SATAN HUNTERS AT THE 2001 SATAN SEMINAR
Valerie Sinason |
Col. Kobus Jonker |
Dr Sara Scott |
Norma Howes |
Their track records and background
VALERIE SINASON: Unlike most of the other RAINS members Valerie has been consistent in her pronouncements about Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) . As recently as January 1999 Andrew Boyd, that ever faithful promoter of the Satanic Child Abuse Myth wrote an article which attempted to persuade X Factor Magazine readers that SRA existed. In it he has Sinason saying:
'Among her case studies is that of a six year old girl whose back was broken during an alleged satanic ritual conducted in the presence of her mother and father . "There were lots of people in the room;'' recalled the girl. "They didn't have anything on except these long black things. They passed me round and people touched me and hurt me and stuck things up me. Mummy said I would be shut up in a box if I cried". In a later ritual the girl was allegedly forced to become a Daughter of Satan and underwent horrifying physical abuse.
'It would be nice to think this is a delusion said Ms Sinason.. but for the majority of victims I have seen this is a reality. Within Satanism there is a small group dedicated to abuse as part of a belief system involving every perversion known to man'
There it is as clear as crystal. Satanic Abuse exists, says Valerie, with no equivocation. In fact in 1994 she published a book to help others hunt it out titled Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse.
Dastardly though this anecdotal extract sounds we should remember that stories by victim impostors (unconscious and conscious) makes up 99.9% of all the evidence the Satanic Ritual Abuse lobby has ever offered. Their Witch-hunt has continued throughout the past 12 years with such claims numbering in their hundreds. Unfortunately there has never been any forensic evidence to substantiate any of them - rather the reverse; upon investigation many 'celebrated' cases held up as absolute proof were disproved when put to the test. Ms. Sinason has been banging on about Satanic Ritual Abuse for the last decade . Despite years of research and networking at the leading edge of this issue she has never, ever been able to produce incontrovertible evidence .
Her proof-positive was going to be the Sinason / Hale Devil Report; (research compiled for the Department of Health which was heralded by Sinason's supporters as being the ultimate expose of the existence of Satanic Ritual Abuse and the overturning of the original government report which found that there was no such thing). Unfortunately the DoH junked the Devil Report report last year (see elsewhere on this site) . Although the anecdotal evidence above appears to come from child disclosures, in actual fact the vast majority of these cases are obtained from adults using the highly contentious 'recovered memory' technique which has hypnotically Quotes from The Keynote Speakers at the 2001 Satan Seminarcreated memories of crimes which never existed in at least a dozen failed criminal cases on this issue.
Yes, dear reader, Valerie has no problem with using the Satan Word, she has been perhaps one of the staunchest advocates of the supposed threat of Satanic Ritual Abuse. Over the past decade she has made many allegations about unbelievably horrendous crimes. What she has been singularly unable to do is produce any incontrovertible evidence that it happens.
Col. KOBUS JONKER: Not to be confused with the therapist of the same name who was involved in Holland's most celebrated case of claimed Satanic Ritual Abuse (the counterpart to the Notts, Broxtowe Case) in the early 1990s. Kobus Jonker is instead the star performer in the Channel 4 documentary in the 'Witness' series which was broadcast on Sunday Oct 15th 2000 (just in time for Halloween). The trailer for the programme read:
This documentary looks at the alarming increase in violent crimes committed by Satanists in South Africa. Each year Kobus Jonker of the Occult Related Crimes Squad investigates more than 250 suspicious occurrences, including abduction, rape, body-snatching and ritual murder. Like his deputy, Captain Riette Everton, Kobus is a born again Christian and both police officers believe that they are engaged in a war of good against evil.'
In reality the programme was the worst kind of post-Cook Report kitsch. It becomes obvious that the Satan Scare has hit South Africa a decade after it troubled the U.K. There were no actual cases of Satanic rape, body snatching or Satanic murder but simply a collection of circumstantial suspicions elevated to 'evidence' by the missionary zeal of the bigoted Jonker and his religiously obsessed deputy, coupled with the obligatory 'confessions' of self-proclaimed 'victims', including one star performer, an 'ordinary' murderer who had converted to Christianity in prison. The dysfunctional Maurice Smith reinterpreted his actions as Satanic and blamed his actions on The Devil. This criminal was shown kneeling and praying with Jonker over a bible in his cell during what can only be described as a missionary visit.
In the customary media build up for the broadcast the Sunday Times magazine carried a despicably hacked five page special, utterly unworthy of the newspaper's pedigree , featuring the manic claims of the South African Occult Related Crimes Unit. This primer and advertorial for the Witness documentary inadvertently revealed the true nature of Jonkers' involvement, being filled with exactly the same claims which fueled the hysteria in the U.K. in 1989 and harmed so many innocents.
Jonker's standards of evidential veracity would send a shiver through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A car hit-and-run victim was found with 'Jesus Christ' tattooed on her feet . Jonkers concludes that she was a Satanist; because 'this was the woman's way of trampling on Christ's name'. The intellectual rigor in Jonkers' cases is reminiscent of a mediaeval witch-hunter. 'A Cat disappears and 'strange smells' eminate from a room used by a suspect - Jonker deduces that she was therefore 'enganged in some satanic practice.' Jonker has a 'museum' of Satanic artefacts which include 'human fat candles '(?) and , wait for it, Heavy Metal Posters' (!). Jonker's believes in all the crud about so-called backward-masking on pop-music. He says he 'loved Satanists as god would wish him to' and found plenty to put under the microscope. Anyone who reads Tarot Cards, frequents Health Shops or Listens to Heavy Metal Music is immediately suspect in his religious crusade against Satanism. A woman who resents having her book on Astral Projection confiscated is immediately earmarked as a Satanist murderess. One of his prime witnesses is a dysfunctional self-imolating woman who was brought up in a strict pentecostal family. She relates in graphic detail ten years of detailed abuse at the hands of a 'satanic circle' she says she joined when she was 15. She knows the chief satanists name but is prevented by some magical force from speaking it (a typical victim impostor confabulation) so her story cannot be checked. Jonker did not think to ask her to write it down instead. Jonkers appears enthusiastically clued in to everything except what is actually going on. He says that he does not know of any other unit in the world like theirs , but there are dozens in the fundamentalist circuit (see CCIN later). Jonkers believes that the Devil exists. Really exists. He adds that he has witnessed Demonic Possession 'a few times' and claims that the devil actually tried to take him over in 1989:
'He had been at home, walking to his bedroom and felt another presence even though there was nobody there.. He had laid down on the bed and felt held there, pressed down, unable to move or speak. Finally he had called out to God, in his mind and vroom, that feeling just disappeared. The reality of Satan, he would say, and the reality of God. After that Jonker had no fear of Satan or Satanists. He would not routinely carry a gun but he would always wear a tiny silver cross on his jacket. He was protected by the blood of Jesus - was beyond harm.'
Readers untutored in the ethos of the Satanic Abuse Myth can be forgiven for asking why a sectarian bigot who is obsessed with mediaeval psychology and who believes that the Devil really exists, is being allowed to lecture to an audience of social workers on the subject of Satanic Ritual Abuse. That is because they do not realise that history is repeating itself. Those who think Jonkers is a loose-cannon in law-enforcement are in for a surprise. In fact he is just one of an army of self-styled Satan Hunters; emulating the original 'Cult Cop' Randy Emon, who grabbed nationwide publicity in the U.S.A. in 1988 with his sensational claims about Occult Crime and Satanic Abuse. Emon, a fundamentalist Christian (head of Breaking Point Ministries) and beat policeman did his Satan Snopping unofficially when he was off-duty but was nicknamed God's Cop by the USA media. A few years later after realising the damage his zealotism had caused, he publicly recanted and denied that Satanic Ritual Abuse Existed. This is what Emon had to say in a 1992 letter to 'Cornerstone' (a mainstream USA Christian magazine):
'I and many others have been the unwitting perpetrators of fostering a conspiracy theory without having factual substantiated evidence... I believe the MPD movement [ed: MPD multiple-personality-disorder] fueled by Bennet Braun and Catherine Gould [ed: Gould was the USA therapist who invented the 'symptoms list' which was widely used as a witch-pricker in alleged cases of Satanic Abuse both here and in the U.S.A. to supposedly identify children who had been Satanically Abused ,] has been instrumental in knowingly or unknowingly creating this hysteria. I too, must accept part of the responsibility. The bottom line is that there is just no evidence to support a conspiracy theory.. I got the impression that this stuff was widespread everywhere. But I couldn't find any evidence. ..... there is zero evidence that there is a multigenerational Satanic conspiracy."
Unfortunately, by that time other fundamentalist God-Cops had exceeded their secular remit and also jumped on the bandwagon to create the U.S.A. Cult Crime Information Network, a nationwide association of off-duty Christian fundamentalist police dedicated to using their power and influence to swap any information in ongoing cases which they see as 'evidence' of Satanic Ritual Abuse. In fact their data is the same style of thoroughly unreliable mish-mash of circumstancial evidence and superstitious nonsense which pervades Jonkers' tales.
It was the CCIN which provided much of the 'evidence' and 'investigatory expertise' which was imported into the U.K. in 1989 to fuel the hysteria here. It was Maureen Davies, a British Christian fundamentalist activist, who appeared at many of RAINs' first Satan Seminars lecturing on Satanic Ritual Abuse, who imported and promoted CCIN's 'evidence'. When Davies became pre-eminent and began getting nationwide publicity in the UK, CCIN used this publicity as confirmatory proof that SRA was occurring in Europe and therefore their original contentions were correct! So CCN's imaginings were imported into the U.K. and then exported back into the U.S.A. as 'proof' that Satanic Abuse was rife! Later, when the bubble burst and Davies' allegations were discredited in the National Press and on TV , the Cult Crime Informtion Network did not mention it. Jonkers' claims are so typical of CCIN and copycat missionary outfits that it is clear he has received similar information from the same fundamentalist network. Sectarian information masquerading as evidence comes through and via many sources. In Britain there is the Christian Police Association with 3,000 members and a turnover of 40.000. per year in 1992. We are not suggesting that the CPA are involved in Satan Hunting, but it is obviously their intention to further the sectarian ideals and principles of Christianity in police work. Will they be more or less ready to accept tripe from Jonkers because of that?
The RAINs people are portraying Jonkers as an 'expert' in Cult Crime, but all they are really doing is giving a bigot a platform to disiminate sectarian hate against non-Chistian beliefs. This is how the social work and therapy industry cleverly used fundamentalist agitators in the 1989 scare. Drum up some misguided religious obsessive to make the headline-grabbing claims, then, when the pack of cards collapses, claim that the social workers never said those things and blame it on media sensationalism instead.
Dr SARA SCOTT: Sara Scott is a committed feminist who is heavily involved in the Manchester Rape Crisis Centre. She helped organise the helplines after the follow up to the infamous (and now thoroughly discredited) Cook Report "The Devil's Work" which was widely blamed for starting the nationwide hysteria about Satanic Ritual Child Abuse. In this appalling program the production team claimed that they had uncovered 20 cases of Satanic Abuse in the U.K. But they were using fraudulent tactics to convince the British public. One completely innocent man featured falsely in the programme as an Organiser of Satanism took Cook to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission who found in his favour and subsequently broadcast a statement on prime-time TV that the Cook Report had been unfair to him. Every case in this despicable trial-by-TV turned out to be either false or failed in the course of time but the helplines were jammed after the programme and many millions of people actually still believe that there was some truth in it . From all this data Sara Scott subsequently produced a Satanic Abuse Training Pack and video which was widely circulated and credited with keeping the myth alive during the late 1990s. Norma Howes was featured on this video making allegations about Satanic Abuse. Also featured were Judith Dawson Jones (the leader of the team of social workers in Nottingham who claimed to have discovered the first UK case of Satanic Ritual Abuse (1988)). After massive amounts of controversy their accusations and allegations were disproven by an official Notts, Social Services investigation. There was no Satanic component in the case - it had all been hyper-suspicion by the social workers. Sara Scott has also contributed chapters to Valerie Sinason's book 'Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse' (1994). Sara may not be giving The Satan Word top billing at the moment but she's a Satan Hunter all right.
NORMA HOWES: Ms Howes was a key organiser in the first Satan Seminars in the early 1990s and is a leading member of RAINS. In Spring 1990 at the height of the Satan Scare she gave this professional opinion to a child protection unit involved in a case thought to have Satanic connections:
'It is now known that satanic practices involve the physical, emotional and sexual assault of children taken to meetings. If the family is involved in any way in these activities the children are clearly at risk'.
Outcome: The case was dropped. It turned out that the family concerned were completely innocent, the meetings they attended were for Morris Dancing!
Speaking about one of her first Satan Seminars, (also held in Reading) , Norma Howes gave an interview in March 1990 which was published in God's Word Now', a religious missionary tract intended for distribution in the street by members of Prophetic World Ministries, a wacky fundamentalist Christian group fronted at that time by Andrew Boyd (a key figure in the campaign to try to establish the idea of Satanic Ritual Abuse and regular contact of Valerie Sinason and Maureen Davies [ Maureen glowingly reviewed Boyd's book on Satanic Abuse in a fundamentalist activist's magazine] ). Under the headline CHILD VICTIMS OF BLACK MAGIC RITUALS, we are treated to a list of circumstantial evidence (all of which were disproven in the course of time) and then Howes , billed as 'the conference organiser' is reported as saying::
' The conference reacted with a sense of overwhelming horror. We were stunned.''
Ms Howes and her ilk were stunned yet again in March 1991 when Rosie Waterhouse of the Independent on Sunday reported that Pamela Klein (Ms. Howes' colleague ; co-organiser of the first British Satan Seminars and prime source of much of the imported information coming from the U.S.A. on this issue) had been dismissed from court by a judge who said she 'was not a legitimate therapist' when a claimed Satanic Child Abuse case she was involved in fell through in America. What a tangled web the Satan Hunters weave.
The Sub-culture Alternatives Freedom Foundation (S.A.F.F.) (c) 2001
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