From: David.Rice@ofa123.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Religion & Crime / "Satanic Conspiracy"
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Sep 21 1992
Date: 26 Sep 92  17:30:02

Religious Crime / "Satanic Conspiracy" Series #006
  
 Child Abuse - or occult rituals? ROSIE WATERHOUSE traces the events 
               leading to trauma for Rochdale families
 
 
            Satanic cults: how the hysteria swept Britain
                                   
           FROM: The Independent On Sunday 16-09-90, Page 3
 
 
TWO  WEEKS  before satanic child abuse was "diagnosed" on  a  Rochdale 
council  housing estate, social workers and a police officer from  the 
area attended a seminar on the subject.
 
At  the  course in London in March, they and the council  director  of 
social services were warned of a nationwide increase in satanic sexual 
abuse  and  given literature on the signs and symptoms to  watch  for. 
They soon thought they had found them.
 
An  investigation by the Independent on Sunday has revealed  that  the 
subsequent chain of events is becoming frighteningly familiar in other 
towns  and cities. A pattern has emerged which suggests  the  Rochdale 
case will not be the last.
 
Some children undoubtedly suffer sexual abuse. But the suggestion that 
covens  of  witches  and  satanists are  luring  children  in  bizarre 
black-magic  rituals,  sacrificing babies, drinking  their  blood  and 
eating them has become a dangerous new phenomenon.
 
Sine  the  lurid  stories first appeared in Britain  in  1988,  it  is 
possible  to  trace  the  spread of what has  become  an  outbreak  of 
hysteria through a network of contacts. 
 
Police  in  Rochdale  and other forces  which  have  found  themselves 
dragged  into  similar investigations are convinced that  after  being 
propounded  and  perpetuated  by  a core  of  believers,  the  satanic 
child-abuse myth has taken a life of its own, and is out of control.
 
In  Rochdale it led, over six months, to 20 children being taken  from 
their  families, made wards of court and put into council  care.  Five 
have been returned, but remain wards of court.
 
When the council applied to the court for care orders, the allegations 
included  "satanic"  sexual abuse. But, last  Tuesday,  Gordon  Little 
more,  Rochdale's director of social services, said: "We  are  dealing 
with  allegations  of emotional abuse,  degredation,  humiliation  and 
exposure  to  acts of violence which would not necessarily  result  in 
physical injuries."
 
On Thursday, Greater Manchester police said that the case of the  last 
three  children,  taken  into care on 7  September,  was  still  being 
investigated. But in the case of 17 children, no evidence of  satanism 
or  sexual  abuse  had  been found, and there  would  be  no  criminal 
charges.
 
Yet  the  parents of the 12 children who remain in  council  care  and 
foster  homes  have no prospect of getting their children  back  until 
January, when the case is expected to be heard.
 
As  the  Independent  on  Sunday  revealed  last  month,  the  satanic 
child-abuse  myth  originated in the US in the early 1980s  after  the 
publication  of  a book by a "survivor". Stories  spread,  largely  in 
Fundamentalist  Christian  circles, and satanic abuse is  accepted  as 
fact by many psychotherapists and police officers.
 
The  first British story of satanic abuse appeared in  the  Colchester 
Evening  Gazette  in  January 1988 in the form of  an  interview  with 
"Satan's Cop": Sandi Gallant from San Francisco police department  was 
in  England on a conference circuit to issue warnings that in  the  US 
satanic  cults were sacrificing animals and killing children,  and  it 
was likely to happen here.
 
During  1988  a  group  of  loosely  connected  people  began  telling 
newspapers increasingly ghoulish stories about how satanic cults  were 
luring children into the occult and how animals were being sacrificed. 
Teenage girls, they said, were being used as "brood mares"; they  were 
deliberately impregnated and the foetus was aborted for sacrifice and, 
in  come cases, eaten. The Evangelical Alliance, which represents  one 
million  Christians in Britain, set up a committee to investigate.  It 
included those spreading the stories.- Maureen Davies, director of the 
Reachout  Trust based in Rhyl, North Wales, a charity to  help  people 
who  have been involved with the occult; the Reverend Kevin  Logan,  a 
vicar  from  St Johns Church, Great HArwood, near  Blackburn  who  had 
written  a  book, Paganism and the Occult; Doreen  Irvine  and  Audrey 
HArper, who confessed to being former witches who had survived satanic 
abuse;  Diane  Core,  founder  of a  charity  called  Childwatch,  who 
compiled a dossier of cases. 
 
The  first suspected cases investigated by social workers  and  police 
appeared like a rash late in 1988, in Kent, Nottingham, and Congleton, 
Cheshire.
 
In Kent, a two year old boy was showing signs of disturbed  behaviour. 
He kept wanting to take his clothes off, would laugh hysterically, and 
told  about strange drinks that made him feel funny. Norma  Howes,  an 
independent social worker from Reading, was brought in. She  consulted 
an  American  expert  on child abuse, Pamela Klein,  who  diagnosed  a 
classic case of satanic abuse.

--- Maximus 2.00
Newsgroups: alt.atheism