Satanic ritual abuse/Bibliography

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Books

Richardson JT, Best J, Bromley DG (1991)The Satanism scare Aldine Transaction ISBN-10: 0202303799

Victor JS (1993) Satanic panic: the creation of a contemporary legend‎ - Open Court Publishing Company ISBN-10: 081269192X Reviewed in Sociology of Religion 1994 ("Victor acknowledges that some psychotic murderers may call themselves Satanists and that, "There are also some people who sexually abuse children, using rituals and perhaps references to the Devil to manipulate the children". There are some "pseudo-satanic" juvenile delinquents. But what does not appear to exist, the author implies, is a vast Satanist conspiracy or extensive networks of "ritual abuse" practitioners.")

Ellis W (2000) Raising the devil: Satanism, new religions, and the media‎ University Press of Kentucky 2000 - 332 pages ISBN-10: 0813121701 [ http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_american_folklore/v117/117.463magliocco.html Reviewed in Journal of American Folklore 117.463 (2004) 115-7] ("very few scholars have attempted what Bill Ellis does in this book: the careful, methodical study of a legend complex and its interaction with the surrounding context—social, historical, and global. The satanic legend complex of the late 1980s focused on Satanism as a worldwide conspiracy behind such crimes as child sexual abuse, ritual murder, and cattle mutilation. Raising the Devil traces this legend back to the early twentieth century and across the Atlantic to Britain, where it morphed into related variants. Ellis reveals a story that is nothing short of fascinating: how legends, the ultimate shape-shifters, diffuse, adapt, and are appropriated by ideologically motivated parties to fit specific cultural and historical circumstances.")

Gould C (1992) Diagnosis and treatment of ritually abused children in Sakheim, D.K. (1992). Out of Darkness: Exploring Satanism and Ritual Abuse. Lexington Books. ISBN 0-669-26962-X.

Lockwood C (1993) Other altars: Roots and Realities of Cultic and Satanic Ritual Abuse and Multiple Personality Disorder. Minneapolis, MN: Compcare Publishers.

Nathan D, M. Snedeker (1995) Satan's silence: ritual abuse and the making of a modern American witch hunt. Basic Books. "the authors show how children's testimony was led; nevertheless, civil libertarians shied away from challenging such cases: "demonization of child sexual abuse as society's ultimate evil has rendered it so holy as to be virtually immune to reasoned analysis." The authors believe that real sexual abuse, especially incest, is underreported, and recommend that investigators be better trained as well as granted only limited immunity from malpractice. More broadly, they see a need to educate children in such a way that they develop psychological and sexual integrity." Publishers' Weekly.

Ryder, D (1992). Breaking the Circle of Satanic Ritual Abuse: Recognizing and Recovering from the Hidden Trauma. Minneapolis, MN: CompCare Publishers, 265 isbn =0896382583. 

Ross, CA (1995). Satanic ritual abuse: Principles of treatment. University of Toronto Press, 228 isbn =0802073573.  From the author's preface:("Personally I have had clinical contact with about three hundred cases of multiple personality disorder... in which the person had memories of involvement in a destructive Satanic cult. ...In none of these cases has the reality of the memories been objectively validated and in several of them collateral history has proven that patient claims of Satanic ritual abuse were false")

Sinason (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. Routledge, 320. ISBN 0-415-10543-9. “from google books "Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse" defines, describes and deals with the clinical issues surrounding the treatment of survivors of ritual satanist abuse. Ritualist abuse is a double trauma--both a physical and mental torture--that is becoming increasingly more frequent and yet continues to face societal disbelief."” 

Waterman, Jill; Kelly, Robert J.;Oliveri, M. K.;and McCord, Jane (1993). Behind the Playground Walls - Sexual Abuse in Preschools. New York, London: The Guilford Press, 284-8. ISBN 0-89862-523-8.

Secondary sources (Peer-reviewed reviews)

Bernet W, Chang DK. (1997) The differential diagnosis of ritual abuse allegations. J Forensic Sci 42:32-8 PMID 8988572 ("This paper clarifies the behaviors that represent or may be mistaken for ritual abuse: Cult-based ritual abuse, pseudoritualistic abuse, activities by organized satanic groups, repetitive psychopathological abuse, sexual abuse by pedophiles, child pornography portraying ritual abuse, distorted memory, false memory, false report due to a severe mental disorder, pseudologia phantastica, adolescent behavior simulating ritual abuse, epidemic hysteria, deliberate lying, and hoaxes.")

Spanos NP et al. (1994) Past-life identities, UFO abductions, and satanic ritual abuse: the social construction of memories. Int J Clin Exp Hypn 42:433-46. PMID 7960296 ("People sometimes fantasize entire complex scenarios and later define these experiences as memories of actual events rather than as imaginings. This article examines research associated with three such phenomena: past-life experiences, UFO alien contact and abduction, and memory reports of childhood ritual satanic abuse. In each case, elicitation of the fantasy events is frequently associated with hypnotic procedures and structured interviews which provide strong and repeated demands for the requisite experiences, and which then legitimate the experiences as "real memories." Research associated with these phenomena supports the hypothesis that recall is reconstructive and organized in terms of current expectations and beliefs.")

Young WC (1993) Sadistic ritual abuse. An overview in detection and management. Prim Care 20:447-58. PMID 8356163 ("Sadistic ritual abuse, including satanic cult abuse, is emerging as a syndrome among people with severe dissociative disorders, including multiple personality disorder. ...")

Valente S (2000) Controversies and challenges of ritual abuse. J Psychosoc Nurs Ment Health Serv 38:8-17. PMID: 11105292 "Children who have survived ritual abuse have endured physical, psychological, and sexual trauma; brain-washing; and mind-altering drugs. Their trust in adults has been eroded. Their coping strategies include anxiety, denial, self-hypnosis, dissociation, and self-mutilation. Although reports of ritual abuse initially seem hard to believe, nurses have a responsibility to detect clues to abuse, diagnose the child's responses, and recognize controversial issues regarding ritual abuse. To evaluate ritual abuse, nurses should avoid interview strategies that influence the child's recall (e.g., coaching, suggestions) and recognize that some reports are discounted as false memories because they emerge from fantasy, distortions, innocent deceptions, false beliefs, lies, or adult coaching." [1]

Victor JS (1998) The Satanic Cult Scare and Allegations of Ritual Child Abuse. Sociological Perspectives 41:541-565 [2]. The rapid rise and decline of SRA accusations gives evidence to the volatility of a moral panic. Claims about ritual child abuse by satanic cults began to appear rather suddenly. The oldest known satanic cult "survivor" account was published in 1980 in the book, Michelle Remembers. SRA testimonials, accusations and rumors spread rapidly thereafter in the United States during the early 1980s and then declined rapidly during the early 1990s...So far, no law enforcement agency or researchstudy has found the kind of physical evidence needed to support accounts ofSRA. No one has turned up written or electronic communications, bank accountrecords, meetings in process, members who can identify leaders, or any of thevast number of bodies of people supposed murdered by satanic cults. Official government reports from several countries could find no such evidence to support claims about SRA. He cites official reports from the U.K., Netherlands, U.S., and the U.S. states of Michigan, Virginia and Washington.

Peer reviewed articles

Bottoms BL et al. (1997) “Jurors’ reactions to satanic ritual abuse allegations.” Child Abuse and Neglect 21(9):845-59.("... highly bizarre details may be discounted by jurors (particularly less religious jurors), but that jurors may set aside their skepticism of satanic ritual details and make judgments about child sexual abuse cases based on their perceptions of the credibility of nonsatanic allegations of harm.")

Bottoms BL, Davis SL (1997) The creation of satanic ritual abuse. J Social Clinical Psychol 16:111-228 ("Fears about satanic ritual child abuse swept the nation in the 1980s and 1990s, but were probably largely unfounded. In this article, we explore sociocultural, individual, and therapy-related factors that together may be responsible for the creation of ritual abuse allegations. We conclude that there are serious problems with embracing false ritual abuse claims and call for more responsible journalistic coverage of issues relating to child abuse, more research to identify factors that contribute to false allegations, and better therapeutic practices to aid people seeking psychological help.")

Bucky SF, Dalenberg C (1992) The relationship between training of mental health professionals and the reporting of ritual abuse and multiple personality disorder symptomatology. Journal of Psychology & Theology, 20(3), Special issue: Satanic ritual abuse: The current state of knowledge. 233-8.

Coons PM (1994) Reports of satanic ritual abuse: further implications about pseudomemories. Percept Mot Skills 78:1376-8. PMID 7936968

Fraser GA (1990). “Satanic ritual abuse: A cause of multiple personality disorder”. Special issue: In the shadow of Satan: The ritual abuse of children. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 55-60 "Satanic ritual abuse has been identified within the etiology of multiple personality disorder (MPD). Drawing directly from case material, George Fraser offers compelling clinical evidence of how such childhood experiences may lead to dissociation and personality disintegration. In his conclusions Dr. Fraser raises the interesting, though horrifying, possibility that Multiple Personality Disorder may actually contribute to the abuse cycle as individuals become perpetrators without the knowledge of their" primary" personality."

Gelb JL.1993 “Multiple personality disorder and satanic ritual abuse,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 27:701-8

Goodyear-Smith FA et al. (1998) Parents and other relatives accused of sexual abuse on the basis of recovered memories: a New Zealand family survey. N Z Med J 111:225-8. PMID 9695750 ( To survey New Zealand families where an alleged perpetrator and/or other family member denies an accusation involving the childhood molestation of one family member by another, based on a memory recovered in adulthood...Many accusations involved events of low base-rate probability including satanic ritual abuse. ... The data suggest that it is unlikely that many, if not most, of the memories of child sexual abuse recovered in adulthood are a true reflection of history)

Goodman GS et al. 1997 Children's religious knowledge: implications for understanding satanic ritual abuse allegations. Child Abuse Negl 21:1111-30.PMID 9422831 ("... children do not generally possess sufficient knowledge of satanic ritual abuse to make up false allegations on their own. However, many children have knowledge of satanism as well as nonreligious knowledge of violence, death, and illegal activities. It is possible that such knowledge could prompt an investigation of satanic ritual abuse or possibly serve as a starting point from which an allegation is erected")

Gould C (1992) “Ritual abuse, multiplicity, and mind-control.” Special Issue: Satanic ritual abuse: The current state of knowledge. J Psychol Theol 20:194-6

Gould C (1995). Denying ritual abuse of children. J Psychohistory, 22:329-39. [3] "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."

Jonker, Fred. “Reaction to Benjamin Rossen’s investigation of satanic ritual abuse in Oude Pekela,” Special Issue: “Satanic ritual abuse: The current state of knowledge.” Psychology and Theology 20(3) 1992 pp. 260-2

Kent S (1993). “Deviant Scripturalism and Ritual Satanic Abuse. II: Possible Masonic, Mormon, Magick, and Pagan influences”. Religion 23(4):355-367

Kent S (1993). “Deviant Scripturalism and Ritual Satanic Abuse Part One: Possible Judeo-Christian Influences”. Religion 23(23):229-241. "This study argues that readily accessible religious texts that often are central to our culture may provide inspiration to people who either want to sanctify their deviance or venerate the reputed god of this world (i.e. Satan). Using interviews and diaries from several alleged survivors, this study compares excerpts from their accounts with doctrinal precedents for satanic ritual abuse in deviant interpretations of the Judeo-Christian tradition. While the article stops short of stating that intergenerational satanic accounts are true, it insists that at least some of them are plausible." [4]

La Fontaine J S (1994) Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Abuse National Criminal Justice Reference Service (survey)ISBN 0-11-321797-8 ("Child sexual abuse involving organized and ritual abuse in England and Wales were studied by means of a survey of police and social service agencies and a review of case files on wards of the court. The analyses revealed that an estimated 242 cases of organized abuse occur each year; of these, about 21 cases involve allegations of ritual or satanic abuse. Organized abuse accounts for a small minority of all cases handled by child protection teams. However, no evidence was found that the sexual and physical abuse of children was part of rites directed to a magical or religious objective. In the three substantiated cases of ritual, not satanic, abuse, the ritual was secondary to the sexual abuse. ")

Leavitt F, Labott SM (2000) The role of media and hospital exposure on Rorschach response patterns by patients reporting satanic ritual abuse.” American Journal of Forensic Psychology 18:35-55.

Leavitt F, Labott SM (1998). Revision of the Word Association Test for assessing associations of patients reporting Satanic ritual abuse in childhood. J Clin Psychol 54:933-43. "Based on a sexual history, they were grouped into those reporting sexual abuse, those reporting satanic ritual abuse (SRA), and those without a history of sexual abuse (controls). In both studies, SRA patients gave significantly more total associations, significantly fewer normative associations, and significantly more satanic associations than did the other two groups. These results suggest that an experience base is shared by individuals reporting SRA that is not found in individuals who do not report satanic abuse (even if they do report sexual abuse). The implications of these findings are discussed from the perspective of arguments advanced by advocates and critics of SRA." [5]

Leavitt, F. (1994). “Clinical Correlates of Alleged Satanic Abuse and Less Controversial Sexual Molestation.”. Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal 18 (4): 387-92. doi:10.1016/0145-2134(94)90041-8. PMID 8187024 [6] "This study found that 39 women alleging satanic ritual abuse and 47 women reporting less controversial forms of sexual trauma as children were characterized by high but nondiscriminating levels of psychiatric pathology. Patients alleging satanic ritual abuse reported higher levels of dissociation, in the range often exhibited by patients with multiple personality disorders."'

McCulley D (1994) Satanic ritual abuse: A question of memory Psychol Theol 22:167-72

McCully, RS (1978) The laugh of satan: A study of a familial murderer. Personality Assessment 42:81-91

McCully RS. “Satan’s eclipse: A familial murderer six years later.” British J Projective Psychology and Personality 125(2) 1980 pp. 13-7

McShane C (1993) “Satanic sexual abuse: A paradigm” Affilia J Women Social Work 8

Mulhern S (1994) Satanism, ritual abuse, and multiple personality disorder: a sociohistorical perspective.Int J Clin Exp Hypn 42:265-88. PMID 7960286 ("During the past decade in North America, a growing number of mental health professionals have reported that between 25% and 50% of their patients in treatment for multiple personality disorder (MPD) have recovered early childhood traumatic memories of ritual torture, incestuous rape, sexual debauchery, sacrificial murder, infanticide, and cannibalism perpetrated by members of clandestine satanic cults. Although hundreds of local and federal police investigations have failed to corroborate patients' therapeutically constructed accounts, because the satanic etiology of MPD is logically coherent with the neodissociative, traumatic theory of psychopathology, conspiracy theory has emerged as the nucleus of a consistent pattern of contemporary clinical interpretation. Resolutely logical and thoroughly operational, ultrascientific psychodemonology remains paradoxically oblivious to its own irrational premises. When the hermetic logic of conspiracy theory is stripped away by historical and socio/psychological analysis, however, the hypothetical perpetrators of satanic ritual abuse simply disappear, leaving in their wake the very real human suffering of all those who have been caught up in the social delusion.")

Rockwell RB (1994). One psychiatrists view of Satanic ritual abuse. J Psychohistory 21:443-60.

Rogers ML 1992“The Oude Pekela incident: A case study of alleged SRA from the Netherlands.” Psychology and Theology, 20:257-59

Van Benschoten SC (1990) Multiple Personality Disorder and Satanic Ritual Abuse: the Issue Of Credibility Dissociation. III, No. 1 [7] ("... The MPI) patient's descriptions of experiences within the satanic group can neither be accepted as literally accurate in all respects, nor unequivocally dismissed as untrue. The literal truth is intricately and inextricably woven together with threads of misperception, suggestion, illusion, dissociation, and induced trance phenomena, to form the complex web which becomes the survivor's memories. Objective reality and experiential truth simply can not be disentangled with certainty.")

Articles

Lanning KV (1992) FBI Report Satanic Ritual Abuse Supervisory Special Agent Behavioral Science Unit National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. quotes - "This report documents FBI investigations into allegations of satanic ritual abuse, and essentially describes the consistent lack of evidence supporting these allegations. Extracts from conclusions: "There are many possible alternative answers to the question of why victims are alleging things that don't seem to be true. The first step in finding those answers is to admit the possibility that some of what the victims describe may not have happened. ... Some of what the victims allege may be true and accurate, some may be misperceived or distorted, some may be screened or symbolic, and some may be "contaminated" or false. ...The amount of "ritual" child abuse going on in this country depends on how you define the term. One documented example of what I might call "ritual" child abuse was the horror chronicled in the book A Death in White Bear Lake (Siegal, 1990.) The abuse in this case, however, had little to do with anyone's spiritual belief system. There are many children in the United States who, starting early in their lives, are severely psychologically, physically, and sexually traumatized by angry, sadistic parents or other adults. Such abuse, however, is not perpetrated only or primarily by satanists. ...Until hard evidence is obtained and corroborated, the public should not be frightened into believing that babies are being bred and eaten, that 50,000 missing children are being murdered in human sacrifices, or that satanists are taking over America's day care centers or institutions. No one can prove with absolute certainty that such activity has not occurred. The burden of proof, however, as it would be in a criminal prosecution, is on those who claim that it has occurred."

Benetts, Leslie ““Nightmares on Main Street”” Vanity Fair, June, 1993, pp 42-62, quote from Pg. 62 “To my surprise, (Lanning) admits he has never talked to a ritual abuse survivor””……(several weeks later, Lanning revised his story to say that he had spoken with ’’several dozen’’ survivors on an unofficial basis.)