NZ Herald
Tuesday, September 3, 1996.
Hysteria recalls Salem trials
by Neil Sands
A new book examines the satanic abuse
phenomenon.
Controversy has raged over "recovered memory" in cases of sexual
abuse. Neil Sands finds that a book published yesterday in Australia will
fuel further debate.
Sydney - Fear of devil-worshippers performing satanic rites on children has
always exercised a chilling grip on society's collective unconscious.
The excesses of the Spanish Inquisition in the Middle Ages and the Salem
witch trials in the 17th century seem far removed from the modern age. But a
new book argues that a similar hysteria - just as ill-founded and devastating
to those involved - has swept Australia in recent years.
In his book Talk of the Devil, Richard Guilliatt, a Sydney Morning Herald
journalist, outlines how dozens, perhaps hundreds, of parents and childcare
workers have been accused of satanic abuse of children.
Evidence for the allegations was based on "repressed memories" of
adults or evidence gathered from children using "suggestive"
psychological techniques that have been discredited overseas, Guilliatt
argues.
"Many people, predominantly women, but also men and children, now claim
to remember childhood events which are clearly impossible and have no basis
in reality," he writes.
"These people are recovering memories of extreme and bizarre incidents
perpetrated by parents who, it is claimed, belonged to satanic cults which
participated in murder, child sacrifice, torture, pornography and other
serious crimes on a major scale.
"Such stories have given rise to a new term in the child abuse field —
ritual abuse. Yet, despite hundreds of massive police investigations in
Europe, the United States and Australia over the past decade, virtually no
material evidence has ever emerged to support the existence of ritual or
satanic cult abuse."
In New South Wales alone, more than 300 people are estimated to be seeking
treatment for ritual abuse, Guilliatt writes.
The United States experienced a similar wave of ritual abuse claims in the
early 1990s, leading to massive prosecutions that failed due to lack of hard
evidence and spawning a mini-industry of ritual abuse "survivor"
books, New Age therapists and seminars.
Guilliatt says that, in 1991, comedy star Roseanne Barr told a magazine that
when she was a child her parents repeatedly sexually assaulted her, staged a
fake murder in the family home and chased her trying to rub excrement in her
hair.
But, he says that since then serious questions have been raised about ritual
abuse after the psychological methods that led to the claims were
discredited.
While the credibility of ritual abuse 'Was waning in the $S, it was
increasing in Australia* as sexual assault services; police and prosecutors
adopted a "blinkered" view and ignored mounting evidence against
it, including reports from the FBI and the American and British governments.
A large part of Guilliatt's book recounts a case of alleged ritual abuse in
the West Australian town of Bunbury. In the case two adult sisters told
police their father, brother, grandfather and uncles subjected them to
systematic satanic abuse while they were children.
The story of a once close-knit family split into two camps, each believing it
was right and both suffering enormously, is a disturbing portrait of how
allegations can start a legal process that quickly turns into a juggernaut.
"In something like the Bunbury case you have two women who are claiming
they were subjected to sexual crimes that are almost physically impossible,
with no corroborative evidence really of any kind," Guilliatt says.
"And yet that father very nearly ended up spending his final years in a
prison cell."
Guilliatt readily admits there is a "kernel of truth" to the ritual
abuse phenomenon. But he says it has been blown out of proportion by the
unlikely combination of Christian fundamentalists keen to find evi¬dence of
devil worship, and radical feminists who feel such abuse validates their view
of a patriarchal society.
"If you look at something like the Belgian case that's going on at the
moment and the Fred West [the so-called House of Horrors] case in England,
there's no doubt that there are psychopathic sexual criminals out there who
will do' the most unspeakable things to children. "I'm not disputing the
existence of that sort of crime, which has been going on since time
immemorial, but this notion that it has a satanic, occult base, and that it's
all part of a big network, I think is highly dubious."
Guilliatt says his book raises serious questions about the way the
psychologists, police, prosecutors and sexual assault workers succumbed to
the hysteria surrounding ritual abuse and repressed memory.
It should in no way be seen as an attempt to discredit the genuine victims of
child abuse, he says; but the resources poured into investigating ritual
abuse could be better used elsewhere.
"Every false allegation of child abuse absorbs the resources of a system
which is already struggling to protect children who are ifi real danger.
Every repressed memory allegation which is investigated and found to be
baseless reinforces the hardened scepticism of police. Every well-meaning
therapist who validates a Byzantine story of satanic abuse to authorities
erects a hurdle in front of women who, in the future, will struggle harder to
have their stories believed."
- AAP
• Talk of the Devil (Penguin, $21.95) will be in New Zealand bookshops before
the end of the month (1996).
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