by blanc » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:12 am
The UK satirical mag Private Eye has published a series of articles debunking a number of people who as therapists, police, lawyers or academics, have a different opinion to that expressed by the author of the govt commissioned report "The Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Abuse" - Prof. J.S.La Fontaine. Private Eye's targets in these articles are not media hungry types, more people who have tried to help survivors. The articles are not signed and Private Eye has been coy about identifying the author. <br>The articles have been stuffed with fudgy expressions like "proponents of a belief in satanic ritual abuse" - pull that apart without getting bits stuck to you! - and contain factual errors. This latest for example, claims "In September 2001, on the very weekend Adam's body was found, Driscoll was a key speaker at a conference at Reading University organised by Sinason and an organisation called Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support.. run by Dr Joan Coleman, a psychiatrist who claims to have talked to more than 600 professionals who have worked with survivors of "sadistic ritual abuse" and spoken to more than 200 victims."<br>DCI Driscoll was not at the Reading Conference alluded to, but undeterred by fact, the article continues to claim that he shared a platform with Colonel Kobus Jonker, " a born-again Christian from the South African Police " and further claims that Driscoll and Jonker gave the conference presentations...<br>in fact Kobus Jonker presented forensic evidence of ritual crime from his perspective as head of occult crime investigation unit in South Africa, but did not, as the article further claims say he manned a unit run by "devout Christians". <br><br>This article, which I can't find on the web, muddies facts around for a few more paragraphs and takes a swipe at Valerie Sinason, therapist, and Lee Moore, barrister, former head of ACAL in an attempt to shore up the Government commissioned report - La Fontaine's, which it states<br>"concluded definitively in 1994, after the debacles of false allegations in Rochdale, the Orkneys and elsewhere across the UK - that Satanic ritual abuse in this country was a myth."<br><br>This is in itself a curious statement - La Fontaine's report, as she makes clear in the initial page of definitions, only used the broader term "ritual abuse" for all the cases in her study.<br>satanic is the term Private Eye prefers because it rhymes with panic - sor t of.<br>A mojor flaw in this study was that La Fontaine did not interview survivors, but relied on second hand information.<br><br>Why Private Eye and why now. any ideas?<br><br> <p></p><i></i>