-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Other Altars - Roots and Realities of Cultic and Satanic Ritual Abuse and
Multiple Personality Disorder
Craig Lockwood©1993
CompCare Publishers
3850 Annapolis Lane, Suite 100
Minneapolis, MN 55441
612.559.4800/800.328.3330
ISBN 0-89638-363-6
255+pps — out-of-print/one edition.
-----
A very interesting and excellent book.
Om
K
--[19]--
Chapter 19
Slouching Towards the Millennium:
Fin De Siecle Future
"That darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
-W. B. Yeats, 1921
In an uncertain world, facts and events don't always fit into neat
informational packages.
Though forewarned, some readers may still be expecting an authorative
conclusion that imparts a degree of certainty. Unfortunately, there is none.
There is only what Orange County District Attorney Investigator At Valdez
calls a "threshold of belief."
Each reader, at some point, will straddle or cross this two-way threshold of
belief, choosing either to wait for more information, believe in, or
disbelieve in the ritual-abuse phenomenon. This decision may or may not be
influenced by "the facts."
Putting belief and disbelief aside for the moment, let's reexamine the facts.
Fact: Hundreds of children from all over the United States and the United
Kingdom have testified in courts or disclosed during interviews with police
and child-protective services that they experienced sexual abuse with ritual
overtones in preschool settings.
Fact: Most survivors' accounts of rituals involving crimes of infanticide,
homicide, and/or cannibalism have surfaced during Some form of psychotherapy.
Fact: Therapists are not criminal investigators. They are under -no
professional mandate to verify a patient's claims.
Fact: Contemporary psychotherapeutic theory holds that verification of
patient claims would have little effect on the healing process and might
actually block the formation of the bond-of-trust needed between therapist
and patient.
Fact: Dissociative disorders exist. There is a significant body of clinical
and scientific evidence establishing the validity of the medical diagnoses of
PTSD and MPD.
Fact: Clinicians have identified two types of MPD: reactive and structured.
Structured MPD, which is associated with trauma-structured abuse, is
diagnosed with far greater regularity than reactive MPD.
Fact: While the diagnosis of MPD is generally accepted within the
psychological and medical communities, total consensus has not been achieved.
There are still some who consider MPD a "controversial" diagnosis. They,
however, may not be familiar with the research or the literature. Nor have
they treated patients with MPD.
Fact: All diagnoses, medical and psychological, are subject to a degree of
interpretation.
Fact: Clinicians report that patients diagnosed with MPD disclose that some
form of severe and chronic structured abuse seems to have been used on them
at a very early age.
Fact: Of the thousands of legitimately tested and diagnosed case of MPD in
the United States today, the overwhelming majority are women.
Fact: In the past ten years, forensic evidence leading to successful
prosecution has been associated with at least a dozen
multiperpetrator/multivictim cases with ritual overtones.
Fact: International links have been verified in several high-profile
multiperpetrator/multivictim cases.
Fact: Claims that organized groups perpetrate these crimes have been met with
skepticism by certain academics and lawenforcement officers.
Fact: Crimes committed during a religious ritual are treated no differently
under the law than crimes committed at any other time. Trying a case as a
"ritual crime" offers no advantage to the prosecution.
Fact: Most prosecutors have no interest in establishing any religious
motivation during a trial because this offers defense attorneys too many
First Amendment options.
Fact: Since crime centered around ritual is prosecuted in exactly the same
way as ordinary crime, prosecutors discourage the labeling of these cases as
"ritual" to avoid negative media attention.
Fact: In the: United States, England, and Europe, there have been
successfully prosecuted cases of criminals who engaged in some form of ritual
prior to committing murder, or who first killed and then used the body in a
ritual, or killed the victim during an activity that involved elements of
religious ritual.
Fact: Sexuality is often associated with these kinds of crimes.
Dealing with ambiguous phenomena such as ritual abuse, even a careful
observer soon discovers conflicting evidence and claims. Even facts can be
given a spin—depending on who presents them and the presenter's ideological
agenda. And make no mistake, everyone has an agenda.
Discord is amplified by emotional words and terminology. Danger always
surrounds the wholesale acceptance of labels, such as "false memory," "cult,"
"survivor," and "perpetrator."
While handy, terms such as these can create polarities, and establish
territories that proponents must then defend or attack.
Journalists are supposed to present "both sides" of an issue as clearly and
objectively as possible. They then stand back while readers make a considered
judgment based on the facts.
Objectivity, unfortunately, is not guaranteed by simply presenting "both
sides." Some claims and certain purported facts may in reality be carefully
crafted half-truths, misinformation, or propaganda created by expert public
relations people—who are paid to get the message across. Coupled with
pseudoscientific research surveys, and the refusal to accept testimony from
any source that doesn't agree with their premise, this kind of media
manipulation focuses a great deal of attention on the deniers' arguments and
perpetuates dissimulation.
One recent example of this kind of thinking is the absurd "evidence"
presented by organizations who claim the Holocaust never happened. Enormous
denial was generated to create this pseudohistorical belief.
When equal media weight is given to these kinds of "facts," as in the case of
False Memory Syndrome, pseudopsychology is suddenly elevated to equal status
with clinical research.
What are the "facts" surrounding this organization?
Fact: FMSF was founded in March 1992 by a couple whose adult daughter, a
doctor with degrees in psychology, had privately accused them of sexual abuse
and molestation. The daughter did not make her charges public until August of
1993.
Fact: FMSF maintains that therapists are purposely either implanting false
memories of abuse in their patients' minds or accepting patients' fictitious
accounts as bona fide.
Fact: False Memory Syndrome is not a recognized medical or psychological
diagnosis and does not appear in the American Psychiatric Association's
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III-R, or the soon- to-be-released DSM-IV.
Critics claim that oganizations such as FMSF and NAMBLA (North American
Man/Boy Love Association) have among their members individuals who have
either been accused of, or convicted of, child sexual abuse, or who express
an interest in or favor legalizing pedophilia, or professionals who question
the validity of repressed and/or dissociated memory retrieval. Neither
organization will confirm or deny this claim.
Questions have been raised suggesting that these organizations may have
received funding from individuals and organizations associated with the
pornography industry.
Is FMSF merely an organization formed of parents who have been wrongly
accused of child abuse, or is there something else going on?
Hidden agendas become more visible when, for instance, FMSF board member
Ralph Underwager, a highly paid "expert witness" in high-profile child-abuse
cases and an outspoken MPD skeptic, states in an interview in Paidika, The
Journal of Paedophilia, vol. 3, no. 1, 1993, that:
Paedophiles spend a lot of time and energy defending their choice. I don't
think that a paedophile needs to do that. Paedophiles can boldly and
courageously affirm what they choose. They can say that what they want is to
find the best way to love. I am also a theologian and as a theologian I
believe it is God's will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of the
flesh, between people. A paedophile can say: "This closeness is possible for
me within the choices that I've made." Paedophiles are too defensive. They go
around saying,
"You people out there are saying that what I choose is bad, that it's no
good. You're putting me in prison, you're doing all these terrible things to
me. I have to define my love as being in some way or other illicit." What I
think is that paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy
and love is what they choose. With boldness they can say, I believe this is
in fact part of God's will."
Members of the media can also be bought. Sometimes the price is little more
than the promise of an easy story. Deadlines dictate, and on occasion
important editorial decisions are made on whims, or even the editors' or
reporters' own bias about sexual-abuse issues.
Since simplistic pseudofacts and pseudoscience are easier to understand and
report, the legitimate research, which is invariably complex and difficult to
interpret, will tend to be ignored in spite of its validity.
Is there a solution?
Dr. Colin Ross remarked during the September 1993 National Conference on
Crimes against Children in Washington, D.C., that the polarization created by
FMSF sidetracks the scientific mission. Ross believes that by resisting the
concept that memories can sometimes be false, the resistors perpetuate the
cycle of attack and counterattack.
Ross observed that there are always political consequences to strong beliefs.
In the interest of getting on with the job of healing patients, it may be
necessary to concede that some mistakes have been made. At any rate, he says,
philosophically, "all doctrines eventually become irrelevant."
"False memory is a reality. It's also normal to be amnesiac. Ninety-two
percent of the population experiences some degree of amnesia-survivors
experience 99 percent."
Ross maintains that there is also a pressing need to distinguish between
false memories and "false accusations," such as might arise in a custody
dispute, but are not "fully formed false memories." False accusations are the
real cause of the erosion of public acceptance of MPD and structured
traumatic abuse.
"Secondary gain," says Ross, referring to the reward a patient gets from
being the center of attention, "and false memory can go hand in hand," along
with "copycat memories, memories in which actual tales of abuse by one
survivor are mimicked by another.
Counterdenial on the part of believers is also counterproductive. When
mental-health, religious, and law-enforcement professionals refuse to accept
and admit that grevious mistakes have been made, that innocent persons have
been falsely accused, that children have been mistakenly removed from their
homes, and parents mistakenly prosecuted, they are inviting a backlash.
This is an unfortunate situation. In a civilization rent by violence, abuse
in its many forms has been identified as a major contributor.
While neither sociology or psychology can say with certainty exactly why
humans are violent, we have made strong efforts to identify the causes.
During the last thirty-five years, however, almost all the studies of "causes
of violence," have recommended cures that didn't seem to work.
During the 1950s and 1960s, studies ascribed the causes of violence to
poverty, racism, and lack of opportunity. Police brutality and a racially
biased criminal justice system were also thought to contribute to the problem.
Championing these conclusions, lobbyists urged Washington to enact social
programs aimed at eradicating these inequities. At the same time, landmark
cases before the Supreme Court resulted in expanding the rights of suspected
criminals and a restriction in police powers of search and seizure.
Coupled with these important and overdue legal and civil-rights gains for
those wrongly suspected of crime were the reduction of prison sentences,
increased plea-bargaining, and eradication of death penalties for capital
crimes.
Somehow, however, the well-intentioned reforms went awry. Career criminals
quickly learned to manipulate the new system to their advantage and society's
disadvantage.
By 1980, incidences of crime nationwide showed a steady yearly growth.
Alarmed, the justice Department commissioned a variety of new studies.
Several Justice Department studies verified that adults who had been sexually
abused as children formed over 90 percent of the repeat criminal
offenders-hard-core career-criminals. When these offenders had children, the
cycle of abuse -crime-incarceration was repeated.
Abuse, it could be inferred, produced antisocial individuals who then abused
their offspring, thus perpetuating the cycle of abuse and antisocial criminal
behavior. As usual, the kids came out the losers.
In the meantime, expanding population put increasing stress on police and
justice system resources. Those inclined to commit low-priority crimes such
as pedophilia soon learned that the odds, and reduced penalties, were in
their favor.
More studies by HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and HEW (Health,
Education, and Welfare) were commissioned. Many repeated the same conclusions
about racism, lack of economic opportunity, and poverty.
Research, however, showed conclusively that racism, police brutality, and
lack of opportunity had been far worse in the 1920s, '30s, '40s, and
'50s—with no correlation to increasing crime.
Reality, however, is not subject to the social schizophrenia subscribed to by
postmodernist academia and some organized religions, who, for mutually
exclusive reasons, seem bent on insisting that life is increasingly
benevolent, despite rampant uncontrollable violence and terror.
Accompanying this is the exponential growth of fear-based religious movements
that incorporate terror and violence. These seem to portend a wave of the
future.
What Western societies are experiencing as a result of the upswing in these
kinds of violence-condoning religions may be less a triumph of evil over good
and more a clash of cultures in which good and evil have very different
definitions.
When Western civilization, which defines certain acts such as using children
sexually or sacrificing animals as evil, is culturally overwhelmed by members
of civilizations that don't share these beliefs, more conflict and violence
inevitably ensue.
Western culture, of the North American variety, is far more permissive than
Western culture of the European variety. Many Americans fear our social
permissiveness is facilitating our social extinction.
One example: recent Supreme Court decisions may soon allow prisoners to
practice animal sacrifice. Administrators will be required to provide
prisoners with knives and animals to kill. Conversions are said to be high in
some prisons.
Since religion forms a large part of the culture of any given civilization,
we may be witnessing the beginning of a period in which religious wars
replace ideological conflicts. This certainly has happened in the past. If
so, religions of violence already have a toehold in that future.
Professor Samuel P. Huntington, director of the John M. Olin Institute for
Stategic Studies at Harvard University, calls these conflicts "cultural fault
lines," and notes that "the most important conflicts of the future will occur
along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one
another."[1]
Huntington's observations may be prophetic. But do they apply to the
phenomenon of ritual abuse?
Today, members of the media, clinicians, and law-enforcement officers are
looking at the same events and reaching very different conclusions about the
existence of networking groups perpetrating some form of trauma-structured
abuse in either a religious, or, more recently, laboratory context.
Though there are ample historic examples validating that abuse in many
religious forms has existed in most human societies, as we have seen, the
information can be interpreted in a variety of ways or dismissed as
culturally irrelevant.
This poses a dilemma for the media.
While ritual abuse makes good copy, it shows a dark side of humanity most
people would just as soon ignore.
"Debunking," exposing the gullibility of people who believe such tales, is
not only an easier job, it's more fun. In the end, debunkers can pat
themselves on their collective backs, believing humans are "basically OK."
If, however, there is substance to survivors' and law-enforcement's claims
that groups have operated in secret for decades, government and the media are
faced with the fact that they've ignored it. Should there be any truth to
allegations that elements within Western intelligence agencies are involved
in any part of this, at any level, they have missed even more.
There is an additional dilemma. Millenial movements, takeovers of weakened
societies by small, highly organized and determined groups, have ample
precedent in the twentieth century. Few people at the time saw what was
coming.
Two examples-the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Hitler's successful putsches
in the late 1920s—should leave no doubt that such things can and do happen,
with disastrous effects.
Nor do we always see them going. Soviet Russia's collapse caught not only the
world's media off guard, but the major Western intelligence agencies as well.
Saddam Hussein has shown how a ruthless determined sociopath, even in losing
a war, can still dominate a society. It has happened before. It will happen
in the future. Only the names will change.
Some will make convincing arguments that this has nothing to do with ritual
abuse, and they may be right. It is easier either to ignore these Claims, or
to discount them as therapistinduced fantasy.
Stepping over Valdezs threshold of belief and believing in the validity of
the more believable survivors' claims presents an uncomfortable choice: learn
more, and take some sort of action.
Choosing means accepting a significant responsibility. Learning more,
however, does not always mean understanding more. Nor is it certain that
predictions or changes of any kind can be made once such information is
acquired-so action may be limited.
In the event survivors' claims are valid and groups of this kind are seeking
greater social control, an additional moral choice must be made-opposition or
acquiescence to their aims and efforts.
Suppose the wildest assertions are correct and Western civilization is
targeted by such groups for subversion and the assumption of increased
control. Anyone offering resistance will be vulnerable, and eventually marked.
This happened during the Inquisition, in Hitler's Germany, Soviet Russia,
Mao's China, Pinochet's Chile, and Pol Pot's Cambodia, to mention just a few.
Either citizens resisted and faced almost inevitable death, or citizens
acquiesed and faced an uncertain future and survival in a society of horror.
Should the various phenomena we now term ritual abuse eventually prove to be
too small for lasting impact, however, the effort to understand it-and the
inevitable emotional identification with the survivors-has the potential of
leaving those who have chosen this path feeling foolish and betrayed.
So neither choice offers any indemnification.
And the truth? Only those who are involved know the truth-and they aren't
telling.
Least trustworthy are those who claim supernatural origins to this behavior.
Simplistic answers cannot encompass complex events. Bear in mind it was the
"true believers in Christ" who led the Inquisition, just as today some of the
most visible ritualabuse groups lay illegitimate claim to being "Christian."
There is one reasonable certainty, however. There is nothing supernatural
about ritual abuse. There are no "spirits" or "demons" or "forces" other than
those created by the human mind and projected or perceived as real, which are
responsible for what humans are doing to other humans. The devil isn't making
them do it.
Humanity's worst is bad enough. We have never needed help from spirits.
This is not to imply that there are no spiritual forces at work in the
universe. Spiritual forces, however, are not to blame. Negative spiritual
values well may be. And there's a big difference.
Human spirituality, which expresses itself in a variety of positive ways, is
not immune, unfortunately, to negative spiritual expression. Ritual abuse is
just such a negative expression. Abusive religious practices, whatever their
cultural origin, deserve no immunity from moral judgment-especially in
Western societies.
This concept is hard for social idealists to accept. But cultural relativism
is irrelevant when it comes to suffering. Those cultures, societies,
civilizations, or elements or individuals within them, who condone suffering,
who promote or institutionalize it, must be judged morally inferior.
If a spiritual activity practiced by a group or an individual takes away
another person's intrinsic right to control his or her own destiny, if humans
are harmed, degraded, injured, or murdered for any reason, in the name of any
deity or spiritual practice—then it is wrong.
One final question: if all or any significant part of survivors' claims are
true, who is going to all this effort and why? A puzzling fact is that none
of the survivors seem to really know. Financial gain and some sort of social
takeover seem to be the most commonly attributed motives.
To serve whatever masters are purportedly being served requires-in the case
of these groups survivors' claim are operating in North America and Europe—a
tremendous effort at camouflage and deception. This is often pointed to as a
reason not to believe survivors' claims. But our society, any society, is
neither above being deceived nor deceiving.
Given today's available facts, we can only surmise that either the
disbelievers are correct and the phenomenon is some kind of overblown
hysterical psychological fantasy, or that the survivors are correct and some
larger covert intent is driving this behavior.
Assuming that "it can't happen here" is fatuous. It can. Anything can.
History shows that small fanatically determined groups can achieve
unthinkable ends. All the mechanisms are already in place. We exist under a
level of social control once considered typical of fascism or communism. That
alone should be of great concern.
Perhaps, as in the tale of the boy who cried "wolf," we have heard the call
repeated once too often-and fallen asleep, forgetting the rest of the story.
One night the wolves came.
pps. 243-255
--[notes]--
Chapter 19
1. S. P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? vol. 72 (New York: Foreign
Affairs, 1993).
--fini--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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