SOURCE: The Times      DATE: 03 June 1994        PAGE: 4 

SATANIC abuse of children has been dismissed as a myth by a government inquiry. A report by a leading social anthropologist, published yesterday, finds no evidence to support claims of abuse by devil worshippers using black magic rituals. It says that children were influenced into making claims by adults who had been sucked into the ``powerful influence'' of evangelical Christians.

Jean La Fontaine, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, said yesterday: ``There is a pattern in the allegations of satanic abuse. A large proportion of cases concern extremely deprived parents and children, who have posed intractable problems in the past. In some cases the parents were themselves abused and so it is hardly surprising that the children do show very distressing behavioural problems, and that some explanation is sought for that behaviour.''

The three-year inquiry was commissioned by the Government in the wake of dawn raids in which a number of children were taken from homes near Rochdale, Greater Manchester, and in the Orkney islands.

There were no prosecutions following the seizure of the children and the Government set up the inquiry, which examined 84 cases, as suspicions grew about the actions of social workers.

The report says: ``Too frequent interviewing, leading questions, contamination, pressure and inducements may have resulted from the anxiety of interviewers to have found out what happened.''

The report defines satanism as ``sexual and physical abuse of children as part of rites directed to a magical or religious objective'' and says no evidence was found of this in each of the cases reported between 1987 and 1991.

Ritual abuse use of mystical powers to enslave children and keep them quiet was substantiated in three cases, but this was secondary to the sexual abuse and therefore not satanic.

Scrutiny showed that almost all the cases involved very poor people and at least six adults had previous convictions for sex offences; in four of those cases there were instances of incest or sexual assault in the previous generation.

Professor La Fontaine concludes: ``A belief in evil cults is convincing because it draws on powerful cultural axioms. People are reluctant to accept that parents, even those classed as social failures, will harm their own children, and even invite others to do so, but involvement with the devil explains it.

``The notion that unknown, powerful leaders control the cult revives an old myth of dangerous strangers. Demonising the marginal poor and linking them to unknown satanists turns intractable cases of abuse into manifestations of evil.''

One of the organisations criticised in the aftermath of the Orkney case, in which nine children were taken from their homes in February 1991, agreed with the findings of the report. The Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said it accepted criticism of interviewing techniques, now no longer used by the society. The NSPCC in London accepted that there was no evidence of satanic abuse but added: ``We hope that Professor La Fontaine's research will convince sceptics that abusers will go to almost any lengths to entrap and abuse children. The NSPCC knows that in a small number of cases abusers use rituals to frighten,intimidate and control children so that they can abuse them and maintain their silence.''

Valerie Sinason, a leading child psychotherapist and author of Treating Survivors of Satanist Aubse, said she believed that satanic abuse existed and that victims would now find it harder to be believed.

Ms Sinason questioned the approach of Professor La Fontaine's report and said there was still room for disagreement. She said: ``As an anthropologist, she understands that people in every culture have satanist fantasies. However, this does not mean that it cannot exist in some cases in reality.''

In Rochdale it was the fantasy of a six-year-old boy which led to 20 children being taken from their homes on suspicion of satanic abuse.

Police and social workers launched a series of raids after the boy told teachers that he had seen other children caged and drugged, babies being murdered and people digging up graves.

The children, aged from 2 to 16, were separated from their families for up to nine months, a situation brought to an end when a High Court judge confirmed fears that a mistake had been made.

Mr Justice Douglas Brown said social workers had become obsessed with the fantasies of the boy, whose parents had allowed him to watch horror videos, and then acted like amateurs.

Similar cases in the past five years have distressed communities in Nottingham, Manchester and Durham, causing widespread public concern and sparking debate about the rights of parents and the need to protect children.

Influence by American Christian fundamentalists led to allegations of satanic abuse surfacing in Britain in the late 1980s. The term originated in America after the publication in 1980 of Michelle Remembers by Lawrence Pazder, a psychiatrist, which told the story of a girl who recalled being ritually abused by satanists, one of whom was her mother.

The term satanic abuse spread among social workers after Catherine Gould, a clinical psychologist, produced a widely read paper which included a list of abuses such as sadistic play, harming animals and a preoccupation with faeces.

The term caught on in Britain when Pamela Klein, who worked at a rape crisis centre at Southern Illinois University, moved here in 1985. Mrs Klein made a video, aimed at police and social workers, demonstrating how to interview adult victims and worked at Bramshill Police Staff College in Hampshire developing courses on child abuse. She organised a conference on child abuse at Reading University in 1989 and theories of satanic abuse spread among social workers.

Recent thinking among social workers is also based on the work of David Finkelhor, author of Nursery Crimes, published in 1988. Mr Finkelhor, who endorsed unsubstantiated reports of ritual abuse, defined three types: mentally disturbed abusers acting singly or in couples; pseudo-satanic abuse in which abusers use occult trappings to abuse; and members of rings, which link into international networks of satanists.