From the British False Memory Societys Newsletter ( http://www.bfms.org.uk/Text_Assets/newslet_march2000.htm#Satanic )
 

New research supports existence of ‘satanic abuse’ - this was the claim made on BBC Radio 4’s flagship news programme Todayi. Thus a concept consigned to history following FBI research in the US and that of Professor Jean La Fontaine in the UK rose again - this time by virtue of the therapist’s couch.

The source of the claims was psychotherapist Valerie Sinason. The evidence was ‘clinical’ i.e. that deriving from interpretation of patient symptoms and narratives rather than empirical research. The stories included babies being secretly reared for ritual sacrifice in satanic orgies. These were the same types of claims being made over a decade ago in the UK in Nottingham and elsewhere. Following the discrediting of claims, belief was kept alive by the welfare professionals’ organisation the Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support (RAINS), a training video distributed by Manchester Rape Crisis Centre and the therapeutic excavation of histories among adults.

Sinason’s research claims were backed up by psychiatrist Dr Joan Coleman, the chair of RAINS. Dr Coleman was a contributor to the book Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse, edited by Ms Sinason, that made similar claims based on the beliefs of clinicians. The book was published in 1994 at the same time as Professor LaFontaine’s sceptical report was published by the Department of Health (DoH). Following on this Ms Sinason and her colleague at London’s psychoanalytic Tavistock Clinic, psychiatrist Rob Hale, persuaded the Department of Health to fund further research to see if ‘survivor testimony’ could be empirically validated.

Unlike some therapists who are content to accept patient narratives as ‘personal truth’ regardless of the external truth of the alleged events, Ms Sinason has always maintained that it is important to establish whether the events really took place: ‘it is crucial to discover as near to the historic truth as possible and have it confirmed. Where possible the real event needs to be objectively validated by someone who is not involved in the therapeutic relationship and whose task is to do precisely that - i.e. a police officer.’

Thus it was somewhat disconcerting to realise that Ms Sinason’s research had yet to be tested by police investigation though a senior officer in the Metropolitan Police was being assigned to this task. Why, if the objectivity of the claims was critical, was Ms Sinason prepared to go public about her findings? Even more puzzling was the fact that similar claims for Ms Sinason’s research findings had been made three and half years previously in an evangelical newspaper the New Christian Heraldii. Under the banner headline ‘Satanic abuse : It’s a Reality’ readers were told that ‘Although the DoH report is still under wraps, Ms Sinason is able to reveal that her past research has produced startling forensic evidence which will confound false memory theorists.’ While ‘publication of the report [had] been delayed to give police authorities time to investigate survivor account to try to bring the abusers to justice. The report [was] due out within the next three months.’

The reporter was Andrew Boyd, evangelical author of an influential but discredited ‘satanic abuse’ book Blasphemous Rumours. Despite his confidence that the report was official and the research sound, he nevertheless felt constrained to urge readers to "pray that the Sinason/Hale report does see the light of day."

Those sceptical of the claims and the methodological soundness of Ms Sinason’s previous objectivity looked forward to its speedy appearance. But months turned into years and there was still no news. In fact Ms Sinason became herself uncharacteristically silent on the matter.

So when she burst upon the airwaves it might be expected at the very least that the report itself had been filed with the DoH. Yet it turns out not to be the case. The research is neither official, nor has it been lodged with the DoH and the police investigation of the claims has been entrusted to a police officer working outside the remit of his official duties.

From this confusion one might infer that the research is neither more nor less certain in its conclusions than it was three and a half years ago, and that those conclusions may still be found wanting. So what motivated Sinason to go public at this stage?

The apparently flimsy nature of the research as revealed meant that the media feeding frenzy was bound to be short-lived. Yet for the small band of true believers centred around the 200 or so members of RAINS, the hard-core survivor movement and some evangelical activists, the hushed reverence accorded to Sinason’s claims by Today was both a vindication of their beliefs and a rallying cry. By tea-time it was not just old stalwarts like Joan Coleman who were prepared to back the crime that dare not speak its name, but a former barrister, Lee Moore confessed to satanic survivorhood.

Lee Moore is the chair and founder of the Association of Child Abuse lawyers - a network of 50 professionals dedicated to advocacy on behalf of child abuse victims. For the most part they are involved in personal injury litigation on behalf of those making retrospective allegations of abuse in institutions. These claims are possible outside normal limitation periods and because they are settled by insurance companies and may involve 6-figure claims brought as part of class actions.

On ACALs extensive websiteiii there is no mention of ‘satanic abuse’ and Ms Moore, who teamed up with ‘recovered memory’ therapist and former social worker Sue Richardson, criticised in the Cleveland report, to form ACAL, has previously gone public as a ‘sexual abuse survivor’. In the Times Education Supplementiv we were told:

From her earliest years, Lee Moore was repeatedly abused sexually and physically. Yet she was only helped to come to terms with the horrors she had been subjected to 40 years later, when she suffered a nervous breakdown and went into therapy.

With the help of her psychiatrist she pieced together her life of fear growing up in an organised abuse ring between the ages of three and 15. Lee Moore was abused by carers, friends and acquaintances both male and female. Her life was so traumatic that she had dissociated herself from it.

This is an appalling catalogue of horrors, if true, yet Ms Moore at this time felt constrained to refrain from disclosing the satanic elements with baby breeding and ritual sacrifice. The following week she was on a C4 panel discussing the Waterhouse report and the complaints of a ‘cover-up’ of paedophile rings networking society from high to low. While the other panellists put forward the speculative but plausible views that such networks were at large, Ms Moore added, to the embarrassment of her co-pannellists, her belief in the existence of ritual and satanic rings.

Here we find the key to Sinason’s willingness to go public. The Waterhouse findings were bound to increase societal anxiety about the hidden extent of child abuse with serious multiple abuse taking place under the nose of the authorities unchecked. But outside the existence of an active local faction of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality exploiting underage boys which was not linked to the most damning convictions for abuse, the Tribunal found no evidence of the networks and rings rumoured to underlie the abuse. Since much of the original scandal was media-driven through complaints by a handful of noisy individuals complaining of rings, it was hardly surprising that these same voices were those most prominent in the aftermath.

It was to these voices that Sinason’s research was intended to adhere. Shadowy networks of one sort might easily be linked - or be feeders for - those of an even more sinister hue: where satanists practice ritual child abuse or where paedophiles pretend to be satanists in order to abuse. This is ‘ring theory’ as promulgated in Lauren Stratford’s Satan’s Underground in fiction or by Teena Sorenson and Barbara Snow in academic circles.

Sorenson and Snow’s hypothesis of interlinking rings has been an important theoretical concept in ring theory from the late 80’sv. It was extrapolated from earlier sex, porn and prostitution ring theories together with the clinical research using Roland Summit’s child abuse accommodation syndrome. Sorenson and Snow were involved in a series of controversial ‘satanic’ cases in Utah and their research findings have been repeatedly criticised as questionable and unsoundvi. Yet their two thin studies have been cited since the original scare a decade ago through to the Newcastle nursery report Abuse in Early Yearsvii (now the subject of a libel action) as lending authority to a method of abuse ‘disclosure’ that is not only highly problematic, but may elicit and encourage bizarre and groundless allegations.

Fears of organised satanic rings sharpened the appetite for feeder rings. The latter concept drew not only on traditional vice notions of porn, drugs and prostitution, but the systematic corruption of children for this purpose. Starting off from this baseline and with an expectation of there being a cauldron of hidden abuse, the retrospective abuse trawls became a self-fulfilling prophecy in finding evidence of abuse - but stopped short of hard evidence for the rings. Despite the criss-crossing of careers and institutions of alleged abusers, these shadowy hypothetical networks remained as elusive as the satanic rings they had replaced.

Riding on the back of the inflated institutional ring claims and the Waterhouse report, satanic and ritual abuse believers can raise their flag once more. The irony is that their beliefs have, to a significant degree, created the ground they now rest on. At some point this flimsy platform will collapse, but until then we can look forward to yet more mischief and mayhem at the public’s - and possibly child protection’s - expense.
 

ii 5.10.96

iii www.abny.demon.co.uk/acal/

iv 29.1.99

v Sorensen, T., & Snow, B (1991) How children Tell: The process of disclosure in child sexual abuse. Child Welfare 70(1), 3-15

Snow, Barbara and Teena Sorensen. Ritualistic Child Abuse in a Neighbourhood Setting. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 5:4:474-487.

vi Jones, D. P. H. (1997) Gradual disclosure by sexual assault victims: A sacred cow? (Comment on Bradley (1996). Child Abuse and Neglect, 230, 879-880. Bradley, A. R. and

Wood, J. M. (1996). How do children tell? The disclosure process in child sexual abuse. Child Abuse and Neglect, 20, 881-891.

vii Barker, R, Jones, J, Saradjian, J and R Wardell, (1998) City of Newcastle on Tyne