Call for Policy to Increase Protection for Victims of Ritual Abuse in San Diego, Part II
© Ellen P. Lacter, Ph.D.
Nonetheless, since the mid-1990s, reports of suspected ritual abuse to CSB by mandated child abuse reporters have tended to be discounted or not investigated by CSB and law enforcement. In some cases, mandated reporters have been harshly criticized for making these reports. No additional detail can be provided here due to concerns for therapist-patient confidentiality, concerns for the safety of the ritual abuse victims, and the desire for anonymity by the reporting therapists.
Pressure to avoid reports of suspected ritual abuse has been brought to bear on CSB from the San Diego County Grand Jury reports (no. 8 and 1994), negative reports on CSB from the San Diego Union-Tribune, and from County agencies that seek to avoid financial losses stemming from lawsuits against the County based on County responses to ritual abuse cases.
One case of alleged ritual abuse resulted in a judgment for $750,000 against the city of Escondido (San Diego County). The Escondido police took two children into protective custody following a suspected report of ritual abuse. The children's parents filed a lawsuit in 1992 against Escondido police, county social workers, and a physician for violating their constitutional rights to be free from "unreasonable intrusions on their privacy, person and home." On November 2, 2000, Mark Sauer wrote in the San Diego Union-Tribune that the children's parents won a judgment against the city of Escondido. A lawsuit remained against the three individual police officers who picked up the children (Article: http://www.holysmoke.org/wicca/san-diego...
This judgment against the city of Escondido binds the hands of CSB. Cities and CSB are placed at significant financial risk every time parents can make a case in court that a child taken into protective custody was probably not abused. To guard against financial damages from lawsuits for taking children into protective custody in the case of false positives (findings of abuse when no abuse occurred), no action will be taken to protect children in thousands of cases of false negatives (findings of no abuse when abuse is in fact occurring)! CSB experiences the greatest pressure to avoid false negatives in cases of the most controversial form of abuse; ritual abuse.
