I had completely forgotten about Warnke. My youth group went to see him speak, probably '78 or '79. I remember that at the age of 16 his stories struck me as really over the top with the Satanic elements and his “comedy” being kind of hateful. A very self aggrandizing jerk basically. Not having paid much attention to his ilk in the last 25 years I must say it is heartening to see he got busted by his peers for his bullshit.
The need for evil enemies has created a lot of suffering in human history. This is just a wacky side chapter in this endless tome.
Your link talks about someone named Gerard Amirault. I find it odd that the McMartin Pre-school staff didn’t fight back. I certainly would have since it sounds like a dreadful injustice was visited upon them.
Of course. Who wants to believe he’s capable of being a complete TIT without some help?
They did fight back, but there was a belief that gigantic satanic groups were all over the damn place, and any defense was vastly overwhelmed by the mass hysteria going on at the time.
One of the reasons I did not lament that Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley, who was a prosecutor who insisted in having Amirault serve full term regardless of the facts even after the parole board had unanimously recommended a commutation (not even a pardon!). “See how we’re tough on crime! Think of The Children!!”
I just finished reading Remembering Satan, which is about this case. I couldn’t get over how gullible the law enforcement officers were – including the ones accused. One of the daughters claimed her parents were part of a coven that ritually sacrificed hundreds of babies, and an investigator explained the lack of any physical evidence to support this claim by stating the area’s acidic soil completely broke down the remains. Seriously??!
- Attention.
Do you have any idea or recollection of how your friends and relatives, not to mention acquaintances, respond to talk about traumatic events? People avoid talking about trauma, especially if the nature of that trauma challenges their worldview.
Look at how this forum is talking about David Shurter. Look at how people are attacking Jenny Hill on Amazon.com, and other survivors who’ve come forward with their stories, and RA in general, do you think they receive any better treatment from people in their day to day lives?
Unless the entire lot of self-identified survivors can also be diagnosed with some sort of disorder of extreme masochism, then your point is ridiculous. Speaking out publicly about RA brings ridicule, ostracism, negative impacts on career and personal relationships. If you want to make an instant pariah of yourself, claim to be a survivor of ritual abuse.
2., 3., 4. No one ever got rich off of publishing books about or treating survivors of ritual abuse. Conversely, Child trafficking and child pornography are multibillion dollar businesses. Do a simple google search on child porn and you’ll find that most cases involve perpetrators in all strata of society, all the way up to people with high clearance in the pentagon, google project flicker. No matter the trappings, the costumes, or whatever organizing principle perpetrators use to rationalize their behavior, and how these are overblown by the media in each case, what’s at the core of RA claims is organized crime. Law enforcement has utterly failed to address it, to an even greater extent than they failed to contend with the mafia for half a century.
In other words, your arguments are illogical and misinformed.
The reason stories of RA keep surfacing, even in this climate of instant denial, is because they are based in real phenomena. The stories will keep surfacing until and unless this society and its institutions begin to adequately address child torture and exploitation as components of organized crime in the private sphere.
Show me your best evidence that so-called “ritual abuse” occurred in any of the stories mentioned in this thread. Where are the secret rooms? Where are the hot air balloons and elephants? Where are the wounds from the butcher knifes shoved into the asses of little children? Where is the actual evidence that the stories coerced from little children after hours of interrogation, prodding and extremely dubious hypnotic techniques are true?
Like Satan, and magic tunnels accessed through toilets, and enormous knives that are plunged into children without leaving injury. Real phenomena like that.
There is plenty of real child abuse, that’s for darn sure. But none of it is conducted by organized covens of Satan-worshippers, because neither Satan nor his worshippers exist or ever have existed.
There was also the little matter of insurance claims-the parents who bought into this nonsense accepted millions in insurance payouts-so they liked the money too.
Which makes me wonder how many claims of sexual abuse (against scoutmasters, priests, teachers and coaches) were in fact motivated by large sums of money, paid out in compensation.
Of course sexual exploitation of children occurs and some profit from it. What has any of that to do with Satanic ritual? Never attribute to religion that which can be adequately explained by the profit motive.
Oh, there are Satan worshipers. But most of them don’t actually believe in Satan as a being, “Satan” is just the pet name they give their own egos. As for ritual abuse of children, the LaVeyan Church of Satan’s “Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth” include, “5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal,” and “9. Do not harm little children.”
There’s a book called “Painted Black” that spins all sorts of crazy tales about Satanic abuse, including stating that the Atlanta child killings were a bunch of white Satanists sacrificing black ghetto kids, and did not stop when Wayne Williams was in prison (total bullshit). Also the author suggests that Sharon Tate’s murder might maybe have been orchestrated by her husband Roman Palanski in exchange for fame and fortune, a la Rosemary’s Baby.
My guess would be that in most such cases the money might be some incentive to speak out, but not sufficient incentive to make the whole thing up.
No, they are based on the raving paranoia of severely deluded people and the calculated fraud by those who seek power through exploiting fear. It’s not any different from the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism.
Is post #28 for real? Or is it a parody of how those nutters want everyone to believe that’s how things really happened? Sheesh. Anyway, I came in to mention Warnke. He was a huge hit in my youth group in the 80s and I read everything he put out. When I fell away from the church, I never really have him any further thought. So, it was interesting to look him up in the early 2000s and found out he was busted for his bullshit. I was completely not surprised, nor that he’s continued on in the Christian scene and has always been totally unrepentant. Nothing that he does, even if he still pretended to be a satanist “high priest,” should illicit shock. The whole lot of 'em are douches.
Is this correct? Are there no verified accounts of repressed memories coming to light that are true?
You are right-if you read the story of the “Fells Acre” preschool trial, the whole thing reads like a rerun of the Salem Witch trials. The people who ran the daycare center were accused of taking the kids to a “magic room” where they were raped and tortured. There was NO evidence presented at all of this-just the testimony of children who were brainwashed into saying what the prosecution wanted them to say. The parents of the “victims” did accept large cash settlements though-apparently, that was enough to sway them. The lead prosecutor of the case is now the MA AG-oddly, she doesn’t like to talk about the case…I wonder why?
Wiki sez, “According to the American Psychological Association, it is not currently possible to distinguish a true repressed memory from a false one without corroborating evidence.[1]”