Call for Policy to Increase Protection for Victims of Ritual Abuse in San Diego, Part II

In September of 2000, an important official at Children's Services Bureau (name withheld) said; "Years ago, we had a lot of stuff written about it [ritual abuse]. Right now, we have nothing. I think what happened with the county was that there was a big lawsuit about a ritual abuse case. We had a person considered an expert, but she left the agency." This official also said that clinicians in the community no longer make reports of ritual abuse to the Child Abuse Hotline.

Between the mid-1980s and late 1994, the San Diego County Juvenile Court served the function of approving therapists to treat Juvenile Court Dependency cases. The June 1, 1994 San Diego County Grand Jury Report recommended that the Juvenile Court; "Monitor all CAPF therapists to guard against possible liability suits due to their culpability in administering care." (CAPF stands for "court-appointed, publically funded therapists").

In late 1994, the County Board of Supervisors transferred responsibility for monitoring CAPF therapists from the Juvenile Court to a "Treatment, Evaluation, and Resource Management (TERM) Team. The TERM Team was essentially mandated to perform two functions that are sometimes in conflict; 1) Ensure good practice by clinicians treating and evaluating Juvenile Court cases, and, 2) Ensure clinicians do nothing that could result in lawsuits or embarrassment to county agencies. The greatest risk of embarrassment and lawsuits exists in treating and evaluating cases involving possible ritual abuse. In one case, a mandated reporter came under intense scrutiny of the TERM Team simply for making a report of suspected ritual abuse and trying to get law enforcement to take the report seriously.

Therapists treating victims of ritual abuse are in a terrible bind. They can choose to report suspected ritual abuse and face harassment by CSB, the TERM Team, the District Attorney's office, the Grand Jury, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and also risk possible complaints by public agencies to their licensing boards. Or, they can not report the suspected abuse and thereby violate the Child Abuse Reporting Law.

CSB also unfortunately appears to have colluded in a serious conflict of interests in early 1996 with Carol Hopkins, Deputy Foreperson for the strongly-criticized 1991-1992 No. 8 Grand Jury Report, as follows.

In the mid-1990's, Hopkins created what she called "the Justice Committee". Under these vague auspices, she interjected herself into the Wenatchee, Washington, sex ring case to organize multiple protests on behalf of parents convicted of sex

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