The Independent , march 1, 2001, Thursday, http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/indyhoax.htm

'LET'S NOT beat about the bush. I've been had. A reporter in search of  a story has, not for the first time,fallen foul of an excess of enthusiasm, credulousness, and someone's idea of a good joke.

Last week, a story by me appeared in The Independent, saying that police were trying to close down an internet site that carried pictures of a man eating a dismembered baby. There was a suggestion, which I reported, that this gave credence to claims of ritual or Satanic abuse, including human sacrifice, which have been the subject of fierce controversy for more than a decade.

It turns out, as several readers have brought to our attention with notable glee, that the pictures on the Californian website show, not human sacrifice, but a Chinese performance artist who has been shocking audiences in the Far East with his images of cannibalism. Distasteful as his pictures will seem to most people, they are not evidence of Satanic abuse.  So here I am eating humble pie. I apologies for misleading readers about the proper context of the pictures (which was unknown to me).

I was contacted a fortnight ago by Valerie Sinason, a child psychotherapist who has, almost single-handedly, kept alive the notion that some children in Britain have been the victims of ritual or Satanic abuse for more than a decade. She has, she says, 51 adult patients who are survivors of child abuse and who, during therapy, have disclosed details suggesting that the abuse had ritual elements.

I was well aware of Ms Sinason's controversial background and have myself been a skeptic about Satanic abuse since the first allegations were made in the late 1980s. I visited Rochdale in 1990, one of the alleged centres of the practice along with Nottingham and Orkney, and concluded in a piece I wrote for the Sunday Correspondent that the most likely explanation for the strange goings-on could be found on the horror shelves of the local video store.

However, I decided to take Ms Sinason's evidence at face value and check it. I accessed the website and there, sure enough, was a man apparently eating a dead baby. I spoke to the police officer she put me in touch with - Detective Inspector Clive Driscoll - and he gave me some bloodcurdling quotes about murder and human sacrifice and said a senior forensic pathologist who had examined the pictures considered the dismembered baby to be real.

There were, admittedly, no candles or crucifixes, and the man was obviously posing, but, on the face of it, cannibalism had been caught on camera.

Once again, however, allegations of ritual abuse have turned out to rest on very little. A year ago, Valerie Sinason appeared on Radio 4's Today programme claiming she had "clinical evidence" of babies who had not been registered at birth being involved in ritual abuse. The implication was that the babies had been conceived and raised secretly for use in rituals that sometimes ended in their sacrifice.

Most experts poured scorn on these claims and pointed out they could do serious harm by their very outlandishness - by making the whole of child abuse seem less likely and easier to dismiss. But they gained a measure of credence because Ms Sinason had been commissioned by the Department of Health, together with a colleague Dr Robert Hale, to write a report detailing her findings, which was submitted to the department last July.

I contacted the health department to ask what had happened to Ms Sinason's report and ask for a comment. What I received, by e-mail, was one of the longest and most carefully worded statements I can remember receiving.

The health department said, in summary, that they had received the report by Dr Hale and Ms Sinason, submitted it to peer review and returned it to the authors with reviewers' comments. They had no plans to publish it. They also cited separate research that they had commissioned from Professor Joan La Fontaine of the London School of Economics, who found "no independent material evidence" to support allegations of "Satanic child abuse and devil worship".

The coup de grace came in the final paragraph:

"In the Government's view, the conclusion of the study they commissioned by Professor La Fontaine ... has not been rendered invalid by Dr Hale and Valerie Sinason's study."

In other words, the claims about Satanic abuse are a load of tosh. To my knowledge, this is the first official declaration by a government department to this effect.

Professor La Fontaine said:

"It is not surprising to me that patients who are having treatment by Valerie Sinason would produce stories that echo such topical issues as the recent trial for receiving internet pornography and the publicity for the film Hannibal. There is good research that shows the "memories" of abuse are produced in and by the therapy."

It would be helpful now to everyone, especially those charged with the protection of children, if the debate about whether or not ritual abuse exists were drawn to a close. Allegations of Satanism should be directed where they belong - at the horror films and videos that almost certainly triggered the scare a decade ago, and have fostered it ever since.'