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The Dominion
March 30 1999
Tracing the evolution of a satanic scare
by Alan Samson
The spotlight is back on Peter Ellis, as High Court Justice Sir Thomas
Thorpe begins investigating a petition on his behalf. Meanwhile, a paper on
the background of satanic abuse, by Victoria University
sociology Professor Michael Hill, has been posted on the Internet. Alan Samson considers the study.
When the mother of one of the children alleged to have been abused in 1993 by
convicted paedophile Peter Ellis listed 16 dramatic signs of abuse, few would
have noticed that the signs had been published before.
But they had.
The "signs" included being locked in a cage, being buried in the
ground in a box, being tied upside down and hung from a pole or hook, seeing
children or babies killed, having blood poured over them, participating in a
mock marriage, and being taken to a church or graveyard for ritual abuse.
In a newly published paper tracing the evolution of the satanic scare from
the United States to New Zealand, Victoria University
sociology professor Michael Hill sets the bizarre claims of the Christchurch
Civic Creche parent alongside the writings of
American satanic abuse hunter Pamela Hudson.
Ms Hudson identified 16 satanic indicators; the Christchurch
mother not only identified all 16, but demanded at the depositions hearing
that Hudson be brought to New Zealand as an expert witness.
Professor Hill recalls that the mother proclaimed her son told of being
"forced to kill a boy and animals", of visiting a church where
children had been made to take part in a marriage ceremony and of visit to a
graveyard, where he had been placed in a cage with a cat.
Among other claims was the much-reported "circle incident", where
children were taken to a Hereford St address and put in a tunnel beneath a
trapdoor; they were later made to stand naked in a circle of adults,
including all five creche workers initially
accused.
Indecencies were reported to have been committed on them, and the children
were made to kick each other in the genitals.
Professor Hill's investigative paper precisely traces the history of what he
says is the social hysteria that led to numerous of ritual atrocities without
any physical corroboration. Ever.
Satanic abuse a la Professor Hill started with the 1980 publication in America
of the book Michelle Remembers, a claimed account by a "survivor",
Michelle Smith, and her therapist and later husband, Lawrence Pazder.
Michelle recalled as a five-year-old being tortured in houses, mausoleums and
cemeteries, being raped and sodomised with candles, being forced to defecate
on a Bible and a crucifix, witnessing babies and adults butchered, spending
hours naked in a snake-filled cage, and having a devil's tail and horns
surgically attached to her.
Despite lack of corroboration, the book was an international bestseller.
The same year, the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
the American Psychiatric Association listed categories of "dissociative
identity disorder" and "post-traumatic stress disorder" - to
become the most common diagnoses applied to the thought victims of satanic
abuse.
Very soon, Professor Hill says, a group of eminent American psychiatrists who
specialised in hypnotism had set up an organization to advance the treatment
of multiple personality and dissociation.
And the treatment spread "like pyramid selling".
Most famous of the satanic scares that followed was the McMartin
Preschool case, after a mother complained her boy
had been sexually abused.
After the police alerted 200 parents of the "possibility" of abuse,
elaborate stories began filtering in, seemingly under the guidance of new
social worker interview techniques.
Social worker Kee MacFarlane used anatomically
correct hand puppets in interviews, and children were told that if they could
not remember incidents at the preschool, this was because they were
"dissociating".
It was perceived to be the job of the interviewers to help them remember,
leading to a form of insistent interviewing in which children's denials of
abuse were discounted in the search for "truths" that the
interviewers believed were being suppressed.
At the same time, psychiatrist Roland Summit said that children never
fabricated accounts of sexual abuse and so were to be believed - regardless
of how incredible their accounts were.
Children who had been victims of incest, however, would often retract "in
order to maintain family equilibrium".
The McMartin case ended, after two hung trials, the
first of 28 months being the longest criminal proceeding in American history,
with various acquittals and dropped charges, though not before a male
defendant had spent a year in jail.
Among other figures central to what he classifies as the early hysteria,
Professor Hill identifies David Finkelhor, who
published three dozen ritual abuse case studies, without evaluating the
reliability of any of the allegations.
MORE important to New
Zealand was doctor Astrid Heger, one of the McMartin
investigators, who wrote that sexual abuse could be detected by the size and
shape of girls' hymens.
This was taken as an abuse indicator at a Glenelg Health Camp investigation
in Christchurch, a related anal dilation test - supposed to indicate
molestation - triggered a sexual abuse scare in Cleveland, Britain.
The next figure to be considered, Professor Hill says, is Illinois rape counsellor Pamela Klein, who
drew up a set of "satanic indicators", including such symptoms as
bed-wetting, nightmares, fear of monsters and ghosts, and a preoccupation
with faeces, urine and flatulence.
Next came Pamela Hudson and her list of 16 reported
forms of physical and psychological abuse. Ms Hudson also had a particular
interest in the robes and masks that perpetrators were alleged to wear.
In Professor Hill's analysis, satanic abuse came down under in 1986, when Australia hosted the largest child abuse
conference in its history - the Sixth International Conference on Child Abuse
and Neglect, held in Sydney.
It was attended by Mr Summit, Ms MacFarlane, Dr Heger
and Professor Finkelhor, all of whom gave papers.
Within two years, it was followed by a day-care centre abuse complaint of
children being abducted, given drugs, assaulted with knives, forced to watch
animal sacrifices and satanic rituals, and of sexual abuse and pornographic
filming.
Their abuser was named as a "Mr Bubbles".
New Zealand's
flirtation with satanic abuse appears to have begun with a 1990 speech by the
visiting Ms Klein, Professor Hill says. She had spoken to a child sexual
abuse conference of "horrific satanic cult situations" and claimed
that children in cults were "purposely programmed to develop multiple
personalities".
The following year the Ritual Action Network - later to be called Ritual
Action Group - was set up in Wellington.
The key members, Professor Hill says, were social workers Ann Marie Stapp and Jocelyn Frances, also known as O'Kane, the latter practicing hypnosis and recovering
memories of satanic cult abuse; policeman Laurie Gabites,
who visited the United States and brought back satanic material; and
probation officer Nigel Marriott, a classics graduate.
The group received public funding from the Social Welfare Department through
its Family Violence Prevention Coordinating Committee, a committee exposed in
a 1994 internal audit for "grandiose overspending", including"
well catered" breakfasts, lunches and dinners, uncontrolled use of taxi
chit books, and wrong accounting practices.
And in 1993 Frances
was convicted of benefit fraud totalling $30,000.
Professor Hill says the group attracted considerable credibility,
successfully propagating its views among social welfare staff, police and
staff from other government departments.
But the main focus of satanic allegations was to be in Christchurch.In
August 1991, American Christian sexual abuse therapist Mitchell Whitman came
to Christchurch
as a guest of the Open Home Foundation, a Christian child and family support
agency.
His claims included "that the usual damage caused to children by satanic
ritual abuse was a multi-personality disorder... research showed that about
half the children suffering [such] disorders had been victims of satanic
ritual abuse".
Professor Hill records that six days later, Ms Stapp and Frances presented a paper at a family violence
prevention conference on behalf of the Ritual Action Group.
It claimed that children were subjected to ritual and indoctrination to
convert them to "the worship system of the group" and intimidated
into silence.
After listing signs of a progression to "higher rituals" -
including hatred to family and religion, drops in grades, cuts
to the body, increased use of illegal drugs, satanic nicknames - it suggested
parents should be looking for particular items.
These included a black-covered book listing types and locations of rituals
and contracts for suicide or homicide, ceremonial knives, candles, chalice,
robes, satanic books and animal and human bones.
A later workshop at the University
of Auckland featured Mr
Gabites, the police officer who belonged to RAG.
Later Mr Gabites returned to America to investigate links
between satanism and child pornography, and the
allegedly related issues of satanism, child
pornography and ritual abuse received huge coverage in a Sunday newspaper.
Seventeen days after this story appeared, the first allegations were made
against Peter Ellis, a male childcare worker at the Christchurch Civic Creche - by a mother who had earlier written a pamphlet
on sexual abuse.
Though the apparent hysteria has died down, Professor Hill argues that as
long as courts and other authorities accept the "expert" word of
pseudo-scientific claims, the satanic scenario may persist.
Professor Hill concludes: "Satan's New
Zealand stopover may have been more
low key [than Australia],
but for some of those involved in the Christchurch
creche case it has had devastating
consequences."
Ellis remains in jail.
'I am not a guilty man’
Peter Ellis made the following statement to a parole board hearing at Paparua Prison at 5pm on March 11:
"I would like to thank the Board for the opportunity to appear here
today and in particular for allowing both my mother and my counsel to be
present.
"There are two reasons why I think it is important for me to be present
today.
"Firstly, because I wish to show my respect for the Board by personally
explaining my position regarding parole and secondly, because it gives me the
opportunity to say myself that which I have had to rely on others to say for
me for the last six years.
"I cannot accept any Parole that you could offer me because the Board
can only release me as a guilty man.
"I am a human being and of course I very much want my freedom, but I
simply cannot accept it, if it is to be given, on the basis that I am a
guilty man.
"I am not a guilty man. I am an innocent man."
Signed: "Peter Hugh McGregor
Ellis"
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Graphic: Professor Hill argues that as long as courts and other authorities
accept the 'expert' word of pseudo-scientific claims, the satanic scenario
may persist.
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