Forensic Considerations in Ritual Trauma Cases
Both during and after the abuse, most victims are in a state of terror, mind control, and dissociation in which disclosure is exceedingly difficult.”
In most ritual abuse cases, the intensity and severity of the trauma is intended to create a dissociative mental state in its victims, and the use of drugs to facilitate this process is very common. While dissociation is a natural phenomenon in which everyone engages to some degree or another, it is also a common psychological response to trauma that can spontaneously occur with any form of abuse. In ritual trauma, however, dissociation is the desired result because it ensures that the victim will not only survive the experience, but have great difficulty remembering the details of the trauma - thereby limiting subsequent disclosure of the abuse by the victim.
Furthermore, sophisticated cults deliberately exploit the dissociative process in victims. As a result of experiencing repeated trauma designed to fragment their psyches, victims often develop a number of psychological conditions, including Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Formerly characterized as “Multiple Personality Disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association (and, thereby, referenced as such in many articles and publications included in this material), DID is the presence of two or more “personality states” in an individual that recurrently take control of his or her behavior.
These personality states are commonly referred to as “personalities,” “sub-personalities,” “alters,” “components,” or “parts,” and they can operate independently of one another in the consciousness of the victim. The degree of dissociation in DID creates amnesic barriers between these parts, representing an extreme on what might be considered a “continuum of dissociation.” In ritual trauma - through a systematic and traumatic conditioning process - these distinctly created alters can be programmed, triggered, and subsequently accessed by controlling cult members. In this manner, separate “sub-personalities” within a victim can be formed and developed by the cult, then trained and conditioned to serve special functions or take on specific roles. Consequently, ritual abuse is sometimes referred to as a form of “trauma-based mind control.”
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