Strange Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse During Rituals
A deputy sheriff is arrested and charged with sexually abusing his two daughters, now 18 and 22. Soon the charges emanating from the devoutly religious 22-year-old (who has a history of making unsubstantiated complaints about sexual abuse) grow to alarming proportions: she claims to have attended 850 satanic rituals and to have watched 25 babies being sacrificed and then cannibalized. Eventually, both daughters, the mother, and then even the father, can visualize being present at these ceremonies, where members of a sadistic devil-worshipping cult forced the women to perform sexual acts with goats and dogs. The father is grilled by his police department collea- gues and quickly confesses to the abuse, but then hires a new lawyer and tries to withdraw his guilty plea. However, it is too late and he is convicted of six counts of child molestation. His older daughter demands that he receive the most severe punishment possible, and the judge sentences him to 20 years in prison. (Wright, 1994)
One of the most peculiar debates between the max- imalist and minimalist viewpoints reached a feverish pitch that resembled what sociologists call a “moral panic” during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It incorporated several elements of great concern at the time: child abuse, sexual exploitation, kidnapping, and repressed memories.
The maximalist position was that tens of thou- sands of people disappeared each year because they were dispatched by secret cults. Believers in the existence of a satanic conspiracy circulated frighten- ing accounts about bizarre “wedding” ceremonies in which covens of witches and devil worshipers chanted, wore costumes, took drugs, sacrificed
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animals, and even mutilated, tortured, and mur- dered newborn infants or kidnapped children. In its most extreme form, the charge was that satanic cults engaged in baby breeding and in kidnapping in order to maintain a fresh supply of victims for human sacrifices and cannibalism. Child care work- ers, parents, relatives, and other adults in the United States, and soon afterward in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Germany were accused, arrested, prose- cuted, and sometimes convicted of engaging in abu- sive rituals organized by religious cults (see Neuilly and Zgoba, 2006; and Cole, 2009).
The people who came forward and claimed that they had survived these vicious rituals often were young women undergoing psychotherapy. They told tales of being fondled, raped, sodomized, and exploited as objects in sexual games and porno- graphic films. Usually, the scenarios they pictured involved groups of adults, sometimes including members of their own families, abusing very young children. Although many of the alleged vic- tims said that they encountered resistance or even outright disbelief when they reported the crimes to officers, some law enforcement agencies took their charges seriously. Newsletters, conferences, and training sessions were organized for detectives, social workers, child welfare investigators, and therapists. Public fears soared after bizarre charges about teachers practicing witchcraft at a California preschool generated one of the longest and costliest trials in American history in 1990 (but no convic- tions). In response to this outcry, several state leg- islatures quickly outlawed the “ritual mutilation” of innocents during religious initiation rites (see Bromley, 1991; Richardson, Best, and Bromley, 1991; Lanning, 1992; Sinason, 1994; Kincaid, 1998; and Holmes and Holmes, 2009).
To investigate the deluge of claims about ritual abuse, a study sponsored by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect surveyed more than 11,000 psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, district attorneys, police executives, and social service agency administrators during 1993. The respondents told the survey interviewers that more than 12,000 accusations of ritual abuse had
been brought to their attention, but that not a single case had been proven in which a well- organized, intergenerational ring of satanic followers had sexually molested, tortured, or killed children in their homes or schools. The study only turned up some cases in which lone individuals or isolated couples carried out abusive rituals or perpe- trated crimes in the name of some distorted inter- pretation of religion (Goleman, 1994). Similarly influential studies in other countries also debunked near-hysterical claims that organized groups were routinely sexually abusing children during bizarre rituals. Although some of those accused indeed may have been guilty of certain illegal acts, and some horrific murders surely were committed, many of the convictions that resulted during this “witch hunt” can be viewed as miscarriages of justice (Cole, 2009).
A minimalist position emerged and insisted that the public was overreacting to exaggerated claims and unsubstantiated charges. At first, these minim- alists were accused of being secret Satanists engaged in a cover-up of the “truth” and also as “anti-child” by maximalists. Nevertheless, these skeptics kept challenging the widely accepted belief that this was a real problem. The minimalist view attributed these unfounded fears to sensationalism by the tab- loid press and irresponsible talk shows that fed a climate of rumors and fears. The time was ripe because of widespread and deep-seated anxieties concerning new brainwashing techniques of mind control and the use of highly manipulative and sug- gestive questioning methods to unearth memories and get children to accuse adults of unspeakable acts. Social developments and cultural trends also set the stage: youthful experimentation with sex and drugs; the growth of cult-like religious groups; the breakdown of traditionally structured families; the redefinition of male and female roles; increased conflict over abortion, which some opponents con- demned as “baby-killing”; and concerns about a growing reliance on daycare services for preschoo- lers. The resulting moral panic was fueled by an unusual confluence of interests: of religious funda- mentalists concerned about inappropriate sexuality undermining the innocence of childhood and of
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feminists intent on protecting girls from molestation by boys and men. Fears about well-financed, hid- den cells of satanic infiltrators seemed to replace the witch-hunt for “communist subversives” as the forces of an “evil underworld” in these updated versions of older conspiracy theories (see Bromley, 1991; Richardson et al., 1991; Lanning, 1992; Sakheim and Devine, 1992; Nathan and Snedeker, 1995; LaFontaine, 1997; Jenkins, 1998; Cole, 2009; Veraa, 2009 and McRobbie, 2014).
Although many people claimed to have witnessed, participated in, and survived these “devilish acts,” minimalist skeptics concluded that their credibility was as questionable as that of the hundreds of people who swore they had been abducted by aliens from outer space (see Schemo, 2002; and Clancy, 2005) or who said they remembered events from their past lives as different people.