New Book on Satanic Abuse

Private Eye (1213 p. 25) draws attention to a forthcoming book, entitled Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder:

The book’s contributors include…Dr Joan Coleman, founder of RAINS (Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support), writing on “Satanist Ritual Abuse and the Problem of Credibility”; Valerie Sinason PhD, a child psychologist and a psychotherapist who practises in Harley Street and has written two chapters, including “When murder moves inside”; and Ellen Lacter PhD, a psychologist from San Diego, California, who writes about “Mind Control: Simple to Complex”.

The Eye also gives us the response of Jean La Fontaine, author of Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England, which (alongside Jeffery Victor’s Satanic Panic) debunked claims of Satanic abuse in the 1990s:

“It fills me with rage”

La Fontaine’s book was written in the wake of the “Satanic Panics” which blighted a lot of innocent people’s lives in both the USA and the UK.

Lacter, meanwhile, tells us that the book’s publication is a sign that “the tide is beginning to turn” after years of sceptical dismissal.

As I noted in 2006, Lacter is a particular fan of Steve Oglevie, who was one of those responsible for causing a Satanic panic in Idaho in 1989 when he declared that a dead baby found on a garbage dump had been sacrificed by Satanists – in fact, the body had been mutilated by wild animals. Sinason and RAINS have also featured in Private Eye’s discussions of Satanism, as I blogged here.