Thread by @JimmyFalunGong

because I might not be around forever, there’s some things I wanted to get out there and making an episode might take too long. I want to talk about satanic ritual abuse.

but before that, I must talk about the underlying phenomenon of child abuse

in 1984, FBI Special Agent Kenneth V. Lanning testified before Congress about child pornography. in that setting, Lanning stated that there were likely hundreds of thousands of pedophiles in the United States.

In 1984, Lanning co wrote an article entitled Child Pornography and Sex Rings with a Professor of Psychiatric Nursing, Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess. They examined 40 known, prosecuted cases of child pornography rings

the average number of active victims (children actively being victimized) at a given time was typically 3 to 11, though “cases involving hundreds of children could be reported if the numbers of victims were added consecutively over the tenure of the adult's operation of the ring"

the article lists out several types of rings: solo, transition (cooperation between solo offenders), and syndicated sex rings

the article provides a case study for a solo ring. this case involved a pedophile who paid boys for various services ranging from household chores up to photos and sexual favors (like Epstein did w/ massages)

this same case study stated the offender kept biorhythm charts on his victims

this offender kept a staggering amount of data about the victims and offenses via a computer system (when computers were not as widespread) and also had something called the “88 club” for victims

the syndicated rings:
"this ring involves a well-structured organization that recruits children, produces pornography, delivers direct sexual services, and establishes an extensive network of customers. The number of adults operating the ring ranged from two to nine."

again, another example is provided.

"For example...the occupation of five of the defendants included a pediatrician/adolescent psychiatrist, assistant to the headmaster of a private boy's school, a psychologist, an investment broker, and a business executive."

imagine the interference a network like that could run for themselves.

now, child porn cases overlap with but are not synonymous with satanic ritual abuse cases. still, SRA claims often come up in these real cases

I'm looking at the Investigator's Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse, January 1992, by the same Special Agent Kenneth V. Lanning of the National Center for the Analysis of Violence Crime for the FBI

I’ve been told that this text has the reputation that it “debunked” SRA and/or broader networks.

that's not what the text says.

ironically Lanning was a member of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) which we all love so much

Agent Lanning had been investigating these cases for years before the Satanic Panic of the 1980s/1990s.

“In 1983 and 1984, when I first began to hear stories of what sounded like satanic or occult activity in connection with allegations of sexual victimization of children (allegations that have come to be referred to most often as "ritual" child abuse), I tended to believe them..."

"I had been dealing with bizarre, deviant behavior for many years and had long since realized that almost anything is possible. Just when you think that you have heard it all, along comes another strange case..."

"The idea that there are a few cunning, secretive individuals in positions of power somewhere in this country regularly killing a few people as part of some satanic ritual or ceremony and getting away with it is certainly within the realm of possibility.”

Lanning explained that the problem was not the nature of the claims but the scope: that victims were alleging more murder victims than was physically possible, and offering no corroborative evidence.

Lanning explained how the burden of proof for believing an abused child would necessarily be different for a parent, a social worker, a therapist, and a law enforcement officer.

LEOs deal with concepts of reasonable suspicion, probable cause, and beyond a reasonable doubt, while the others do not. consequently, the approach must be very different for each of those positions.

Lanning wrote, “Bizarre crime and evil can occur without organized satanic activity. The professional perspective requires that we distinguish between what we know and what we're not sure of."

nevertheless, Lanning lays out "the facts" as he saw them

"Some individuals believe in and are involved in something commonly called satanism and the occult. Some of these individuals commit crime..."

"Some groups of individuals share these beliefs and involvement in this satanism and the occult. Some members of these groups commit crime together."

"The unanswered questions are:
1. What is the connection between the belief system and the crimes committed?
2. Is there an organized conspiracy of satanic and occult believers responsible for interrelated serious
crime (e.g., molestation, murder)?"

Lanning stated that he was involved in “several hundred of "these kinds of cases"...since 1983”

In these discussions, Lanning dropped an interesting line: “the US Department of Defense has conducted specialized training and has developed much a [contingency] plan for child sex ring cases involving military facilities and personnel”

I wonder why

perhaps pulling a hat trick from the ol BSU playbook, Lanning tries to rename these cases

Lanning tried to coin the term: “multidimensional child sex rings”.

what are multidimensional child sex rings?

These have four main characteristics:

1. Multiple young victims
2. Multiple offenders
3. Fear as a controlling tactic
4. Bizarre or ritual activity

characteristics unique to multidimensional child sex rings (as opposed to CP rings or more traditional child abuse rings) include a higher percentage of female offenders than historical child sex rings (in which almost all the offenders are men), as well as

more situational molestation (his term) over pedophilia-driven molestation, and more male and female victims (as opposed to victims driven entirely by offender preference)

further, multidimensional sex rings appear to be motivated by spiritual elements to an unspecified degree, as opposed to the aforementioned offender sexuality-driven rings

"It is my opinion that the motivation may have more to do with anger, hostility, rage, and resentment carried out against weak and vulnerable victims...

"Much of the ritualistic abuse of children may not be sexual in nature...this may also partially explain the large percentage of female offenders."

Lanning’s report includes a section “Why Are Victims Alleging Things that Do Not Seem to Be True?”

Lanning does not debunk victim claims so much as make categories:
physically impossible claims
possible but improbable claims
possible and probable claims
corroborated claims

examples of physically impossible claims would be most supernatural claims, like the victim cut into pieces and put back together alive again

possible but improbable claims often include human sacrifice, cannibalism, vampirism, et cetera

possible and probable claims could include relatively terrestrial things like child pornography or clever manipulation of victims

and corroborated claims are of course whatever has been corroborated thus far

there's an extended discussion of misperception especially by children:

"In one case, a child's description of the apparently impossible act of walking through a wall turned out to be the very possible act of walking between the studs of an unfinished wall in a room under construction."

No matter how you slice it, there are many claims made in multidimensional cases which cannot be corroborated. Although child abuse may have occurred, it is extremely unlikely that the group responsible has also murdered hundreds of people. the scope is off

fundamentally, though, Lanning wrote, "I believe that the majority of victims alleging "ritual" abuse are in fact victims of some form of abuse or trauma."

switching gears, Dr. Colin A. Ross wrote a book, Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment

with an afterword by Elizabeth F. Loftus, no less

although the book is geared toward therapists, the book opens with a history of satanic ritual abuse claims including the witch trials of Europe, the Malleus Maleficarum, and the Inquisition

it is somewhat understood that many of the claims made during the 1980s satanic panic curiously mirrored those of the witch trials and the inquisition. why?

Ross wrote "The key to understanding the psychology of the Catholic Inquisition is the Malleus Maleficarum, which is basically the operations manual of the Inquisition…The Malleus is analogous to a twentieth-century text on how to diagnose and treat borderlines"

Dr. Ross basically argues that borderline personality disorders are fundamentally the same as people accused of witchcraft

“In twentieth-century psychiatry, bad borderlines are said to be prone to polymorphous perversity, pan-anxiety, and pan-sexuality. In the fifteenth century, these were the characteristics of witches.”

Schopenhauer gets some heat here, too

“The majority of victims of the Inquisition were women, while the perpetrators were almost exclusively men..."

"I believe that many of the witches must have been victims of childhood sexual abuse: their symptoms of demon possession and collaboration with Satan were probably indicators of childhood trauma..."

"This history has been repeated in the twentieth century by both the Church and psychiatry, each of which has disavowed the traumatic origins of 'hysterical', dissociative and possession symptoms.”

Dr. Ross cites a wide number of studies that suggest about 10% of physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers admit to having had sexual relations with their patients or clients

an interesting parallel is that the "rate of completed suicide in patients with borderline personality disorder is about 10 per cent: this figure was established by a research literature which almost completely ignored the traumatic origins of the disorder..."

"Studies published since the late 1980s have consistently demonstrated that the majority of people with borderline personality disorder, though not all, report childhood physical and/or sexual abuse..."

"An unanswered epidemiological question is whether the percentage of sexual abuse victims who die by suicide in our society is significantly lower than the percentage who died by burning four hundred years ago.”

Ross argues that there’s an argument to be made that psychiatry’s record with treating the long-term consequences of childhood trauma in the twentieth century may not have been much more successful than in the fifteenth century when they simply burned them at the stake.

“What we see in both periods is pervasive institutionalized rationalizations for maintaining the status quo, combined with negative characterological attributions of blame directed at the victims of childhood trauma..."

"The elimination of the ultimate abuse, burning, was a public-health measure that occurred before the advent of modern psychiatry; thus, psychiatry cannot take credit for the eradication of that form of abuse in the twentieth century.”

“The fact that we call our witches 'borderlines' and hospitalize them rather than burn them, while institutionally ignoring the origins of many of their symptoms in childhood trauma, must be considered an advance, ...

"but a limited one in that it does not represent either a full understanding of or an adequate social response to the problem of child abuse.”

all of this to say that while Dr. Ross suggests that much of the fantastical elements to SRA are attributable to mental health side effects of child abuse, that doesn't discount the possibility of actual SRA accompanying the child abuse

still, what’s up with that afterword by Loftus?

bitch ass nerds still get hung up on the "satanism" aspect to this whole thing, too, when multiple different religious/spiritual belief systems are cited in the 2007 Extreme Abuse Survey

to wrap up here, I'll finish with Lanning's observations:

“When a victim describes and investigation corroborates what sounds like ritualistic activity, several possibilities must be considered..."

The ritualistic activity may be part of the excessive religiosity of mentally disturbed, even psychotic offenders. It may be a misunderstood part of sexual ritual. The ritualistic activity may be incidental to any real abuse..."

"The offender may be deliberately engaging in ritualistic activity with a child as part of child abuse and exploitation..."

"The motivation, however, may be not to indoctrinate the child into a belief system, but to lower the inhibitions of, control, manipulate, and/or confuse the child..."

"In all the turmoil over this issue, it would be a very effective strategy for any child molester deliberately to introduce ritualistic elements into his crime in order to confuse the child and therefore the criminal justice system.”

go ahead and read that sentence and then reread it

surely someone would have thought about tactic by now, huh?

So when people online try to discredit real cases and solid investigations by objecting to the existence of ritualistic elements, pay attention and keep track.