Paul Flowers and The Religious Prejudice Which  Created The Rochdale SRA Blunders

WHEN SATAN CAME TO TOWN

Sixteen Years After The Rochdale Satanic Ritual Abuse lifts the families can no longer be legally Gagged by the Authorities who want to Hide their Blame.

THIS GROUND-BREAKING BBC1 DOCUMENTARY CONVEYED ONLY PART OF THE STORY

The leaflet reproduced here (rightmost column) was printed and published by the SAFF in the Autumn of 1990 shortly after the Rochdale mass child lifts had occurred and well before the public were being made aware of what had happened. This SAFF leaflet was distributed widely to thousands of journalists, newspapers, police authorities, social work groups, NGOs, child welfare charities, as well as local and central government officers, including members of the Cabinet.    

The S.A.F.F. went public'  in an attempt to inject some sanity into a situation where everyone's child was at risk from the Nazi like tactics of the New Inquisitors within Social Work who had bought into the Satan Scare.  

We knew a hard-core of a few dozen activists were creating false cases of Satanic Ritual Abuse across the country and we also knew, even whilst the case was progressing, that it was in error.   We exposed the faultlines in the Rochdale allegations long before anyone else had the wit to realise what was going on at a time when the vast majority of people were actually led to believe in the reports of this nonsense which they were being fed with on a daily basis by the tabloid press.  

We went public to ensure that none of these 'opinon formers' and activists and organisations could say later that they were ignorant of the situation, yet it has taken 16 years for everyone to catch up.  Read what follows and thank you lucky stars you were not accidentally drawn into this witch-hunt. 

THE LAST THROES OF THE  SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE HYSTERIA? 

Because the SRAM was swept under the carpet in the 1990s a replay of the Rochdale Lifts  occurred ten years later in Stornoway, Western Isles of Scotland. In October 2003 nine adults were arrested by social workers and police who believed in the existence of Satanic Ritual Abuse - even though the government report in 1994 was distributed to Social Work departments to avoid such a thing happening. .

The innocent victims suffered a catalogue of crimes of terrorisation, vandalism, personal attacks, media vilification, just like the poor unfortunates in Rochdale in 1990.  After a two year investigation they were all released without charge. If you think the Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth is a Seven Day Wonder then be ready for the knock on the door in the middle of the night. 

By the way, did you know that the two committed Christian social workers who caused the Rochdale Satanic Ritual Abuse Scandal were not sacked but allowed to resign and take up posts with a child charity in Scotland where other SRA cases subsequently began to appear.

Learn How To Protect Yourself and Your Family From Social Services Excesses, here:

 ROCHDALE CASE BLUNDERS EXPLODE SATANIC ABUSE MYTH

By John Freedom,

The Gestapo-like seizure of 17 children and consequent break-up of five completely innocent Rochdale families on suspicion of Satanic Child Sexual abuse was not only a travesty of natural justice, it was a completely avoidable situation for which the police and the social services have absolutely no excuse. Both agencies IGNORED documentary evidence which the SAFF sent them which categorically proved that Satanic Child Sexual Abuse is a MYTH. (ed. The SAFF view was subsequently confirmed by the government's own official report on SRA, which the SAFF contributed to in 1994. Professor Jean La Fontaine concluded that SRA had been a scare developed by leading edge social workers in conjunction with input from Christian fundamentalist activists. )

WE TELL THE POLICE AND THE SOLICITORS THAT IT'S ALL LIES.

As early as May 1990, just as investigations were getting under way, we contacted the police sergeant dealing with the case (Sgt Carol Woodcock of the Blackburn Child Protection Unit) and provided her with an FBI document which was the result of an investigation into the Satanic Child Abuse Myth in the U.S.A. The document titled 'Satanic, Occult, Ritualistic Crime: A law enforcement perspective' was written by the FBIs foremost authority on child violence, Kenneth V Lanning. Lanning lectures at the FBI academy at Quantico Virginia. His long report not only gives the pitfalls that law enforcement officers must avoid when investigating these areas but concludes that Satanic Crime and Child Abuse is a modern myth. Lanning Says "After all the hype and hysteria is put aside the realisation sets in that most satanic/occult activity involves the commission of NO crimes and that which does usually involves the commission of relatively minor crimes such as trespassing, vandalism, or petty thievery."   This report, published in October 1989 was and still is the most authoritative guide for law enforcement officials on this subject in the world. After telephoning Sgt Woodcock to offer help , whom we have to admit we found antagonistic, we followed up with a letter sent recorded delivery on Thursday May 17 which pointed out that the police & the social services had become entangled in a hysteria which had no basis in fact and that there was great danger in concluding that satanic abuse was involved. We requested that Sgt Woodcoock send a duplicate set of documents provided to the solicitors of the parents involved. We received no reply from Sgt Woodcock, nor any contact from the Blackburn Police, nor the Whitworth Social Services who were handling this case.

On June 1 1990 the lack of reply prompted us to seek to identify the solicitors ourselves through the Law Society. We spoke to Mr Richard Postle of Richard Postle & Co over the telephone. We found him only slightly interested but he did confirm that he had not received our documents via Sgt Woodcock. We sent him a repeat set of documents along with a letter written and sent by recorded delivery on June 1 in which we again offered further background information on the fundamentalist scare and asked him to allow his clients to see the information and choose themselves whether they wanted our help. We heard nothing else from Mr Postle.

Additionally we had conveyed a tremendous amount of evidence about the scare and the way that it had been constructed and promoted to Inspector Brian Storey of the Manchester Child Abuse unit in a 5 hour long meeting at our offices during June 1990. Inspector Storey was astonished at the amount of duplicity and manipulation that the Manchester police had received from various 'autonomous'  organisations some of which had not admitted their fundamentalist origins and intent.

WE TELL THE SOCIAL WORKER'S IT'S A MISTAKE

 In line with our policy of bypassing the sensationalism of the British Press our normal press-releases and information broadsheets which the SAFF have sent out every few weeks to update concerned individuals had been regularly sent to the following authorities who were involved in the case/area since mid 1989:

• The Chief Constable of Manchester:
• The Director of Social Services, Manchester, G. Littlemore
• The Director of Social Services at Rochdale; R K Ramadhan,
• Director of Social SErvices in Oldham;
• and the following
• MPs Geoffrey Dickens;  Keith Bradley; Lawrence Cunliffe; Terry Lewis; Tony Lloyd; Cyril Smith and David Sumberg.

It is about time the public of this country were made aware of the irresponsibility of POLICE CONSTABLES, dIRECTORS OF SOCIAL SERVICES and MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT in the U.K. who have consistently ignored our representations and efforts to present the alternative view and provide them with truthful background information on the satanic child abuse myth.

 WE DISCOVER THE U.S.A. LINKS:

Our information has always been devalued, yet our information is always superbly accurate and of immense importance to these enquiries.

For example; The 'symptoms' used by social workers to 'detect' satanic child abuse were imported into this country from work undertaken by one person , Catherine Gould, an American psychologist. These 'symptoms' were collated by Gould from her own case files. You need to be aware that Gould has NEVER BEEN ABLE TO PROVE THE CONCLUSIONS IN ANY OF HER CASES. Not one case of hers has been verified.

Accordingly the criteria by which Rochdale social workers are 'discovering' satanic abuse, are utterly unreliable and untested.  The 'symptoms' themselves are highly suspect and have not been chosen by social workers after exhaustive professional tests, but have been GIVEN TO THEM BY FUNDAMENTALIST GROUPS.  Catherine Gould is herself a fundamentalist activist working out of the Calvary Chapel in Covina U.S.A.

Since 1988 the SAFF has strenuously campaigned to show that the U.K. was suffering from a completely unfounded scare about satanic child sexual abuse which was invented by religious zealots to gain a platform to impose their narrow-minded morality upon the Social Services, Police and Parliament.

WE WARN THE GOVERNMENT, POLICE AND SOCIAL SERVICES PRIOR TO ROCHDALE.

Despite the unequivocal evidence and factual documentary proof we have amassed we knew that a Rochdale had to occur sooner or later and we warned THE POLICE, THE SOCIAL SERVICES , MPS OF ALL PARTIES and THE GOVERNMENT what was likely to happen. The sad fact is that nobody listened to our warnings. Our continuous attempts to get someone, anyone, to come and look at the evidence we held met a total and utter wall of ignorance and prejudice which was unbelievable in its scope.

The terrible stresses and anxieties of the 5 Rochdale families, and at least another 100 people who were victimised unnecessarily could have entirely been avoided had just one Social Worker, Policeman or MP considered our evidence. Yet, despite accepting and acting on unproveable allegations from fundamentalist sources which pandered to their prejudices they continually rejected the opportunity to talk to OCCULTISTS THEMSELVES.

Over the past few years the SAFF has written thousands of letters to all levels of government, to every CHIEF CONSTABLE of every police force in the U.K. offering our help and evidence to stop the hysteria about satanic child sexual abuse spilling over into injustice. As long ago as 1988 we were assiduously writing at a high-level  to GOVERNMENT, POLICE, MPS AND SOCIAL SERVICES, (the people whose job it is to protect the populace from persecution and injustices!).We complained to them about misrepresentation, lies, intolerance, corruption, incitement and the fundamentalist origins of the anti-New-AGE campaign.  We named names and we named motives, we named times & dates and provided documentary evidence to prove our case.   We sent EVERY ONE of these letters by recorded delivery and can prove the receipt (and the lack of response of every person who read them)

But no one would listen. Our evidence, which could have actually saved lives and avoided the Institutional Abuse of  85 kids caught up in this manic scare, was treated with utter disdain.

It was as though the U.K. WANTED to dash headlong into hysteria and prejudice. Many people saw our attempts to get the truth across as proof of the fact that satanic sexual abuse existed; otherwise why would we be so persistent in our representations? What did  WE know about it? Wasn't the SAFF an association of the same twisted, criminal, dishonourable and anti-social occultists that were involved in Satanism and its like? The implication was that we could not be trusted, but as time went on and the SAFF was seen to be correct in every one of its conclusions the 'conspiracy' tightened up even further. The unwritten conspiracy meant that, in persisting in cataloguing the people who were making the wrong decisions the SAFF had become a personal danger to their careers and so people didn't just ignore us, the actively worked AGAINST us. A DESPICABLE state of affairs which is still ongoing.

WE TELL THE POLITICIANS AND MINISTERS IT'S ALL LIES

NUMBER 10 KNEW BUT DID NOTHING: We sent letters to Mrs Thatcher and corresponded with Perry Miller of the Political Office at Number 10 and prophesied that a Rochdale would occur as early as 9 November 1988; but Miller fobbed us off. Later we discovered that the leader of the Political Office is himself was an evangelical Christian.

WHITEHALL KNEW BUT DID NOTHING: We wrote to Douglas Hurd repetitively when he was Home Secretary and conducted extensive correspondence with the Broadcasting Department of the Home Office about incitement to religious hatred, they refused to take any action to prosecute the liars who were appearing daily in the newspapers talking about supposed satanic child abuse involvement which was so sparse in facts that it couldn't be corroborated or checked. .

THE POLICE KNEW BUT APPEARED TO ACTIVELY WORK TO AVOID INVOLVEMENT WITH US: We wrote to the Chief Constable of Surrey to ask him to make a public statement . We knew that he had investigated the outrageous claims of child murder which one of these 'victim impersonators' was making. He had investigated it TWICE and his force had concluded that there was no evidence to prove her accusations.  The Chief Constable of Surrey refused not only to make a public statement but to conduct any further correspondence with us.  As the Home Office had passed the buck to him, this effectively stopped any further enquiries or action in this area. So basically the police conived with the fundamentalists to perpetrate this terrible injustice.   A categoric public assurance from the Chief Constable of Surrey at this point would have stopped the satanic child abuse scare dead in its tracks, but it didn't materialise.

We wrote to the Chief Constable of Hull and demanded that he investigate claims made by Diane Core of Childwatch that 4,000 children were sacrificially murdered in the U.K. annually. Core was a key player in promoting the idea of the existence of Satanic Ritual Abuse and appeared on many TV programmes both here and abroad, peddling the scare.  The Chief Constable refused saying that as Core had not specifically attributed any of these 4,000 murders to his patch it did not concern him! This is typical of the irresponsible and short-sighted obfuscation we often received from people in authority. The authorities never took us seriously enough to even investigate what we were saying. Had the Chief Constable of Hull properly investigated these claims (which were made to a U.S.A. magazine) many of Core's other statements would have been seen to be exaggerations too and her great influence within the social services in the U.K. would have waned  before the damage was done. But he didn't and Core continued making her insupportable allegations in the press and on TV.

HOW THE BROADCAST MEDIA HYPED AND INCITED BELIEF IN THE MYTH OF SATANIC ABUSE:

We were told by the Home Office that they had no powers to intercede in media propaganda which attempted to convince the public that there had been successful prosecutions for satanic child abuse crimes even though the Home office itself had agreed that there was no evidence to suggest that there was a connection with child abuse and witchcraft.  The Home Office refused to make a public statement that there was no evidence.

The Home Office refused to make a public statement that  the much vaunted 'dossier' from Geoffrey  Dickens MP for Saddleworth, said to 'prove' the satanic child abuse allegations had never been sent to them even though a year had now elapsed since he promised to send it to them (Ed: Dickens was Childwatch's official parliamentary representative). Neither would the H.O. agree to our request for SAFF representatives to travel to present our evidence to the Home Office so that a proper investigation could ensue. Had the Home Office done all this the perpetrators of the Satanic Child Abuse Hysteria would not have got off the ground with their scare and Rochdale would have never happened. The HO didn't co-operate in any way and the scare simply grew and grew to damage our society.

In respect of inciting broadcasts The Home Office deferred responsibility for the content of Independent Broadcasters to George Russell CBE the director of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Russell became so antagonistic over our perseverance about the despicable, misleading and virtually bogus Cook Report programme The Devil's Work that he eventually refused to respond with us at all. Russell could have seen a deputation from the SAFF; looked more closely at the situation, accepted the numerous complaints which were landing on his desk and given guidelines to stop the ridiculous excesses of sensationalism which were occurring at an ever faster rate. He did nothing. The IBA received constant complaints from British Esotericists about the way that their beliefs were being travested on television but the IBA wouldn't even consider complaints of this nature. In their opinion occultism WAS a repository of criminal and sexual abuse. Prejudice indeed. So the British public continued to be mislead and the myths grew in shape and magnitude. When we complained to the Home Office that Russell had ignored his statutory responsibilities to investigate our complaints under the 1981 broadcasting Act the HO said that

'They had every confidence in Mr Russell'

- but they didn't insist that he do his job or accept our evidence.

(Ed: In an attempt to further censor our discoveries about the discredited Cook Report the 'Taped Crusader' later  tried to close down our website and Central Television/Granada's legal department threatened us with legal action.)

HOW PARLIAMENT LET THE PEOPLE DOWN:

We wrote personally to ask so many MPS to intervene that we can only list a few them here; Angela Rumbold MP; Kevin McNamara MP; Geoffrey Dickens MP; The Speaker (Bernard Wetherill); Dame Jill Knight MP; Keith Hampson MP; Anthony Wedgewood Ben; Peter Brooke MP; Tony Worthington MP on and on.

. None of these people asked to see our evidence, or requested more information; the majority were antagonistic to our assertions but conversely were quite willing to talk with organisations like the NSPCC, REACHOUT, Childwatch and Childline who WITHOUT A SHRED OF EVIDENCE took on board and promoted the idea that Satanic Child abuse existed.

HOW THE NSPCC JUMPED ON THE BANDWAGON:

We kept up detailed correspondence with Dr Alan Gilmour director of the NSPCC providing him with statistical information and background data about occultism in the U.K. well before their public support of the satanic abuse myth. Whilst engaged in correspondence with the NSPCC they, without warning, published a critical and sensational press-release supporting the idea of satanic child sexual abuse. The NSPCC did this without ever once asking to see our documented evidence to the contrary. When we sent them a dossier, containing suspicious background on people and groups from whom they had been accepting 'evidence' they ignored the dossier entirely and when we persisted the NSPCC took legal advice and  subsequently refused to comment on our evidence.  The NSPCC never once telephoned or visited us to review our evidence. They knew that had they done so, they would have had to retract publicly and admit a mistake over a pronouncement which they were already incorporating into a fundraising appeal. Instead they sent a questionnaire to their branches asking their inspectors if they believed that satanic abuse existed.  

It was this unethical and unprofessional 'research' that prompted the public statements in their annual report in which the NSPCC said that they had 'evidence' of satanic child abuse occurring.

Upon sight of this we immediately prepared a condemnatory press-release showing the NSPCC'S inaccuracies. We sent this to the influential people on various NSPCC standing committees, including Princess Margaret, The Queen Mother; Various Bishops and others. We asked SOMEONE to telephone or write to us BUT NOT ONE DID. We then mailed out the same press release to our general mailing file (all MPs; Newspaper Editors and Police & Social Services). We got only ONE reply, a courageous journalist from the London WEEKENDER Magazine who contacted the NSPCC. A spokesperson for the NSPCC backtracked immediately and blamed the sensational publicity on the media response, denying that the NSPCC had said that satanic child abuse existed. When we wrote to the NSPCC and asked them to issue a press release to the effect that their stance on satanic child abuse had been misinterpreted by the media the NSPCC point blank refused.

"It is not for the society to comment upon statements published in the popular press".

The NSPCC were basically saying that even if their dishonourable handling of the situation had resulted in a jeopardising of religious freedom or victimisation of innocent occultists it was not in their interests to put the matter right under the hysteria which reigned.  (Ed: The only time we actually received anything pro-active from the NSPCC was when, because of their clear intransigence we told them that we were getting ready to go public with their obstinacies . Almost by return post they paid megabucks of donor's funds to a blue-chip firm of barristers in the city to write and threaten the SAFF with legal action if we did.  So we called their bluff. Print and be damned!)  

HOW IT BECAME OPEN-SEASON FOR WITCHES WITH THE BRITISH MEDIA:

During the summer of 1989 over 360 (three hundred and sixty) anti-occult articles were published  in the British Press. The witch-hunt was in full swing and the depth of ignorance of occultism which showed in these articles was so appalling that the confusions could not have been subconscious ones. Witchcraft/Paganism (which is a pre-christian religion) was confused with Satanism which has completely different aims and tenets (Witches do not worship a devil figure). Mediaeval stereotypes and incompatible theology was mixed with inconsistent dialogue until a cocktail of illogical images became commonplace. Witches were evil; worshipped the  Devil and killed and ate babies - they said. Nobody asked WHY they were supposed to do these things; WHERE were the bodies? WHY weren't some children missed?  HOW MANY children were sacrificed and at what frequency?  Where was the forensic evidence?  

Likewise the supporters of the satanic abuse myth never considered the theological fact that to believe in the devil you have , perforce, to be a Christian or a lapsed or renegade Christian. Pagans do not have a devil figure in their cosmology but nobody thought  to ask them what they believed in.  Mediaeval theological assumptions were dredged up and presented as though modern fact.

Witches always made their candles from the fat of unbaptised babies the scaremongers said; but nobody could produce candles made from the fat of unbaptised babies!

Witches not only sexually abused children as a matter of course but they took pornographic photographs of them; they said. But no-one could produce any pornographic photographs which had been made by witches.

They looked into the history books and pointed to the fact that Celtic Pagans used to sacrifice animals; and then forgot to mention that during the same period so did Christians.

Witches have a compulsion to destroy family life and subvert society, said the agitators; but couldn't explain why thousands of witches have happy & content family lives and come from the professional classes having a vested interest in keeping society as it is.

Witches are terminally psychotic and can't be trusted claimed the 'experts' and exampled Charles Manson's murderous excesses as proof.  Nobody wanted to know that Manson was actually a Christian and used to read the bible, just as they forgot to mention all those hundreds of modern murderers who claimed that God made them do it, such as the Yorkshire Ripper.

Witches were dross they said; epithets like "ultimate evil" and "inhuman monsters" became common-place; yet whilst the British Media cast around to find just ONE case which proved their accusations about the supposed inhumanity of Witchcraft, Sadam Hussain was gassing Iranians by the thousand; Chileans were being terribly tortured and Indians in the Amazon Rain Forests were being exterminated. Oh, yes, if anyone has a sense of proportion these days it has to be the British Media.

WE CONTACTED THE CRUSADING JOURNALISTS

In order to stem this tide of dangerous intolerance the SAFF wrote personally to every journalist who had written such articles, and every editor of every newspaper which had printed such articles to insist that there was no such thing as Satanic Child Abuse - the myth was a blend of vicious religious prejudice stemming from an ignorance of the subject coupled with the overactive imaginations of children and the suspect testimony of born-again 'witnesses' whose own medical history often made their testimony unreliable.

Despite our continuous letters; despite providing the journalists concerned with updated information from time to time NOT ONE journalist from any national or provincial newspaper ever contacted us about the scare until Rosie Waterhouse of the Independent became suspicious of the information she was being fed by the promoters of the satanic child abuse myth. This lady's commitment to her profession resulted in the Independent's recent exposure of the Myth which was based on background information supplied by the S.A.F.F.

Accordingly for over two years the British public were totally and utterly mislead and manipulated by 99% of the British media in such a complete and total way that even now 9 out of every 10 people asked would, without question, insist that satanists do in fact abduct, murder and eat babies, even though there has never ever been been one investigation either here or abroad which has succeeded in proving this.

Despite many SAFF successes, despite our insistences coming true time after time after time, our evidence was consistently ignored by the POLICE, Government, MPS and The Social Services. We contacted Mr P Baldrin an influential member of the Department  Of Health, who had accepted representations from the NSPCC, Child line and the National Children's Home. We sent him a dossier of information about the hoax. He acknowledge receipt but deferred the opportunity to talk with us or respond to our offer to send a deputation to speak with him.

POLICE AND SOCIAL SERVICES SQUANDERED RESOURCES ON A PHANTOM:

By this time the Social Services and the POlice of this country were wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers money in investigating supposed cases of satanic child abuse which simply did not exist.  The paranoia became intrinsic to any child- abuse investigation and even spilled over into animal abuse with RSPCA inspectors declaring a nationwide campaign to catch satanist animal sacrificers and touring the country to gain background information to prove their point. Utterly facetious and unnecessary police investigations found that a case of a sacrificed cat in south wales turned out to be a teenage prank and a case in Weston Supermare of a 'dismembered'  cat was stopped when an old lady contacted the police and admitted that she had buried her cat in the woods after it had died of natural causes.

THE BOGUS, BOGUS SOCIAL WORKERS:  A CLASSIC EXAMPLE:

During early 1990 the fundamentalist involvement with hyping the satanic-child-abuse scare spilled over into a hybrid scare about social workers. Satanists posing as social workers were calling to kidnap children, it was alleged. Within a week over 173 (one hundred and seventy three!) cases of Satanic Bogus Social Workers were reported to the police. A special incident room was set up to correlate police activity on a nationwide scale. Witnesses told of personal examinations of their children and fundamentalist and child welfare organisations came out with the most ridiculous possibilities which were lapped up by the British Press. Satanists used miniature spy-cameras to photograph children whilst they were examining them, we were told. Within the space of a month the police unit was disbanded. The Bogus Satanic Social Workers simply didn't exist. Out of 173 incidents reported police believed only 3 were possibly genuine. The rest were thought to be door-to-door salesmen, religious canvassers and market researchers. Yet this classic incident of the gullibility of hysterical people to create their own terrors following press scaremongering did nothing to lessen the belief in the satanic child abuse allegations even though only half a dozen of these cases had been 'discovered' and there was even less evidence to support them!    People, of whatever intellect and background, INSISTED IN furthering these illogical and damaging assertions. The whole of the U.K. was indulging in a form of interactive fantasy which played on people's fears, prejudices and emotions.

WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE TELL THE KING HE HAD NO CLOTHES?:

The passive acceptance of allegations of the most horrible and terrifying kind continued with increasing pace. Not one person seemed to want to stop and ask WHO? WHY? WHERE and HOW?  Instead everyone 'knew' it all made sense and as the fundamentalists piled on the anecdotal testimonies using a growing band of 'victim imposters'. Professionals who should have known better fell into the trap hook line and sinker. SAFF monitoring of influential magazines devoted to the 'social work and caring professions' ( I.E. Social Work Today and Community Care) had a marked lack of responsibility towards the subject and were themselves feeding their readers with fundamentalist allegations without corroborative evidence.

The magazines had no doubt that satanic child abuse did exist and should be addressed by social workers even there was absolutely no evidence to support any of the allegations. When we wrote to the editors, pointed out their lack of responsibility and provided them with background evidence to the contrary most of them refused to reply to our letters.  It was easier for them to keep their social worker and professional readers uninformed of our evidence. Rather some poor parents suffer in Rochdale than cause discord within the professions and reveal their fallibility to their readers.

The absolute stupidity of police and social services during this period has grave repercussions for the future of justice and tolerance in the U.K. Having seen exhibited the gullibility and lack of commonsense of many social workers during this period I for one wouldn't give most of the ones involved the responsibility of looking after my dog, let alone overriding powers to influence an individual's destiny. In this matter 'well-meaning' is insufficient excuse for grave errors of judgement which can destroy people's lives.

The spectacle of professional self-interest coming to the fore as various therapists used the sensational claims of their patients ( 'victim impersonators') as a platform to make a name for themselves in their profession was absolutely despicable. We have seen doctors allowing journalists to sit in on therapy sessions and even take photographs of patients under therapy; we have seen patients used as 'witnesses' at child-abuse conferences, like freaks at a sideshow, to convince other members of the professions and gain media sensationalism WHILST THEY ARE STILL UNDERGOING TREATMENT!

Although we worked phenomenally hard with very limited resources the S.A.F.F. wasn't getting the truth across as quickly as the fundamentalists were getting across their lies. Following our continuous stream of individual and personal letters to MPs, POLICE CONSTABLES and SOCIAL SERVICES we embarked upon a blanket dissemination of factual evidence in the form of thousands of newsletters like this one. It is hard to believe that whilst we kept up a constant barrage of accurate information hundreds of influential people glibly ignored it. On a repetitive and regular basis we mailed out to the following people:

• (1) EVERY NATIONAL AND PROVINCIAL EDITOR WHOSE NEWSPAPERS HAD AT ANY TIME FEATURED THE SATANIC CHILD ABUSE MYTH.
• (2) EVERY JOURNALIST AND FREELANCE WHO HAD AT ANY TIME WRITTEN ABOUT THE SATANIC CHILD ABUSE MYTH.
• (3) EVERY CHIEF CONSTABLE OF EVERY POLICE FORCE IN THE U.K. AND EVERY POLICE OFFICER WHO HAD UNDERTAKEN SATANIC ABUSE INVESTIGATIONS (that we knew of).
• (4) EVERY GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT WHICH HAD AN INTEREST IN THE ONGOING SITUATION AND EVERY PERSON IN THOSE DEPARTMENTS WHOM WE HAD PREVIOUSLY WRITTEN PERSONAL LETTERS TO.
• (5) EVERY ONE OF THE HUNDREDS OF MPs IN PARLIAMENT
• (6) EVERY DIRECTOR OF SOCIAL SERVICES IN EVERY LOCALITY IN THE U.K.
• (7) EVERY BODY OR GROUP WHICH HAD BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE SCARE (I.E. NSPCC; CHILDLINE; CHILDWATCH; AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL; UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION ETC ETC)
• (8) EVERY BROADCASTING BODY, RADIO STATION, TELEVISION COMPANY AND THE PEOPLE WHO HAD PRODUCED PROGRAMMES WHICH HAD UPHELD/INVESTIGATED THE SATANIC CHILD ABUSE HOAX. (e.g Sarah Cullen of I.T.N. George Russell IBA/ Checkland of BBC Radio 4 / BORDER TV; CENTRAL TELEVISION; BROADCASTING COMPLAINTS COMMISSION etc. etc etc.

In short literally thousands of these newsletters reached the most influential and concerned people in this matter nationally. During this period we PROVED the following:

Geoffrey Dickens MPs outbursts in parliament which started the myth in the first place were untrue and inaccurate.

Dickens no-longer campaigns with the same degree of adamancy - his much acclaimed dossier which he was preparing for the Home Secretary and which he said would categorically PROVE the existence of satanic child sexual abuse has NEVER been presented.

The Childwatch group in Hull for which Dickens is the parliamentary agent, no longer spearheads the campaign against satanism, we discovered that Diane Core had made inciting statements and exaggerations of fact which could not be corroborated and had attended decidedly evangelical conferences in the U.S.A. and Rome which were financed and organised by Lyndon La Rouche's anti-papist anti-communist Mcarthyist-like organisation. Despite her vociferous claims and allegations throughout a three year period Core has only had ONE alleged case of satanic activity in her locality and that turned out not to be proven.

FUNDIES HYPE THE NSPCC HYPE

The hysterically sensational Press coverage of the NSPCC's public statement about their stance on satanic ritual abuse (July 17th 1989) was caused by a widely used re-written press release from Associated Press Ltd which included absolute statements about satanic child abuse and conclusions which did not appear in the NSPCC press release. The journalist who used the AP in this way is an evangelical who is writing a book on the satanic child abuse allegations!  Most newspapers just printed it whole.  Associated Press now refuses to correspond with us over this matter and like the NSPCC has refused to distribute an apology or withdrawal, telling us instead to complain to the newspapers who used the piece.

It was the SAFF which discovered that the NSPCC had been accepting discredited information on the satanic child abuse scare from various groups, including representations from a fundamentalist organisation called REACHOUT which hid its real intent (to suppress occultism and the New age) and instead came forward as a group of caring and involved Christian people who were primarily interested in the protection of children. REACHOUT had assisted Dickens with his campaign and was behind/involved in virtually every article and TV programme on the subject. Reachout presented evidence to the Department of Health and Childline, to various private members' committees in the Houses of Parliament as well as many social service departments throughout the country.  Reachout representatives spoke at all the early infamous Satan Seminars giving workshops on how to detect SRA.to social workers.    Even though Reachout is not qualified to deal with psychologically distressed children or adults and their charitable licence clearly shows them to be a Christian organisation dedicated to cult-busting, their telephone number was quoted in hundreds of articles as a 'helpline'. The Cook Report listed Reachout members' as consultants on their programme and put a Reachout director in charge of their response lines after their discredited Devil's Work programme.  (Ed: ultimately when so many false cases came to fruition in Orkney, Ayr, Rochdale, Epping, Manchester, Nottingham, Leicester etc., the British Public had had enough and the media turned against their previous informers.  When asked to substantiate the Satanic Indicators Reachout had distributed Douglas Harris who runs Reachout denied that SRA was an official interest of Reachout.   He inferred it was the private interest of one of their directors and that it was not a central plank of the Reachout Trust.   This was not only completely disingenuous at the time because SAFF files show that Reachout actually was the front runner in promoting SRA but after the glare of publicity faded, you can still find the same faulty and dangerous SRAM demonology  shown on the new Reachout Website  right now, for obsessive SRA believers to read . As though the suffering of  all these poor innocent children and their families was of no consequence whatsoever.   The main reason why Reachout , and the other army of fundamentalist agitators continue to peddle this dangerous nonsense is because the government allows them to do so.  If the government had prosecuted just one of their number for inciting religious hatred at the start ,as we demanded, then the hysteria would have never gained momentum and we would have avoided the sight of  dozens of children being tortured by the British Social Services.   In a country which allows its fundamentalists preferential treatment to run riot what can one expect? )

FUNDAMENTALIST AGITATORS WHIPPED UP THE SOCIAL WORK MAFIA

The SAFF discovered a massive fundamentalist industry behind the scenes which was dedicated to preparing 'counsellors' with an understanding of professional dialogue so that they could communicate their religious prejudices to professionals and convince them that satanic child abuse existed. Astoundingly these people, many of whom are totally unqualified in these areas, are still holding training seminars for social workers which teach facile 'symptoms' supposed to be an indicator of satanic child sexual abuse but which are in realty the behavioural difficulties which are sometimes exhibited by young children. E.G. Talking about faeces at the table; smearing of faeces; toilet training difficulties; etc. When a young child's attempts gain attention from its parents are considered symptoms of satanic abuse is it  really surprising that the ROCHDALE case and others will happen? Some of these 'experts' in satanic sexual abuse have a sum-total of 6 weeks expertise gained from tours of fundamentalist circuits in the U.S.A. Often the fundamentalist 'courses' which teach 'counselling skills' to unqualified people are one-day seminars. The only qualification needed to join this band of mind-benders  is that you are a Christian.

THE COOK REPORT OVER-COOKED

The SAFF exposed the bogus nature and fabricated evidence used in the now totally discredited COOK REPORT ' which electronically tampered with a tape recording of an interview to make their 'target' appear to be condemning himself.  The Devil's Work' was an appalling piece of  third rate journalism and we have publicly criticised its researcher Tim Tate who had himself influentially promoted the idea of satanic child sexual abuse, and wrote a book on it which was so inaccurate that at least one person sued and the book had to be pulped!

FUNDAMENTALIST INPUT INTO THE NOTTINGHAMSHIRE BROXTOWE CASE

IT WAS THE SAFF who provided evidence to the Nottinghamshire Social Services to show that the two social workers involved in the case which featured 20 abused children had come to the wrong conclusions and that there was no satanic or occult connection. This case has been repetitively quoted as 'proof' of the existence of Satanic Child Abuse in conferences attended by social workers and child welfare professionals as well as police, but there was no evidence to prove that any occult connection existed. The SAFF uncovered evidence to show that one of the social workers involved had a prior connection with the fundamentalist groups who had hyped the satanic child abuse scenario and had appeared on a fundamentalist video quoting scriptural passages. The report into the internal enquiry which admonishes the two social workers is to be published sometime this month.

It was the SAFF which uncovered the multi-national fundamentalist groups which aim to bring pan-global pressure on Westernised societies. These extremely powerful and wealthy fundamentalist organisations are already well esconsed into the British Establishment and use gullible British religious zealots to implement plans and strategy to interfere with the democratic process in this country. Their aim is to completely restructure our society and they have set a target of 20 MILLION CONVERTS throughout the 1990s. They wish to change our laws, the media and education to suppress minority cultures such as Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism etc and outlaw alternative beliefs and philosophies. AND THEY ARE SUCCEEDING in this just as easily and subversively as they have done with the satanic child abuse allegations BECAUSE THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY ARE TOTALLY CONTROLLED BY THE MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT and the Media & the Government are still not clued in to how their consideration of the satanic child abuse scare has meant they have unwittingly become complicit in these destructive changes. But what do WE know we're only a bunch of evil esotericists? After all we have only been absolutely right in everything we have ever said over the past few years.

It was the SAFF which warned U.K. social workers to the pattern of hysteria which had occurred in the U.S.A. and told of the risk of it happening here. U.S.A. experiences were replicated in the U.K. EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, yet even though we warned the social services that the McMartin Pre-School Trial(the show case trial for satanic child abuse in the U.S.A.) had ended with no convictions of any kind and that our police and social services should inspect this case to avoid making the same mistakes, within months the ROCHDALE case had occurred and destroyed the lives of five families.

It was the SAFF which pointed to the fact that such pressure and victimisation would sooner or later claim a death and indeed a Manchester man who was accused of satanic child abuse just because he had an interest in alternative medicine recently died because of the pressure heaped upon him by social workers and the police. The SAFF is working on several other cases in which deaths have occurred through the perpetuation of the satanic child abuse myth.

ROCHDALE NEEDN'T HAVE HAPPENED

If the authorities had taken on board SAFF information ROCHDALE would never have happened We know this is true because we had ALREADY STOPPED a similar investigation in HULL. An SAFF member was picked upon for investigation by the Hull Social Services because someone had told tales to the Hull NSPCC about their occult involvement. The Hull NSPCC had been primed with the paranoia of NSPCC HQ press bulletins and passed on the 'tip off' to the Hull Social Services. SAFF involvement resulted in the parents being vindicated and avoided a disturbing and unnecessary medical examination of the child. But the Hull Social Services did not further the matter; they did not enquire about the situation in general; nor did they warn other Social Services of the danger; they simply treated the case as a one-off and brushed the case under the carpet.

If the information that we supplied to the Hull Social Services was sufficient for them to see sense and not jeopardise the family unit in the Hull case, then why did the ROCHDALE POLICE SERGEANT DEALING WITH THE CASE REFUSE TO CORRESPOND OR TAKE UP THE SAME EVIDENCE WHICH WE SENT TO HER? WHY DID THE SOLICITOR OF ONE OF THE FAMILIES CONCERNED ALSO NOT ACT ON OUR INFORMATION AND FAIL TO GET BACK IN TOUCH AFTER WE HAD TELEPHONED HIM AND OFFERED OUR HELP? These are questions the public, and no doubt the families of those involved, will want to ask of the ROCHDALE POLICE AND SOCIAL SERVICES.

Excuses will not do - professionals are to blame for allowing their emotions to override their professional judgement. The whole of the U.K. has been had. Social Workers, Police, Courts and the Media are ALL guilty of perpetrating a satanic child abuse witch-hunt which disgraces our society.  History will show the truth of the matter.

This country will forever owe the SAFF a debt which will begin to be more appreciated as time passes and the hysteria subsides. The freedom to write what you want to write; think what you want to think; pursue the belief you want to believe in and learn what you wish to learn is under attack by an insidious and persistent force. A force which relies upon one main human ingredient. IGNORANCE.  

This is not someone else's fight; it is YOURS.

ENDS.September 1990.