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Ritual abuse: the under-recognized problem


© Svali

**If you are a survivor of ritual abuse, please be aware that reading about it may be triggering. Please take care of yourself, and be in a safe place before reading

Ritual abuse. The word conjures up images of people in robes, chanting, or perhaps a grade D horror flick. But what is the reality?

First, let's look at a definition of ritual abuse:

Ritual abuse is the systematic, repetitive abuse of both children and adults by either an individual or a group. It may involve psychological, sexual, physical and/or spiritual abuse, and the effects are devastating on the individual who undergoes it. Often survivors of this type of extreme abuse cope by dissociating, and as adults may continue the cycle of amnesia and abuse. The key word here is : repetitive. Ritual abuse is done repetitively, in a consistent pattern, over time. This may be done in the name of a religious belief, or simply out of patterned cruelty. Any idealogy can and has been used to justify the pattern of abuse. Most of the victimization begins in early childhood, and is done by adults who were themselves abused. The cycle continues because people often do not realize that they can stop it; often, they feel "trapped" in the pattern of abuse. What is the incidence of ritual abuse today? Statistics vary, depending upon the source. When I lived in a large metropolitan city in the Southwest, population close to 2,000,000 , the group that I was affiliated with, known as the Illuminati, had 24 sister groups. Each group had roughly 50 members, so they had approximately 1,200 members in this area. These numbers are reflected across the United States and European countries. And this was only one group.

In the next few months, I will be sharing different perspectives on the reality of ritual abuse. I hope to address the following questions:

1. What kinds of groups engage in what is known as ritual abuse? What motivates them?

2. How do these groups maintain their "cloak of secrecy?" How do they operate? What kind of security do they use?

3. How do they program their followers? Why? How does a person break free from this kind of programming?

4. What is the opinion of experts in the field?

5. Has there been documented, physical evidence that ritual abuse occurs? What evidence? 6. What about spouses and friends: what can they do to help survivors of ritual abuse? What is helpful, and what isn't?

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Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: View all related messages

13.   Sep 2, 2000 5:52 PM
Something else to consider on Nazi Germany. After the war, both the Russians and the Americans extracted several notorious Nazi doctors, considering them "reparations of war" or some such. I think t ...

-- posted by eladrin


12.   Sep 2, 2000 5:19 PM
I just wanted to put out a few things for consideration:

Many of us are put in situations that we take for granted. We just accept the things others do to us as our fault or as natural, a fault of ...


-- posted by eladrin


11.   Jul 16, 2000 2:38 PM
Dear Factory Girl:
You are right. Ritual abuse is a complex subject, and some people do define it as repeated abuse, done in the same context, usually with an underlying philosophical basis. When I w ...

-- posted by svali


10.   Jul 12, 2000 9:18 PM
The way you define ritual abuse in your first article seems to say that ALL abuse that is repeated over time is ritual abuse. Your second article goes over the history of human sacrifice saying THAT i ...

-- posted by FactoryGirl


9.   Jun 16, 2000 8:35 PM
This forum will be useful and powerful in making the nuts and bolts of the information on this subject matter more available with Svali's contributions here. With the personal resources Svali hersel ...

-- posted by suitewoman





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