Joanie, 12
years old, was visiting her old preschool with her mother. Dr. Stickel asked her, “Can you tell us
where it was that you entered the tunnels and which way you turned?” Joanie gave a meticulous description of
every step along the way. Starting in
the northeast corner of classroom #3, she described being lifted down a hole,
turning right, going “straight past the roots that brushed your face”, turning
right again “where you were hurried through the long tunnel. I liked to stop where the pipe was and swing
on it. There was a little boy who
couldn’t reach the pipe, and sometimes I’d lift him so he could touch it. But right after that you had to duck down so
you wouldn’t hit your head on the cement, then you had to run again to get to
the secret room.”
Part of the course Joanie described corresponded to
twin anomalies which had been detected earlier by ground penetrating radar (the
tunnel walls). Corresponding openings
had previously been cut in the concrete (see below: Unit 1 in classroom 3 and Unit 2 in classroom 4), but nothing
unusual had been found. Encouraged now
by Joanie’s explicit directions, the archaeologists extended the dimensions of
the Unit 1 dig and discovered contrasting soil. The concrete cutout from the earlier dig had passed just inside
the fill dirt between the tunnel walls.
Besides being different in color, texture, and density
of pack, the dirt which filled the tunnel spaces was distinct in composition
from the adjacent soil of the tunnel walls. Now that the soil contrast was
identified, the tunnel could be reopened with precision. It proceeded westward beneath a cast iron
waste pipe, just as Joanie had described, and then passed under the deep
concrete foundation of the wall separating classrooms #3 and #4. At the point where the tunnel passed under
the foundation, and only at that point, the concrete had been arched upward and
worn smooth, in contrast to the adjacent ragged contours and texture assumed by
the concrete poured into an earthbottomed trench.
Under the classroom to the west the tunnel proceeded
into a wide, room-like potential space of earth fill bearing remnants of
timber, plywood, and tar paper which appeared to have shored up the ceiling of
a “secret” room. All this had been
implied for years by numerous children and anticipated on the spot by
Joanie. There was not time to determine
the entire parameters of the room-like space, but there was enough excavation
to show that it was 6 feet 8 inches high
and at least 9 feet in diameter, and that it connected to the north, exiting
under the foundation of the west wall of the building where the rabbit hutch
used to be -- again, as children had previously described.