-Caveat Lector- Hi ! Below please find an article from C. Gould. Sincerely, Neil Brick This may be triggering for survivors of RA and MC. All accusations are alleged. from http://members.tripod.com/~Curio_5_/gould.html Notes: The following is reproduced here with the permission of the author. Permission is given to reproduce and redistribute, for non-commercial purposes only, provided this information and the copy remain intact and unedited. The views and opinions expressed below are not necessarily the views and opinions of VERICOMM, MindNet, or the editors unless otherwise noted. Editor: Mike Coyle ================================================================ Cultural and Economic Barriers to Protecting Children from Ritual Abuse and Mind Control By Catherine Gould, Ph.D. Dec. 1995 ---------------------------------------------------------------- How are we to understand the phenomenon of ritual abuse in the 1990's? Throughout the Western world, increasing numbers of therapists and other helping professionals are hearing accounts from children as young as two and adults ranging into the ninth decade of their lives describe mind-numbing accounts of abuses consisting of sexual sadism and pornography, physical torture, and highly sophisticated psychological manipulation which, taken together, we have come to refer to as ritual abuse. The evidence is rapidly accumulating that the problem of ritual abuse is considerable in scope, and extremely grave in its consequences. Among 2,709 members of the American Psychological Association who responded to a poll, 2,292 cases of ritual abuse were reported (Bottoms, Shaver, & Goodman, 1993). In 1992 alone, Childhelp USA logged 1,741 calls pertaining to ritual abuse, Monarch Resources of Los Angeles logged approximately 5,000, Real Active Survivors tallied nearly 3,600, Justus Unlimited of Colorado received almost 7,000, and Looking Up of Maine handled around 6,000. Even allowing for some of these calls to have been made by people who assist survivors but are not themselves survivors, and for some survivors to have called more that one helpline or made multiple calls to the same helpline, these numbers suggest that at a minimum there must be tens of thousands of survivors of ritual abuse in the United States. Evidence also continues to accumulate that the ritual abuse of children constitutes a child abuse problem of significant scope. In 1988, Finkelhor, Williams and Burns (1988) published the results of a nationwide study of substantiated reports of sexual abuse in day care involving 1,639 young child victims. Thirteen percent of these cases were found to involve ritual abuse. Other studies of ritually abused children have been relatively small. Kelly (1988; 1989; 1992a; 1992b; 1993) reported on 35 day care victims of ritual abuse, Waterman et al. (1993) reported on 82 children complaining of ritual abuse in preschool, Faller (1988; 1990) studied 18 children who had disclosed ritual abuse in their preschool, and Bybee and Mowbray (1993) from the Michigan State Department of Mental Health identified 62 children alleging ritual abuse in their preschool and 53 children who reported seeing others be ritually abused. Snow and Sorenson (1990) studied 39 children reporting ritual abuse in five neighborhoods in Utah, and Jonker and Jonker-Bakker (1991) reported on a total group of 98 children, at least 48 of whom were believed to be victims of ritual abuse. The latter case is the only one cited here which was conducted outside of the United States. Unfortunately, these statistics tell us little about the actual prevalence of child ritual abuse. Much more telling are the data these researchers have collected regarding the effects of ritual abuse on child victims. In Faller's (1994) review of the literature from which these studies are drawn, most of the studies which were selected included a control group of children with sexual abuse histories but no reports of ritual abuse. It is very telling that in every case in which the symptomatology of the ritually abused children was compared to the symptomatology of the sexually abused children, the ritually abused children showed considerably more symptoms of trauma. In the Finkelhor et al. (1988) study, ritually abused children showed significantly more symptoms of trauma than did sexually abused children. Kelly (1988; 1989; 1992a; 1992b; 1993) showed that ritually abused children had significantly higher scores on the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist than did sexually abused children, indicating more severe symptomatology on the part of the children who had been ritually abused. Waterman et al. (1993) found that both therapists and parents rated ritually abused children as showing more behavioral symptoms on the Achenbach than sexually abused children. Other assessment instruments used in this study found ritually abused children to function less well at the time of termination from therapy than did sexually abused children. Faller (1990) found that more ritually abused children than sexually abused children suffered from sleep, emotional, and behavioral problems, as well as phobias and problems with sexual acting out. A great deal of literature has been amassed on the often extreme and debilitating effects of child sexual abuse on its victims, effects which may last a lifetime. To have four comparative studies as methodologically sound as the ones presented above all illustrating that ritual abuse causes even greater effects on child victims than does sexual abuse should give us as a nation serious pause. The data reflecting the grave consequences of ritual abuse on children has been coming in for over five years now. Yet we, a nation with mandated child abuse reporting and computerized accounts of numbers of children reported to have been sexually, physically, and emotionally abused each year, still have no systematic means of collecting data on numbers of children reported to have been ritually abused! We could, relatively easily and for minimal expense, obtain statistics on the number of cases of ritual child abuse being reported in the United States each year simply by adding one additional category on the child abuse reporting forms which mandated reporters must complete when they file a child abuse report. Given the accumulation of data illustrating not only that children reporting ritual abuse are profoundly negatively impacted by those experiences, but that they are even more severely impacted that are child victims of sexual abuse, how can we give any weight at all to the skeptical position that ritual abuse memories are no more that screen memories for incest experiences that are actually worse, suppressed from awareness and replaced by accounts of impossibly bizarre rituals? If children claiming to be ritually abused were in fact sexually abused only, then clearly their symptomatology should be similar to and no more serious than that of sexually abused children. The psychological condition of ritually abused children matches the accounts they give of what has been done to them not only in the severity of their symptomatology, but also in its particulars. That is to say, not only do ritually abused children appear more disturbed than sexually abused children on traditional instruments like the Achenbach, they also demonstrate symptoms which relate in direct and obvious ways to the abuse experiences they describe. For example, because ritual abuse usually involves traumatic confinement, ritually abused children often fear elevators, closets, and other small spaces. Because these children have often had urine and feces smeared on their bodies and put in their mouths, they may smear themselves or others with urine or feces, or develop phobias of the bathroom. Because many of these children have witnessed torture and killing, and have been threatened with death of themselves and their loved ones, they often fear that they or their family members will be killed. And so on. (See Gould, 1992 for a more complete account of the symptomatology that characterizes ritually abused children). The nature as well as the severity of ritually abused children's symptomatology gives eloquent and tragic testimony to the fact that ritual abuse does indeed exist, in all the horror described by its victims, both young and old. Perhaps no skeptic has done more to obfuscate the issue of ritual abuse than Kenneth Lanning of the FBI, who for years has maintained that no substantive evidence exists for the reality of ritual abuse (Lanning, 1991). (As investigative journalist Civia Tamarkin has noted, for decades the FBI also told the American public that the Mafia did not exist in the United States (1991)). "No bodies...No adult witnesses," as Parenting magazine put it so succinctly, and so erroneously in their March 1994 article "The Satanism Scare" (Ruben, 1994). And why do accounts like the ones given by the 37 ritually abused adults in the Young et al. (1991) study, and the 14 ritually abused families in the Kelly (1992a) study, of group sexual assaults, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism and the like not constitute eyewitness accounts to so-called experts like Lanning? I am personally aware of scores of adult survivors with memories of ritual crimes (contrary to the position of many skeptics, most of these memories were retrieved without hypnosis or chemical assistance; many were in fact retrieved outside of therapy) who have made concerted attempts to bring these crimes to the attention of law enforcement. The vast majority of these survivor accounts have been met with absolute indifference and inaction on the part of local law enforcement agencies, as well as the FBI, who might reasonably be expected to investigate the charges of interstate trafficking of children and pornography which are commonly made by ritual abuse survivors. Not only do skeptics such as Lanning choose to ignore eyewitness/victim accounts of ritual criminal activity, they apparently also choose to overlook the significant number of cases of ritual abuse in which perpetrators have confessed to their crimes. In the Bottoms et al. (1991; 1993) study of 2,292 cases of ritual abuse, perpetrators in 30% of the child cases confessed to abusing one or more children, and perpetrators in 15% of adult cases confessed to perpetrating as well. In the case studied by Snow and Sorenson (1990), two adolescent perpetrators admitted to charges of abuse. Both of these sets of data require further analysis to determine which acts of ritual abuse were confessed to by what number of perpetrators. Corroboration and eyewitness accounts offered by children should also be given serious attention when therapists and investigators can demonstrate that no contamination of the children's disclosures has taken place. In the case studied by Jonker and Jonker-Bakker (1991), children from different schools and different locales gave accounts of perpetrators, abuse locations, and abusive acts that were mutually corroborating. Accounts of tunnels under the McMartin preschool given by children claiming to have been ritually abused at the school were fully corroborated when the existence and location of the tunnels were documented by a professional team of archaeologists (Summit, 1994). If it were not enough to have a substantial amount of data from well-controlled studies demonstrating the grave psychological impact which ritual abuse has on children, to have eyewitness accounts of significant numbers of adult and child survivors, to have perpetrator confessions of ritual abuse crimes, and to have a whole variety of types of corroboration of children's accounts of ritual abuse, the number of ritual abuse cases in which criminal convictions have been obtained should certainly put to rest any remaining questions about the existence of ritual abuse. It has become fashionable in the last several years for the media to minimize and even dissemble about the data which so strongly support the existence of ritual abuse. Amazingly, this has happened even in relation to ritual abuse cases in which criminal convictions have been obtained. Parenting magazine (Ruben, 1994), for example, asserted that "far more cases (of ritual abuse) end in acquittal" than in conviction. In fact, 58% of the ritual abuse cases in the Finkelhor (1988) study that went to trial resulted in convictions. In the Kelly (1992b) study, convictions were obtained in 80% of the ritual and sexual abuse cases combined; since there were no significant differences between the rates of criminal conviction in these two groups, we can surmise that convictions were obtained in approximately 80% of the ritual abuse cases Kelly studied. Finally, and most significant given the thousands of cases studied, convictions were obtained in 11% of all ritual child abuse cases studied by Bottoms et al. (1991; 1993). All three sets of data need to be further analyzed to determine in which cases acts of ritual abuse other than child sexual abuse per se were entered into the court record, and on which charges the perpetrators were convicted. It is because ritual abuse cases are being seen in greater numbers in courtrooms across the United States, and convictions are being obtained, that one by one states are passing laws against crimes that occur virtually exclusively within the context of ritual abuse. In September of this year, California became the sixth state in the country to pass a law against specific acts of ritual abuse. How can it be that, with significant numbers of criminal convictions of perpetrators of ritual abuse and laws against ritual abuse on the books in a growing number of states, with the clinical data amassed by thousands of therapists in the United States and internationally, with physical evidence like the tunnels found under the McMartin preschool corroborating children's reports of abuse, that we cannot reach a consensus that ritual abuse constitutes a serious problem for us as a nation, and demands to be addressed? Why is it that media accounts of ritual abuse are often filled with so much obfuscation that the public is left wondering whether ritual abuse might not in fact be the "urban myth" or "mass hysteria" that certain skeptics have made a virtual career out of saying that it is? I propose that there are two major factors at work in this elaborate national dance of deception and denial. The first is economic, and the second sociocultural. The economic reasons for the denial and minimization of ritual abuse are in one sense obvious. Survivors of ritual abuse, especially those far enough along in their recoveries to have moved through the horrific memories of group sexual assaults and bloody sacrifices, usually find that underneath those traumatic ritual memories is a previously dissociated knowledge of having served the cult/perpetrator group in ways that are unambiguously economic. For example, women survivors often discover that they have served as prostitutes for the cult, sometimes since childhood, and frequently for little or no financial compensation. Within the frame of the cult-created Multiple personality disorder (Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID, in the new diagnostic nomenclature) from which most ritual abuse victims suffer, the core personality in such a survivor usually knows nothing of her cult involvement or of her cult "job". In other words, her core personality does not wonder why her work as a prostitute never earns her any money, because she has no idea that she (or, more accurately, one of her alters) is prostituting. The alter who works as a prostitute does so because she has been programmed to function in this manner, usually from early childhood, with extreme torture, and knows no other way of life. (See Neswald, 1991 and Gould & Cozolino, 1992 for a more complete description of how ritual abuse deliberately creates alters programmed to serve particular cult functions). DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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