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barabara
I have personally heard only one story of a therapist digging around for buried memories of occult abuse. In my opinion, her actions were reprehensible and she is a lousy therapist.

Lord, read about the Christchurch Civil Creche Case. What a hornet's nest. A book by Helen Garner.

Being that I am friends with many Satanists and I'm quite versed in what is and is not practiced as part of a Satanic ritual, I feel I should speak up. Satanists do not abuse children or animals as part of their rituals. They don't abuse children or animals at all. Crowley did some very odd things and nothing at all surprises me where he is concerned. But, the Satanism of the 1960's and 70's had nothing to do with exploiting children, killing animals, kidnapping, rape, incest or any of the other attrocities attributed to it. I do not doubt that some people claiming to be Satanists may have done some awful things, but these things are not representative of true Satanism.

I've read the books on SRA, I've read the books refuting SRA too. I don't think that it ever happened much less on the large-scale that some people claim. The women in these group are being made victims twice if you ask me. They were most likely abused, now they're being exploited by people who won't let go some spectre that was debunked over a decade ago.

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kath
I am on a sexual assault survivors forum. I'm discovering that this particular forum fosters and propogates the belief in 'alters' and 'recovered memories' or 'satanic ritual abuse.'

This is REALLY sounding familiar here.

I have been watching a cult that uses the concept of Satanists and "covens" and SRA and MPD and Theophostic to do it's thing, and it ends up a complicated picture.

Unfortunately, this cult functionally has a real-life agenda behind what it does. You could tell the SRA/MPD-affected members what's going on, straight up, and they would practically mock you because it would sound so ridiculous to them. You cannot put the facts in their face and have it make an impact, be it the facts about SRA, Satanists, or the exploitive nature of what has been done to them.

The girls who get all the way involved appear to be in a terrible state of mental health as a result. I found it amazing that internet chat could be the main tool for causing this in someone.

I don't know if the cult I have been watching is exceptional in regard to how far they exploit the MPD/SRA thing. It goes like this...

On one hand you have the "Satanists" as these dangerous, powerful bad guys who go throughout the world kidnapping and torturing (SRA) innocent people, often young girls. In control of the Satanists is Satan, and there are billions of demons hanging around to help. There are active paranoid fantasies in which the members believe they are being attacked or stalked, either physically or spiritually, by Satanists and demons. The police and local governments are reportedly infiltrated by Satanists, and the Illuminati is paving the way for the Antichrist to come.

On the other hand, you have the cult and it's gifted leader/father figure. The cult is the extra-special group of good guys who have the power of God watching out for them, and they can "deliver" the people (often young women between the ages of 18 - 25 but they can be older) from the effects of the demons, satanists, and generational curses that have been imposed upon them. The vehicle for this deliverance is internet-chat-based or possibly telephone deliverance sessions. The people being subject to the "deliverance" sessions start doing altered states of consciousness stuff, and it all goes downhill from there.

The belief system says that the SRA causes MPD, so everybody is talking about their "alters", and this online portrayal of "alters" becomes an ordinary thing, like an alternate online lifestyle. The involved people spend a lot of time interacting with one another within this framework of "alters" and I think that drives the point into their minds a hundred times harder than it would be otherwise. It feeds upon itself, validating and re-validating itself hundreds of times as the months pass.

The belief system also strongly supports and encourages everybody to take a spiritually-mature person in the group as their spiritual father. Conveniently, the person who seems just right for the girls is the cult leader. After the father thing is completed, it is possible to make a move from daughter to wife (Real-life, not online. Oh, did I forget to mention polygamy?)

And to complicate things even further (as if it's not complicated enough already), there are a number of people who stay involved only as fringe members. The written material on the cult's web site can be hypnotic in nature if it is read diligently, and for some of the people who show up, it really works. They talk on the cult's private message boards and read the web site, and they feel like they are really a part of the cult, but they aren't and most of them never will be. Many of this type of member does not seem to actively stick around long, but the ones that do can become very loyal, even to where they are sending money and believing what the leader writes without critical thought.

I am going to guess (it's a guess, not from experience) that it could be possible for someone to at least start to do this type of counseling without having a specific agenda other than thinking they are doing the right thing. But the potential for undue influence and control of the affected girls is huge due to how vulnerable they are. Especially if the person doing the counseling has any kind of enjoyment of the feeling of personal power or has any male chauvinistic perceptions, it's exactly the kind of thing that can turn bad. If you add someone into the mix who has character or personality traits that would nudge him into a role as a cult leader, you can just look the hell out.

I think that this whole thing is nasty and abusive at it's core, and any group of people that uses it needs to stop.

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IndieQueen
Being that I am friends with many Satanists and I'm quite versed in what is and is not practiced as part of a Satanic ritual, I feel I should speak up. Satanists do not abuse children or animals as part of their rituals. They don't abuse children or animals at all.

The actual beliefs and practices of real Satanists have no bearing whatsoever upon the cult I have been watching. Real Satanists are expressly not allowed to join the message boards and communicate with the cult members. The cult members would under no circumstances believe the honest account of any actual Satanists. The whole "Satanist" thing is just a scapegoat. The draw to get the initial interest in this case is Christianity, and the required bad-guys as Satanists play well into that.


--NCCG_Concern
[www.geocities.com]

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The actual beliefs and practices of real Satanists have no bearing whatsoever upon the cult I have been watching. Real Satanists are expressly not allowed to join the message boards and communicate with the cult members. The cult members would under no circumstances believe the honest account of any actual Satanists. The whole "Satanist" thing is just a scapegoat. The draw to get the initial interest in this case is Christianity, and the required bad-guys as Satanists play well into that.

Of course not. After all, that takes away the power of the supposed "healer." It is a scapegoat, look at Mike Warnke and all of the money he's made playing up to this scapegoat, he's not about to let facts get in the way and neither are most of the others.