This Skeptical Inquirer article has an overview of current-day ritual abuse claims, explaining that advocates have mostly dropped formal reference to a “satanic” aspect, but still buy into it.
“Somewhat bizarrely, it appears mind control is a modern-day explanation for the lack of memory many self-described satanic ritual abuse victims experience. Mind control, it is posited, is achieved through a systemic method of mental reprogramming, ranging in severity from physical torture to strangers on public transit engaging in “subtle hand signaling” (e.g., excessive nose scratching) (Brick 2003; Brick 2017)*. In an almost direct repeat of Satanic Panic era–therapeutic practices, modern-day therapists who specialize in ritual abuse cases claim that such mind control results in dissociative identity disorder—formerly known as multiple personality disorder, a diagnosis that was used during the Satanic Panic to add legitimacy to claims of repressed memory.”
In looking up Alison Miller, I found that she’s a retired Canadian psychologist who has authored books relating to ritual abuse. The Skeptical Inquirer article mentions that she has been a frequent contributor to the annual conference and website of an organization calling itself S.M.A.R.T. (Stop Mind Control And Ritual Abuse Today).
The article notes that the annual S.M.A.R.T conference, while purportedly open to the public, excludes members of the press and known skeptics. That exclusionary policy is reminiscent of the annual AutismOne conference, which features quack treatments for autism and antivaccine speakers.
*one time in high school I recall someone subtly signaling to me on a subway train. It wasn’t mind control, just a scuzzy pervert trying to pick me up.
OK thank you for the correction. However this is a published book on Amazon and some of those redactions still remain in my post #65.
The second redaction (the teacher of the online webinar) also has a public presence although she was not mentioned in public news stories so I’ll be more discreet in the future.
Also Dopers often want to see cites, and substantiation.
If you prefer to learn more about the Satanic Panic while doing other things, the podcast You’re Wrong About (with the wonderful Sarah Marshall) has several episodes dealing with it, such as the weird books written by “victims” of Satanists (though obviously they may indeed have been really abused).
Pretty much what I can contribute is that I have read most of the corpus of Elizabeth Loftus, an expert on human memory. One of her books addresses Satanic Ritual Abuse, and other types of “recovered” [read: false] memories, and how such things come to be.
I did some AA meetings years ago and remember a girl coming in and sharing that she had spent 20 years with a satanic cult. She talked about women having babies for the soul purpose of sacrificing them. She said some children were bred and raised off the grid for the purpose of sexual abuse and then sacrificed. It just so happens that I had gone to school with this girl for many years. I didn’t know her; I don’t think anyone did as she was a loner and appeared to be deeply disturbed. I always wondered if their might have been some truth to her tails or were they just all fabricated.
There was a book published at the beginning of the Satanic Panic called Michelle Remembers, about a woman recalling years of Satanic abuse, where she was flown to other cities to be abused in rituals, and the tales go one.
The book was debunked, and one of the biggest chunks of evidence against it was the fact that she had very few recorded absences from school, none consecutive that would allow for the things she claimed, and no one ever recalled any marks on her. The abuse she recalled would have resulted in much more than bruising.
She also was present for school pictures every year, and appeared well-kempt and healthy in the pictures.
So yeah, some tall tales do get completely fabricated, but usually not without help from an over-reaching therapist.
Or friends who encourage the tale with their attention. Or a real memory of abuse that’s more common with an overlay of a more fantastical screen memory. Or a delusion.
I have worked on several inpatient psychiatric units. I’ve had disconcerting experiences of being assigned special 1 to 1 duties that have included sitting outside a patient room and performing a visual check of the patient every 10 minutes, and spending shifts monitoring cameras on several patient rooms. No one entered these room except nurses and mental health staff doing required checks, assessing for a lower level of restriction as required by law, or offering food or meds. Yet several of the patients I observed reported (and in some cases filed grievances about) being sexually assaulted during these and other shifts. I don’t assume they were lying, but that they were hallucinating or remembering actual assaults in their histories.
(I"m not saying that people aren’t sometimes assaulted while hospitalized. But not on my shifts, and not by 30 Soviet agents, ghosts, aliens, or everyone on the ward.)
Speaking of Sybil, Multiple Personality was an extraordinarily rare diagnosis-- a handful of patients in all of psychiatric literature-- and then the Sally Field movie came out, and suddenly there were a handful a day, in every psychiatric facility in an area where the movie had aired.
I’m willing to believe some of that had to do with awareness, but cripes, not all of it.
