Shadows and Silence: Unveiling the Trauma, Controversy, and Implications of Satanic Ritual Abuse Allegations
A teenage girl, who was impregnated during a satanic ritual, is forcibly delivered of her nearly term baby and then made to ritually kill the child and eat its heart as cult members watch. Another girl, a small child, is sewn inside the cavity of a disemboweled animal and “rebirthed” by her cultic captors in a grotesque ceremony. A preschool class is systematically abused — sexually, emotionally, and physically — by members of a nationwide, nearly invincible network of satanic pedophiles and pornographers. A young girl is thrown into an electrified cage with wolves and ritually tortured to deliberately produce a “wolf personality,” part of her multiple personality disorder (MPD).
These are but a few of the thousands of horrifying stories circulating throughout the United States and abroad. Some true believers in satanic ritual abuse (SRA) say that more than 100,000 “adult survivors” have undergone therapy and “remembered” these horrible abuses. Others more than double this number. These terrifying accounts are linked to the current public concern about child abductions by strangers, which true believers claim number in the thousands annually.
True believers say the conspiracy is almost invincible, covers the nation (if not the world), and involves key power players in the courts, education, politics, religion, and society in general. True believers provide unconditional support to alleged adult survivors whose therapeutically recovered “memories” typically implicate their elderly parents in heinous crimes including murder, cannibalism, sexual torture, incest, and bestiality. Some alleged victims bring their cases to law enforcement officials, hoping for criminal prosecution. Some obtain restraining orders barring their parents from seeing them or their grandchildren. Some cut all ties with family and simply disappear. A few begin new lives as television and radio talk show guests, sharing their gruesome stories from coast to coast during after-school television time. Almost all are in the midst of long-term, intensive therapeutic counseling. Many undergo dozens of psychiatric hospitalizations and take part in almost daily therapy sessions and support group meetings. Tragically, small children are sometimes snatched from their parents’ custody on the whisper of a suspicion that the parents may be SRA participants.
True believers among therapists, alleged adult survivors, law enforcement officials, journalists, and Christian leaders unanimously call for the public to believe the stories, to change the justice system so recovered “memories” alone can bring convictions in criminal court, and to rise up against this astonishingly powerful satanic conspiracy. If the alleged victims’ allegations are true, then such reactions are to be expected. If they are false, then countless families and reputations are being destroyed for nothing, truth is being ignored, biblical standards of evidence and testimony are being discarded, “survivors” are being trapped in long-term, destructive therapeutic situations, and Satan is getting more credit than he is due. In this article we will move beyond sensationalism and emotionalism to take a serious look at SRA stories and theories.
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