Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 2, 1994 TAG: 9411020065
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Tales of satanic ritual abuse, with well-organized cults sacrificing animals and babies and engaging in sexual perversion and cannibalism, is the stuff of tabloid television.
Now the first empirical study of its actual prevalence, based on information from district attorneys, social service workers, police officials and psychotherapists, suggests these tales are usually just that - figments of imagination.
Athough the survey found occasional cases of lone abusers who used ritualistic trappings, it found no substantiated reports of well-organized satanic rings of people who sexually abuse children.
In a survey of more than 11,000 psychiatric and police workers throughout the country, conducted for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, researchers found more than 12,000 accusations of group cult sexual abuse based on satanic ritual, but not one that investigators had been able to substantiate. The organizers of the survey say it is the first authoritative national survey on the subject.
Accusations of molesting by cults have been made in thousands of cases over the last decade, and in retrospective claims by adult patients in psychotherapy who say they were abused as children.
Combined with sensationalistic press coverage, these lawsuits and other reports have led many people to believe that there is a nationwide network of satanic groups preying on the young.
``After scouring the country, we found no evidence for large-scale cults that sexually abuse children,'' said Dr. Gail Goodman, a psychologist at the University of California at Davis, who directed the survey.
``Since the McMartin preschool case there have been claims of ritualistic and sadistic child abuse in cases all over the country, and we've been concerned,'' said David Lloyd, director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect. ``The survey was to see just how well-founded these concerns are - if these are just based on mistaken perceptions or there is some firm evidence.''
The survey included 6,910 psychiatrists, psychologists and clinical social workers, and 4,655 district attorneys, police departments and social service agencies. They reported 12,264 accusations of ritual abuse that they had investigated.
The survey found that there was not a single case among them where there was clear corroborating evidence for the most common accusation, that there was ``a well-organized intergenerational satanic cult, who sexually molested and tortured children in their homes or schools for years and committed a series of murders,'' said Goodman.
But Goodman said her group did find ``convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or couples who say they are involved with Satan or use the claim to intimidate victims.''
One of the best-documented cases, reported by a district attorney in the South, involved four boys and a girl whose grandparents are accused of molesting them from age 4 into early adolescence; the case came to light when the children refused to visit their grandparents.
``The grandparents had black robes, candles and Christ on an inverted crucifix - and the children had chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease, in their throats,'' said Goodman, citing the district attorney's report.
But the overall results show little or no support for the more extreme claims, Goodman said. ``While you would not expect to find corroborating evidence in many sexual abuse cases, you would expect it when people claim the rituals involved murders, and the reported cases come from district attorneys or police."
by CNB