society-denial

We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.

Oddly then, in our search for meaning, we often assign victims too much blame for their assaults, and offenders too little. Our inconsistencies do not seem to trouble us, but they are truly puzzling. After all, if the offender is not to blame for his behavior, why would the victim be, no matter what she did our didn't do? Our views make sense, however, if you think that we are trying to reassure ourselves that we are not helpless and, that, in any case, no one is out to get us.

During a period in which women and children__ testimony of incest and sexual abuse were gaining an increasingly sympathetic hearing, lobby groups of people accused of child abuse construed and positioned __itual abuse_ as the new frontier of disbelief. The term __itual abuse_ arose from child protection and psychotherapy practice with adults and children disclosing organized abuse, only to be discursively encircled by backlash groups with the rhetoric of __ecovered memories_, __alse allegations_ and __oral panic_.Salter, M. (2011), Organized abuse and the politics of disbelief.

DENIAL OF EMOTIONSOur culture does not handle emotions well. We like folks to be happy and fine. We learn rituals of acting happy and fine at an early age. I can remember many times telling people "I'm fine" when I felt like the world was caving in on me. I often think of Senator Muskie who cried on the campaign trail when running for president. From that moment on he was history. We don't want a president who has emotions. We would rather have one that can act! Emotions are certainly not acceptable in the workplace. True expression of any emotions that are not "positive" are met with disdain.

In all the interviews I have done, I cannot remember one offender who did not admit privately to more victims than those for whom he had been caught. On the contrary, most offenders had been charged with and/or convicted of from one to three victims. In the interviews I have done, they have admitted to roughly 10 to 1,250 victims. What was truly frightening was that all the offenders had been reported before by children, and the reports had been ignored.

The truth is: Everyone will judge you. But this depends upon your intellectual capacity whether you are able to distinguish constructive criticism between an insult coming from other people's opinions about you.

There should be a public outcry about what happened to me and other women in the name of our government! But history has shown __he customs of society and laws of the State allowed it to crush my aspirations and barred me from the the pursuit of almost every object worthy of an intelligent, rational mind._45 What law has the right to entrust the interest of myself and my children into the hands of such an evil bunch of men? I did not occupy my rightful place in 1976.45. (paraphrased from Gurko, Miriram, The Ladies of Seneca Falls; the Birth of the Women's Rights Movement, 1974.

It wasn__ just heartbreaking but it broke my identity! All that anguish that was deep hidden in me because rejections from family and friends started to pour out like a current in the sea that would seem destructive.

Ritual abuse is highly organised and, obviously, secretive. It is often linked with other major crimes such as child pornography, child prostitution, the drugs industry, trafficking, and many other illegal and heinous activities. Ritual abuse is organised sexual, physical and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals - things which the abusers 'need' to do, or 'need' to have in place - but it doesn't have to have a belief system. There doesn't have to be God or the Devil, or any other deity for it to be considered 'ritual'. It involves using patterns of learning and development to keep the abuse going and to make sure the child stays quiet.There has been, and still is a great deal of debate about whether or not such abuse exists anywhere in the world. There are many people who constantly deny that there is even such a thing as ritual abuse. All I can say is that I know there is. Not only have I been a victim of it myself, but I have been dealing with survivors of this type of abuse for almost 30 years.If there are survivors, there must be something that they have survived.The things is, most sexual abuse of children is ritualised in some way. Abusers use repetition, routine and ritual to forced children into the patterns of behaviour they require. Some abusers want their victims to wear certain clothing, to say certain things. They might bathe them or cut them, they might burn them or abuse them only on certain days of the week. They might do a hundred other things which are ritualistic, but aren't always called that - partly, I think because we have a terror of the word and of accepting just how premeditated abuse actually is.Abusers instill fear in their victims and ensure silence; they do all they can to avoid being caught. Sexual abuse of a child is rarely a random act. It involves thorough planning and preparation beforehand. They threaten the children with death, with being taken into care, with no one believing them, which physical violence or their favourite teddy being taken away. They are told that their mum will die, or their dad will hate them, the abusers say everyone will think it's their fault, that everyone already knows they are bad. Nothing is too big or small for an abuser to use as leverage.There is unmistakable proof that abusers do get together in order to share children, abuse more children, and even learn from each other. As more cases have come into the public eye in recent years, this has become increasingly obvious. More and more of this type of abuse is coming to light.I definitely think it is the word ritual which causes people to question, to feel uncomfortable, or even just disbelieve. It seems almost incredible that such things would happen, but too many of us know exactly how bad the lives of many children are. A great deal of child pornography shows children being abused in a ritualised setting, and many have now come forward to share their experiences, but there is a still tendency to say it just couldn't happen.p204-205

There is unmistakable proof that abusers do get together in order to share children, abuse more children, and even learn from each other. As more cases have come into the public eye in recent years, this has become increasingly obvious. More and more of this type of abuse is coming to light.I definitely think it is the word ritual which causes people to question, to feel uncomfortable, or even just disbelieve. It seems almost incredible that such things would happen, but too many of us know exactly how bad the lives of many children are. A great deal of child pornography shows children being abused in a ritualised setting, and many have now come forward to share their experiences, but there is a still tendency to say it just couldn't happen.Why not?Why, given what we now know about paedophiles and about what they do to children? Would they have limits? It was all done to me and I have enough experiences to write many more books than this one, but this will have to do for now. I've tried to make sense of it and I've tried to tell you my story in a way that will, hopefully, let you understand how it was done, and how they managed to get away with it, but I haven't told you a big part of it yet. I haven't told you what happened that finally ended it all for me.There was something else.When I was eight, someone else came into my life and made a huge difference to what was happening and how things would turn out. I didn't know it then, but I see the whole picture now.Something I have often wondered is whether Andrew was there while I was being abused. Lots of people hide their faces, and there were often masks worn, so he certainly could have been. I have no evidence one way or another though, so I will leave it to the reader to decide whether it would seem in a paedophile's character to watch abuse continue when it has been masterminded by him. But I do know that it wasn't just me who he abused - I know that because I saw it.Andrew was away a lot with the Army until I was at high school, then he left that position. He was instrumental both in my abuse and in setting the scene, but when I was eight, something happened which would distract him and which would, at times, take his attention from me. My mother very kindly provided him with a new victim - my little sister.

I'm just asking you to accept that there are some people who will go to extraordinary lengths to cover up the facts that they are abusing children.What words are there to describe what happened to me, what was done to me? Some call it ritual abuse, others call it organised abuse. There are those that call it satanic. I've heard all the phrases, not just in relation to me, but also with regard to those I work with and try to help. Do you know what I think? It doesn't matter how you dress it up, it doesn't matter what label you put on it. It is abuse, pure and simple. It is adults abusing children. It is adults deciding - actually making a conscious decision, a conscious choices that what they want, what they convince themselves they need, is more important than anything else; certainly more important than the safety or feelings or sanity of a child.However, there can be differences which are layered on top of that abuse. I'm not saying that some abuse is worse than others, or that someone 'wins' the competition to have the worst abuse inflicted on them, but ritual and organised abuse is at the extreme end of the spectrum. If we try to think of a continuum where there are lots of different things imposed on children (or, for that matter, anyone who is forced into these things _ and that force can take many forms, it can be threats and promises, as well as kicks and punches), then ritual and organised abuse is intense and complicated.It often involves multiple abusers of both sexes. There can be extreme violence, mind control, systematic torture and even, in some cases, a complex belief system which is sometimes described as religion. I say 'described as' religion because, to me, I think that when this aspect is involved, it is window dressing. I'm not religious. I cried many times for God to save me. I was always ignored _ how could I believe? However, I think that ritual abusers who do use religious imagery or 'beliefs' are doing so to justify it all to themselves, or to confuse the victim, or to hide their activities. Ritual abuse is highly organised and, obviously, secretive. It is often linked with other major crimes such as child pornography, child prostitution, the drugs industry, trafficking, and many other illegal and heinous activities. Ritual abuse is organised sexual, physical and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals - things which the abusers 'need' to do, or 'need' to have in place - but it doesn't have to have a belief system. There doesn't have to be God or the Devil, or any other deity for it to be considered 'ritual'. It involves using patterns of learning and development to keep the abuse going and to make sure the child stays quiet.

There have been extensive human rights violations by American psychiatrists over the last 70 years. These doctors were pad by the American taxpayer through CIA and military contracts. It is past time for these abuses to stop, it is past time for a reckoning, and it is past time for individual doctors to be held accountable. The Manchurian Candidate Programs are of much more than "historical" interest. ARTICHOKE, BLUEBIRD, MKULTRA and MKSEARCH are precursors of mind control programs that are operational in the twenty first century. Human rights violations by psychiatrists must be ongoing in programs like COPPER GREEN, the interrogation program at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Such programs must be carried out within CIA units like Task Force 121 (The Dallas Morning News, December 1, 2004, p. 1A). Information pointing to ongoing human rights violations by psychiatrists is available in publications like The New Yorker (see article by Seymour M. Hersh, May 24, 2004). Yes the indifference, silence, denial, and disinformation of organized medicine and psychiatry continue. One purpose of The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations By American Psychiatrists is to break that silence.

In 2011, actor Johnny Depp told the November issue of Vanity Fair that he felt participating in a photoshoot was akin to rape."Well, you just feel like you're being raped somehow. Raped . . . It feels like a kind of weird - just weird, man. But whenever you have a photo shoot or something like that, it's like - you just feel dumb. It's just so stupid," he said.Likening instances of being flustered or uneasy to the often life-shattering experience of rape has become a far too common comparison in modern lexicon.The phrase "Facebook rape" is perhaps the most widely used, which implies one person has posted on another person's Facebook account - usually something intended to embarrass the person.But the casual, flippant use of the term "rape" in instances that do not involve sexual violence is highly problematic in that it trivialises one of the most despicable invasions of a human being.Desensitising the masses to the term "rape" is just another way the conversation surrounding sexual assault is derailed or diluted in society.Rape is, and should be considered universally, as a serious societal sickness that occurs within the "toxic silence" that surrounds sexual assault as Tara Moss put so elegantly in her recent Q&A appearance.Further to that, the use of the term can be a trigger for rape survivors in that it may jolt terrifying memories of their own experience.According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, up to 57 per cent of rape survivors suffer post-traumatic stress disorder in their lifetime, with "triggers" including inflammatory words like rape causing deeply traumatic recollections.Beware desensitising the term "rape", Newcastle Herald, June 6, 2014

But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth _ given the passage of time _ recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from many different and largely unrelated families had been taken into the care of Cleveland County Council in the three short months of the summer of 1987. (p18)The key to resolving the puzzle of Cleveland was the children. What had actually happened to them? Had they been abused - or had the paediatricians and social workers (as public opinion held) been over-zealous and plain wrong? Curiously _ particularly given its high profile, year-long sittings and £5 million cost _ this was the one central issue never addressed by the Butler-Sloss judicial testimony and sifting of internal evidence, the inquiry's remit did not require it to answer the main question. Ten years after the crisis, my colleagues and I set about reconstructing the records of the 121 children at its heart to determine exactly what had happened to them... (p19)Eventually, though, we did assemble the data given to the Butler-Sloss Inquiry. This divided into two categories: the confidential material, presented in camera, and the transcripts of public sessions of the hearings. Putting the two together we assembled our own database on the children each identified only by the code-letters assigned to them by Butler-Sloss. When it was finished, this database told a startlingly different story from the public myth. In every case there was some prima fade evidence to suggest the possibility of abuse. Far from the media fiction of parents taking their children to Middlesbrough General Hospital for a tummy ache or a sore thumb and suddenly being presented with a diagnosis of child sexual abuse, the true story was of families known to social services for months or years, histories of physical and sexual abuse of siblings and of prior discussions with parents about these concerns. In several of the cases the children themselves had made detailed disclosures of abuse; many of the pre-verbal children displayed severe emotional or behavioural symptoms consistent with sexual abuse. There were even some families in which a convicted sex offender had moved in with mother and children. (p20)

It is often said that Vietnam was the first television war. By the same token, Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media. By the summer of 1987 Cleveland had become above all, a hot media story. The Daily Mail, for example, had seven reporters, plus its northern editor, based in Middlesbrough full time. Most other news papers and television news teams followed suit. What were all the reporters looking for? Not children at risk. Not abusing adults. Aggrieved parents were the mother lode sought by these prospecting journalists. Many of these parents were only too happy to tell _ and in some cases, it would appear, sell_ their stories. Those stories are truly extraordinary. In many cases they bore almost no relation to the facts. Parents were allowed - encouraged to portray themselves as the innocent victims of a runaway witch-hunt and these accounts were duly fed to the public. Nowhere in any of the reporting is there any sign of counterbalancing information from child protection workers or the organisations that employed them. Throughout the summer of 1987 newspapers __eported_ what they termed a national scandal of innocent families torn apart. The claims were repeated in Parliament and then recycled as established __acts_ by the media. The result was that the courts themselves began to be paralysed by the power of this juggernaut of press reporting _ __ournalism_ which created and painstakingly fed a public mood which brooked no other version of the story. (p21)

I used to pray you know, pray to God that He would somehow stop it. All the nights of listening to my mother scream and things breaking. Of holding my brother and sister and listening to them cry and begging me to stop it.'My voice is slow and steady like a freight train at night.'I was too young, and we were always told that they'd put us in foster homes where people would rape us if we ever said anything. So we explained away the bruises and my mom wore big sunglasses whenever she left the house. And we invented car accidents if the bruising was too bad to cover with make-up.

...Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media...Given that most of the hearings took place out of sight of the press, the following examples are taken from the recollection of child protection workers present in court. In one case, during a controversy that centred fundamentally around disputes over the meaning of RAD [reflex anal dilatation], a judge refused to allow __ny evidence about children__ bottoms_ in his courtroom. A second judge _ hearing an application to have their children returned by parents about whom social services had grave worries told the assembled lawyers that, as she lived in the area, she could not help but be influenced by what she read in the press. Hardly surprising then that child protection workers soon found courts not hearing their applications, cutting them short, or loosely supervising informal deals which allowed children to be sent back to parents, even in cases where there was explicit evidence of apparent abuse to be explained and dealt with. (p21)[reflex anal dilatation (RAD): a simple clue which is suggestive of anal penetration from outside. It had been recognised as a valuable weapon in the armoury of doctors examining children for many decades and was endorsed by both the British Medical Association and the Association of Police Surgeons. (p18)]

from: The Portrayal of Child Sexual Assault in Introductory Psychology Textbooks - Elizabeth J. Letourneau, Tonya C. LewisOne of the central questions surrounding the debate on memories of CSA is how often false or repressed memories actually occur. The APA working group (Alpert et al., 1996) and other experts (e.g., Loftus, 1993a) noted that no reliable method can distinguish between accurate and inaccurate memories. Therefore, no one can determine the prevalence of false or repressed memories. Nevertheless, six texts (30%) implied that false memories occur frequently (see Table 1). Of these, three included the opinionated suggestion that a "witch hunt" may be occurring in which innocent parents are routinely accused of, and then severely punished for, CSA. Two texts suggested that false memories of CSA must occur because an entire support group (the FMSF) has been formed for falsely accused parents. These authors apparently failed to consider that some members of the FMSF may actually have sexually assaulted children but are motivated to appear innocent. (85)