Staying with Private Eye, the latest issue also has a report on a keynote talk presented recently at a conference of London childcare workers by psychoanalyst Valerie Sinason, on the subject of “ritual abuse and Dissociative Identity Disorder”. The Eye observes:
The prospect of Sinason converting London’s childcare workers to a belief in the existence of ritual abuse and a dubious mental disorder is alarming – especially as the initial Satanic panic in the early 1990s was spread largely through conferences for childcare workers. (1)
The Eye is always good at keeping an eye on this kind of thing. Back in September 2006 it revealed that Sinason had tried to become involved in the investigation of the “Adam” killing, a few months before that it noted the continued existence of a
network of believers across the UK among professionals and assorted therapists who work with children and adult “survivors” who reinforce each other’s convictions that what they now term “ritual abuse” exists, through literature, websites, conferences and training courses.
One exponent, Sarah Nelson, who claims that “1,650 people in Edinburgh had been involved in satanic ritual abuse” had a booklet on child sex abuse published by the Scottish Executive.
I blogged the final unravelling of the old “Satanic abuse” cases in the USA and the UK here.
(1) “The devil’s in the detail”, Private Eye 1201: 29 (11-24 January 2008)
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