AN AMERICAN woman who played a cruciel role in bringing the Satanic child abuse scare to Britain, and who is presented as a psychologist and psychotherapist, has no licence to practice and it is ”not a legitimate therapist”, according to a judge in her homestate Illinois.

Pamela Klein ”diagnosed” one of the first British cases of socalled Satanic abuse, in Kent in October 1988. She was employed by Bramhill police college to develop courses on child abuse for senior officers, and she lectured to hundres of socialworkers, psychiatrists and other child-care professionals nation-wide.

But Ms Klein has made claims about her works in Britain which are challenged in affidavits. In sworn depositions to be used in evidence in a Satanic abuse criminal trial in Chicago, Ms Klein claims she ”served as a professional consultant and did training for” several organisations dealing with child abuse in England.

Senior staff from two of them – the BBC´s Child Watch programme and Thames Valley Police – have sworn affidavits stating that they can find no trace of her. The BBC says her claims is ”false and misleading”.

Ms Klein, an independent child abuse counsellor in Chicago, is a key prosecution witness against a man accused of sexually assulting a six-year old girl in Satanic ceremonies in the city. She conducted unrecorded interviews with the child on which the charges are based.

Ms Klein, 49, has previously been called as an ”expert witness” in two other Satanic abuse court cases and many ordinary sex abuse cases in Illinois, and has become established  as a specialist in the field.

In a series of preeleminary hearings, Ms Klein claimed she had legal privilege as a therapist to refuse to disclose confidential information about clients. But last month, at the circuit court of Cook Country, Judge Morgan Hamilton ruled that Ms Klein was ”not a legitimate therapist” as defined by Illinois law, so she could not claim client confidentiality.

Ms Klein only formal qualifications are a bachelor´s degree in sociology and psychology and a master´s degree – involving 30 hours of study – in counseling education, both from Southern Illinois University.

After working for eight years at a rape crisis centre at Southern Illinois University, Ms Klein came to England about July 1985, She lived for 18 months in Maidenhead, Berkshire, and formed a consultancy with Norma Howes, an independent social worker from Reading.
 In september 1986 Ms Klein was featured in the Maidenhead Advertiser as a ”psychologist specialising in child sexual-abuse cases”. She was employed by the Police Staff college at Bramhill in Hampshire to help develop courses on child abuse. In a trainingvideo demonstrating the interview of an adult victim, she was presented as ”a psychologist”.

Ms Klein had introduced herself to Dr. Susanna Adler, now the principal lecturer in manegement development at the college, an elite national training centre for officers above the rank of Chief Inspectors. Last week Dr Adler said: ”She is a psychologist and I think she has got a social work qualification as well. She definately had a psychology background. I mean that was her qualification.

”My understanding was thatshe had been doing  private practice as a psychotherapist and my assumption was that she had some relevant qualification.” Asked if she meant more then a university degree, she said: ”Oh, yes. That was certainly my impression. I certainly found her very professional and very knowledgeable about Child Abuse.”

But it was in the field of Satanic child abuse that Ms Klein has been most influential. In October 1988 Ms Howes had been asked by social workers in Kent to advise on the case of a four-year-old boy who was behaving very oddly. Baffled she rang Ms Klein, who, on hearing of the strange drinks, hysterical laughter and stripping-off of clothes, diagnosed, on the telephone, that it was a classical case of Satanic abuse. This was a new phenomenon, she said, which was sweeping the United States. But police found no evidence and the child was returned to his parents.

In Britain Ms Klein distributed much litterature on Satanic abuse including a list of ”Satanic indicators”, signs and symptomps to look for, which have since been circulated to police forces and social workers nation-wide.

Copies were given by an intermediary to social workers dealing with an incest case in Nottingham and to Central Television´s Cook Report, which used Ms Klein as a consultant and which, in July 1989, claimed that Satanic abuse was rife in Britain.

In September 1989 Ms Klein and Ms Hower organised national conferences on child abuse at Reading and Dundee universities for social workers, police officers, psychiatrist and other child-care professionals. There, social-workers from Nottingham announced they were dealing with Satanic abuse and an Evangelic Christian charity worker claimed she knew of 35 cases.

Various lists of ”Satanic indicators” have featured in every case of alleged Satanic abuse which since surfaced in Britain from Liverpool to Manchester, Rochdale to Glasgow, and now in the Orkney case Islands. Since November, 17 children have been taken into care in the Southern Ronald-say after social workers suspected they were victims of ”ritualistic” abuse. Last week the Scottish Crown Office ordered further police investigations as no evidence has been produced. No evidence of Satanism has been produced in any case so far.

Ms Klein solicitor, Pamela Loza, said yesterday: ”Ms Klein is not a psychologist. She has never described herself as a psychologist.. She has never held herself out to be. She is not responsible for what other people print about her.” She added:”Ms Klein does not have a licence. Illinois is one of 33 states that do not require licence to be a therapist.”

When reminded about the BBC and Thames Valley Police statements denying they had paid her, she said the police might have paid the corporation Ms Klein set up, rather her personally. She would check. She did not call back.

Additional reporting by SARAH STRICKLAND