http://www.delphicentre.com.au/M%20Salt ... itness.doc
Bearing witness to ritual abuse
Michael Salter
Every morning, when I wake up, I go next door and check on Alex. I knock on her door, and sometimes I hear a rueful answer muffled by bedsheets. Most of the time, I’m met by silence, and I go into her room to find her curled up in bed or on the floor. She can be shaking silently, or crying, her hands clamped to her face. It can take half an hour of coaxing before she opens her eyes.
I’ll wait while she has a shower. If the night has been bad enough, she’ll collapse in the bathroom. I throw a bathrobe over her shivering form, calm her down, and gently lift her out of the shower and take her to her room. Sooner or later, once she’s dressed, we are both off to work.
During the day, it’s hard to think about anything else. I worry about her, how she is going, whether she’s safe, whether she is happy. We make contact a few times during the day through email and text message. If her anxiety levels are particularly high, I will leave a little early to pick her up from her work, and we’ll go home.
She lives mostly on a diet of liquid substitutes such as Sustagen, although, if she’s feeling bright enough, she will eat an entire meal. She does her best, but forcing herself to eat solids will bring on an automatic choking and vomiting reflex. Night-times are the worst of it. She rarely gets more then a few hours sleep; insomnia and flashbacks make sure of that.
I have the bedroom next to hers. At night, I hear her coughing and gasping for breath in her dreams, crying out for help, her body wracked with muscular spasms and memories of agony. Often enough, I go into her room and hold her hand. I tell her that everything is OK, that she’s safe, that she’s just having a ‘bad dream’. I tell her stories and read to her. If she’s feeling particularly bad, I’ll sleep in her room to keep her company.
For me, it’s been a couple of years. For Alex, it’s been two decades.
Ritual abuse and torture
Alex is the survivor of a paedophile ring that used ritualized torture to keep child victims compliant and silent. A cocktail of drugs, electrocution and sexual assault fragmented her young consciousness, and placed her exploitation in a place beyond words. The perpetrators convinced her that what was occurring was normal and natural, and that they were teaching her to be good. Her childhood was spent trying to please them.
Now, Alex has an ‘illness’ that doesn’t exist. You could loosely call it ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD), but what she goes through is much more then the nightmares of a mugging victim. There are terms like ‘complex PTSD’ or ‘cumulative trauma disorder’ that cover it, although they have an apocryphal status at best within psychology and medicine. Australia has yet to admit that torture occurs in our country, or develop any comprehensive diagnostic, treatment or prevention frameworks to assist survivors. That is a denial that reaches far deeper then you think.
Alex and I
I’ve known Alex for six years. I met her when I was still a teenager, living in a student share house. We got along well, but she was private and kept to herself. I couldn’t help noticing how little she ate, how little she slept, or the hours that she spent walking at night. One day, a flatmate told me that she could hear Alex crying herself to sleep every night.
The next night, when Alex set out for one of her long walks, I told her I was coming with her. We were barely around the corner when I confronted her with my suspicion. I told her that I believed she’d been sexually abused. I’ve never seen anyone look so terrified. I asked her who it was, and she told me. “A group of police officers.”
Over the next few months and years, Alex let me into her life. I came to see the ravages of extreme trauma; the depression, the flashbacks, the suicide attempts, the self-mutilation, the hyper-vigilance. The most simple acts and challenges were incredibly fraught for Alex. Getting enough food and sleep was a battle that was lost a long time ago. The everyday pressures of social interaction and study prompted overwhelming and paralysing emotional responses.
What frightened me the most was her silence. She couldn’t speak about her past without being forced to internally re-live it. We worked together to try and create a joint understanding of her history, but the end result was always hours of flashbacks and re-experienced trauma.
What we were able to piece together was well outside my realm of understanding. She told me that there were many abusers, and that they had been organized and systematic. Sometimes, sleeping in her room and bearing witness to the nightmares and flashbacks, I would hear her conversations with people from long ago. I didn’t know what to make of it all; what got me through was an increasing conviction that she needed and deserved assistance, and that, without support, she might not make it through.
While I was living overseas, I received a death threat, and so did Alex. The men from Alex’s childhood came back for her, blackmailing her with photos and videos of the things they did to her when she was younger. After a two year game of cat-and-mouse, in which Alex moved a dozen times in a futile attempt to stay safe, I moved interstate to live with her again. That was over a year ago.
In that time, I’ve intercepted phone calls from perpetrators who demand to speak to Alex and threaten to kill me if I try to stop them. I’ve heard from an adult victim who pleaded for Alex to return to the group. I’ve read text messages telling Alex to ‘give in’ and referring to the rape and torture of young children. I’ve come home to find bloody organs smeared through our beds and strange sigils painted on our sheets.
Alex’s mobile phone rings constantly, day and night. If she answers, the perpetrators demand that she goes to a certain place and wait for a car. Sometimes, Alex disappears for a period of five to ten hours, only to reappear dumped on the side of the road with multiple injuries. It takes her weeks to recover.
Carer-counselor-nurse-private investigator-body guard
Caring for a survivor of ritual abuse is a guerilla war waged against specters both inside and outside her head. Sometimes, it’s an agonizing memory that overwhelms her for hours at night. Other times, it’s the man waiting by her car after work, who moves swiftly from convivial chatter to demanding her keys and forcing her into the car. My role is a blend of counselor, nurse and bodyguard.
Since February, Alex has been undergoing treatment as a trauma survivor, and she has been responding very well. Before treatment began, she could muster little resistance to the orders she received via the phone and email. Experience had taught her that sexual assault and torture was an inevitable part of her life, and that she might as well give in. For the first time, treatment has given her a sense of hope, and a taste of a world free from sexual exploitation, pain and the threat of death.
As she moves towards a healthier state of being, her thought processes are re-ordering, which can be both disorientating and distressing for her. It’s difficult for her to concentrate, and her short-term memory can be unreliable. However, she’s getting more sleep, eating better, and her levels of somatic pain have dropped dramatically. Her flashbacks have lessened in severity, and she inhabits an emotional space that is much more engaged and integrated then when I first met her.
When I first met her, Alex could not speak even tangentially about what she’d been through, without lapsing into flashbacks and mute terror. Now, she speaks openly and eloquently about her abuse and its impact on her. As she keeps speaking, the fear begins to subside, and the memories settle down into a slightly different configuration from where they bubbled up. Change is simultaneously incremental and monumental. We celebrate every small step forward.
Invisible survivor, invisible carer
Like many other ritual abuse survivors, Alex has been groomed since childhood to be deeply phobic of police and doctors. As a result, when faced with a police officer or a medical examination, Alex becomes glassy eyed and speechless with fear. Both police and doctors have interpreted this response as ‘non-cooperation’. They don’t understand that she has no choice.
In the face of ignorance and denial, Alex is rendered invisible to service providers, and so am I. I have found myself in a world filled with memories of rape and torture. Men have threatened to kill me. My dearest friend keeps disappearing and reappearing, bleeding, burnt and speechless, whilst police and doctors refuse to get involved. Without external assistance, I am stretched trying to manage her challenging psychological symptoms whilst ensuring her safety from an organised criminal network.
Who are the perpetrators?
The perpetrators are a sadistically abusive prostitution and pornography ring operating throughout Australia. Members have in common a sexual interest in the brutal torture of young girls, who are ritually abused with the intention of irrevocably shattering their consciousness, ‘bonding’ them to the group, and creating a sense of complicity in their own sexual enslavement.
Ritual abuse is commonly blamed on underground ‘cults’, but these perpetrators are not a ‘cult’ in the usual sense of the word. They do operate within a specific misogynistic occult ideology, however, this appears to function as much as an organizing principle as a shared religious conviction. This ritual abuse group is better conceptualized as a network, in that it is constituted of specific chapters operating across the country under the auspice of an overarching authority structure.
Child victims are usually sourced from within the perpetrator’s family, however, the ritual torture and indoctrination process is effective enough to camouflage a child’s abuse from non-perpetrating parents. Whilst many people presume that parents will ‘intuitively’ sense that their child is being sexually abused, the truth is that the more profound a child’s trauma, the more entrenched their silence. The sexual torture of young children creates such an extreme level of dissociation that parents may be oblivious to their child’s ordeal. This is particularly true when ritual abuse begins so early that the child’s traumatic symptoms – profound shyness, slow social development, inappropriate behaviour – appear to have always been present, and can be dismissed as part of their ‘personality’.
The rationale imposed on the child by the group is the justification of every paedophile writ large; that the child deserves torture and pain, and that she enjoys and seeks the sexual abuse. The child ‘learns’ that she is innately evil, and that the pain and dehumanization of the torture both ‘punishes’ and ‘purifies’ her. She is instructed that she can only find redemption by doing exactly what she is told. ‘Goodness’ equals obedience. As the child grows, this becomes the underlying belief structure upon which she bases her entire worldview. During sexual assault, she is electrocuted if she resists or cries out, thus dislocating stimulus from affect. She does not dare associate her natural responses of rage and fear with the predations of the ‘Masters’, and they encourage her to vent her pain and anger on other victims.
The victim is progressively dehumanized by the group and socialized into sexual perpetration. She is referred to by a specific number within the group to reinforce her dehumanization. She is marked on her body as a sign of her enslavement. During a torture ordeal, the victim is usually forced to wear a dog collar with her number written on it. The collar is tightened in punishment for imaginary ‘transgressions’. The perpetrators refer to victims as ‘dogs’, ‘slaves’, ‘sluts’ and ‘whores’.
Many torture ordeals are filmed and photographed. An ordeal may be ‘preceded’ by the production of ‘vanilla’ pornography in which the victim is forced to ‘smile’ and act naturally while the camera is rolling. This material is sold commercially, and some of it is available on commercial websites. Ritual abuse pornography is also available online, but it is more commonly hoarded by the group, and used as part of the indoctrination process. During torture, victims are forced to watch the pornographic films made of them in order to further embed their sense of degradation and shame. When they grow older, the pornographic material is used for blackmail.
If a victim survives into adulthood, her torture is ongoing until she commits suicide or ‘agrees’ to become a ‘master’ and begin orchestrating ritual abuses on children and other survivors. In this way, former victims are bought into the 'fold' and the perpetrators ensure that errant survivors do not compromise the security of the group.
Why haven’t they been caught?
The perpetrators have been investigated by law enforcement and other agencies. However, a number of factors have prevented the group and network from being shut down:
The nature of torture: Ritual abuse victims, due to the neurology of extreme trauma, are unable to provide the detailed narrative that the police and judiciary require in order to provide assistance. This is one of the defining characteristics of complex post-traumatic stress disorder – the victim is not able to contextualize the traumatic experience within a larger narrative. When we look at history and anthropology, we can see patterns of ritual abuse and child torture throughout a variety of eras and cultures, but since it results in involuntary and intractable speechlessness, it remains largely unrecognized.
The nature of law enforcement and the judiciary: Ritually abusive groups have been successfully prosecuted overseas through the cooperation of police with welfare services, however, such synergy has yet to be seen in Australia. I have spoken to police officers who are aware of the existence of this group and who have come across victims who corroborate one another’s stories; however, the law does not have the necessary frameworks to prosecute offenders. Moreover, most Australian police receive no training in the nature of trauma or organized sexual exploitation.
Lack of specialized services: The official refusal to accept the phenomenon of ritual abuse and child torture has meant that, although welfare workers and departments encounter survivors and victims in their case loads, the public service has yet to develop any organizational response to ritual abuse. The disbelief associated with ‘ritual abuse’ has forced social workers to refer to such cases as ‘women with complex needs’, ‘sadistic organised abuse’, or other euphemisms, thus effectively fragmenting and camouflaging the crime. Meanwhile, torture services are funded purely to work with refugees and migrants, and Australian-born torture survivors have no access to comprehensive, targeted assistance.
Corruption, misconduct and inaction: No charges have been laid in any Australian police investigation into child sexual abuse involving trafficking and torture. These investigations have been characterized by misplaced evidence, missing reports, uncontacted witnesses, and intimidated victims. A founding member of the Victorian sexual crimes unit described a twelve-year-old abuse victim as a “little slut” and a senior investigator with the NSW sexual crimes unit is under suspicion for possession of child pornography. Some survivor advocates feel that the ritual abuse network in Australia, like those uncovered in Portugal and Belgium, may have sufficient power to pervert police investigations.
Ignorance and disbelief: The “art’” of torture is to never leave a mark. A victim may have no “proof’” of their ordeal beyond what they can disclose. The lack of physical evidence and the extremity of their story means that torture victims are rarely believed within their own communities. This is particularly true in Australia. We don’t know very much about torture and we don’t want to know. It is easier to discredit victims then listen to their harrowing story, particularly if it means that we have to challenge our common assumptions about safety, law and order.
Where to now?
Torture victims need a great deal of community support before they can speak about what they have been through; that support is not on offer in Australia, and, consequently, the torturers walk freely amongst us. The inability of law enforcement or the public service to generate any response to this issue (let alone an appropriate one) highlights significant and concerning structural deficiencies. Non-political torture is effectively invisible in Australia and survivors are on their own.
Ritual abuse, non-political torture, and intra-national sexual trafficking are emerging as global human rights issues. Survivors and advocates are becoming increasingly vocal and there have been successful criminal prosecutions overseas, most notably in America and Europe. Whilst public ignorance and police inertia are exploited by ritual abuse perpetrators, who have considerable power and influence of their own, Australian survivors are in the early stages of connecting with one another and developing a cohesive voice. It is only a matter of time before the most disempowered and betrayed citizens of this country begin to demand the same rights and freedoms that the rest of us take for granted.
Despite the challenges, Alex and I are winning. As she heals, every day is a new world. I’m watching her unfurl, exploring possibilities that she never knew were hers, reclaiming choices that the torturers thought they had erased forever. They wanted her to be an empty shell; a slave who would do as she was told. Instead, they face a beautiful young woman fighting for her freedom with a degree of strength and intelligence far beyond them. When you consider what is stacked against us, that’s a profound testament to her and the partnership that we have forged.
