Amazingly there are some Pagans out there who still believe there is some truth in the Satanic Abuse Myth. They should read these two books from cover to cover--together they illustrate the growth of a social panic, its tragic consequences and how easily prejudiced preconceptions can be accepted as fact by people expected to know better.
Hicks concentrates entirely on America, examining a number of the 'day-care' cases in which hundreds of young children were allegedly abused by Satanist nursery staff. He details the extraordinary and often terrifying methods used by police investigators who believed in the existence of ritual abuse. On the basis of, usually, a single uncorroborated allegation, parents would be warned that their children had probably been abused and handed a list of 'Satanic abuse indicators' to watch out for (nightmares, phobias, bedwetting and deliberate farting were all certain symptoms); therapists were allowed to question very young children dozens of times, using lies, threats and misleading questions to get the answers they wanted to hear; older children were bullied and intimidated into 'confessing'.
When the facts didn't fit, the believers struggled to find explanations: a nursery's open-access policy meant that visitors were liable to walk in on 'secret' rituals? The Satanists had posted look-outs on all the doors! The nurseries' open-plan designs made unobserved devil-worship untenable? The children were taken to other locations to be abused! Nobody had noticed busloads of kids going in and out? They went through tunnels! No tunnels? The Satanists filled them in...!
Believers' psychological theories and techniques are examined and found wanting. Hypnotic regression, once thought to be infallible for recovering repressed memories, is demonstrated by modern research to be a form of imaginative reconstruction rather than a straightforward memory playback, making it possible to introduce false memories that feel totally convincing. Hicks also profiles some of the key US ritual abuse believers, finding bogus credentials and lack of relevant experience and qualifications everywhere. For instance, Dr Roland Summit (whose twin precepts "Children never lie about sexual abuse" and "Abused children usually deny they have been abused" are engraved on the hearts of most social workers) has never actually worked with children!
In addition to pointing out the gaping holes in "proven" SA cases, Hicks' training in anthropology enables him to put the Satanic Abuse Myth into context alongside other social panics and urban rumours--cattle mutilations, LSD transfers etc, to show that all such myths follow the same basic pattern of an invisible all-pervading Them threatening the family and society.
By contrast, Dr Reid's book is extremely short. It deals with just one case--the allegations of Satanic abuse on a small Orkneys island that led to the legal dawn kidnapping of nine children in February 1991.
A consultant paediatrician specialising in child sex abuse, he was asked to write a report on the Orkney case. What he found appalled him. He is not a good writer and tends to wander off the point, but his book should be on every social worker's reading list as an example of how not to manage a case.
Incompetence and slowness to act in an earlier, (genuine) case of child abuse in one South Ronaldsay family largely led to the events of 1991. One severely abused daughter of this family, left without counselling or real support for years, became highly disturbed and began spouting lurid fantasies involving other islanders as well as her family.
By 1989, some elements of these fantasies were showing similarities to the new phenomenon of Satanic abuse that Scottish social workers were being told about by experts like Maureen Davies and Dr Roland Summit, and Orkney social workers promptly kidnapped the rest of the children into care. (This was probably to make up for their earlier slowness, when they had ignored clear signs of cruelty by the children's father for four years.) Over a year of 'therapy' was needed before some of the children felt able to admit to being ritually abused. That was enough to tip several of the social workers over into an all-embracing wish-fulfilment fantasy, where they were the goodies protecting helpless kiddies from Evil Abusers. Accordingly, they 'protected' nine more children by dragging them from their beds, at which point their pathetic fantasy was finally exposed to the world. Since then, the law on child care has been amended to ensure that 'dawn raids' can no longer take place. However, there is no sign that the social work industry has learned anything from this and other so-called ritual abuse cases, according to Dr Reid.
In 1992, the Pagan magazine Wood & Water ran a review fully supporting the ritual abuse myth on the grounds that 1) children don't lie, and 2) people once denied that child sex abuse existed. Their article was headed "A Conspiracy of Toddlers?"
What these two books show is that it is really a case of a conspiracy of conspiracy-freaks.
Set some time after an environmental holocaust in a Neo-Pagan world where the two major factions officially get on with each other. Naturotech rose from the Neo-paganism we know as a belated response to ecological disaster--a radical liberal attempt to use new technology to fix the mess made by the old. Tech-Green is a capitalist offshoot.
The land is full of new sacred sites built by a rich convert--parodies of Bronze Age and Neolithic monuments with a touch of Thelemic theatre.
Our heroine, Ari, is the daughter of an eminent Tech-Green scientist (deceased) and the result of some genetic experiment. Her sympathies lie more with the Naturotech, some of whom, ex-colleagues of her father, are fulfiling his wish and looking for her.
One Beltagne (sic), she comes across a group of Randomati (New Age Traveller types) and sets off with them. She meets a few interesting characters, and the story eventually comes to a satisfactory ending about 200 pages later than really necessary.
No beating about the half-flaming bush here--this is one of the most inspiring books I have ever read in my life. I was introduced to it by a friend back in 1988. It tells the tale of an ancient Celtic girl around her adolescence and her experiences through the four elements and ether. At each of the great Sabbats, she is taken on a journey by an Otherworld guide to receive a gift from the sidhe and to learn their knowledge. The tales make excellent material for meditation and remain consistent throughout--D'Ambrosio obviously knows her stuff. There are songs in here, too, complete with music. I know not whether the book is still available--I had difficulty getting it back in '88, but have seen it in secondhand bookshops and it's well worth the search.
Two overwhelmingly Scottish books. The first concerns Maria, an artist who falls in love with a remote Scottish island and its matriarch Catriona--the local clan chieftain and witch.
The island has always been woman-positive it seems, with the Sisters of Bride worshipping the One True Goddess and a history of women fighting off male marauders since Viking times. This book has recently been made into a play by Red Rag -- a feminist theatre company.
Queendom Come is set in the Blue Reich--a Britain run by a fearsome female prime minister.
The health service, post office and everything else has been privatised; sacred sites have been sold to developers and the Sexual Normality Bill (outlawing homosexuality) has just been passed "by a House full of adulterers, voyeurs, fetishists and secret spankers".
The social workers make the present bunch look keen to leave well alone--snatched kids are made to work for their keep.
At this time, Albanna -- She Wolf of the North, a proto-Celtic queen rises from her grave on Arthur's Seat to save her people. After spearing the local Arch Druid (not approving of his nonsensical rites) she meets up with a couple of locals and her old Priestess. What follows is hilarious as the Priestess tries to look after Albanna and two kids she's been landed with. The frightening bit is that the government in the book is only one step more extreme than a certain British government to which it bears no resemblance, honest!
Like most science fiction (it seems), this is set in post-armageddon times. A church of fundamentalist mathematicians and scientists are evangelising their message of rationality across the world. To them, violence and disorder is all caused by the id and sexuality. Beauty is judged on geometric principles and nature is reduced to a series of equations.
The enemy are the Babylonians -- Goddess mythomaniacs who revel in carnality. Here we have the tale of a newly sanctified missionary arriving at a Scottish abbey to convert the heathen.
Once she gets to know the locals, she starts to have a crisis of faith -- some of the pagan music is perfectly mathematical yet it is still a sin, and she struggles with a long-repressed sexuality.
The metaphor is not subtle -- the fundies are Krischan and they have an inquisition to stamp out all traces of heresy. They use brainwashing drugs and other such techniques and are not averse to a bit of torture despite their avowed abhorrence of violence (the pagans are seen as a lower life form and pain as the only language they understand).
Among the highlights is one of the most erotic love scenes I've ever come read, but it's overall importance is in how it relates to the current situation with religious fundamentalism and their demonisation of the "other".