Talk:Satanic ritual abuse/Archive 4

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Contents

RFC: Article tone POV, and sourcing

RFCsoc

Recently a conflict has arisen as to the relative weight given to various POVs on this issue, and to the quality of sourcing. What conclusions should this article draw about the real / mythic nature of SRA, which sources should it use, and are the current sources accurately represented? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eleland (talk • contribs) 21:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks like enough eyes are on the page now to deal with this. If problems continue, somebody else can open the RfC. <eleland/talkedits> 02:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Sources

In this edit, I commented out the newest source added. The reference is not to B, S & G, which I have still failed to find, but to Faller, in the APSAC Advisor, a news journal, not a scientific journal. I doubt that a news publication did a survey of 2300 clients, and if they did, I am reluctant to endorse it until I've seen their methods. Also, the wording discussed the BSG reference. This looks like a case of a book citing a news article which cited a journal article, a third-hand reference at best. I can't find a version of the original BSG article, so I'd rather the information were not in the page until at minimum a reliable source can be found for the existence of the study itself. Before references are added to the page, can we be sure they exist through a reliable source, ideally a pubmed citation, doi or google scholar citation? The only place I can find many of these sources is in web forums, personal webpages and other dubious places, it looks like the references are getting pasted and passed around in a variety of unofficial websites, which isn't helping their credibility or that of the page. WLU 16:21, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Will try and get the original article. Hope that all sources in the article are held to this high a standard. Abuse truth 02:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
For anything that's a scholarly article, it's generally not a big deal to get some sort of confirmation that it exists, if not a link to an abstract or even full text. Also, since they're generally the most reliable articles and useful for providing proof (ie you can make the firmest statements and conclusions based on them) it's nice to have confirmation that it exists and ideally some sort of summary or link to the actual content. Many of the sources on this page are quite problematic for their dubious reliability, I'm trying to be evenhanded, but it's an enormous undertaking and exhausting to try to track down 160-odd references. Let me know if I'm removing things that you think should remain and we can discuss. WLU 16:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Biaothanatoi - is there any on-line source for the info you just added to Australia or are you referencing from hard-copy press clippings? I'd like to see the original source and it's always handy to have some sort of weblink for readers, but the article will survive without one. Unfortunately The Age doesn't have an archive that goes back further than 12 months. And have a look at citation templates - it's an easy way to standardize the formatting of references and makes it easier to track down the original sources; there's one there for news articles as well. WLU 17:19, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
The articles that I've listed are available online, but they aren't authorised republications and so they breach copyright. Not much we can do about that - some sources are over fifteen years old. --Biaothanatoi 04:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposing the removal of the second and third tags at the top of the article

I am proposing this because it appears both of these issues have been addressed by the editors. Comments are welcome. Abuse truth 23:32, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Though I think the page is getting better, I've still seen enough problems with citations and text that until I've been through all the sections I'm reluctant to endorse the tags being removed. The unbalanced tag I'm not so sure about, and I don't really have an opinion either way. WLU 03:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
This article is improving greatly — thanks for the salutary work, WLU! The citations are still very problematic. Many sections contain assertions which are not made in the sources which superficially appear to verify them. Many sections contradict their sources outright, or cherry-pick their sources for claims favorable to the SRA believers while ignoring skepticism.
You've made these claims numerous times, Eleland, but you haven't provided a single example. Instead, you've spent the last few months trading in pejorative generalisations against editors and sources that contradict your entrenched POV.
It's hard to take you seriously when you can't be bothered to read the sources you criticise out of hand. --Biaothanatoi 05:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
(For example, the "Belgium" section makes no mention of the prosecution's theory that Dutroux was spamming the police with nonsense allegations against "bigger fish" to try and save his own skin.) Some of the sources are seemingly unreliable, especially given the rather extraordinary nature of the claims made. Some of the cases listed have no apparent evidence to support their categorization as "satanic" or "ritualistic" in nature; they're just awful cases of intense, long-term abuse. (It is true that some SRA believers, like Summitt, advocate extremely broad definitions of ritual abuse, which complicates matters.) The "unbalanced" tag is probably best replaced with something more specific; perhaps we should use "exampefarm" which says "This article or section may contain poor or irrelevant examples. Articles should only contain pertinent examples." I don't know if the "multipleissues" template currently supports it though. <eleland/talkedits> 04:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Note that I believe WP:REDFLAG supports the notion of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary sources. If the Belgian thing is a stretch, there's no reason to include it. The page, given it's length and referencing, should include references that explicitly discuss SRA, and ideally it should be more than just 'and Bob Abuser mentioned Satan once while beating his kids'. The page is of sufficient depth and non-stubby that it should discuss the best examples. WLU 14:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, there really was a national scandal over the thing, and conspiracy theories abounded which were apparently given credence by some, but not most, credible journalists (Olenka Frenkiel had a investigative report / advocacy piece for the BBC.) Basically, Dutroux painted himself as just a procurer for a massive ritual-rape-'n-murder ring, and the victims' families believed him. They began campaigning publicly for this theory, and the investigating judge (it's an inquisitorial system in Belgium) showed up at a fund-raising event for their campaign, for which he was promptly sacked. This gave rise to a large, but brief, public outcry. During the publicity storm, some previously unknown people (the "X witnesses") came forward with stories of their knowledge of the alleged abuse ring, especially someone named Regina Louf. She was originally announced by police to have produced corroborated accounts, ie giving details of murders which were not publicly available. Later, police said that the original investigators had badly botched the interrogations, basically leading her on to give these details and then announcing them as corroborating proof. Finally parliament set up a commission which found that the entire investigation had been a terrible botch, and the police and judges were hugely incompetent. As for evidence of corruption and protection? "On the question of protection we didn't discover much, unless you count the best protection that Dutroux could have had and that's the incompetence of Belgium's police and judicial system." The scandal died a natural death, although the usual true-believer claims continue to survive, in this case by an unusual number of people who should know better. Still, the majority view is clearly the Hanlon's razor explanation, which even the true-believer sources make clear, if they're reliable. I think we should keep the Belgium section, mind you, because it involved allegations of ritualistic abuse conspiracy by high-level government and business VIPs, in line with the panics of the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We just need to write it to the majority viewpoint, while accommodating minority claims fairly and proportionally. <eleland/talkedits> 16:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
This is a manifestly inadequate and biased summary of the Belgium case.
Eleland falsely claims that the X Witnesses came forward during the "publicity storm". In fact, the police force made a public request for witnesses to approach them at that time. For some reason, Eleland wants to characterise the X Witnesses as publicity seekers and fabricators, when they were simply responding to a request by the police.
Numerous journalists and politicans have noted that Dutroux's investigation and prosecution was characterised by ineptitude and conflicts of interest. Countless articles and books have documented Dutroux's activities in a child sex ring since at least the mid-1980s. When I type "Dutroux" and "corruption" into Factiva, I get 623 articles from the last 10 years. Searching for "Dutroux" and "satanic" brings up 51 articles regarding Dutroux's connections to a "satanic cult".
Eleland falsely (but characteristically) claims that his preferred take on the case is the 'majority view'. 300 000 Belgians took to the streets in 1996 to protest against the conduct of the investigation and in support of the victim's families, whose concerns Eleland callously dismisses in his passage above. His summary runs against the known facts of the case, which points again to his ongoing and zealous interest in discrediting any case in which SRA is substantiated. --Biaothanatoi 05:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Another Archive

This page was getting extremely long, so I've archived another big chunk of it. I tried to keep any discussions that were active less than a week on here. If you want to continue any of the archived topics, create a new topic here. Please do not edit the archive. -- Kesh 21:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

new book section

I've added a book section to the page. Please feel free to add appropriate selections.Abuse truth 00:49, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted your addition, as all of the books listed ascribe a single POV. All parts of an article need to present a neutral point-of-view, including See Also sections and Recommended Reading sections. Presenting only books from one view on this subject is not compatible with Wikipedia's goals or policies. However, once I've found some more selections, I will come back to this list to try and put together a balanced "Recommended Reading" section. -- Kesh 01:08, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea. "Further reading" is more usual than "recommended reading". It's not up to us to recommend. Itsmejudith 15:19, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Eh, six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. "Further reading" sections are recommendations of books on the subject, but it's a semantic debate that's not worth getting into. :) -- Kesh 16:38, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I will wait a week on this. Hopefully by then a NPOV selection can be added. If not, I'll restore the edit, and others can add more books. Abuse truth 22:33, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't really see the need for a books/rec. reading section at all - there are already a multitude of books referenced in the main body, and it's not like there's a single, or even several books that can definitively describe Satanic Ritual Abuse, discuss it rationally, or even prove that systemic SRA exists. What worth would such a section serve? What's our criteria for including books? I'd prefer books were discussed on the talk pages before a) building such a section b) adding more if said section is included in the page. WLU 23:23, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I believe a reading section would help readers find more information on this controversial topic. There are several books that do definitively define SRA and discuss it rationally.Abuse truth 21:41, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
My experience on controversial pages is that it is essential first to trawl through all the books and articles that might be relevant in order to add something from them to the article. Then at the end if there are sources that are not referred to but are still relevant then they form the Further reading section. For example, a source might be a good one for someone who wants an overview of the subject but is not referenced because it is a summary of material found in other sources that are referenced. It may be that this article is not yet ready for a Further reading section but it may become necessary later. Itsmejudith 21:56, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree with the above - further, if a book can't be used in the article, but still adds something valuable, then discuss it on the talk page before creating the section and adding it. When it's something as uncertain as SRA, I don't think you can unambiguously put up a book without discussing it first. WLU 19:28, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I will list a few books below that might be good to add. Please feel free to make comments about them. Of course, they need to be balanced with the other side of the issue.
  • Sinason, Valerie (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10542-0. 
  • Devine, Susan E. (1992). Out of Darkness - Exploring Satanism and Ritual Abuse. New York: Lexington Books. ISBN 0-669-26962-X. 
  • Raschke, Carl A. (1990). Painted Black. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-104080-0. 
  • Johnston, Jerry (1989). The Edge of Evil - The Rise of Satanism in North America. Dallas: Word Publishing. ISBN 0-8499-0668-7. Abuse truth 04:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Of these, the Sinason book is from a top scholarly publisher. Sinason is a qualified psychologist. This is a good source for the viewpoint that SRA is a real phenomenon, and can be drawn on extensively in the article. The others I would say are not scholarly and therefore not suitable sources at all. However, we could discuss further. Would you like to quote the qualifications of any of the authors? Itsmejudith 07:59, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>The Sinason book is a good source for the page, but I don't see it as a 'further reading' candidate - it's about treating SRA, not SRA per se. Further reading should be for explicit discussion of the phenomena itself, not how to treat it. I'd love to see the reference list for the first chapter (which I assume discusses the phenomena in general). Incidentally, an NPOV section in my mind would contain both a 'SRA is real and here's the proof', and 'SRA is bunk and here's the lack fo proof'. Not to charicature the two sides or anything ... :) WLU 17:54, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

That's why I initially removed the section when it was added. From the descriptions, all the books in the list were of the "SRA is real and here's how to treat it/eliminate it from society" variety. Entirely one-sided. I have to agree with the above, we need a mix of both for a NPOV selection, and they need to be about the phenomenon, not about treatment methods. -- Kesh 18:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
The last three books are about SRA per se. Maybe they could be added with three balancing books.Abuse truth 03:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't be in favour of that. We should only be using scholarly sources. Since there is a disagreement between experts we must aim for balance, but that means balance between scholarly/expert views. Itsmejudith 14:40, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
The phenomenon has notability in popular culture, so I don't think it would be out of place to link popular or non-scholarly works as long as we're careful and circumspect about it. I think the same guideline for external links would apply - it's acceptable to link to biased, nonreliable sources, as long as they have some kind of useful information. Michelle Remembers, for example, is absolutely worthless as a source of factual information, but the book itself became part of the SRA story, so reading it would help understand the phenomenon better. This being said, there's no shortage of popular, non-academic skeptical books on the subject, especially from pagan/Satanist/new-religious-movement sources and secular Skeptics. So I think a light smattering of each would be appropriate, although of course factual and academic sources are preferred. <eleland/talkedits> 17:25, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Much like see also, I don't see much point in duplicating the books referenced in the body text; if the section is called 'Further reading' so I'd say it should have texts not already on the page. Specific to MR, it's dealt with at relative lenght, including a wikilink, so no need for it in the section. WLU 18:35, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, there's no need to duplicate. I was just using MR as an example. <eleland/talkedits> 18:58, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>Sure. To summarize, a further reading section could be added, provided its contents are reviewed on the talk page first, should contain key texts of both a skeptical and 'believer' (somewhat pejorative, I can't think of a better term) sides, should not duplicate the books used as a reference in the body text, should deal with the reality of SRA, rather than how to treat or otherwise deal with it, and should be the most reliable available. Does that sound reasonable? WLU 19:10, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the above. Abuse truth 04:18, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Lewis case

Both The Guardian and the Sunday Herald can be regarded as reliable sources, for news facts at least. I'm disappointed to see Biaothanatoi describe my summary of a Guardian article as biased and inaccurate in an edit summary. It may well be that both articles need to be included.

Please may we avoid the words "disclosed" and "disclosure" as they imply that we endorse allegations that are usually not proven. I'm aware that they are widely used by psychologists but they are avoided by legal professionals. We should use the most neutral language available. Itsmejudith 12:43, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Your summary was biased and inadequate in that you gave such undue weight to the recantation of single adult witness as to infer that all the charges were based on her allegations. You failed to note that an extensive social work investigation had found that the three complainant children had been abused in a sadistic and organised manner by at least four adults on the Isle. Of the 220 seperate incidences of abuse substantiated by investigators, some involved Satanic rituals.
In short, your summary led the reader to beleive that the charges against the defendants were based on a single lying witness, and were thus without substance. This runs counter to the known facts.
I disagree that the word 'disclosure' is used in a different way by either lawyers and psychologists. The word 'disclosure' is inherently nuetral in that it does not make a value judgement on the truth value of a child's statement about abuse. In contrast, using the term 'allegation' to characterise a child's disclosure of abuse is inherently problematic, in that it confuses the child's disclosure with a formal legal allegation.
Using legal terminology to characterise children's disclosures of abuse is profoundly biased, in that it immediately raises the question of the legal burden of proof, which can rarely be met in sexual abuse cases. --Biaothanatoi 23:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I have noted that the Guardian is still being used as a reference. But there are still problems in how this case is currently written up. The Sunday Herald article makes no reference to allegations of child prostitution being upheld. The Guardian makes reference to the police focusing on satanic abuse for unknown reasons. In summary, no allegations of abuse of a satanic nature reached court. The whole case collapsed. A witness who had made such allegations withdrew her statements entirely. An investigation found evidence of serious sexual abuse but nothing of a satanic nature. It's debatable whether this case should appear in the article at all. The Orkney case should be mentioned. Itsmejudith 12:59, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
The Sunday Herald article refers to people paying the complainant children's parents to have sex with them. That is called "child prostitution". The Scotsman article refers to Satanic rituals being amongst the 220 seperate incidences of abuse substantiated by investigators.
You have no basis for your statement that the single recanting witness was the basis for the Satanic allegations. That is apparently your presumption, since it is not stated in the article itself. --Biaothanatoi 23:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
In my reviews and re-workings of some of the sections, I noticed a tendency for the inclusion of entries in which the 'satanic' aspects were tenuous, or an extremely minor note in the news articles themselves. I'm inclined to say leave out entries when the 'satanic ritual' elements are not extremely significant, if not central to the cases. A father abusing his child and mentioning satan once isn't really SRA in my mind. WLU 15:18, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
In this case the original allegations were full of satanic ritual elements and the police investigation also seems to have concentrated on those elements. But all the satanic ritual allegations were withdrawn, while an official investigation found tht there was substantial abuse of a non-satanic nature. Itsmejudith 16:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Blech. Re-wrote it. The 'satanic' nature of the lewis investigation is really glosssed over in the news articles in favour of the incompetence or inappropriate focus of the investigators. I've tried to focus on this, rather than the 'satanic' nature, since the SRA aspects really are essentially discarded. The Scotsman reference didn't seem to justify anything, and certainly not the statement a police spokesperson stressed that there numerous other witnesses and complainants in the case (acutal quote from the article - "Extremely serious allegations were made in this difficult and complex case, by a number of witnesses. It was necessary for such serious allegations, involving children under the age of 16, to be thoroughly investigated." I've commented it out, but if there is consensus that it needs to be changed, go ahead. The word satan/satanic appears about once in each article, and then is quietly dropped. WLU 17:35, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Where is the disjunction between my summary of the spokesperson's statement and the spokesperson's statement? She refers to multiple witnesses and complainants in fairly strong terms. Provide a direct quote if you object, but I can't see grounds for your criticism.
WLU states that including the police response to the witness's accusation of coercion is "apologist" when I would have presumed that presenting both sides of an argument lends balance to the article. Why should the witness' claim be considered relevant if the police counter-claim is not?--Biaothanatoi 23:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>The references really don't support the idea that there was a satanic ring on the island or in Lewis - a bunch of predators, yes, people abusing their kids, yes, but the Satanic elements really don't seem justified. From The Observer, Angela Stretton, whose evidence was vital in bringing a case of satanic sex abuse against eight people on the island of Lewis, has written to police confessing that some of the allegations she made were false. Especially considering the entire thing has essentially been discarded, to have an extensive discussion based on discarded allegations of abuse in which the 'satanic' aspects are glossed over or barely mentioned seems undue. We could take it to a RFC, really the whole page needs a RFC. Anyway, the situation was full of allegations, none of which were proven. Anyway, the whole thing screams for more sources, so here, here, here (original source preferred), WLU 00:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, you are relying on the emphasis given to the Satanic rituals in a single solitary article regarding the recantation of one witness, but I've pointed you to other sources which indicate that Satanic rituals were amongst the 220 abusive incidences substantiated by investigators.
It seems that undue weight is being given to the recantation of one witness, such as to infer that all charges were based on her testimony. In fact, the govt report indicated that the three children at the centre of the case were the primary complainants and witnesses, and the primary source of the Satanic allegations.
There is a lot of supposition going on amongst editors in this case, and too much reliance on a single article, without considering the facts proferred by all media coverage on this case. --Biaothanatoi 00:14, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Which sources do you think indicate that the investigators substantiated instances of Satanic rituals? I think we are agreed, aren't we, that the police investigation was mishandled. We should look at the terms of reference of the subsequent enquiry, and see if we can find the report itself. Itsmejudith 21:20, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, the newspaper reports hardly portray a damning indication of active Satanists on Lewis. The SRA aspects appear to be mentioned simply because they were mentioned earlier. Given the news articles, you can't really say much about the SRA aspects because the articles don't say much about the SRA aspects. Needs more sources! By my reading, there's two soures saying the investigation was inconclusive, two saying an important witness recounted her testimony, and two saying the procedures followed were bogus. The 2005 investigation did find extensive evidence of abuse, but I don't recall mention of extensive evidence of Satanic abuse. WLU 21:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
The enquiry report is online at http://www.swia.gov.uk/swia/files/An%20inspection%20into%20the%20care%20and%20protection%20of%20children%20in%20Eilean%20Siar.pdf. It documents in great detail a history of abuse within families, in which children's symptoms went unnoticed and their statements were ignored. It uses both the terms "disclosure" and "allegation". It makes no mention at all of any satanic dimension to the abuse. It mentions "ritual" only in the following context:
"In all interviews Mrs A was accompanied by an appropriate adult. She described in detail severe and prolonged abuse of her children by a number of adults. She was interviewed over a period of seven months. Towards the end of the period she described abuse of her children and others as part of various rituals conducted by numbers of adults. She was eventually advised by her appropriate adult to stop describing abuse. In her precognition statement she retracted her allegations against two of the former accused. We found no record of Mrs A being assessed by a psychologist as to her ability to be a witness. The impact of her learning disability appears never to have been determined."
My interpretation of this is that the report authors were concerned that this witness may have begun to exaggerate or invent material about rituals after prolonged questioning by police, questioning that took no account of her learning disability. This is the witness that is mentioned in the newspaper accounts as having retracted her statement - she was also involved in the neglect and abuse of her own children. I'm not suggesting that my interpretation should go into the article. What I'm wondering now is whether this case belongs in the article at all. This report is a highly reliable source and it does not only not say that SRA took place, it does not raise the question at all, it does not discuss whether the police investigation considered it, it does not say that the child witnesses mentioned it (even though it goes into great detail about what the children did say at different times). I cannot find mention either of children selling sex, although it may be somewhere in the report - it may not be relevant anyway. Would others like to read the report and discuss? Itsmejudith 23:13, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
The report is very specific that Mrs A retracted her allegations against "two of the former accused". It does not state that she retracted all her allegations, or her allegations regarding the ritual abuse, nor does it state that she was the sole complainant in relation to the ritual abuse. A number of editors here have sought to make that inference here, but it is not supported by the report and it should not be made in the article.
Disclosures of child prostitution come from p 102: "Caitlin and Alice were also interviewed on separate occasions. They described sexual abuse by male and female adults including family members. They described money changing hands between adults after they were abused."
The media has made much of the disclosures regarding Satanic activity, but the social work report has not, although it does note it in the passage you provide. The fact that the Satanic allegations were widely publicised, the fact that the ritualistic activity is noted in the social work report, the fact that these allegations remain on the public record, and the fact that the organised abuse of the complainant children has been substantiated - all of these facts suggest to me that this case is relevant to the debate on SRA as a whole.
It is also worth noting that the previously misleading material on this case was not challenged here as long as it inferred that the abuse allegations had no basis in fact. Now that this has been corrected, we find the relevance of the case to the article as a whole is challenged - a repeated pattern on this page in relation to organised abuse cases that include SRA allegations.
Why does false and misleading material on SRA cases go unchallenged here as long as it supports the view that the case is fabricated?--Biaothanatoi (talk) 04:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Please assume good faith Biaothanatoi. These are complex cases that are difficult to summarise. I haven't left anything unchallenged but as and when I have time (and I am editing other articles such as solar energy), reading the reliable sources to which I have easy access and trying to make sure that they are accurately reflected in the article. As a point of fact the enquiry report did not "note ritualistic activity" as you say above. It only mentioned in passing that one witness's statements, taken in circumstances of which it was highly critical, mentioned that element. All the reports in the serious press keep separate a) the idea that there was child abuse in one family or a group of families on Orkney and b) the idea that some of that abuse was ritualistic in nature. a) is not proven in law but was found by the social work inspectors, b) was apparently suggested by one or more witnesses, but has never been investigated except in a way that ignored the vulnerability of the witnesses and destroyed the chance of the case ever coming to court. We also must keep these ideas separate. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:36, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Abuse was found to span more then one family, and ritualitsic abuse was a feature of some disclosures in the case. Those are two facts established by the social work report.
Much of your commentary is based on your own supposition and finds no support in the report e.g. The social work report does not make an assessment of the nature of the policy inquiry into the ritualistic allegations, and yet you appear to claim otherwise.
I agree that cases of organised abuse are very complex, which is why we should resist the urge to "fill in the blanks" on a situation that we don't have all the information on. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Preview header

<undent>The PDF provided by IMJ is by far the most reliable source we've got on this case. In it, 'satan' is not mentioned at all, and 'ritual' is mentioned once, as noted above. What kind of rituals were they? Satanic? Voodoo? Puja? There's no clarification. If the Satanic aspects were widely publicised, we must find those public sources and cite them, because the ones we have right now don't say much. The document does not support the idea that SRA occurred in Lewis, though it does support the fact that allegations were made (then withdrawn) for a variety of types of abuse, one of which was SRA. Some paraphilias involve extremely detailed rituals, that does not make them satanic. In this case, there is no indication of a supernatural, religious or occult basis to any allegations.

With the sources we have right now, all we can say is that allegations of SRA have occurred, at least one witness has recanted them, and the investigators were criticized for botching things. It's not a matter of 'the case being fabricated or not', it's a matter of summarizing what the sources give us, and that's not much. Wikipedia will not, and can not due to policy, prove that SRA is real or not, in this case or any others; sources attempt to do that. The sources have minimal mention of stanic abuse in them - the Herald mentions it once:

  1. Allegations soon emerged of ritual abuse - a Satanic paedophile ring with echoes of similar allegations uncovered in Orkney and Cleveland

The Guardian thrice:

  1. Headline - Satanic abuse key witness says: I lied
  2. Angela Stretton, whose evidence was vital in bringing a case of satanic sex abuse against eight people on the island of Lewis, has written to police confessing that some of the allegations she made were false.
  3. For reasons which have never been explained, the authorities instead focused their inquiries on allegations of an island-wide satanic abuse ring.

Other relevant sections:

    1. The developments have raised critical questions about the handling of the investigation and whether lessons have been learnt by the police and social workers following false allegations of ritual child abuse in the Orkney, Rochdale and Cleveland scandals.
    2. In Lewis, eight people, including a 75- year-old grandmother, appeared in court accused of raping and otherwise sexually abusing children in black magic rituals. The court was told of wife-swapping orgies and the sacrifices of cats and chickens whose blood was drunk. [paragraph break] The case made international news. Yet it was quietly dropped nine months later with no explanation...

The Scotsman thrice:

  1. Headline - Police deny pressuring 'satanic abuse' witness
  2. POLICE yesterday rejected claims they put undue pressure on a key witness in a satanic abuse investigation on the Isle of Lewis, after she admitted lying to detectives following days of intense questioning.
  3. Despite that, social work inspectors found more than 220 incidents of abuse between 1990 and 2000 - including allegations of satanic rituals - involving at least four adults.

The SWIA report mentions 'ritual' once:

  1. Towards the end of the period she described abuse of her children and others as part of various rituals conducted by numbers of adults.

That is what we have to work with so lets build the Lewis section out of this. The rest of the articles' and the report's contents discuss abuse, but do not single out SRA. They do case doubt on the testimony as a witness. I've underlined the points which I believe demonstrate that an interpretation of 'a SRA ring existed on Lewis' does not belong in the article. Again, all of the Satanic aspects are cited as 'allegations', not proof. For better or worse, this is what we have to work with. I think we should try to get the article up to a higher standard, then ask for a RFC on the whole thing. WLU (talk) 15:19, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

This report may be helpful [1] although there is a slight contradiction with the Guardian article, in that the Guardian states that allegations of satanic ritual were made in court whereas the Scotland on Sunday article implies that they were not, but only contained in reports which they had been shown by the police. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
The key line for me from that article is "A police report on the Lewis case, seen by Scotland on Sunday, appears to show that there was some evidence of abuse not related to Satanism, including inappropriate touching and indecent pictures of juveniles kept on a computer. " The only thing I think we can say about Lewis is that allegations were made, a witness retracted them, and the case has been dismissed. WLU (talk) 21:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
That is an inadequate summary of the facts, WLU. What we can say is that the children's allegations of organised abuse over a ten year period were substantiated and this included abuse inside and outside the family by male and female perpetrators. One adult witness who corroborated the children's accounts has since retracted a portion of her statement.
At no point does the social work report state that Miss A was the sole witness in relation to the ritualistic activity, or that Miss A specifically retracted the portion of her statement related to the ritualistic activity.
As for your statement that the case has been 'dismissed' - what does this mean, WLU? Dismissed by who, and when? It seems to me that the case has been subject to a government investigation, which found the children's complaints to have been true. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:23, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Organized abuse does not equal SRA. A pedophile ring aren't satanists (unless they're satanic pedophiles). The social work report also does not help include the idea of SRA being in the article; satan's not mentioned. I'm not arguing that the children's complaints of abuse are not true, I'm arguing that the complaints of satanic abuse are tenuous. This page is about satanic ritual abuse, there are other pages discussing other types of abuse. We should be focussing on the satanic aspects (oh, if my mother could see what I'm typing now...), not whether the abuse overall happened. To portray it as 'abuse happened therefore the SRA happened' would be original research in my mind, a synthesis that is not allowed. WLU (talk) 22:11, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm happy to see this article reflect the ambiguities of this case - in fact, it would be constructive and informative for the reader if it did so. For instance, it would be accurate to state that sadistic and organised abuse has been substantiated, and that ritualistic forms of abuse were alleged, however these claims have not been contested in a court of law - or words to that effect.
I'm not claiming that SRA occured because organised abuse occurred. What I'm saying is that it is significant that the children's disclosures of organised abuse were substantiated, even whilst claims regarding satanic or ritualistic features remain uncertain. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:16, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Well-researched?

An Empirical Look at the Ritual Abuse Controversy has so many misspelled words, that I would question the research. It's possible that it's ra-info.org's fault, rather than the researcher's, so it's not enough to remove the link, but you might want to let them know. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing in this internet paper that reassures us that it is a good source. If the author is a researcher in the field then he will have published papers in peer-reviewed journals that can be cited instead. Otherwise, I don't think the source should stand. Itsmejudith 21:17, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
It appears to be well-referenced. And if this one http://www.smwane.dk/ is allowed to be on the page, then the ra-info one IMO appears to be better researched and more reputable.Abuse truth 03:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I removed both, and the conviction list, which I still fail to see the point of. Sure it's got references, but to what? It's a listing of newspaper clipping summaries, in which the ritual and satanic aspects are sometimes very dubious (child pornography and cannibalism are indeed horrific, but are not satanic in and of themselves). Anwyay, we can discuss. The Empirical Look paper should have been an inline citation linked to the conference abstract rather than an external link. I've sent Noblitt an e-mail to see if he can provide us something actually citable - right now it's verging on a personal webpage, and its eligibility for inclusion in the article at all is questionable. WLU 16:35, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I've added back Conviction List: Ritual Child Abuse for now. IMO, it is important to show that these kinds of cases have occurred in the legal system and this appears to be the best list available. It also adds balance to the article. Abuse truth (talk) 23:20, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I disagree, I think it unbalances the article. WP:EL, by my understanding, actually calls for a higher standard than WP:RS, but at minimum, a link should be a reliable source if it's asserting information. I don't think it's useful and previous approval doesn't make it permanent. As always, there's the option of a WP:RFC to settle it. WLU (talk) 02:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:EL#Avoid_undue_weight_on_particular_points_of_view
it states - Avoid undue weight on particular points of view
On articles with multiple points of view, the number of links dedicated to one point of view should not overwhelm the number dedicated to other equal points of view, nor give undue weight to minority views. Add comments to these links informing the reader of their point of view. If one point of view dominates informed opinion, that should be represented first. For more information, see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view—in particular, Wikipedia's guidelines on undue weight
Having the Lanning link alone definitely gives undue weight to a POV. It is from religioustolerance.org, IMO a POV site. Lanning has also been criticized for ignoring certain cases and not doing sufficient or any investigative work on the subject. I will be adding the ra-info site back for now. Abuse truth (talk) 23:36, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>The actual guideline from WP:UNDUE states that minority viewpoints should be given less coverage than the mainstream ones. Currently, the mainstream view by my reading is that SRA is greatly blown out of proportion, and the extreme view (that there's widespread cults dedicated towards ritual sex and murder that are dedicated to 'Satanic worship') is pretty much bogus. Ergo, that should be reflected in the page and the links Please don't add the link back until the discussion is complete and consensus is reached. I'd say the report on SRA is definitely notable, the RT.org site is the resource. The other link is, as I've said before, a collection of news reports, some of which are extremely tenuously related to actual SRA, and there's no weblinks to the source articles themselves. I don't think it's a good link. It's a summary of news reports, verging on a personal website that happens to collect summaries of said articles, with no way of knowing if the summaries are accurate. WLU (talk) 00:46, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Even if you are right, less coverage however doesn't mean no coverage. Having only one POV link does not accurately reflect the media coverage or journal articles. The page deleted does not take an extreme viewpoint. If Lanning did ignore certain cases, than how do we know if his work is credible. IMO, the Lanning link either needs to be balanced or the entire section deleted. Abuse truth (talk) 23:50, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
If you want to include a 'pro' link, find a reliable one. Lanning's is published by the FBI accademy. It's credible because its attributable to a person and it's published by a government publishing house. I think it should stay because it is too lengthy to quote or include in the article, yet contains the thought process of an investigator who worked in this area for over 10 years, who is employed in a national training academy for law enforcement. The other was a summary and combination of newspaper articles from all over the world, that did not have links to the articles themselves, ergo no way to check they're accurate, containing doubtful (in my mind) conflation of specific cases of abuse with SRA based on dubious evidence. The 'conviction list' also states at the top "The ritualistic aspects of the crimes often are not presented in court but are clearly indicated in the victims' accounts." At the bottom of the second page it states "Granting an appeal for a new trial does not constitute a ruling that the crime for which the defendant was originally tried could not have been committed." In my mind, the page assumes the individuals are guilty, then conflates any mention of possible 'indicators' of SRA to assume abuse, all without giving original context. I think it's out, due to this section, point 2. WLU (talk) 15:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, it's my understanding that Lanning's report was not published or endorsed by the FBI. It was simply a paper that the Lanning wrote and disseminated himself. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:07, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I believe that Biaothanatoi is correct. The article was first printed in "Out of darkness: Exploring satanism and ritual abuse." (Sakheim, David K. and Devine, Susan, Eds.) (1992) Lexington Books/Macmillan: NY, NY. Lanning, Kenneth V. "A law-enforcement perspective on allegations of ritual abuse." pp. 109-146. I have the book. There is no mention that the article was ever published by "the FBI accademy." To me, the article looks like it is simply his opinion with a few sources thrown in at the end.
As WLU stated on a different talk page:
"The figures and claims should be backed by the most reliable sources available - if not a peer-reviewed journal, then a peer-reviewed book or book published by a university press or other publisher with oversight on the contents of books" and "publication in a lay-book bypasses the peer review process, but publication in a valid publisher with oversight and review over the contents would be valid. If they're quoting a journal publication, that should be the source, not the book, and include the pubmed ID or other abstract-available weblink."
If we hold all sources up to these guidelines, then Lanning's article does not hold up.
I am also confused that this link :
http://www.ra-info.org/library/programming/noblitt.shtml An Empirical Look at the Ritual Abuse Controversy was previously rejected by the same editors at this page. Yet it contains "the thought process of an investigator who worked in this area for over" 20 years and one that is well-published in the field. This article, unlike the Lanning one, footnotes every statement. If we lower our standards for the Lanning article, then other articles from a different POV should be allowed to stand as well.Abuse truth (talk) 03:11, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
The quality of a source should not be judged by whether we think there is adequate footnoting or not. There are only two points to consider in relation to the Lanning article:
1) Is Lexington Books/Macmillan an academic/reputable publisher? If it is part of Macmillan, then it would seem yes.
2) Is the online version an accurate representation of the original book chapter? I don't know that and would be interested to read editors' opinions.
There is no need to compare one book with many footnotes and another without. Lanning is/was a top professional in his field and may write from his professional experience. Another writer may make a review of academic literature. Both are relevant and should if possible be reflected in the article. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I e-mailed Noblitt, he said it was a conference abstract part of a self-published book, as well as part of another book. I've asked him if it was ever peer-reviewed before any of the publications, if I get a reply that's documentable, I'll post a link. Though I could not find reference to this publication by Lanning on the FBI reports site, there were numerous other mentions of Lanning on the site, and the report itself appears to be referenced many times in reliable sources. If Lanning's report was published in full by Lexington Books (a university press? Is there editorial oversight?), that does make it a reliable source, and the religious tolerance website is just a convenient way of citing it. Depending on other concerns, Lanning's report may not be eligible for being an EL, I don't have time to comment right now. It's already an in-line citation, but I think there's merit in it being an EL as well as. We'll have to discuss, but it'd be a case of WP:IAR. Apologies, I've got to be running. WLU (talk) 22:07, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Lanning's paper was not published or endorsed by the FBI, although many people erroneously believe it to be so. Lanning wrote and circulated it himself. You might note that Lanning's paper does not follow a standard report format - there is no literature review, no overview of his methodology, and no attempt to explain to his readers how he came to his conclusions. In effect, it is simply Lanning's personal reflections on his experiences investigating child abuse, in relation to claims in the sensationalist media relating to a "Satanic conspiracy" etc.
Lanning's chapter in Out Of Darkness is not a reprinting of his report - in fact, he states explicitly in Out Of Darknes that ritualistic and satanic forms of abuse do occur in sexually abusive groups, but he challenges the notion that the ritualistic abuse is a "religious" or "cult" activity.
ReligiousTolerance.org is not a reliable source for a number of obvious reasons. The authors have no experience or credentials in any of the matters that they write about, they have never been published anywhere else except on their own website, and they claim to be "Consultants" but I've never seen any evidence that they've ever been paid for what they do e.g. Their claim to be "consultants" is actually false, and they are nothing of the kind. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:26, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
As far as WP:IAR goes, we should include both Noblitt's and the ra-info court case article. Both can be helpful to readers in seeing different sides of the issue. "When reputable sources contradict one another, the core of the NPOV policy is to let competing approaches exist on the same page."Abuse truth (talk) 04:45, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>WP:IAR means there is no 'should', it means we discuss until we decide what rules to ignore. Noblitt could be used as an in-line citation, it's short enough for that. Lanning's article is included as an EL because it is so long, it can't really be used as simply a soure, or more accurately, it's a good, lengthy discourse on the subject. The RA court cases are not reliable sources in any way by my reading. I think IAR could apply for Lanning because it's cited many times in actual scientific literature but it's not published itself in a form I can find. It's used as a reliable source by reliable sources, giving it credibility, and it's written by an expert in the area (Lanning is indeed an employee of the FBI). Thus I venture to IAR because even though a strict interpretation of WP:RS and WP:EL would bar Lanning from being included as an EL, it's sufficiently material, of such length, and used in such a way elsewhere (i.e. as if it were a RS), that it's worth keeping. Noblitt isn't lengthy and could easily be an inline citation. The court cases are not reliable, the are the interpretation of whoever posts to the website (and I don't know who maintains it, so it's not attributable) and I find their interpretations suspect in more than one instance. It is useful as a source of sources (and apparently has been used as such, because I notice the news articles it cites have appeared quite frequently on the SRA page proper several times), but should not itself be cited or appear as an external link. Bring all three up at Talk:WP:EL, WP:RS and WP:IAR if you'd like, or as a RFC, or ask some admins for their opinion, be sure to post a link to the discussion here. WLU (talk) 18:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

As per WLU's suggestion, have made Noblitt article a citation. Have added another EL that adds NPOV to EL section.Abuse truth (talk) 04:48, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
The current use of the Noblitt article doesn't really say anything, and I don't know about putting it in the lead, but it's better than as an EL. The second link, going by its description, shouldn't be an EL - the description stated it was a poll about how many people in Utah believe in SRA. That's not a good EL, though the contents may be more appropriate. If you've a reference and you're not sure where to put it, the EL section is not a good place to go. It does look like a near-ideal source for the body text. It'd be nice if we could get it right from the Utah government site if possible. Report of Utah State Task Force on Ritual Abuse - May 1992 WLU (talk) 12:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Have added the Utah link instead as a reference.Abuse truth (talk) 20:06, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The Netherlands section

Given the scrutiny being paid to the Lewis case, do editors also want to read the Netherlands section and make a call regarding the relevance of much of the material to the article in general?

I've voiced some concern in the past that the material is speculative, POV, and largely reproduces the arguments of pro-incest advocate Benjamin Rossen's coverage of the case. Many of the quoted sources are too general to apply specifically to the Netherlands or SRA (e.g. Stanley Cohen's "Moral Panic", published in the 60s), or else they are in Dutch and we can't assess their credibility, or whether they are being quoting them accurately. Much of his account is speculative in relation to the cause of claims of SRA in the Netherlands or why there have been relatively few of them in comparison to the States. What relevance does this have to the article as a whole? It is clearly one person's POV.

His account of Oude Pekala contains a number of ambiguities. For instance, he notes that the psychiatrist and the two doctors who examined the children, have stated that they informed the police that the children disclosed ritualistic abuse, and that the parents of the children have also claimed that they informed the police of their children's ritualistic disclosures. The editor then states that the authorities "would have denied" being told of these allegations. This statement is unclear - have the authorities denied such a thing? Or is the editor postulating that they "would" deny being told if they were asked?

The attendant physicians in the Oude Pekala case, Jonker and Jonker-Bakker, have published their medical findings in English, peer-reviewed journals, where they indicate that there were clear findings of psychological and physical harm amongst the complainant children in the Oude Pekala. The editor in question has blocked a summary of their research findings, stating instead that these findings have been "heavily criticised" - but he does not tell us on what grounds or why. Putnam may feel that their research is "inflammatory" but he does not question the methodology of the research.

I'd like to see some balance from editors here in terms of the scrutiny that they apply to cases of SRA. The Netherlands material is long, rambling, and clearly POV. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this needs reviewing. The Cohen book, outstanding sociology though it is, is not relevant here. The trouble is, few of us read Dutch. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:22, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
We don't need to read Dutch to correct this section. There are numerous factual inaccuracies and unsupported (and unsupportable) POV assertions throughout the article. I'm also concerned that the editor in question who wrote this material knew intimate details about the life of Benjamin Rossen that are not, to my knowledge, in the public domain. Given Rossen's writings for the pro-paedophile Journal of Paedophilia, editors here should be concerned about the possibility that someone friendly with Rossen is writing on child abuse for Wikipedia. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Much of the speculative analysis here is attributed to "Tjalling Beetstra", a doctoral candidate writing in the Netherlands on satanic ritual abuse. Is this editor the same person, and is he referencing himself? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Just checked over Beetstra's biography, and he was born in 1963. Interesting, because the editor responsible for this section on the Netherlands is called Criminologist1963. Seems like Beetstra is using Wikipedia as his own little self-promotion vehicle.
What is the appropriate course of action here? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Recent changes

I'm trying to figure out who removed recent research findings from the section on DID, and posted instead a fifteen-year-old paper by Richard Ofshe on the Paul Ingram case.

Ofshe is a founder of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and his theories on the Paul Ingram case (on which the new source is based) were thrown out of court by the trial judge as unscientific and bizarre. Please read this overview of the case for more information on the methodological and logical flaws in Ofshe's account.

It is difficult to understand why recent research findings on memory and trauma were deleted in favour of a fifteen-year-old paper on a falsified case study by a founding member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Probably me, in this edit. The Ofshe paper I just threw in because I found it on pubmed. I've no problem with taking that clause out. There's a bunch of commented out stuff in that paragraph, I have some concerns about the resources being used either inappropriately or as a synthesis. Unless the article about PTSD mentions SRA or DID in a very specific context, I can't see a reason to include it. WLU (talk) 23:30, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd frankly be happy to delete the entire section on DID - it's only there as a hang-over from the previous article.
Can you please substantiate your concerns about 'synthesis' before acting on them? It is not good faith to delete material on the basis of a suspicion if you have no actual grounds to do so. I'm hearing consistent concerns about 'synthesis' in relation to my material, but editors have yet to demonstrate - just once - where this has taken place.
It would also be appreciated if you could hold your own editing to the standards that you set for others. You deleted recent research findings in favour of an old (and falsified) case study to make a generalisation about the nature of memory. A case study is an inadequate source for such a generalisation, particularly when it is fifteen years old and contradicted by recent research.
In this particular case, the author is a founding member of a fringe activist group constituted of people accused of sexual abuse, and his paper advanced an argument that was thrown out of court by a judge as unscientific and bizarre. The subject of the article, Paul Ingram, was not only found guilty and went to jail, but he confessed to his involvement in SRA, and his son requesteed in 1997 that his father be denied parole, since he was a 'dangerous' man.
Please show more care before you delete relevant material and "throw in" a random article that you stumble across. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:52, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Criminologist1963, Tjalling Beetstra, and self-promotion

The Netherlands section is a cut-and-paste job from the Duth Wiki site by an editor called Criminologist1963, and you'll note that much of the article is cited to a Duth PhD candidate called Tjalling Beetstra. There are some interesting similarities between Criminologist1963 and Tjalling Beetstra that I'd like to raise here. They are both Dutch, they both study "Satanic Ritual Abuse", they both claim to be criminologists, and they were both born in 1963.

Criminologist1963 cites Beetstra as an authoritative source no less then three times, then mentions Beetstra as an expert in the article itself, and provides a link to Beetstra's website, which advertises his services as an 'expert' on SRA. It seems likely to me that Crim1963 is Beetstra, and this raises issues regarding Beetstra's use of Wikipedia to promote himself, and his conflict of interest in editing this article.

Criminologist1963 has consistently rejected attempts to change this article, even though factual inaccuracies have been established in his account. Looking back over the changes that he blocked, they were all changes that deleted Beetstra's name or the link to his commercial website. It seems that Crim1963 has a financial interest in maintaining this portion of the SRA website and preventing other editors from contributing, even where his information has been established as factually incorrect.

I think this is a clear-cut case of self-promotion and conflict of interest. What do other editors think? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not concerned about possible COI without direct evidence, but the weblink doesn't work for me. If the references support the statements, it should stay (though it does appear to be quite long considering it's a single incident). Irrespective, Beetstra's name should be removed (no reason to put up a non-notable name) and if the reference is just a webpage and not a peer-reviewed source, the whole section it justifies should be removed. Really, the webpage is irrelevant, without a book, book chapter or journal, the section should be removed. I'm working on it now. WLU (talk) 23:47, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I would have presumed that this is a prima faci case of COI - it is reasonable to presume that Crim1963 and Beetstra are the same person (Dutch, 'criminologists', specialise in SRA from a skeptical POV, born in 1963), therefore Beetstra added himself to the article without declaring himself as the author, included a link to a website where he advertises his commercial services, and then ridiculed other editors if they attempted to delete the reference to him without making it clear that he had a financial interest in those links. Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:01, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I re-worked it, as you suspected, it deserved to be a much shorter section and there's no reason to mention Beetstra. The report itself does sound interesting as a source though. WLU (talk) 00:01, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Cheers. Agreed that the report sounds interesting - we had a similar report published in Australia in 1994, although it concluded that SRA did exist.
I'll take a look at the article and include some material about Jonker and Jonker-Bakker - they published four articles that I know of documenting their experiences of the Oude Pekela incident, including findings of medical, psychosocial and pscyhological harm drawn from a ten year cohort study of the complainant children. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:06, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>If you reference them make sure you use the <ref name> template, [18] is Jonker/Jonker Bakker (1991). Otherwise, have a go at finding it on pubmed and using the citation generators - they're incredibly easy and incredibly handy. I think there's already a ref name template - <ref name = Jonker1991/>. WLU (talk) 02:04, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Reworking looks good, thanks WLU. Are we sure all the remaining sources are scholarly? Itsmejudith (talk) 20:57, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Jonker-Bakker and Putnam are genuine, they're in peer-reviewed journals with PUBMED numbers. The Tijdsein ref with Beetstra as an author I have no idea (can't read Dutch and haven't looked for it due to time constraints; I could ask User:Jfdwolff to look into it - he's an admin and speaks Dutch) but I'm agf-ing that it's genuine. Pretty much the exact same comment goes for the Werkgroep reference, but I'd love to get my hands on a translated copy. Werkgroep is not scholarly, but it's reliable and appropriate for for the citations used (assuming the background is correct, it's a government publication on SRA in the Netherlands). Non-scholarly sources are OK, as long as they're reliable. WLU (talk) 22:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)


Since Fred Jonker and Ietje Jonker-Bakker are still seen as the experts on satanic ritual abuse by you and it seems that your conviction is only based on the fact that they published articles in the International Journal on Child Abuse and Neglect, please read the article of Frank Putnam that was published in the same journal. 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. Finally I want to point out that in the Netherlands Jonker and Jonker-Bakker are not and have never been seen as the experts on satanic ritual abuse.

Jonker and Jonker-Bakker have never claimed to be experts on satanic ritual abuse. Their articles refer specifically to their clinical experiences of the Oude Pekela case and the cohort study of children that developed from that case.
What you are highlighting between Putnam and Jonker/Jonker-Bakker is a differing point of view, not a criticism of their methodology or analysis. Putnam's own stance on satanic ritual abuse has been criticised elsewhere. That is simply the nature of academic debate, particularly on contentious issues like this.
Wikipedia asks us to maintance balance, and so it is necessary to report on Jonker and Jonker-Bakker's findings, since they are of significance to the case. What you have attempted to do, instead, is suppress Jonker and Jonker-Bakker's findings - and we have established here that you had an undisclosed commercial and professional interest in doing so, Beetstra. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

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

Aanh. Hand. II, 1992-1993, Nr. 770 - an official document from the Dutch parliament: It contains questions of members of parliament to the minister of Health and the answers of this minister.

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 of a congress about mediahypes at the University of Leiden.

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.

Tijdsein is a television newsmagazine.

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. Translation of my own Dutch text on Wikipedia is not a violation of any policy or guideline of Wikipedia. Criminologist1963 (talk) 19:04, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

It is a violation of Wikipedia guidelines to use this site to promote a commercial service, Beetstra. In this case, you have attempted to use WP to promote your services as a self-appointed "expert" in satanic ritual abuse, which is why your edits have been removed. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I removed the massive dump of information to the Netherlands section - the whole thing was far too detailed considering what it was - the sources ultimately stated that the allegations were bogus. It's therefore unnecessary in my mind to have a multi-paragraph discussion of what is described (by its own author) as a tempest in a teapot. If it's nothing, it gets the same mention as other nothing incidents - short, referenced discussion. If the Netherlands involvement in the SRA phenomenon is of sufficient interest and detail, it can be spun off in its own article with a {{main}} in this one. Further, if Beetstra's work is ever published in a reliable source, it can be quoted. The inclusion of a link to a personal webpage is clearly out per WP:RS. The fact that it doesn't even link to a research portion of the page (not that any research reported there would be eligible for inclusion in the page) makes it look like spam. I don't care if it's self-promotion or other-promotion, it's spam and is not suitable for inclusion in the page. If Beetstra can't get published in journals, he certainly can't get published here. WLU (talk) 15:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

New source

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/garyhughes/index.php/theaustralian/comments/ritual_abuse_real_or_not/ - it's a blog, so there needs be some digging to see if they could be considered a reliable source. It is a blog of a senior writer of a national newspaper I believe. WLU 01:31, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Trying to find Bottoms, Shaver and Goodman. Found this and this and this and this and this and this one available as pdf and this, the only ref I found to B, S & G 1993 on google scholar was to a conference ( Repressed memory and allegations of ritual and religion-related child abuse; GS Goodman, J Qin, BL Bottoms, PR Shaver - Clark Conference on Memories of Trauma, Worchester, MA, 1993). Does anyone have an actual citation that would let us see the original work? WLU 01:41, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
this, this. Also, if the B, S & G is cited in the book, but the book does not contain the full article, the better thing to do is provide the full citation, perhaps with an 'as cited in' and then the book citation. WLU 01:45, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
The citation has been fixed. Abuse truth 02:10, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Lurvely. Have a gander at WP:TALK, it'll help standardize your talk page comments so they look like everyone else's - makes it easier to read. WLU 02:16, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

General comments on references

I'm again slogging through the article attempting to standardize the referencing. When adding or reorganizaing material, please consider using citation templates. They are extremely easy to generate, using the following tools:

  • [2] - generates a {{cite journal}} template requiring only a search term, usually the article title works
  • pubmed/isbn template generator - generates a citation template for books and journals using ISBN or PUBMED ID numbers. I prefer this one, because it automatically results in a link to the pubmed abstract in the template.

Regards general formatting, I believe the preference is for punctuation to precede the reference, and there should not be spaces, punctuation or other breaks between citations. Also, no spaces between words/phrases/sentences and the citation - all these leave gaps or hanging punctuation which look odd to my eye.

Also, for any newspaper references, please attempt to find some sort of link to the article through google or the individual newspaper archives. I've managed to find a fair number, but it's extremely tedious to do so for dozens of articles in a row. If the page is taken for a RFC (as is my intention), these are things that will be pointed out.

For repeated references, please use the <ref name = name/> tag, it means fewer endnotes in an already very long list.

Finally, please do not use e.g., see, for example, etc. in references justifying statements (unless it's things like 'numerous books were written'). Either the reference justifies the statement, or it doesn't. To provide examples and say this demonstrates the point, without said example explicitly demonstrating said point, is original research and to be avoided. Links are vital in these cases, so readers can determine if the example is justified, and so editors can tweak the phrasing to accurately represent the article.

If anyone has questions about formatting, citation templates or other wikification stuff, I'm happy to answer questions (but leave me a note on my talk page to get my attention). A RFC will definitely work to improve the page, but there's no point getting dinged for minor stuff that's easy to correct first. WLU (talk) 21:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Orkney

Orkney needs much better referencing. There's only one linkable reference, it mentions ritual abuse twice (and satanic abuse once, see below). I can't find the text of the Lord Clyde report, surely it must have been published on-line somewhere? Considering there's two references, it's an awfully long section. Also, the one link that is present, to The Scotsman, contains the immortal line 'In 1994, a government report based on three years of research said there was no foundation to the plethora of satanic child abuse claims.' So basically we have five short paragraphs, of maybe 20 sentences (far longer than the Lewis section, with three references, each one linked multiple times to specific statements), with two references, one of which basically appears to say there is no actual connection to SRA. Seems a bit odd... WLU (talk) 01:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Re-worked. Still needs better references. WLU (talk) 02:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
WLU, should La Fontaine's report be included specifically under the Orkney section, or in the section on the UK in general? Also, if La Fontaine's report is aired here, we should also mention a subsequent govt-funded report in 2000 written by Hale and Sinason which contradicted La Fontaine and stated that SRA was occuring in the UK.
We need to be careful about maintaining balance here. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
No idea, I'd have to see the report to give an opinion. I assume La Fontaine is Lord Clyde? Find the sources, post them, then they can be reviewed. I can't give an opinion blind, and if you've got a weblink, it's easier than me tracking it down. I hate slogging through google to find obscure references. WLU (talk) 11:55, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Nope, Clyde was the author of the Orkney-specific review, La Fontaine is an anthropologist who published a govt-funded report in the mid-90s stating that SRA was not occuring in the UK. Sinanson and Hale released another govt-funded report in 2000 stating otherwise, but my understanding is that this report was never made public.
Not at my desk at the moment, but will dig up references ASAP. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, and I hope you'll be able to clarify what you mean by a report that was "released" but not "made public". I'm going to do a trawl for scholarly articles by the people you mention. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
My understanding is that Hale and Sinason were engaged by the health department to write a report on SRA, and they wrote and submitted ("released") this report to the health dept, although the dept decided not to make this report public e.g. circulate it or release it to the media.
Authorities may decide not to make a report public for any number of reasons. For instance, in Victoria, Australia, the police ombudsman submitted a report to the premier in 2004 which raised concerns about police improprieties in relation to investigations into allegations of organised abuse, including SRA. Under pressure from the police union, which threatened to go on strike, the premier chose not to table this report in parliament, which meant that the report is not in the public domain. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>Basically if anyone else is going to add information to the page based on the article, we need access to it - otherwise we're limited by the wording placed on the page by the person who added the info in the first place. Essentially, links to any and all possible and actual references are useful. I dislike paper references for the obvious reasons that a) I can't read it to see if its accurate and b) I can't mine it for further information to expand or modify the page. If you've got weblinks to Clyde, La Fontaine or Sinanson & Hale, please post 'em as they could be germane to multiple sections. WLU (talk) 15:48, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it would be very nice to have weblinks to all the potentially good sources, but it ain't necessarily gonna happen. Much of the relevant material comes from the 1990s when it wasn't routine to put reports online. I did my academic paper trawl and while there are papers by La Fontaine and Sinason, I didn't find any relating to SRA. The Clyde Report and La Fontaine report are in principle accessible, at least if you can get to a good academic library in the UK. The Clyde Report should be available to purchase from HMSO. The Sinason and Hale report was not published. It seems that the research was funded by the UK Department of Health but then the report did not pass peer review and was buried. Sinason does not list it among her publications on her website. As far as I can see her only publication related to SRA is the book "Treating Survivors of SRA". There are some extremely critical reviews of it around online but I would have to check to see which of any of them if any are by academics in the field. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with WLU, who is essentially advocating that the scope of this article be limited solely to online sources. I can't imagine a less systematic approach, or one more likely to exclude reliable and peer-reviewed material in favor of questionable "free" material e.g. religioustolerance.org or Underwager's IPT. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't advocate online-only sources, they are just far more convenient. Off-line sources are a completely unknown quantity for all except the person with the source unless they're scanned or transcribed. Ideally I'd rather have the entire page based on peer-reviewed journals, but that's never going to be the reality. Another advantage is on-line sources tend to be more recent. But I've consistently tried to AGF - as long as I can find evidence that even the paper exists, if it's the only source I've left it in. I think that's reasonable. WLU (talk) 02:58, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Also, if the report hasn't been released into the public domain, what's our source? How did anyone get a hold of it? Is it therefore reliable? Are any of these concerns documented anywhere? It just makes it difficult to work with the information and opens the door to 'counter sources', also not available, that discuss problems with the other sources. I think the page isn't doing too badly considering the nature of the topic and the polarization of the skeptics and believers. WLU (talk) 03:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
In Sinason's case, the suppression of her report was widely reported in the print media.
Agreed that the page is doing pretty well. I've been trying to see some reform here for a few years, and this is the most reasonable collection of editors I've come across so far.
I understand that online sources are easier to access, but in my experience of this field, there is a massive divide between the online and offline sources on SRA. In particular, the online debate has been captured by "False Memory" activists and armchair "skeptics", whilst there is a suprising amount of nuanced and evidenced-based debate in the academic press - but people have to care enough about this subject to go to a library and read some books first! --Biaothanatoi 23:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

UK section

The lead-in to the UK section starts with The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children affirmed the reality of ritual abuse in 1990, with the publication of survey findings that, of 66 child protection teams in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 14 teams had received reports of ritual abuse from children and seven of them were working directly with children who had been ritually abused, sometimes in groups of 20. [98] Reference 98 is to "Libby Jukes adn Richard Duce, NSPCC says ritual child abuse is rife, The Times, 13 March 1990", of which I can't find an on-line citation (brief search though). However, this article seems to cast some doubt on the NSPCC report, and makes me wonder if the section should a) lead in with this information given the tenuousness of the source (the actual NSPCC report would be much better than an unlinked article to a 17-year-old news story - cite the source rather than the news story!) and b) state it as strongly as it does if it's moved elsewhere. From my reading and re-working of the SRA claims in the UK, it looks like a history of allegations, withdrawn charges, failed court cases and negative government reports (on the satanic ritual aspects, not the abuse - again, this is the SRA page, not the child abuse page). WLU (talk) 02:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

WLU, please consider that media coverage may not be the whole story. There is twenty years of research in the United Kingdom regarding the role of ritualistic activity in child sex rings, and I'm happy to point you to it. Prof. Liz Kelly, Sara Scott, Catherine Itzen, Peter Bibby and many others have undertaken empirical research in substantiated cases of organised abuse, and found ritualistic activity is associated with the worst forms of child maltreatment. The vast majority of cases of child abuse never go to the court (whether the abuse was 'mundane' or organised/ritualistic) and the prosecution rate is very low. It's not suprising that allegations of SRA faired badly in court - most allegations of sexual abuse do.
Cleveland, the Orkneys, and the other "high profile" UK cases got media attention because the accused abusers engaged journalists and tried to use the media to contest the charges against them, whereas child protection workers were unable to contradict the media coverage because they were bound by professional codes of confidentiality. Consequently, media coverage was profoundly skewed towards the parents, who gave sympathetic interviews, showed journalists through their homes, etc etc etc.
We now know that the parents lied to the media in these cases. In the Cleveland case, the accused parents already had children in care for horrific sexual abuse, and they went to the media when one of mothers fell pregnant and they knew that social services would remove the child. The parents withheld that information from journalists and painted a picture of a 'perfect family', which the media bought wholesale. In the Orkneys case, several of the accused already had convictions for child sexual abuse, and they had all moved (en masse) from mainland England to the Orkneys to escape social services. They withheld this information from journalists, and they lied when they claimed that the children were abducted in "dawn raids".
You can't just type these cases into Google and expect to glean all the information you need. The info I've provided above comes from social research undertaken by sociologists, criminologists and social workers who published in the academic press. If you don't do this kind of in-depth research, and rely instead on two or three archived newspaper articles (or "Spiked Online", whatever that is) then you can be easily mislead. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Please do give us as many pointers towards relevant academic literature as you can, and as soon as you can. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:21, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Rather than posting long discussions on the topic, can you provide the references? The page is written on the basis of reliable sources with discussion playing a second fiddle. Right now I've got a source telling me that SRA in the UK is bullshit, and you telling me it's not. I'll find a source far more convincing than any discussion, and every source I've seen leads me to the conclusion that 'satanic panic'-style SRA (organized, with a primary goal of pleasing satan rather than sexual gratification, sacrificing thousands of children a year, which helps practitioners fly and summon demons) does not exist. You've got a source saying parents milked the press? Post it. WLU (talk) 12:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
The info I provided is summarised in Jenny Kitzinger, "Framing Abuse: Media Influence and Public Understanding of Sexual Violence Against Children", Pluto Press, 2004. The reason why I have posted the "long discussion" above is because Wiki editors on this page have often challenged footnotes to off-line sources, particularly books, since they can't access the info immidiately via Google.
Kitzinger is the Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University, and, in the book I've quoted, she undertook focus group testing with groups of people in the UK regarding their recall of media coverage of ritual abuse cases. She also discussed the manner in which media coverage of those cases was distorted by the differential capacity of parents to engage with journalists, whilst child protection workers were constrained from doing so by professional codes of ethics (e.g. they can't publicly discuss active cases with the media, but the parents can).--Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
This Guardian article, based on an interview with the Orkney child (now adult) who is intending to sue, replaces "dawn raids" with "snatching" from class, then reverts to "dawn raids" in its backstory section. I suggest the whole mention should stay out for now as not directly relevant to the SRA question. Re the Kitzinger source above, it is scholarly and can be cited so long as a) it is made clear that it is a view of the media, not a view of SRA per se, and b) contrasting scholarly views can also be cited, as Kitzinger has a marked viewpoint in her scholarship (radical feminist). Itsmejudith (talk) 08:40, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Contrasting views are crucial to maintaining balance on all matters, not just those where a feminist may be writing. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:29, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I think we both understand WP policy on this. There are of course many topics covered in WP on which there is little or no disagreement between scholars, or where there is a mainstream view that only a few scholars dissent from. This isn't one of those topics, in fact it is hotly contested between experts of different kinds. We can only show the contrast of views when we have good sources for each side, though. You mentioned a number of academic writers but I haven't so far tracked down any books or papers that any of them have written that mention SRA. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:08, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>I see no need for a criticism of the methods used to extract children, as it's not relevant to the satanic aspects. Again, this page is about satanic ritual abuse, so all references and text should focus on that aspect. WLU (talk) 20:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

It's relevant in relation to consistent media misrepresentation and misreporting on SRA. The claim of "dawn raids" was one of the most prominent features in media coverage on Orkney, but these claims were planted by the accused parents and promulgated by journalists who colluded in the smearing of child protection services. --Biaothanatoi 23:38, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Revert discussion

This addition and the various reverts are obviously problematic for some editors. So, let's discuss. Both the references are apparently to conference papers, neither come from a reliable webpage (i.e. Karriker or Noblitt's, or even better, a university page). Noblitt's is a research summary, so I think it's OK to include for it's summary of articles, which can themselves be tracked down. Karriker's however, is original research. It's not published in a journal article, and further, the use it is put to (In a recent survey of extreme abuse with over 1000 participants, 71% (out of 987 participants) stated that they were survivors of ritual abuse) in the article is somewhat bogus. The paper is primarily about the healing methods, but it's used to justify a proportion. Given that it's a web survey, I don't think it can be considered representative, and it's heavily biased towards the U.S. while still combining a significant proportion of people from other areas of the world. In my mind, it can't really say anything about participants given its flaws.

Regards Noblitt, the statement Studies have been presented detailing ritual abuse allegations. adds nothing to the page in my mind, and seems kinda weaselly given the actual source (a conference paper never actually published as a journal article). WLU (talk) 20:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe that Noblitt's work deserves at least a line of text. He is a well-known author on the topic "Cult and ritual abuse: its history, anthropology, and recent discovery in contemporary America." It is well-footnoted and the article gives the reader a great deal of accurate information.
The survey included over 1000 participants. The article is objective and presents a great deal of data. This can compared to the Lanning EL, which is given a whole line for one person's opinion from a debated website.Abuse truth (talk) 04:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Noblitt's mentioned twice, the final sentence in Satanic ritual abuse#Evidence is referenced to Noblitt. And his work deserves to be mentioned if it usefully references an idea in the text, which he does. And I agree with others about Karriker, unlike Noblitt, which is a review of literature, it's a survey which has never been peer-reviewed. WLU (talk) 12:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Is there a dispute about the Lanning source? As I understand it, our reference is to Kenneth V. Lanning, "Investigator's Guide to Allegations of 'Ritual' Child Abuse", Behavioral Science Unit, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia 22135 (1992), available online at religioustolerance.org. It would seem to meet the criteria for a reliable source 100%, being written by an expert in the field and published by a governmental body in a country where the government is reputed to take care over factuality in official reports. The only possibility is that the organisation that has made the source available online has not reproduced it faithfully, which I would think very unlikely. If I'm right in reading Abuse Truth's comment above as asking us to doubt the Lanning report as a reliable source, then I would like to ask for a Third Opinion on the question. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:57, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
The potential problem with Lanning's report is that it does not appear to have been officially published by the FBI - I believe that reference was pasted from religioustolerance.org, and has been handed around the internet on many, many sites, but never was it documented as officially issued by the FBI and there does not appear to be a weblink or pdf file available on their website. Paper publications are of course allowable, but a weblink would fully justify it as a reliable source whereas now it's still somewhat open to questions. Lanning did indeed work for the FBI in that particular unit I believe (his name shows up multiple times when searching the FBI site), but there's never been anything I've seen released by the FBI saying he wrote it. Could be you can call and get paper copies perhaps.
A WP:3O would not be appropriate in this case, as there are more than two individuals who have opinions on the matter. A request for comment or solicitation of input from the WP:RS talk page would be more appropriate. Right now, I believe AT is the only editor who objects to it as an external link. Though his/her objections are not without merit per policy, I would prefer to WP:IAR in this case and leave it. It's long, it's purported to be by someone with credibility, and it's very extensive. Not a perfect EL, but I think it's worthwhile. WLU (talk) 15:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for this helpful clarification. It seems that there is a possibility that it was submitted to the FBI as a report for publication but the Bureau decided not to put it out in its name, which would affect the document's status. The document is not in the British Library. It's a difficult one and I'll take it to the RS talk page as you suggest. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
ReligiousTolerance.org is not a reliable source, for a number of reasons already discussed on this page - not the least of which being the fact that the website falsely claims to be written by a group of "consultants", when, in fact, the authors are no such thing. RT.org also falsely attribute Lanning's paper to the FBI when it is not an FBI-endorsed report.
I am uncomfortable having RT.org quoted on this page as "religious commentators" - they have never published anywhere else except on their own, free website. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>I'll see if I can get around to tracking down something about the organization that defends it or eliminates it as a RS. WLU (talk) 03:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Biaothanatoi above. RT is POV pushing and is not peer reviewed. I do not believe we should cite any source from their website. Karriker et al. work is an important survey that IMO needs to be mentioned. One sentence could be for their data and the next a critique of their research.
Agreed that RT is only a website, not peer reviewed and has a POV, which happens to be not an outlandish POV but one shared by a large section of the population (religious tolerance). All of that is beside the point if all that RT has done is to take a report that was already in the public domain and simply acted as a web host to put it online. If Lanning's document has been published in paper form then it must be a reliable source, unless there is a good reason that indicates otherwise, for example if it was commissioned by a body that then declined to publish it. As I said it's not in the British Library, but may be in a US library collection. I'm less familiar with how to search for that but will try if I get a minute. Meantime, Biaothanatoi, any more links for the academic authors that you said above had published on the issue? Itsmejudith (talk) 08:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, RT is not the EL, Lanning's report is, and what are they but religious commentators? Taken at face value, this and this and this and this and this page seem to justify the site being useful as a reference, and again, the Lanning link is one of convenience to the actual report. I still see no merit in the Karriker until it's published as a journal article, and to critique the research is WP:OR. WLU (talk) 12:07, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree that RT is a useful reference that should be cited. This page here this shows an incredibly biased perspective, citing all kinds of figures that aren't backed up by studies or data. This page shows the manipulation of unsourced figures into their own POV. The Lanning article is simply an opinion piece by an author who has been cited by several sources as being biased and not investigating some cases.
From Cult and Ritual Abuse - It’s History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America - Noblitt and Perskin (Prager, 2000) p. 179
...the document featured on the program (ABC newsmagazine)...is entitled "Investigator's Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse" and contains no data nor research methodology whatsoever. This monograph by Special Agent Ken Lanning (1992) is merely a guide for those who may investigate this phenomenon, as the title indicates, and not a study. The author is well known sketpic regarding cult and ritual abuse allegations who has consulted on a number of cases but to our knowledge has not personally investigated the majority of these cases, some of which have produced convictions."
and
http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/whycult.htm Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children
LLOYD DEMAUSE The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (4) 1994 Even when "authorities" and cited to disprove the existence of any physical evidence of cult abuse, these usually end up referring to one man, Kenneth Lanning of the FBI, who says he has "been unable to find one murder of anyone by two or more people following typical sa-tanic ritualistic prescriptions." What is never mentioned Is that Lanning has done no investigative work on any cult anywhere and ignores all kinds of convictions for cult abuse that are in police and court records, while others who have actually done ritual abuse investigative work for the F.B.I. are ignored by the press.(8) 8. Alfred Lubrano, "Deadly Memories." New York Newsday, May 10,1993; Valerie Sinason, Ed. Treating Satanist Abuse Survivors: An Invisible Trauma. Forthcoming, ms. p.14.
I believe the data on the Karriker et al article should be included on the page. It is an excellent study and much of data has been published on the web. Abuse truth (talk) 02:54, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
As a former senior FBI officer, Lanning can be considered to have expertise in the field. When other experts differ then their views are also notable and should be presented alongside his. We as editors must refrain from taking sides on who is correct. We should all be working together on the article to find more reliable sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Itsmejudith (talk • contribs) 08:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
But if Lanning ignores other sides of the debate and "has not personally investigated the majority of these cases" that he comments on, is his opinion valid and appropriate to quote or list as an EL.Abuse truth 16:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I would say yes, because he was a very senior policeman and was in a position to form a professional opinion. Whether you and I think he ignored other sides of the debate is irrelevant. If other experts say he ignored sides of the debate then they should be quoted alongside him. Itsmejudith 17:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

<undent>I put up an unsigned template for IMJ for ease of reading, feel free to replace it with a proper sig.

I hate the journal of psychohistory as a source - it's got a single editor (Lloyd deMause), not a peer review board. The RT site also provides reverences in the false memory essay, and it's clearly presented as their point of view. Again, RT is irrelevant to the status of Lanning's report. It is a link of convenience (LOC) that allows people to access an otherwise unaccessible report.

The RT site is rarely directly cited. There are four instances of the site being linked to:

  1. Lanning twice (LOC, once as an EL and once as a source, ref 2, used three times in the article, could be replaced by this)
  2. Once to a summary of the NCCAN report (LOC, ref 9, used twice). Both citations are for the following finding: Only 1 of the 12,264 suspected cases could confidently be accepted as real abuse This involved a 16 year old male whose parents were Satanists. He took part in rituals which sometimes involved sexual activity. He was an observer, victim and perpetrator. None of the usual factors associated with the public's perception of Satanic Ritual Abuse was present in this case; no infant killing, animal torturing, blood drinking, flesh eating, etc.
  3. Once to the essay providing an overview of RA (Ref 3, used twice). In both instances, it adds to number of groups that are skeptical of SRA. Removing the link doesn't really change much, but keeping it in does link to an explicit discussion of RA and I think it's a nice overview. These two citations are the only uses of RT where it's used to justify content, not merely for convenience.

In my opinion, because of its broad overview, extensive coverage, relatively even-handed treatment and citations (which I admit is spotty), it's a useful site to link to. When the RT site specifically is cited (ref 3) it's not justifying anything horribly controversial (that skepticism exists). I wouldn't use it as an EL, but as a source for the relatively minor points it references, it's better than a {{fact}} tag.

Lanning provides the investigator's perspective. Considering the amount it's cited and his position (and his work in related areas [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] (not all are him, but many are), [10] (note the words perhaps the most recognized law enforcement expert in the field of Child Sexual Victimization for the past 20 years has been SSA Ken Lanning, he's got credibility from the FBI), [11]), I think there might sufficient sources to establish him as notable for his own wikipedia page, let alone qualify for an external link. WLU 18:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I still stand by my position that as a piece of original research, not a literature review like Noblitt, the Karriker paper is not useful. If it's ever published in a peer-reviewed journal, OK, but given it's contents and methodology, I doubt it will be. If scholars in the field consider it sufficiently notable and an adequate methodology, it'll be published. Try bringing it up at Talk:RS and see what is said about it. WLU 18:58, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
"I would say yes, because he was a very senior policeman and was in a position to form a professional opinion. Whether you and I think he ignored other sides of the debate is irrelevant. If other experts say he ignored sides of the debate then they should be quoted alongside him. Itsmejudith 17:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)" I agree that this should be done. My question is how can we do this if the Lanning article is an EL.
As far as RT using "relatively even-handed treatment," I would respectfully disagree with this. As I stated above : This page here this shows an incredibly biased perspective, citing all kinds of figures that aren't backed up by studies or data. This page shows the manipulation of unsourced figures into their own POV. And as admitted above, they have "spotty" citations. The Journal of Psychohistory has numerous citations and is far more scholarly than RT. Abuse truth 20:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
You've pointed that link out before. I've pointed out that it is very clearly their opinion, they very clearly state that it's their opinion, and why on this page they take a less even handed approach than most other pages on the site. Further, they are discussing recovered memory therapy, not satanic ritual abuse, so that particular page is pretty irrelevant in my mind. I think that's quite fair. Do you have other objections to other pages on the site? Specifically the only Religious Tolerance page that is linked as a source (this one)? The other links to the RT page, as I discussed above, are not actually to the RT page, but are to information the RT page hosts. They are links of convenience.
You are free to suggest other ELs to add to the page, and if they are as authoritative as Lanning's, as lengthy, as appropriate as an EL, then they could go up. The previous suggestions included a conference paper, which is now a source on the page, and a dubious listing of newpaper article summaries, of dubious relation to SRA. Lannings is a multi-page document on SRA, from a respected FBI employee with multiple scholarly publications. It's attributable to him as well, while the newspaper page is linked to a site with no attribution to anyone noteworthy that I saw (though I admit that I don't recall doing an extensive search - the content is far more of an issue). WLU 03:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Ok, will find additional ELs. Abuse truth 17:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not thrilled with the newest EL, many of the articles referenced don't appear to deal with SRA directly and I'd rather an abstract than a summary, but it is a potentially useful resource and does present the non-skeptical POV. WLU 19:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to respond to Judith's earlier point about RT.org. The fact that the site is branded 'religious tolerance', and the fact that this principle is a sound one, is no reason to consider the site a credible source in relation to organised and ritualistic child abuse.
The fact is that RT.org has no experience, credentials or experience in regards to "religious tolerance", let alone child abuse. They have also claimed to have some professional authority as "consultants" that they do not have e.g. they have consistently misrepresented themselves to their readers.
I'm happy to see Lanning's report quoted as long as it is quoted appropriately. Lanning does not state that satanic and/or ritualistic sexual abuse does not occur in organised abuse - he says quite the opposite. He states that it does occur, however, there is no evidence to suggest a widespread "Satanic conspiracy" of the kind being advanced by some people at the time.
Lanning has been systematically misquoted by SRA "skeptics" and I see no reason why we should repeat their errors here. --Biaothanatoi 23:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
1) If you re-read my posts you will see that I have not said at any point that I consider RT to be a good source on the topic of this article. I explicitly said that this source is only acceptable if we can agree that the site has simply acted as a web host for the Lanning material. I'm in no position to make a judgement about RT as consultants or not and don't see that that can remotely be an issue in editing this article. Fully endorse your point about summarising Lanning accurately. Itsmejudith 09:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I raised the point about RT.org more generally - it has been directly cited in this article for some time.
Interesting how Lanning's paper is used by so many to claim that there is no evidence of ritual abuse. I get the impression that few people have bothered to read the thing. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

RT link on England

I hadn't noticed this section of the essay - could be mined for sources on the England section. Note that I'm not advocating the use of this page as a source, but it might have links to information we don't have on the page yet. WLU 18:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Taming the lead paragraph

The lead paragraph opens with two sensible sentences before dissolving into a POV tug-of-war over whether SRA exists. Most of the content and its sources are already contained within the article, and so I propose that we delete much of it and leave the opening paragraph relatively minimal.

There are a number of issues in the text at the moment, in particular:

(a) The sourcing of religioustolerance.org, a website written by a small group of people who misrepresent themselves as "consultants", have no professional experience or expertise in the field of child abuse, and have never published any written work beyond their own website.
(b) The opening paragraph is USA-centric, focusing on the American media-driven controversies over SRA without acknowledging the international context. There are a number of substantiated SRA cases listed on the page in which Satanic rituals were a feature of organised child abuse, and, in South Africa, Belgium, Argentina and Brazil, such cases included links to international child trafficking and organ trafficking.
(c) It has already been pointed out here that the reference to "daycare sexual abuse hysteria" is profoundly POV and factually incorrect. There are a number of well-recognised experts on the subject of child abuse, like Finkelhor and Faller, who have undertaken empirical research on ritualsitic sexual abuse in multi-perpetrator daycar cases, and found ritual activity to be related to the most severe forms of maltreatment.

I propose that much of this material is removed, and we let the article speak to the complexities of the issue, rather then trying to ram it into the first few paragraphs. --Biaothanatoi 23:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Nobody has disagreed, so I've made some changes with specific reference to controversy. All the sourced info is already available in the article itself, so I see no reason to have it repeated in a push-and-shove way in the opening para. Also, I'd like some clarity on the credibility of RT.org - it seems to me that RT.org cannot be regarded as a credible source on child abuse and should not be quoted here. They misrepresent themselves as "consultants" when they are not, they have no experience or expertise regarding child abuse/the law/psychology, and they are only published on their own website. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Again, look at how RT is used - very, very minimally, and only to justify skepticism. I think it's reasonable. I do agree with the above comments regarding removing stuff from the lead, but given the length of the article I think it could be expanded. One thing that could be included is the mention of places where SRA has been purported as it does occupy a huge proportion of the article. WLU (talk) 02:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

<undent>More lead stuff - in my opinion, the much greater coverage of Australia, the UK and the US within the body of the article are adequate to support the statement in the lead - several subsections each, versus basically a single reference for the other sections (shaky recall, could be wrong). Since the bulk of the body is made up of individual examples of SRA in different countries, makes sense that this would be reflected in the lead. WLU (talk) 01:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Revert

I've reverted to an older version of the article before all the cruft and conspiracy theories started showing up. The older version is much better than the mess it was now. 168.30.196.235 21:35, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Your preferred revision is probably much better but don't expect it to stick. Since talk-page discussion has been impaired / pre-empted by hostile claims of pro-paedophilia POV, etc, this probably needs to go to mediation (or worse). <eleland/talkedits> 23:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
A number of editors have been working constructively on this article for a few months now, and all changes has been discussed and debated here in good faith. As it stands, the article is comprehensively sourced to a range of authors, journalists and commentators. If you have concerns about this material, then please detail them here and we can try to work through them. Showing up out of the blue and attempting to obliterate these changes, without discussing them with other editors, is vandalism pure and simple.
Eleland, you've made wide-ranging criticisms of recent changes without offering any specific examples so that we can actually improve the article. Instead, you've used these criticisms to cast aspersions on me, my motivations, my beliefs and my trustworthiness as an editor. For all your efforts in attacking me (including tracking down two-year-old posts from elsewhere), you've yet to actually contribute constructively to the development of this article. It seems that you have more of an interest in attacking other editors then you do in participating in the core work of Wikipedia. -- Biaothanatoi 02:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Biaothanatoi above about editors working constructively on this article for a while now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wp:consensus
"Wikipedia works by building consensus. Consensus is an inherent part of the wiki process. Consensus is typically reached as a natural product of the editing process; generally someone makes a change or addition to a page, and then everyone who reads the page has an opportunity to either leave the page as it is or change it. In essence silence implies consent if there is adequate exposure to the community. When there are disagreements, they are resolved through polite reasoning, cooperation, and if necessary, negotiation on talk pages, in an attempt to develop and maintain a neutral point of view which consensus can agree upon."
The "mess it was now" as you state, was a lot of hard work by a lot of editors, some with a lot of experience in wikipedia. I have reverted your changes and fixed the page so that the reference section is not a mess. Please attempt to work via the consensus process on the talk page before making any major changes.Abuse truth 03:54, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Uh, yeah, an anonymous IP unilaterally reverts to some version from months ago and their justification is cruft and conspiracy theories? I don't think there's a need to justify this based on policy, I see it as flat vandalism. WLU (talk) 12:14, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

My considered thoughts

Based on my readings, it seems like the disputes over this article are really based on the differing views of various fields of study. The overwhelming majority of criminologists and sociologists reject the existence of satanic ritual abuse, while a vocal minority of psychiatrists still believe in it. My search for "satanic ritual abuse" on the JSTOR and EBSCOhost databases does not support the claim of Biaothanatoi that the consensus has changed. Virtually all articles on these professional academic databases support the mainstream view: that "satanic ritual abuse" was a moral panic, and that there never was a large-scale intergenerational satanist conspiracy to abuse children. Again, this does not mean that no child molester ever used ritualistic elements in his or her abuse, or that institutional child abuse does not exist (we know the latter existed in a variety of settings, especially where there was a massive power differential between the abusers and the abused). "Satanic ritual abuse" as used in the literature specifically refers to the large-scale conspiracy theory popularized by Michelle Remembers and similar trash. If someone wants to create a sourced, verifiable article on ritualistic child abuse in general, that would be justifiable. But this article is not the place for it.

Another important thing to consider is the place of academic articles. All else being equal, peer-reviewed academic articles are preferable as sources to non-peer-reviewed articles, and books published by reputable academic presses are preferable to those that were published elsewhere. However, just because an article was published in an academic journal doesn't mean it was handed down on stone tablets from Mt. Sinai. Academic journals — especially in the social sciences — sometimes publish minority views, even fringe views. Also, in the social sciences, some journals have strong biases towards a particular point of view. Journals can also be taken in by hoaxes, as the Sokal Affair demonstrated. When searching for the professional consensus, we need to look at the overall weight of the evidence, not just isolated articles. *** Crotalus *** 13:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

This is all fine and a good summary of WP policies. If you could go on to applying this to specific suggestiosn about the article content it would be appreciated. Itsmejudith 15:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Crotalus, I did not state that the consensus on "satanic ritual abuse" has changed. I stated that the evidence base for organised and ritualistic child sexual abuse has developed other the last two decades. These are very different statements. I am not simply a "believer" in "satanic ritual abuse", although some editors here have gone out of their way to characterise me as such, and connect me with conspiracy theories that I do not believe in.
As my changes to the article makes clear, it is now very rare for professionals in the field of trauma and abuse today to use the term "satanic ritual abuse". The phrase was used by some professionals in the 1980s, but it featured far more prominently in "backlash" literature written by Underwager, the Eberles, the False Memory crew, etc. They used SRA as a straw man to "prove" their point that children and adults were being coerced to confabulate impossible accounts of abuse.
So the history of the term is not simply a matter of "believers" and "skeptics". It has been used in a particular way by different activist groups to pursue different political agendas. In particular, SRA was a favorite bogeyman of the False Memory crew, and they promulgated a ridiculous/farcical/unbelievable construction of it through their media advocacy (e.g. precisely the definition you invoke above regarding a "Satanic conspiracy").
There was no such consensus on a definition amongst treating professionals and it is historically inaccurate to write such a "definitive" definition into the article - it characterises those professionals in a pejorative way that is not justified by the facts.
I don't think that a debate on this page over whether SRA is "true" or "untrue" is particularly useful. As you can see by the cases listed, ritualistic abuse (including Satanic rituals) are an occasional feature of organised child sexual abuse. I don't personally believe that it is useful to describe these cases as "satanic ritual abuse", but nor do I think that SRA is a completely hollow moral panic with no basis in reailty. Given that SRA is a constructed category of abuse, I prefer a "social constructionist" point of view that traces the development of the concept over time, and gives balanced consideration to the different actors who have used the phrase, and the different ways they have used it.
A number of surveys with psych and welfare professionals in Australia, America and Britain have established that between a quarter and third of workers have encountered a client with a history of ritualistic abuse, and that the majority believe that this history is indicative of genuine trauma. This does not support your assertion that only a "vocal minority" of psychiatrists believe in "SRA" - it suggests, instead, that encounters with ritually abused clients is a clinical reality for many people in the field of healthcare and welfare services. This page should be a resource for them as well, rather then an arena for armchair skeptics to beat up a straw man. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and you might want to check out my update on the Hosanna Church case. They've secured the first conviction in the Hosanna Church case, where a number of adults confessed to ritually abusing a number of children in Satanic rituals. If you read the expert testimony of the FBI agent in the case (linked from the article), you'll find that investigators were actually shown the location of the ritual activities by the accused, and it included a room painted completely black, but scrawled with inverted biblical passages that could only be read under a black light. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
This is indeed a bizarre case. It is distinct from the SRA cases of the 1980s because there appears to be actual physical evidence (and it was verified by the FBI, not panicked local authorities). Most of the 1980s cases had only statements from the alleged victims, which were elicited using interview techniques we now know to be incorrect. Some of these 1980s abuse statements claimed conduct that was physically impossible and/or obviously did not match the actual facts. I agree that individuals and small groups engaged in child abuse have on occasion used rituals to control and intimidate their victims. But, in the academic literature, the specific term "Satanic Ritual Abuse" refers to the large-scale conspiracy theory and moral panic of the 1980s. The actual, verified phenomenon of ritualized abuse by individuals or small groups should have an article of its own. I'm starting to get the feeling that our debate is mostly semantic in nature; you don't believe that there ever was a massive worldwide satanic conspiracy (though you are wrong to dismiss it as a strawman; these claims were made very seriously by cult cops and therapists in the 1980s), and I don't argue that every case with ritualistic elements was automatically a hoax. I'm just saying that these are two separate topics and I don't think having them both in the same article is wise. *** Crotalus *** 03:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Crotalus, the majority of child abuse cases in which ritualistic/organised abuse are alleged have been successfully prosecuted and only a small number have been overturned on appeal (Newton, M. Guilty as Charged. International Council on Cultism and Ritual Trauma Conference, Dallas, Texas, 1996). The high-profile SRA cases that attracted media attention became high profile precisely because they were ambiguous and contested, but they were not representative of SRA cases as a whole. ( see Kitzinger, J. Framing Abuse: Media Influence and Pubic Understanding of Sexual Violence Against Children. London; Ann Arbor, MI, Pluto Press, 2004)
There is a significant body of research on bizarre/unbelievable disclosures of abuse, and they have been found to be related to the most serious, and most well substantiated, cases of abuse - often where perpetrators have deliberately attempted to confuse and disorientate a child in order to conceal organised/sadistic sexual abuse. The fact that a child's account of sexual abuse includes events that are impossible/improbable does not mean that they are lying about sexual abuse. You can read a summary of this research at Everson, M. D. "Understanding Bizarre, Improbable, and Fantastic Elements in Children's Accounts of Abuse", Child Maltreatment, 2, 2, May, 1997, 134-149..
The phrase "Satanic Ritual Abuse", as I stated above, featured heavily in skeptical literature on child abuse as a "straw man" that was used to "prove" the point that children and adults were confabulating disclosures of abuse. The authors of this literature attributed a very narrow definition of SRA ("satanic conspiracy") in order to characterise professionals working with such clients in a pejorative way. There is no definitive definition of SRA and the majority of professionals who have used it in the past were not referring to a "satanic conspiracy" - although activist groups and skeptical journalists might have you believe otherwise. Yes, some conspiracy theorists do use the term "SRA", but that fact does not support the assertion that claims of SRA are all confabulated, or that everyone who uses the term SRA is a conspiracy theorist.
At a baseline, SRA refers to the sexual abuse of children in satanic rituals, and such practices have been uncovered over the last decade in a variety of contexts, such as small groups like the Hosanna Church case, as well as in large-scale child trafficking networks throughout Europe, Africa and South America. You seem to be advocating for the creation of artificial, analytic distinctions between these cases, in order to hive off substantiated cases and call them something else, thus preserving SRA as an example of "hysteria" and "moral panic".
As I said above, this article should be more then a place where armchair skeptics beat up a strawman in order to amuse themselves. Survivors, and the professionals who work with them, should be able to come hear and read about relevant, up-to-date research and evidence-based analysis, rather then an undergraduate rehash of the media-driven recovered/false memory debates of the 1990s that have long been put to rest in the academic literature.--Biaothanatoi (talk) 04:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I should also say, in relation to your concerns about interviewing techniques, it is worthwhile to note that neither police nor psychs/counsellors were given specialist training in forensic interviewing with children until the early 1990s. However, this does not mean that children's accounts of ritual abuse prior to this time were confabulated/coerced/suggested. Research shows that even the most suggestive forms of interview do not inevitably lead children to make false reports, and that children very rarely make false positive reports (e.g. state that something did happen when it did not).
These concerns about the suggestibility of children are important elements in the court-room strategies of people accused of seuxal abuse, and they have been widely promulgated through the media, but we should not uncritically reproduce them here without reference to the research literature. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 05:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
With ref to a statement by Biaothanatoi above, what is a black light? Itsmejudith (talk) 11:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
The term is used in America to refer to ultraviolet light. Sheffield Steeltalkstalk 14:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Archive

OK, the page is very long. I've archived everything I don't believe is a current discussion. Feel free to pull stuff out - I left in two sections at the top that contain some useful links and advice given the apparent aversion to using citation templates. I propose that we basically use that page of the archive to archive everything else that comes up between now and 2008. Page is currently getting a lot of traffic and it's cleaner to read if we dump resolved issues in there as they reach consensus. WLU 20:47, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to say that I think we are getting somewhere with this article, and it's been largely due to the mediation of WLU in a long-standing editing war. Thanks for all your hard work on this page. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Allow me to venture that you are also not doing too badly, and overall it's been a pretty good process. Huzzah for all of us! WLU (talk) 02:32, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


Some academic sources justifying the majority position on SRA

"The term 'satanic ritual abuse' was coined in America just over a decade ago to describe what is believed to be the widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse of very young children in satanic ceremonies." — DeYoung, Mary. Satanic Ritual Abuse in Day Care: An Analysis of 12 American Cases. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6; p. 84-93 (1997). Emphasis mine.

"First, it can be added to a small but significant body of international professional opinion and literature that insists that the attempts to prove satanic ritual abuse real have functioned, however unintentionally, to detract attention from more common forms of child abuse and to obfuscate the investigation and substantiation of organized and systematic forms of child abuse within a variety of settings (Armstrong, 1994; Bottoms, Shaver and Goodman, 1996; Clapton, 1993)." — DeYoung, Mary. Satanic Ritual Abuse in Day Care: An Analysis of 12 American Cases. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6; p. 84-93 (1997).

"Religious-studies approaches to the SRA panics and their claims of widespread, intergenerational Satanic cults should, of course, depend primarily on the nature and veracity of the evidence rather on the presumed likelihood of the rituals’ or cults’ existence. For this reason it is important to realize that actual, historically tenable forensic evidence for the alleged Satanic cults and the crimes has not yet appeared, a fact that many law-enforcement experts, psychologists, sociologists, and journalists noted already in 1991 (Richardson, Best, and Bromley 1991; Lanning 1991; cf. Goodman, Qin, Bottoms, and Shaver 1994; La Fontaine 1998)." — Frankfurter, David. The Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic as Religious-Studies Data. International Review for the History of Religions; 2003, Vol. 50 Issue 1, p108-117

"Ritual abuse cases have also raised substantial concern about claims by 'adult survivors' of having suffered abuse as children at the hands of satanic cults. Research by Bottoms et al. (1996) indicates that, while some people do terrible things to children in the name of Satan, there is little to no evidence that abuse of children by large scale satanic cults is widespread (see also Goodman et al., 1993). For instance, corroborative evidence of satanic cult abuse is surprisingly lacking, even when such extreme acts as maiming and killing children are involved. If such violent acts did occur, corroborative evidence such as physical remains should be available. Yet despite intense interest by the public and police, and the potential value of evidence to prosecutors, such evidence has never been found. Results of this research also indicate that many ritual abuse claims result from highly suggestive interviewing of children and adults, conducted by a relatively small number of professionals. Thus some of the interviewing that creates such accusations occurs in overly suggestive, accusatory contexts and qualifies for the far end of the leadingness continuum." — Goodman, Gail S. and Schaaf, Jennifer M. Over a Decade of Research on Children's Eyewitness Testimony: What Have We Learned? Where Do We Go From Here? Applied Cognitive Psychology; Dec1997, Vol. 11 Issue 7, pS5-S20

"Our results point to the possibility that some acts of child abuse qualify as 'ritualistic,' but not that highly organized, intergenerational, international child-abusing satanic cults exist. Few people would deny the existence of pedophiles, sadistic killers, authoritarian religious cultists, or even practicing satanists. It would be surprising if these categories were not occasionally conjoined in a quasi-satanic mixture with serious consequences. As discussed earlier, several examples provided by our respondents contained realistic elements of brutality, some perhaps influenced by satanic themes, along with other seemingly unrealistic elements. Weir and Wheatcroft (1995) have recently reported results of a clinical evaluation of 20 cases in which British children alleged to have suffered satanic ritual abuse. Their conclusions were similar to our own: specifically, that most cases of ritual abuse were probably false, but not all, including one case in which incriminating photographs and documented confessions of multiple perpetrators substantiated the claims of multiple child victims. Thus, some true cases are likely to exist that meet the heinous criteria for the label ritualistic abuse, but many, and perhaps most, other cases are unsubstantiated." — Bottoms, Bette; Shaver, Philip R.; and Goodman, Gail S. An Analysis of Ritualistic and Religion-Related Child Abuse Allegations. Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 20, No. 1. (Feb., 1996), pp. 1-34.

Note, by the way, that Goodman and Schaaf agree that "the actual abuse of children is a bigger problem than false reports." Also, they say that only the worst and most blatant forms of leading questions directed at children are likely to lead to false abuse disclosures — but that some of the SRA cases really were that badly handled. So they are not simply coming in with a blindly skeptical point of view.

Also note that these cited articles were only a few of the total number I found. Furthermore, all four books that the college library had on the subject were decidedly skeptical about the SRA phenomenon. I just don't see any evidence that the academic consensus on this matter has changed substantially in the last couple of years, and a handful of dissenting psychiatrists isn't enough. *** Crotalus *** 08:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Crotalus, it is insufficient to call your own POV on SRA the "majority position". Nor is it sufficient to whitewash over the differences between three skeptical sources (two of which are already in the article) in order to claim some kind of professional "consensus". de Young argues "moral panic", Bottoms/Shaver argue "confabulation", Frankfurther argues "scapegoating". These are three very different arguments.
There are a range of views on SRA - people use the term to mean different things, and they assert different things about it. That's why this subject is so interesting, and why it's so important that we strive for balance in this article, and all editors keep an open mind. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:46, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Fringe book

One of the sources currently cited is as follows:

Perskin, Pamela Sue; Noblitt, James Randall (2000). Cult and ritual abuse: its history, anthropology, and recent discovery in contemporary America. New York: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-96665-8. , Hudson, P. "Ritual Abuse: Discovery, Diagnosis and Treatment", Saratoga, CA, R&E Publishers, 1991

A quick search and review of this on Google Books shows that it is fringe nonsense. On pages 41-42, the authors uncritically recount known hoaxes — Mike Warnke's The Satan Seller, Michelle Remembers, Lauren Stratford's proven lies — as if they were real. All of these have been proven false several times over, and even the majority of SRA believers have given them up. Noblitt and Perskin seem to think that they can obtain credibility simply by citing a lot of sources, even if all those sources are worthless. Unlike Lanning's landmark report, and Satanic Panic, I see no evidence that this book was ever taken seriously in academia. Nor was I able to find any reviews of the book in academic journals. This article discusses a crackpot fringe conference sponsored by the two authors, where various anti-government conspiracy theories were discussed. *** Crotalus *** 15:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Noblitt is the Program Director of the Clinical Psychology Dept at Alliant University, and he is well respected in the dissociative disorders field. I don't understand why you coul dnot find any reviews of his work in academic journals, since I'm aware of several. For instance, a review in the "American Journal of Psychotherapy" (Summer 1996; 50(3) p383) stated:
Whether or not one believes in MPD and/or Ritual Abuse, this book provides one with what is probably the most comprehensive and reasonable review of the subject that has appeared up to now. The primary author, James Noblitt, provides us with a personal historical review of his experience with MPD. Starting out as an "unbeliever", he provides case histories of patients that led him to believe in the reality of the syndrome and to develop expertise in its therapy. This in itself would make the book of value.
However, even more significant is the manner in which he introduces us to the problem of ritual abuse. Describing himself as a "secular psychologist," and specifically repudiating any belief in Satanism, he describes case after case of sexual abuse of a ritual nature - ritual in the sense that it is surrounded with cultic practices. He documents the similarity of such practices from widely seperated parts of the country; and even on an international basis. because he writes from a non-fundamentalist and non-religious point of view and because he sees riutal abuse in a wider context than Satanism as such, he provides the reader with both important information and a perspectie that is clinically helpful ...
They also discuss their negative experience with police agencies and the FBI, pointing out that contrary to generally accepted opinion, the FBI has never published a study stating that there is no evidence of organised cult or ritual activity associated with sexual abuse in the United States ...
Of the many books on this sunbject that I have read, this is perhaps the most helpful and is highly recommended to those who deal with these problems whether or not they believe in ritual abuse."
It is clear from this review that Noblitt is not the pariah or fringe theorist that you claim he is, and that his book has been well recieved amongst his peers. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
It is noteworthy that Crotalus has relied on a negative review of Noblitt and Perskin from the CSICOP website. Let's review some facts on CSICOP:
- CSICOP shares numerous board members with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, including Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, Elizabeth Loftus, Loren Pancratz and Thomas Sebeok.
- CSICOP is chaired by Paul Kurtz, who heads the publication house Prometheus Books, whose publications include books like "Children's Sexual Encounters with Adults", which suggested that sex with children was enjoyable for children.
- The editor of Prometheus's "Human Sexuality" line is Vern Bullough, who sits on the editorial board of Paidika, the Journal of Paedophilia.
Crotalus has shown very poor judgement in attempting to delete a credible source from this article on the basis of a CSICOP review, given CSICOP's links to the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the pro-paedophile movement. I hope that he conducts better research in the future when assessing the credibility of sources. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 21:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
May I suggest that the previous paragraph violates WP:NPA and WP:BLP. There is no legitimate claim that CSICOP (now CSI) or FMSF are pro-paedophile, or "linked to the pro-paedophile movement", as well you should know. Now, CH's rant at the start of this section is questionable: ''Michelle Remembers, for example, although almost certainly totally false, is not a hoax. As for the seminar review, although almost certainly accurate, it's not adequate to establish that the authors and their books are unreliable. Severely biased, yes, but not necessarily unreliable. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
You cannot be taken seriously as an editor e.g. You state that a "severely biased" source is still a reliable one? This is not the first time that you have made such a contradictory and ridiculous statement.
Furthermore, the links between CSICOP, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and the pro-paedophile publication Paidika, are verifiable facts first published in "Accuracy About Abuse" in 1996, and they are clearly relevant considerations when assessing credibility.
You have nothing to contribute here and you are wasting our time. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:39, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

recent edits made to the page by Crotalus horridus

Here are the explanations for my reverts.

He reverts two paragraphs because "Noblitt/Perskin is not a reliable source."

These reviews present a different point of view than his: http://www.psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/52/7/978 http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/mind/research/re021101b.html http://books.google.com/books?id=zJkTTpfyJ-8C&dq=cult+and+ritual+abuse A personal but also scholarly journey into the clandestine and confusing world of ritual abuse, this book provides unique insights into the catastrophic experiences of ritual abuse survivors and their efforts to find healing through psychological treatment. This revised edition provides contemporary revelations about cults in existence today and also new therapies developed since the first edition was published in 1995. Co-authored by a clinical psychologist and the executive director of a professional organization dedicated to treating survivors of cult and ritual abuse, this edition will be of interest to both academic and professional markets. The special legal dilemmas, survival problems and day-to-day life experiences of these survivors are examined in a scholarly but sensitive manner. The book presents the idea that ritual abuse is an age-old phenomenon found in many cultures throughout the world. That ritual abuse causes a variety of specific psychiatric symptoms is noted. Special attention is given to the diagnosis dissociative identity disorder that is frequently found among ritual abuse survivors. Suggestions are offered for effectively dealing with the various social and legal problems that result from this severe form of abuse. New diagnoses--cult and ritual trauma disorder--are proposed for this newly identified problem.

He stated in one edit : "Revert; the other version was POV and does not accurately reflect what the cited articles say" Yet, his version is POV.

On this talk page recently, an unknown editor tried to revert the page back to October 2007. They stated : I've reverted to an older version of the article before all the cruft and conspiracy theories started showing up. The older version is much better than the mess it was now. 168.30.196.235 21:35, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

This was fortunately reverted and fixed.

On Arthur Rubin's talk page I recently found: Arthur, the SRA article was in much better shape before a handful of axe-grinders showed up and started putting in fringe sources and adding original research and OR by synthesis. That's why I reverted to the older version (mid-October). I think there is a coordinated attack on the SRA article by a handful of fringe individuals and I would be interested to know if Bio, "Abuse truth", and "West world" know each other in real life. 168.30.196.235 21:45, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

and

Just today, I've dug up a bunch of papers on SRA from JSTOR, which catalogs academic articles published in journals. As I suspected, the consensus of these articles is that SRA is a crock of bull. Once I log in at home under my account, I will work on incorporating this information into the article. I already removed a few of the worst POV statements and fringe theories. 168.30.196.235 22:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Then this user disappeared.

The next day "Crotalus" appears on this page.

"My search for "satanic ritual abuse" on the JSTOR and EBSCOhost databases does not support the claim of Biaothanatoi that the consensus has changed. Virtually all articles on these professional academic databases support the mainstream view: that "satanic ritual abuse" was a moral panic, and that there never was a large-scale intergenerational satanist conspiracy to abuse children"....*** Crotalus *** 13:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I find it very problematic that these two could possibly be the same editor.Abuse truth (talk) 18:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

  • I never denied it, and it is not against the rules to edit anonymously. I simply did not feel comfortable logging in from a computer at the school library for password security reasons. *** Crotalus *** 18:09, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
  • And a back cover blurb (the Google Books cite) in no way establishes the reliability of the book. Nor is hiddenmysteries.org a reliable source. You keep citing miscellaneous crap that was published on random websites or by books with no peer review, while I have cited proper academic articles. You need to follow Wikipedia's rules on reliable sources. I stand by my large-scale revert because the article as it currently stands is POV crap. Please read BOLD, revert, discuss cycle — this is NOT vandalism as some commenters have falsely claimed; it is a legitimate part of Wikipedia editing. In the long run, the article will have to be rewritten entirely. I am going to create a sandbox article and remake the entire thing from scratch using only reliable sources. *** Crotalus *** 18:12, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Furthermore, while the review and blurb says that the Noblitt/Perskin book "presents the case for a new DSM diagnosis of cult and ritual trauma abuse," no such diagnosis has been inserted in the DSM. In other words, the concepts set forth by Noblitt and Perskin have not received widespread acceptance by the psychiatric community. *** Crotalus *** 18:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
How on earth would that be "very problematic"? The IP editor said he was doing research and would be logging in from home to add his results. Then he logged in and added his results. This is the very opposite of sock puppetry. <eleland/talkedits> 18:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


The problem is that this editor "Crotalus," originally reverted the page back a month or more over numerous edits simply because "I've reverted to an older version of the article before all the cruft and conspiracy theories started showing up." One editor on this talk page stated : "Showing up out of the blue and attempting to obliterate these changes, without discussing them with other editors, is vandalism pure and simple." Another stated: "Uh, yeah, an anonymous IP unilaterally reverts to some version from months ago and their justification is cruft and conspiracy theories? I don't think there's a need to justify this based on policy, I see it as flat vandalism." Two editors have accused him of vandalism. I find it highly inappropriate and damaging to the consensus process for an editor to do this.
Crotalus states that "I stand by my large-scale revert because the article as it currently stands is POV crap. Please read BOLD, revert, discuss cycle (BRD) — this is NOT vandalism as some commenters have falsely claimed; it is a legitimate part of Wikipedia editing."
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BRD it states:
"Problem: Editing a particular page has become tricky, too many people are stuck discussing endlessly, and no progress can be made." This was not happening at all. The page had actually settled into a balanced article with continuous sourced additions.
This was on the SRA talk page.
"Just to say that I think we are getting somewhere with this article, and it's been largely due to the mediation of WLU in a long-standing editing war. Thanks for all your hard work on this page. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC) Allow me to venture that you are also not doing too badly, and overall it's been a pretty good process. Huzzah for all of us! WLU (talk) 02:32, 5 December 2007 (UTC)"
Nor was this done:
"How to proceed: Discover the Most Interested Persons, and reach a compromise/consensus with each, one by one."
"What BRD is, and is not....BRD is not a justification for imposing one's own view, or tendentious editing without consensus."
"Tendentious editing is editing which is partisan, biased, skewed—in other words, it does not conform to the neutral point of view." It appears that Crotalus' edit was a justification for imposing his own views, without consensus. Nor did his edit conform with a neutral point of view.
Crotalus believes about Noblitt's book that "A quick search and review of this on Google Books shows that it is fringe nonsense. On pages 41-42, the authors uncritically recount known hoaxes — Mike Warnke's The Satan Seller, Michelle Remembers, Lauren Stratford's proven lies — as if they were real." If "Crotalus" had bothered to look at the footnotes (43 and 44) for both on page 50, he would have seen that Noblitt discusses these criticism and cites their sources.
He also states "while the review and blurb says that the Noblitt/Perskin book "presents the case for a new DSM diagnosis of cult and ritual trauma abuse," no such diagnosis has been inserted in the DSM. In other words, the concepts set forth by Noblitt and Perskin have not received widespread acceptance by the psychiatric community." There is no way to insert a diagnosis into the present DSM-IV R. One must wait for the DSM-V, which will hopefully be out in 2 to 3 years. So one is unable to gauge the level of acceptance of their proposal.
Crotalus also conveniently ignores this review of the Noblitt book at
http://www.psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/52/7/978 which is copywritten by the APA. "Psychiatr Serv 52:978-979, July 2001 © 2001 American Psychiatric Association" It concludes: "The authors explore the similarities between the experiences of Noblitt's patients and experiences reported in other cultures around the world. They carefully distinguish between satanic cults and contemporary neopagan and Wicca practices. Also discussed are the challenges presented by the media and skeptical practitioners. Although the writing is uneven at times, anyone who is interested in the topic of cult and ritual abuse will find this book worth the time to read." The author of the article is well-published and reputable. "Dr. Fletcher is assistant professor of psychiatry and director of the behavior sciences research core in the Graduate School of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester."
I stand behind my position that the Noblitt book definitely fits the description of a reliable source. "Wikipedia relies heavily upon the established literature created by scientists, scholars and researchers around the world. Items that fit this criterion are usually considered reliable." Noblitt is definitely a scholar and a researcher with a large knowledge of the topic.
The publisher of his book, Prager Publishing, received numerous honors.
http://www.greenwood.com/greenwood_press.aspx
Each year the library media and ALA select "Best" or "Outstanding" Academic and Reference titles. These honors are bestowed by Booklist, Choice, Library Journal, ALA's RUSA Outstanding Reference committee, and by the New York Public Library. This year Greenwood and Praeger received 22 such honors.Abuse truth (talk) 06:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Crotalus, I've posted a glowing review of Noblitt's work form the Journal of Psychotherapy. Please cease your spurious attacks on Noblitt - which you apparently base on a single review from an online, non-acadedmic website.
Oh, and, no, I don't know Abuse Truth, West World or any other editor on this page. Strange that you accuse others of being conspiracy theorists - seems like you are prone to a little paranoia yourself. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry are hardly unknown phenomena on Wikipedia. When a handful of editors all show up at the same time and start pushing the same POV, it's natural to suspect something amiss. *** Crotalus *** 02:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
How ridiculous. We've all been here for a while - it's you who showed up out of the blue, alongside a series of single-edit usernames and anonymous IP editors, all pushing the same POV.
Should we suspect something amiss as well? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Go ahead and have them run an IP check if it makes you feel any better. The only editing I've done that was not from this account was from the single IP address mentioned above (which was not against policy and which I never attempted to deny). Would you be willing to accept similar scrutiny? *** Crotalus *** 02:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Of course. I suspect that West World and Abuse Truth live on a different continent to me.
The fact that your initial edits to the article were made on the presumption that other editors were acting in bad faith does not suprise me. It explains the hostile and unilateral manner in which you have engaged me, and other editors, who do not share your POV.
It is a pity that your presence here has not been more collaborative and constructive. I hope that you can take the time to review your conduct here and work with us to develop the article further, instead of trying to "win" a "contest" that nobody is fighting except yourself. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed sourcing requirements

I think we need some clear standards as to what is an acceptable source and what is not. WP:RS provides some guidelines, but not exact details. Given the obviously controversial nature of the subject, we should set the bar as high as possible. In my opinion, this article should use only the following as sources:

  • Academic articles published in peer-reviewed journals
  • Books published by academic presses
  • Material published by state and national governments (e.g., government agency reports and court cases)

We have more than enough material in these three categories. For instance, I found three books on SRA that were published by university presses; plus, there are at least a dozen or two academic articles on the subject, and probably more. Then there are several different government agency reports (from several countries). Anything else — i.e., material published in the popular press or on non-peer-reviewed websites — should be avoided if at all possible. If it must be cited, it should be cited only as a justification for what the authors or the groups in question believe, not taken as objective fact. Note that this criteria excludes several sources that I personally consider to be reliable and trustworthy, such as Satanic Panic, The Satanism Scare, and the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance website. (I do still intend to link to the Lanning article on OCRT, since that is the only place this article is available online, and no one has credibly claimed that their verbatim reproduction of this government report is not accurate). We'll never reach anything approaching consensus if we continue to take an "anything goes" attitude towards sources. We've had far too many low-quality sources for too long. Note that I would be willing to accept a few popular-press or web articles in the External Links section, but not as sources. *** Crotalus *** 06:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Very helpful. One other kind of source that I think we should consider is the serious press. Reports of course cases appearing in newspapers such as The Scotsman should, I think, be taken as reliable. But they are only of interest to us as providing information about the actions of the courts and authorities. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:42, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
How do we decide what the "serious press" is? I generally like the proposal, even though it excludes a number of sources which would be helpful in explaining context. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:58, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I think any criteria that excludes Satanic Panic and the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance is probably too strict to be helpful, as those are both very important and reliable works. The former pretty much brought the problem to wider attention and the second is a very methodical website with lots of researched info, not just a toss something together site. I think we have two problems here. One is simply reliability of sources in general: any old person of the street writing a web page or whatever being cited by people desperate for sources for some opinion they want to push but who can't get a real one. The second is finding a reliable source for one thing (their own opinions as a group) and then trying to use it as a source for something else entirely (facts, scientific results, even what 'other sources claim). I think we need science sources for science claims, and so forth. DreamGuy (talk) 17:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
In general, I agree with you. However, I don't want to open the door wide enough for dubious sources to be allowed into the article. By the way, I did some googling on en.wikipedia.org and found that there was already a discussion on OCRT: see Wikipedia:Verifiability/Religioustolerance.org and Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Religioustolerance.org. There was no consensus to exclude it, but I do think it should be used sparingly in controversial articles. In this case, it mostly reiterates and backs up the academic consensus (and serves as a repository for an important government report). One thing I insist upon is that under no circumstances should popular sources be permitted to override academic sources. *** Crotalus *** 20:42, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
In relation to Arthur's query above about the serious press, I think you can usually find from the article on the relevant newspaper whether it is considered to be a reliable source for news. Certainly in the UK there is a distinction between the popular press, tabloids or red-tops, e.g. the Daily Mirror on the one hand, and the broadsheets on the other, e.g. the Daily Telegraph. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:39, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
We've had a detailed discussion about Lanning's report. I'm happy to see it quoted here as long as it is quoted accurately. In particular, it is not an "official FBI report" and it was not published by the FBI. It is a personal, unpublished paper of Lannings that he circulated himself, which is why you can't find a copy of it anywhere except online.
The paper also does not reject the notion that satanic ritual abuse occurs - it rejects the notion that the ritualistic abuse of children indicates a national/worldwide "Satanic conspiracy". This paper is misquoted and misattributed so often that I'm starting to think most "skeptics" haven't bothered to read the thing.
The FBI recently testified in the Hosanna Church case in relation to the satanic ritual abuse of the complainant children in the case, so it is disingenuous to use a personal essay by an FBI agent written fifteen years ago to claim that the FBI has never found evidence of SRA. It is clear that they have.
Crotalus is advocating for good sourcing standards but his own have proven pretty flexible, depending on whether the source in question advances his POV or not. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I would like to see some evidence for your claim that Lanning's report "is a personal, unpublished paper of Lannings that he circulated himself." And the notion of a "Satanic conspiracy" is central to the concept of SRA. No one disputes the existence of occasional small-scale ritualized abuse.
Moreover, Kenneth Lanning was one of the FBI's foremost experts on sexual abuse. It's not as if he was just some random FBI agent who happened to air his own personal opinion. Do a search on Amazon and you will find that he wrote a lot of documents on child abuse that had nothing to do with SRA. A Google search shows he was often quoted by news media as an expert in the subject, something that the FBI obviously wouldn't have allowed when he was working for them if they didn't take his professional opinions seriously. Our article on Scouting sex abuse cases has a lengthy quote from one of Lanning's official reports on a related subject. The opinions of one of the top law enforcement experts on the subject of sexual abuse definitely deserve to be explained at length in this article. *** Crotalus *** 02:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm familiar with Lanning's published work and I own most of it. He also wrote a paper in the early 90s on SRA and circulated it to journalists, but it's not an FBI report. As I stated above, I don't reject the paper, but it should be quoted accurately. Lanning was very prominent in the field but I believe he has since passed away.
As I stated in your initial incursion on this page, there is no single definition for SRA. Where it was used in clinical literature, it referred simply to the sexual abuse of children in satanic rituals. Some conspiracy theorists and religious fundamentalists have used it to refer to a Satanic conspiracy. More often, "skeptical" commentators have attempted to attribute this conspiratorial belief to all people who use the term.
In the Dutroux case, satanic rituals were a feature of a large, organised child trafficking ring, and intersections between organised abuse and SRA have been uncovered elsewhere - the International Organisation of Migration published a report in 2001, for instance, which suggested that some trafficking flows out of Africa were terminating in ritually abusive perpetrator groups in Europe.
It is inadequate to claim that ritualistic abuse is "occasional" and "small-scale" - this is a misrepresentation of the evidence. Lanning's report is over 15 years old now - he may have been an "expert" back then, but his position is certainly not definitive a decade and a half later. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Propose formal mediation

No details, no statement yet of issues to be mediated. I'm just putting out feelers. For details see WP:MEDCOM.

I agree to participate (sign below with optional comment)
  1. <eleland/talkedits> 18:48, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
  1. Happy to participate to help the article along. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:08, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree to participate with reservations (leave a brief comment explaining them)
  1. The page was coming along nicely with good (if wordy) discussion that was very civil and no major reverts. It kinda all went to hell rather recently and I've simply given up until this whole thing settled down. Given that I'm not checking changes or reading the talk page, I don't have anything to say about the most recent disputes. WLU (talk) 21:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
  2. I recall a previous meditation in alternative medicine which foundered on the question of the scope of the mediation. I think it needs at least to expand to all related articles, include, not only the question of what is appropriate somewhere but what is appropriate in the specific articles, a few other points. If not, I'm willing to participate, but I doubr it would help. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:48, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
  3. I think what is more needed is an RFC on Abuse truth's behavior, as he is editing the exact same disputed content with very clear agenda-pushing and false claims into a whole group of articles despite ver clear consensus that his edits simply do not conform to policies. Any mediation on this page only is doomed to failure, as it's across at least four or five. It also seems unlikely that he would follow any mediation if he is already ignoring consensus. Even when discussions happen he just then later goes and reverts right back to his old version with all sorts of edits never discussed on talk (or which the discussion actually went against him) and falsely claims it was agreed upon. I also have seen many cases where the mediators were just random people off the street with little to no editing history and no understanding of policy. I think any real mediation to be attempted needs to find a mediator with a demonstrated history in solving these kinds of situations and not risk having someone who makes things worse. DreamGuy (talk) 17:22, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
    (This is all moot, as this particular mediation request has been denied.) I don't think an RFC/U would be helpful, as it would only establish consensus that the edits are improper. As the edits are already being made against consensus, I think the next step would have to be RfAr. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
    I had no idea about the related dispute (or even about that article at all.) This is a separate question and no RfM has yet been filed. <eleland/talkedits> 06:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
  4. I agree to participate with reservations. DG claims that I have been editing with "disputed content." Most of the content he has disputed, solely because the content does not fit his POV.

On another page, an editor commented: "Read over the edit history on this article and a distinct pattern comes up. Abuse Truth tries to contribute - DreamGuy and Arthur Rubin delete, remove or undo his changes, with MatthewTStone not far behind. These deletions are invariably accompanied by an insulting or sarcastic remark in the editing comments, or here on the discussion page." and "... yet all of Abuse Truth's changes are being blocked, regardless of the content of his changes, or the credibility of the source that it is attributed to. Meanwhile, the editors who are blocking Abuse Truth do not attempt to educate him on WP policy or conduct (although they often claim he is in violation of it) and they do not seek clarification or consensus before deleting content. In fact, they have contributed almost nothing to this article."

The same editor stated "Reviewing your conduct on this page, Dreamguy, and reading back over the page history: All that you do is block. That's it. You just sit on articles, block changes, criticise other editors, and randomly invoke WP policy to justify yourself. You contribute nothing, you add nothing, you do no research and you write nothing. You just bully editors and I'm not the only one sick of it."

Even user Arthur Rubin stated "That being said, I don't think User:DreamGuy is seeking balance, either; he's merely removing statements he believes to be false, regardless of whether some of them are adequately sourced." I stated: "Unfortunately, AR has been backing up many of DG's edits. DG has accused me of ignoring consensus. Yet he is the one who has been deleting five or more sourced paragraphs from certain articles without discussing this on the talk page first. And they all disagree with his POV."

DG states (falsely) that I ignore consensus. Yet DG is the one that makes large edits (deleting four or five paragraphs from certains articles, without discussing this on the talk page, simply because they disagree with his POV.

DG requests an Rfc on my behavior. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wp:rfc#Request_comment_on_users "A user-conduct RfC is for discussing specific users who have violated Wikipedia policies and guidelines. RfCs brought solely to harass or subdue an adversary are not permitted." I strongly believe that my edits have been an attempt to follow Wikipedia policy and make the pages balanced (NPOV) with sourced data. I believe that this request is an attempt to harass my my ability to edit.

I have no problem with the AR's request for an RfAr. It will hopefully review all of the participants behavior in the pages in question. I believe that a clear pattern will appear showing that one or two editors have consistently attempt to blocked any changes in the articles they have been working on that does not agree with their POV. And that they have been using any stretch of Wikipedia policy or guidelines to do so.

AR also states that my edits have been against consensus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wp:consensus "Consensus is typically reached as a natural product of the editing process; generally someone makes a change or addition to a page, and then everyone who reads the page has an opportunity to either leave the page as it is or change it." I saw the edits as improper and decided to change them. This fits the policy above.

"Note that consensus can only work among reasonable editors who make a good faith effort to work together to accurately and appropriately describe the different views on the subject." This is not occuring. Data on views different from AR's and DG's POVs are being deleted from these pages, without any attempt to look at data that concurs with their POVs.

I still have faith that this can change and all editors can work together in good faith. But, this will entail more honest editing with an attempt to look at all data from the same perspective, and not just delete data that is against their POV. Abuse truth (talk) 07:22, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

  1. I will participate in mediation. I agree with WLU, we'd struck a good balance on a really difficult topic, and now we are flooded by random editors making huge changes to the article without attempting to build consensus or clarify any issues. There is a long history on this page of "skeptical" editors attacking verifiable and trustworthy sources when those sources contradict their POV on the topic, whilst utilising a much lower standard for sources that support their own POV. We've just seen references to a well-respected resource on SRA deleted from the page despite glowing reviews in the academic press - because a "skeptical" editor found a negative review posted in a non-academic online forum. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I will not participate (leave a brief comment explaining why not)

General comments

Achieving consensus on the idea of mediation

OK, thus far, it seems that most of the players in the recent edit war agree in principle to mediation, while they have a variety of reservations and qualms. The following users have not indicated any opinion on the idea yet:

It also might be worthwhile to hear from:

Both were involved before about mid-October on very similar issues but have not been very active here since. Finally, there is

who hasn't been working on the SRA page much since he decided to fork his text over to Satanic ritual abuse in The Netherlands and Satanic ritual abuse in the Netherlands, where he's been reverted repeatedly as WP:POVFORKing. Still, he was acting very professionaly and effectively on talk in October and seems to have resorted to the underhanded tactics out of frustration over the idea of being an expert having to defend his changes against people he may see as random Internet nutcases; he should probably be participating in mediation too.

Since essentially all of these individuals mostly share my own POV on this issue, I don't want to message them myself, as it could be seen as canvassing. Rather, I'm asking all those currently involved to help form a list of people who have been involved in the content dispute which began, roughly, around mid-September. Then we can contact them and ask for a "yes, qualified yes, no" posting above. If and when they answer, we can move on to enumerating the specific issues to be meditated, then go ahead and write the formal request. <eleland/talkedits> 17:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I was on a wiki vacation. Maybe RFCs on the POV pushers of the minority view might be the best bet. They are violating WP policy re undue weight. According to policy this article must be skeptical (the majority view among sociologists and criminologists).
The best start is to unlock the page for a minute and place a POV tag. Presently the article has been locked showing the fringe/minority view. —Cesar Tort 20:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Academic books on this subject

Here is a list of books on SRA that have been published by academic presses. There are four of them I have found so far; if anyone knows any others, I would be interested to hear about it.

  • Ross, Colin A. (1995). Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802073573. 
  • Fraser, George A. (Ed.) (1997). The Dilemma of Ritual Abuse: Cautions and Guides for Therapists (Clinical Practice, No. 41). American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0880484780. 
  • La Fontaine, Jean (1998). Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521629349. 
  • Frankfurter, David (2006). Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691113505. 

*** Crotalus *** 20:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Sinason, Valerie (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. Routledge. ISBN 0415105420. 
  • Scott, Sara (2001). The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse: Beyond Disbelief. Open University. ISBN 0335204198. 
  • Smith, Margaret (1993). Ritual Abuse: What It Is, Why It Happens, How To Help. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 006250214. 
  • Devine, Susan (1992). Out Of Darkness: Exploring Satanism and Ritual abuse. Lexington Books. ISBN 066926962. 
  • Bibby, Peter (1996). Organized abuse: the current debate. Arena. ISBN 1857422848. 

Crotalus, what is the purpose of this exercise? Is this an attempt to substantiate your previous claim that your POV on SRA is the "majority" position by counting the number of sources you can find???

If you are looking to establish that your position is the professional "consensus", you'll find that is disputed by the dozens of books, journal articles and book chapters that take disclosures of SRA seriously. I'm happy to post them here, but it'll be at least four or five pages worth of bibliography dating from 1985 to 2007. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

  • You didn't read what I wrote carefully enough. I said academic presses. The standards for popular and academic presses are very different. Popular presses are concerned with whether a book will sell. Academic presses are concerned with whether it meets scholarly standards. I know that there are shitloads of books published on the subject by the popular press, and it is for precisely this reason that we need to stick to the reputable academic sources. *** Crotalus *** 01:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
A number of these books meet the standard that you set out here, however, I would piont out that the definition of a credible source is set out by Wikipedia policy, and not by you. You are in no position to attempt to strike out credible references on this subject simply because of their publishing house. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:07, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Per WP:V: "In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable it is." Note that peer-reviewed materials and university presses are listed before "respected publishing houses," implying that they take precedence. *** Crotalus *** 02:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, by the way, Jenny Kitzinger's book is not an acceptable source because it is not even published by a "respected publishing house." It is published by Pluto Press, a self-proclaimed "radical book publisher" (see [12]). "Pluto Press," the page notes, "has always had a radical political agenda." This is their own words. We generally don't take fringe publishers that seriously when it comes to sourcing. *** Crotalus *** 02:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
"Radical" does not equal "fringe". Kitzinger is a Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University. As a professor, she is a credible author and you cannot strike out her work simply because you don't like the political view of her publishing house. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, a Professor of Media and Communication Studies' work would not be necessarily be considered "expert" about SRA, only about media coverage of SRA. Hence, we cannot list it unless the publishing house is considered generally reliable. I agree that "radical" does not mean "fringe", but we need a better source that it isn't "fringe". — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:06, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
And that's exactly the manner in which the book is quoted - the engagement of defendents in SRA cases with the media. These objections are completely superious and I will vigorously block any attempt to delete Kitzinger from this article on such a shallow basis. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Crotalus, Your efforts here stink of a pissing contest, in which you seem to think you stack up "your" sources, attack "mine", and see what's left. You attempted to delete Noblitt on completely spurious grounds, and now you attack Kitzinger in a similar way. Your approach here has nothing to do with Wikipedia, NPOV and balance - you are simply raising facetious objections to legitimate references in an attempt to obliterate sources that don't accord with your POV. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Mornington Peninsula, Victoria

Could someone please explain to me how this section is at all relevant (or preferably edit the section to reflect this). This article seems to be reasonably well-edited, this content has been there for a good deal of time, and there -is- discussion about the relevance of other sections, so it seems strange that 5 paragraphs just sat there while apparently having nothing to do with the article...Tiak (talk) 18:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, I've just reread the article and it seems I managed to miss the word "ritualistic" once in the beginning of the section... All the same, the point remains that it fails to detail that the crimes were ritualistic or satanic, or portrayed as such.Tiak (talk) 18:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
The article states that the crimes involved organised, ritualistic abuse. What is your point? Do you want graphic details? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Crotalus' attacks on Noblitt, and failure to build consensus or seek clarification

Crotalus and a range of anonymous IP editors and single-edit usernames have recently flooded onto this page, making significant changes, deleting information and triggering massive reverts without attempting to build consensus or clarify their concerns. Crotalus, in particular, is claiming that all literature that supports his POV is the "majority" position, while attempting to delete credible sources which contradict such a claim.

In particular, he has deleted - and continues to block - references to Noblitt and Perskin's "Cult and Ritual Abuse", which he claims is a "fringe book" that has never been reviewed in the academic press. Abuse Truth has already demostrated that their book has been well-received in the press, and I've posted (above) the glowing review of "Cult and Ritual Abuse" in the Journal of Psychotherapy.

There is now so much chaffe accross this discussion page that I'm reposting the review for your consideration. The review in the "American Journal of Psychotherapy" (Summer 1996; 50(3) p383) stated:

Whether or not one believes in MPD and/or Ritual Abuse, this book provides one with what is probably the most comprehensive and reasonable review of the subject that has appeared up to now. The primary author, James Noblitt, provides us with a personal historical review of his experience with MPD. Starting out as an "unbeliever", he provides case histories of patients that led him to believe in the reality of the syndrome and to develop expertise in its therapy. This in itself would make the book of value.
However, even more significant is the manner in which he introduces us to the problem of ritual abuse. Describing himself as a "secular psychologist," and specifically repudiating any belief in Satanism, he describes case after case of sexual abuse of a ritual nature - ritual in the sense that it is surrounded with cultic practices. He documents the similarity of such practices from widely seperated parts of the country; and even on an international basis. because he writes from a non-fundamentalist and non-religious point of view and because he sees riutal abuse in a wider context than Satanism as such, he provides the reader with both important information and a perspectie that is clinically helpful ...
They also discuss their negative experience with police agencies and the FBI, pointing out that contrary to generally accepted opinion, the FBI has never published a study stating that there is no evidence of organised cult or ritual activity associated with sexual abuse in the United States ...
Of the many books on this sunbject that I have read, this is perhaps the most helpful and is highly recommended to those who deal with these problems whether or not they believe in ritual abuse."

Crotalus claims on this page that the article has been referencing "low-quality" sources for too long, but it appears that he considers all literature that takes claims of SRA seriously as "low quality". I am somewhat circumspect about his/her capacity to objectively consider credible sources on their merits on this topic. Crotalus has indicated a considerable bias on this matter and a willingness to ignore the concerns of other editors. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Biaothanatoi above. With the help of senior editors, this page was becoming an accurate, well-balanced source of information. It is crucial that all editors work together on building this page via consensus and not by simply deleting information they disagree with.Abuse truth (talk) 04:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Lead

Accusations and substantiated allegations of child abuse ocurring within the context of satanic rituals have been documented on all the continents but Asia, with a greater number and higher profile of cases being reported in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Has been added and re-added lately. We need a specific source as to "greater number and higher profile", or it's gone. As far as I can tell, no such source has ever been in the article. If I'm wrong, please add the source.

As for other incredible (if nominally reliable) sources: The Freud section seems OK. Noblitt may be OK, but the claim that there are examples of "ritualistic abuse in substantiated cases of day care sexual abuse" is disputed among reliable sources. The McMartin source is a newspaper, but seems to have been discredited. I wouldn't have deleted to the rest, except for the clear errors in the lead and in McMartin. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:36, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

The sentence that you are deleting and re-deleting is actually a summation of information contained in the article itself. A reference to a statement by an NGO in relation to SRA in Africa and developing nations was deleted by another editor. There have been so many small edits by anon IP editors/vandals over the last week that I'm thinking about requesting a lockdown until we get some clarity on these new flood of editors, who are apparently disinteresed in consensus or clarification. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
In relation to daycare centre cases, we've pointed in the article to first-hand sources and press coverage of substantiated cases of SRA in daycare centres. I'm not certain which "disputing" sources you are referring to - my knowledge of such sources is limited to literature written by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and people affiliated with it. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
It's not an accurate summary of the article. If you leave the main sentence (supported by the article itself and its sources), and leave out the "greater number" section, I'd consider it adequate sourced. But unless there's a specific source to the "greater number and higher profile", it doesn't belong here.
There seems to be exactly one case in which there was substantiated cases of SRA in day care sexual abuse. The others remain unsubstatiated, although there were some convictions for abuse (with little evidence of SRA being substantiated). But I wouldn't have removed it, merely noted that I believe it to be false, but cannot really source that, so it would stay out of the article.
As for McMartin, I was there (living in the Los Angeles area) during the McMartin trial, and most of the press coverage was about the prosecutor "campaigning" for DA, and the improbability and inconsistency of the "evidence". You can quote sources as to the children being "badgered", but there was actually a statement made by a Federal prosecutor that the child care workers in question would have been prosecuted for subordination of perjury if they weren't immune. Accusations of the children being badgered by defense witnesses would need to be balanced. It appears to have been excised from the Los Angeles Times archives, but it was there. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I really don't know what you are talking about in relation to McMartin. To my knowledge, this article has not covered McMartin for some months now. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Look closely at your edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Satanic_ritual_abuse&diff=177097900&oldid=177095328 which added a paragraph on McMartin, among other changes. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
It was a verifiable fact - and your claim that the San Diego Union-Tribune has been "discredited" is just bizarre.
I really don't understand your engagement with this article at all. It seems to me that you had absolutely no basis to delete that information from this article. You just sit on this article with a particular POV, contribute nothing to the writing of the article, blocking and reverting whenever you can - often on spurious or illogical grounds.
The San Diego Union-Tribune is "discredited"? What a joke. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
That article is discredited, as is any allegation there there was actually abuse at the school, making McMartin irrelevant to this article, except in a section on false accusations. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 04:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
This isn't true. There is no evidence showing there wasn't abuse. There were only no convictions. Both sides of the argument from the media need to be covered.Abuse truth (talk) 04:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
There is no credible evidence showing there was abuse. That seems adequate to me for it being inappropriate in this article.
As for my interest, I believed I followed Abuse truth's trail of inappropriate spam here from his disreuptive edits on other articles. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 05:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
You are wrong, Rubin. All complainant children in the McMartin trial had positive medical tests for sexual abuse. In interviews after the trial, all McMartin jurors stated that it was clear that the children had been sexually abused, but that the prosecution hadn't established it was Buckley.
An acquittal does not immidiately "discredit" all prior newspaper coverage. That is a completely ridiculous claim, and it is in line with your history of pointless and illogical POV vandalism.
Moreover, your treatment of Abuse Truth on this page and others is nothing short of insulting. If you can't contribute collaboratively to the development of this article, and if you can't do it without bullying other editors, then I don't know why you are here. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:28, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Biaothanatoi above. It is important for editors to contribute data to this article and not simply delete information that disagrees with their POV.Abuse truth (talk) 04:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

<undent>The statement "all complain(t)ant children in the McMartin trial had positive medical tests for sexual abuse" was false at the time of the trial, unless you include the psychological tests without sufficient supporting evidence. It may be true, now.
An acquittal does not "discredit" the newspaper coverage. The coverage from more credible papers which show that the San Diego Union article was not based on facts discredits the newspaper coverage.
<undent>I'm just reversing Abuse truth's edits which continually add unsourced, misquoted, non-reliably-sourced, or self-sourced (the only source is his own web site, although he claims he copied it from somewhere) information, and information which belongs only in a different article. If he'd stop doing that, I'd stop reverting his edits. EACH of his edits had that problem, at least in part. If he does it slowly enough, I can look at each paragraph to see if it's appropriate. If he reinserts 6 in an hour, I only have time to verify that at least some of each edit is invalid before reverting. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
<undent>Your statements in relation to McMartin makes no sense, Rubin. I don't know what you are talking about, but I'm not conviced you do either. And you are vilifying AT across more then one article.
<undent>As I said above: You contribute nothing to the writing of the article. You block information on illogical grounds, and your deletions are undertaken for such spurious reasons that they constitute vandalism. All the while, you attack other editors.
<undent>Why are you here? --Biaothanatoi (talk) 03:23, 12 December 2007 (UTC)--
<undent>I'm here to remove clearly false and clearly irrelevant statements from this cluster of articles. I'd like to see some credible evidence that the day care abuse hysteria was not a construction of therapists and prosecutors; and that there really was some underlying abuse in the day care centers. The alternative is that the therapists and prosecutors were evil, seeking to damage the children for personal gain. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Semi-protection is the appropriate way to deal with a rash of unhelpful edits by anons. Not full protection. I'd support a request for semi-protection in the current circumstances. But we still have to AGF and get on with the discussion between us established editors. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I've requested semi-protection. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
The page has been fully protected for a week. Let's sort out the problems in the meantime. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


I agree with Itsmejudith that we need to get to AGF,. I also agree that we need semi-protection and not full protection.
Arthur Rubin appears to use any reason he can to delete information in articles he disagrees with, including accusing other editors of violating wikipedia policies. Arthur Rubin states “I believed I followed Abuse truth's trail of inappropriate spam here from his disreuptive edits on other articles.”
Arthur Rubin states that he “followed” me.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WIKISTALK#Wikistalking
“This page in a nutshell: Do not stop other editors from enjoying Wikipedia by making threats, nitpicking good-faith edits to different articles, repeated annoying and unwanted contacts, repeated personal attacks or posting personal information.”
Wikistalking
“Wikistalking refers to the act of following an editor to another article to continue disruption.
The term "wiki-stalking" has been coined to describe following a contributor around the wiki, editing the same articles as the target, with the intent of causing annoyance or distress to another contributor....Not all personal attacks are harassment, but when an editor engages in repeated personal attacks on a particular editor or group of editors, that's another matter.”
This issue may need to be looked into further.
It is true that I scanned a few articles to a website, but it is obvious they are from journals, law books or a newspaper, yet Rubin keeps questioning their veracity, even when another editor states they are fine. And I wouldn’t even have to do this if it was accepted in good faith that my edits were appropriate.
Arthur Rubin also claims that I “add unsourced, misquoted, non-reliably-sourced”articles. This is also of course totally false and he never has proven this. He needs a reason to explain his large deletions of material that disagree with his POV, so he uses these.
I agree with this : “Moreover, your treatment of Abuse Truth on this page and others is nothing short of insulting. If you can't contribute collaboratively to the development of this article, and if you can't do it without bullying other editors, then I don't know why you are here. Biaothanatoi “
And of course I will restore sourced and valid data to articles that Arthur Rubin deletes by paragraphs at a time. Arthur Rubin needs to stop deleting large portions of articles and start working toward consensus on the talk pages to compromise about the article data.
I plan to keep working on these articles to improve them to make them more balanced and NPOV with solid data.Abuse truth (talk) 04:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't remember how your (AT's) edits first came to my attention, but it was probably in regard WP:AN or WP:ANI comments, or I noticed AT's irrelevant paragraphs when reverting clear vandalism in one of the articles. But, as I said, each of AT's edits that I've reverted, at least in part, faulty in adding unsourced, un-reliably-sourced, irrelevant, or misquoted data. It's really the misquotes that got to me at first. But, in any case, an editor who makes faulty edits is likely to make them in the future, so it's not Wikistalking. I regret my initial assertion that the misquote must have been intentional, as a violation of AGF. I still cannot really imagine how someone with a reasonable knowledge of the English language could make some of those misquotes. I also don't see AT's self-published scans of articles, almost certainly copyright violations, as being helpful. A bare citation of the original journal would be best, although, with AT's history of misquoting, I must continue to ask for source verification from another editor. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I remember a false accusation by AR that I misparaphrased something. This was false and I proved this. AR then took direct quotes from these articles and I agreed to them as a compromise. Since that time, AR appears on most pages I am on and reverts the majority of my edits. He finds a reason from the guidelines or from his own mind sometimes, once he even stated "better before" as a revert reason. He sometimes states that the content doesn't fit the topic, even long after he and other editors agreed it did. I have been forced to scan articles, due to his constant reverts. As I said before, AR has never proven any of these supposed "misquotes." It would be best if he would stop following me around wikipedia and instead start contributing data to these articles.Abuse truth (talk) 03:24, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
You're the only one who thinks my accusation is false. At least you're the only one who has ever stated that any of my specific accusations that you've misquoted is false, although you may have quoted correctly in your scanned uploads. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 04:20, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
You're the only one who thinks your accusation is true. If you actually took the time to look at the edits in detail, you would see the quotes are accurate. Like I said before "It would be best if Arthur Rubin would stop following me around wikipedia and instead start contributing data to these articles".Abuse truth (talk) 02:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
You're usually accurate when you're quoting your own web site, although I found some questionable cases there. The scanned pages are hard to read from time to time. When you're quoting someone else's website, you're wrong more often than not until called on it, and even then about 10% of the time you revert to a previous version which was in error. I have no idea whether you're accurate when quoting hard-copy, but your inaccuracy in quoting web pages suggests that it be questioned. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:07, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
As usual, another statement with no evidence above. More unsourced opinion(including an unsourced percentage). You are using this as an excuse to follow me from page to page and revert my edits.Abuse truth (talk) 03:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Rubin does not provide evidence for his statements because he has none. He is a vandal who has consistently deleted verifiable information from this article, and others, where that information conflicts with his POV.
When challenged, he justifies himself with bizarre, illogical and ridiculous arguments that often contradict his own previous statements. Meanwhile, he attacks other editors, ferments conflict, and provides support to larger-scale vandals like Crotalus.
We need an administrative review of his conduct. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Van Rooyen case

Anyone else have a view on whether this case is relevant? As far as I can see, the only allegations of SRA were made by a person serving life imprisonment for murder. I don't doubt that the case is complex and it seems likely that there were multiple rapes and murders committed over many years. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

POV tag badly needed —mediation also needed!

This article was a good one before I left Wikipedia in August. Now it has been turned 180º around by pro-conspiracy believers. It's a real pity.

My references and quotations of David Frankfurter's scholarly 2006 work are gone in the present incarnation of this article. This strikes me very much as vandalism —and the same can be said of the many skeptical paragraphs deleted!

While I am still on wiki-vacation and don't have the time to enter into detailed discussion a few observations are at hand:

Biaothanatoi uses ad hominem arguments when he stated in the archived talk page that John Earl's article The Dark Truth About the "Dark Tunnels of McMartin" is biased because it was published in the IPT Journal. Actually, Earl is a freelance journalist. He is no pedophile at all!! His long article is a thoroughgoing debunking of the SRA McMartin claims, including the tunnels issue. It's must reading for anyone willing to correct this article.[13]

The whole of my adult life is devoted to expose child abuse, including sexual or ritualistic abuse (e.g., the African children accused of witches by with-hunters). In fact, I have written five books on child abuse (in Spanish). Nonetheless, SRA buffs are an embarrassment to us, child advocates. The best example that comes to my mind is my friend Colin A. Ross, the psychiatrist who coined the term trauma model in the sense of all kind of child abuse that causes neuroses and psychoses. Many years ago Ross believed in the SRA claims. He changed his views and co-published a skeptical book with Elizabeth Loftus. (You can see the reasons of how child-advocates change their mind with regard to SRA in an online forum in which I participated.[14])

Ross' book on SRA is academic and scholarly. It's also must reading to correct this wiki article, along with Satan's Silence.

The present incarnation of this article badly needs a POV tag once the page is unprotected. Since the two sides are basically as opposed as, say, pro-parapsychology advocates and skeptics of the paranormal, I would recommend mediation of some sort. It is the only way. An article like this one can do great damage not only to Wikipedia, but to the very cause of children.

(If you are curious about my pro-child advocacy views, just take a look at my user page.)

—Cesar Tort 05:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

RE: Frankfurter. His work is sourced in the article twice, so I'm unsure of the basis of your objection. Your reference to Frankfurther was removed, I recall, because you had cut-and-pasted a large quote from his book. You'll note that we haven't provided large quotes from any source in the article, so removing your quote is hardly evidence of POV.
Wikipedia asks us to use only credible sources, and John Earl does not meet this standard. He wrote a book with the Eberles, who, it has been established in court, have a history of manufacturing and distributing child pornography. The article in question is published in the "Institute of Psychological Therapies", which was founded, run and staffed solely by Ralph Underwager and his wife, and Underwager has been exposed for over twenty years as a person who consistently has consistently lied and misrepresented the facts in relation to child abuse. He has also made statements in public to the effect that most women sexually assaulted in childhood enjoyed the experience.
Earl has a long history of involvement with the pro-incest movement of which the Eberles and Underwager were central to. This is a historical fact, and it precludes any serious consideration of his writings on Wikipedia, according to basic WP policy.
I own Colin Ross' book "Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment", and he does not take an unequivocable stand on the veracity of memories of SRA e.g. "The question of the extent to which the symbolism and mythology of Satan are being acted out in Satanic human sacrifices in North America in the late twentieth century is not answered in these pages, and cannot be. As I said earler, at least 10 per cent of the reported memories could be real: no one knows where the actual figur falls, and no benefit can be derived from making premature estimates". (p xi) He also warns against precisely the kinds of polarised debate that you are driving at here. Meanwhile, "Satan's Silence" is not an academic book - it is written by two journalists.
Tort, I'm sorry that you could not make a more substantive contribution to this page beyond this hit-and-run approach. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 06:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
There are some editors here who believe that claims of SRA have no basis in fact. In my experience, they have also tended to presume (as Cesar Tort does above) that there are only two sides to this debate - the "skeptics" and the "believers" - and that anyone who is not a "skeptic" must therefore be a zealot or nutjob who believes in "Satanic conspiracies". As a result, editors like myself who don't subscribe to the "skeptic" POV on SRA tend to be accused of having a secret "agenda" or being a "conspiracy theorist". This is not the basis for calm and respectful discussion.
There are a diversity of opinions and explanations for SRA, even amongs the skeptics. You'll note that I've added the largest number of "sceptical" references on SRA of any editor. However, regardless of what your personal POV is, Wikipedia asks us to give adequate weight to all sources and POVs in order to meet the basic criteria of balance and NPOV.
The following is a sample of academics who have conducted research, and written articles and books, which take disclosures of SRA seriously: Prof. Liz Kelly, Prof. Roland Summit, Prof. Jenny Kitzinger, Prof. Catherine Itzen, Prof. Freda Briggs, Prof. Chris Goddard, Ass. Prof. Dawn Perlmutter, Dr Randy Noblitt, Dr Sara Scott, Drs Jonker and Jonker-Bakker, Dr Phil Mollon, Dr Katherine Faller, Dr Valerie Sinason, Dr Jean Goodwin, Dr Peter Bibby. Only a few of these authors are quoted on this article, but they have all made substantive contributions to the study of SRA and organised abuse. These people are not zealots, nutjobs, or "believers" in a "Satanic conspiracy". They are respected professionals and academics who are writing from a range of disciplines, and they take disclosures of SRA seriously on the basis of clinical experience and/or empirical research.
We all have strong views on the subject. I'm not advocating that we ignore the "skeptics" or entrench one POV in the article over another. I'm asking that we abide by Wikipedia policy: which is that we represent all POVs and sources in the article fairly, with consideration to balance and credibility. I'm also asking that "sceptical" editors presume good faith, and start treating myself, and other non-"sceptic" editors, as people of serious intent who are here to improve the article and nothing more. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 06:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, here I go, jumping into another controversy. First off, this is an issue which many people will have a lot of emotions over, especially those who were survivors of this type of abuse. It was bad enough when their abusers were telling them that nobody would believe them if they told, but now they have to get it from skeptics online! Please try to stay as objective as possible and consider your statements and the feelings of others.
Biaothanatoi, Wikipedia is not the place to accuse John Earl of being a pedophile without proof (sources), even if you have personal knowledge of such, like being one of his victims. Neither, Tort, do you have a place to say that he isn't. Unless you have been conjoined to his body for his entire life, you do not even have personal 100% knowledge that he is indeed not a pedophile, nor can you prove that he is not. For instance, I have first hand knowledge that Ross had a romantic (and probably sexual) affair with a therapist who interned under him while he was still married (with kids), as well as second hand information indicating that he may have had inappropriate (romantic and/or sexual) relationships with at least one of his patients. But I would not say "Collin Ross will fuck anything that comes near him" unless I have some heavy duty evidence that I can put in a <ref> tag.
Now, Biaothanatoi, if you have evidence that John Earl co-authored a book with the Eberles, and that a legitimate court of law determined that Eberles manufactured child pornography, let's get the sources! But now keep in mind, the findings of a court of law, even one of the best, does not determine truth with 100% assurity. And just because John Earl co-wrote a book with a child pornographer doesn't mean that he is also a child pornographer or pedophile, although the likelihood is up there with the likelihood that big oil companies are using propaganda to hide the ill effects of their cash cow.
And one last thing Tort, please do not copy and paste copyrighted material. It can get the entire article deleted if an admin catches it and can cause legal problems for Wikimedia as well.
Now, that I've set those points straight, I can take my gloves off. My hero Ralph Underwager is the defender of pedophiles rights! Speaker of many (differing) truths! Writer of wrongs! Come on! click on that link and just look at his face! Doesn't it make you want to have your daughter sleep over at his house!?
"Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose. They can say that what they want is to find the best way to love... Paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness they can say, 'I believe this is in fact part of God's will.'" --Ralph Underwager. [1][2]
Therefore, Tort, your claim that ITP is an objective source of information on issues of the validity of child abuse allegations causes me to feel highly suspicious about your true position. You say that "SRA buffs are an embarrassment to us, child advocates", but I don't see how you count yourself as a child advocate when you're using sources from a pro-pedophilia organization to discredit survivors of some of the most horrific abuse that occurs on this Earth! Additionally, you make personal attacks by calling somebody who supports ritual abuse survivors "SRA buffs," as if we're into some fad like wearing our shirts inside out. I'm quite curious as to what your personal theory is for the tens to hundreds of thousands across the world, claiming to have been abused in a Satanic or similar cult.
That aside, let's try to stick with reliable sources and even put them into the talk page, it can help our discussion progress better IMO. I seriously need some sleep now. Daniel Santos (talk) 10:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I like that rant. Although I believe that many of the reports of SRA are completely unfounded, and that most of the rest are reconstructed memories of actual abuse, possibly confabulated with (either the victim or the therapist) having read other reports of alleged SRA[3], usually with the actual abuse being committed by someone other than the claimed abuser, I, too, would like to see actual, reliable, sources. (My rant usually relates to McMartin, as, even at the time, most people believed that the children's claims were too bizarre to have basis in reality, and in some cases physically impossible, but I digress.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I would like to mention that I've seen some pretty disgraceful stuff come out media organizations that are widely considered credible. Even the big guys "get it wrong" sometimes. Remember that the supreme court voted many times for slavery and segregation before finally "getting it right." An overwhelming majority of Americans once thought that it was a good idea to go into Vietnam, almost all of which would say that it was a mistake 10 years later. All the more reason to consider the "unlikely." Daniel Santos (talk) 00:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
To clarify: I have never accused Earle, or anyone else, of being a paedophile on this page, nor do I have any reason to believe that is the case. The fact that Earle co-authored a book with the Eberles, who were found to be child pornographers in a court of law, is a verifiable historical fact that is attested to by Earle at IPT and elsewhere. I've posted those sources on this page before, and they are archived here. These are facts that are relevant to our assessment of Earle as a credible source according to WP policy. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 21:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • My quotations of Frankfurter in the previous incarnation of this article were not long blocks so as to violate his copyright. Unlike much of the SRA-myth sources, his book is a reliable source according to Wikipedia (WP) standards.
  • Ross became increasingly skeptical about SRA due to his enormous clinical experience with so-called SRA survivors.
  • Biaothanatoi's attack on Earl is ad hominem. His long article pretty much exposes the claims in the McMartin Kindergarten as crack claims. Labeling him pro-pedophile just dismisses his work on an ad hominem basis. Stick to his arguments! (e.g., how John Earl thoroughly debunks the tunnles myth).

User Crotalus noted above:

“ The overwhelming majority of criminologists and sociologists reject the existence of satanic ritual abuse, while a vocal minority of psychiatrists still believe in it. My search for "satanic ritual abuse" on the JSTOR and EBSCOhost databases does not support the claim of Biaothanatoi that the consensus has changed. Virtually all articles on these professional academic databases support the mainstream view: that "satanic ritual abuse" was a moral panic. ”

This means that the present incarnation of this article has been taken over by the minority (and in my opinion crank) pov pushers. According to WP policies the minority view should be mentioned in an article, but not as if it represents the overwhelming majority (in this case, of criminologists and sociologists).

My suggestion: with the help of mediation just revert this article to a July or August version of it and create a new article, SRA controversy, where the minority view may be fully explored.

But to present the minority view as the majority one is a flagrant violation of WP policies. I iterate that I cannot spend more time here. This editorial war can only be solved thru mediation.

An advice to the newcomers to this article: don’t miss this film (Indictment: The McMartin Trial link interpolated to recover properly deleted image — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:31, 13 December 2007 (UTC))

—Cesar Tort 15:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Biaothanatoi, again you have listed some writers whose work you think is relevant. If they are to be cited, you need to give the actual articles or books that you think should be referred to. Otherwise it is impossible to track down what contribution you think each of them has made to the field. It would also be very helpful to know what discipline and/or area of practice each comes from. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm happy to provide all those references, but the purpose of listing those authors was simply to indicate that taking SRA disclosures seriously is not the province of "conspiracy theorists", and nor are the authors who dismiss SRA representative of the "majority view". --Biaothanatoi (talk) 21:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Tort, first off the last part of my previous post questioning your character/motives was probably inappropriate for this forum. Having said that, this is not the place to attempt to win your argument and you will loose miserably in mediation with the types of attacks you are making against others who do not share your point of view (name calling like "SRA buffs", "so-called SRA survivors", etc.). I do not see you as inferior because you disagree with me, I do not treat you as such and you should have equal respect for other editors here (WP:CIVIL, WP:NPOV, etc.). We do not say "so-called SRA survivors", we say "alleged SRA survivors." I suggest that you spend less time trying to convince others of your point of view and more focusing on the actual issues in an objective (or at least objective as possible) fashion. If this doesn't work, we can file a request for medication. Have a good wiki-vacation :) (and now I have to get real work done) Daniel Santos (talk) 22:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I was not trying to convince anybody. Just pointed out the fact that WP's "due weight" policy has been violated in this article since I went on a wiki-vacation. I will continue my vacation and can only hope that other editors will comply with the policy with or without mediation. —Cesar Tort 01:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
There are at least two sides to this argument in the literature and in the research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPOV
“NPOV requires views to be represented without bias. All editors and all sources have biases - what matters is how we combine them to create a neutral article.”
And
“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.”
and
“An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject.”
About the movie "Indictment"
Cult and Ritual Abuse - It's History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America - Noblitt and Perskin - Prager (2000)
The movie "The Indictment," produced for Home Box Office, about the McMartin trial, was criticized by several children's advocacy groups for being slanted in favor of the accused perpetrators. According to an article featured in the newsletter "Sex Abuse, Lies and Videotape," (1995) the film's author Abby Mann and his wife Myra became advocates of the operators and staff of the McMartin preschool during the McMartin trial. The article expressed the concern that the film might reflect an unbalanced portrait of accused and accusers such that roles might be reversed in the eyes of the viewing public. This has been proven to be a correct assumption.Abuse truth (talk) 03:35, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
It should be pointed out that YOU have been violating that very expression you've quoted: “An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject.” (Even if I'm not sure exactly what those funny characters setting of the quotation are.) Once I'd pointed out that your paraphrases were inaccurate or unsupported by the reference, you switched to including long direct quotes, which are almost entirely irrelevant to the article.) In this article, I only find your McMartin section violating NPOV, as the professional and popular consensus at the time, and since, was that no abuse occured at the school itself. Some if the accusing children might have been abused by relatives, and some may just have been convinced by the therapists that they were abused, and conflated that abuse with the environment of the school. I have no comment as to the movie, not having seen it, but I can report that the credible press noted that the "evidence" was all questionable. (I think I have to exclude the San Diego Union from "credible press", as the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and Orange County Register all noted the evidence was marginal, at best.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 04:20, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Isn't user "Abuse truth" misrepresenting policy? I quote from WP's Undue weight policy:

“ NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth doesn't mention modern support for the Flat Earth concept, a view of a distinct minority. ”

As to the film, I don't know of any former "victim" of the McMartin school who has complained about the Oliver's Stone/HBO Pictures film (only the misguided zealots who believed in the witch-hunt). As a specialist in child abuse I can state that sometimes adults are innocent, just as the so-called Salem "witches" were innocent. Professor of religious studies David Franfurter makes the point that in the Salem trial the moral panic also started when a few children made wild accusations. That history repeated itself in the 1980s and 1990s is Frankfurter's message in Evil Incarnate.

Cesar Tort 17:35, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

OK guys, just a quick off the topic. I really enjoyed "Lies my Teacher Told Me" by James W. Loewen and I was so excited when he came out with a 2nd edition (which I haven't gotten to read yet). One of the main conclusions that he makes about history text books is that they try to dictate facts as if there were never any controversy about it (at least events that occurred in a time where there is nobody left alive to recall it first hand) instead of presenting the information and allowing students to draw their own conclusions. I would like to heavily emphasize this mentality in this article, let's present the information as best we can and let the readers decide what conclusions they wish to draw from it.
Further, to Tort, I happen to know Noblitt and Perskin quite well. Noblitt is one of the driest, even-headed, pragmatic, "show me the proof" people I know (sometimes annoyingly so) and doesn't come near the "zealot" mentality. I understand that he started out a skeptic of SRA as well. He is a professor and even the Director of the Psychology program at Alliant International University -- not a position easily attained. I ask you to consider these things before throwing out criticisms like "crackpot" and "zealot." Will have to write more later. Daniel Santos (talk) 18:04, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
A response to Arthur Rubin. My paraphrases were accurate. And I switched to quotes as a compromise. On 12/11/07, you deleted several sections nt his article, not just the one on McMartin. These sections had been in the article for quite awhile, were well sourced and agreed upon by the editors working on the page.
Arthur Rubin states "as the professional and popular consensus at the time, and since, was that no abuse occured at the school itself." This is unsourced opinion at best and a biased statement at worst. The trial lasted longer than any trial in the history of the United States. Someone must have thought something happened there.
The paragraph below was not written by me, as Arthur Rubin claims above.
("I only find your McMartin section violating NPOV.")
In the McMartin ritual abuse case, children as young as ten were subject to hostile cross-examination for over two weeks. Flynn, G. "Parents plead to spare molested kids new pain", The San Diego Union-Tribune, 1985-03-01, pp. 1-4.  The McMartin case sparked a program of legislative reform in recognition of the harm that children testifying in court and the justice system face. It also catalyzed a broad agenda of research into the nature of children's testimony and the reliability of their oral evidence in court. The findings of this research is somewhat ambiguous, suggesting that neither children nor adults are immune to suggestive interviewing techniques but even extremely suggestive techniques do not inevitably lead to false reports.
Ceci SJ, Kulkofsky S, Klemfuss JZ, Sweeney CD, Bruck M (2007). "Unwarranted Assumptions about Children's Testimonial Accuracy". Annual review of clinical psychology 3: 311–28. doi:10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.3.022806.091354. PMID 17716058. 
Arthur Rubin makes a lot of claims with very little data, and in this case, with actually no data.
In reply to Cesar Tort I am not "misrepresenting policy." Even if the paragraphs deleted are minority views (which has never been proven), they still need to be represented and not simply deleted from the page. ("and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each.")
It is interesting how you define the debate. Those that believe the children were abused are :
"misguided zealots who believed in the witch-hunt."
Here's an interesting quote, from Arthur Rubin's "credible press":
actual quote from news article : "Nine of the 11 jurors who agreed to be interviewed said they believed that some children were abused, but that the prosecution, for the most part, had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Buckeys were responsible." "Tapes of Children Decided the Case for Most Jurors", Los Angeles Times, Friday, January 19, 1990, pp. A1 and A2. (English) 
Even the jurors believed they were abused. And comparing the Salem Witch Trials from early America to a day care case in modern times that lasted quite a long time is ridiculous.Abuse truth (talk) 03:18, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
My recollection of news articles at the time is that most people, including the jurors, believed that the children were abused in some sense, but there was no evidence of whether the teachers, their respective parents, or possibly even the therapists, were responsible. That quote is not inconsistent with my recollection. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:26, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Users Daniel Santos and "Abuse truth"’s replies are unresponsive to the issue. Here we go again!: "The overwhelming majority of criminologists and sociologists reject the existence of satanic ritual abuse", and the WP policy violated by you guys: "Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not [my emphasis] give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all."

Rubin: I am on a very brief break these Christmas days and won’t be able to discuss the obvious ad infinitum & ad nauseam with these guys. Since you are an admin—:

  • What could be done to unlock momentarily the page to place the proper pov tag?
  • Do you plan to request formal mediation?
  • What happened with the editors who gate-keeped this article from the minority viewers taking it over??

Cesar Tort 05:51, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The overwhelming majority of criminologists and sociologists reject the existence of satanic ritual abuse. -- Cesar Tort
So let's examine this. Do criminologists treat survivors of trauma? No. Sociologists? No. Psychotherapists? Ahh, there ya go!
Typically, the mere mention of SRA in either a civil or criminal court proceeding is a kiss of death. Luckily, survivors of cult abuse don't have to go to court to recover. This article is not solely about legal matters related to SRA, it is about SRA. Attempting to indicate the the opinions of criminologists and sociologists dictate the overall validity of the issue is to misconstrue the facts. There are not yet many successful prosecution against perpetrators of SRA (for SRA crimes), our legal system has a hell of a long way to go (no pun intended). It has only been in the last few decades that child sexual abuse was recognized at all! Just because thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands of criminal cultist are walking around free today isn't an excuse to further extend the crime by pretending it isn't happening, especially, when the evidence is so overwhelming. How exactly do you propose that thousands of alleged survivors come up with the same stories year after year? False memories? Therapists lacking creativity and installing the same old lines into their clients, which they have the amazing ability to completely control? Give me a break.
No Cesar Tort, you won't be reverting this to the previous misinformation and you won't squelch the facts as long as people like Abuse truth, Biaothanatoi and myself are alive. And Arthur Rubin, as admin I expect professionalism despite your personal POV (which we all have). Daniel Santos (talk) 10:34, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
:So let's examine this. Do criminologists treat survivors of trauma? No. Sociologists? No. Psychotherapists? Ahh, there ya go! -- Daniel Santos
Let's examine that more closly. Criminologists have a professional interest in determining whether illegal CSA has been committed, whether or not in conjunction with SRA. Psychotherapists may not professionally care whether the SRA actually occured, if the patient thinks it has. The treatment may not depend on whether the SRA actually occured. (I don't know. If you, DS, assert that the treatment would be different if the SRA was known not to have occured, I'll have to take your word for it.)
(And I don't recall editing much in this article, other than removing known falsehoods from the McMartin section, removing AT's at most partially revelvant and sourced misquotes, and reverting CT's reversion from a long time ago, on the grounds that it was a major change without discussion, which is now happening here. If I've done anything else, other than reverting edits made at the same time as the re-addition of those falsehoods, I apologize.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:27, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
In reply, only one of the parts I restored of the section deleted by Crotalus and then AR several times was written by me. And this was a single sentence that was 100% accurate originally in the intro. It was a simple statistic on SRA. And an EL that belongs in the article. So none of the part I wrote was either "partially relevant" or "misquotes." I restored data that should have stayed in the article, that was from a variety of sources. IMO, these sections need to be restored, at least until some consensus is achieved about due weight and other issues. Hopefully, in the future, edits will be made more cautiously and carefully.Abuse truth (talk) 21:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
My apologies for the slow response on this. I think AT beat me to the criticism of the "overwhelming majority" statement. This is one of those negative proof issues, make an unsubstantiated claim and claim that it's true until I present evidence that it isn't. So if you want to make such claims, source them. Next, a criminologist does care rather a crime was in the context of a satanic ritual or not, because there are special laws designed specifically to prosecute perpetrators of cult abuse crimes more harshly. A (good) therapist does care if a client has indeed suffered SRA because it changes the complexity of their problems significantly. Many therapists that work with DID clients will limit the number of SRA survivors they take because it can be such an emotional strain to listen to the horrible stories. There can also be great professional strain when the risk of suicide and self-injury is high, obligating them to sometimes report their clients to police or other authorities or otherwise force them into the hospital (there is a considerable legal consequence of a therapist does not).
But all of that aside, I should say that a great many more survivors get psychotherapy to deal with the effects of SRA, than seek to prosecute their perpetrators. A crime cannot be prosecuted if nobody steps forward. Most survivors are terrified of such a thought. Daniel Santos (talk) 22:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


I strongly disagree that I am "unresponsive to the issue." But I do disagree with your perspective on this. You state that "The overwhelming majority of criminologists and sociologists reject the existence of satanic ritual abuse," yet I have seen no evidence to back this up.
Here's some evidence to back up the POV that you are incorrect:
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~skent/satanic.html       (corrected bad link Daniel Santos (talk) 10:34, 15 December 2007 (UTC))
Articles
October 20, 1997 ASSESSMENT OF THE SATANIC ABUSE ALLEGATIONS IN THE [name deleted] CASE Stephen A. Kent (Ph.D.) Professor Department of Sociology University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H4
Diabolic Debates: A Reply to David Frankfurter and J. S. La Fontaine," Religion 24 (1994): 135-188.
"Deviant Scripturalism and Ritual Satanic Abuse" Part One: "Possible Judeo-Christian Influences." Religion 23 no.3 (July, 1993): 229-241.
"Deviant Scripturalism and Ritual Satanic Abuse" Part Two: "Possible Mormon, Magic, and Pagan Influences." Religion 23 no.4 (October, 1993): 355-367.
"Deviant Scriptualism and Ritual Satanic Abuse Part Two: Possible Masonic, Mormon, Magick, and Pagan Influences," Stephen A. Kent, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton (Canada) published by Religion (1993) 23, 355-367, c 1993 Academic press Limited.
"The strongest (but not definitive) evidence that satanic rituals are being conducted in the context of deviant Mormonism appears in an internal memo about 'ritualistic child abuse' written by a Mormon bishop.... Bishop Glenn L. Pace .... indicated that he had "met with sixty victims. That number could be twice or three times as many if I did not discipline myself to only one meeting per week... All sixty individuals are members of the church. Forty-five victims allege witnessing and/or participating in human sacrifice. The majority were abused by relatives, often their parents." (Pace, 1990 p. 1, reprinted in Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1991 p.3) . . . The alleged perpetrators were Mormons, often ones in prominent church positions." (Page 358)
"While I concede the point to skeptics that alleged victims might use the same passages that I identified to fabricate or otherwise construct false memories, I remain unconvinced that many of the people with whom I have worked had sufficient scriptural exposure to have done so.... It is entirely possible that intergenerational Satanists do exist . . . we cannot know what (if any) relationship exist between actual perpetrators' satanic and the religious justifications that exist for them... (assuming, of course, that they are real)." (Page 364)
from web: LETTER FROM PROFESSOR STEPHEN KENT Ph.D., SOCIOLOGY DEPT, AT UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY.
I am a sociologist of religion who has presented research findings about ritual abuse allegations at a conferences about ritual abuse. I will be pleased to snail-mail you three published articles that I have written about ritual abuse allegations, two of which contain sections on the deviant Masonic accounts that I have heard....Please know that I maintain appropriate academic detachment in my analysis, so that the lack of definitive proof for these allegations forces me to stop short of saying that they represent accurate memories. Nonetheless, I sure do hear lots of tales about very bad abuse in deviant Masonic settings, and I take them VERY seriously.
Best Regards, Steve Kent
Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Can. T6G 2H4, Phone:403-492-2204, Fax:403-492-7196, E-mail: skent@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca
http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/48/10/1360
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 48, No. 10, 1360-1374 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764205277013
© 2005 SAGE Publications
Sharing and Responding to Memories
Hal Pepinsky Indiana University-Bloomington Walden University
This article describes the evolution of a college seminar in which reports are presented of sexual assault arising in child custody cases and of ritual abuse and mind-control programming. Seminar participants listen to stories from a variety of sources firsthand and secondhand. Techniques of seminar organization and management to promote open, critical evaluation and discussion of the significance and validity of these reports are reviewed. The seminar has become a primary means by which the instructor himself learns and teaches about the nature of personal violence and of efforts at healing and peace making in response.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation
The basic philosophy of Wikipedia is to reach a consensus in decision-making; this allows for the creation and maintenance of a stable knowledge base
IMO, consensus would entail working in good faith and respecting all opinions to find a common ground. To me, this means AGF. I believe that we all have something to add to the discussion and the page.Abuse truth (talk) 21:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
The Kent articles are scholarly publications. They form a series constituting a disagreement with Frankfurter. This exchange should be summarised in the article. The Pepinsky piece on the other hand does not seem to be relevant. The abstract shows that is focus is on a way to organise seminar discussions about abuse, not on the abuse itself. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Itsmejudith above about the Kent articles. I have all three copies of the articles by Kent. If an editor would like to submit a section on the Frankfurter articles, then I can match it up with data from Kent's articles. Or, I could simply draw data from one of them. Kent's reply to Frankfurter's and LaFontaine's Diabolic Debates may be the most appropriate for this article.Abuse truth (talk) 21:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/NudistHallofShame/Underwager2.html (Excerpts from Ralph and Hollida Underwager's interview with Paidika)
  2. ^ Whitman, Charles L (1995). Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma. Health Communications Inc, 6-7. ISBN 1558743200. 
  3. ^ I just recently read an article stating that a study has shown that a flat denial is often remembered later as confirmation of a statement being true. ~~~~

No forensic evidence!

  • "Attempting to indicate the the opinions of criminologists and sociologists dictate the overall validity of the issue is to misconstrue the facts [...] So let's examine this. Do criminologists treat survivors of trauma? No. Sociologists? No. Psychotherapists? Ahh, there ya go!" —Daniel Santos.
Bullocks! Psychotherapists are notorious for endorsing UFO abductions and past lives (reincarnation) as well! Obviously what counts here is the what criminologists think about Satanic Ritual Abuse. And their dictum is that there is no forensic evidence of SRA claims.
Cesar Tort 17:51, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
CT's statements above appear to be unsourced. He states that "(t)he overwhelming majority of criminologists and sociologists reject the existence of satanic ritual abuse" yet I have seen no data to back this up. Even his statement about psychotherapists above is unsourced. I strongly believe that all reliable sources from all fields that discuss this topic need to be at least considered, if not included in the article itself.Abuse truth (talk) 21:56, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Ditto of AT. When did psychotherapists become notorious for endorsing UFO abductions, supporting Communism and turning people into gay florists who squeeze their toothpaste tube from the middle? What other nonsense can we make up here? George W. Bush is an alien seeking to enslave the world so his species can come steal our Oreo cookies? Bush did discover that if he said "weapons of mass destruction" enough times, that people would believe that Sadam had them. Is that what you are attempting Tort? Daniel Santos (talk) 22:21, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Surveys in Australia, England and America have found that between a quarter and a third of psychs and counsellors have encountered at least one client with a history of ritual abuse, and the majority of professionals believe this history to be genuine.
It is clearly inaccurate to state that it is the "majority opinion" that disclosures of SRA have no basis in fact. It seems to me that there are a small group of very vocal authors, associated with the False Memory position, who hold to this view. The majority of practitioners hold a more nuanced and evidenced-based position. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

User “Abuse truth”: I am afraid that you are abusing truth. The fact that the skeptical view of SRA is the standard and the majority view among academicians (and non-lunatic investigators and reporters) can be easily checked out in a section of the article “Child abuse” of the 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica:

“ Dangers of overreaction. By the mid-1980s, child abuse was considered a leading social problem in the United States and other Western countries. The extent of the problem seemed to many to be increasing, and many claims were made about the prevalence of incest, child abduction, and even child murder, as well as the operation of organized child-abuse rings. In part these charges were the result of new methods used by social workers and psychotherapists to interview children suspected of being victims of abuse. Interviews conducted with these methods often suggested that the child had been exploited, and some interviews, especially with toddlers, appeared to yield details of sexual abuse so bizarre and shocking as to suggest that it had been committed in ritualistic fashion by some kind of cult. Also contributing to the perceived increase in the incidence of child abuse was the controversial practice of some psychotherapists of attributing the problems reported by adult patients to repressed memories of sexual abuse suffered during childhood. In fact, however, many of the children who reported sexual and other forms of abuse through the new methods were inventing the stories they told. As critics later pointed out, the methods—which involved repeatedly asking leading and suggestive questions and rewarding children for giving the “right” answers—encouraged children to tell false stories of abuse or to believe, contrary to fact, that abuse had taken place. One significant series of cases involving such reports were the trials beginning in 1984 of Virginia McMartin, founder of the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, and others on dozens of counts of child abuse. Most of the charges, which were based on reports of abuse collected in interviews with hundreds of students, were eventually dropped for lack of evidence. In 1990 the last case resulting from the affair ended in a mistrial; thus, no convictions were ever secured. Even so, the careers of the McMartin family, as well as their reputations, were ruined. During the decade after the revelations in the McMartin case, thousands of people worldwide were likewise accused of involvement in ritual abuse (Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica). ”

In the same article, “Child abuse”, you can read: “During the early 1990s, charges of ritual abuse and recovered memory encountered serious criticism, which dealt a setback to the child-protection movement”. Hence, since I am devoting my life to children’s rights, I must debunk the claims of those who, in good faith but misguidedly, caused the setback to the child-protection movement.

—Cesar Tort 06:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Can we please get back to discussing improvements to the article and refrain from lengthy exposes of our own views. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:44, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
The point was precisely to show to user "Abuse truth" and Daniel Santos that the majority view is the skeptical view; and that, therefore, they and Biaothanatoi have been (unconsciously) violating WP's Undue weight policy. Once this point is taken, the SRA article will be reverted to a September or October incarnation of the article. —Cesar Tort 17:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Itsmejudith above. I would prefer to add data to the article. Unfortunately, some editors would prefer to delete data that doesn't fit their POV.
In response to Cesar Tort. In the quote above, I still haven't seen any evidence of a majority of criminologists or sociologists that are skeptical about SRA. Also, the article states "in part." This means that they believe that only part of the charges increasing was due to interview procedures. The article also states "encountered serious criticism." This does not mean that the charges weren't true (which was never stated in the article) nor does it mean that there is a majority (or minority) view of anything. It appears you still haven't shown your idea of a majority view is true. And name calling ("non-lunatic investigators") is unnecessary.Abuse truth (talk) 04:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I also found this as a reference at the Britannica website:
Ritual Abuse, Ritual Crime, and Healing (http://www.ra-info.org/)
"Detailed information on this form of human rights abuse. Includes a collection of articles, a list of help centers, and a bibliography on related publications. Also contains remedial tips for psychological problems and a photo gallery. "
quote from website :
Ritual abuse is an extreme sadistic form of abuse of children and non-consenting adults. It is methodical, systematic sexual, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse, which often includes mind control, torture, and highly illegal and immoral activities such as murder, child pornography and prostitution. The abuse is justified by a religious or political ideology.Abuse truth (talk) 04:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Ritual Abuse and Ritual Crime is not SRA. The paradigm of SRA are the McMartin-like school trials. You know that. Cesar Tort 06:09, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Cesar Tort, it's obvious that this is an emotional topic for you, but you aren't making sense. Some "ritual abuse" and "ritual crime" is SRA. All SRA is "ritual abuse" and "ritual crime". You quote the "dangers of overreacting", while yourself appearing to be overreacting to people speaking out about SRA. What is the "danger" involved in looking at the facts for you? Daniel Santos (talk) 22:21, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
This is not a blog. Will both sides please cease adding incivil and ad-hominem comments. If it goes on I will delete a whole chunk of this as irrelevant to the talk page. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Itsmejudith above. IMO, we need to focus on the data of the topic and policy of wikipedia. Abuse truth (talk) 02:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Pictures?

Please don't take this the wrong way, but couldn't this article be improved by some pictures? I mean, I wouldn't expect Commons to have many pictures of children being satanically, ritually abused, but could we at least put a picture of Geraldo or of a book cover or of some artist's depiction of an 80s cultist? It would brighten things up.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 04:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Fat Man. Welcome to the discussion! These guys will never be able to provide photographic evidence of children being satanically abused because they know that, unlike ritual abuse, there is no forensic evidence of SRA. Cesar Tort 06:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Sadly such footage can surely be found p2p networks with tags like "black tape", or "snuff film", etc. I know somebody who has seen a VHS tape with cult ritual torture/murder. I certanly have no interest in seeing this myself. (edited my comment) Daniel Santos (talk) 22:46, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
But I'm not calling for pictures of Satanic ritual abuse in action (how distasteful!). Just asking for some visual aids.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 06:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Visual aids would be an embarrasment for those who believe in the authenticity of the memories (memories that the therapists implanted in children). The kids "recalled" being flushed down the toilet and abused in sewers, taken into an underground cavern beneath the schools, flying through the air, and seeing giraffes and lions.
OK guys: I will continue my wiki-vacation now and in a year or two will check this article again. I hope I will see it reverted to the incarnation of the article that does not violate the WP policy.
Bye right now :)
Cesar Tort 16:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Tort departs after criticising us for failing to post satanic child pornography on this page.
I think that's a good summation of the level of coherence and logic that he bought to the debate. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Please keep it civil, everyone. Cool Hand Luke 22:41, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Moving ahead

Page protection comes off shortly, so lets look at moving ahead.

This article should be a summary of the range of views on SRA from credible sources. It is not a forum to disseminate your particular POV on SRA, however strongly you might hold to that POV.

There are a number of editors here who presume that authors that take disclosures of SRA seriously cannot, by definition, meet the critera for a "credible source", regardless of the credentials of the author, the source's publication in peer-review, or it's reception amongst the author's academic peers.

Presuming that everyone who holds a different POV to you is a nutjob is violates Wikipedia policy in relation to AGF. Deleting credible sources that disagree with your POV violates Wikipedia policy in relation to balance and NPOV.

Currently, I think the article strikes a relatively good balance between the various positions on SRA, but there is always room for improvement. If you want to start a fight, go to a discussion board. If you want to contribute to a fair and balanced summary of the literature on SRA, stick around and let's work together. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 21:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree (because of lack of knowledge). I believe CT's statement about "the vast majority" to be accurate, but we cannot use it without sources; nor could we use a statement that the vast majority of psychotherapists believe SRA acctually occurs. (The correct statement seems to be that most psychotherapists whose patients claim SRA believe them.) However, in the McMartin section, the POV (which I believe to be mainstream) that nothing happened or could have happened has been ignored. It might be best to remove it as an example entirely. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
There is no McMartin section, Rubin. The article refers briefly to the conduct of the McMartin trial, specifically in relation to the cross-examination of child witnesses.
You appear to believe that, since the accused as acquitted, therefore the children were not cross-examined in the manner described by journalists at the time. This is a bizarre argument that makes no sense.
If you continue to vandalise this article on such ridiculous grounds, then we will have no choice but to seek intervention from elsewhere. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 00:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
No, I believe that because there was never any credible evidence of SRA, the badgering of child witnesses at the trial is irrelevant. McMartin should (at most) appear as a mention in this article, as an example of disproved SRA allegations. (The disputed sentence is not presently there, but I expect it to re-appear within minutes of unprotection.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:34, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Rubin, you know very little about McMartin, SRA or the trial process, and what you do know appears to be factually incorrect.
The McMartin defendants were charged on the basis of the children's disclosures of sexual assault and abuse, not SRA, and claims of SRA were not tested in court. The defense was permitted to cross-examine the children on their SRA disclosures, but this was in relation to credibility - not the charges themselves.
In this article, the reference to McMartin that you are disputing is specifically to the conduct of the trial, and it does not make an imputation in relation to the guilt or innocence of the accused.
You have no basis to delete this information on McMartin, which is verifiable and relevant. Your contributions to this article are in breach of Wikipedia policy and I'm frankly sick of your vandalism. If you can't contribute constructively to this article, in accordance with Wikipedia policy, then leave. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, even if you're correct, that makes it clear that McMartin doesn't belong in this article, now, doesn't it? Unless you can add a reference that the precedents set by the McMartin trial affected future SRA prosecutions, it doesn't belong here. It wasn't really an SRA case.
As for the lead problems, I have no objection to noting the SRA has been reported on the various continents, but described where it (SRA, or SRA accusations, or SRA prosecutions) is most prevelent requires a separate reference to that effect. Our noting that more accusations or prosecutions occur in specific places is clear WP:SYN, without a specific reference to that effect. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:18, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Of course McMartin is relevant to this article. It was the McMartin trial that bought SRA to the attention of the world media, but only because the SRA disclosures were effectively used by the defence, in both the courtroom and the media, to discredit the complainant children, although the defendants were never charged in relation to SRA.
You deleted verifiable information from this article on the basis that McMartin was an example of "disproven" SRA allegations when it was no such thing. You now suggest that this basis was false, but create a new one to exclude the information from the article anyway - and, again, on facetious grounds.
You make edits on false grounds, you are proven wrong, and you just re-assert the old argument. You do not act in good faith. It is clear that you have an agenda that has nothing to do with the work of Wikipedia. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Interesting. You add data about the McMartin trial which isn't in the article on the McMartin case. If it's not relevant there, why is it relevant here? And if it is relevant there (and it's relevant here, which I still dispute), then why isn't the paragraph replaced with a pointer to that article, and summarized here? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
You first deleted the McMartin info claiming that the newspaper it was printed in had been discredited (???). You are wrong. Then you claimed McMartin was irrelevant to SRA. You are wrong. Now you try to exclude the info because it's not posted elsewhere on Wikipedia. How ridiculous. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 02:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Biaothanatoi above.
This is the paragraph that was first deleted by Crotalus and then AR:
In the McMartin ritual abuse case, children as young as ten were subject to hostile cross-examination for over two weeks.{cite news | last = Flynn | first = G | title = Parents plead to spare molested kids new pain| publisher = The San Diego Union-Tribune | date= 1985-03-01 | pages = 1-4}}The McMartin case sparked a program of legislative reform in recognition of the harm that children testifying in court and the justice system face. It also catalyzed a broad agenda of research into the nature of children's testimony and the reliability of their oral evidence in court. The findings of this research is somewhat ambiguous, suggesting that neither children nor adults are immune to suggestive interviewing techniques but even extremely suggestive techniques do not inevitably lead to false reports.
Ceci SJ, Kulkofsky S, Klemfuss JZ, Sweeney CD, Bruck M (2007). "Unwarranted Assumptions about Children's Testimonial Accuracy". Annual review of clinical psychology 3: 311–28. doi:10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.3.022806.091354. PMID 17716058. 
I don't see anything POV about this paragraph. It appears to be fairly neutral and uses reliable sources. It is relevant here. It discusses the history of child testimony in ritual abuse and other cases. If an editor feels they need to balance it further, they should add data to the article, not delete this paragraph.Abuse truth (talk) 03:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't see anything POV about it, either. It's the relevance that's questionable. "B" has no admitted that there is little relevance of SRA to McMartin. I suppose it's possible that there's still relevance of McMartin to SRA, but we'd need a source for that relevance. It relates, at best, to children's testimony, not to SRA or even prosecution for SRA. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 07:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Reading back over it, the McMartin version which AT quoted seems reasonable. I have doubts that it really was what was in the article before, but I have no objection to it being inserted as long as the sentence on harm (after being edited for grammar) really is in a cited source. Otherwise, that sentence is {{or}} or {{syn}}, even if accurate. I belive the later two sentences in the paragraph likely to be reasonable paraphrases, but I'm not sure about the failed attempt to attach "harm". It's unclear whether the principle harm in question is to the children, the defendants, or the justice system, and even more unclear which the harm was actually done to. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
If you don't believe that AT is telling the truth, you can go to the editing history of the page and see for yourself. Do not accuse editors of acting in bad faith if you don't have proof or if you can't be bothered checking for yourself.
Sexual abuse trials are complicated and McMartin is no different. It seems that you would like to revise the historical record in order to further your own agenda: in particular, to paint the McMartin trial as an unambiguous exoneration of the accused. To further this agenda, you have consistently blocked verifiable and relevant information from this article.
You are a vandal, pure and simple, and you are wasting all our time. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 22:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe AT understands the concept of truth, as can be seen from the fact that he frequently misquotes articles, and doesn't understand that he is. I'm agnostic as to whether he's telling the truth in an individual instance. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
AR, you are violating WP:AGF, WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. And even though I sympathize with Biaothanatoi, I have to say that your last post was also incivil and a personal attack. I realize that I have "gone off" a lot of times as well on the discussion pages of this and other related articles and I apologize. Please let's all try to be civil and cool headed. I know it isn't easy because we bring our own personal experiences to the table and that influences our feelings. (this post was revised) Daniel Santos (talk) 05:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Arthur Rubin has falsely accused me of misquotes without evidence. He has self-admittedly followed me from page to page, reverting my edits for any possible reason he can find. Not surprisingly, these edits disagree with his POV. He rarely adds anything to these articles. He often refuses to discuss edits on the talk pages and simply deletes large amounts of information from articles. He changes excuses to delete pertinent sourced information, claiming relevance, etc. I plan to keep trying to improve this article, according to the principles of consensus, NPOV and RS.Abuse truth (talk) 03:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I support the your last edit. I believe that it is well sourced, accurate and relevant. There may be wordings, etc. that can be improved, but I see nothing that I consider a reason to revert. Also, the ritual abuse bibliography link AT added at this end is exceedingly relevant and, IMO, should not be removed. Daniel Santos (talk) 05:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Trudging towards mediation

Well, I'm not sure if we'll be able to do it, because not everyone who should probably be involved has signed on. Let me just say, if anyone is "holding out" because they think the Arbitration Committee will step in and decide this if mediation is declined, that's wrong. ArbCom does not decide content disputes, it hands out sanctions for user misconduct. And anyway, ArbCom may not want to get involved without further dispute resolution; thus far, there's been only an RfC and a noticeboard posting.

Let me just proceed anyway, on the assumption that everyone here is amenable to mediation. The next question would be, what are the issues to be meditated?

  1. How do we treat the very existence of SRA? All parties agree that SRA is a controversial issue, and that there are "skeptics" who believe that the phenomenon either does not exist, or is almost entirely fantasy and conflation with only the barest kernel of truth. However, is this position significant enough, based on the relevant sources, that it should hold sway over the article as a whole? In other words, should the article describe skepticism "in some quarters" and very briefly treat skeptical explanations, or should it describe the skeptical view as the view which carried the day, and provide detailed information about the skeptics' conclusions?

  2. What is the scope of this page? Does it refer strictly to those cases which were presented in the sources as "Satanic ritual abuse," or does discuss what the former SRA therapists now call "ritualistic, organized abuse," "multidimensional child sex rings," or "multi-victim, multi-perpetrator abuse?" Should it discuss cases which appear, based on the sources, to clearly meet one of the definitions of the latter terms, but are not actually described as "satanic ritual abuse" per se? Would it be appropriate to fork this page, not along POV lines, but to clearly separate the two concepts?

  3. In that vein, what is the significance of the intense popular interest in SRA dating to the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially in the United States? Is this an incidental phenomenon of little relevance to a serious discussion of SRA, is it a signficiant part of the SRA story in context, or is it in fact central to understanding the issue, and the main reason to have an article at all?

That's my attempt at a summary of broad issues; of course it's coming from just one participant, who is not even the most active one, and obviously has some mutual antagonism with some other editors here. Please feel free to critique my wording and suggest other questions, however, please keep this thread as a discussion of mediation prospects, not a discussion of SRA generally. <eleland/talkedits> 23:37, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a few more issues, minor though they be:
  1. Can we describe where SRA (whichever) occurs just by looking at the sources, or do we need a specific source identifying the locations and prevelance?
  2. Do we need online verification of sources, considering the high emotional content causing people to shade the truth in favor of their own interpretation.
  3. Can we use clearly biased sources, such as (pro-existence-of-SRA) the Leadership Council or (anti-) the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, if generally reliable?
— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:14, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I would like to make a few clarifying observations.
  • While the phrase "satanic ritual abuse" is pretty common now, it is often used to describe abuse that has been perpetrated by cults other than Satanic. In the US, there is also a lot of Luciferian and Illuminati cults and perhaps others that I am not aware of. While very similar, they do have different belief systems, histories and practices.
  • Unrelated organizations can worship the same deity, yet behave differently. The existence of public churches for worshiping Satan and Lucifer are examples of this, as Satanic and Luciferian cults are sworn to secrecy by their very belief system.
  • Just as major corporations create child companies for various markets and such, so too do cults create sub-organizations such as child pornography and prostitution. Running a secretive cult takes a lot of money, and having free access to a large number of children who are already taught to keep secrets and sexually appease adults has made this an appealing mechanism for secretive cults to garner undocumented revenue, especially with a clientèle who would go to great lengths to hide how their money is being spent and keep it hidden.
--Daniel Santos (talk) 07:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The two key issues that I see on this page are:
1. The definition of SRA: In the literature, the term is used in a variety of ways, but I find "skeptical" editors here are pushing for a narrow and extreme definition to be entrenched in the article (e.g. "global Satanic conspiracies") which would therefore cast anyone who has used the term in the past as a conspiracy theorist. This is not an adequate summation of the range of ways in which SRA has been defined, and this approach clearly breaches Wikipedia policy in relation to balance and NPOV.
2. The polarisation of the debate: "Skeptical" editors here have typically presumed two sides to this discussion - theirs (scientific, rational, evidence-based) and anyone elses (zealots, conspiracists, hysterics) - and they have sought to attribute conspiratorial beliefs to every editor and every source that holds a different POV to them. We need to stop trying to lump everyone and every source into two opposing camps. This approach has not only fermented unnecessary conflict here, but it has whitewashed over the range and nuance of views on SRA in academia and the professional community.
One way around the endless conflict, I think, is to take a historical and social constructionist approach. The term SRA is not a "natural type" (e.g. a descriptor for a rock or a chemical), it is a category that has been constructed by different actors and employed in different ways over time. Some people (clinicians, social workers, survivors) have used the term to refer to organised and ritualistic abuse, others (conspiracy theorists, religious fundamentalists) have used the term to refer to a supernatural or parapolitical conspiracy, and others (the FMSF, sympathetic journalists) have used the term to refer to impossible and bizarre allegations of sexual abuse.
We need to treat all these sources appropriately and fairly e.g. The POV of the conspiracy theorists and fundamentalists should not be given undue weight, given that they represent minority views. However, "skeptical" editors here have been trying to conflate the conspiratorial POV with those of the professionals who work with survivors, despite the reams of academic and peer-reviewed sources over the last twenty years which indicate that SRA (organised and ritualistic abuse) is associated with the worst forms of child maltreatment.
In terms of moving ahead, I think we need to distinguish between the media treatment of SRA, and empirical studies and case studies on org/ritual abuse, whilst giving balance and due weight to all credible sources. I would also like to see "skeptical" editors cease their conflation between SRA conspiracy theorists (a tiny number of zealots) and those involved in treatment and research on SRA (clinicians, therapists and researchers). If you could start AGF in relation to myself and other editors, that would be a start. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 01:08, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I think point one is a good one, although I disagree with your assessment of what "skeptics" are pushing for on this page. I think it ties into my questions #2 (What is the scope of this page?) and #3 (What is the significance of the impossible and bizarre allegations to understanding SRA).
I think point two is a little dubious, frankly, I feel pretty strongly that you and the other "pro-SRA" editors are largely responsible for this polarisation. I take particular issue with your technique of chain-linking edits back to some disreputable source; editor X says "ABC", and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation also says "ABC", and Ralph Underwager of the FMSF said (sort of) nice things about pedophiles, so editor X is unduly influenced by pedophile apologia and a discredit to the project, etc. In any case, mediation cannot really fix this type of problem, which is about how editors deal with each other personally, and not about what the article text says.
I am glad to hear you embrace a historical and social-constructivist view of the SRA phenomenon. However, I believe that we disagree rather sharply about what such an approach would entail. No, I do not believe that you are a conspiracy nutter who buys into all of the SRA claims, even the patently ridiculous ones. I am under the impression — and feel free to correct me — that you believe SRA to be fairly prevalent, and a major factor within the broader issue of child abuse. I get the impression that you believe SRA was seized on and exaggerated in the 1980s by religious fundies and others, and that the backlash of the early 1990s not only exposed their exaggerations, but went further, and resulted in genuine ritual abuse rings being "let off the hook" due to the mistaken popular impression that there was nothing to it.
Now, this is an interesting thesis, and surely worthy of investigation. But regardless of whether it's an accurate view of the SRA phenomenon, Wikipedia can't adopt this narrative unless it's the point of view of a clear majority of reputable sources. We can certainly explain this view, attributed as a view, to its notable proponents. However, I see no evidence that this thesis is widely accepted even within the psychotherapy community, let alone by criminologists and sociologists. Certainly no evidence to that effect has been presented here, rather, you've tried to convince us that it's true. Well, it may be true and it may not be. Most of us are in no position to judge. But Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, nor is it a soapbox to convince others of your views. Pursuing an approach based on convincing editors that some thesis is true rather than widely accepted in the scholarly sources is, indeed, fermenting conflict. <eleland/talkedits> 02:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I would like to comment on that. I strongly agree with Biaothanatoi's assertion in item #2, although I would say that this does not apply to all skeptical editors. None the less, I have seen a lot of this behavior in the discussion of this and related articles, Dissociative Identity Disorder and recovered memory therapy to name a few.
Second, there is a distinctly different state of the dispute in the public arena (mostly media-based) and amongst psychotherapists. While there are indeed psychotherapists who do not believe the allegations of SRA reported by survivors, few dispute its existence today. As such, it may even be helpful to have separate sections or subsections devoted to examining how the topic of SRA plays out in these arenas.
Historically, there is a good deal of evidence suggesting that SRA has existed for several centuries, although it's only come to light and been given a name recently. In one case I remember in particular, a man being interrogated for something unrelated claimed to be possessed (or a daemon, I forget now) and said that he went off into the woods at night to worship the devil and described a number of features that sounded very much like SRA. Feeling as though one is "possessed" is a common reaction to having DID and not having another explanation for the phenomena. Unfortunately, in that day, they believed him and "broke him on the wheel" (warning: graphic link). But on the bright side, this practice now appears to be extinct. --Daniel Santos (talk) 07:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

restorations of data to the page that were deleted without consensus

I have restored information to the page that was deleted without discussion. Much of this data has since been discussed and it appears there is no objection to the text sections. I would hope that the editors of this page will be to discuss these sections here and not simply delete data from these sections.Abuse truth (talk) 03:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

You've just reverted the article to a prior state, ignoring previous additions, and the lead is clearly an WP:OR violation as to prevalence statistics. Furthermore, this article is subject to WP:BLP in regard any (alleged) victims and (alleged) perpetrators who are still living, so anything without a clear source must be removed. Please discuss your "restorations" one paragraph at a time. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
While I support AR on wanting to discuss the changes one at a time, I also believe that some of it did not need to be rolled back en masse. For instance, I find the history information on Freud to be relevant, appropriate and non-biased. Do you agree AR? Daniel Santos (talk) 20:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. AT "rubs me the wrong way" (colloquial, please, AT, don't interpret it literally.) No object to Freud, McMartin as recently reported provided that "harm" is sourced (I didn't check) (with possibly another note that the question of whether SRA acctually occured, or was even plausible, is irrelevant), and to the lead EXCEPT for the comparative difference in prevalence, unless specifically sourced. I'll accept the list of (sourced) incidents below as adequate evidence that it has been reported on each of the continents in question. However, perhaps we should get general consensus as to each change. I'm not the only editor who feels that many of your (DS) and AT's changes in this article are inappropriate. As an editor who generally has similar POV to AT, could you explain that, in general, Wikipedia "rules" (policies, guidelines, etc.) suggest that material should not be included in articles unless there is general consensus FOR inclusion? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I just wish we had more impartial editors involved. WLU suggested that our bickering scared them all away! do'h! I guess we just have to try to do the best we all can. I'm getting kinda burnt on some of these "debates". Anyway, I hope the below helps and that we can discuss them better than we've been doing (all of us). Daniel Santos (talk) 21:11, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I almost lost all of this (below) work due to edit conflict, whew!
OK, I have reverted some of ARs changes that I felt were baseless. However, let's discuss them one at a time here. I'll create subsections for each. To see which of ATs changes are still reverted from the article, click here. To see which of ARs changes I reverted, click here. Also, it looks like there was some whitespace changes, so sorry for the slightly confusing diffs (i.e., some paragraphs show changes, but there appear to be no visible changes at all). Let's all please try to be civil and cool headed and discuss these objectively. Thanks, Daniel Santos (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Lead

AT, I did not put the sentence you added back in because it isn't sourced.

Accusations and substantiated allegations of child abuse ocurring within the context of satanic rituals have been documented on all the continents but Asia, with a greater number and higher profile of cases being reported in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Can you please source this? Daniel Santos (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

History / Freud

I left this out of my revert because I want to hear ARs side of this story. The information AT put in appears accurate, sourced and relevant. Why do you feel it should be removed? Daniel Santos (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Evidence

I reverted changes that AR removed from evidence. I see nothing wrong with it the second sentence and would like to know why AR removed it? The only problem I can possibly see with the 1st sentence is that it is an estimate and I wish it had a page number tied to it so we can see how they came up with that estimate. Was this based upon a study? If it was, then it will be better to source the actual study rather than their book (although both wouldn't hurt). But I put the sentence back in, partially to keep them together.

An estimated 93% of therapists working with alleged ritual abuse survivors in the early and mid 1990's believed that ritual abuse occurs.[1] Studies have shown a connection between dissociative identity disorder and SRA, and researchers have found ritualistic abuse in substantiated cases of day care sexual abuse.[2][1]

Daniel Santos (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

SRA in the courts

I have re-added what AR removed from this section and I believe this information is so relevant, as well as sourced that it's removal was irresponsible and I implore you to be more discerning with reverts (everybody really). If there is a reason why you removed this, please let us know. This is one of those areas I can't possibly imagine a legitimate reason for removing it. Daniel Santos (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Dissociative identity disorder and SRA

I felt that I should re-add what was removed here because the original is misleading. However, (playing devil's advocate -- no pun intended :) I should like to hear more about why studies prove that DID is less controversial. I know that the science is rock solid, and there are plenty of references for that (even in the DID article), but I don't have personal knowledge about it's state of dispute. None the less, the original paragraph gave the false impression that scientists were "trying" to make a case for DID -- this is off by about a mile or 2 thousand. Daniel Santos (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

External links

I re-added the link you removed and I see no reason why it should have been removed. Comments? Daniel Santos (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)


===My Latest Edits===

1) I agree with AR about the lead statement. Since I did not write it, I do not have the source. Maybe BIA or WLU have the source.

2) I re-added the Freud section.


"A number of psychologists have noted the similarities between modern accounts of SRA, and the disclosures of Emma Eckstein to Sigmund Freud whilst undergoing psychoanalytic treatment. ref name = Noblitt Perskin, Pamela Sue; Noblitt, James Randall (2000). Cult and ritual abuse: its history, anthropology, and recent discovery in contemporary America. New York: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-96665-8. , Hudson, P. "Ritual Abuse: Discovery, Diagnosis and Treatment", Saratoga, CA, R&E Publishers, 1991 Eckstein described to Freud experiences similar to the ritual abuse survivors of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, which included sexual abuse and ritual bloodletting. Freud was so disturbed by these disclosures that he stated "we may have before us a residue of a primaeval sexual cult". Masson, J.M.. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press. ISBN 0-674-15421-5. "

This section was originally deleted due to the claim that Noblitt was not an RS. This has been shown to be untrue.

3) I restored the original paragraph from this:

Although psychiatrists have attempted to standardize evidence-based treatment for DID ref name=Barach1994Barach, P.M. (1994). ISSD Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder, in Adults, 1994. ISSD.  Kluft RP (1999). "An overview of the psychotherapy of dissociative identity disorder". American journal of psychotherapy 53 (3): 289–319. PMID 10586296. , skepticism about the diagnosis is still significant in the scientific community. The reliability of memories of SRA elucidated by clients in treatment for MPD has been a major point of contention in the popular media and amongst clinicians. Some healthcare professionals continue to express ambivalence over the reliability of narratives of SRA provided by patients, although most acknowledge that such a narrative is likely to be indicative of serious victimisation and trauma.[3]

to this:

Criticisms of DID have largely died away following numerous research studies and meta-analyses confirming the construct validity of the diagnosis, ref name=Elzinga1998 Elzinga, B.M.; Van Dyck, R.; Spinhoven, P. (1998). "Three controversies about dissociative identity disorder". Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy 5 (1): 13-23. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-0879(199803)5:1%3C13::AID-CPP148%3E3.0.CO;2-J.  and the standardisation of evidence-based treatment for the disorder. ref name=Barach1994Barach, P.M. (1994). ISSD Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder, in Adults, 1994. ISSD.  DID has become less controversial since its introduction as a diagnosis Sno HN, Schalken HF (1999). "Dissociative identity disorder: diagnosis and treatment in the Netherlands". Eur. Psychiatry 14 (5): 270–7. PMID 10572357.  Kluft RP (1999). "An overview of the psychotherapy of dissociative identity disorder". American journal of psychotherapy 53 (3): 289–319. PMID 10586296.  though skepticism about the diagnosis is still significant in the scientific community. ref name = Pope The reliability of memories of SRA elucidated by clients in treatment for MPD has been a major point of contention in the popular media and amongst clinicians. Some healthcare professionals continue to express ambivalence over the reliability of narratives of SRA provided by patients, although most acknowledge that such a narrative is likely to be indicative of serious victimisation and trauma. Schmuttermaier, J. and A. Veno "Counselors' beliefs about ritual abuse: An Australian Study", Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 8, 3, 1999, 45 - 63.

Maybe there is a way to combine the two paragraphs. I believe this should be done here on the talk page and not unilaterally as it was done by one editor a few weeks ago.


4) I changed the EL on Tamarkin to a Cite Journal as requested.

Tamarkin, Civia (July/August 1994). "[url = http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/investigative-issues-in-ritual-abuse-cases-part-1-and-2-1994/ Investigative Issues in Ritual Abuse Cases, Part I]" (scanned reprint). 4 4 (4): 14-23. Abuse truth (talk) 03:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I added a {{syn}} tag on the new DID section, as the sources seems to be using different definitions of DID and of the contraversy. I believe it's more balanced, as there is little contraversy among experts that DID exists, but it's not at all clear they're talking about the same DID. I also added a {{verify source}} tag on the scan, as AT seems to be the uploader. Uploading a probable copyright violation to a web site which hosts such, and then referencing it seems, at least, questionable. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)


The Benschoten source clearly backs up the claims in the following line of text:
This source was recently removed as a reference.
Studies have shown a connection between dissociative identity disorder and SRA, and researchers have found ritualistic abuse in substantiated cases of day care sexual abuse
The part below taken directly from the text backs these up.
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/dspace/bitstream/1794/1492/1/Diss_3_1_5_OCR.pdf
''''MPD AND SATANIC RITUAL ABUSEA large number of adult MPD patients in psychotherapy

are reporting memories of explicitly satanic ritual abuse beginning in childhood. The authors of two limited surveys, conducted with a select group of MPD therapists, suggest the percentage of reported satanic ritual abuse in the MPD population to be 20% (Braun & Gray, 1986) and 28% (Braun & Gray, 1987). A survey by Kaye and Klein (1987) reveals that 20 of the 42 MPD patients in treatment with seven Ohio therapists describe ahistorvofsatanic ritual abuse. Ilopponen (1987) states that 38 of the more than 70 MPD patients she has treated report memories of "satanic-type ritualized abuse " (p. 11). Two inpatient facilities specializing in the treatment of MPD report that approximately 50% of their patients disclose memories of satanic ritual abuse (Braun, 1989a; Ganaway, 1989). Similar accounts of satanic ritual abuse are being reported by personally unrelated MPD patients from across the United States (Braun, 1989b; Braun & Sachs, 1988; Kahaner, 1988; Sachs & Braun, 1987). In addition, according to Braun (1989b), the reports of patients in this country are similar to data collected from adult survivors in England, Holland, Germany, France, Canada, and Mexico, though Braun does not reveal the number of individuals surveyed or the details of their accounts. Brown (1986), noting many similar allegations in child and adult satanic ritual abuse accounts, suggests that reports are not only comparable across geographical and personal boundaries, but across generations as well.

RITUAL CHILD ABUSE IN DAY CARE SETTINGS
While terms are defined somewhat differently, and though methodological problems with data collection and interpretation are apparent in some of the day care studies

beginning to emerge, ritual abuse can be differentiated from traditional child abuse in several fundamental ways. 'Many professionals note that explicit features of day care ritual abuse indicate an extreme departure from previously accumulated data on child abuse (Believe the Children, 1989; Finkelhor et al., 1988; Gould, 1986; Hudson, 1988; Kagy, 1986; Summitt, 1989; Kelley, in press).' These professionals cite the following characteristics of contemporary child reports which distinguish ritual abuse as a unique form of maltreatment. Day care ritual abuse accounts usually implicate multiple non-familial perpetrators and multiple victims. Female perpetrators are nearly always reported. Characteristically, very young children and children of both sexes are said to be involved. Extreme forms of coercion and intimidation are typically reported, including threats of death and demonstrations that perpetrators possess magical powers. Extended, severe, and bizarre types of sexual abuse are frequently described, including penetration with objects, and forced sex between children and between children and adults. Physical and emotional abuse are reported as well, for example threats with weapons and the use of various forms of bondage. Children ' s disclosures often cite pornography and drug use as components of the abuse. Many reports allege cruelly to animals, or the mutilation and sacrifice of animals or human beings. Practices linked to satanism are often reported. Children frequently describe chanting or singing, the presence of symbols, costumes, masks, candles, and the ceremonial use of blood, urine, and feces. Finkelhor- et al. (1988) found the ritualistic cases in their national study of substantiated day care sexual abuse to be the ones "whose allegations seemed to most strain public and professional credulity. (and) in which the children appeared to have suffered the most serious and lasting kind of damage " (p. 32). This impression is supported by the work of Kelley (in press).

AR, please clarify your reason for adding the SYN tag to the DID section.
The scans are fine. Any editor should feel free to check them at:
http://abusearticles.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/investigative-issues-in-ritual-abuse-cases-part-1-and-2-1994/
And actually, I did have permission to put these articles on the web. I believe the tag is unnecessary.Abuse truth (talk) 20:45, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
The only bit of that reference which actually pertains to the text you keep re-inserting is the mention of Finkelhor's "substantiated" cases, which according to De Young:
...has no particular fidelity to its data. The 36 ritual abuse cases in the sample of 270 day care sexual abuse cases were considered "substantiated" by Finkelhor if "at least one of the local investigating agencies had decided that abuse had occured", even if no formal action, such as license suspension or arrest, followed. Given the fact that a plethora of investigating agencies, from childrens' protective services, to departments of social services, to the police and even the FBI were involved in many of the day care ritual abuse cases, that each has its own threshold of suspicion before it can act, and that the agencies often rancorously disagreed with each other about whether these were even cases to act upon, the criterion for inclusion is liberal, indeed.
I seem to recall that I got into a tussle with Biaothanatoi about a review of Finkelhor's study of "substantiated" cases, which made this same point. Rather than dispute the accuracy of the review, he attacked the credibility of the author based on a wellpoisoning link to Ralph Underwager. I eagerly await an explanation of how de Young, too, is clearly aligned with the pro-paedophile agenda... <eleland/talkedits> 01:21, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Eleland, can you kindly refrain from shouting in your edit comments? Certainly, this is a hipocritical request as I've done it in the past, but you aren't helping to deescalate tensions when reacting like this. Thank you. Daniel Santos (talk) 05:21, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I appreciate the work done on this edit by Eleland and Daniel Santos. The Finklehor report does state that "the abuse had been substantiated by at least one of the agencies assigned to investigate the report" and that there were "three main types of investigations" one of which was "multi-disciplinary teams." Abuse truth (talk) 03:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Mediation request filed

It should show up at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation within a few hours, when the case management robot finds it. All parties feel free to participate, in accordance with mediation guidelines. I have omitted the issues which other users brought up, they are free to add those as "additional issues" to the mediation page.

Please indicate that you accept the request for mediation, so we can proceed at a decent pace. This one will probably take quite a long time to work through the system. <eleland/talkedits> 21:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I am very interested in the process of mediation. However, I hesitate to agree to it at this point. I would want to be certain that the process will be used to ensure an amicable compromise amongst all parties and will not be used as a process to promote one POV over another on the page.Abuse truth (talk) 00:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I've been involved in mediations before - some have worked, some haven't. Be assured that you will have ample opportunity to make your arguments and that all sides will be heard. Unless we all sign up to the mediation at the outset, it won't happen. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Mediation is non-binding; if you find that the process is pushing a "denialist" POV you can walk away at any time. Even if mediation completes you don't need to follow the results after. The idea is to facilitate a compromise between the parties, not to impose a solution. <eleland/talkedits> 17:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)