The Broxtowe False Satanic Abuse Case
The 'Broxtowe Case' was the first case in the
U.K. where the Child Abuse Industry claimed that Satanic Ritual Abuse had
been uncovered but we will here prove, beyond doubt, that all
they had really done was to select a most disgusting high-profile case
of 'ordinary' intra-familial child abuse and grafted claims of SRA
onto it afterwards.
The Timeline in the leftmost column shows that the Broxtowe case really began in July 1986 when one of the children
from the T family [Colin] was taken into care. The boy was 'therapised' for a whole
year without mentioning anything remotely esoteric or occult, but, as the Timeline shows, in 1987 SRA was becoming the latest social work fad in the U.S. and without
official approval Christian social workers and Christian foster
mothers involved in the case began to indoctrinate [Colin] and the
other children with the motifs of Satanic Ritual Abuse which they had
been given from crusaders in the U.S. We will show you how
this happened and how these people, unconsciously or not, invented the
SRA components of Broxtowe, and forced false memories of horrific
criminal acts into the minds of children so young that they were unable
to
resist. The long-term trauma to these children caused by this indoctrination
has yet to be revealed.
The 'T' family at the centre of the horrid
activities were a typical example of the worst of the human
condition. living in squalor in Broxtowe, a 1930s built Nottinghamshire sink-estate
where they were always causing trouble with their neighbours and, their neighbours
claimed, neglecting their kids. Already in the hands of social
services, most of the adults and children was classed as ESN -
(Educationally sub-normal) and therefore already lived a life half-way
in and half-way out of reality.
No Doubt About It. The Broxtowe Kids Were
Awfully Abused Sexually and Physically But There Was Absolutely No
Evidence of Satanism
There is absolutely no doubt that incest
and physical violence took place and as the timeline records,
in February 1989 TEN adults from the extended family both male and
female were given extensive prison sentences. The case
involved 21 children linked to an extended family. The trial proved that there was
absolutely no involvement of Satanists or Satanism in the case - it
was all the figment of the minds of the Satan Hunters in social work
as we shall show below.
According to the official JET report, which
investigated the claims, the clique of believers in SRA in Broxtowe
had linked with and been manipulated by fundamentalist Christians from
the U.S. and the Media, (in particular The Cook Report who were working
an an 'expose' of SRA for that summer) but Nottinghamshire police had
thoroughly investigated all the claims, from children and adults
involved in the case, in great detail and found them false. The
police dispensed with the SRA claims and proceeded to prosecute on the
clear evidence of regular abuse in the case.
How a Clique of Satan Hunters tried to take over Nottingham Social Services
This created a conflict between the Social
Workers
and the Police. The Satan Hunters in Nottingham were involved in a
crusade to 'prove' SRA. They wanted to feature what they saw as a
Satanic Conspiracy to abuse. The police said it hadn't happened.
After checking all the evidence Nottingham Social Services backed
the police view which enraged the Satan Hunters in
Team4 (the special
social services team set up to oversee the Broxtowe case) who had
by that time already made a name for themselves amongst believers in SRA in social
work and the child therapy movement.
These crusaders defied the police and their social service director. They began
lecturing at Satan Seminars and conferences. They organised a new clique
within social work called RAINS
(Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support)
a group of radical therapists, social workers and doctors who are
active even unto this day in pushing the idea of SRA. Using
sensational media articles both in the national and trade press to ram
home their original contention that Broxtowe was a case of Satanic
Ritual Abuse.
![Social Work Today, article promoting Judith Dawson](confrontingdisbelief.jpg)
The Social Work press of the time, in particular
Social Work Today, the magazine of the
British Association of Social Workers (BASW),
gave Team4 and RAINS members extensive coverage and support for their
contentions with no balancing evidence whatsoever. The cutting from the Guardian (below left) shows
Valerie Sinason (a founder member of RAINS) pushing the SRA
Myth - she's still doing it today. The Guardian and other left-leaning newspapers also
promoted SRA as part of their feminist bias. The
image on the right shows a two page special which
Social Work Today used to promote the
idea of SRA to its rank and file. There was never any balancing reporting of any kind from
dissenters in social work who didn't believe in SRA or from
representatives of the beliefs which were being accused (Witches and
Satanists were never ever consulted).
In fact at the time
the SAFF was so worried at this bias that we spoke with a member of
BASW's committee, Mr Brian Todd and convinced him there was an
alternative view. He
was so angry at being deceived that he promised that if we put together a
report for the next BASW committee he would present it to them on the
day. We did. We wrote, printed and published a 40 page
presentation explaining everything about the inner workings of
Witchcraft and Satanism. When Todd tried to present it the
contingent of SRA
![How the Guardian helped along the SRA Myth](talkofdevil1.jpg)
believers
on the committee used the race-card to refuse it. They accused us (falsley and despicably) of
being Fascists and said that as BASW rules repudiated fascism they
couldn't accept our report. So 40 copies of an important report
from us, with key assertions and proof that SRA did not exist, which might have saved lives, was
consigned to the bin! The BASW committee also refused the SAFF affiliate membership and sent our cheque back!
When we discovered this wicked act we telephoned the secretary of BASW to complain about the untrue
Fascism allegation and to find out whether there was any other way we
could contribute. He became angry at our persistence and slammed the
phone down on us!
These people didn't want the truth, they wanted lies about Satanic Ritual Abuse.
Remember this well. One of the things believers in SRA always say
is that nobody but them can understand the implications of SRA because
nobody else in their profession knows enough about it. But when a
group like the SAFF or the Pagan Federation who DO know far more than
they offer to help they are not only rebuffed but viciously lied
about.
They seem to enjoy keeping others in the dark, better it be for them to manipulate the debate. Back to Broxtowe.
To halt the controversy caused by the crusading of a small number of his social workers the Director of Social
Work in Nottingham ordered a full joint social services and police enquiry into how
the Broxtowe case had been handled. This
Joint Enquiry Report
became known as the
JET report. It had a total overview of
the situation
and went through all the SRA allegations with a fine tooth comb,
building a comprehensive view of what had happened using the diaries of
the foster mothers, the police witness statements, tape recordings of
interviews with the kids and one-to-one interviews with all the people
involved.
The
JET report was
published in December 1989. It resoundingly criticised the social
workers and foster mothers involved for the practices used in
interrogating the children and also strongly complained of outside
interference from crusading child specialists and the media who combined
to import notorious Satanic Abuse Indicators from the U.S. into the
case at an early stage which corrupted the disclosure of the
children. The panel below right contains it's main conclusions
which are unequivocal.
Satanic abuse did NOT occur in the Broxtowe case.
JET report: SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS
1. That there is no evidence of Satanic ritual abuse in the Broxtowe case or its aftermath.
2. That there is no evidence of any other organised abuse in the Broxtowe case or its aftermath.
3. That there is no evidence of ritualistic abuse in the satellite cases.
4. That we are unable to identify any other children at risk or any
other perpetrators arising from the Broxtowe case and its aftermath.
5. That it is doubtful
whether the practice of the type of Satanic ritual abuse being
promulgated by the Social Services Department actually exists. It has
never been substantiated by empirical evidence. We have come to the
hypothesis based on [Melanie]'s case that evidence can actually be
"created" by social workers as a result of their own therapeutic
methods.
6. That the lack of joint working in the follow up to the Broxtowe case
led to a serious polarisation of the Police and Social Service
Departments. Initially it was the Police who declined to work with
Social Services on "bizarre cases", latterly the roles have been
reversed.
7. That parts of the
Social Services Department appear to have developed, over the last two
years, a belief system in ritualistic Satanic abuse which is unwittingly
resulting in children being encouraged to believe in and allege bizarre
abuse. This could lead eventually to grave injustice and if unchecked
it has the ingredients of a modern "witch hunt".
8. That if children in care continue to allege the most bizarre abuse to
Social Services staff who appear to accept it, and the Social Services
staff present these children to the Police weeks later, with the final
outcome that the ensuing Police interview discredits the disclosures,
then the relationships between Social Services and the Police will
completely collapse.
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The Initial report, which was never intended for public consumption,
ran to 600 pages and caused eruptions within Nottinghamshire
Social Services at every level. By naming and blaming the
unorthodox practices which some of the social workers had used to elicit
'evidence' from the children the
JET Report had exposed the inconsistencies in what was being claimed.
For example, foster mothers ferrying the children around in cars
to supposedly identify locations where 3 year olds had indicated babies
had been ritually sacrificed.
Or selectively constructing toddlers' responses to suit themselves e.g.:
"When a child said they had '"Killed
a baby and "then it was
alright", and then in the next sentence said that they had also killed a
relative (who is of course still alive)' the Satan Hunters simply
accepted the bit about killing a baby and omitted the rest! ',
The JET report not only threatened the entire facade of the Satan Hunters it also damaged the justification for the
![The Cook Report's special on Satanic Ritual Abuse, The Devil's Work](thedevilsworktitlescreen.jpg)
Roger Cook's
'The Devil's Work'
programme which had been designed to 'expose' Satanic Abuse to the
British Public. The social workers in Team4
had worked closely with the researcher for the programme and actually
manned the helplines after it was broadcast. But at this point
everything was being called into
question. The Satan Hunter clique began a campaign to
contradict the JET report. They went public in Seminars and conferences
to indoctrinate other social workers and therapists with their faulty
evidence. Not only that, they also insinuated that there was a police
conspiracy to cover up the evidence.
Nottinghamshire Social Service Department responded to
this campaign by ordering the JET people to condense their 600 page
report into a smaller 'sanitised' version without names, which could be
published to reveal the ridiculous things the social workers and foster
mothers had done to
try to create an SRA case out of Broxtowe.
This caused further eruptions at a national level
when politicians and government ministers got involved in the
controversy. Eventually Nottingham Social Services capitulated. They not
only failed to publish the JET report but actually legally threatened
anyone who tried to leak it.
Since then those who believe in Satanic Abuse have
consistently ignored the facts and referred in their manifold literature to the Broxtowe case
being the first 'proven' case of SRA in Britain. It is an abject LIE, but
the Broxtowe case is absolutely crucial to those who believe in the
existence of Satanic Abuse. The case is a foundation stone of
everything else which has happened afterwards. The whole edifice
of the millions of SRA believers who traverse the internet is built upon
it. Those who were involved in it but who were never publicly
censured, have gone on to promulgate the idea of Satanic Abuse in
books, meetings, lectures, seminars, television programs and articles
both here and abroad and it ha also spilled out into the general
'survivor' network where continued insistence upon recovered memories of
historical abuse now takes up enormous amounts of police time and
resources. We shall show how this happened.
All claims and cases of SRA which occurred in the U.K.
post Broxtowe were based upon the interrogatory techniques used to
elicit false memories from the Broxtowe children and have over
the years spread out not only to infect regular child protection but
also to create the massive adult false-memory industry which has
produced hundreds of thousands of 'victims' in Britain and created
satellite hysterias such as untrue allegations against celebrities
and VIPs. We will prove that this is the case by showing
how it was done, blow by blow, below, but this next section explains
just how those who believe in SRA try to interfere with natural justice
and censor facts which go against their obsessions.
The Jet Three
How Satan Hunters tried to suppress free speech on the internet
In 1997, in response to the continuing
misrepresentations of the conclusions in the JET report by the clique of
Satan Hunters who were involved with sensationalist media, three award
winning journalists David Hebditch, Nick Anning and Margaret Jervis saw
that Social Workers and therapists were being greatly mislead.
They were all professionally experienced and insiders in the areas
of social work/child protection who had been tracking the myth since
it's inception. Hebditch and Anning had a few years earlier published
the seminal
Porn Gold which was the first book to expose the
tentacles of the International pornography business. When they
tried to organise articles and documentaries on SRA Hebditch and
Anning had met with a media conspiracy to hide the truth about the false
claims of SRA. They experienced refusals for the commission of
documentaries
containing evidence of
the falsity of the scare, and even the cancellation of one documentary
half way through its production. Channel 4's Dispatches series was
particularly prejudiced over this and gave Satan Hunters a free-hand to
disseminate their poison.
See Bogus Devil Video here as an example:
![How the leaked JET report was first exposed](socialworkerwitchhunt.jpg)
The
'JET Three' saw that history was being re-written and that society was being damaged by it because the
JET report
(they had been sent a copy of it anonymously) discrediting the first
SRA case had been purposefully censored from public view.
This coincided with the explosion of information being uploaded to the
then relatively new world wide web. They made a conscious decision to
upload the JET report so that the public could read it and judge for
themselves.
The JET Report itself had warned that if the presentations of ritual
abuse information were not stopped there was the likelihood of a
"witch-hunt" developing which would result in grave injustice and
further harm to the children concerned by professional staff. "Tragically ,
our prediction proved to be well-founded with the subsequent misery
involving children and parents in Rochdale, the Orkney Islands and Ayr."
The publication of the JET Report caused panic in the ranks of believers in Satanic Abuse. Immediately Nottinghamshire Council sought legal
action and the JET Three were injuncted and charged. John Gwatkin, who had
actually been one of the ten people running the Enquiry (personnel were drawn from the police and social services)
was additionally charged with Breach of Confidence. Being a
whistleblower to get the facts of the SRA Myth out is a risky business
when dealing with an autocratic corrupt system which has a bottomless
pocket of ratepayers' money to waste!
The 'JET three' were all members of the National Union of Journalists so
the NUJ were informed and took on the case. Disappointingly their
legal people recommended the JET report should be taken down and that
the three would go to trial on the civil charges. With this
withdrawal of NUJ funding, the JET Three were in a precarious legal
position and it looked like the pro-SRAMists had won another battle to
hide facts from the public.
Margaret Jervis went home dejected but the more she thought about it the
more she brooded and the more she brooded the more outraged she became
at this travesty of justice. The JET Report was full of important FACTS
about Broxtowe which the public should see and yet it was being
censored. This courageous lady then cast around to organise
alternative funding, when she succeeded she told the lawyers that the
JET Three would fight on in the public interest. They began
structuring
their legal defence and obtained the support of Prof. Jean La fontaine
whose own 1994 report on SRA for the government, which also concluded
that SRA did not exist, has been suppressed and slandered by the
pro-SRAMist lobby. Soon their case was ready and their lawyer
presented it to Nottinghamshire council's lawyers - when they saw it
they caved in!
Events had outrun the power-shadow of the myth-mongers. By this time the
Broxtowe files were all over the world anyway through mirror sites in
the internet. Nottinghamshire Council then tried to threaten the mirror
sites with
injunctions (not just the links)! This was what made it a legal
cause
celebre at the time regarding free speech because if that had succeeded
it could
have brought down the entire internet. At that time there was no
case law
on the liability of servers so search terms in the UK would pick up the
mirror sites across the world. The JET Three case had excited a massive
'free speech' response
relating to internet freedom and thus Nottinghamshire Council's
lawyers
could see that the 'public domain argument' was lost anyway, so they
lifted the injunction and with it the charges. The council agreed to
meet John Gwatkin's legal costs as an ex-employee. So it was a moral and
a legal victory for all.
Had the
JET Three not had the facility of the internet there's no
doubt
that the hard copy injunction to cover-up the JET report would have
stood and YOU would still be in the dark about the machinations
surrounding the Broxtowe case. Freethinkers everywhere owe the JET Three
and particularly Margaret Jervis an eternal debt of gratitude for their
historic stand. What follows below is a partial review of the JET
report, don't forget that you can read a full unexpurgated copy of it
here.
How The Satan Hunters Conspire to Shuffle Their Evidence
The way that the pro-SRAMist lobby presents its 'evidence' is regularly found to be partial, misleading, manipulative and often economical with the truth.
For instance, on page 25 of Tim Tate's book Children for the Devil (
Ed: not now available in the U.K. because it was pulped for inaccurate
defamatory allegations but widely circulated and referred to by Satan
hunters in the U.S. and other areas outside the jurisdiction of the
U.K.
Courts. See here.) which he compiled from his close relationship with social workers in Nottingham he has Judith Dawson, leader of the Broxtowe social work Team4, say:
"It was a way for these very young children
to explain to us what had happened. But we were very careful to prevent
them discussing or agreeing the content between themselves. All the children were in separate foster homes and contact was minimal. "
But is this the truth? In the JET Report
it was pointed out that many of the children were fostered with their
siblings and that cross-contamination of their 'evidence' had occurred
not by accident but by design when the foster-mothers conducted open
discussions about SRA claims made by the other children. JET
had access to the tape-recordings made by the foster-parents from
which they say:
"Interestingly [John] tells his foster-mother that [Roberta] was wrong about the babies. Of similar age to
his sister and in the same foster home with her, his disclosing
cannot be separated from [Roberta]'s as it is clear that the foster
mother discusses things with them together."
There is ample evidence throughout the JET
report in the written statements given by the children that they have
been speaking and discussing things together.
Another mis-statement by Tate is when, in the book's Introduction he
insinuates that the police failed to do their job in the Broxtowe case.
"To give one simple example; had detectives in Nottingham carried out research into satanic worship they might have understood the significance of the testimony from the small boy who described what he called 'poppets' being used in ceremonies. Because
the police did not know that 'poppets' are a common feature of many
occult rites they dismissed the story as nonsense - and , with the
story, the credibility of the ritual-abuse allegations"
But this is NOT what happened. The JET Report, which had access to the taped interviews, puts it this way.
[Colin]'s speech
is never clear and on questioning he answers 'S'Lina' which becomes
'Selina' (because of the significance in the SRA literature of a Selina
as a Satanic figure). Likewise he mentions a little puppet but
corrects himself, this was translated by social workers into 'poppet' as
these are the dolls that witches are supposed to stick pins in.
Of course because the JET report was not then publicly
available, critics could not see this error and so it was allowed to
stand and is often quoted by believers in SRA as a 'fact'.
Additionally the JET people, who had access to
police records in the investigation as well as those of the social
workers clearly said the police had done everything they could
to check out the claims that Team4 had worked-up from the
Foster-mothers' diaries.
"The police had investigated locations
thoroughly, they were sceptical at the idea of the family murdering
children in a semi-detached council house, (particularly after
interviewing neighbours). They were aware that the adults (recalling SRA) were
totally unreliable, they were suspicious as to the validity of the
American literature and they had doubts about the interpretation of
the diaries. We were surprised to discover that the Police had
actually researched witchcraft and Satanism quite thoroughly. "
Of course, it was misrepresenting the
Nottinghamshire police in such ways that got Tate's book pulped when he
defamed Detective Superintendent Peter Cole who
was in charge of the Broxtowe investigation. He would have none of it
and ordered his solicitors to sue Tate and his publishers. Tate
lost and Children for the Devil was withdrawn.
In
1989 when Tate was liaising with Team4 and in the middle of preparing his programme on SRA,
he went to the occult bookshop in Leeds which he had, months before,
targeted as the 'patsy' for his Cook Report on Satanic Ritual Abuse.
Tate went there incognito to purchase occult paraphernalia.
Paraphernalia which was later used in a mock Satanic Initiation which
Tate filmed and put into his programme to 'prove' the prevalence of Satanism in Britain! The manager serving him smelled a rat and asked him outright who the items were for and whether he was a journalist. Tate, flustered, replied that he worked at a the
Keighley
News, a parochial local rag. This was not a lie, because in his
past that is where he had worked, but of course it was a key
misdirection. If he had been honest and said ' I work for the Cook
Report' the manager would have thrown him out minus the paraphernalia
and made the 'entrapment' of the shop very much more difficult.
The inset illustration is of the credit-card voucher Tate signed when he
made that purchase. (Full Story here).
The
assertions of everyone involved in promoting the idea of SRA should be
questioned for often they are not what they seem.
The reader may ask why are we treating at such length with the mistakes of Tim Tate?
The answer is that he is one of those most responsible
for promoting the idea of Satanic Ritual Abuse in Britain and therefore
must
answer questions upon it if his research has been found
faulty. He may not be comfortable with the SAFF regularly
testing his research and writings but Tate has been the
'Witchfinder General'. He has acted as a bridge between the radical
feminist lobby in social work and the Christian fundamentalists who have
kept the myth alive. We
have tracked him in detail over the years and have discovered recently
that he is also now involved in the controversies about
VIPs in Westminster supposedly abusing children (see here).
Not only that but by his own admission he is actually providing the
Metropolitan police with information on ritual abuse. By questioning
Tate's track-record we can get an objective perspective of the
perspicacity of the claims he and his Satan Hunter friends make. Some people would say it is the SAFF's duty to take him to task.
Poppets? or Puppets? or Witch dolls?
or just NSPCC flim-flam?
What the NSPCC therapists gave [Colin] to play with immediately before he began talking about Witches for the first time.
- Witches costumes
- Monsters placed in a circle in sand
- Flowing gowns
- Snakes
- Spiders
- Small unclothed baby dolls buried
in the sand
- Toy syringes for extracting blood
- A toy medical kit
- Masks
- Mr Pooh Bear
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The Timeline (leftmost column) shows that the first
inklings of Witches, the sacrifice of sheep and the killing of babies
which occurred in the Broxtowe case came from [Colin] a disturbed FOUR YEAR
OLD in January 1987. He had been taken into care a year
earlier.
During his first year in care he made absolutely no references to occult things.
During his first year in care [Colin] made absolutely no references to occult things. Then suddenly it happened; immediately following a course of
therapy at the NSPCC's child-unit in Nottingham which just happened to
employ an experimental and now discredited method of disclosure therapy
with children which involved the use of Character Dolls. One of the forerunners in the use of this 'Sand-Pit' method
was the U.S. fundamentalist Satan Hunter Catherine Gould who was also
the first to draw-up the infamous Satanic Indicators - a list of things
which supposedly showed whether a child had been Satanically abused (see later)
The children were allowed to play with the dolls
and describe their 'abuse'. What were those toys that
[Colin] was encouraged to play with?
WITCH COSTUMES AND MONSTERS.
Take a look at the blue panel on the right.
The image below shows the
Independent on Sunday
reported it (
Children's games that bred alarm over Satanism). There was massive publicity about this
at the time so that
'Witch Dolls' became a shibboleth of the case just
as allowing the kids to watch
'Video Nasties' became the keynote of the
![Children's Games That Bred Alarm Over Satanism, Rosie Waterhouse](childrensgames.gif)
Rochdale false SRA case in the minds of the public sometime later.
At this point when it becomes obvious to readers that Broxtowe
was a travesty observers usually fall into two camps. Those who still
insist in believing in SRA at all costs (cognitive dissonance) and
insist that we are lying (despite the documentary proof we provide) and
those who start to see how most of the false allegations were generated.
To try to bring these camps together we have reproduced an extract from
the second police investigations into the Broxtowe SRA claims (the
investigation which the JET team ordered to get to the bottom of it
all) Here they are:
What Happened When The Police Checked out the Allegations of Children and Adults at Broxtowe?
"A decision was made at the start of the Enquiry that these investigations would include both the Police
and the Social Workers in order to obtain a balanced view. We
started the Enquiry with an open mind and did not know where it would
lead us. All of the team were prepared to believe that Satanic abuse
could be a reality and we approached our task with an initial premise
that it was true until proved otherwise. A
number of places had been indicated by the three adult witnesses and
by the children during 1988 as locations for Satanic ritual abuse
ceremonies. Many of these had been investigated during the earlier
Gollom enquiry but were reinvestigated. They included the following:-
Wollaton Hall The children and [Mabel] and [June] (Ed: both adults) identified tunnels and a room. They do not exist.
St Mary's Church The children identified tunnels and an underground room. They do not exist.
Private Dwelling, Ruddington [Mabel] identified a room under the stables. It does not exist.
Old Lodge Gates The children and [Mabel] identified tunnels running to Wollaton Hall. They do not exist.
Private Dwelling, Derby Road The
children, and [Mabel] and [June] alleged an underground room, tunnels
leading to Wollaton Hall and an outdoor swimming pool. The former do not exist and the latter which is indoors did not exist at the time of the disclosures.
(On audio tape [Mabel] claimed that it was an outdoor swimming pool
and that the police must have been blind if they could not see it.)
Private Dwelling, Lenton Avenue [June] identified a swimming pool. It does not exist.
With respect to these premises it is clear that the children and the adults of the extended family had not been telling the truth.
As
[Mabel] and [Vanessa] were the corroborating adults from the extended
family we interviewed them and the audio-tapes are available. [Mabel]
gave us an amazing description of the rooms under Wollaton Hall, the
entrances and the tunnel lit by torchlights leading to Derby Road. On being taken to Wollaton Hall she could not identify anything and it was apparent that she had little knowledge of the place.
The Enquiry Team took [Vanessa] for a
trip into Derbyshire and although it was obvious that she had no idea
where she was she identified a house that she claimed had a butler, a
secret passage and an underground room with four dead bodies in it.
The Enquiry team later visited this property and found that it was a
complete fabrication.
[June] the third corroborative member of the extended family had already made a statement of retraction to the Police on the 22nd August 1988. She confirmed to us that this second statement was the truth and that she still stood by it.
In it she states that she was interviewed by her social worker about
20 times before she made her Affidavit to the Wardship Court about witch
parties and big houses. In this statement [June] claims that the information she gave subsequently misled the Wardship Court and that her evidence was the result of "pressure" from her social worker. She comments that the only things that she knows about
witchcraft and magic are "the things I've seen on the telly" and with reference to [Mabel] "I know she is telling lies".
(Ed: if [June's] statement above is true it means that her social workers interfered with the course of justice and could be prosecuted for contempt of court, no wonder they didn't want this stuff out! )
All of these educationally sub-normal adults will tell you anything, have suggested the impossible and have been found to be lying in every respect that could actually be checked.
They are highly suggestible and will relate anything that comes into
their heads. We would suggest that the video tape made by [Mabel] is a
good example of this. In our view they could not be considered corroborative witnesses of anything that the children have said.
At the end of these
investigations we could not find any evidence to support the children's
disclosures and in our view the apparent corroboration by the adult members of the family (claimed by believers in SRA) was illusory.
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So nothing, absolutely nothing, checked out
from the allegations of satanism made by the adult victims in the Broxtowe family. A Big Fat Zero. Nada. Zilch.
All that Team4 were left with were the prompted
ramblings of the small children in the case. Of course very young
children aren't expected to have an adult's memory or the insight to
explain what is in their minds and so their words must be interpreted by
adults and here lies the problem. How would Team4 and their foster-mothers interpret?
Well an example of how Team4 approached the questioning of [Melanie] who was 17 years old at the time will give us a clue. [Melanie] had 'intimated that young children had been murdered' and so according to the JET Report Team4 worked on her for three months before providing the JET with a 35 page
statement which they said proved their contentions that SRA was involved.
What the statement provided was clear evidence of interrogation techniques which bordered on brainwashing.
The JET people were so shocked by this that they included one section
in their report to convey the pressure [Melanie] was put under to 'confess'
and we have reproduced it in the panel below:
"The following gives a flavour of the type of questions asked and some of [Melanie]'s answers (which are in
brackets and italicised in red).
"Your father's killed a baby more than once."
"We know that your father delivered a foetus and aborted it - he drank the baby's blood"
(M. I didn't know anything about that)
"You tell us about things that happen when you were there"
(M. I ate the stomach my dad ate the head)
"What part of the head?"
"What's special about the stomach?"
"Did anybody say why you should eat the baby?"
"Dad brought the baby and the wheelie bin, what then?"
"When you ate the stomach, were you told it was good for you?"
"Did you say any words, prayers, chants?"
"That's one occasion when you had to eat part of a baby - I'd like you
to tell us about parties where that happened."
"Other parties where babies are killed."
"You had to eat babies more than once"
(M. I can't remember)
"We think you did."
"Whose baby?"
"Who brought it?"
"A name?"
"Difficult to remember who asked you to kill the baby?"
(M. I didn't kill it)
"Who told you to?"
"Did she give you a knife?"
(M. No)
"I think she did."
"I think you had to do it you were scared something might happen to you."
"Did the social worker stay?"
"You were asked to kill the baby."
"You had to do it."
"How was it killed?"
"Last time we met you talked about an 11 year old boy being killed"
(M. I heard it on the news, he was murdered and thrown in the Trent, I don't know who by)
"Let's have names of older children you've seen murdered"
(M. At a house someone murdered a kid that's all I remember)
"How old?"
"Who was there?"
"Who ate it?"
"Did they have to drink the blood?"
"We think you were made to."
"Did many people get buried in mum's back garden?"
"That's not right you said babies were buried somewhere else."
"Who was buried in the front garden?"
"Mum put the knife in and made you do it."
"You did it that's why you're frightened."
"You quite liked drinking blood and that made you guilty."
"She made you eat him."
Does mum wear special clothes?"
"Tell us about the adults that have been killed"
"and the Church."
"Did you sexually abuse the little boy before you were made to kill it?"
"Did someone give birth to that baby at the big house?"
"When you got there was the lady aborting the baby?"
"What did it taste like?"
"What parts did you eat?"
"What other reasons did people in your family kill babies for?"
"At the Church drinking blood"
"Who told dad to kill?"
(M. Don't know)
"I think you did."
"Does he murder on any special days or times?"
"[Colin] talked to me about granddad drinking blood what would [Colin] say he drinks blood for?"
"[Colin] says [Melanie] was there"
(M. To please the Devil)
"That's what [Colin] was told is that what [Melanie] was told?"
"You were told the Devil would be pleased."
"[Colin] was told it would do special things for him.
Things your family did for the Devil."
"Things happened to [John], [Roberta], special things I don't know if special things happened to
you, you haven't told us yet."
"Your family did this because they believe in the Devil"
"Who else had the same belief outside the family?"
"Names?"
"Outside the family"
(M. Robin, the whole Church)
"Some people in this are important people."
"You killed at least one baby, more than one, 3?, 30? how many?"
"If you didn't feel (guilty) you might go on killing."
|
Team4 and their media supporter, Tate, have
told many
people that the answers elicited from people and children under
questioning like this is reliable and trustworthy. I don't think
so do you?
![Nottingham Social Services 'disclosure' Dungeon](nottinghamsocialservicesdisclosuredungeon.jpg)
To
an outsider this interview smacks of a
clique of obsessive believers in SRA who are ready to go outside all normal social work rules and
regulations to browbeat peoplea child into confirming their obsessive ideas of
Satanic Ritual Abuse.
Other people might see it as a modern form of the Inquisition, where Inquisitors of the state 'use any and every method to 'put the question'
and press people in their clutches into naming others whom the
inquisitors will queue for the same treatment to confirm the devil's
work.
There is another imperative, that of the power-shadow of the social
workers in Nottingham. The tacit control that social workers have over the
lives of their 'clients'. A comment uncovered by the JET report
makes the tangled web of intrigue and false allegations frighteningly
clear, as well as the terrible hold that crusading social workers have
over the lives of their charges when [June] an adult in the extended
family who had earlier confirmed SRA, recanted and says:
"I have seen [Mabel] many times over the past few months and she's told
me she's been telling the Social Services about witch parties. I
know she's telling lies... [Mabel] has told me that if I tell the
Social Services about witch parties at big houses I might have a
chance of getting my daughter back (June's child is in care) my social
worker's told me if I 'tell the truth' I could get my daughter back...
...everything I have told (the social worker) is lies. I've told her
the truth more than once but she wouldn't believe me so I just said
anything.... the only things I know about witchcraft and magic are
the things I've seen on the telly.
What the little Broxtowe Children actually said:
So eventually we get around to the children themselves. They were
from three to seven years old. Although Tate and his SRA buddies
like to insinuate that all 21 Broxtowe children were satanically abused.
The JET report states that only FOUR children made allegations,
under prompting, that could have been significant: In particular
[Colin] contributes a mammoth proportion of the 'tales' when compared
with the others.
"Although
it has been stated that social workers were convinced by the number
of children telling the same story the significant diaries really
reduce to four children in three foster homes."
How the Clique of Believers in SRA unconsciously twist the ramblings of children to suit themselves and their narrative.
The very first chapter of Tim Tate's book Children for the Devil, is titled. A Conspiracy of Toddlers,
and seeks to convince the reader that all the cases which Satan Hunters
have logged over the years have consistent evidence of the same type
of Satanic Abuses and that the very similarity of the accusations from disparate children is proof that they are telling the truth. On 19th September 1989 Tim Tate was interviewed on the BBC World Service Outlook radio programme and said:
"Yes. And the details do appear to be very similar across
the world. I think the best way of summing it up is the way it was put
to me. If children all over the world are giving you identical details
of bizarre abuse either you have an international conspiracy of
toddlers, which seems unlikely or you have something rather more
organised on an adult basis."
Judith Dawson, leader of
Team4 also appeared in the same
programme backing up Tate and opining her belief in the existence of
satanic Ritual Abuse. Bear in mind two things here: (1) the
Broxtowe trial had finalised earlier that year and had proved that there
was NO Satanic abuse involved in that case yet the Satan Hunters
involved in it were still trying to convince outsiders that there
was. (2) The JET inquiry had opened in July 10th 1989 and had yet
to report on how the overall investigation had been undertaken and whether there were any faults in it.
![Catherine Gould's List of Satanic Indicators](gouldlist1.jpg)
Two years later on, in his book Children for the Devil ,
Tate introduces Pamela Hudson, a Christian fundamentalist Satan Hunter
from the U.S. In 1991 Hudson published her book Ritual Child Abuse
which has since become required reading for believers in SRA. The
'research' she used in that book was refined over earlier years and
developed in conjunction with the fundamentalist Christine Gould
(Ed: who works out of the Calvary Chapel of West Covina in the U.S.A.
and the Los Angeles Ritual Abuse Task Force - the latter is a collection
of feminists who never ever found a guilty satanist but who did cause
evacuations of buildings claiming that Witches had tried to kill them
with poisoned gas - it was all nonsense of course).
It was Catherine Gould who developed the very first Satanic Abuse Indicators
which listed 29 things which would tell you if your child had been
satanically abused. It is infamous for indicating false cases of SRA and
causing suffering around the world ; see pic (right)
Hudson's work amplifed and expanded on that, though neatly left out some bits such as where Gould maintains that 'farting at the dinner table is a sign of Satanic Abuse' and other things which were clearly stupid.
As you can See Gould's list included 29 'indicators', Hudson's Ritual Child Abuse
was an attempt to statistically analyse claimed (but as yet unproven) incidents of SRA around the
world to portray a consistency in childrens' claims. She did this through a
'questionnaire' to believers ( which was first distributed in March 1989 almost
synchroniously with the Broxtowe trial) and by cross-referencing claimed
cases in the U.S. (such as the McMartin pre-school case) which were
later, like Broxtowe, proved false. Hudson came up with 8 primary
indicators of SRA: These were:
l . Compulsive, erotic behaviour, acting out the sex acts.
2 A sudden extreme fear of the bathroom, bathing, washing, rain.
3. Nightmares, Night terrors, Night Sweats.
4. Extremely high anxiety, fearful of being separated from parents, school refusal.
5. Hyperagression, temper tantrums, oppositional behaviour and school disruptiveness.
6. Sudden eating disorder, refuses meat, catsup (ketchup), spaghetti, tomatoes.
7. Fearful of going to bed, the dark, resists bedtime, will not sleep alone.
8. Vomiting for no apparent reason, abdominal pain.
It will be clear to all parents that using
this checklist 99.9% of children would be diagnosed as having been
Satanically abused. It could only have been written by a spinster!
The child who never has nightmares, eats everything put in front of
him, washes and cleans his teeth without being asked, and rushes
to go to bed simply does not exist. Even more telling is the
phrase
'Vomiting for no apparent reason' when all mothers know
that kids regularly fail to wash their hands after going to the toilet
and then suck their fingers afterwards, causing occasional tummy upsets.
In bigging up Hudson and trying to establish the 'pattern' of SRA Tate writes:
"What Hudson was hearing from the children she
counselled in 1984 — and still hears today — was a bizarre litany of
serious criminal offences apparently committed in the course of
obscene religious ceremonies. Simultaneously other therapists
and law-enforcement agents were picking up remarkably similar stories
from children - mostly under school-age — throughout the United States." (Children for the Devil pp2)
On the next page Tate introduces Sandi Gallant
to his readers to 'corroborate' the fact that all the children appear to be talking
about the same
'pattern' of abuses.
"....but therapists and police couldn't ignore the pattern that was emerging, the more so since it appeared to correspond with earlier intelligence reports which law enforcement had been unable to substantiate. According to San Francisco Police Intelligence Officer, Sandi: Gallant
"In 1980 rumours about animal mutilation and human
sacrifice began circulating throughout the law-enforcement community.
Despite the bizarreness of the stories, law enforcement was concerned because the accounts came from such different parts of the
country. However, during the next four years investigators were never
able to prove that any of the rumoured homicides had occurred. Today the
stories are not only more widespread, but also more bizarre. Young children throughout the country describe either participating in or observing homicides of other young children or adults in connection with ritualistic activity."
Tate says: "Police officers like Gallant took the
emerging pattern sufficiently seriously to compile intelligence dossiers on the major satanic organisations based in their areas. "
(Children for the Devil pp4)
This all sounds like a large weight of evidence
to suggest that leading edge social workers and child protection groups
were discovering a new type of child abuse. However what Tate fails to mention to his reader is that
three years before he published his book Gallant
had actually had a public dispute with Pamela Hudson at a 1988 U.S. SRA
Conference over the fact that she (Gallant) believed that many of the
stories being related were contaminated by preconceived ideas from
parents and therapists.
So the police were not
in agreement with Pamela Hudson and other Satan Hunters. As early as
1988 Gallant and Hudson clashed on the veracity of the tales.
This is what Gallant actually said:
Q: Is contamination of the witnesses a problem?
A: Sandi Gallant: "I see it as a real serious problem. In fact. at this conference that I spoke at where Pam Hudson was also speaking, we disagreed on that.
l feel that it's extremely imperative that there be little if any
contamination of a case; that questions be very broad-based. The
children should actually respond in narrative form without really
point-blank questions being asked.
Hudson feels quite the opposite of that.
I also feel it’s very important that parents and adult survivors—even
though I think it's very necessary that they have support groups—what
concerns me about these groups is that I believe there's a lot of
contamination going on, and people feed off of one other, and then what
happened to their child yesterday is happening to someone else's child
today, because the parents are asking very few questions.
Or what happened to adult survivors, that's talked about in the group,
tomorrow is happening to another survivor in the group, in the memories,
and that concerns me greatly. I don't think it's helping this whole issue at all. I think it‘s just further confusing it.
Source: Green Egg magazine, October 1988.
|
Randy Emon's Public Contrition Hereunder
Shows How Dangerous Mixing Religious Beliefs and Policing can be.
I am personally convinced I helped create the hysteria that put Paul Ingram
in jail. In 1986 I participated in a video called AMERICA'S BEST KEPT
SECRET in which Mike Warnke also appeared.
(Ed: See Timeline for the September 1986 cult-crime seminar at
which Gallant spoke alongside fundie Mike Warnke (of Mike Warnke
Ministries). Note also that fundie Maureen Davies from the Reachout
Trust who was instrumental in propagating the SRA myth in UK during
1988-1994 and who handled the helplines on Tate's ill-fated Cook Report
was also in touch with and obtaining 'evidence' from Mike Warnke
Ministries).
Because I was a cop and also a
Christian I believed other Christians who told horrific satanic stories would
certainly not fabricate their accounts.
I later taught some 5,000 law enforcement
personnel. After about 4-5 years of teaching the existence of satanic
criminals rife in America I was challenged to examine the evidence.
I realized it was I who had been buffalloed.
Prior to that I participated in other video documentaries such as:
IN THE NAME OF SATAN;
DEVIL WORSHIP, THE RISE OF SATANISM -
1989 Jeremiah Films. (Ed:
Maureen Davies also appeared giving 'evidence' in this sectarian
propaganda video , as did Audrey Harper, a director of the fundie
Reachout Trust who was filmed as an SRA 'victim' on the Cook Report even
though her allegations had been fully checked out years previously by
Surrey police (TWICE) and found 'no case to answer!)
HALLOWEEN TRICK OR TREAT
and a few other local documentaries in L.A.
When I changed my viewpoint due to the lack of empirical research or physical evidence to support the SRA claims I was quickly ostracised by my colleagues.
America has been hoodwinked and many other cops have also bought into this modern myth.
Randy Emon: Sergeant (retired) Baldwin Park Police Dept., Calif.
[Source:] Reproduced with kind permission of www.skepticfiles.org |
Now of course it may be that Tim Tate didn't know that Sandi Gallant had
changed her position and had found through her detailed investigation
of claimed SRA cases in the U.S. that many of them were based on
hysteria. Tate's universal expertise in this issue as a founder
member of the clique that imported the SRA myth to U.K. shores, who
injected the Satanic Indicators into the Broxtowe case, who supported
and campaigned for Team4, who appeared at satan seminars with them, and
who researched and co-produced that despicable Cook Report which
unveiled allegations of SRA to the British public in July 1989 but eventually turned
out to be wrong in almost all respects, might not have heard about Gallant's scepticism about SRA.
"America has been hoodwinked and many other cops have also bought into this modern myth".
But did Tate also not hear about the unfortunately named
U.S. 'Cult-Cop' Randy Emon's public
retraction of his prior beliefs on SRA? See the panel alongside
and weep for the small children sucked into this maelstrom of lying, left
to go through life by being brainwashed and traumatised by people who set out to
'help' them. This is what Emon said:
"America has been hoodwinked and many other cops have also bought into this modern myth". It does rather undermine the advocacy of Tate's, writings, don't you
think, when the SAFF can find
SO many instances where his
research
can be countermanded? Is it right that he continues to try to
persuade readers that there is a PATTERN when in reality no pattern
exists save in the minds of obsessed Satan Hunters?
THE 'PATTERN' OF SRA
Tim Tate has spent considerable time in interviews and in his
own writings insisting that there is a
'pattern' which proves the
existence of SRA
but there wasn't any pattern at all. There wasn't a
'Conspiracy of Toddlers' but a conspiracy of therapists and hysterical
parents pushed ever onwards by media voracious for sensational stories. We will show you it now, below.
Further on in his book Tate is upbeat when he introduces Pamela Klein on page 266. He describes her as
'a highly respected Chicago-based child sexual-abuse therapist.'
![Judge dismisses expertise of Pamela Klein](judgedismissesklein1.jpg)
Do
you believe him?
If Klein is respected it is only within the confines
of the obsessive SRA clique because in 1989 she gave a lecture to
Social Workers in Nottingham about SRA in the same month her
'commrade in arms' Jacquie Balodis who had earlier joined with
Klein to give a lecture on SRA to Kansas City police officers, was
telling the UK Sunday Sport that she had
'Skinned her Baby for Satan'. It was of course a lie.
I'm afraid Klein's own work on SRA didn't turn out too good in the long run
"...in the
Chicago area, Pamela Klein conducted over 50 interviews with a young
girl, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Fittanto. Their daughter
revealed to Pamela Klein vivid details of their parents' involvement in
satanic cannibalism, including mutilation. The judge ruled that
Ms. Klein was not a bonafide therapist and that she was responsible for
teaching the child to believe the horrendous fantasies. The
father was charged with molestation, but the charges were later
dropped. John Fittanto subsequently filed a million dollar lawsuit
against Pamela Klein. Source:
![Pamela Klein](pamelakleinrumourfuelledfearsshort.jpg)
Perhaps Tate thought a lot of Klein because she had been used as a consultant by the Cook Report to advise on his trashy
Devil's Work'
programme screened on July 17th 1989?
In fact Klein was very
active in the 1990s - she helped export the SRA myth to Australia and to New
Zealand. Look what the Mail on Sunday said about her activities:
The cutting on the right came from the Daily Mail 25th April 1994, they didn't think much of Klein's expertise in SRA either.
To convince readers of his 'Pattern' Tate then unveils extracts
from one the
Broxtowe foster-mother's diaries (The foster mothers had been told to
keep diaries by the Wardship judge ) where they recorded conversations
with the children in a casual manner. The child's words are in
Red, the foster-mother's in black and Tate's comment is in Green.
"Wednesday, 17 May 1989
’When Mr Pooh-pants goes to the witch parties — well, he’s
horrible.’
’Why?’
‘ ’Cause he’s the boss. We have to call him “High Man".’
’Do you?’
“Yes, and Mr Brown [a coloured adult male identified by several
children] because they say, “Children - come here.” ’
“’Children come here?" — what do you mean?’
’Well, Mr Pooh-pants says to me: “Number One, come here." We
have numbers — but Mr Pooh-pants and Mr Brown don't have
numbers."
Tate infers that a coloured
adult male has been categorically identified by three children
independently as a 'High Man'. The implication is that 'Brown' is some
kind of 'Man in Black' for the Broxtowe 'coven'; an outsider who runs things, but when the evidence
Tate does NOT tell his reader about is revealed it shows that this is a step too far. The JET report states:
"The style of the diaries changes with the foster parents taking an
interrogative approach in a desire to elicit more information and using
many leading questions e.g. Have you been to this big house? Do you know Tony? Is Mr. Brown there? Have you ever been to a farm?"
Tate appears to ignore the fact that children,
particularly young children who may not yet be totally in control of
their own bowels frequently mention poo. Tate says that 'the conversation he quoted could have been replicated 3,000 miles away'. PRECISELY!
Tate appears not to notice two things. Firstly the significance between 'a number one' and 'a number two' being
common questions to not-quite-potty-trained children, as is 'wee-wee' and 'poo-poo'.
Secondly he also overlooks the fact that the NSPCC unit which
therapised these children had a model of Pooh Bear that they played with along with the Monsters and Witch Costumes! Mister Pooh!
It
is often difficult to take to task the accusations made by the
advocates of SRA because of the secrecy and confidentiality of the
documents they are privy to. Tate for instance appears to have
access to the foster mothers' diaries and other insider information from Team4
whereas we are denied it, but thankfully some of the SRA crowd reveal
their hands. In Beatrix Campbell's discredited documentary Listen to the Children (which you can see extracts from here
) there are momentary shots of some of the
scrappily written 'diaries' which the foster mothers completed,
including the
one Tate refers to. When we checked that page we found that Tate had
omitted some of the conversation, because the child went on to
say:
— but Mr Pooh-pants and Mr Brown don't have numbers, but my mum and my family all do"
"What number is your mum?
"Number 1"
So although the child has contradicted itself in the course of the
conversation the contradiction is either ignored or censored. Firstly he says
he is No.1. Then in the bit Tate
did not record he says that his Mum is No1. Now, the child's evidence
is either all to be relied on, or all NOT to be relied on, one cannot
pick or choose to prove one's point but Tate appears to be doing exactly
that.
By overlooking the fact that only one child (the most
voluble where SRA motifs were concerned) volunteered information
about 'Mr Brown' but the rest of the children were asked leading
questions about 'Mr Brown' by the foster mothers, and then by omitting
the full conversation
Tate manages, accidentally or not, to give 'the High Man' a significance which it does not deserve. There may well have been a Mr Brown who was involved in the 'regular' abuse of these children but
the
police couldn't find him and there is absolutely no indication that he
was a leader of satanists. In any event Satanists do not give their members numbers!
How many other 'therapists' and SRA 'survivors' believe these points? How
many times have they told 'victims' that SRA has been proven because all cases
are part of a 'pattern'. A pattern which never really existed except in the minds of fundamentalist
Christians and therapists?
Having followed Tate's pronouncements on these issues and noted the failure of
dozens of the historic cases he originally claimed were evidence of SRA
see here along with the errors and chicanery in The Cook Report
see here we find the
'certainty' he employs when writing about SRA completely unacceptable.
It is no surprise to us therefore that the JET report discovered the following:
"The
Police were highly suspicious of the involvement of the media and Mr.
Ray Wyre,
particularly after they discovered that they ( the Cook Report ) wanted to
make a good T.V. programme and had supplied Ray Wyre
with the Satanic indicators that he used when briefing the foster
parents. The Police speculated that the Social Services Department
had been manipulated.
On 9.2.88 Ray Wyre, having been contracted to Social Services as an expert, gave a presentation to the foster parents using the Satanic Indicators of an alleged American Expert.
.
These were passed around the foster parents. One foster parent claims
great stress was laid upon them and they were told what to look for.
These indicators emphasize transportation to other places,
animal sacrifices, drinking of blood, eating flesh, defiling children
with urine and faeces, monsters and ghosts, a mysterious church, killing
of children etc.
[Laura]
was aged 5 years..... In the
diaries for November, December 1987 and January she is consistent
with [Colin], [Roberta] and [John] in identifying home and the
family, except that she talks about parties but not specifically
witches. The main content during this period is of the family at
home burning her with sticks. After Ray Wyre's
presentation to the Foster-mothers on the 9th February 1988 [Laura] talks on the 19th February
1988 about the murder of babies and the bath being full of blood.
(iv) Interviews with Experts previously used by Social Services
Our fourth approach was to check upon the basis for the experts' views. As Ray Wyre
was paid as a consultant by Social Services and used the Satanic
indicators to brief the foster parents we interviewed him first. In our view he was extremely vague and evasive and could give no evidence to support his assertions beyond a few cases that we subsequently checked with negative results.
All this is very pertinent. Ray wire was a key
instigator of belief in SRA in Broxtowe though he kept a respectable
distance from most of the sensational 'victim imposters' (like Jacquie
Balodis and
others) who were providing quotes for shocking headlines in the
British media at the time. Occasionally Wyre would give one paragraph quotes within articles
in the social work press, or in the Broadsheets but he never gave a lengthy interview on his SRA beliefs. How
surprising then to find that in the middle of 1989 when he was being
circumspect in the U.K. media he appeared on the
Australian TV documentary series
'Sixty Minutes' talking at length about Broxtowe and about another U.K. case of a 15 year old girl who
Sixty Minutes chose
to call
'Theresa' but who was actually a girl given the pseudonym
'Natalie' when she was shown in silhouette in the Cook Report
'The Devil's Work' which
went out around the same time in Britain!
Did Wyre have any
evidence of SRA?
The JET people said clearly that he could not
produce any but here we find him giving an interview intended for Australia which is categoric
in its insistence that children are being killed in Satanic
Rituals. Wyre, an ex Baptist minister, opened his
Gracewell Clinic
to amongst other things, 'rehabilitate' Priests who had sexually abused
children so they
could go back into the church. He had found and therapised plenty
of abusive priests but had never ever personally come across any Satanic
Abusers, yet here he was stating categorically that they killed
children even though no dead children had ever been found. You can
see him make his astonishing claims by clicking on the TV image above.
![Ray Wyre taking calls on the helplines after the Cook Report, The Devil's Work](raywyretalkinghelplinecallsaftercookreport.jpg)
In
hindsight of course
'Natalie's' Cook Report claims were all found to have nothing
to do with Satanists, but at the time she convinced many as she
tearfully pleaded on
camera.
Strangely Wyre did not appear in the Cook Report but
as you
can see from the
JET report and the Timeline on this webpage and the photograph left, he
was
actively involved with Tim Tate who researched and co-produced it and
Wyre was also there behind the scenes assisting with the 'help-lines'
after broadcast
The
Australian Sixty Minutes documentary ended with the interviewer asking whether Wyre
thought there might be some abusing Satanists in Australia.
Wyre
said 'undoubtedly' but then again, in the programme so did Audrey
Harper from The Reachout Trust who also claimed to
be a 'victim' of Satanists on the Cook Report, along with her friend
Maureen Davies, director of The
Reachout Trust who worked with the Cook Report and along with Wyre handled the
helplines afterwards, she sat next to Judith Dawson leader of Team4 from
Broxtowe. Beginning to see the pattern now?
Predictably, by May of the following year
(1990) Pamela Klein had introduced her 'Satanic Indicators' to police in
New Zealand and a rash of SRA cases then ensued, all of which were
proven false in the passage of time.
Witch Drawings.
Of course very young kids can't say "Well, this man
turned up, put on a robe, set up an altar with candles, placed a baby
on it
and slit it's throat, then we all ate bits of it." One
way to get children to open up is to let them play-act things out.
Another is to allow them to draw what they are thinking. Of
course, if you let the children know that you want them to draw, scenes
of witches and devils, then this is what you get:
The first drawing
is from Pamela Hudson's book Ritual Child Abuse, the middle one was
drawn by one of the Broxtowe children (the foster mother has written on 'Witches at Witch Parties'
in case there was any doubt about what it is (sigh), and the third one is a
Wikihow showing kids how to draw a stereotypical witch including "draw a long pointy hat" and "a pointy nose with warts and an ugly set of teeth to make her look wicked".
Of course REAL witches aren't wicked and don't wear pointy
hats. Neither do real Satanists, which brings us to the fundamental
point that although
Team4 and the Broxtowe foster mothers
prattled on
about
Satanists, the children's comments were all about WITCHES.
They were simply mirroring back the stereotypical kind of 'wicked witch'
stories that appear in children's TV stories and books.
The only people who would today confuse Witchcraft, the prehistoric
pagan religion of the British Isles, who believe in a pantheon of
gods,
with Satanism which believes in a single divinity, are fundamentalist
Christians who believe in the devil. Witches do not believe in a
devil figure, never have; never will. They have no devil in their
cosmology. BASW would have known this if they had read our report that they had earlier binned. Only
Christians believe in the devil and therefore technically only lapsed
Christians can
become Satanists. Neither witches nor Satanists abuse children as part
of their rites. Assuming that they kill and abuse kids because a 4
year old can draw a witch 'to order' is absolutely bonkers.
Jerry Simandl and Microwaved Babies Who Never Were
The Jet Report says that [Norman] was the child who first spoke about Microwaving Babies.
"Coincidentally
he made this disclosure within a week of social work staff attending
the Reading Conference on child abuse and learning there from Jerry
Simandl (who produced the second set of Satanic indicators used by
Social Services) that children in the USA had reported babies being
cooked in microwave
ovens.
"Perhaps the most important conference for spreading Satanic Abuse
hysteria, was at Reading University, on 15-17 September 1989. The
organisers were Norma Howes, an ‘independent social worker’, and
Pamela Klein, the American who had introduced the ‘Satanic
indicators’ to
Britain. The star speaker was Detective Robert J. (‘Jerry’) Simandl of the Chicago police. He
held up a plastic sheet, of the type which he said was 'used to
wrap the bodies of children sacrificed at Satanic rituals'
and described how the body would be buried in a freshly-dug grave the
day before a genuine funeral. He told harrowing tales of sexual abuse of
children in caves and underground tunnels, and of one case in which a child had been cooked in a microwave oven.
Among
other speakers were Pamela
Klein, as well as Maureen Davies, Dianne Core, and Marietta Higgs.
Others noted as having made a considerable impression were Nottingham
social workers Christine Johnston and Judith Dawson, who recorded
their "ritual" interpretation of the recent abuse case there. " Source: Drammatis Personnae website.
An illustration of the utter lack of discernment in these
Satan Seminars is when Simandl held up a plastic sheet and told the
conference that Satanists used plastic sheets 'like this' to wrap the
bodies of children they had sacrificed. An ahhhh went around the
conference hall. Nobody said. "There hasn't ever been a case of a
child's body being sacrificed, how would you know what plastic sheets
they used?
"
A year later, Mr Simandl was interviewed by the Mail on Sunday (16 September 1990). He reportedly said
:
‘My superiors and colleagues are sceptical when I tell them these
stories. But it is so interesting being in England and
Scotland and talking to people there. The rooms were packed, and
everyone wanted to know more and more what was going on’. "
I Bet they did! Over 230 delegates attended that Satan Seminar to have their minds poisoned by rubbish like this and
from it most of the other false SRA cases in Britain occurred,
including the scandals of Rochdale, and Orkney.
Interestingly in January 1990 Ker Khulan an American police investigator
attended a US presentation by Simandl. This is what he wrote:
Simandl showed some films by Cavalcade Productions
an outfit run by fundamentalist Christian Dale McCulley:
"Ritual Crime: Guidelines for Identification" and
"Identification of the Ritually Abused Child." Some of
Simandl's therapist associates appear in these films.
FUNDIE CONNECTIONS:
How The Battle Was Won For The Lord - with the help of the NSPCC
![A Satanic Litany of Childrens' suffering](sataniclitanyofchildrenssuffering.jpg)
Rosie
Waterhouse is an award winning journalist and former Director of ther MA in
Investigative Journalism at City University, London. In 1989 she, worked on
the
Independent on Sunday
newspaper and like thousands of other journalists country-wide, rushed
to cover the sensational news conference held by the NSPCC on March 12th
which had, to the absolute astonishment of all, said that 14 of it's
branches had reported evidence which showed that the hidden menace of the Satanic
Ritual Abuse of Children was taking place across the country. She and
her co-writer Jenny Cuffe were given access to insiders (including Rev
Kev Logan, pictured) who 'confirmed' the threat of SRA. Waterhouse and Cuffe
believed everything and wrote it up as you can see in the image on the right.
This
NSPCC press briefing was the detonator for the Satanic Panic of the
1990s. It got MASSIVE coverage across the country and kick-started
many local controversies. The
![Kids forced into satan orgies](kidsforcedintosatanorgiesnspccdaily13-3-1990a.jpg)
massed
hatred towards anyone even slightly involved in the esoteric was
immense following this NSPCC press release. To give you an indication
of how deep it ran, one spiritualist church in Hull actually took a
display advert in their local newspaper explaining that Spiritualism was
a Christian belief and should not be confused with Satanism! Within
days the British public had been utterly convinced that SRA existed by
headlines like the one on the left from the Daily Mirror. The scare
extended to the whole of society and of course was soon picked up by
mainstream politicians. On March 13th under the headline
Thatcher Outrage Over Children in Satanic Rites
a commons question confirmed to the whole of Britain that SRA was actually
happening, even though there was no evidence of it!
"The
Prime Minister today expressed outrage at reports that children as
young as five are being forced by adult sex abuse rings to take part in
satanic rites. At Commons question time Mrs Thatcher urged anyone with
evidence to take it to the police to enable offenders to be prosecuted.
Her comments followed yesterday's warning by the National Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children of child involvement in
ritualistic abuse. Tory John Bowis (Battersea) asked if Mrs Thatcher had
seen the NSPCC report "linking satanism practices with child abuse". To
cheers from all sides, he demanded: "Will you do everything possible in
the Government's power to support the police and child welfare
agencies, to stamp out this loathsome practice?"
![NSPCC backtracking on SRA](nspccgetssack.jpg)
There
was a complete and unquestioning acceptance of the allegations made by
the NSPCC. Why would such an august body even say something like that if
they were not absolutely sure? But of course, as we maintained at the
time, and as we have proven since, the NSPCC opportunistically
maximised the SRA myth. There was NO evidence from their branches. It
was the result of an unscientific questionnaire sent by the radical
wing of the NSPCC, mostly crusading feminists influenced by the SRA
panic which had already occurred in the U.S. The NSPCC 'research' asked
subjective questions about whether any of the cases handled by that
branch might align with the 'Satanic Indicators' which had been imported
from the U.S.A. Of course, as we have shown above, the 'indicators'
proved that anyone and everything was a result of Satanic Abuse and so
many of the questionnaires came back 'positive'. This was all the excuse
the NSPCC required to start a national panic.
Despicably the NSPCC allowed this exaggeration to sieze
hold of child protection and grow into a panic which damaged child-care
at its roots. Only when the NSPCC got the blame following the scandals
of Rochdale and then the Orkney cases a year later did they retract and
try to minimise the damage that their announcement had caused. You can
see a montage of NSPCC irresponsible statements and their creeping
retractions as public opinion grew against them in the leftmost column.
Of course, crusading
Christians were absolutely thrilled with all this. They had already been on-board and
cultivating the SRA lie since the spring of the previous year when
Geoffrey Dickens MP (the parliamentary representative of Childwatch) had
announced Satanic Abuse as a reality in parliament in April 1988.
Childwatch was run by Dianne Core, an ardent Christian. Dickens and
Core had joined up with Kevin Logan, a fundamentalist ex-Coal Board
journalist who had taken holy orders and become a vicar of a Blackburn
church a stone's throw from Dickens constituency.
![Logan damns Dungeons and Dragons](bantheseevilgames.jpg)
Logan
had for years been active in the fundie circuit specialising in
creating discord between Christians and anyone involved in the New Age
or Neo-Paganism. One of his successes was to arrange a
'questionnaire' for children at the local church school containing
leading questions similar to the Satanic Indicators. Had children ever
played 'fantasy games' or listened to 'heavy metal music'? When most of
them said yes he drew up a report saying that 87% of schoolchildren
were being inculcated into occultism! And got lots of press coverage for
it.
The
fundies had set up contingencies to maximise the NSPCC statement and did
so with a vengeance. There was a coterie of fundamentalist activists
who came together to create, massage and promote the myth of Satanic
Ritual Abuse. We have already mentioned Core, Geoffrey Dickens and Kevin Logan (who went on to accuse Harry Potter of
inculcating kids into occultism). Now we come to Maureen Davies who was a
director of The Reachout Trust a Christian fundamentalist group originally started in 1986 to combat the Jehovah's Witnesses which they saw as a 'cult'. Davies was a long-time fundie activist who in her own words 'started by putting tracts under the windscreen wipers on cars' and ended up lecturing to police top brass at Bramshill police college on how Satanists eat children.
Before
she got interested in the SRA bandwagon she used to campaign to have 'occult
magazines' (i.e. astrology magazines) removed from W.H.Smiths and also
widely distributed a lecture to other Christian activists on 'How to Deal With The Occult In Your Area
which gave dubious methods of influencing and biasing local opinion
(such as letter chains where fundies are given a boiler-plate letter and all write at once to complain- ).
Davies
was in direct touch with manic fundamentalist SRA hunters in the U.S.
and based a lot of her 'knowledge' about SRA on what she imported from them.
Particularly that from Mark Warnke Ministries, Randy Emon's COIN
organisation, Patricia Pulling's BADD (Bothered About Dungeons and
Dragons - a popular 1980s fantasy game which Pulling maintains pushes
kids into suicide because of occult characters) and
in particular the Cult-Crime Impact Network which we have exposed
elsewhere in this article. The Logan and Davies fundie double-act was so close
that they were almost inseparable. In almost
![Bella Cults in Britain. The Gang of Five are all here](bellacultsinbritain.jpg)
every
anti-occult newspaper and magazine article in which Logan appeared, so
did Davies - (she was quoted in the
Ban These Evil Games article above).
To
make up what became known as
'the Gang of Five' came Audrey
Harper.
Converted to Christianity in 1967 she used to travel the 'born-agin'
circuit visiting church-halls to give testimony about how she supposedly
escaped the clutches of Satan. One of her stories was how she was
present when a baby was sacrificed by Satanists. When she first made these statements in the
1970s and early 1980s the police investigated them TWICE and concluded
that there was no case to answer but when the SRA scare began in the mid
1980s her previous allegations dovetailed into the NSPCCs outrageous claims and took off.
She was a director of Reachout Trust and therefore compromised; yet
whenever any journalist asked to speak to a 'victim' of SRA Audrey was
trotted out. Her story was covered so many times they eventually began
using pseudonyms so as not to bore readers. 'Black Anna' was one of
them, Anna Dixon was another. She and Maureen Davies appeared together in the U.S. fundie video
Devil Worship and the Rise of Satanism
made by Jeremiah Films which 'confirmed' the English experience of SRA
to the U.S. fundie circuit and in which Randy Emon also participated but later retracted.
Together the
Gang of Five achieved hundreds of column inches of sectarian
bile with the ever-eager British press hungry for any and all
uncorroborated allegations to spice up the bored lives of their moribund
readers. In the 1988 Bella Article shown right,
Satanism a Threat to
Our Children, every single person interviewed and quoted was a
fundie
and the Gang of Five are all present. Bella never bothered to
get any balancing quotes or information from the Witches and Satanists
of course but what can one expect from a smear-sheet that is not worth
the destruction of the trees required to print it.
What Motivates Christian Fundamentalists
Ordinary folk reading this will about now be asking themselves what
motivates these Christian Fundamentalists. Obviously it is their
LACK of faith in their own religion. There are millions more
ordinary and nominally Christian folk who don't need to continually
prove to themselves that God exists by finding the Devil. Ordinary
Christian folk are confirmed and secure in their beliefs about god but
fundamentalists seek evidence of the second coming
everywhere. Like the rest of us, unconsciously they are
anxious about the mystery of death and worry about life after
death. Discovering the Tribulations (indicators that the Devil is
trying one last time to take over the world before Jesus's second
coming) assuages that fear and also confirms that they are secure in
their religious path. As long ago as 1988 we published an article
which tried to explain the fundie-mindset to outsiders. Those who want
to, can read it here
biblos90.htm
When we castigate or criticise people for being 'fundamentalists' we are
not saying that they are unsympathetic to children, exactly the
reverse. These people have a compulsion to help children because
of their religious ideals. That is the point. They want to
do good but their world-view is completely different to that of ordinary
folk. They see Satan under every Sofa. They expect the worst.
They see mentally ill people as being 'possessed' by the devil.
They see ordinary folk who contract in to our modern society as victims
of the devil and in their eyes almost every aspect of modern life is in
some way supernaturally threatening and suspicious. In their
paranoia they are constantly scanning for the Devil in case he creeps
up on them unseen. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy because when
they meet with anyone who doesn't let them have their own way, like us,
they see them as Satanists - proof of the satanic conspiracy.
These attitudes are reinforced by networking with other
fundamentalists. They do so in arrogant fashion away from
mainstream society thinking that ordinary folk are the stupid ones who
cannot see the truth. Because of this they employ what they
term
'shepherding'. Conscious manipulation of those who
have not yet 'seen the light' towards their world-view. They
become adept at it. Identifying a fundie who is
'shepherding'
from one who isn't is very difficult unless you know which buttons to
press. Press the right buttons (as the SAFF often does) and you see an
irrational and obsessed person whose judgement is tainted by extreme
religious dogma and who will say and do anything to aggrandise their own
religious beliefs. Otherwise ordinary folk think they are dealing
with other 'ordinary folk' and trust what they say when in fact there
is a tacit conspiracy and a completely different agenda going on at
another level, (wink, wink). Obviously if the people the
fundamentalists are 'shepherding' are nominally Christian they are
already indoctrinated by society to trust others 'like themselves' and
are not equipped to see the anti-social repercussions of the disguised
activities of ardent Christians. The SRA myth is replete
with instances of fundies surreptitiously redirecting the course of
cases and investigations and this article here has been written to alert
ordinary folk to it. Now back to the plot.
This is how it can happen
Rosie Waterhouse had initially been a wholehearted
believer in the SRA myth as her article for the IoS above shows, and as
a believer she was given access to the people who had created the SRA
circus, including the leaders of Team4, Judith Dawson and Christine
Johnston. In her forthcoming book about the SRA hysteria
Waterhouse says that she spoke to Dawson and Johnston who told her that
when motifs of SRA had occurred in the Broxtowe case they had got in
touch with Stuart Checkley and Russell Blacker , founders of the
Association of Christian Psychiatrists. This is categoric proof of the
infiltration of the Broxtowe case by evangelical christians at a
formative stage. The ACP then sponsored and
organised the first ever Satan Seminar in Britain in a room at the Royal Society
of Medicine, London in April 1988.
But the
Association of Christian Psychiatrists is no stranger to allegations of the devil. A year earlier, in
1987, they were involved in cooperation with the Evangelical Alliance
(EA) in publishing Doorways to Danger, a Christian
fundamentalist tract which outlined supposed 'dangers' attached to
Tarot, cards, Hypnosis, astrology,
meditation and other inconsequential New Age type activities. Kevin
Logan and Audrey Harper were involved too; both contributed 'personal testimony' about the
dangers of the occult but Satanism and Satanic Ritual Child Abuse were
NOT mentioned in the leaflet but note that in an article in Christian News World dated May 1990 Logan and Maureen Davies were interviewed about the EA and the report said:
"Mr Logan is also a
member of the Evangelical Alliance which was formed a year ago following
reports of child,abuse,rape,animal and human sacrifice in satanic
rituals."
![Doorways to Danger launch with Stuart Checkley](doorwaystodangerredemptionmag.jpg)
Stuart Checkley himself contributed to
Doorways to Danger , saying
Dr Checkley concludes: ’Such things as ouija boards and tarot cards can definitely harm. They open up the mind to outside
forces.’
Kher Cuhulain, an American police investigator of the Satan Myth, wrote that Checkley had in fact co-authored Doorways to Danger. Whether he had or not he was certainly involved closely with it as the
photograph alongside at the launch of Doorways to Danger proves. In the article published in Redemption Christian Magazine, Checkley reportedly said:
'I have seen someone who as a result of one experiment with
an ouija board, suffered frightening experiences outside his
control'.
In Doorways to Danger Checkley waxes to this theme by reportedly saying
'I have seen patients whose
involvement with relatively
minor forms of the occult has caused them to suffer mental
illness. I have seen someone who as a result of one experiment
with a ouija board suffered frightening experiences outside his control,
including automatic handwriting. He found himself writing frightening messages to himself,’
You can see much more about the machinations surrounding the infamous
Doorways to Danger leaflet on this website here:
http://halloweenchoice.nfshost.com/halloweenharding.htm
But what follows next is almost too wacky to believe. Dr Stuart Checkley, admitted in an interview in the Mail On Sunday (16th June 92) to having performed an exorcism in hospital on a patient who was threatening suicide.
Earlier, on 17th October 1988, and much more pertinently in respect of the Broxtowe case , the Independent newspaper reported that:
'Dr Checkley is convinced that the occult can have very
harmful consequences. " Sometimes you cannot explain
it
in a psychiatric
way...The occult has harmful effects
through unknown mechanisms'.
He has seen people who,
following lengthy and unproductive
psychiatric
treatment, will recover after being helped by
the
Church'.
After
Stuart Checkley retired from his psychiatric work he began travelling
around churches
lecturing to christian audiences about spiritual healing and prayer
healing of the mentally sick. In September 2006 he lectured in Exeter
under the aegis of Exeter Anglican Diocese on Healing
the soul via Dreams:
" They (Checkley and his wife) have
many years’ experience of praying for inner healing, and have worked
closely with Leanne Payne, who is well known in the area of healing, and
whose books and ministry on this subject are internationally respected.
For twelve years they have run conferences similar to hers, and they
have both taken early retirement to be able to spend more time on this
ministry"
There
is no doubt that Stuart Checkley is a fundamentalist Christian and,
would be ready to spot Satanism in the most moribund places. However
for an influential professor of psychiatry, he had some very
unconventional beliefs surrounding mental illness.
The question is, why did Judith Dawson and Christine Johnston of Team4
go to him to help in their campaign to recognise Broxtowe as a case of
Satanic Ritual Abuse?
The
situation becomes even more astonishing when you realise that a year
later in July 1990 the Evangelical Alliance began distributing a video
version of their leaflet Doorways to Danger, entitled Doorways to Danger The Video - in
which Judith Dawson personally took part talking about SRA and Broxtowe
in clear evangelical terms. This is some of what she said:
"We've
had to be taken beyond belief because what we've learned is that
children are not only sexually abused but that they are also
ritualistically abused that means that we have learnt that some families
some adults get involved with satanic groups whose main aim is to
destroy everything that is good everything that is good about human life
and human values, and one particular target in that would be that they
should hurt and defile children. As you are
probably aware Christ said 'Touch not one hair of this child's head',
satanists believe that they should do the opposite of that.
"
Her section about Satanic Ritual Child Abuse came right after Kevin Logan
had wittered on about how 'dangerous' it was for children to play
fantasy games and use tarot cards. The point is that she has no
evidence whatsoever to support that view. Nowhere in the books of
Satanism has any Satanist ever required harm to children. There is no
liturgy for it and there has never been an example of it. Dawson's assertion is therefore simply sectarian prejudice.
![Nottinghamshire Social Services suspend Andy Croall](nottssuspendsandycroall.gif)
Were
there other sectarian influences in Nottingham at the time? Well yes
there was. The Deputy Director of Nottingham Social Services, Andy
Croall was a vituperative fundamentalist who said that abortions (legal
abortions) were a form of Child Abuse. He made this statement
![Andy Croall speaking on After Dark TV programme](andrewcroallonafterdarkstillshot.jpg)
in
a TV interview right in the middle of the SRA debate. His statement
caused uproar in the ranks of Nottingham social workers and he was
suspended. Shortly thereafter Croall resigned and took up a
high-profile position in
Caring Professions Concern, the Christian
fundamentalist body acting as a forum for doctors and therapists and
psychiatrists to which Stuart Checkley and Russel Blacker were allied.
Croall later travelled around the U.K. giving lectures on Satanic Ritual Abuse.
It is absolutely impossible for anyone involved in Broxtowe to now
deny that the case wasn't infested with Sectarian prejudice and
that fundamentalist lies and liars had been imported from the U.S. to
corroborate the SRA aspects of the case by those who wanted to find them
there, despite the fact that the police after extensive investigations
found no forensic evidence ever existed. It is the worst example of a
witch-hunt in modern British history.
The Timeline in the leftmost column gives all the references and
sources for this article but if anyone wants further clarification then
they are invited to contact us at the email address below.
Please
note that to ensure that the children involved were protected from
identification we took the pseudonyms already given to them by the JET
report and then changed them all to new pseudonyms, just in case.
Tony Rhodes and John Freedom,
Mortlake.
Summer Solstice 2016
Ends:
Here's some links which will help you understand the 'Broxtowe Conspiracy' further.
Cook Report Man dredges up Cleveland Mass Lift Scandal
RAINS Satanic Evidence is Worthless - how adult victim-imposters are manufactured
Author of Governments' 1994 reporton SRA explains why it won't go away.