IMO, it is very important that we defend the existence of ritual abuse in the media.
If at all possible, please send two letters to the people below.
About a month and a half ago, members of the FMSF attempted to try to pressure FVSAI to take two ritual abuse presentations off of their program. The attempt failed and IMO, FVSAI should receive thank you letters from survivors.
The web address with FVSAI's rebuttal letter is at http://www.fvsai.org/FVSAI_rebuttal.htm This address also has contact information for FVSAI
Recently, there was a letter in the San Diego Union Tribune from Mark Sauer attacking the inclusion of these two topics in the conference. We should send as many letters to the Tribune as possible about this. My letter is followed by the article below.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
sent 9/22/02
I was very disappointed to read the one sided article "Abuse or Unfounded Fear?"
By Mark Sauer (9/21/02). The existence of ritual abuse is a fact. There have been many criminal cases and research studies showing that ritual abuse exists, and it should definitely be included as a topic at any conference dealing with child abuse. The Ritual Abuse Task Force of the L.A. County Commission worked on this topic for many years.
In the book, "Cult and Ritual Abuse" - Noblitt and Perskin (Praeger, 1995) "One of the best sources of evaluative research on ritual abuse is the article "Ritual Abuse: A Review of Research" by Kathleen Coulborn Faller (1994)....in a survey of 2,709 members of the American Psychological Association, it was found that 30 percent of these professionals had seen cases of ritual or religion-related abuse (Bottoms, Shaver & Goodman, 1991). Of those psychologists who have seen cases of ritual abuse, 93 percent believed that the reported harm took place and 93 percent believed that the alleged ritualism occurred" and "Nancy Perry (1992) ....also conducted a national survey of therapists who work with clients with dissociative disorders and she found that 88 percent of the 1,185 respondents indicated "belief in ritual abuse, involving mind control and programming"
There are also lists of court cases on the internet describing court cases pertaining to ritual abuse at http://www.newsmakingnews.com/karencuriojonesarchive.htm
I hope that in the future the Union Tribune will print unbiased articles about this topic, so these horrible crimes can be stopped.
Neil Brick
http://members.aol.com/smartnews/index2.html
editor of SMART
P O Box 1295
Easthampton, MA 01027
---------
This article from the Union Tribune may be very triggering for survivors.
Abuse or Unfounded Fear?
Either way, talks to delve into ritual child torture
By Mark Sauer STAFF WRITER
September 21, 2002
In the fall of 1993, a jury returned a swift and resounding
not-guilty verdict in the longest, costliest and most bizarre
criminal trial in San Diego history.
The Dale Akiki case featured tales of animal sacrifice
(including giraffes and elephants), blood and water torture
rituals, several murders and various other allegations of physical, sexual and emotional abuse of preschoolers.
When the former volunteer at a Spring Valley church day
care was acquitted after 21/2 years in jail awaiting trial,
jurors said the only crime committed in the case was the
misguided prosecution itself.
Their verdict in the seven-month trial –– coupled with the
$2 million Akiki got to settle his wrongful-prosecution
lawsuit –– was widely seen as driving a stake through the
heart of America's ritual abuse witch hunt.
But now the controversial notion of children being
tortured and terrorized by an underground network of
satanists and other ritual abusers is making a comeback in
San Diego.
The occasion is the seventh International Conference on
Family Violence, which will attract 1,500 social workers,
therapists, prosecutors and defense attorneys, doctors,
nurses and police from around the world for a week of
workshops on various kinds of physical, sexual and
emotional abuse.
At least two of the sessions will focus on ritual abuse,
which the conference program describes as, "the
organized, systematic use of children in brutalizing
ceremonial acts."
District Attorney Paul Pfingst expressed grave concerns
that a widely attended and influential conference would
feature workshops on ritual abuse, since he has seen no
evidence that such cases exist. That view is shared by the
FBI, which spent a decade searching in vain for a valid
ritual abuse case.
The conference on abuse is set for next week at the Town
& Country Convention Center in Mission Valley. It is
being hosted by the Family Violence & Sexual Assault
Institute (FVSAI), a nonprofit training center based at San
Diego's Alliant University.
Robert Geffner, conference director, said ritual abuse is
recognized as valid by "most people in the field" and
defended including the workshops.
The conference is not a fringe event.
Among the dozens of "conference collaborating
organizations" are many highly respected names: the California Attorney General's Office; the American Bar
Association; the American Academy of Pediatrics; the
American Psychological Association; the SDSU School of
Social Work; and the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services.
The conference program claims that, "Ritual abuse cases
are coming into the system through the accounts of adult
survivors, in child-custody disputes, day care and isolated
neighborhood cases."
One of the workshops in question, "Psychotherapy and
Ritual Abuse Survivors," will be conducted by San Diego
psychologist Ellen Lachter and marriage-and-family
therapist Mary Battles, longtime supporters of the ritual
abuse conspiracy theory.
Along with a ritual abuse "survivor," they will "share their
respective and clinical and subjective experiences that
have led to their understanding of ritual abuse as a
prevalent problem in Western and other cultures."
Lachter and Battles declined interview requests.
The other workshop, "Childhood Ritual Abuse," will be
conducted by Jeanne Adams of Ogden, Utah, who says
she is a survivor; Dawn Mattox of the Special Victim's
Bureau, Butte County, Calif., district attorney's office; and
Anne Hart of a Davis group, Mothers of Lost Children.
Adams will discuss "the cult experience and the
governmental mind control experimentation used on
children," according to the conference program.
Since the Akiki trial, the infamous McMartin Preschool
case in L.A. and scores of other failed ritual-abuse
prosecutions of the 1980s and '90s, leading psychologists
and law enforcement officials across the country have
decried the ritual abuse scare.
FBI Special Agent Kenneth Lanning, now retired, spent
10 years chasing down hundreds of ritual-abuse
allegations, only to conclude there was no evidence
supporting the claims.
Pfingst, who used the Akiki case as a springboard to the
district attorney's office in his 1994 campaign against
longtime D.A. Edwin Miller, said in an interview, "This
theory was completely debunked in the early '90s.
"It created so much harm in San Diego and across the
country, and to see it even start to emerge again is very
disturbing," he added.
"If someone wants to go back to teaching that satanic
ritual abuse claptrap, we're going to have a serious
discussion about whether law enforcement in San Diego
should respond and expose it for what it is."
Jeffrey Younggren, a Los Angeles clinical psychologist,
who 10 years ago warned state officials that ritual-abuse
allegations constituted a hoax, said the two workshops
appear to "tarnish what otherwise looks like an excellent
conference."
"It's amazing to me that this ritual-abuse stuff never seems
to go away," Younggren added.
Geffner, founder and president of FVSAI, reacted
strongly to criticism of his decision to include the
workshops. In a sternly worded letter, he dismissed
objections by a Philadelphia-based organization
representing hundreds of families who say they were
victimized by false ritual abuse allegations.
"Our goal is to address certain controversial topics instead
of suppressing them under the rug," Geffner said in an
interview.
Geffner and Jae Marciano, executive director of FVSAI,
said that, as with all of the more than 150 conference
workshops, the ritual abuse sessions were evaluated by a
panel of 80 screeners, including psychologists, doctors,
social workers and law-enforcement officers.
"What the presenters are going to talk about specifically, I
don't know," Marciano said. "But the purpose is to have a
forum. If there are victims who come forward and say
they have survived this form of abuse, then we need to
listen to the victims."
One of the presenters, Mary Battles, listened to alleged
victims of a satanic cult in therapy sessions a decade ago.
Battles convinced two San Diego police detectives, who
also subscribed to the ritual-abuse theory, that the
murderous cult was operating out of a Clairemont area
church.
The alleged cult victims revealed "repressed memories" to Battles in which babies were sacrificed in ceremonies at
the church and their blood was drunk from chalices.
The detectives requisitioned bulldozers and prepared to
excavate church grounds before police brass stepped in
and halted the unlikely investigation.
But Geffner said the fact that investigators can find no
evidence of ritual abuse doesn't mean it isn't there.
He disdained use of the word "satanic" in conjunction
with ritual abuse. In fact, he said, much of the controversy
can "probably be traced to semantics."
"My definition of ritual abuse is the organized exploitation
of children," Geffner said. "Take a child pornography ring.
If it's organized and they're doing it in a way that exploits
children, that's a form of ritualized abuse.
"Paul Pfingst announced recently he is prosecuting two
local people who are part of a child pornography ring.
That ring goes across several countries and represents the
systematic abuse of children –– that is ritual abuse."
Pfingst scoffed at that characterization, however.
"That case had absolutely nothing to do with ritual abuse,"
Pfingst said. "It had to do with fathers molesting their
own children on videotape and spreading it around the
world for other pedophiles to see; a straightforward child
porn case. No one is alleging any ceremonies or animal
sacrifices or cannibalism took place."
Pfingst added, however, that after looking through the
program "the abuse conference as a whole looks like a
well-put-together event. It's unfortunate they have this
ritual abuse stuff involved.
"I plan to have someone there monitoring those
presentations and reporting back."
Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
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