Pilot Study on Alleged Organised Ritual Abuse:Final Report

Dr Robert Hale, FRCPsych

Ms Valerie Sinason, BA Hons PGTC MACP

General Introduction and Definitions:

In The last decade there have been reports of organised ritualistic child sexual abuse in the USA(Finkelhor et al1988).The Netherlands (Jonker & Jonker-Bakker1991),Canada,Australia, (Johnson1992) South Africa and the UK (Creighton1991).Within the USA the figures of alleged ritual abuse are smaller than for other kinds of abuse (Bottoms,Shaver and Goodman1991) and in1991,2,292patients identified themselves as ritual abuse survivors. With both children (Jones1991) and adults in the UK the figures are smaller than for other kinds of abuse and a lack of forensic evidence is commonplace (Weir & Wheatcroft1995)

Gallagher et al (1994) in the UK found the estimated national incidence for organised abuse was an average of 242 cases a year and allegations of ritual abuse involved 21 cases a year. After the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary (Satanic Ritual Abuse, February 19^th 1992)  [ SAFFedit: The Programme was actually titled 'BEYOND BELIEF',and was shown at10.30pm on19th February 1992.]  191 calls were dealt with on the helpline set up by the Broadcasting Support Services. However the 15 lines set up were inadequate to the task as the BT recorded 4,500 attempted calls during the first hour.

[SAFFedit: Sinason-Hale quote the  attempted calls to this helpline to imply a large number of hidden cases of SRA. However a leading member of the SAFF (Chris Bray ) actually spoke to Sarah Scott who was then Key Counsellor at Chester Rape Crisis centre (which handled the calls) in a telephone conversation the day after Beyond Belief was broadcast. Scott told him that 191 calls were received overall but when asked if that was typical, Scott told Mr Bray that they had estimated one thousand (1,000) calls could not get through.  When questioned as to how many callers were reporting SRA and how many were simply calling for further information Scott estimated about 60% of those who actually got through were adult survivors. Obviously there are discrepancies concerning the 'missed' calls. Sinason-Hale state that there were 191 SRA victims when the probability is that there were actually 114 callers claiming to be SRA victims.   Sinason-Hale do not include other similar help-line call-in figures which would elucidate the matter.  When the Cook Report exclusively broke the 'Satanic Ritual Child Abuse' story with their 'Devil's Work' documentary in July 1989, Maureen Davies, a fundamentalist activist who was heavily involved with promoting SRA in the UK during that period, handled the helplines after the programme. She later wrote that she had received over 300 calls.  This might have increased the weight of evidence from Sinason-Hale's point of view but of course that Cook Report was utterly discredited as none of the 21 SRA cases it claimed to have found across the UK turned out to be true.   Indeed, the very same thing happened to Beyond Belief, which pretended to offer actual scenes of SRA which had been filmed by perpetrators. Within days of broadcast this was found to be a lie and the producer/researcher Andrew Boyd, admitted on TV that he knew the clips were from a ten year old Performance Art video but omitted to mention it to his audience!   SAFF exposed the full story here: http://saff.nfshost.com/devilvid.htm . Trawling for susceptibles who are ready to make fantastical claims about being SRA victims is not new.  In the hysteria surrounding Jimmy Savile (which Sinason contributed to by trying to inject a Satanic connection to his abuses) 450 people called NSPCC helplines set up by the police, but it was later found that 239 of them were not genuine.  What is important is that neither the Cook Report, nor Beyond Belief resulted in ANY prosecutions of people for SRA so numbers who called in are largely irrelevant and do not convey an estimation of actual harm being done by Satanists.  Why didn't Sinason-Hale discuss these facts in their study? ]

The organisation RAINS (Ritual Abuse Information and Network Support) for professionals dealing with such cases has 150 members, all of whom have a least one such current adult or child case. For as long as the forensic evidence for substantiating these accusations remains speculative, it is impossible to gauge the true extent of this phenomenon.

[ SAFFedit:  This Sinason-Hale 'Devil Report' was kept under wraps by the Department of Health who had commissioned it. They did not publish it for unstated reasons. It has taken 24 years to obtain a copy of it.  During those 24years there has not been one proven case of Satanic Ritual Abuse anywhere in the U.K. Estimates of numbers of cases by Sinason and Hale are therefore simply unfounded suspicions. ]

In South Africa there is a National Unit for Occult-Related Crimes.  In the UK the Scotland Yard Research Unit on Ritual Abuse has been disbanded 1994 and its report on allegations of Ritual Abuse has not been published.

[ SAFFedit: These statements are highly misleading. Firstly  NUORC  (Originally called  'Occult Related Crime Squad' ) is a two-person department of the South African police. It was set up by Kobus Jonker, a bigoted fundamentalist Christian cop who thinks that Heavy Metal Music and Playing Fantasy Games is evidence of Satanic Crime.  His sidekick, a policewoman, is also an evangelical.  Apparently his department was somewhat of a joke amongst regular SA police.  Emblazoned over the door of Jonker's Office was a placard saying 'Onder Jesus' Blood'.  The Occult Related Crime Squad was disbanded after a few  years when its pronouncements began to embarrass everyone.    It never found any genuine evidence of Satanic Ritual Abuse in South Africa.   You can see the SAFF's expose of Jonker's activities here: http://saff.nfshost.com/ttorso2.htm#jonker    

Secondly the Metropolitan police's Research Unit on Ritual Abuse was disbanded in 1994 following the publication of the official government report into claimed cases of SRA spanning 1987-1994 {The Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Abuse ISBN0-11-321797-8.HMSO } After having been given special access to all the insider information in each case and having been able to interview key players, It's author Prof. Jean La Fontaine's conclusion was that Satanic Ritual Abuse did not exist. It was a figment of the minds of fundamentalist Christians and an over-reaction by do-gooders in child protection.  Obviously the Yard's report concurred the same so there was no need to publish it. ]

Definitions

By organised ritual abuse we mean sexual abuse

a) where there was more than a single abuser

b) where the adults “appear to have acted in concert to abuse the children” (la Fontaine1994) and

c) in which there have been allegations of rituals associated with the abuse, whether or not these allegations have been taken further or tested in the courts.

By Satanist ritual abuse we mean a situation in which the discloser (whether a victim,perpetrator or both} believe there was a Satanist belief system involved in the alleged ritual organised abuse.

 [SAFFedit: Surely Satanist Ritual Abuse must mean abuse by Satanists? Otherwise it is just regular child abuse. Either Satanists are performing bestial acts on children because of the demands of their liturgy, or they are not. Just because a mentally fragile patient watches a Horror film and the next day wakes up thinking it is reality, does not mean that it is, nor that we should take their imaginations seriously.]

Background to current project

Since 1992 there has been an increasing number of referrals to the Tavistock and Portman Clinics and other NHS Trusts,as well as to individual health service professionals,asking for consultation assessment and treatment for children and adults alleging involvement in organised ritual abuse,particularly abuse within a Satanist context. Both children and adults presented affective states of extreme terror,and persistent problems including trance states,flashbacks,self-injury, substance abuse, sleep problems and difficulty concentrating. Their narratives include accounts of sado-masochistic acts, non-consenting heterosexual and homosexual acts, paedophilic acts, necrophilia, bestiality and torture. Many of the referrals experienced these alleged activities in association with a Satanist belief system.

[SAFFedit: Sinason & Hale somewhat censor history. This gives a false perspective. The Satan Scare actually began in 1983 with the first mass allegations of abuse at the McMartin Pre-School in California which was later found to be false. These allegations of child abuse morphed into claims of SRA. The first U.S. 'Satan Seminar' entitled The Emergence of Ritualistic Crime' was organised by a group of Christian fundamentalist 'cult-cops' in 1986  to promote the idea of SRA, and helped do the morphing.  Lies and suspicions from this watershed conference were then imported by fundies and feminist activists into the U.K. The first allegation of mass abuse in the U.K. was in Cleveland in 1987. This was a counterpart case to the McMartin one.  A scandal erupted when 121 children were kidnapped from their parents by the State. The public inquiry that followed showed that none of them had been abused.  The first claimed SRA case in the U.K. started soon after Cleveland in the autumn of 1987 - the Broxtowe case of inter-generational abuse, which was ultimately found to have NO SRA content, in Feb 1989, (See http://saff.nfshost.com/broxtowe.htm )   but by then the ball had begun rolling.  Between then and 1992 there had been no less than 84 cases including the Scandals of Rochdale, Orkney, Ayr, Liverpool and Epping ALL of which were false and had been whipped up by SRA hysteria in social work and the press. Sinason-Hale are perfectly aware of this because not only did Sinason frequently comment in the press on those cases, but  in their study they quote from Prof Jean La Fontaine's government report on those 84 cases frequently. The implication that the false allegations in 1992 were a new phenomenon  are disingenuous in the extreme but by ignoring this extensive history of how obsessive believers in SRA caused multiple failures and invoked such public anger that Social Work was set back 30 years, it gives Sinason and Hale a clean sheet for their conclusions.   By 1989 Jim Phillips, a Birmingham NHS General Practitioner , had started the Jupiter Trust to begin indoctrinating a 'stable' of SRA 'victims' using Recovered Memory techniques. Patients were sent to him by other therapists and psychiatrists who were believers in SRA. Phillips was later suspended by the GMC for his increasingly bizarre actions. You can see the full story of his activities here: http://saff.nfshost.com/fontaine.htm (see rightmost column on that webpage)  Vera Diamond , a close colleague of Sinason's and a member of RAINS was treating patients for SRA as far back as 1990 and, incidentally, was cooperating with the Jupiter Trust in 1993 to do it. ]

Following the publication of a collection of clinical papers (Sinason1994) to explore and provide further understanding of this topic,the authors set out to conduct a more systematic survey of referrals concerning alleged organised ritual abuse. Our initial concerns were that due to the fear engendered by the topic, National Health Service patients and their families were not receiving an adequate service (Weir & Wheatcroft1995). Health service professionals and the media (Scott1992) were embroiled in religious discussions of belief and disbelief in which the patients were left without adequate treatment. We were also concerned by the initial impact of this work on clinicians as it became clear that even experienced forensic health service psychotherapists were more powerfully affected by the narratives and emotional interactions of these patients as compared with other vulnerable groups (Hale & Sinason1994).Obviously working with any severe physical or psychological trauma has a profound impact on the professional (Hale1998)

[SAFFedit: This is completely disingenuous. Many mentally fragile folk believe they have been possessed by Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte and other historical figures. Their megalomania is not treated by visiting the pyramids or re-enacting Waterloo. There are already tried and tested methods of psychiatry to treat people of all kinds in all situations.  Sinason-Hale are here making an appeal for self-styled SRA victims to be treated differently to other patients.  Presumably this is because of the tacitly understood 'horror' of Satanic Ritual Abuse, but we must remind ourselves that people like Sinason have been searching for SRA across the world for the past 30 years and have not been able to point to one actual proven case of it.  It simply does not exist. If Sinason-Hale want us to accept the idea that people who believe they have been Satanically abused need extra special treatment from psychiatry they have not succeeded in convincing us of the need for it with this half-hearted study.

Whilst therapists are normally primarily concerned with internal psychic truth,any case of sexual abuse that involves an interface with legal procedures requires an assessment of the external objective validity using,if possible,the resources of other services. Professor La Fontaine's preliminary report makes clear that within her sample of 84 child cases in which there were allegations of ritual abuse this was substantiated in three (La Fontaine,1994).She did not find substantiation of ritual abuse allegations involving more than one adult perpetrator. Within the field of child abuse it is also well established that only a disproportionately small number of abuse cases get to court in the first place. Bentovim & Tranter (1994) found that where cases involving an alleged ritual element do succeed in court the ritual element is often removed. Sometimes this is done at the suggestion of barristers and the ritual element is not mentioned in court and sometimes it is not possible to prove.

[SAFFedit: Bentovim etc. may have 'found' that, but SAFF statistical records show that it is simply not true. Often a prosecution will revel in Occult and Satanic horrors to replace a dirth of actual evidence and in most cases actually get a guilty verdict.  The classic case is the murder of Rikki Neave where his mother was found guilty on the basis of trumped-up evidence of Satanism and then, years later, was freed when the real murderer was caught. Full details are here: http://saff.nfshost.com/rikkineave.htm and there are many other cases on SAFF files which repudiate Sinason and Hales and Bentovim's theory that SRA cases don't come to court because the horrors of them would not be taken seriously.  That's an unproven and prejudiced suspicion not backed by the facts. ]

Evidence from experienced health service clinicians who have encountered cases of alleged ritual or organised abuse suggests that this kind of abuse is rarer than other kinds (Creighton,1993) and that an even smaller number of cases of this kind of abuse have entered the legal process. Possible explanations might be that:

1. corroborative evidence simply does not exist (Lanning,1991)

2. corroborative evidence does exist but adequate methods of establishing its validity do not exist; or

3. the current views on the status of such abuse hinders investigation (Dawson,1991).

[SAFFedit: Point number 1 has inverted reality.  Kenneth Lanning,the FBI's specialist in Violent Crime investigated all the claimed Satanic Ritual Abuse cases in the U.S. during the early 1990s. He was the FBI's specialist on it. His conclusion was that SRA simply did not exist. He ruled that it was impossible to clean a crime scene of forensic evidence in the way that believers in SRA have tried to suggest and that there would always be forensic evidence left behind. Thus if no crime-scenes are ever found ergo there is no crime. SRA does not exist, he concluded, because there is no such thing as SRA, not because of any difficulty in obtaining evidence in crime scenes as Sinason and Hale have implied! If it happened there evidence will be found.

Again with point 2. Sinason and Hale confuse the issue – a murder is a murder, forensic crime scene investigation is now an almost perfect art , if a murder occurs it can be detected; but nobody can prove the truth or otherwise of the contents of a patient's memory.

 Point 3. is another misdirection. Judith Dawson, a key SRA believer in the 1987 Nottinghamshire Broxtowe case of SRA still thinks it was an SRA case even though an official JET report conclusively proved that it wasn't and showed how people in Dawson's team conflated the testimony of very young children with leading questions about ghosts and witches. Because she refuses to believe the truth - that there was no SRA in the Broxtowe abuse case,  she implies that disbelief by police and other social workers is hampering the identification and resolution of existing SRA cases.  This is just sour grapes. She's had 30 years to prove that SRA exists and has failed.   There has not been one successful case of SRA prosecuted through the courts.  There appears to be an attempt here to besmirch the integrity of all those other folk who work in child protection who do NOT believe in the existence of SRA. That is a monstrous misdirection. ]

The authors thus considered it of central importance to establish the validity of the clinical history and case material by external corroboration wherever possible.

Aims and Outline of the Project

A multi-disciplinary clinical approach was adopted,employing information from psychiatric, psychoanalytic and forensic methods of investigation. The project had three broad aims:

1.To systematically collect data on all referrals (telephone and letter) received at the Portman Clinic involving allegations of ritual abuse for a period of one year. This survey comprised the first stage off the project and was essential to establish demographic data.

2.To offer clinical assessment to all referrals and to examine the nature of the clinical descriptions given by patients taking up this service. In line with psychiatric practice,corroboration was sought from both “non contentious” areas of personal history as well as from that concerning ritual abuse.

3.In a further refinement,a sample of those patients who took up the clinical assessment were offered further in-depth forensic investrigation. This met with the third aim of the project in which a formal comparison of clinical description with forensic evidence was made.

The results from the three studies that comprise this project will provide information on the profile of those referred for allegations of ritual abuse,enable a more accurate clinical picture to be drawn up of this sample and finally enable an understanding of the links between clinical description with forensic evidence.

The Department of Health funded the project for one year. This largely covered the costs for the therapist's time (5sessions per week) and the research assistant's time (4sessions per week).Dr Hale,as Director of the Portman Clinic,where the project was based,was paid for within his NHS time. Psychotherapy time for patients who required longer-term treatment,which was outside the remit of the project,were funded through Extra Contractual Referrals. It was part of the ethical planning of the project that the psychoanalytic psychotherapist kept time available for this provision.

[SAFFedit: The DoH gave a reported £22,000.00 (today's value £29,000) to Sinason-Hale to produce this report within one year. In reality it took them six years to complete a 12 page theoretical document which has very little statistical gravity. ]

A steering committee had oversight of the planning and the execution of the project¹

Method

1. All referrals (50) (by telephone or letter) were monitored and analysed for two years (although initially we had intended this stage to be completed in one year,the information took much longer to collect). The database included age, sex, source of referral, nature of first contact, nature of first response, presenting problem, alleged offences, actual psychiatric and medical symptoms, current religious involvement, reason for referral, any previous treatment and previous statutory involvement.

2. Fourteen index cases,where patients wished their case to be investigated for the first time,or re-investigated,were identified and referred to their local police department through the help of the Chief Constable for initial or further investigation. We decided at the outset to exclude from the cases we passed to the police, any, where, from our clinical interview, we considered that there was not a reasonable likelihood of a true statement being made concerning criminal offences.

3. Cases excluded were to be

a) Those from fundamentalist religious backgrounds (as Professor La Fontaine (ibid) has also observed) where it is sometimes possible that the ideology of adults has been imposed on children.

b) where the alleged ritual abuse is likely to be a cover for paedophile activities.

c) where we considered there was a psychiatric condition which would mitigate against the ability to provide a truthful statement.

4. Individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy and/or supportive psychotherapy would be provided to index or non-index cases who required it in liaison with other psychiatric and social service departments. Following the research period a small number of cases were subsequently taken into formal psychotherapy.

Outline of Police Liaison for Index Cases

All patients entering the project were told of the clinical and forensic aims. They signed a consent form for their material to be used in a non-identifiable statistical way for the database in the first instance. Background details were disguised where necessary at the patient's request without losing the essential data.

______________________________________________________________________________

¹.The steering group included a representative from the research team,Dr Hale,with Ms Sinason and Ms Gordon (research assistant) in attendance,a representative from the Department of Health,Dr J Lissamore,a representative from the Association of Chief Police Offices,Mr A J P Butler,and a representative from the Association of Directors of Social Services,Ms M Gibb.

Within the Clinic,discussions were held at the start of the project with various senior staff members including Ms S Dermen,adult Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst,Ms D Lloyd-Owen,Senior Lecturer in Social Work,Mr R Davies,Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Mr D Campbell,Principal Child Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst. Advice was also provided by Professor Julian Leff and Mr Tony Lee.

Where patients were still concerned to take the investigation forward the research psychotherapist carefully outlined the procedure: in the first instance our co-ordinating Chief Constable was sent a letter stating that an alleged offence had occurred in a particular geographical area, but not providing a name or identifying details. he then notified the Chief Constable of that area about the research project and sent the research psychotherapist a contact name and number. At a further meeting the patient was told of the name and address of the police officer and police station; if they were still interested they signed a formal permission to proceed and a letter providing their name and basic details was forwarded. Apart from Scotland, in all other areas of the UK a joint meeting was then set up with the allocated investigating police officer, the research psychotherapist and the patient. In this meeting the patient told the police of alleged offences they had witnessed and discussed the consequences and implications of proceeding. Thus ethically and clinically the patient had a time in a safe setting to consider whether to pursue the forensic investigation of his/her testimony.

Because of the structure of multidisciplinary co-operation, the number of agencies involved depended on the age of the alleged victims and the nature and number of the alleged perpetrators.

The clinical research team considered it would be appropriate to have a police officer experienced in this subject included as part of the team (as in Working Together ). Such an individual was identified. However due to the status of this topic, the police authorities did not consider it appropriate at that point in time.

Ethical Issues.

The Clinical research protocol was submitted to the Ethical and Research Committees of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. Great care was taken to determine the nature and meaning of clinical consent for (a) clinical research and (b) external investigation. This has also extended into preparing patients for the publication of this report, particularly the different meaning of clinical research as opposed to forensic investigation.

Descriptive Definition of Ritual Abuse

Whilst the project was open to any referral involving abuse within a ritual context, the researchers and the wider community were aware of particular concern regarding alleged ritual Satanist abuse. In particular, we agreed with Professor La Fontaine (La Fontaine, 1994) that the more serious allegations had not been proven in the UK. Hence, regardless of religious definition, for the purpose of this report we were particularly concerned by those allegations that included practices of

The following list are not offences in themselves, but were mentioned so frequently in allegations that they are seen as contextually relevant to the establishment of a definition of ritual abuse;

induction of trance states

wearing of ritual apparel

use of chanting

use of ritual instruments

[SAFFedit: Unfortunately Sinason-Hale inclusion definitions are unfocussed. The four above, for instance, could apply equally to most Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic forms of religiosity. The SAFF published a much more informative and accurate paper on SRA definitions in 1991 here: http://saff.nfshost.com/footprin.htm where we succeeded in doing what Sinason-Hale have failed to do here, by concentrating on the main motifs alleged in actual SRA cases during 1988-1990. With our 'Satanic Footprint' there is no ambiguity. For instance, the inclusion in Sinason-Hales study of 'despoiling of churches and cemeteries' introduces a corruption of statistics because the vast majority of vandalistic attacks on cemeteries are usually caused by druggies, glue-sniffers, and wayward teenagers who have no connection with Satanism. SAFF records show that in the major claimed cases of SRA in 30 years the desecration of churches or graveyards was not featured at all.  In fact if any witness began to introduce such a motif to us it would be clear evidence that they were fantasising.]

A further clinical note on definitions

Satanism (Sinason 1994) is not an illegal belief system. We do not imply that Satanists in general are committing criminal offences. Similarly, witchcraft, both of a healing kind and otherwise has a long history and many branches and we do not imply criminal offences above that of the rest of the population. With any population only a small percentage are likely to be involved in criminal offences. We are aware that some children may be tricked by paedophiles using ritual material ) La Fontaine). However, it has been demonstrated that where the children believe the offences were committed within a religious beliefs system and then become believers themselves, it is irrelevant how that belief system was originally inculcated (Working with the Children, Childline 1994). The crucial element therefore, in these cases is what the child believes.

[SAFFedit: This attempt by Sinason-Hale to sanitise their prejudices is utterly illogical. 1: The theory that there will be perverts within Satanism and Witchcraft in the same median percentage as within the ordinary population only applies to ordinary crimes.  The very hypothesis of the Sinason-Hale approach is that a new kind of super-abuse has been discovered which exists by virtue of the beliefs of the cult itself.  This fallacy can be easily seen by the fact that though there are literally thousands of proven cases of Priests abusing children in not one of them has anyone ever insisted that they did so because of the requirements of the Christian belief. 2. Though there have been abusers who used fear of the occult to control and gain power over their victims these cases were statistically insignificant as Prof. La Fontaine pointed out, and apply to single-perpetrators only.  The fact that there were a dozen such cases over the past 30 years does not have any implication in the bulk of Sinason-Hale hypothesis which is that Satanists are eating babies and drinking their blood as part of their rites.  3. The fact that children may have  been frightened into believing occult things or have been 'disclosed' into such meanings by interfering evangelistic social workers (La fontaine 1994) does not make their testimony proof of the existence of a previously unknown national network of child-abusing Satanists.

The Sample

Fifty consecutive referrals were assessed by the research psychotherapist. Of these, 19 expressed an initial interest and willingness for police investigation. Accordingly, they were given a psychiatric assessment to exclude current mental illness that would impair their capacity to give accurate testimony. No one was excluded for psychiatric reasons. Five subsequently excluded themselves for other reasons (see page 6) Therefore 14 cases proceeded to the police investigation.

Findings

Method of Referrals.

Comparison with referrals to the Portman Clinic over the period of the research project demonstrated that pattern of referral of patients alleging ritual abuse was markedly diverse from the usual Portman Clinic referral pattern. Referrals to the project (see table 1) were usually by telephone (70%) and cases were self-referred (38%). In comparison the majority referrals to the Portman Clinic (see table 2) were made by psychiatrists or psychotherapists (24%) with only 18% of patients being self-referred. The Portman clinic did not record any referrals made by telephone during this period.

Reasons for referrals

Referrals fall into three categories:

1. adults wanting treatment/redress for previous experiences;

2. parents wanting legal redress for alleged offences against their children – usually involving

custody and with allegations against the custodial partner (with three exceptions where mother did have custody);

3. adults wanting treatment/redress for current experiences.

Breakdown of DID & PTSD-like symptoms²

● Eight out of the eighteen seen together by Valerie Sinason and Rob Hale had dissociative identity disorder

● Thirty-three out of the fifty had symptoms relating to PTSD

● Six out of the eight patients with DID seen by Valerie Sinason and Rob hale required abnormally high levels of medication and anaesthesia for operations and other medical treatments compared with non-dissociative patients. This replicates American research on this topic. (Ref:)

²Dr Butler commented that where the historical accuracy of the traumatic event(s) had not been externally established the diagnosis PTSD should include the caveat 'alleged' PTSD

Allegations (see tables 3 & 4)

Thirty-six cases (72% of the sample) allege witnessing murder;

Twenty of those who alleged they witnessed a murder were speaking of infanticide (57% of the sample);

43% of those who alleged they witnessed a murder were speaking of an adult;

68% allege to have witnessed necrophilia;;

66% allege to have witnessed or been subjected to illegal abortion';

64% allege to have witnessed or been subject to acts of bestiality;

64% allege to have witnessed or been subjected to non-consenting impregnation;'

64% allege to have witnessed the killing and/or torture of animals'

62% allege to have witnessed cannibalism'

66% allege to have witnessed the consumption of body fluids;

80% allege to have witnessed or been subjected to non-consenting sado-masochistic acts;

64% allege to have witnessed or been subjected to the consumption of animal fluids;

68% allege to have witnessed the despoiling of churches and/or cemeteries

Breakdown of previous statutory involvement (see table 5)

56% of cases had had previous statutory involvement

30% had had involvement with the police;

32% had had involvement with social services;

10% had received in-patient psychiatry.

It should be noted that in a number of cases the research team felt there was sufficient evidence for the case to be referred to the police for further investigation but the person(s) involved would not proceed for the reasons summarised below.

As Weir and Wheatcroft comment (1995) it is necessary t emphasise the need for care in evaluating allegations of abuse because it has been noticeable that in cases where the possibility of ritual abuse occurs there can be such a level of professional anxiety that the normal procedures of investigation and protection of family rights are abandoned or curtailed (p492).

Index Cases

Fourteen cases were referred to the relevant police department using the protocol described above. The outcome was as follows:

1.Before proceeding to an initial meeting the subject decided to withdraw (n=2)

2. After the initial meeting with a local officer the subject decided to withdraw (n=1)

3. After the initial meeting the police decided not to proceed (n=3)

4. After the initial enquiries post decision to proceed the Police concluded there was insufficient evidence to go further (n=6)

5. Prosecution (n=2)

Comment

Of the twelve cases which proceeded to a police investigation, six were deemed by the police to merit further investigation which was duly carried out.

The only two cases to get to court were non-satanist. This could be because they were the only two where there was sufficient evidence to proceed or the lack of bizarre elements made it easier for the offences to be considered. The researchers did not consider that there was any significant difference in clinical presentation and mental state in the two whose cases proceeded to court compared with the rest of the sample. This fits with ACAL's awareness that some cases get to court by avoiding mention of ritual elements.³ Of the other cases several peripheral aspects of 3 cases were confirmed whilst two peripheral aspects of 2 cases in the aforementioned sample of 3 were disproved.

[SAFFedit: Again Sinason-Hale corrupt their own statistics by imposing their prejudices upon them. Their study shows that of their sample of 50 patients who had self-identified as having been ritually abused, only TWO had cases which the police accepted were sufficient for prosecution, but that neither of those cases were Satanic Abuse. In short then, after a two year survey of 50 self-declared victims NONE OF THE SAMPLE HAD VALID CASES OF SRA. Yet Sinason-Hale excuse this with the disproven theory that the CPS may censor prosecutions to omit Occult motifs because they think it will dissuade a court. Where is the part of the study focussing on correspondence with the DPP and CPS to back up this mad idea?  Nowhere.  Instead Sinason-Hale promote the opinion of ACAL whose loony ideas on SRA have been exposed by Private Eye magazine (issue 1395) - see extract alongside, double-click on it to get a larger image so you can read it more easily. Now,  would you trust the opinions of conspiracy theorists like this?]

Clinical Results

Clinicians would not be in a position to prove or disprove events in legal terms but only to asses mental state and collect evidence that corroborates or dis-confirms the history.

Patients were asked to provide corroboration of alleged family backgrounds, work, past medical histories, educational histories,etc.

Clinical Presentation

1. Subjects brought as corroborative evidence weapons, ceremonial clothes and items, medical and educational records and photographic evidence of Satanist emblems, despoiling of churches, unregistered children and injuries.

 [SAFFedit: And who was it that pronounced these symbols, weapons, clothes, and emblems as 'satanic' ?   In SAFF experience most victim-imposters are highly ignorant of true Satanic Regalia and often confuse emblems and symbols from other NON-satanic religions in their place. Where is the occult 'expert' in the panel who accepted patient's 'corroborative' evidence like this as real?  Did the police take them away for DNA analysis?  If so what was the result?  How did the 'victims' end up with treasured Satanic regalia without their group missing it?  Who analysed the photographs?  Which churches were desecrated, when and why?  Why can we not see a list of the items/symbols and clothes?  These are key questions which anyone seriously wanting to get to the bottom of whether these patients really were SRA victims or were just fantisising , would want to ask to prove their contentions but as usual with this appallingly conceived and enacted 'Devil Report' they are glossed over. ]

2.Subjects took part, where they wished to, in three-way telephone discussions with allegedly abusive family members with the therapist involved. Permission was asked of family members first. Corroboration of gross family trauma including murder was provided.

[SAFFedit: Provided by whom?  Are Sinason-Hale saying that the patients' mothers and fathers or siblings incriminated themselves in murder?  If so which murders, where and when?  Were the police informed and what did they do about it?  Sinason-Hale write in a non-detailed obfuscatory manner. How is it possible to know what they mean when they term extreme allegations of satanic murder as 'corroborated' in a conversation?  Obviously although Sinason-Hale believed these interviews had 'corroborated' Satanic murder the police did not. ]

3. Within the total sample two subjects (one from the index group and one from the total sample) had been involved in a recovered memory technique, but only after they had already made substantial allegations.

Psychiatric Assessment.

1. In the majority of cases known psychiatric disorder was not a basis for explaining or discounting the account given by the patient.

2. In none of them was there an enduring diagnosis of schizophrenia or other axis I psychotic illness. Equally none of the patients had been previously diagnosed as Munchhausen's syndrome.

3. 3. (sic) In only two cases out of the total sample did we consider that the severity of the personality disorder could be a significant feature in lowering the credibility of testimony.

4. A significant number of the patients had a diagnosis of DID (This is till a controversial diagnosis in the UK but has attained wide recognition in the USA)

_______________________________________________________________________

³ ACAL is an association of child abuse lawyers, a non-profit-making company formed as a response to concerns within the legal profession that people abused in childhood and the learning disabled were receiving poor standards of advice and assistance. They are concerned about adults claiming to be victims of Satanist abuse who are also dissociative. [SAFFedit: Utterly disingenuous note. ACAL is run by lawyers Lee Moore and Peter Garsden. Lee Moore claims to have been Satanically abused herself and bothftop insist, without proof, that satanic networks of child-abusers exist in the U.K. ]

Clinical Conclusions

1. The patients alleging this abuse form a significant and discreet clinical group as judged by the following criteria.

a) the consistency of their core accounts

b) these accounts cannot be discounted as being the products of mental illness (e.g. Munchhausen's syndrome, Munchhausen by proxy or psychotic illness) or fundamentalist beliefs.

c) the affective state of the patient when recounting experiences.

d) the high frequency of Dissociative Identity Disorder.

[SAFFedit: These conclusions are contradictory and in error. By choosing prejudiced definitions of SRA Sinason-Hale corrupted their survey and consciously or unconsciously harvested  only that information in their work.   This is the only reason why their patients' stories can be considered 'consistent'.  This was the same error made in the 1987-1990 period.  All early cases were caused by evangelistic social workers who believed in SRA asking leading questions of children to get 'consistent' confirmation which turned out to be wholly wrong. 

Secondly Sinason-Hale insist that their patients' stories are not the product of mental illness yet earlier they have clearly stated that 10% had been Sectioned.  The sample includes many who have already been in trouble with the police and others who are under social services care. There is no in-depth analysis of patients past psychiatric treatment nor any attempt to rate them for normality.  For Sinason-Hale to imply that we must believe their patients after admitting that two had been proven to have lied to the police is an insult to the scientific method! ]

2. Fundamentalist religious belief was not a significant issue in our sample. In three of the total sample there was involvement in fundamentalist religion. In two of these cases this was in seeking help after previously alleged Satanist abuse. Both patients were ambivalent about their involvement but stated that these religious organisations had been the only ones to believe their testimony and offer them support in the third case the organised abuse took place in the context of the religious organisation.

[SAFFedit: Another nonsensical statement by Sinason-Hale. There is no indication or categorisation in this study of their patients' religious beliefs. The fact that Buddhists and Atheists along with many other philosophies do not believe in a Satan figure means that there is absolutely no doubt that SRA survivors contain a majority of Christian believers. Many of the people Sinason has worked with on SRA have been ardent/evangelical Christian believers and it is their religious world view which has driven their belief in SRA and caused them to campaign to get others to believe in it. Andrew Boyd, for example, who contributed to Sinason's book and researched and produced Beyond Belief which she mentions in her study above, is a fanatical Christian who edits 'God's Word Now' and writes for Prophecy Today, a fundamentalist Christian magazine. To try to wave away the influence of Christian activists in promoting the idea of SRA is simply fraudulent and the SAFF has absolute proof of how they were involved here: http://saff.nfshost.com/reachout.htm .  Many SRA victims imposters were nominal Christians at a turning point in their lives who fell into the hands of fundamentalist agitators who forced ideas into their heads during exorcism rituals.  Jennifer, who was the prime witness in Beyond Belief, fell into that category and after the programme blamed the SRAhunters at Ellel Grange for putting false memories into her mind. Double click on the image to see full size version of her retraction.   Sinason openly declares that two of her patients came down this path obviously not realising what that means.  She must have also believed in Jennifer's original story as she has several times promoted Beyond Belief as a source in this report. Jennifer's retraction of course makes that programme defunct.  Astounding.  Failing to categorise the religious beliefs of patients utterly undermines any conclusions in this report and is a glaring omission.  We should not have to take Sinason-Hales opinion or conclusions on this important issue, which are, in any event, clearly incorrect. ]

3. Recovered memory was not a significant issue in our project. In every case the original allegation of ritual abuse had already been established before the patient was involved in the project.

[SAFFedit: What does this gibberish mean? Does it mean that Sinason-Hale found that patients had undergone Recovered Memory Therapy or had not undergone RMT?    RMT is a discredited method of therapy which most scientific observers consider causes confabulation.   Categorising patients who had undergone RMT as irrelevant because it was done 'before the patient was involved in the project' is nonsense. Which bit of their SRA story was established before RMT and which not?    Important ramifications like this are left out of this study and reveal not so much a scientific attempt to get at the facts, but a willingness to prejudicially emphasise the writers' own beliefs upon the reader, making their work invalid as a serious scientific document.] 

Overall Conclusions

I) Police Liaison

Our original hypothesis was that the clinical accounts would provide police with an evidential basis through which they could investigate or re-investigate and thereby prove or disprove the allegations made.

This expectation was not achieved except in two cases, which were the only two in which non-Satanist ritual allegations were made.

[SAFF underlining/emphasis. In short the findings of their 2 year study conclude that there is no evidence to support the idea of Satanic Ritual Abuse.

Clearly there were many factors which complicate the police investigation of such cases. We would cite the following:

1. Where patients were unwilling to proceed further without a safe place. Bentovim

2. Where patients were unwilling to proceed further for fear of the legal consequences for if (sic) their own offending behaviour was confirmed.

3. Where patients were unwilling to proceed further for fear of the legal consequences to their allegedly abusing but loved family members.

4 Where patients were unwilling to proceed sensing scepticism in particular investigating officers.

5 Where patients were unwilling to have their cases investigated by local police in areas where they feared social/familial overlaps.

6. Where patients were unwilling to proceed until they had received Extra Contractual Referral funding for therapy and this was not achieved within the time frame of the project.

7. Where particular police did not receive adequate co-operation from other statutory services.

8. Where there is a lack of experience in professionals. In many cases of organised abuse there has been a breakdown of inter-agency working. In Cleveland (Butler-Sloss Inquiry HMSO 1988) and in the Orkneys (Orkney Inquiry HMSO 1992) inter agency conflict led to serious problems in handling such cases. Whilst in the child sector area child protection committees exist with roles organised under the Working Together under the Childrens' Act (1988, HMSO 1991) there is little adequate recognition of procedures needed to deal with organised abuse or the smaller sub-section of ritual or ritual organised abuse. Indeed Professor La Fontaine comments that with organised abuse there is no adequate body of case experience for most child protection workers to draw on and the cases are difficult to handle.)

[SAFFedit: Fallacious. The conflict between the Orkney SS department and the Police occurred when two ardent SRA activists created a false case of SRA and , having backed it, the local SS department dug-in to protect their own interests. The SAFF exposed it here;  http://saff.nfshost.com/orkney.htm      The  two social workers were castigated by the judicial inquiry, the head of SS then resigned. Changes were then made to stop idiot SRAhunters in social work causing such cases by having them report to their director before taking any action. Any such reports were then forwarded automatically to the DoH headquarters who intervened to stop any further scandals occurring. There were no problems in inter-agency work which the Satan Hunters themselves did not cause. There is no procedural difference in child-protection between multiple-familial-abuse and SRA. There is no need for special training. What we have here is Sinason-Hale subtly complaining that the police didn't do their job. This enables them to carry on as though the fantasies told to them by their sample were true, when it is clear they were not. ]

9. Where there was a custody dispute and for whatever reason one parent is given custody it proved extremely difficult for the non-custodial parent to have their case researched right from the start. As Bentovim (1992) has shown, the weight of the files in themselves precludes fresh rethinking and reinvestigating. Forces demand new evidence in order to re-open these files rather than starting from the beginning.

10 Where patients alleged taking part in cult activities that did not involve illegal acts, i.e., where there is not a child involved, cruelty between “consenting” adults is legal, so longer (sic) as it falls within the parameters of Spanner's recommendations. A cult victim who is addicted through familial loyalty to returning to a group is seen as a consenting adult because they go without coercion. This highlights the need for Vulnerable Victim Co-ordinators.

 [SAFFedit: This is plainly incorrect. Sinason-Hale invoke Operation Spanner, where a group of consenting sado-masochists were successfully prosecuted for causing harm to each other in order to explain why police can't prosecute members of Satanic covens for abusing adults who later complain.(?)   It's just a farcical attempt to whitewash the fact that their own statistics show that 40 people in their study claimed to have been involved in sado-masochistic abuses with 36 of those claiming to have witnessed actual murder,  yet only two cases out of the 50 went to trial. In other words 96% of Sinason-Hale's sample could be construed as fantasising evidence. ]

11. Where the need to involve local police frightened patients.

12. Where patients were seen as unreliable witnesses due to Dissociative Identity Disorder

ii) Conclusions regarding clinical services.

1. Regardless of proof or disproof,belief or disbelieve a significant number of NHS patients are in great mental distress and are not receiving the treatment they need.

2. There is an almost total lack of Health Service in-patient and outpatient treatment facility for Dissociative Identity Disorder patients.

[SAFFedit: And thank goodness that is the case, because DID is a development of the idea of Multiple Identities which is an unacceptable psychiatric method which conflicts with accepted medical views on schizophrenia. ]

iii) Conclusions regarding the external reality of ritual Satanist abuse

We are left with a substantial number of cases in which the central allegations remain neither proven nor disproven by the police.

 [SAFFedit: Again Sinason and Hale contradict their own findings. Sinason and Hale themselves say they actively stopped some of their sample from being investigated by the police because their stories were weak. Out of the 50 sample just 12 cases were eventually given to the police for proper forensic investigation.  After thorough investigation the police found only 2 (two) which warranted police action.  It is not sufficient therefore for Sinason-Hale to say that the other 48 patients' cases were neither proved nor disproven. In fact 10 were disproven by the police and the stories from the 38 others failed to convince even the sympathies of Sinason and Hale whose report has actually proved that 86% of all patients who self identify themselves as victims of SRA may be fantasising or lying. ]

Explanation of observed phenomena:

1. It is an encapsulated psychosis, not based on any reality.

2. Sexual abuse exists but the personality structure leads to an elaboration involving confabulation of ritualistic element.

3. That the events occurred but could not be proven and the psychological disturbance we are seeing was the result of trauma.

 [SAFFedit: There is a fourth conclusion which Sinason-Hale completely ignore of course; that people who claim to be victims of Satanic Abuse are fantasists – as was the case of Carl Beech recently imprisoned for 18 years for making false allegations of ritual abuse against VIPs and celebrities. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7237167/Fantasist-Carl-Beech-invented-VIP-paedophile-ring-guilty-LYING.html .

The child-protection industry has always been highly resistant to the idea that 'victims' lie, but they do so frequently. So frequently that in 2018 the SAFF began counting instances and gave up after over 600 false allegations of abuse in two years. People like Sinason-Hale refuse to entertain the possibility that their SRA victims are fantasising about their experiences yet in 30 years of tracking this myth the SAFF has recorded thousands upon thousands of untruths which Satan Hunters like Sinason have originally believed, but were later found to be lies.   So prevalent is lying in these SRA cases that the SAFF started a campaign for police to use Artificial Intelligence lie-detectors in pre-charge questioning of accused and accusers.  If Sinason-Hale want a change to improve the situation this would be the first one to go for wouldn't it?]

Recommendations

Consideration should be given to establishing:-

1. Specialist investigator independent of local police forces with access to all material

2. Personnel involved in the investigation, as in the new rape suites and child protection units, need to offer a basic stance of believe in the patient narrative until proven otherwise. This would be in line the specialist Occult Crimes Unit in South African (sic) headed by Colonel Kobus Jonker (which has proved and solved 29 ritualistic murders).

[SAFFedit: This is absolutely untrue. The ORCU SA has not 'solved 29 ritualistic murders'. Jonkers has not had even one successful case.  What Jonker did was to seek out crimes which he could reinterpret as 'Satanic'. Most of these were teenage angst.  He reclassified 'ordinary' foul murders as 'Satanic' , tried to convert the murderers to Christianity and then get them to say that Satan made them do it.   SAFF have clips from a documentary showing him in a cell reading the bible to a convicted murderer and encouraging him to confirm Satanic connections in a kind of prison-cell-cum-church witnessing. Hallelujah! 
You can see Jonkers caught on film doing it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AF3jDD_U-A   
Additionally, you can see a detailed history of Jonker's track record at the time this study was published here; http://saff.nfshost.com/ttorso2.htm#jonker
and you will be astonished that Sinason & Hale can so glibly accept and promote the idea that this fundamentalist bible-thumper has 'proved and solved 29 ritualistic murders' as fact.  Just as nonsensical in fact as their conclusion that Fundamentalist Christianity had no effect on their study! ]

3. The provision of specialist therapeutic services, both inpatient and outpatient to contain the patient's fears during investigation and afterwards.

[SAFFedit: It has not been proven that 'containing patients' fears' is a valid mode of therapy.   Research shows that perpetuating fantasies about SRA in the minds of patients can lead to permanent therapy and long-term damage.  See the case of poor Carol Felstead/Myers who committed suicide due to being diagnosted as an SRA victim here;  http://saff.nfshost.com/eyefelsteadmyers.htm  .

4. The provision of specialist multi-disciplinary teams as advocated in 'Working Together' for child protection (Jonker and Jonker-Baker, 1997)

5. The development of vulnerable victim co-ordinators with the police force to deal with 'consenting' adults who are vulnerable.

6. Liaison with legal services to uncover the extent to which bizarre elements are removed from court presentations.

[SAFFedit: Records over the past 30 years show bizarre elements are not removed from court presentations.  The reverse is the case. Such elements are often used to 'carry' prosecutions. ]

The report further highlights:

1. The need for clinical research and provision on dissociative identity disorders.

[SAFFedit: It is disingenuous when making such recommendations for taxpayer funding of DID therapy that Sinason-Hale do not alert readers to the fact that they have a vested interest.  Sinason has been a ground-breaker in the promotion of DID in the U.K. despite general suspicion of the idea in psychiatry.  She founded and helps run the Clinic for Dissociative Studies which intends to popularise what used to be termed Multiple Personality Disorder until that ism became tarnished by its involvement in early-stage SRA allegations which turned out to be false. ]

2. The need for clinical research in elucidating the nature and severity of personality disorder when identified in this group.

3. The need to acknowledge the findings of experienced forensic clinicians (Sinason and Hale 1993) that these cases have been found significantly more difficult to deal with.

[SAFFedit: There is no evidence that clinicians have found allegations of SRA more difficult to deal with, and why would this be the case? The details of ordinary child abuse are shocking and disgusting enough as they stand. Why would similar abuse alleged to occur within a Satanic framework mean that a clinician could not deal with it?  If clinicians can't rise above these things they aught to get another job. ]

We have taken care in this report to exclude evidence brought by subjects in the context of a therapeutic encounter which would have high significance on clinical grounds.