Ritual Abuse Research Articles

Child-Sacrificing Drag Queens: Historical Antecedents in Disinformative Narratives Supporting the Drag Queen Story Hour Moral Panic

This paper uses critical disinformation studies to analyze claims that LGBTQ+ communities “groom” children at “Drag Queen Story Hour” (DQSH). We identify anti-homosexual narratives in previous moral panics: the 1950s sexual psychopathy laws, Anita Bryant’s 1977 Save Our Children campaign, and the 1980s Satanic ritual abuse panic. Using critical discourse analysis, we find all disinformative narratives from previous moral panics present in the DQSH discourse, while new themes center transgender people and parental rights. We consider concerns over DQSH a moral panic responding to the gradual mainstreaming of gender nonconformity and increase in LGBTQ+ civil rights and social acceptance.

Making Memories: A Qualitative Exploration of the Impact of False Allegations of Satanic Ritual Abuse

ABSTRACT The aim of the present study was to explore the impact of false allegations of satanic ritual abuse. Data was gathered from semi-structured interviews with six participants and analyzed using thematic analysis through an interpretivist paradigm. Two key themes are discussed: (i) the impact of false allegations and (ii) coping techniques employed by retractors and falsely accused individuals. Results highlight the long-term, life-changing impact of false memories as well as the coping strategies employed by those involved. While the authors make no claim to generalizability, these findings raise significant implications for practice, including greater governance for private therapeutic practice.

Mapping the Territory of the Devil: Roman Catholicism, the Satanism Scare, and the Origins of Contemporary Demonology

Mapping the Territory of the Devil: Roman Catholicism, the Satanism Scare, and the Origins of Contemporary Demonology

Artistic portrayal of the rats of Shah-Daula in Pakistan: a visual analysis through portrait painting

This research aims to explore microcephaly disorder which is an abnormality that is treated as a taboo in Gujrat, a city in Punjab province in Pakistan. The making of Shah Daula rats is a Taboo in which new-born babies are abused with an iron cap placed on their heads to stop their natural development. Their physical growth is manipulated, and they are unable to spend life like a normal person. All of this is done for the purpose of begging, and this ritual abuse in Pakistan has humiliated humanity for ages and is still practiced under the name of religion. This research is descriptive and qualitative in its nature. The study investigates the survival strategies as well as the living conditions of Shah Daula. The findings of the study show that microcephalic children suffer from alienation, child abuse, lack of fundamental rights, self-respect, and various disappointments. The study concludes that Shah Daula, in Pakistani society, is compelled to live as an abnormal human being.

Better the Devil you Know: The Myth of Harm and the Satanic Panic

The 1980s were a time of big hair, big cars, big phones, and big panics. Yet no panic has ever come close to the hysteria generated by the ‘Satanic Panic’. It was an episode which encompassed an entire decade, spilling into the 1990s as well as into further child-centric narratives of harm such as the 1980s video nasty controversy in the UK. Beginning with the McMartin preschool trial in California in 1983, the satanic panic was a fear that America, or at the very least its white suburban middle class, was under a subversive form of attack from satanic forces. In a perfect storm of disparate cultural elements, satanic panic gained momentum in the wake of the McMartin ritual abuse allegations. Not unsurprisingly, all claims were unfounded and eventually quashed, but not before the ritual abuse cases and their alleged victims were paraded in the news media. This was indeed a real-life horror story and throughout this article, by reading the panic as a Gothic tale of excess, I wish to introduce a liminal narrative composed of hysteria, lies and media sensationalism henceforth known as ‘the myth of harm’. A complex composite of various social narratives, the myth of harm functions as both a vehicle for the articulation of our fears, while simultaneously capable of mobilising and often weaponising them, especially when those fears are directed towards children.

“The History And Politics Of ‘False Memories’: The Australian Experience”

ABSTRACT The Australian history of the false memory (FM) movement has similarities to that of the UK and America, but also important differences that are rarely described in the literature. This article, through an examination of cross-discipline professional literature, media reports, and the personal observations of the second author, describes the history of the FM Movement in Australia and outlines similarities and differences between Australia, the UK and America. All three countries experienced the establishment of false memory syndrome (FMS) societies and a backlash against those reporting or treating child sexual abuse (CSA). However, in Australia the backlash was notably smaller and led to a different trajectory for those reporting CSA, particularly institutional abuse. The authors propose that this is due to differences in the media and legal systems; the later timing of the backlash in Australia; and a more muted reporting of satanic ritual abuse (SRA), which avoided the extreme disbelief and backlash that occurred in other countries.

Modern Practice, Archaic Ritual: Catholic Exorcism in America

The following ethnographic and folkloric analysis of American exorcism practices post-1998 centers on four Catholic priest-exorcists currently active in the United States. After a brief commentary regarding the place of Satanism within contemporary Catholic imagination, this article posits that the Catholic Church’s recent institutional support of its office of exorcist must not be viewed separately from its discursive fear of Satanic cults and larger narratives of religious declension. The current era of exorcism practice in America is chiefly characterized as a response to the media sensationalism surrounding not only prior cases of demonic possession but also of Satanic ritual abuse. Moreover, beyond these explicit issues of religious competition (e.g., Catholics versus Satanic conspirators), the current era of exorcism practice is also implicitly characterized by the changing belief systems of contemporary Catholics. Thus, this article ultimately concerns issues related to religious modernization, the apotropaic use of established religious tradition, popular entertainment and the mediatization of contemporary exorcism cases, institutionalized training curricula and the spaces allowing ritual improvisation, and the vernacular religious consumption of unregulated paranormal concepts that possess no clear analogues within official Church theology.

The Witchraft Reader ed. by Darren Oldridge

Reviewed by: The Witchraft Readered. by Darren Oldridge Michael Ostling witchcraft, Paganism, witch hunts, Satanic Panic, Satanic Ritual Abuse, spirits, popular culture, iconography, sabbat darren oldridge, ed. The Witchraft Reader, 3rdedition. New York: Routledge, 2020. Pp. xix + 470. When the first edition of Darren Oldridge's Witchcraft Readerappeared in 2002, it was almost the right book at exactly the right time (I'll get back to that "almost" below). Witches were everywhere in popular culture, from Willow and Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer(1997–2003) to Hermione Granger in the Harry Potterseries (1997–2007). Partly inspired by such pop-cultural depictions, various strands of modern Pagan Witchcraft enjoyed an upsurge in interest, especially among young people. 1In addition, the 1990s had seen an unprecedented flourishing of scholarship in witchcraft studies, culminating in the six volumes of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe(1999–2002). 2Concurrently, undergraduate courses on medieval and early modern witchcraft exploded in popularity. Instructors for such courses had some good source-books of primary documents at their disposal, 3but no convenient collection of the fast-changing and expanding secondary scholarship. Oldridge presumably intended The Witchcraft Readerto fill that need. That first addition fulfilled its role imperfectly. Carefully abridged selections traced our emerging understanding of early modern witchcraft since the 1970s (Norman Cohn on the derivation of witchcraft stereotypes from slanders directed at medieval heretics, Christina Larner's invaluable exploration of the question whether witch-hunting constituted woman-hunting, Carlo Ginzburg on folkloric motifs in the witches' sabbath, Stuart Clark on inversion, misrule, and the imagined witch). Oldridge also chose well among a rich selection of the best new scholarship (Éva Pócs on the sabbath as alternate world, Lyndal Roper on how to read the confessions of accused witches, Gary K. Waite on the complex overlap between witch trials and the persecution of religious dissidents during the Reformation, Louise Jackson on the imagined witch as inversionary wife and mother). Other selections were less advised: especially the final two chapters, which lent unearned (and indeed dangerous) credence to the claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) that motivated the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s and early 1990s. [End Page 128] The second edition of The Witchcraft Reader(2008) repaired most of the first edition's shortcomings. In place of the apologies for Satanic Panic, we get a short but powerful excerpt from Jean la Fontaine's ground-breaking demonstration that the allegations of SRA, not unlike allegations of witchcraft centuries earlier, destroyed innocent lives in the name of a false but terrifying threat of evil: in each case, the real evil is perpetrated by the accusers and by the legal system. This second edition also features several new entries of great use to the teacher of undergraduate courses on witchcraft: Jane P. Davidson on the myth of the persecuted female healer, Jacqueline Simpson on Margaret Murray's counterfactual reconstruction of the "old religion" of the witches, Diane Purkiss on modern Pagan (mis)use of the mythologized history described by Davidson and Simpson. But this second edition has its problems as well: with seven more chapters but forty fewerpages than the first edition, its abridgements of some articles are so severe as to teeter on the edge of incomprehensibility. Twenty years on, the fevered pace of witchcraft scholarship has slackened slightly, but this scholarship continues to produce new interpretations of great sophistication across an expanded temporal and spatial geography. Journals that had just begun or were in the planning stages when the first and second editions of The Witchcraft Readerfirst appeared— The Pomegranate(1997), Preternature(2012), and of course Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft(2006)—are now established and respectable. Ever-ramifying versions of Pagan Witchcraft remain popular, including new and troubling white nationalist versions. Buffyand Harry Potterhave been replaced with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina(2018–present) and the Brooklyn Brujas(2018–2020). Powerful white men have tried to paint themselves as innocent victims by labelling investigations into their wrongdoing (the #MeToo movement, the Mueller Report) as "witch hunts," and undergraduate courses on witchcraft continue to fill. Darren Oldridge has brought out a third edition of The Witchcraft...

Abusive Policies: How the American Child Welfare System Lost Its Way by Mical Raz

Reviewed by: Abusive Policies: How the American Child Welfare System Lost Its Way by Mical Raz Paul M. Renfro Abusive Policies: How the American Child Welfare System Lost Its Way. By Mical Raz. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. xvi + 162 pp. Paper $26.95, cloth $95. A mid the satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s, congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D-Colorado) explained why such scares resonate with the American public. "You don't need to convince people that child abuse is bad," she proclaimed (114). Indeed, efforts intended to stamp out child abuse remain virtually unassailable. Yet, as historian Mical Raz illustrates in her terrific new book, understandings of child abuse—and thus the measures enacted to limit such abuse—have changed dramatically over the past half century or so. Abusive Policies explores the politics of child abuse from the late 1960s through the present, arguing that definitions of child abuse, neglect, and exploitation have expanded in the intervening years, while state and private mechanisms designed to curb abuse have grown more extensive, coercive, and punitive. Children and families of color, as well as poor and working-class families, have borne the brunt of these transformations, Raz shows, even as the racial, gender, and economic inequalities that enable and exacerbate child abuse remain largely unaddressed by the state and its private auxiliaries. Raz's story begins with the establishment in 1969 of Parents Anonymous, "a self-help group for parents who either abused or were concerned they might abuse their children." Originally called Mothers Anonymous—in keeping with the larger political and cultural "belief that mothers posed the greatest danger to their children"—Parents Anonymous "played a pivotal role in changing perceptions of child abuse" in the United States (9, 40). Specifically, Parents Anonymous helped shape the discourse surrounding the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA). Signed into law in 1974, CAPTA "intentionally circumvented discussions of race and class" by "presenting child abuse as a scourge of all walks of society" (10, 11). As appealing as this framing might have been—particularly during the "post-civil rights" moment in which CAPTA passed—the act disregarded research that proved "that child abuse was more common in low-income families" and also foreclosed more robust, redistributive policy solutions (11). Raz reveals how such "social welfare" approaches—touted by researchers and advocates cognizant of the ways in which "poverty and social inequities" [End Page 317] precipitated child abuse—ultimately went "unheeded by politicians and policymakers" (32). These elite actors opted instead for ostensibly race- and class-neutral child abuse measures, a decision that reflected not only public skepticism of anti-poverty initiatives but also the increasing pathologization of poverty and crime, including the offense of child abuse. While supposedly race- and class-neutral, mandatory child abuse reporting requirements—which proliferated in the mid-to-late 1970s—"led to significant increases in reporting of low-income and minority families," even though "only a fraction of the[se] reports involved physical harm to children" (62). Many of these reports stemmed from alleged incidents of emotional or verbal harm, a consequence of the expanding definition of child abuse in the twentieth century's second half. This surge in reporting also prompted more muscular, more coercive, and more consistent state interventions in the lives of poor and working-class children and families, disproportionately those of color. These interventions often resulted in the criminalization of family members, the removal of children from familial and extended kinship networks, and the placement of children in foster homes. Further, such interventions offered little in the way of material support or other services for needy children and families. As Raz describes the situation in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s, "Foster care placement involved taking children from suboptimal homes that could have benefited from further support and placing them in homes where there was a greater danger of physical abuse and death" (84). Indeed, the placement of poor and working-class children in public foster care became increasingly common just as the foster care system desegregated and just as public assistance mechanisms grew more punitive and less generous, as scholars like Julilly Kohler-Hausmann...

“She Comes from a Cursed Lineage:” Portrayals of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Satanism in The X-Files

One of the most iconic television series of the 1990s, The X-Files drew on religious and folkloric traditions regarding supernatural phenomena for many of its plotlines. Among the themes that the show’s writers turned to repeatedly was witchcraft, using it as a major plot device in six episodes over the course of the series’ eleven season run. While drawing on longstanding ideas about witchcraft arising from European and European-American culture(s), these writers also had to contend with a social environment in which fears of witchcraft had resurfaced in the form of the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria and where various forms of modern religious witchcraft had arisen, often claiming proprietorship of the concept of the witch itself. How the show’s writers chose to portray this topic and navigate around the social issues it posed offers insight into the nature of beliefs about witchcraft present in American culture, especially at the close of the twentieth century.

Discovering Jesus Anew

AbstractIn light of the political and ritual abuse of religion in India today, this article underlines the importance of Christian women’s engagement with women of all faiths to resist discrimination and violence. The Indian Christian Women’s Movement draws on Jesus’ liberative practice and teaching as women find creative and subversive ways to strengthen Christian women’s solidarity with women of other faiths. While all faith traditions carry embedded patriarchal biases that have been used to legitimize the second‐class status of women, they also have streams of liberation motifs. The article employs a feminist epistemology to reconstruct dominant theological motifs and assumptions based on an ethic of care, compassion, and mutuality in relationships.

Background and psychological impact of organised and ritual child sexual abuse: Reports to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany

Organised child sexual abuse is characterised by commercial exploitation of children and adolescents by networking perpetrator groups. Ritual abuse is further characterised by ideological frameworks (e.g., cults). Forty-one confidential hearings and written reports, gathered by the German Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse from individuals as well as contemporary witnesses subjected to organised and ritual abuse (ORA) were analysed by means of a quantitative content analysis. Right-wing extremist, Satanist and religious ideologies were most frequently described. The perpetrators were, next to unknown offenders, mostly described as fathers, and in half of the reports, besides also mothers of the victims. Dissociative identity disorders resulting from such traumatic violence present a challenge to psychosocial and psychiatric professionals. It is necessary to educate professionals in psychosocial care settings about ORA and the psychological consequences of extreme violence.

Demystifying ritual abuse - insights by self-identified victims and health care professionals

ABSTRACTEmpirical evidence on organized and ritual child sexual abuse (ORA), that is, organized child sexual abuse with an ideological framework, is rare and definitions of the term “ritual” are often vague or inhomogeneous. The aim of the current study is to analyze contents, purposes and acts of violence in ORA.In a project of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany, 165 adults who identified themselves as ORA victims as well as 174 health care professionals who supported ORA victims were recruited via various sources and completed anonymous online surveys.Both samples report experiences with ideological frameworks in organized child sexual abuse contexts at the same ratio (88%). Ideologies are mostly perceived as a means to facilitate violent acts (e.g. commercial sexual exploitation). Positive correlations between the manifestation of ideologies and all violent acts suggest that organized and ritual perpetrator groups use the same violent strategies, but ritual or ideological groups, in which perpetrators are more often family members, use them to a greater extent.A modified narrative of “ritual abuse” as a (pseudo-)ideological, domestic and more violent subtype of organized child sexual abuse could enhance the credibility and visibility of ORA in science as well as in society.

Malignant trauma and the invisibility of ritual abuse

This article draws on psychoanalytic theories of malignant trauma to explain the invisibility of ritual abuse. Ritual abuse refers to the misuse of rituals in the organised sexual abuse of children. Despite expanded recognition of the varieties of child maltreatment, ritual abuse remains largely invisible outside the trauma and dissociation field as a specific form of sexual exploitation. Presenting qualitative data from interview research with ritual abuse survivors and mental health specialists, this article argues that the trauma of ritual abuse and its invisibility are co-constitutive. The perpetration and denial of ritual abuse occur within a relational matrix of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders structured by the presymbolic dread of vulnerability and dependency. The simultaneity of perpetration and disavowal creates the conditions for the malignancy of ritual abuse, including the invisibility of victims and the intergenerational transmission of extreme abuse. The article examines how the provision of care to ritual abuse survivors can become contingent on its erasure, and reflects on the role of therapists and others in interrupting the metastases of malignant trauma and crafting cultural and moral frameworks to transform the dread at the core of ritual abuse.

KARAKTERISTIK KEKERASAN SEKSUAL TERHADAP ANAK PEREMPUAN DI WONOGIRI DAN BOYOLALI

The future of this nation depends on the quality of its young generation. Sexual violence against daughters that is rampant today can damage the growth of the spiritual and physical body of the young generation. For this reason, a preventive solution is needed for prevention. This initial study will identify the characteristics of sexual violence against girls which occur in two regions, namely Wonogiri and Boyolali. This research was the qualitative descriptive analytic study that explored and described the characteristics of sexual violence against girls in the two regions. Data was collected through in-depth interviews and document review of key informants, PPA Polres officers, Head of P2TP3A, Head of Women and Children Protection, Solopos.com news and Kompasanda.com, and other key informants. Data were analysed using GAP techniques to obtain insightful initial data. The research conclusion is as follows. a) Most intrafamilial abuses are carried out by stepfather, biological father, victim's sibling and grandfather. b) Extrafamilial violence abuse is carried out by the same age victim’s friends and playing that mocking the victims in abuzz and begin with alcoholic parties. The perpetrator with the status of a boyfriend is difficult to trace, and the actual cases are very large in number. c) Institutional violence abuse often occurs in elementary and junior high schools with the perpetrators is a teacher. The victims are more than one student. d) Ritualistic abuse takes the form of shamanic practices. The triggers are such as; a) inharmonious family situation, b) unfavourable economic conditions, c) unhealthy social environment, d) the negative influence of social media use, e) unstable psychological conditions, and f) superficial understanding of religion

Malignant trauma and the invisibility of ritual abuse

Malignant trauma and the invisibility of ritual abuse

Flash Technique for Safe Desensitization of Memories and Fusion of Parts in DID: Modifications and Resourcing Strategies

This paper explores the use of the Flash technique in the treatment of extreme trauma in Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) from satanic ritual abuse. The results include desensitization of trauma memories and the planned fusion of parts. I share my insights on safe application of the technique and modifications that can be used for highly fragmented DID clients and other complex trauma presentations. Strategies include ways to safely assess the severity of the memory, modifications in the Subjective Units of Distress (SUDS) measurement, instructions in applying the technique, modes of bilateral stimulation and use of the conference room technique. Nine case sessions are documented demonstrating nine variations in use of the technique. I describe how to install an engaging activity in parts that cannot come up with a resource. Additionally, I write about the use of playful extra resourcing to strengthen the engaging activity, leading to “boosting” of the Flash therapy session and hence faster processing of trauma memories. I hope that colleagues working in the field of trauma and dissociation can find the tools and strategies in this paper helpful for their professional development and also for treatment of their clients.

How Are Memories of Entrapment in Abuse Born?

This month, Frontiers presents a collection of articles related to the paper Colin Ross published in our journal last year (Ross, 2018). That article’s purpose was “to discuss the similarities and differences between maladaptive daydreaming and dissociative identity disorder (DID), and then to discuss possible implications ... in the treatment of complex cases of DID, particularly those with ... reported histories of satanic ritual abuse....[to consider that] maladaptive daydreaming, combined with the principle of therapeutic neutrality ... can help in the management of counter-transference...” (p. 161). The term “therapeutic neutrality” refers to the therapist’s judgment about the veracity of memories of satanic ritual abuse (SRA).

Therapeutic Neutrality, Ritual Abuse, and Maladaptive Daydreaming

The purpose of this commentary is to express my concern about the way in which Colin Ross employs “therapeutic neutrality” in his recent article in Frontiers.

Understanding Reports of Satanic Ritual Abuse

Understanding Reports of Satanic Ritual Abuse