Talk:Satanic ritual abuse/Archive 3

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Archive 3

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Contents 1 The question of secret tunnels or dungeons 2 The McMartin section 3 Improper copying of citations from Diana Napolis 4 Diana Napolis responds on May 28, 2008 5 Prevalence: none? 6 unsourced changes to United States 7 POV pushing in the Netherlands section 8 Neutral stance toward satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands 9 Changes to opening para 10 External links 11 Attack site removal 12 Literature section 13 Archive 14 Article Issues 14.1 "Criticisms" 14.2 "Citecheck" 14.3 "Unbalanced" 14.4 Eleland's criticisms 15 Alien abductions 16 One sentence in Intro 17 Sources 18 Self-Confessed Satanist? 19 Oh my god

The question of secret tunnels or dungeons

Not all SRA accounts mention tunnels or secret rooms, however a significant number do. While these stories are now generally dismissed as the product of over-active childhood imaginations, it should be noted that some evidence of tunnels has appeared in certain documented SRA cases.

The above section has no sources, contains numerous weasel words, and does not document either the 'significant number' of accounts containing tunnels, nor that 'some evidence...has appeared'. Provide citations for both, and that this is significant to SRA, and the section could stay in; otherwise, it looks like a bit of WP:OR that tunnels are somehow significant. Pointing to random bits of evidence or items linked to some cases of SRA and saying that they are somehow significant is not how a featured article is made. Before re-adding the section, use the section on the talk page to try to get it to a point that it is acceptable to most contributors. WLU 13:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

well my source is other wikipedia pages lol. go read some of the pages on the different accusations; secret rooms or tunnels do keep coming up (even though the cases were later disproven). I guess I think its notable, especially when looked at after the alien section. The documented accounts are mentioned above by biaothanatoi... yes I can come up with many citations but is that going to change your mind? With SRA I think it is clear you have to consider the "hypothetical" nature of so much of the rhetoric on both sides of the issue. In that regard I don't think a secret room reference is out of order, again consider some of the far longer sections left in. PS- I think room is proably a better catch-all than tunnel the more I think about it66.220.110.83 01:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This is not a case of 'my citations vs yours'. Tunnels and 'secret rooms' are not a defining feature of disclosures of SRA. Given that tunnels are tangential to the issue under discussion, what would a section on tunnels add to the article? From your explanation above, it seems that you believe it adds value to the article by emphasising an unlikely or impossible feature of some disclosures of SRA, thus adding weight to the argument that SRA is a fabrication.

Although they did feature in some high-profile allegations, there is no research which suggests that tunnels are a frequent feature of disclosures of SRA. There are also cases in which tunnels and secret rooms where alleged, and later found. For instance, Marc Dutroux was a high-profile sex offender and murderer in Belgium who was trafficking kidnapped girls and children into an international child abuse ring which also, according to survivors, practiced Satanic rituals. He held the children in secret undergorund rooms beneath his seven houses whilst trafficking them into slavery.

Given that tunnels aren't a defining feature of SRA, and that there is no research to suggest they are a common feature of SRA, it seems to me that a section on tunnels would add very little to the article. If that section were to claim, as you apparently advocate, that allegations of tunnels are significant because they have never been found to exist, then you would be misleading the reader, because such a claim is factually incorrect. --Biaothanatoi 13:31, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry I'm not being clearer. My point is that why would tunnels show up in stories AND verified cases, if there wasn't some truth to it? I think the tunnel/secret room issue is important, I haven't reade much of the research, but I have read the entireity of almost every wikipedia page on the subject and secret rooms do keep showing up, either in the verified cases mentioned above or in simple accusations. Even if it is a psychological explanation, the events forcing a need for safety and privacy in child so the concotion of the secret room stories, or something else. I think there is a hundred different ways to cut the issue but none of them are simple "totally made up" scenarios. So anyways I think its notable as proof of the existence of SRA or at least the need for further investigation.66.220.110.83 00:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Removed as WP:OR I believe. WLU 20:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The McMartin section

The section on the McMartin preschool appears to have been drawn from a book written by Paul and Shirley Eberle, who came to the attention of the police in the 1970s for the manufacture and distribution of child pornography (see Laurina, M. (1988). "Paul and Shirley Eberle: A Strange Pair of Experts." Ms. Magazine).

The Eberles are notable for their belief that some forms of sex with children are 'benign', and their conspiracy theory that a vast network of corrupt social workers, psychotherapists and police officers are trying to convict innocent parents of sexual abuse. The Eberles have no credibility in the field of child abuse and child protection, although they were able to propagate their work through groups such as Victims of Child Abuse Laws and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Any reference to their book should be removed from this article and any information drawn from their book should be considered extremely suspect. The McMartin section needs to be substantially rewritten.

Biaothanatoi 11:49, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I have substantially rewritten the McMartin section and included multiple references, including material from press clippings at the time. The previous text was false and misleading, particularly in it's characterisation of the mental health of the mother of one of the complainant children, who later committed suicide. The reliance of the previous text on the ritualistic elements of the children's disclosures was also questionable, since those disclosures did not result in charges against the defendants and were therefore not facts in issue during the case.

Please feel free to review the changes and make others where necessary. It would be good to see Wikipedia providing some factual and objective commentary on this case. The previous reference to the published work of child pornographers was beyond the pale. Biaothanatoi 12:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), if you want to make changes to a section, please

discuss your reasons on this page. You removed factual information from a peer-reviewed journal article written by a

consultant psychologist on the McMartin case, and replaced it with second-hand and selective information taken from an

obituary written fifteen years after the events took place. Obituaries aren't exactly objective sources of information.

The psychologist who wrote that particular article met with and assessed the mental health of Judy Johnson in 1984 and wrote the following:

"If post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments are to be honored, and if an author is to be equally empathic with all the

players, one might consider that McMartin whistle blower Judy Johnson's psychotic break and alcoholic toxicity were

precipitated by, rather than precipitants of, her desperate concern that she and her not-quite three-yr-old son were victims

of unfathomable treachery. Having met Ms. Johnson in February, 1984, I am convinced of the first option. Judy Johnson was

quite sane and emotionally contained even as she described the improbable complaints of her child."

Johnson did eventually suffer a psychotic break, which, in the opinion of Prof. Roland Summit, was caused by the stress of

the case. Your changes infer that Johnson was mentally ill prior to the events of the McMartin case, and infer that her

complaint to the police was motivated by her mental illness. In fact, as the information which you deleted states, a number

of McMartin children were already in treatment for suspected sexual abuse. Your changes have no basis in fact and I have

altered them accordingly.

It is also worth noting that, during the case, several hundred former McMartin students contacted the prosecution stating that they had been sexually abused at the school, a fact openly acknowledged by the "Friends of McMartin" support group that formed around the defendants at the time. Biaothanatoi 15:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I see it's been removed from the article, but it is worth noting that Johnson had a "psychotic break" before all of

this occured. Whether she was "cured" is a separate question. And all of the parents of "McMartin students (who)

contacted the prosecution" had been contacted by the police. I don't have sources with me, but I was living in the Los

Angeles area at the time, and the information was in the newspapers, if anyone cared to read it. — [[User:Arthur

Rubin|Arthur Rubin]] | (talk) 21:45, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Improper copying of citations from Diana Napolis

Diana Napolis responds on May 28, 2008

This arose from my review mentioned above. User:Biaothanatoi has [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Satanic_ritual_abuse&diff=159924353&oldid=159915598 added a summary] of an SRA case in Orlando, Florida. He referenced

three newspaper articles in the Orlando Sentinel Tribune. His citation was, to the letter, identical to the citation in

a "Satanism and Ritual Abuse Archive" which has been

floating around less reputable websites.

My background is as a child abuse investigator, researcher, licensed therapist, and independant contractor for Family Court in San Diego County. After a cover-up of ritual abuse occurred in my local community, I created an archive of satanic cases to serve as objective proof that this type of crime existed. In 1998 I posted the results of my research in an archive titled Satanism and Ritual Abuse Archive. In the year 1999-2000 I was stalked in my local community by a satanist who was trying to identify me for the cult group she worked for. After I was identified I was targeted with nonlethal technology called “Voice to Skull Devices” http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/vts.html and "Voice Synthesis Devices" http://call.army.mil/thesaurus/toc.asp?id=32228&section=v . A recent wired.com news article describes how these weapons can be used to simulate mental illness and can be found at http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/report-nonletha.html.

On March 25, 2008 I filed a Federal lawsuit against Michael Aquino, Michelle Devereaux, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Carol Hopkins, Mark Sauer, David Copley, and San Diego State University for Defamation, Infliction of emotional distress, conspiracy, violation of my first amendment right to free speech, invasion of privacy, and lastly, in the body of my lawsuit I have alleged that I was intentionally targeted with nonlethals in retaliation for my research. On May 1, 2008 I amended my complaint. A link to this lawsuit can be found at my web site.

I have recently returned to my work and research. I have updated my Satanism and Ritual Abuse archive and it can be found at http://members.cox.net/dnap/srarchive.pdf. Approximately 99% of these cases in this archive can be objectively confirmed and it contains very valuable information.

I am also in the process of reviewing several major reports in the United States which purported to debunk the notion that satanic ritual abuse occurs. I have critiqued the research study "Characteristics and Sources of Allegations of Ritualistic Child Abuse," which contained so many irregularities that I requested an academic review at the University of California school system.

I discovered that there had been an article published on Wikipedia about satanic ritual abuse which tried to make it appear that I had been "mentally ill" while on the internet. That was the agenda of my opponents, strangely enough, to try to deflect from the damning information I had revealed. Although this bogus allegation was removed from Wikipedia, I found a copy of this article on seven different web sites. I am putting others on notice. Any allegations made about me should have the evidence to support it, otherwise, I will be taking multiple parties to court. Other details about my case can be found at my website http://diananapolis.wordpress.com

Diana Napolis, May 28, 2008

_________________end

I doubt that Biaothanatoi actually read these newspaper articles; I suspect he simply rewrote the summary and passed it off as proper research. The "archive" was originally compiled by "Diana Napolis aka Karen Jones © 2000". Diana Napolis is currently on probation for stalking and threatening Jennifer Love Hewitt, who she believed was the lynchpin of a satanic-ritual conspiracy involving "psychotronic weapons".

Biaothanatoi then substantially expanded the case of the West Memphis 3; his information purported to prove that the case was not false, but rather involved Satanic Ritual killers escaping the net with media co-operation. His citation was again letter-for-letter identical to Ms. Napolis's.

Strangely, Biaothanatoi earlier commented on this individual, opining that the reference to her mental illness should be removed since she is not a significant figure in ritual abuse literature or research. Apparantly, her conclusions are still perfectly OK. <eleland/talkedits> 15:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, the actual factual accuracy of Diana Napolis' website has never been questioned or debated. The fact that the above writer doubts that "Biaothanatoi actually read these newspaper articles," is simply an unproven assumption. Abuse truth 02:34, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Eleland, if you can prove that any of the information provided in this article relating to any of these cases is false, then please do so. As I made clear when I made the initial changes, the information on all these cases is drawn from Lexis Nexis and newspaper articles, which are accessible via Factiva or any other newspaper archive. You are free to engage in your own fact checking.

However, if all the information is verifiable via Lexis Nexis and the newspaper articles cited, then you do not have grounds to quesiton that information. I am not taking Napolis' word for anything. Everything she has collated is supported by independant and reliable sources.

I would also point out to you that you have previously defended the reputations of a professed pro-paedophile advocate and two people who were found to be child pornographers in a court of law. It is odd to me that you considered their opinions on child sexual assault to be valuable additions to the article, despite their public pro-incest stance, whilst Napolis' verifiable research is somehow unreliable because of her history of mental illness.

If you want to challenge info in this article, then please find a firm basis from which to do so (beyond ad hominem) - and perhaps you could make it consistent with your standards for other authors, which is apparently very low. At the moment, it seems that you are applying a very strange double standard indeed. --Biaothanatoi 03:21, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

• Who are the child pornographers? I am assuming the alleged pro-ped person is Eberle. But he isn't used as a source here. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 03:30, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The Eberles have been referenced here for years, and their credibility has been repeatedly defended by yourself and Eleland, despite two sources with statements from both the LAPD and a trial judge that they are child pornographers. --Biaothanatoi 01:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

it is unacceptable to copy summaries of court cases from pages like hiddenmysteries.org. It appears obvious that Biaothanatoi is attempting to inflate credibility of SRA cases, and isn't picky about her methods. I find the discussion of individual cases questionable in any case, and such as we so discuss need to be directly referenced to the court verdict mentioning "rituals" or "satanism", to make sure we do not fall victim to stale media hype. dab (𒁳) 16:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

ok, regardless of the murky origins of these case studies, this is an encyclopedia article, not a newspaper archive. We need to present the pattern of such "satanic" cases in the early 1990s, not report the headlines of each one. The notable ones, like West Memphis 3, can get their own articles, the rest can just be listed. dab (𒁳) 16:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

For years, this article has contained lists of "SRA cases" with reams of factually incorrect information and quotes from dubious sources - some with a history of child sexual offences, like the Eberles. The relevance of those individual cases, and the credibility of those sources, was not questioned for as long as they were skewed to the POV that the allegations had no basis in fact.

Now the relevance of including any individual cases is questioned - and the credibility of newspaper articles and Lexis Nexis - because other cases have been listed in which ritualistic and organised child sexual offences were substantiated.

I challenge editors here to demonstrate where the information that has been provided on these cases is incorrect. Check the sources cited and get back to this page. If the information is incorrect, then please correct it. If it is not, leave it alone.

As it stands, the information is factual and verifiable, and you have no basis for removing it - aside from a very clear preference amongst some editors to withhold information from the reader regarding substantiated cases of organised and ritualistic abuse. --Biaothanatoi 01:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Biothanatoi, your constant drumbeat of accusations related to Underwager and the Eberles is uncouth and uncalled-for. You're trying to discount all of our arguments based on tenuous and obscure connections that have nothing to do with anything. Even if the accusations against those sources were as damning as you make them out to be (and they're not, by a long shot), it doesn't have anything to do with the discussion. It's pure Chewbacca defense.

You're also digging yourself a hole, here. I thought you just copied the citations; now I actually noticed that you stole whole chunks of text in violation of copyright (and common sense). The Orlando piece is just a slight rewrite of Napolis. "The parents of three of the victims moved residences and the prosecutor expressed concern because the children had been threatened by the cult not to testify" becomes "The parents of the complainant children later moved residences and the prosecutor at trial expressed concern because the children had been threatened by the Satanic cult not to testify," etc. Your "Fran's Day Care" case is almost entirely the Napolis piece (with more lurid or unbelievable details removed). Your "Arizona" is also a rewrite; for example, your sentences "Five other relatives..." is just Napolis' with an extra clause tacked on the end.

Better watch yourself. I'm removing all your copyviol sections, then I'll go and report this in the appropriate place. I'd advise you to be contrite and acknowledge your error, otherwise you might get banned from here. <eleland/talkedits> 18:28, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

When assessing sources on a discussion on child sexual abuse, it is relevant to consider whether that source has a history of child sexual offences (like the Eberles) or is a pro-paedophile advocate (like Underwager). Underwager has been person non gratis in the field of child abuse since his public fabrications and outright lies were exposed by Dr Anna Salter in 1991, and he sued for libel, only to lose, with the court upholding Salter's criticisms of Underwager that he had fabricated his research findings.

You have yet to demonstrate that any of the information provided in this new section is incorrect, but I am touched by your concern about Napolis' copyright. You are welcome to bring up those concerns here, but instead you have presumed bad faith and run off to Wiki admin. I am unsure how to proceed in improving this article since you have proven yourself to be profoundly hostile to me, and to anyone who disagrees with you on this matter. --Biaothanatoi 01:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is the kicker. When assesing sources. Not when discussing the selection of quotations from other sources, for example. And can you provide sources for your assertion that "the court upheld Salter's criticisms of Underwager"? My impression was that the judgement was on the basis that Underwager could not demonstrate the Salter's "knowledge that the statement was false, or doubts about its truth coupled with reckless disregard of whether it was false".

Moving along, respecting copyright is a policy on Wikipedia. You may not like it, and you can make all the insinuations about my motives that you want, but it's still policy. And even Napolis' work was not copyrighted, it is grossly inappropriate to present the ramblings of a paranoid-delusional ex-convict as proper research, especially when citing newspaper articles rather than the actual source. <eleland/talkedits> 04:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Eleland, I suggest you do some research of your own for once. I've sourced all my statements on Underwager and others in the past only to find thouse sources disputed by you on the most spurious grounds. You like Google - surely you can find more information on Anna Salter there, given her standing as a researcher on child abuse.

Napolis' research was not copyrighted and, in fact, was meticulously sourced and verifiable. You haven't bothered to check those sources, and you have yet to demonstrate that a single statement was factually incorrect. Given your hostility to me since you entered this discusison, it is not unreasonable for me to suggest that your sudden concern about Napolis' (non-existence) copyright was motivated by something other then etiquette. In short, it seems to me that you expunged verifiable and factual information simply because it did not accord with your POV.

If you felt that a breach of Wikipedia policy had occurred, then all you had to do was bring it up here and we could resolve it as adults. Instead, you presumed bad faith and deleted the entire section, and then ran off to try and get me banned. You've previously gone to other boards and claimed that I am a fringe activist and a conspiracy theorist, when I am neither. You acccuse me of 'original synthesis' without every checking my citations, you dismiss books that you admit you've never read, and insult researchers that you admit you know nothing about.

If anybody is acting in bad faith, it's you. You seem to want to take a discussion and turn it into a conflict. Let's both just chill out, drop the point-scoring, and actually try to improve the article? --Biaothanatoi 04:56, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

All original work is copyrighted unless the copyright is explicitly disclaimed; furthermore, many of the sites which mirror the Napolis stuff specifically attribute the copyright to her. See [1] [2] [3] etc. How do you know it isn't copyrighted? <eleland/talkedits> 05:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Great, Eleland. Thankyou for making this point clear. Perhaps it would have been more constructive for you to have made this point earlier and sought some kind of resolution that we could both agree on. Instead, you've run off to other boards and falsely claimed that I called you a 'pedo'. What a joke. --Biaothanatoi 05:57, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

If you're writing a Master's thesis, I would assume you have a basic grasp of copyright as it pertains to research, and that you are capable of reading your own sources and noticing the copyright tags. As for the "pedo" post you mention from WP:FTN, the full quote was, "According to Biaothanatoi, this makes anyone remotely associated with [Ralph Underwager], anyone who uses the same terminology as him, or anyone who takes their coffee the same way as him a pedo. Including you and me." I note with disappointment that you read and quote Wikipedians as tendentiously as you do source material. <eleland/talkedits> 06:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Precisely, Eleland. Another example in which you claim that I hold beliefs that I do not. You are clearly incapable of engaging in this discussion in good faith - instead you have systematically attempted to prove I am the 'type' of person that you believe me to be. You won't engage with the actual material that I have cited, because you can't be bothered to read the sources. Instead, you base your objections on ad hominem attacks on me, or you create specious tests in order to dismiss sources of information that contradicts your POV.

You have yet to prove that the information that I have added is incorrect, whilst there were numerous factual inaccuracies in your own writings on this subject matter. --Biaothanatoi 06:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

It appears that two standards are being applied to data. There is no evidence showing that any of Biaothanatoi's are factually inaccurate. I believe all of their edits should stay. It is unfortunate that Eleland above needs to resort to threats to promote his own point of view. If this page is going to have any sort of balance, then both sides of the argument need to be treated with the same standards for data and without threats. Abuse truth 01:42, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

the burden lies on Biaothanatoi to show that his material is correct. We do not include material in Wikipedia "until proven incorrect", this would lead to madness. It has been shown that Biaothanatoi has lifted his material off a cranky website, which is (a) copyright violation, and (b) casts severe doubt on both the credibility of the material and the credibility of Biaothanatoi himself. Who are these Eberles and how are they at all relevant? How can a finding that there is no satanic conspiracy be construed to endorse pedophilia?? At all? Unlike this satanist nonsense, pedophilia is a sad reality, and has its own article, at pedophilia. dab (𒁳) 09:16, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I see, Eberle's book discusses the McMartin preschool trial. Now seeing that we have a full article on Day care sex abuse hysteria, I fail to see why these case studies need to be repeated here. I also fail to see how pointing out that no sexual abuse has taken place in a given case is in any way apologetic of actual sexual abuse? Nobody endorses sexual abuse. There was a moral panic surrounding "satanic ritual abuse" in the 1980s to 1990s USA. What is unclear about this state of affairs? dab (𒁳) 09:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Biaothanatoi has proven that his data is accurate. His data is being held up to a much higher standard than that of the data on the side of those that don't believe SRA exists. The connection between pedophilia and SRA is that publishers of pedophilia have also published "data" on SRA. see Paul and Shirley Eberle: A Strange Pair of Experts by Maria Laurina Reprinted in the ICONoclast, WINTER 1988 / VOL. 1, NO. 2 with permission from Ms. Magazine (December 1988) [4]

also see "Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children" LLOYD DEMAUSE The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (4) 1994 - a peer reviewed journal at [5] "In addition, some of authors of false memory books also turned out to be pedophile advocates. For example, one of the most widely cited books claiming that cult abuse reports were mass hysteria is Paul and Shirley Eberle's The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool trial.(6) Taken quite seriously by reviewers and widely quoted In later maga-zine articles as authoritative, the book makes such claims as that the over 100 McMartin children who reported they had been abused by a cult were all "brainwashed" and the mothers were all "hysterical" and that it was meaningless that physicians found three-quarters of the children bore physical evidence that corroborated their stories. What reviewers didn't mention was that the Eberles had been called "the most prolific publishers of child pornography in the United States" by Sgt. Toby Tyler, a San Bernadino deputy sheriff who is a nationally recognized expert on child pornography.(7) Their kiddie porn material that I have seen and the articles they have published such as "I Was a Sexpot at Five" and "Little Lolitas" Included illustrations of children involved in sodomy and oral copulation and featured pornographic photos of the Eberles. Abuse truth 00:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Excuse the offtopic comment, but the phrase "a peer reviewed journal at http://www.geocities.com..." is one of the funniest things I've heard in a while. Anyway, DeMause's playground is not a peer reviewed journal, and it's amusing that you claim it is, given the fulminations from others every time an "Issues in Child Abuse Accusations" (Underwager's playground) article is mentioned here. DeMause, who has few relevant qualifications, invented a field called "psychohistory" which is unrecognized and practiced only by him and his associated disciples. He believes that all of human history can be explained in terms of child sexual abuse, and that at least 60% of girls and 45% of boys are sexually abused, many before the age of 5. He is, to be blunt, a kook, and should not be cited as anything but a minority view. <eleland/talkedits> 17:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

DeMause's Journal of Psychohistory was peer-reviewed, Eleland. The fact that he has permitted some material to be hosted for free online doesn't change that. And psychohistory isn't a 'field', it's simply a form of historical analysis which emphasises psychological or psychodynamic principles. Psychohistorical analysis and research has been supported by some of the most eminent scholars of the 20th century, such as Robert Jay Lifton. DeMause is also credited with compiling one of the most comprehensive historical accounts of child abuse to hand.

Yet again, you launch spurious attacks on sources who provide information that conflicts with your POV. --Biaothanatoi 01:27, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Prevalence: none?

This article is obviously torn by edit wars. What strikes me by scanning it is

• (a) "Satanic Ritual Abuse is often used interchangeably with sadistic ritual abuse" -- really? By whom? This is rather significant for further discussion of "prevalence": the existence of "sadistic abuse" is hardly disputed. This article needs to make up its mind whether it is about alleged satanic abuse, or just about sexual abuse in general.
• (b) prevalence: the existence is doubted in some quarters (spinning). "what quarters" one immediately asks oneself. The paragraph then descends into a blurred discussion of allegations and opinions, and only in conclusion casually mentions that there isn't a single substantiated case. I mean, hello? It is clear that there are people who have fantasies about ritualistic abuse, but the fact that such stories are never substantiated as factual makes the whole topic appear in a rather different light, doesn't it? Wouldn't this deserve to be mentioned up front, in the intro? The article is still relevant as discussing a psychological condition and/or a conspiracy theory, but it needs to put its cards on the table.

it is clear that the notability of "SRA" is that of a "hysterical epidemic", and not the isolated case of some batshit crazy grandparents in the "South". --dab (𒁳) 11:02, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

There are numerous credible books and peer reviewed articles proving the existence of SRA. There are also many court cases with convictions for SRA. For the article to be accurate, these need to be presented. Abuse truth 01:46, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

People are in jail for a crime - the organised abuse of children with ritualistic and satanic features - that editors on this page want to claim does not exist. I've provided information on confessions of perpetrators, convictions, and substantiations of the more lurid allegations such as animal sacrifice. There are many more cases that I can list, and I'm more then happy to do so.

There is a false consensus among some editors on this page that no allegations of organised and ritualistic abuse have ever been found to have a basis in fact. This is incorrect and it has been repeatedly demonstrated to be so.

However, any editor acting in good faith who tries to provide some objective balance to this article is confronted by other editors who then subject the change to a set of specious tests as to the veracity of sources, or the entire section is simply deleted. Those same editors have been quite satisfied with the article in the past, despite it's outright factual inaccuracies, citations to anonymous sources such as "Wiccan investigators", and citations to people like the Eberles with a history of child sexual offences.

This is an extremely controversial topic and it would be best if cool heads prevailed. Instead, it seems that we are confronting editors who insist on attributing the most pejorative possible motivations to other editors who disagree with them.

I repeat: None of my changes have been demonstrated to be factually incorrect. I have not lied or provided false information. Instead, the information I have provided is consistently dismissed on the most ridiculous grounds e.g. the author can't be trusted because they have no Wikipedia entry, the article isn't verifiable because it was published in a peer-reviewed journal that can't be accessed online, the source is unverifiable because it was a report published outside North America, and so on. These tests were not applied to the Eberles, the anonymous "Wiccan investigators", or the many dubious sources that dominated this article for years.

• I questioned the timeline put forth in an Australian seminar, that could not be examined. It was questionable because it created an alternate timeline that contradicted the one used by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The claim was made, by yes, someone without an article in Wikipedia. Extraordinary claims need to be made by reliable people who are recognized in their field, and even then they aren't given undue weight in articles. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both have articles. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 04:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't present a 'timeline', I simply added information from a report published by an Australian state government. You have no basis to object to this source - it is a reliable source by any definition of the word - and nor did it contradict the timeline that you have accessed from the print media. It simply added new information to that timeline that was both verifiable and factual, and provided by a reliable person (Prof. Roland Summitt) who is one of the most recognised people in his field.

I repeat: Your objections are specious and your repeated removal of the information is not justified by Wikipedia policy. You are acting to withhold relevant, factual and verifiable information from the reader because it does not accord with your personal POV. --Biaothanatoi 05:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Some editors here are not acting in good faith, and they are attempting to bully, intimidate, and harrass those who are. --Biaothanatoi 02:03, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Why do you keep bringing up the Eberles? They're not cited in the article except when your WP:BLP violations are re-inserted. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 02:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Because the Eberles (referenced here for years) clearly demonstrate the double standard that is being applied by Wikipedia editors to the SRA page e.g. very low standards for sources who believe that SRA has no basis in fact vs arbitrarily high standards for those sources who believe otherwise.

This discussion is quite long, and it's often been quite circular, so if you are curious as to why the Eberles are relevant to this discussion, then I suggest you read the debate from the beginning. --Biaothanatoi 02:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Biaothanatoi, you are trying to push an agenda. There are a couple of convictions of occultists involved in sexual abuse. Nobody is trying to censor that fact. The significance of these cases (how many are there, a half dozen?) pales in comparison to the attention received by the moral panic surrounding "satanic ritual abuse". This article discusses the moral panic in the 1980s-1990s USA (and its spilling over to the UK and other countries, such as it was). We can also mention that a number of occultists did in fact perpetrate sexual abuse, which obviously served to add to the hysteria. If the Eberles are unreliable as a source, we'll just not cite them then. I don't know why you keep harping on them long after mention of them has been removed from the article. If you want to discuss Paul Eberle (within WP:BLP), you are welcome to do that at Paul Eberle. Btw, I fail to see how the credibility of a book is compromised by the fact that its authors published hardcore pornography 20 years earlier. I agree that it casts a shadow of doubt on the Eberle's credibility, but I am in no position of judging the reliability of their account of the McMartin case. We'll have to rely on independent reviews for that question. This is a question best addressed at Talk:McMartin_preschool_trial#Eberles, not here. dab (𒁳) 09:38, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

There are dozens and dozens of cases of ritualistic and organised child sexual abuse, and I'm more then happy to provide the details here. Sit tight. --Biaothanatoi 23:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

it turns out that the allegations against the Eberles are just a smear campaign without merit. dab (𒁳) 10:49, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

For pete's sake. You've provided us with an article written by one of the Eberles assistants, published by the Institute of Psychological Therapies, which set up and run by Dr Ralph Underwager, who (like the Eberles) believed that incest is not harmful. Not exactly the most objective source of commentary, but it seems that standards here are pretty low as long as the source supports the POV of a few editors here. I think I'll listen to the LAPD vice squad and the trial judge, who found that the Eberles were child pornographers on the basis of a copy of one of their kidde porn magazines.

Round and round in circles we go. --Biaothanatoi 23:03, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

In addition to the data on the Eberle's in the previous section, see: The Eberle’s, proponents of the theory that the children at the McMartin School were not ritually abused, were publishers of sexually explicit periodicals, including “Finger,” a Los Angeles tabloid containing pornographic photographs, drawings and stories about children. "Cult and Ritual Abuse - It’s History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America" - Noblitt and Perskin (Prager, 2000) also a chapter called “Empirical Evidence of Ritual Abuse” contains a variety of research studies and data showing that ritual abuse exists.

Also at [6] Entire families have been implicated in the ritual abuse of children which proves the fact that generational Satanism exists. See Parker (1995) Figured/Hill (1994) and Gallup (1991) Perpetrators have been found to be professionals who work in law enforcement, the military or daycare, and Christian fronts have been used in some instances as a means of hiding the satanic motivation of the perpetrators. See Cannaday (1994) Wright (1992) Gallup (1991) and Orr (1984). In several cases the perpetrators have confessed to the satanic element of the crime or participation in prior satanic offenses. - See Helms (2006) Cala (2003) Smith (2003) Delaney (2002) Morris (2001) South (2000) Page (2000) T. Kokoraleis (1999) Bonacci (1999) Brooks (1996) Hughes (1996) Penick (1995) Alvarado (1995) Ingram (1992) Rogers (1992) and Fryman (1988) The FMSF and those affiliated with this organization have been using the Appellate courts to overturn cases convictions involving ritual abuse themes.Abuse truth 01:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I suppose it is the hallmark of the conspiracy theorist that when his claims are debunked, he will only conclude the conspiracy goes deeper than he thought... "generational Satanism", now I've really heard it all. The Eberles are apparently spaced out hippie lefties. You are certainly excused if that worldview isn't your cup of tea, but going around smearing them as child abuse apologists is libel, pure and simple. --dab (𒁳) 07:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no conspiracy theory, only data (see the above) and the reality that ritual abuse exists. The Eberle's were pornographers, not "spaced out hippie lefties."Abuse truth 23:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

they were pornographers and hippies (where is the contradiction?), in the 1970s. In the 1990s, they wrote a non-fiction book on the McMartin case. Neither "hippie" nor "pornographer" equates to "child abuse apologist".

In most forums, this would go without saying, but apparently on Wikipeida it is necessary to point out that a person who manufactures and distributes child pornography ... probably thinks that having sex with children is OK. Obvious to most, but apparently not here.

And since we ALSO know that the Eberles make a distinction between "sadistic paedophilia" (that means bad) and "benign paedophilia" (that means good) then we can ALSO surmise that the Eberles think that some forms of sex with children is "benign" (read: good). I'm taking you through step by step here.

And that means ... that, yes, they are child abuse apologists ... and that, yes, this article has been based in part or in whole on their writings for years ... and that, yes, some editors here have read the Eberles (after all, they were cited and the article mirrors their position) and apparently agree with them ... and that, yes, the Eberles continue to be defended by editors here (like yourself) although their history of child sexual offences has been amply substantiated.

Which goes on to raise serious questions about the role that Wikipedia has to play in debates on child abuse, since a complex and sensitive issue like SRA has been so skewed, for so long, by such perturbing sources and biased editors. --Biaothanatoi 02:18, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

re "only data". Nobody denies occultism exists. Nobody denies sexual abuse exists. You would expect co-incidence of both phenomena as a matter of statistics. The notable thing about this is the hysteria it caused. Let us reasonably assume 0.05% of US Americans are into some sort of occultism (this is a very conservative estimate, see Religion in the United States). About 90,000 child abuse cases are reported each year (as of 2000; back in 1992, the number peaked at 150,000. unsurprisingly, numbers fell as hysteria subsided). From this, you would expect about 50 cases of child abuse perpetrated by occultists reported each year (or 75 as of 1992), even if there is no connection whatsoever between occultism and abuse (or accusation thereof). If less than 40 cases per year are reported, this would actually indicate a negative correlation between occultism and child abuse). 88% of US Americans are Christians. From this, we would expect 80,000 cases of child abuse by Christians. Unless significantly more than 88% of Christian child abusers are reported, there is statistically no justification to speak of a phenomenon of "Christian child abuse". dab (𒁳) 10:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Many editors here miss the point that pro-incest advocates like the Eberles and Underwager defined SRA as a "conspiracy theory" about cabals of paedophile Satanists in the first place. They used this definition to contest the gains of the child protection movement and to try and cast professionals working with abused kids as crazy, overly zealous, unprofessional, etc. The majority of professionals and researchers in the field of abuse and trauma never subscribed to this definition, and this is evident in the literature from the late 1980s onwards.

The problem with this page is that many editors here are unreflective about the impact of Underwager and other pro-incest advocates in crafting the debate on SRA from the late 1980s. Eleland, Dab and others think that their position on SRA represents a kind of universal 'recieved wisdom' and, therefor, the only people who would disagree with them must be from the 'fringe' etc. Actually, what I read here is often a carbon-copy of the arguments advanced by Underwager and the like since the mid-1980s - an narrow and extremist definition of SRA which is blamed on 'fundamentalists', 'feminists' and 'moral panic'.

Research demonstrates that women and children are still presenting in small but significant numbers to healthcare providers with psychological and physical injuries inflicted on them by organised groups of perpetrators, and I've quoted some of that research here. There is more. Some of these women and children also dislcose severe ritual violence, sometimes with Satanic features. What this means is unclear, but certainly some of these claims have been substantiated upon investigation. It'd be nice if editors here could bring themselves to permit this information to be bought to the reader. --Biaothanatoi 01:20, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

One could also infer from the data that perhaps the numbers of reported cases fell from 1992 to 2000 due to the backlash, which discouraged people from reporting episodes of child abuse, due to the fact they were afraid they may not be believed.Abuse truth 22:51, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

one could infer many things, it is true, but my main point was about correlation of occultism and sexual abuse. No evidence has been shown that convictions of occultists for sexual abuse has a higher incidence than expected from their demographics. If there is such a statistic (i.e., "over 0.1% of cases of sexual abuse convictions concern occultists", this would provide significant support of your opinion and you should cite it). Just citing individual cases shows nothing: for every satanist convicted, you can easily point to hundreds of "Christian" offenders. --dab (𒁳) 12:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The fact that abuse has ritualistic or occult features does not mean that the perpetrators are card-carrying members of the Church of Satan. If you take a look at the Marc Dutroux scandal in Belgium, the adult survivors of the child sex ring stated that, when 'new' children were bought into the ring, they were subjected to a fake 'marriage' to 'Satan' in order to make the child submissive and obedient whilst being used in porn and prostitution. SRA may just be a technique used by organied groups of perpetrators to control children. Certainly, trafficked children from Ghana and Nigeria are reporting ritual abuse in their home countries and in Europe whilst they are being moved from brothel to brothel - the International Organisation of Migration noted this in 2001, as has ECPAT, the United Nations and a number of other international organisations.

As I said above, it's worth considering this debate as a whole rather then insisting on a narrow 'moral panic' interpretation. There is a lot of relevant and interesting information that could be added to this article to the benefit of the reader, if only editors holding the 'moral panic' POV could believe that those who disagree with them are acting in good faith. --Biaothanatoi 01:20, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

The article currently reads as if it is suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder. Llajwa 03:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

unsourced changes to United States

I will be reverting this section back to its previous version.

the changes below were made without being sourced:

Further information: Day care sex abuse hysteria Cases of child molestation involving allegations of satanic rituals in the United States cluster in the early mid 1990s, growing out of 1980s cases of day care sex abuse hysteria without explicit connections to satanism.

Early cases were the Kern County child abuse cases of 1982-1984 (with the convictions overturned in 1996), and the McMartin preschool nursery case, initiated in 1983, with the trial lasting from 1987 to 1990 (when charges were dropped).Abuse truth 00:03, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

since you seem to be in agreement with "cluster in the 1980s and early 1990s", what part of "Early cases were the Kern County child abuse cases of 1982-1984 (with the convictions overturned in 1996), and the McMartin preschool nursery case, initiated in 1983, with the trial lasting from 1987 to 1990 (when charges were dropped)" is controversial? The links are, after all, to fully developed articles. --dab (𒁳) 17:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

There was no source provided or footnote to the information. In addition, the link to "Day care sex abuse hysteria" is already provided further down in the article under "see also."Abuse truth 01:24, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of changes to this section, it is interesting that the information on the Minnesota case has been quietly deleted. The case overview was amply footnoted and I can't see a basis for it's deletion whatsoever. I'll replace it later today. --Biaothanatoi 01:38, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

The statements about the Kern County case are false - one of those convicted served a full sentence and was only released a few years ago. Sheesh. If skeptical editors want to contribute to the article, can you please try to avoid outright fabrications or misleading generalisations? --Biaothanatoi 05:07, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

......Y'all missed one of the more amusing US Cases, documented here http://members.aol.com/IngramOrg/ But really I think most of this talk is absurd~JS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.98.115.3 (talk) 01:21, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, "hysterical". Ingram's wife, daughters and son all accused him of sexual assault, Ingram confessed and went to jail, and his son showed up at his parole application in 1997 to reinforce that his father was a very dangerous man. But if Richard Ofshe says that he's innocent (even if Ofshe's argument was thrown of court) then it must be true! --Biaothanatoi 01:25, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

POV pushing in the Netherlands section

This section is a POV fork from the main article. From the outset, the author refers to MPD as a political movement rather then a recognized psychological disorder, and they claim that the (very few) allegations of SRA in the Netherlands were the product of a few workshops whose ideas “found their way” to the “conservative religious community”. The author goes on to infer that the Oude Pekala case can be attributed to the conservative religious media.

This argument is highly speculative and at times contrary to known facts. Meanwhile, the general thrust of the author's skeptical account of SRA is covered extensively elsewhere in the article, and does not bear repeating here.

The Oude Pekala incident has been exhaustively documented by the treating clinicians, Drs Jonker and Jonker-Bakker. They provided an overview of the case in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect in 1991, and they presented the results of a cohort study of the children who disclosed abuse in the same journal in 1997. I will be adding a summary of their work to this article, and deleting the POV editorializing. As it stands, the author is clearly pushing a specific POV that allegations of SRA in the Netherlands are unfounded. The facts of the case suggests that, at the very least, serious harm came to some children at Oude Pekala, and the article should reflect that.

It looks as though the author speaks Dutch and subsequently has access to newspaper articles that us monolinguists can't read. I've tried to keep as much info as I can from these sources. --Biaothanatoi 06:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Neutral stance toward satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands

Several days ago I wrote a new chapter in the already existing article about satanic ritual abuse. It contains the discussion about satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands. Today I found out that my chapter (which I have kept as neutral as possible, because I am very well aware that this discussion is very polarized) was almost entirely removed by someone who is not Dutch, who does not speak Dutch and who probably is not familiar at all with the discussion about satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands. Since I follow the discussion about satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands since 1994, I am very well informed about the ins and outs of this discussion. Furthermore, I am always prepared to answer your questions about the situation in the Netherlands. Criminologist1963 16:35, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't get the impression that you read my concerns on your section, posted directly above. No, I don't speak Dutch, and, yes, I am familiar with the situation in the Netherlands from the English-language writings and research of Jonker and Jonker-Bakker, as my changes make clear.

Your account was far from neutral. You referred to MPD as a political movement and posed a speculative 'epidemiological' framework for the notion of SRA - from your account, the reader is led to believe that the Netherlands was 'infected' with the idea of SRA by some American clinicians and that this idea spread like a disease to some 'religious communities' etc. That may be your POV, but it's an inherently pejorative position which treats Sachs et. al. as the diseased transmitters of a poisonous idea.

It is also demonstratably false in that it attributes the Oude Pekala incident to a 'moral panic' within the religious media, when the clinical experience and research of Jonker and Jonker-Bakker indicate that some of the children at Oude Pekala had physical and psychological signs of sexual assault, and that the incident was sparked by the disclosures of the children involved (and physical evidence of rape). Your account of Oude Pekala made no mention of this whatsoever, and so it seems to me that you are less familiar with the facts of the case then you might believe. --Biaothanatoi 00:46, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I am reverting your changes. Your speculation as to why there was concern over SRA in the Netherlands, how the idea came to the Netherlands, and how this differed from the situation in the States, is exactly that - speculation. If you have factual changes to make to this article, then feel free to do so. At the moment, you are pushing an agenda which ignores the evidence of sexual assault amongst the children at Oude Pekala and instead attributes their disclosures to 'moral panic' etc.

The 'moral panic' position has already been summarised more generally elsewhere in the article, and it does not require restatement for every country in which the argument has been advanced. --Biaothanatoi 00:52, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I would like to point about that Suzette Boon, Nel Draijer and Onno van der Hart, who are the leaders of the Dutch mpd movement, describe in their articles how they were informed for the first time about satanic ritual abuse by the leaders of the mpd movement in the United States. Boon, Suzette and Nel Draijer, Multiple Personality Disorder in the Netherlands: A Study on Reliability and Validity of the Diagnosis, Amsterdam/Lisse, Swets en Zeitlinger, 1993, p. 6; Boon, Suzette and Onno van der Hart, Dissociëren als overlevingsstrategie bij fysiek en seksueel geweld: Trauma en dissociatie 1, in: Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid, Jrg. 43, Nr. 11, 1988, p. 1197-1207.

In the literature about Oude Pekela, critics have never said that there was a moral panic. Neither did I. They all said that Oude Pekela is a classic example of mass hysteria. Beetstra, Tjalling A., Massahysterie in de Verenigde Staten en Nederland: De affaire rond de McMartin Pre-School en het ontuchtschandaal in Oude Pekela, in: Peter Burger and Willem Koetsenruijter (Eds.), Mediahypes en moderne sagen: Sterke verhalen in het nieuws, Leiden, Stichting Neerlandistiek Leiden, 2004, p. 53-69; Crombag, Hans F.M. and Harald L.G.J. Merckelbach, Hervonden herinneringen en andere misverstanden, Amsterdam/Antwerpen, Contact, 1996, p. 182-186; Hicks, Robert D., In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult, Buffalo, NY, Prometheus Books, 1991, p. 341-348; Nathan, Debbie and Michael Snedeker, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, New York, NY, Basic Books, 1995, p. 115.

I am not pushing an agenda here. Therefore I have kept the chapter about the Netherlands as neutral and objective as possible.

Since the research of Fred Jonker and Ietje Jonker-Bakker is widely criticized both in the Netherlands and in the United States, their findings are far from objective and as I see you are a firm believer, I would like to ask you to not to make subjective alterations to the chapter about the Netherlands.

I am always prepared to answer your questions about the situation in the Netherlands. Criminologist1963 10:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

You continue to call MPD a "movement" as though it is a political movement, and you continue to an inference between the fact that a few Dutch psychiatrists attended a workshop to the emergence of claims of SRA in the Netherlands. Both of these arguments are characteristic of the False Memory Syndrome movement and you have clearly been influenced by this literature.

You are free to present skeptical literature here alongside the opposing view of Jonker and Jonker-Bakker. You are not free to claim that the skeptical literature's POV is true, and that of Jonker and Jonker-Bakker is not. This is against Wikipedia's policy of NPOV and balance.

I am reverting your changes. Any additions your make to this section should be statements of fact, not an endorsement of one opinion over another. The readers can decide for themselves. --Biaothanatoi 05:02, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Again I point out that Suzette Boon, Nel Draijer and Onno van der Hart, who are the leaders of the Dutch mpd movement, describe in their articles how they were informed for the first time about satanic ritual abuse by the leaders of the mpd movement in the United States. Boon, Suzette and Nel Draijer, Multiple Personality Disorder in the Netherlands: A Study on Reliability and Validity of the Diagnosis, Amsterdam/Lisse, Swets en Zeitlinger, 1993, p. 6; Boon, Suzette and Onno van der Hart, Dissociëren als overlevingsstrategie bij fysiek en seksueel geweld: Trauma en dissociatie 1, in: Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid, Jrg. 43, Nr. 11, 1988, p. 1197-1207. Criminologist1963 10:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

And you have drawn a causal link between the fact that some psychs attended a workshop and the fact that a young boys presented with anal bleeding to a doctor and disclosed organised abuse, alongside almost 100 others.

You are not addressing any of my concerns here in good faith. You are just posting and re-posting a long, rambling, speculative piece about the situation in the Netherlands from your POV, and claiming some kind of authority because you speak Dutch.

Information on the Oude Pekala incident has been published in English and in peer-reviewed journals, and that information contains clinical accounts and research findings of serious harms being committed against some children in Oude Pekala. You are consistently blocking that information from inclusion in the article, and you aren't stating why.

I'm reverting your changes. --Biaothanatoi 05:25, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't yet have any view on the specifics of the situation but I would like to head off a full-scale revert war on this. Could Biaothanatoi and Criminologist each list the sources that they think could be used in this section, with a note on whether each is an academic journal, or other reason why they consider it reliable? Then, having established which sources will be used, it should be possible to summarise those sources and arrive at a comprehensive yet neutral section. I have no previous involvement in this page and came to it after Criminologist left a message on WikiProject Religion. Itsmejudith 07:12, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

As you know, the discussion about satanic ritual abuse is a very polarized one. In the chapter about the Netherlands, I have tried to show how the media, scientists and authorities have reacted to allegations of satanic ritual abuse. For this chapter I have used books and articles from mostly Dutch authors in Dutch literature and newspapers, as well as international publications of them. The reason that I have used these sources is obvious: since most people who look for information on the English Wikipedia don't speak Dutch, I found it a good idea to inform them about how the discussion in the Netherlands has developed. Therefore I have gone into the origin of the allegation in the Netherlands, what the media did with the allegations and how the authorities responded.

I have tried to present the facts in an objective and neutral way. Therefore I have used literature from both the mpd movement and believers and from critics and sceptics. The sources I have used are mentioned in the footnotes. If you like to have additional sources about satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands or in the United States, I am always prepared to give them to you. Since the list of scientific literature, newspapers et cetera I have used during my research is more than 40 pages long, I would appreciate it if you could specify about what particular subject in the discussion of satanic ritual abuse you would like to have more information. Criminologist1963 15:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this answer. However, what I meant exactly was to list the different sources that you have cited and whether each text is a peer-reviewed academic journal, a book for a specialist audience written by an academic in the field, a book for a wider audience, etc. From what I can see at the moment, most of the sources do seem to be of an academic nature, but that is only a first impression. They also seem to be rather out of date. Are there no books from the 21st century that mention allegations of satanic abuse? This topic must be covered, for instance, in textbooks used for training social workers, and I would think that they would give a good balanced overview that this article could draw on. Itsmejudith 21:20, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

You are right, I have mostly used academic books and articles from academic journals. The exceptions are the article from Loes de Fauwe in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool and the Aanh. Hand. II, 1992-1993, Nr. 770, which is a formal document of the Dutch parliament. It contains questions of members of parliament to the minister of Health and the answers of the minister. The questions were about an item on satanic ritual abuse by television newsmagazine Nova the day before. Tijdsein, published by the religious broadcasting company Evangelische Omroep, had already brought items on satanic ritual abuse in 1989, but it was in 1993 the first time that a secular newsmagazine covered it. The Nova broadcast lead for the first time to a discussion in religious ánd in secular media, by journalists, scientists and politicians. However this discussion lasted only three months. When the report of the Workgroup Ritual Abuse was published in April 1994 the discussion revived, but again it lasted for only a couple of months.

Apart from the mpd therapists, only few people in the Netherlands have seen satanic ritual abuse as a social problem. The majority of the scientists, the authorities and the secular part of the population (the Netherlands is a very secular country) see satanic ritual abuse as a psychological phenomenon that almost only worries the very small conservative religious part of the population.

Because the discussion about satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands lasted only for some months, we did not have a hausse of publications as in the United States and some other countries. No handbooks for social workers, therapists, policemen or any other professionals and no books of cult survivors were published in the Netherlands. Therefore it is impossible for me to use any Dutch sources that were published in the 21st century. As I wrote in the chapter about the Netherlands, the most influential Dutch book on satanic ritual abuse is Hervonden herinneringen en andere misverstanden by Hans Crombag and Harald Merckelbach (two professors in psychology), which contains a chapter on that subject. However within a couple of months a comprehensive study on satanic ritual abuse will be published. This study of Tjalling Beetstra will be the first book in the Netherlands which goes entirely about satanic ritual abuse. Since this dissertation is not published yet, I cannot use it as a source. Criminologist1963 00:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I would like to draw the attention of editors here to the conflicts of interest that often arise in literature on ritual abuse. Dutch author Benjamin Rossen wrote extensively on the Oude Pekala incident in the early 1990s, and his argument feature in a book cited by Crim (Robert D. Hicks, In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1991). Crim's arguments are a carbon-copy of Rossen's e.g. the Oude Pekala allegations are the result of community hysteria and religious fundamentalism.

Rossen is a contributer to the pro-paedophile journal Paidika (see here) and he has also contributed to publications by pro-incest advocate Ralph Underwager (see here). Rossen was closely associated with key figures of the pro-incest movement of the 1980s, and he has a clear conflict of interest in writing on matters relating to child sexual assault - however, Crim is attempting to reproduce Rossen's very dubious position here as fact.

I have drawn my information on Oude Pekala and the situation in the Netherlands from two researchers and medical practitioners who treated some of the children in the case for sexual assault, documented this clinical encounter in a peer-reviewed journal, and then conducted a follow-up survey on a cohort of 87 children over the decade following the case.

Jonker F, Jonker-Bakker P., Effects of ritual abuse: the results of three surveys in The Netherlands, Child Abuse and Neglect, 1997 Jun;21(6):541-56

Jonker, F.; Jonker-Bakker, P., Experiences with Ritualist Child Sexual Abuse: A Case Study from the Netherlands., Child Abuse and Neglect, v15 n3 p191-96 1991

You'll note that Crim is factually incorrect in stating that the first 'secular' report of SRA in the Netherlands occured in 1993. The peer-reviewed journal Child Abuse and Neglect reported the allegations in 1991. The rest of his 'explanation' is simply his understanding of the nature of SRA in the Netherlands, unsupported and unsourced. I see no reason why his POV should be enshrined as fact in a Wikipedia article.

He also continues to assert a causal relationship between the Oude Pekala allegations, religious media and three psychologists attending a training workshop some years prior, inferring that the allegations relate to a religious "moral panic". It is concerning that he continues to assert this argument although I have pointed him to clinical accounts of physical evidence of the repeated sexual assault of the first complainant child in the case, and a cohort study of 87 children in the town which found clear indications of physical, emotional and psychosocial trauma. Why does he object to this data being made available to readers of the article, and why is he reproducting as fact the arguments of Benjamin Rossen despite Rossen's dubious associations with the pro-incest movement? --Biaothanatoi 01:10, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Biao, this can only be resolved by concentrating on the quality of the sources. Can I summarise your post as saying that Rossen's book is not to be considered as a reliable source for WP? I would tend to agree, simply because it is not from an academic publisher. Other sources may be reliable though and we will need to discuss them. A source that is in general very reliable should, I think, be removed. That is Cohen's Folk Devils and Moral Panics which is not relevant to this topic. Itsmejudith 07:36, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

We can't assess the credibility of Crim's sources because they aren't in English. I'm concerned that he includes, amongst his sources, a book with a derivation of Rossen's account, and that Crim's version of Oude Pekela mirrors Rossen so closely.

We know that Crim's account of Oude Pekela is factually incorrect - Jonker and Jonker-Bakker's paper was published two years before Crim claims any publication on the matter in the 'secular' media, and the authors clearly state that the first complainant child was seen multiple times for sexual assault. Crim's refusal to acknowledge these facts should be cause for real concern here.

However, it seems that editors have a free reign to post any confabulation and falsehood as long as it reinforces a 'skeptics' view of SRA. --Biaothanatoi 02:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is some additional information about the Dutch sources I have used:

Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid - a monthly journal for psychologists and psychiatrists. In the case of satanic ritual abuse mpd therapists and believers as well as critics and sceptics have published in this magazine. I used publications from the mpd movement as well as from critics and sceptics in the chapter about the Netherlands.

Multiple Personality Disorder in the Netherlands: A Study on Reliability and Validity of the Diagnosis - Suzette Boon and Nel Draijer conducted this study. It was also the dissertation of Boon.

Massahysterie in de Verenigde Staten en Nederland: De affaire rond de McMartin Pre-School en het ontuchtschandaal in Oude Pekela, in: Peter Burger and Willem Koetsenruijter (Eds.), Mediahypes en moderne sagen: Sterke verhalen in het nieuws, Leiden, Stichting Neerlandistiek Leiden, 2004 - a comparative analyses of the McMartin Pre-School case and the debauchery scandal in Oude Pekela by Tjalling Beetstra. The book contains the lectures that Beetstra and other experts gave at the University of Leiden at a congress about mediahypes.

Rapport van de Werkgroep Ritueel Misbruik - official report of the workgroup that was installed by the state secretary of Justice in reaction to the broadcast of the television newsmagazine Nova concerning satanic ritual abuse. I mentioned this broadcast in my last reaction.

If Biaothanatoi would play fair, he would also have given the link to the abstract of Frank Putnams critical analysis of the research of Fred Jonker and Ietje Jonker-Bakker. You find that abstract here: The Satanic Ritual Abuse Controversy

Criminologist1963 11:32, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not "playing" a game, Crim. If you have English-language sources that would facilitate our understanding here, then just let us know. You infer that I am wilfully withholding information from editors here and that is simply not the case. Meanwhile, you haven't addressed the factual inaccuracies in your own argument, such as the emergence of Jonker and Jonker-Bakker's account of Oude Pekala in an academic journal article two years before the date that you fix for such a secular account of the incident. This calls into question the basis of your argument, which is that such allegations where the fabrications of religious fundamentalists. --Biaothanatoi 02:17, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

It looks like Crim's account of SRA in the Netherlands is just a translation job from the SRA article on the Dutch Wikipedia. As far as I can tell, he's pretty much reproduced it word for word in English here.

This section of the article is designed to highlight individual cases, not the overall history of SRA in each given country. Some of the information taken by Crim from this article is factually incorrect, some of it is derived from Rossen, and in other cases, he is reproducing as fact arguments that have been presented elsewhere in the article as a particular POV.

Don't see what any of this adds to the article, particularly when the information is demonstratably wrong. --Biaothanatoi 03:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

And, having reviewed Putnam's editorial, it was not a critical analysis of Jonker and Jonker-Bakker's research. It was a reflection on the challenges that SRA presents to clinicians as a whole.

Crim, did you actually read Putnam's article - or did you just find it via google, read the abstract, and claim you'd found a critical analysis on that basis? If this is how you support your "argument", it's just not good enough. --Biaothanatoi 03:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

For the first time I can agree with Biaothanatoi about what he alleges. Yes, my account about satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands is, apart from a few omissions, a translating job of the Dutch Wikipedia page. The reason is very simple: I wrote both the Dutch text and the English text. As you can see, the Dutch text is written by Criminoloog1963 and the English text by Criminologist1963.

I do not like to say it, but I do not know how to make it otherwise clear to you Biaothanatoi: You may know a lot about the situation in your country Australia, but as far as the Netherlands are concerned, you have no idea at all about how the discussion in the Netherlands developed, who were the actores in that discussion and why the debate about satanic ritual abuse was very short and why it has never lead to disproportionate reactions (mass hysteria, moral panic) as e.g. in the United States.

I have not written the chapter on the Netherlands to highlight individual cases, but to give a brief report about the situation in the Netherlands. This is very relevant, because in the Netherlands the discussion about satanic ritual abuse took a totally different course as the discussion in the United States.

In the Oude Pekela case, satanic ritual abuse was never mentioned by the parents of Oude Pekela or by the general practioners Fred Jonker and Ietje Jonker-Bakker in the years 1987-1988. I have hundreds of Dutch newspaper articles to proof that! Only when television newsmagazine Tijdsein in 1989 covered the topic satanic ritual abuse, Jonker and Jonker-Bakker came up with the idea that the children of Oude Pekela were ritually abused by satanists. They hold a lecture about it at London University and that lecture formed the basis for their article in the International Journal on Child Abuse and Neglect.

After the broadcasts on satanic ritual abuse of Tijdsein, a bigger audience had become familiar with the concept. However, it took another two years before satanic ritual abuse was reported to the Dutch authorities for the first time in 1991. My source for that is an official document from the Dutch parliament: Aanh. Hand. II, 1992-1993, Nr. 770. It contains questions of members of parliament to the minister of Health and the answers of this minister.

Yes, I have read the article of Frank Putnam. On page 176 Putnam says about the article of Jonker and Jonker-Bakker: Throughout this paper, the authors express a firm and unwavering conviction that these acts did in fact happen and were accurately described by the children, although parents and police expressed disbelief and ultimately the case was closed for lack of evidence. (...) Repeatedly the Jonker and Jonker-Bakker paper implies that many or all of the children reported a similar experience, but never once actually gives the percentage of children responding positively or negatively. On page 177 Putnam adds: Nowhere is there a systematic analysis of the actual degree of similarity of these allegations. On page 178 Putnam continues: The most frightening image emerging from this paper is not the alleged satanic conspiracy, but the actual massive social disorder that occured in Oude Pekela. Jonker and Jonker-Bakker describe a community turned against itself, filled with fear, anger, and distrust. Ultimately the national government had to intervene to restore some measure of convidence in the local authorities. (...) The Jonker and Jonker-Bakker paper is particularly inflammatory in this regard, repeatedly stating or implying, without specifying and actual evidence, that the police were, at best, incompetent, unqualified, and neglectful. Therefore Putnam concludes on page 178: In the future, unsubstantiated charges of police or government incompetence or neglect in the handling of satanic ritual abuse investigations should not be published in professionals journals as they only serve to erode public and professional trust in the law enforcement community. Putnam, Frank W., The Satanic Ritual Abuse Controversy, in: International Journal on Child Abuse and Neglect, Vol. 15, Nr. 3, 1991, p. 175-179. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Criminologist1963 (talk • contribs) 13:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth: Translation of another Wikipedia is not a violation of any policy or guideline, provided that the sources are adequate, and those sources do not have to be in the English language. I can't see anything wrong Criminologist1963 may be doing, providing the (Dutch language) sources support what he's saying. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:45, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

For your information Biaothanatoi, Benjamin Rossen is not from the Netherlands but from Australia. He had received several bachelor degrees in Australia, before he went to the Netherlands. Since he did not completed a master study, his tutor Marten Brouwer (a professor in mass psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam) told him that he had to write an extensive final paper to compensate his lack in his education. That lead to his book Zedenangst: Het verhaal van Oude Pekela, Amsterdam/Lisse, Swets & Zeitlinger, 1989.

I see your remark that it seems that editors have a free reign to post any confabulation and falsehood as long as it reinforces a 'skeptics' view of SRA as an insult! You should be ashamed of yourself Biaothanatoi! Remember, you do not know a thing about the situation in the Netherlands! So, stop harrassing me and other editors of the satanic ritual abuse page and concentrate yourself on your study!

Criminologist1963 11:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The information you have provided about Rossen is not in the public domain, Crim. How interesting. --Biaothanatoi 04:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The information I have provided about Rossen is in the public domain! See e.g.: Schipper, Aldert, Als het even over seks gaat, slaat de politie zo weer op hol, in: Trouw, 7 March 1992. Trouw is a Dutch newspaper.

Criminologist1963 11:33, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Changes to opening para

The new statement about SRA as a 'conspiracy theory' within the 'anti-cult' movement makes no sense at all.

The shining lights of the anti-cult movement were Margaret Singer and Richard Ofshe, both of whom were avowed SRA skeptics and they sat on the board of the False Memory Syndrome Movement. In fact, the boards of the FMSF and the anti-cult orgs on the 1980s had a number of people in common.

Anyway, I'm deleting the sentence because it's (a) historically incorrect and (b) pushes the POV that claims of SRA were motivated by anti-cult activists. Actually, the opposite is true. Claims of False Memory Syndrome were motivated by anti-cult activists like Singer and Ofshe who felt that psychotherapy constituted a potentially coercive environment similar to cults. --Biaothanatoi 06:09, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm removing the line in the opening para to the effect that a number of people "have suggested that allegations of SRA are false or at least exaggerated" for the following reasons:

(a) In each of the disciplines cited, there are published authors and researchers who do not hold the view that "allegations of SRA are false or at least exaggerated".

(b) There is not a single citation for this statement to a source published in the last ten years. A number of sources are over 15 years old. The relevance of these sources to the debate in 2007 is extremely questionable.

(c) The statement regarding "day care sex abuse allegations" is demonstratably false. There were numerous 'substantiated' instances of multi-perpetrator abuse involving ritualistic elements in day-care centres. The definition of 'substantiation' in child protection interventions is whether investigators believe the abuse took place on a balance of probabilities (similar to the burden of proof in civil trials, lower then in criminal matters). This burden has been met numerous times around the world in relation to SRA in preschools and daycare centres in the 1980s, and these cases have been documented in the research literature.

(c)There is no text for the second citation, and citation for "religious commentators" goes to ReligiousTolerance.org - a website whose authors have no qualifications, professional experience, or academic expertise in any of the subjects that their website holds forth on, nor have they ever been published anywhere except their own website.

The sentence adds nothing to the article except to infer an interdisciplinary consensus that does not exist, and it actively misleads the reader in relation to sexual abuse in daycare centres. I've deleted it on this basis. --Biaothanatoi 02:37, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Can we separate, for purposes of discussion, the question of removing the sentence

The "Satanic ritual abuse panic" as a conspiracy theory or moral panic within the anti-cult movement is now studied as a religious phenomenon in its own right.

from the other removals from the lead?

It's not obvious what the anti-cult sentence is supposed to mean, but it seems to be (as Biaothanatoi shows) false. Llajwa 19:03, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

It is quite true that that a number of people "have suggested that allegations of SRA are false or at least exaggerated". Merely stated it's contraversial in the lead is inadequate. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:29, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

And a number of other people have suggested otherwise. All these positions are thoroughly documented in the article itself - offering a "he said/she said/they said" in the first paragraph adds nothing. In addition, you are factualy incorrect in your statements about sexual abuse in day-care centres. This factual error has been made clear to you and yet you continue to assert it. Please address the concerns that have been raised on this page regarding this statement before you act on the article - simply ignoring those concerns and reverting changes is not a demonstration of good faith. --Biaothanatoi 01:13, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Rubin, can you treat other editors here with some courtesy and respond to our concerns? You are making edits without trying to build consensus, and you are clearly pushing your own POV onto the article. We aren't trying to entrench one POV over another in the article - we are trying to find balance on a very sensitive issue. Ignoring everyone else and acting unilaterally achieves nothing.

Re: Sexual abuse in day-care. I understand that you may feel strongly about this matter, but that's no excuse for making statements in the article when it's been pointed out to you that they are false e.g. the issue of substantiation in day-care sexual abuse cases. As I said above, child protection services work on the same burden of proof as civil cases, which is a balance of probabilities, and this standard has been met numerous times in relation to allegations of organised and ritualistic child abuse in day-care centres. I can think of three preschools in Australia that have been shut down after allegations of SRA were found to be substantiated by child protection services. Similar American cases have been subject to rigorous analysis in two key books by Finkelhor and Kelly respectively, and their sample sizes were quite large. Faller and others have undertaken smaller-scale studies, both qualitative and quantitative, in relation to sexual abuse in daycare. I suggest you read this literature before jumping to conclusions. --Biaothanatoi 01:29, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

There a few errors in this discussion. I suppose the supporting of the controversy don't need to be in the lead, but the fact that a number of relevant professionals "have suggested stated that allegations of SRA are false" should be in the lead, with a correlative sentence that a number of relevant professionals believe there is more SRA than alleged. This could be supported in the body of the article.

The references in the disputed lead paragraph are not in the body of the article. As they are accurate, they should be.

The level of substantiation in day-care sexual abuse cases is low, if you can find a psychiatrist who will state that the children's symptoms (even if normal) are evidence of sexual abuse. (The following sentences constitute WP:OR, although common sense.) It's still not hard to find such psychiatrists. In fact, as one would expect those to be preferentially sought out by those attempting to "prove" sexual abuse, it would not be surprising if psychiatrists who honestly believe most children are sexually abused would be sought out by the State agencies. Courts do not appoint an advocate for the child until some time after the child is taken from the parents, so, even if that advocate actually wants what's best for the child, it may be difficult to determine what that option is.

I'm not familiar with the Australian schools, but, due to the above phenomenon, actual "scientific" studies are impossible. The prejudices (not intended as pejorative) of the investigators will dominate the facts every time.

That being said, I don't think any of the editors here are being dishonest, so, if you will assure me that the references and points that were in the lead are now in the Skepticism section, I'll concede the point that they don't need to be in the lead. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:58, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

You are more then welcome to add the references to a relevant section (e.g. "Skepticism) if you think they are important. Be brave. However, if your text implicitly endorses one sources position over any other (and there are a diversity of opinions on SRA amongst the skeptics, let alone amongst everyone else) then changes may be made to restore balance.

You may object to the level of substantiation in child protection cases, but it's the same burden of proof as in a civil trial. You may think this burden of proof is too low, but that's your POV, and it places you in opposition to our civil trial system. The fact is that SRA has been substantiated by child protection services in daycare, and any statement to the contrary is wrong. Where datasets on substantiated cases of daycare centre abuse have been gathered, they have resulted in complementary research findings, indicating that the method by which this abuse has been substantiated is far from arbitrary.

Your unsourced speculations about widespread incompetence and unprofessionalism within child protection services indicates a profound bias. You have no evidence for such wild suppositions and no basis from which to question the validity of research findings, undertaken by well-respected academics, on the basis of child protection investigations. You are, of course, free to hold such a POV, but I see no reason why your prejudice should be entrenched in the article. --Biaothanatoi 03:28, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I though my phrasing was quite clear; I'm proposing that the state agencies has an institutional bias toward taking children out of the home (Child Services) and finding ritual abuse (law enforcement and prosecution), as that's one of the measures of the agency's effectiveness at budget time; that employees may have a bias (conscious or unconscious) toward that goal, and would seek out professionals (psychiatrists, in this case) who have the same bias, conscious or unconscious. It's not necessary that there be any malice or unprofessional conduct to have an unprofessional result. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Only if the child care agency has an office of "parent advocate", with an explict mandate toward keeping children in the home, can this institutional bias be reduced. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:55, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Rubin, with all due respect, I see no reasonable basis for entrenching your personal POV in the article in the manner that you have. --Biaothanatoi 02:14, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think I have been. "Entrenching" the POV that allegations of SRA are considered crticially by State agencies, regardless of the facts, is what I would like to see excised from the article. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:52, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

External links

I trimmed the external links again. I removed the following:

• Child abuse and neglect
  • This isn't about SRA, it's about child abuse
• Conviction List: Ritual Child Abuse at Believe The Children
  • This is a personal webpage to sourced, yet not linked entries, to US-only crimes. The next entry features world-wide reports and seems more useful
• Lucifer's Lodge: Satanic Ritual Abuse in the Catholic Church
  • This is just a link to a book, it's spam. The book could be a reference but the page should not be an EL
• Documented Cases of Satanic Ritual Abuse at a Tripod page
  • This is just a personal webpage with linked sources. It's better than the conviction list, but it's full of this person's interpretations and linking of facts
• Entry in Skeptic's Dictionary
  • Skeptic's dictionary is already linked as a reference.
• Geraldo Rivera's Influence on the Satanic Ritual Abuse and Recovered Memory Hoaxes at Religious Tolerance
  • I just don't see the need. The page is SRA, not a single public figure's role in SRA. Further, it appears to be mostly the page author's (BA Robinson) interpretation of things, and there's only six references.

I am adding back the link : Conviction List: Ritual Child Abuse at Believe The Children because it is not a personal page,

and it adds balance to the page. "Balance - When reputable sources contradict one another, the core of the NPOV policy is to let competing approaches exist on the same page: work for balance, that is: describe the opposing viewpoints according to reputability of the sources, and give precedence to those sources that have been the most successful in presenting facts in an equally balanced manner. This link was also previously discussed on this talk page here.

I agree the Geraldo link above should be deleted. It appears to still be there, so I will delete it.Abuse truth 02:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I question the reliablility of the Ritual Child Abuse site listed above. I don't think that site is reputable, under our definitions. Also see #Attack site removal below. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

In addition, the newsmakingnews.com site discusses incidents around the world rather than the US-centric focus of the ra-info.org site. It should presumably cover incidents that are of world-wide importance, rather than just a single country. WLU 13:42, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Attack site removal

It was an ArbComm decision which was apparently blanked and reopened. It's clear that any site which violates the privacy of ANY editor can be banned. There was a finding, that any site which has the primary purpose of "outing" individuals could be banned from external links, but that's been reversed. I think the site in question is also unreliable to the point of the information being more-likely-than not incorrect, but I'll need to research that. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to hear your reasoning. The site in question contains a bibliography of hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles pertaining to ritual child sexual abuse dating from 1980 to the present day. The webmaster has clearly demonstrated a concern about verifiability and accuracy. On what basis do you claim that the list of convictions has been falsified? --Biaothanatoi 05:14, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

well, this is an article about fringe activism. We do link to activist sites on Anti-cult movement without endorsing them. We do link to stormfront.org at Stormfront (website), naturally without endorsement. So I don't quite see why we sholdn't link to "Satanism panic!" sites from this article, naturally pointing them out for what they are. --dab (𒁳) 09:25, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I do not see how the site [7] violates the privacy of any editor. The site has never been proven to be inaccurate. It describes court decisions with full citations. It appears to be more factual in nature than Satanic Media Watch and News Exchange http://www.smwane.dk/ which remains on the page. I will be restoring the link to the page. Abuse truth 01:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Dab and Rubin, the list of convictions contains information that is verifiable and in the public domain. If you feel that is has been falsified, then please do some research and show us where. Rubin's "suspicions" about the site and Dab's ad hominem attacks are not justification for the removal of the link. --Biaothanatoi 05:20, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Literature section

I've added a heap of material to the literature section ... basically the old section was a mash-up of refences to The X Files and Dungeons and Dragons, with any citations to books about SRA followed with a pejorative comment of some kind.

If anyone wants to see some of the deleted sources back in the page, please just insert it, but can you bear in mind that the skeptical literature is comprehensively covered with it's own section. --Biaothanatoi 06:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The critical sources you removed should, at the least, be added to the "skeptical literature" section. Since you know what you did, it would be easier for you to do it than for another editor. If I were to do it, I'd have to start with the revision of a few days ago and work forward. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

All sources are already in the skeptical literature section. --Biaothanatoi 05:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps all the sources are in the "skeptical" section as references (although I'm not fully convinced), but not as sources. WP:UNDUE requires that that skeptical literature be given at least coverage paralleling the popularity and respectablility of that work. I think it may be necessary to revert those sections a few days. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:44, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

If you feel that this hasn't taken place, Rubin, then please show me where. I'm not a mindreader and I can't act on your suspicions. I would point out to you that I have detailed the diversity of skeptical opinions on SRA to a far greater extent then any previous editor, and I've substantially expanded the number of references to skeptical sources.

And while we are throwing Wikipedia policy around, then please remember that Wikipedia asks you to presume that other editors are acting in good faith. I've found that presumption somewhat thin on the ground from you. --Biaothanatoi 01:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand the point of that section. It wasn't an opportunity to plug a particular book on SRA which you think we should read, or to summarize pro-SRA-belief studies from the late 80s and early 90s (interestingly, I seem to remember you dismissing the 1992 Lanning FBI report on the basis that it was over 15 years old and therefore irrelevant...). It was attempting to discuss the phenomenon of SRA in popular culture. I don't mind an expansion of whatever "survivor" literature written for a general audience, but the section should be about popular literature, popular media, and popular culture generally. <eleland/talkedits> 18:39, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not up to you to dictate to any editor here the "purpose" of a section, Eleland.

The subject of "SRA in popular culture" has nothing to do with a "literature" section, and as it stands, the "popular culture" references were random snippets of the The X Files, Dungeons and Dragons and Jack Chick. I don't see what value this adds to the article whatsoever. The literature that I've added here is a comprehensive and balanced overview of 20 years worth of publications on the subject of SRA rather then a compendium of TV shows that mentioned the subject in passing. Some research was undertaken in the early 1990s, but I've included many references until the present day.

The previous section paid great attention to certain books over others - in particular, Pazder and Statford - and so I see no disjunction in highlighting Scott's work, which is the most recent and comprehensive book on the subject.

Sadly, given your history on this page, it's no leap of logic to suggest that your objection to the mention of Scott's research has nothing to do with a concern about the balance of the article, and everything to do with the fact that her findings directly contradict your entrenched and long-standing POV on this matter. --Biaothanatoi 05:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think a literature section is appropriate to an encyclopedia entry, since the whole article should be derived from the relevant literature. The material in that section is, to my quick reading, sound, and it should be moved to the front of the article and given a different section title. Itsmejudith 08:37, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Let me try again. The new "Literature" section plugs The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse: Beyond Disbelief on the basis that it is, "the only qualitative study of the life histories of survivors of ritual abuse". Besides the verifiability problem inherent there (the "only study" claim is cited to the book itself), there is absolutely no reason to believe this book is notable or significant in comparison to others. Its Amazon ranking is #5,145,305. Compare this to Satanic Panic (#317,874 paperback, #1,260,481 hardcover), Michelle Remembers (#166,010 paperback, #503,765 in highest of various hardcover editions), The Myth of Repressed Memory (#82,962), etc.

In other words, it seems like you've read the book, found it persuasive and useful, and want to share it with us. Well, that's OK, but that's not what a section on literature and popular culture should be doing. Such a section should be surveying the most influential and impactful works on the subject - and yes, that includes the ramblings of Jack Chick, Patricia Pulling, et al. Wikipedia is meant to cover all aspects of a subject, not just those which someone considers "serious". I've noticed that over the past weeks that almost every reference to unbelievable claims, such as thousands of satanic murders a month, has been expunged from the piece. Those claims strike me as a highly notable aspect of the SRA phenomenon, even if serious and straight-laced academics no longer discuss them. I don't believe they should be removed, and I'm concerned that removing them not only deprives the reader of relevant information, it has the effect of puffing up SRA's plausibility by downplaying a chapter in the SRA movement's history that most would prefer to forget. <eleland/talkedits> 16:47, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Eleland, you have a clear interest in trivialising the matter of SRA. For example, much has been written about the HIV virus, including vast conspiracy theories as well as claims that it does not exist, and the virus has been mentioned innumerable times in popular culture. There has been a clear "moral panic" around HIV as well, driven by homophobia, stigma and discrimination. A balanced article on the HIV virus, however, would focus on the virus itself and the harms that it causes.

By comparison, you have consistently advocated for an article in which SRA is discussed solely in terms of moral panic, conspiracy theories, and that time you watched the X-Files in 1996 and Scully said something about ritual abuse. Your attempts to assess sources that contradict your POV are so specious it's ridiculous - Amazon ranking? Are you serious? And as for Scott's book, it is the only qualitative study on the life histories of ritual abuse survivors. If you can find another, please let me know, because I would be very interested.

Your "literature" section was pretty light on literature, but you've made it clear that you aren't interested in reading particularly widely on this subject. However, where you did manage to mention a book, you paid particular attention to particular books - when it suited your POV. Now, you've taken the position that any emphasis on any book is POV, whilst the importance of all research findings are now (apparently) assessed by the oracle that is Amazon.com.

Encounters with adults and children disclosing a history of ritualistic abuse is a clinical reality for many pracitioners today - medical, social or psychological. This article should be a resource for them, not just a playground for junk skeptics who like to beat up straw men. --Biaothanatoi 01:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

In case people haven't figured it out yet, I'm separating the references into individual citations rather than clumping them together. Citations can be contested and disputed individually now, and it's just more in keeping with normal wikipedia style. WLU 01:31, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

<undent>The section is shaping up now. I've commented out the following statement and references:

These findings are commensurate with other studies that have surveyed the characteristics and experiences of adults who claim to be survivors of ritual abuse. <ref>e.g. Driscoll, L. and C. Wright (1991). "Survivors of Childhood Ritual Abuse: Multi-Generational Satanic Cult Involvement." Treating Abuse Today 1(4): 5 – 13, Smith, M. (1993). Ritual Abuse: What it is, why it happens, how to help. New York, HarperCollins Publishing, Young, W. C., R. G. Sachs, B. G. Braun and R. T. Watkins (1991). "Patients Reporting Ritual Abuse in Childhood: A Clinical Syndrome. Report of 37 Cases." Child Abuse and Neglect 15: 181 - 9.</ref>

This comment is OR without a citation, a violation of WP:SYNTH by my reading. If these ideas belong together, someone else must have said it, not us. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. We can't engage in original research by adding an e.g. when we feel that the sources support our ideas. Given that, the statement:

Studies of children and adults with a history of SRA have found that intrafamilial abusers were strongly implicated in experiences of organised and ritualistic abuse, and participants reported serious physical, sexual and psychological abuse, including being bound, drugged, deprived of food, forced to ingest waste, blood and semen, and being forced into sex with adults, children and animals. Research participants typically demonstrated severe post-traumatic symptoms and associated dissociative states.

also lacks a citation (what studies? What measures were used to assess PTSD and DID? Did any studies actually say this?) and can not just be assumed. This is a controversial topic, so the important thing is to find sources and cite them. Also, while I'm on the topic of sources, the Journal of Psychohistory pops up a lot, but is sporadic on pubmed. Some sort of citation database link would be nice; paper sources are acceptable, but better on controversial pages is sources people can read themselves.

Finally, I removed the section:

Sara Scott’s book The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse: Beyond Disbelief<ref>{{cite book |author=Scott, Sara |title=The politics and experience of ritual abuse: beyond disbelief |publisher=Open University |location=Milton Keynes |year=2001 |pages= |isbn=0-335-20419-8 |oclc= |doi=}}</ref> synthesizes research on ritual abuse and other forms of organised abuse as well as qualitatively analysing the experiences of several survivors. Scott explored how their accounts of ritualistic abuse and self-identity were enmeshed within histories of family violence, abuse and neglect, as well as networks of perpetrators engaged in sadistic sexual practices with children, and child pornography and prostitution. Her findings challenge many of the presumptions of the ritual abuse literature, as well as it’s detractors, by suggesting that that the harmful and traumatic experiences of ritually abused children are driven by routine power-and-control relationships, such as those between a parent and a child, and that ritualistic and “occult” experiences of abuse should be seen in relation to a wider picture of severe family dysfunction, psychopathology and isolation.

(note that this is post-trim, I'd already modified and trimmed the paragraph before deciding to paste it) and am placing it here fore discussion. This is such a lengthy description for a single book and author who diesn't have a wikipedia page, it seems to me that it places undue weight on the book and it's methods, interpretations and conclusions. It's one book. It should be a single reference to a single sentence (or multiple spread throughout the page) rather than an entire paragraph in an already lengthy section.

Speaking of which, are 37 citations really needed for this section? Going through amazon, for the books I kept seeing the same books popping up in the 'customers who liked this book also liked..." section, that I'm wondering if this is another example of wp:undue. Could it just be reduced to the most relevant books that ideally are from reputable press, major publishers, or most ideally, scientific/university press? I'm guessing there's at least a couple self-published or vanity press books in the list. The whole article seems like it could use a third opinion or RFC, given the ever-burgeoning talk page.

If undue weight is being given to anything, it seems like editors here have a lot of faith in the oracular powers of Amazon.com to assess the credibility of books that editors have never read. --Biaothanatoi 01:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Final comment - within the references there are a distressing number of comments that say 'e.g./see/example/'. A reference either justifies the comment or it does not. Providing examples, in most cases, is a synthesis, and violation of WP:OR in my mind. Whoever adds them, please review the policy, as the refs should be clean and supporting the sentence, not a justification for soapboxing, or as part of a synthesis of information or conclusion on a previous point. If it's notable for inclusion, it'll be documented in a reliable source. If the reference is clean and does justify the point, it does not need to be an example, it is a citation. WLU 02:55, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

WLU, I appreciate any edits and suggestions in the name of balance, since the various ins-and-outs of WP policy can get a little esoteric at times. However, it seems to me a pity that such scrutiny was not applied to the previous article given it's many unsourced and factually incorrect statements, and citations to authors of dubious reputation. --Biaothanatoi 01:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the lack of reply, this is a very labour-intensive article to keep tabs on. What previous article are you referring to? It's not Amazon that I'm relying no for credibility, it's the publishers - if my research has turned up that the publisher is incredibly tiny, vanity press or otherwise completely lacking oversight, I am inclined to remove it. If the reference is one of many (as was the case of the literature section, which was grossly over-referenced, almost spammy) I had no qualms about trimming it down - 117 references is a lot for one article, particularly when they aren't really justifying anything that needed to be referenced. By corollary, if the book was from a reliable publisher or a university press, I am more inclined to leave it in. Amazon I mostly used to find the ISBN, which I used to generate the citation template. I don't believe I've removed any references that were floaters, just the ones where there were 6-10 references to books after a single statement. WLU 16:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Archive

I archived the pages for discussions that ended on or before September 30th, since the page was getting stupid-long. It's still pretty long. WLU 14:37, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Article Issues

"Criticisms"

Unfortunately, even though the skeptical view of SRA is the mainstream view, the article is currently written to confine skeptical views to a "skepticism" ghetto (where they are presented in a misleading, mocking fashion by rapid-fire listing various explanations, giving the impression that skeptics are just randomly stabbing in the dark at explaining the SRA phenomenon). This is out-of-line with both style and NPOV practice.

Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion that the skeptical view of SRA is the mainstream view? Or is this an unsourced statement? Abuse truth 20:53, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

For starters, try Google News: "satanic ritual abuse" since 1997. <eleland/talkedits> 22:08, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Eleland, if you'd like to see the 'skepticism' section or incorporated more generally into the article, then feel free to do so in a way that is balanced and NPOV. In the past, you've preferred to entrench your own beliefs about SRA within the article as fact, so it'd be nice to see you take a different tact this time. --Biaothanatoi 01:59, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

"Citecheck"

Given past editing history, I have a tough time believing that all of the citations here are interpreted properly. Wikipedia is required to fairly summarize the findings of its sources, rather than taking an a lá carte approach where a series of unrelated sources are scoured for information which "proves" a certain point. If a study says, "85% of doctors have encountered patients describing SRA, but we think it's ridiculous", we can't use that to state "a study found that 85% of doctors have treated patients with a life history of ritualistic abuse".

Do you have any evidence that any of the above citations have been interpreted improperly, or is this just another unsourced statment? Abuse truth 20:53, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

How am I expected to "source" a statement like this? We already know that an editor has copied-and-pasted the ramblings of a delusional maniac, citing it to sources he probably didn't read (and has never even said that he read), as well as selectively quoting a study in almost exactly the way I describe in my example. It's linked on the FTN posting. <eleland/talkedits> 22:11, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Let me add furthermore that, as WLU points out above, many statements here are cited in a way which makes it clear that they don't verify the text. For instance, we have lines saying things like, "the most valuable study on the prevalence of SRA is X", and the only citation is to... X. Even if study X says it's the most valuable study, which is doubtful, we cannot make such a claim without independent sources. This entire piece is written in the tone of a persuasive essay, constantly making overt editorial statements about how to interpret some work or datum. Virtually none of these statements are sourced, and many of them, being inherently opinions, are by definition unverifiable. That's bad. <eleland/talkedits> 03:38, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Eleland, you've a longstanding history here of ad hominem attacks and an outright refusal to presume good faith.

Much of your previous take on this article came from two people who manufactured child pornography - shall we all view all your edits in this light? After all, we've already established that much of what you wrote in your previous article was factually incorrect. --Biaothanatoi 01:59, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

"Unbalanced"

This really ties into the "criticisms" section above. It is simply not appropriate to write this article to the "SRA is real!" view, when this is demonstrably not a majority view. It appears that reliable sources almost all conclude that either SRA is total bunk, or SRA is a relatively rare phenomenon which was seized on and exaggerated far beyond recognition during the late 1980s / early 1990s. The article should be written to these views.

A number of reliable sources have been listed in the article stating that SRA has occurred with some frequency. What "reliable sources" state otherwise? And are they reliable or simply pushing their own POV? Abuse truth 20:53, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

<eleland/talkedits> 16:59, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

"Abuse truth", there is simply no way you can push your minority position within Wikipedia policy. You'll need to either accept that, or find another forum to air your convictions. dab (𒁳) 18:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)\

I don't believe that somebody's point of view becomes a "minority position" simply because that person disagrees with you, Dab. Please try to assess people's arguments in good faith - these ad hominem attacks reveal nothing except the paucity of your argument. --Biaothanatoi 01:59, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV

"The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting verifiable perspectives on a topic as evidenced by reliable sources. The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view, or some sort of intermediate view among the different views, is the correct one to the extent that other views are mentioned only pejoratively. Readers should be allowed to form their own opinions." Abuse truth 02:57, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Dab -- evidence please that Abuse truth is pushing a "minority position". West world 04:25, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Eleland's criticisms

It is notable that Eleland has yet to establish that a single fact added to this article, over the last month, has been incorrect. In contrast, much of the information contained in his previous version was demonstratably wrong or misleading.

His criticisms are almost entirely ad hominem, aimed either at other editors or at authors of sources that conflict with his POV. He has consistently sought to characterise those, like myself, who have a different POV to him as people prone to lying, conspiracy and misrepresentation. He points to apparent breaches of WP policy or style, not in order to correct the article, but rather as 'evidence' as to why editors who disagree with him cannot be trusted.

If Eleland is going to continue his campaign of bullying and harrasment then I see no other option then to go to mediation or arbitration. What do other editors think? --Biaothanatoi 06:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I won't reply to this screed, other than to note that "my previous version" is a stub article from September 2002 of dubious relevance to the current dispute. I made minor edits twice in 2003, adding brief mentions of specific cases or allegations (Martensville, and some crap from Scott Peterson's lawyers). In the intervening four years I haven't touched this piece, and I don't know why Biao insists on treating me as its sole legitimate representative. Oh, and of course I'd be amenable to mediation, either through the informal "Cabal" or the formal "Committee". <eleland/talkedits> 07:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm treating you as the main author of this article, because your user page states "I created Winnipeg General Strike, Squamish Five, Satanic ritual abuse, Cluster bomb, and Domino theory among others". Is this statement true or not? --Biaothanatoi 04:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Alien abductions

The Alien abduction section looked like a violation of WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, so I removed it. WLU 02:25, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

One sentence in Intro

There seems to be an ongoing edit war over the Intro, but could we please separate out this sentence?

"The "Satanic ritual abuse panic" as a conspiracy theory or moral panic within the anti-cult movement is now studied as a religious phenomenon in its own right.^[1]"

I removed it once, and User:Dbachmann restored it as part of the larger paragraph. But it doesn't make any sense! Whatever you think of those who believe SRA is widespread, they really have no connection to the anti-cult movement except by analogy. Can you please address this before restoring it? Llajwa 18:49, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

that's a valid info, so long as the reference specifically cites SRA as an example. Whoever has the reference or added it should be able to clarify. WLU 00:22, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

At the very least it needs clarification. What about just removing "within the anti-cult movement"? This question seems separate from the larger SRA-is-a-real-threat / SRA-is-all-in-your-mind debate roiling this article. The anti-cult movement just seems like a red herring here. Llajwa 01:05, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Really, we can't say or do much without knowing what the original citation says. WLU 01:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

We've established elsewhere on this page that the statements about the "anti-cult movement" and the "daycare sexual abuse hysteria" are factually incorrect. I've stated why this is the case and received no reasoned answer in reply, and yet here the statement is again.

I'm finding that editors here are circumventing reasoned debate on this page, pushing ahead with a clear agenda to entrench their POV in the article, and accusing anyone who disagrees witih them of being a "conspiracy theorist". At times, their behaviour has been tantamount to bullying and harrasment.

Meanwhile, any source which provides a view on SRA other then "moral panic" is being struck down by the most specious and abritrary tests. Neutral editors here are also clearly having a difficulty assessing the credibility of sources and the accuracy of the context in which they are being quoted.

Do we need to move to mediation? --Biaothanatoi 02:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

You may want to try a WP:RFC first. Unfortunately I can't really give an opinion since I've only done purely superficial copyedits to the page without touching content. WLU 19:49, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Sources

I'm going through the sources to try to justify them and provide better ones. Some are tough, particularly my last edit - these really need citations to independant sources. When I google them, I come up with wikipedia as the first hit, and many others that cite them as urban legends and 'stuff I heard' on fora and non-reliable sources. They need pubmed id, ISBNs, doi #s, anything to link them to a concrete source. This proves they exist, and allows them to be found so we can read through them and see if they back up the citations. It also adds much-needed credibility to a really rough article. Finally, the paragraph I commented out in Evidence looked a lot like original research - without the source saying 'Satanic ritual abuse', to call these SRA because it's in daycares, involved multiple perpetrators and had ritual elements (what kind of rituals? Hindu? Freemasonic? Shriner? Coronation?) seems way out of line. This whole page is begging for a RFC or something else to comb out the sections. WLU 21:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Self-Confessed Satanist?

Why the negative connotation?

Would you brand somebody a "Self-confessed Christian, or a self-confessed Jew?

Modern day satanism, the only true form of this religion, embraces children as sacred beings, hence SRA is just silly it should be called FRA, for fuckwit ritual abuse.

I wish a minority of imbeciles would discontinue ruining a logical, self-improving religion for the rest of us.

Being tarred with the same brush as a bunch of kid rapers is bullshit, I'd kill all of the bastard kiddy-fiddlers before I touched a kid myself.

Proud Laveyan Satanist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.178.157.127 (talk) 12:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh my god

Ok, I'm going through the citations for the article, trying to get some standard and have them all with citation templates. I have to say, what the hell? Every single citation within the United Kingdom section was to say the accusations and whatnot were baseless. In the Rochdale case, the citation was used to support the existence of a SRA case, when the citation was about the 'victims' (i.e. the children) suing the council for wrongfully removing them from their homes. In other words, it was used to support the exact opposite of what the article actually said. I'm thinking the section should be removed completely, were it not for the fact that it basically guts the SRA case overall, in the UK at least. Also:

• the newsmakingnews.com article, which is where many of the citations for the US appeared to have come from, appears to be citing non-existant newspapers; the Orlando Sentinal Tribune doesn't appear to exist. Despite this, many 'references' appear to be culled from this site; I've commented out any entries where I can't find anything to support the reference. I really think it should be removed as an external link as it appears to be extremely unreliable.
• There appear to be references where the SRA aspects are incredibly minor; having 'cultishness' appearing in a newspaper article isn't really helpful on a page like this.
• When the words 'though no unambiguous evidence linking the girl's death to SRA was ever found' are attached to a reference, on a page about SRA, that's a reason to remove the reference, and accompanying text from the page.
• Michelle Remembers? It's been called fictional. Though this is the most reliable source I can find to date. Still, I've put in a more explicit discussion of it's 'alleged' (i.e. fictional) nature. WLU 19:32, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm going through the 'literature' section and removing the least reliable books I can - in part because they're not reliable (self-publications) and in part because we don't need 8 examples of survivor's publications. I'm also taking out references to the journal of psychohistory, it has an editor (Lloyd deMause) but no peer review board that I could find. Also, the sections with JoPh tend to have multiple references, many of which are peer-reviewed journals which are much more reliable sources. WLU 19:47, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I would agree with the removal of the Journal of Psychohistory, as it does not seem to be an academic journal of the usual type. This is such a sensitive topic that the article should be written up entirely from journal articles, academic books, training manuals for professionals, mainstream news sources and other such top-quality sources. Itsmejudith 21:53, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

The mention of the Cynthia Owen case from Ireland is at present pretty incomprehensible. It is referenced to news sources, which can be taken as accurate for statements made in court. One of these reports a clinical psychologist stating that she was told by Cynthia Owen of ritual sexual abuse over many years and that she believed what she had been told. This is notable and should be in the article, but summarised in that way. The rest is probably not relevant. Itsmejudith 09:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll see if I have the patience to go through the rest of that section today or in the near future. WLU 11:07, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

WLU, I appreciate any changes made in the name of clarity, but the fact that Owen's family was poly-incestuous (that is, with incestuous abuse both within and between generations in the family), two of her siblings committed suicide and her baby was found to have been fathered by her father and murdered by her mother is clearly relevant in assessing the credibility of her disclosures of SRA.

In a debate where I keep hearing "there is no evidence", Owen's case is an example of a substantiated life history in of chronic neglect, polyabuse, murder and suicide, consonant with her disclosures of SRA. --Biaothanatoi 04:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

<undent>I haven't looked at Ireland yet, all I did there was reduce multiple references to a single one using a <ref name> tag. Hopefully I'll get to it at some point, but as I've said before, this is not exactly a labour of love, it's more like just labour. However, one problem I've run into in the article is an extensive disclosure of horrific abuse in specific cases, but when I look for the satanic ritual aspects, there's a single mention of dubious merit (i.e. had victim drink blood from a cup/mentioned the devil/sodomy with a cross/whatever). I don't know if this is the case or not with Ireland, but if the news articles and other sources do indeed mention SRA, I will be sure to include it, to the degree that it is emphasized in the source. It's not fair to portray something as SRA if there are six news articles about it and only one of them mention some sort of Christian devil-type thing. SRA is specific in things like Michelle Remembers (organized, conspiratorial group of people torturing and killing babies for the devil) but much more elusive in the sources for the page (some fucked up people conflate sex and God then it gets mentioned as a salacious tidbit in a news story). I'll keep your comments in mind when/if I tackle Ireland - if this is one case of explicit evidence, I'll certainly try to reflect that in the text. Source checking is tiring! WLU 17:05, 26 October 2007 (UTC)