Ritual abuse convictions in the UK... real, or another hoax?

Charlie Wilkes · Dec 24, 2012

The witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons, repeatedly spoke of being scared and of fearing that she would be thrown onto a fire if she was "naughty" and did not do as she was told.

She said she suffered pain for weeks after she was tied to a bed and raped by an unknown man when she was nearly ten and how, years later, she recognised him when he was murdered and his picture was shown on television.

"I was taken into a big house and upstairs," she said. "There was a weird, incensey smell and I passed rooms where there were chains coming off the backs of the beds, and whips.

I was in a room where there was a big double bed with ropes coming off it, and a black whip with star things on the ends.

"I was scared. He pushed me on the bed and I knew I was in trouble. I did what he told me, he tied ropes around my feet, they were really tight, hurting. "I was telling him 'Please don't hurt me' and he slapped me across the face. His eyes were looking evil."

The witness went on to say her hands were tied and she was then forcefully raped several times.

"I was screaming 'please stop' and thought someone would hear me but no-one came. Afterwards a woman came and helped me shower."

"I didn't recognise the man until a few years ago when he was on the television because he had been murdered. It was Peter Selvine (statement says Selvine, but she meant Solheim)."

When she saw the picture she was "hysterical and lost the plot" but could not tell anyone.

"He made me hate men," she declared.

Her evidence spoke of being about three when she was first abused, and five when she went to a ritual attended by a number of men and women, together with up to 12 children. Among those present were Kemp and Petrauske, the high priest.

"The chanting stuck in my head for weeks," she said. "I didn't understand what it was all about, I just thought they were weird. I was warned that if I was naughty they would hurt me, that they had special powers."

She was taken to a big house, she thought it was near near Hayle, where there was an area with big stones and a fire in the middle. There were people dressed in 'gown things', with hoods. She thought they looked like Ku Klux Klan gowns with necklaces.

"I was with eight or ten other kids and we were allowed to sit and watch," she said. "I didn't understand what was going on and was scared."

Petrauske was at the centre of proceedings, and there was alcohol. She sat next to a little boy who was more scared than her, with tears running down his face.

"That was the first time I learned about witches," the witness declared.

There were references to her being taken to a quarry, made to take off her clothes and pose for Polaroid pictures to be taken.

Haltingly the witness described a number of occasions when she had been sexually abused by Kemp and Petrauske. Her involvement ended when she was about 12.

http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Wit...itness-gives/story-17468127-detail/story.html

Who was taking her to these rituals at the age of 5? Who were the other kids she saw there? Were they local kids, did she know any of them, have any of them been identified by investigators? How is it that these abusers had regular access to her from the time she was 3 until she was 12?

geni · Dec 24, 2012

Charlie Wilkes said:
Who was taking her to these rituals at the age of 5? Who were the other kids she saw there? Were they local kids, did she know any of them, have any of them been identified by investigators? How is it that these abusers had regular access to her from the time she was 3 until she was 12?

Well given UK laws with regards to identification the most obvious explanation is that one of their parents were one taking them there.

Either the parents didn't know and you are looking at a bog standard person in a position of religious authority as an abuser or they did know and were effectively trading them for access to other children.

And the events were in the 70s (natch) when people weren't looking out for such things to the same extent.

Link to BBC report on the conclusion of the trial:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-20705898

Charlie Wilkes · Dec 27, 2012

I have spent a number of hours examining the media coverage of this case. I suspect it is a complete hoax, perpetrated by women who hope to benefit from a gov't fund set up for crime victims:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/victims-and-witnesses/cica

Kemp has a history as a sex offender, but I doubt he had any interaction with the alleged victims in this case. Petrauske is a benign crank who is probably innocent of all charges.

I note this in the media coverage:

One victim gave a graphic account of how, along with other children, she was taken on occasions at night to a wooded area somewhere in West Cornwall, often next to large houses.

Men dressed in black gowns with hoods would appear from the gloom chanting, ordering the children to take their clothes off.

She said on one terrifying occasion she was bound to a chair and blindfolded and feared she would be killed.

The woman said: "They had knives, not like kitchen knives, when I was naked. They were ornamental knives, one had a red gem in the middle."

A High Priestess then ran knives up and down her body and around her neck – she felt hot wax being poured down her stomach.

http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Cou...k-Kemp-Peter/story-17593796-detail/story.html

This description reminds me of a crime summarized in John Douglas's Mind Hunter. It was a case handled by one of Douglas's FBI colleagues, Gregg McCrary.

A woman reported her toddler had been snatched, with one of his mittens left behind.

A couple of days later, the woman reported that the other mitten had arrived in the mail with no note or return address.

At that point, McCrary realized that the woman herself had killed the child. Douglas explains why:

What Gregg decided the mother had done was to stage a kidnapping according to her perception of what a real one would be like. Unfortunately for her, she had no idea of the actual dynamics of this type of crime, and so she blew it.

The cinematic touch in the ritual abuse testimony described above, a dagger with a jewel in the handle, does not map to the realities of child sex abuse. The woman is describing pedophilia as she imagines it, not as it really happens.

The court and the public believe it, because they don't understand this type of crime any better than she does. We live in a culture in which urban legends encourage us to believe that anything might be true. Consider the myth of the kidney thieves:

NO ONE knows why, but in 1997 the mind contagion broke out in New Orleans. In January, as the city geared up for its annual Mardi Gras festivities, a rumor began circulating via word-of-mouth, fax, and email to the effect that a highly organized crime ring in New Orleans was carrying out plans to drug visitors, surgically remove organs from their bodies, and sell the organs on the black market.

The viral message, which most often arrived under the header "Travelers Beware," sparked an avalanche of phone calls to local authorities, prompting the New Orleans Police Department to publish an official statement to calm public fears. Investigators found no substantiating evidence.

The story had a familiar ring. Before New Orleans, people said it happened in Houston; before Houston, Las Vegas — where an unsuspecting tourist was drugged in his hotel room by a prostitute and woke up the next morning, supposedly, in a bathtub full of ice, minus a kidney.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/horrors/a/kidney_thieves.htm

Rumors about kidney theft may be a nuisance for public authorities, but that's the extent of the damage.

Satanic Ritual Abuse, on the other hand, is dangerous nonsense that ruined a great many lives in the US in the 1980s. Now it has surfaced in the UK.

Charlie Wilkes · Dec 27, 2012

Checkmite · Dec 27, 2012

When the links I followed led to articles that described the victims being taken to a house and abused, and the abusers happening to be pagan and having pagan regalia present, I was perfectly inclined to believe that a comparison with "satanic panic" cases was erroneous.

In light of this different information, where the victims evidently described elaborate rituals in far places with many participants, I am now more inclined to agree with your assessment Charlie. Your observation of the testimony sounding more like how the victim imagines pedophiles work rings particularly keen.

sophia8 · Dec 27, 2012

Charlie Wilkes said:
Satanic Ritual Abuse, on the other hand, is dangerous nonsense that ruined a great many lives in the US in the 1980s. Now it has surfaced in the UK.

It's REsurfaced, you mean. The stories told by the 'victims' are all pretty familiar. For example, large numbers of black-robed satanists always regularly gather for chanting and rituals in big houses, but nobody ever seems to notice the traffic or the noise (let alone wonder about all the freshly-laundered exotically-embroidered robes and altar cloths hung out to dry in the days after). It's all pure Hollywood fiction; details like how nobody involved in all this sex abuse and blood-letting ever contracts an STI or AIDS or hepatitis never occurs to these people.

As I explained on the other thread, I was involved in countering all this Satanic abuse nonsense when it hit the UK in the 80s/90s. I belonged to a group called SAFF; I never agreed with their vitriolic anti-Christian stance, but they did a lot of good work in researching, collecting information, working with the media and mobilising people. They're still going - here's their report on this case.

Charlie Wilkes · Dec 27, 2012

Checkmite said:
When the links I followed led to articles that described the victims being taken to a house and abused, and the abusers happening to be pagan and having pagan regalia present, I was perfectly inclined to believe that a comparison with "satanic panic" cases was erroneous.

In light of this different information, where the victims evidently described elaborate rituals in far places with many participants, I am now more inclined to agree with your assessment Charlie. Your observation of the testimony sounding more like how the victim imagines pedophiles work rings particularly keen.

Another thing that bothers me about this case is that I see no effort to corroborate the testimony of the complaining witnesses. No one seems to have looked for the places where they say they were taken. The witnesses testified that a number of other children were abused along with them, but there's no information about who these children were. If they were local children, some of them should be available to confirm that they, too, were taken to these rituals.

I am only working from media coverage that summarizes a complex proceeding, and perhaps some of these points were addressed. I have found, however, that reporters rely on the authorities for information about crime stories. The authorities usually try to make their case sound as strong as possible. They cite anything they have that might be seen as credible evidence.

If this is a hoax, it is significant, because SRA claims have been a real problem in the US. A group on JREF is trying to debunk a group of toxic loons whose theories about recovered memory and "dissociative identity disorder" are intertwined with claims of ritual abuse very much like what is described in the UK case. Most of the US criminal convictions arising from this mythology have been reversed, but SRA proponents, in the guise of therapists, continue to prey on emotionally disturbed people. There's an active discussion about this on JREF:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=246185

It is centered on a book by a woman named Judy Byington. JREF skeptics are debating SRA proponents on Amazon, and the proponents are now citing this UK conviction as "proof" that SRA really exists.

Charlie Wilkes · Dec 27, 2012

sophia8 said:
It's REsurfaced, you mean. The stories told by the 'victims' are all pretty familiar. For example, large numbers of black-robed satanists always regularly gather for chanting and rituals in big houses, but nobody ever seems to notice the traffic or the noise (let alone wonder about all the freshly-laundered exotically-embroidered robes and altar cloths hung out to dry in the days after). It's all pure Hollywood fiction; details like how nobody involved in all this sex abuse and blood-letting ever contracts an STI or AIDS or hepatitis never occurs to these people.

As I explained on the other thread, I was involved in countering all this Satanic abuse nonsense when it hit the UK in the 80s/90s. I belonged to a group called SAFF; I never agreed with their vitriolic anti-Christian stance, but they did a lot of good work in researching, collecting information, working with the media and mobilising people. They're still going - here's their report on this case.

Very interesting. Thank you.

I think a case like this would have a hard time getting off the ground in the US ca. 2012. SRA has been discredited in the courtroom after all the damage that was done in the 1980s.

I noticed that when someone contacted the Utah attorney general's office to corroborate Judy Byington's claim that they had used her as a consultant, they denied it with a vehemence that suggests, to me, an awareness of the credibility problems other prosecuting authorities have experienced because of this junk.

I suppose the Cornwall case got some traction because they found an actual pagan group, which the public is willing to conflate with satanism.

I live in what is regarded as a hippie community, and sometimes people hold equinox/solstice parties with silly rituals drawn from pagan ideas... holding up some kind of object and welcoming back the sun, etc. I don't think anyone treats this as a genuine religious practice, but it has indeed spawned some ugly rumors outside the community.

We seem to inhabit a planet where the lamp of reason flickers in a perpetual storm.

Orphia Nay · Dec 28, 2012

It's hard to tell even from all those links what ritual abuses actually occurred. There does seem to be a distinct lack of corroborating evidence.

Having said that, none of the reports mention satanism.

Also, "Kemp was also found guilty of more recent sexual assaults unconnected to Petrauske, the court heard." - BBC (Kemp's the one who isn't a pagan.)

There could very well have been sexual abuse happening.

But satanic ritual abuse, no.

Checkmite · Dec 28, 2012

Charlie Wilkes said:
It is centered on a book by a woman named Judy Byington. JREF skeptics are debating SRA proponents on Amazon, and the proponents are now citing this UK conviction as "proof" that SRA really exists.

Yes, I've posted a bit in a thread; I was able to add some insight that I hope is useful in the fight against that particular kind of charlatanry.

Charlie Wilkes said:
I suppose the Cornwall case got some traction because they found an actual pagan group, which the public is willing to conflate with satanism.

I concur. I believe the UK reporters are acutely aware of the credibility issues surrounding the "satanic" angle as well; I notice most of the articles continue to use "paganism" despite the "black robes and chanting" details, as if pointedly avoiding the S-word.

Charlie Wilkes · Dec 28, 2012

Checkmite said:
I concur. I believe the UK reporters are acutely aware of the credibility issues surrounding the "satanic" angle as well; I notice most of the articles continue to use "paganism" despite the "black robes and chanting" details, as if pointedly avoiding the S-word.

You're right. I hadn't noticed that. It's as though they think they can dust off this myth for another round, if they just avoid that one word. The rituals themselves sound like the ones alleged in the McMartin case and many other US cases:

- Children are whisked off to some location.

- They are made to disrobe and participate in rituals involving multiple adults of both sexes as well as multiple children of both sexes.

- Photos and video are always taken, but no trace of them is ever found.

- None of the secret rooms or locations are ever found.

- No parent or anyone else ever comes looking for their child during these field trips.

I suspect these witnesses used the SRA literature for ideas.

Aulus Agerius · Dec 28, 2012

I remember a couple of years ago there was some discussion of what they call "historic" child sex offences cases and the reliability of "recovered memories." I even watched a couple of trials from the gallery as a law student.

The trouble is that the witnesses in these cases (all historic, "recovered memory" cases, not just the "ritual" ones) genuinely believe that their accounts are true. They believe that the recovered memories are real. As a result, they tend to be taken seriously by police, judges and jurors.

To complicate the matter, some of what they recall may be real, and only some of it false memory. So, for example, in this case the witnesses may genuinely have been victims of sexual abuse, but the vagueries of human memory have invented all sorts of details - like the ritual aspects - which are inaccurate. Or the entirety may be invented. Or the entirety may be true. It isn't straightforward to tell the difference.

In this case, the evidence seems mostly to have been that of witnesses many years after the fact, combined with a few suspicious items seized from the defendants and more recent evidence of the defendants' sexual interest in children (which seems to have impressed the judge). In the circumstances I can see why the jury convicted. What's really required a specialized jury direction for historic cases, like the direction given for identification evidence, to warn the jury about the unreliability of memories decades old.

Of the cases I watched, only one was a historic case. The defendant came across as rather suspicious, but I found the evidence pretty inconclusive: witnesses contradicted each other, things didn't match up nicely (was the defendant driving a tanker in those years? Did the victim first complain to her mother or father? - that sort of thing) The jury clearly disagreed: they convicted the guy.

On the reporting of the case, to be clear, the press are likely to be prohibited from reporting the names of the victims, or details that would identify them. Apart from that they are free to report the case in great detail. A recording would've been made of the proceedings, but transcripts are rather expensive and tend only to be made for appeals. If the case goes to appeal, the appeal judgment will have more detail.

Charlie Wilkes · Dec 29, 2012

Aulus Agerius said:
I remember a couple of years ago there was some discussion of what they call "historic" child sex offences cases and the reliability of "recovered memories." I even watched a couple of trials from the gallery as a law student.

The trouble is that the witnesses in these cases (all historic, "recovered memory" cases, not just the "ritual" ones) genuinely believe that their accounts are true. They believe that the recovered memories are real. As a result, they tend to be taken seriously by police, judges and jurors.

To complicate the matter, some of what they recall may be real, and only some of it false memory. So, for example, in this case the witnesses may genuinely have been victims of sexual abuse, but the vagueries of human memory have invented all sorts of details - like the ritual aspects - which are inaccurate. Or the entirety may be invented. Or the entirety may be true. It isn't straightforward to tell the difference.

In this case, the evidence seems mostly to have been that of witnesses many years after the fact, combined with a few suspicious items seized from the defendants and more recent evidence of the defendants' sexual interest in children (which seems to have impressed the judge). In the circumstances I can see why the jury convicted. What's really required a specialized jury direction for historic cases, like the direction given for identification evidence, to warn the jury about the unreliability of memories decades old.

Of the cases I watched, only one was a historic case. The defendant came across as rather suspicious, but I found the evidence pretty inconclusive: witnesses contradicted each other, things didn't match up nicely (was the defendant driving a tanker in those years? Did the victim first complain to her mother or father? - that sort of thing) The jury clearly disagreed: they convicted the guy.

On the reporting of the case, to be clear, the press are likely to be prohibited from reporting the names of the victims, or details that would identify them. Apart from that they are free to report the case in great detail. A recording would've been made of the proceedings, but transcripts are rather expensive and tend only to be made for appeals. If the case goes to appeal, the appeal judgment will have more detail.

Interesting comments. Thank you.

I understand why the jury convicted. I understood the moment I saw a photo of the guy decked out as a modern-day druid, the embodiment of the kind of people described in many SRA cases. And, as you say, his co-defendant had a history of sex offenses.

But I seriously doubt if the prosecution's story has even the slightest grain of truth insofar as children being abused at rituals. And I think the truth should be flushed out. This case, as it stands now, aids and abets a dangerous set of false beliefs.

sophia8 · Dec 29, 2012

Aulus Agerius said:
To complicate the matter, some of what they recall may be real, and only some of it false memory. So, for example, in this case the witnesses may genuinely have been victims of sexual abuse, but the vagueries of human memory have invented all sorts of details - like the ritual aspects - which are inaccurate.

I can't remember whether it was this forum or not, but in a discussion on the Jimmy Saville case, somebody suggested that in some cases of genuine abuse, the victim had such confused and conflicting feelings about the abuser (her father, usually) that she replaced him in her memories with somebody, maybe a celebrity, that she might never have even met. This seems to have happened in the Orkneys case, where one child had been genuinely abused by her father and then "encouraged" by her therapists to name other abusers.
So the same thing could well have happened here - the news surrounding the "witches" murder trial in the area a couple of years ago would have provided real victims with suitably distant and demonic 'abusers'. Makes me wonder if they shared the same therapist.

geni · Dec 29, 2012

sophia8 said:
They're still going - here's their report on this case.

Hutton did his best to convince the jury of the truth. That paganism is the original prehistoric religion of mankind and that none of its ceremonies or rites involve or abuse children.

Hmm that sounds like something of a tactical error.

Charlie Wilkes · Dec 29, 2012

geni said:
Hmm that sounds like something of a tactical error.

Sure, defending a fringe religion will never work because it doesn't address the substance of the charges.

The way to defend these guys would be to put the detective on the stand and rip into his investigation... the witnesses said there were other children involved; who were they? How did the pagans procure them for their rituals? Were their parents aware that they were being taken to pagan rituals? We have heard testimony that photos and even movies were taken. Have you come up with any of these photos? Even one image of one child being abused at a ritual?

This is the line of defense that has worked - sometimes - in ritual abuse trials in the US. I don't know to what extent the defense tried to do this in this UK trial.

eir_de_scania · Dec 29, 2012

Hutton did his best to convince the jury of the truth. That paganism is the original prehistoric religion of mankind and that none of its ceremonies or rites involve or abuse children.

My bolding.

I doubt the bolded part is what professor Hutton actuallly said. In his books and interviews he's very clear that, in is opinion, modern neo-paganism is a new thing, even if it draws on older roots. Not that old, either. He's also shown many "old, time-honoured traditions" are medieval at best, but quite often eighteen- and nineteenth-century-inventions. (See his books "Triumph of the Moon" re wicca and "Stations of the Sun" re British traditions.)

Oh, and I'd be disappointed if he didn't use the word "hitherto" once or twice, he seems rather fond of that word.

Aulus Agerius · Dec 30, 2012

Charlie Wilkes said:
Interesting comments. Thank you.

I understand why the jury convicted. I understood the moment I saw a photo of the guy decked out as a modern-day druid, the embodiment of the kind of people described in many SRA cases. And, as you say, his co-defendant had a history of sex offenses.

But I seriously doubt if the prosecution's story has even the slightest grain of truth insofar as children being abused at rituals. And I think the truth should be flushed out. This case, as it stands now, aids and abets a dangerous set of false beliefs.

Thanks.

Of course the truth should be known, unfortunately, it's rather hard to prove the facts in detail, given the passage of time. The only real evidence is witness evidence and the very problem is that memory is rather unreliable. I'm not sure what else could be done to determine the truth after all this time has passed.

I too think the idea of ritual child abuse is fairly risible. I have the vague impression from some of the quotes that the judge seems to have thought that the Defendants used "pagan" paraphanalia to intimidate their victims, which is perhaps a little more believable as opposed to that the defendants carried out the abuse for religious reasons. However it's hard, really, to do anything but take the case with a grain of salt unless it is appealed and the facts are given in greater clarity by the Court of Appeal. I doubt any of the reporters actually sat through the whole trial.

GG Science · Jan 5, 2013

The title of this thread, and much of the commentary, sound neither objective or skeptical. Rather, this conversation more than hints at a confirmation bias, apparently born of a deeply held belief, e.g. ritual abuse does not exist so this case must be a hoax.

I'd like to understand the rules here. Are there other scenarios in which child abuse just cannot happen? If a pedophile wears a clown suit, does the abuse not happen because everybody knows there's no such thing as clown abuse?

In recent years, ritual abuse has been substantiated in criminal investigations in North America (for newspaper reports, see Gyan, 2010; Lemoine, 2008a, 2008b), the UK and Europe (de Bruxelles, 2011; Kelly, 1998), and it has been documented in African and European child traf!cking networks (International Organization of Migration, 2001). A recent resurgence in publications on ritual abuse highlights that adults and children are continuing to disclose ritual abuse in a variety of settings (Epstein et al., 2011; Noblitt and Perskin-Noblitt, 2008; Sachs and Galton, 2008; Sarson and MacDonald, 2008).

...

In criminological and sociological literature, the sceptical account of ritual abuse has proven most influential, and pejorative references to allegations of ritual abuse as lacking substance or credibilityare now a mainstay of writings on ‘moral panic’ (e.g. Cohen, 2005; Garland, 2008; Jenkins, 1992). Ritual abuse is also frequently cited in psychological literature as an example of ‘false memories’ (Davis and Loftus, 2009; McNally and Geraerts, 2009). These forceful assertions that allegations of ritual abuse are confabulated need to be reconsidered in light of the substantiation of ritualistic sexual practices in recent child sex prosecutions.

From:
The Role of Ritual in the Organised Abuse of Children
Michael Salter, Ph.D.
Child Abuse Review (2012)
Wiley Online Library

Orphia Nay · Jan 5, 2013

GG Science said:
The title of this thread, and much of the commentary, sound neither objective or skeptical. Rather, this conversation more than hints at a confirmation bias, apparently born of a deeply held belief, e.g. ritual abuse does not exist so this case must be a hoax.

Welcome to the forum, GG Science. :w2:

I think you'll find that people here are skeptical that this is a case of satanic ritual abuse because no reports mention any Satanism.

Ritual abuse convictions in the UK... real, or another hoax?

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