Forensic Considerations in Ritual Trauma Cases (Part 2) - Page 13

Some perpetrator groups with access to highly advanced programming techniques and equipment are able to create extremely complex and layered systems of programming in victims that can take years to therapeutically neutralize and unravel. All survivors of ritual trauma who have been systematically programmed, however, seem to exhibit common categories of basic programming that are designed to ensure compliance with certain directives. These programs are usually “backed-up” by secondary programs and fall into such categories as self-injury, suicide, reporting, screen, and flooding programs which operate in the following manner:

 “If I remember my abuse, I must cut or hurt myself so that I will no longer remember”  “If I disclose my abuse to the authorities, I will kill myself”  “If I am taken into protective custody, I must get to a phone to report my location back to the cult”  “If I notice that I have lost time (during which I was ritually abused and programmed), I will suddenly “remember” that I was actually at the grocery store”  “If my therapist gets too close to a particular memory of abuse, my mind will flood forth with painful memories so that therapy cannot continue and I will see my therapist as the cause

C. IMPACT OF ABUSE ON DISCLOSURE, ASSESSMENT, INVESTIGATION & PROSECUTION

Dr. Catherine Gould has stated that “...you can abuse a hundred children ritualistically, with all the overlay of terror...and pretty much a hundred children will keep the secret of their abuse until there is some kind of intervention.” And yet, when children do disclose, the extreme delay in their disclosure, coupled with perceived "discrepancies" from original accounts, often results in system disbelief and a failure to further investigate and prosecute additional allegations. Without a proper understanding of the dynamics of this abuse and how victims are impacted, it is easy to summarily dismiss legitimate claims of ritual trauma.

Even when a report is seriously heeded and investigated, professionals need to be aware that medical and physical evidence substantiating ritual child abuse is difficult to obtain, especially in view of the extreme delay in disclosure. While it may be prudent to request that toxicology tests and a sexual abuse examination be conducted on a child, receipt of negative or non-conclusive results in a case involving ritual trauma does not negate the child's allegations. Nor does the fact that some of the specifics of a child's allegations can, in fact, be disproved. Cults are known to use sophisticated techniques to simulate ritual scenarios that appear extremely real to a child victim. When combined with the use of drugs, children’s perceptions of an event are effectively manipulated for the purpose of discrediting a potential disclosure.

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