1959 article on ritual abuse

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1959 article on ritual abuse

Postby biaothanatoi » Fri Jun 24, 2005 1:23 am

I’ve always wondered about this constant emphasis on 1980 and ‘Michelle Remembers’ as the first published account of ritual abuse, and then I came across this yesterday in a footnote within Stephen Kent’s “Deviant Scripturalism and Ritual Satanic Abuse” articles (“Religion”, 1993, no. 23, pp 229 – 241):<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>“Interestingly, the earliest contemporary allegation of Satanism that I have located appeared in Canada’s “Winnepeg Free Press” on 26 November 1959, and it discussed child sacrifice. Mr Leslie Roberts of Brighton, England, told Vancouver, British Columbia reporters that “All over Europe and America organised groups of Satanists – including some of the wealthiest and most respected members of the community – meet regularly to celebrate their infamous rites’. He went on to say that for these groups ‘[h]uman sacrifice is essential. Therefore there is a big trade in unborn children, infants and young girls. Many of Britian’s unsolved murders relate to black magic.’ The article concluded with Roberts saying that ‘he had information that a baby was used as a human sacricice a year ago in the Sussex Village of Rottingdean. Detectives investigated his claim but told him that knowing it was one thing and proving it was another’ (Winnipeg Free Press, 1959). Another neglected article about probable human sacrifice (the terrified reporter fled the site before seeing the ritual’s conclusion) appeared in the 14-20 November 1969 issue of the Berkely Barb in California, although the victim was a man rather then a child.”</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>(On an aside, I was contacted a few months ago by an American alleging that the activities of the Berkely OTO in the 60s and 70s included ritual abuse and human sacrifice.)<br><br>I would really recommend that you read Kent’s two articles on ‘scriptural deviancy’, if you can get your hands on them. He points out something that I’ve long wondered about – that denialists accuse survivors of ‘stitching together’ ritual abuse memories from pop culture/the media/suggestive therapists, but their memories relate directly and specifically to obscure esoteric doctrines that are far from common knowledge. <br><br>My friend’s experiences of ritual abuse relate specifically to some very detailed, underground esotericism that I *know* she has never had access to – in order to ‘make it up’, as some have alleged, she’d have to do years of research into Thelema and Crowley’s more obscure pronouncements <br><br>(not to mention then ‘creating’ a coherent and detailed history of ritual abuse … faking a cumulative trauma disorder … and coordinating multiple abductions, rapes, death threats and home invasions against herself and – in the last two counts – against myself and my family over the last three years). <br><br>That’s quite a feat, but that’s the ‘plausible’ explanation presented to me by the denialist framework. Sounds an awful lot like a conspiracy theory to me! <p></p><i></i>
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