From the Press Association:
A Government-funded “popular tribunal” should be established on a permanent basis to take evidence from survivors of child sexual abuse, a report has recommended.
…The report of the UK Child Sex Abuse People’s Tribunal blamed “a series of institutional failings” for preventing the reporting of abuse, and claimed that there were “clear links” between children left vulnerable as a result and “predatory abuse on an organised scale”.
…The People’s Tribunal was set up in 2014 on the initiative of survivors and their supporters, and has heard the testimonies of 20 people about their experience of sexual abuse, as well as taking evidence from expert witnesses.
…The Tribunal’s legal adviser Alan Collins, a partner at Hugh James solicitors, said: “The People’s Tribunal’s preliminary findings reveal that there exists a widespread under-reporting of sexual abuse, which is the result of inadequate systems and safeguards which, if in place, would undoubtedly have led to a greater number of victims coming forward to report historic or ongoing abuse.
The above process moves from “testimonies” to “expert witnesses” to “findings” without pausing to assess the credibility of “evidence” – which means that we are asked to take at face value a story that contains the most extraordinary and wide-ranging allegations of VIP paedophilia and Satanism.
The full report is available online; it is published as an image-only pdf, which means that it cannot be searched, and it is more laborious to quote than it needs to be. Here is the relevant account (emphases added):
Z86 was sexually abused by his father from infancy, and from about the age of two years his mother began to take him to other houses (‘mansions’) where he was raped both anally and orally by elderly upper-class men. His father also took him to various holiday camps, where he was swapped with other children for abuse by a group of fathers. His father continued to abuse him into his 20s.
At the age of four, Z86 was taken to his GP’s surgery for ‘inculations’ and ‘woke to find himself’ at a nearby defence establishment. He was later taken to the same place via his Sunday school, with other children. Z86 describes children being kept in cages, tortured with electric shocks, deprived of any comfort or proper food, and eventually be ‘conditioned’ or trained to abuse and hurt other children. He believes that the training was to prepare him for child prostitution. From a newspaper photograph Z86 recognized one adult who he remembers being present on several occasions at this place.
At the age of eight, Z86 was taken abroad as part of a large extended family group where he was again abused. The abuse included sex with animals, gang rape and being used to produce child pornography. On returning to the UK he was again taken repeatedly to the defence establishment for further serious abuse. He was injected with unknown substances and given other drugs in drinks. He suspects that these were dissociative drugs, because they made him lose awareness of time and place.
As he became older he was also ‘directed’ to attend monthly ritual abuse bonfires. He was instructed for instance, to go to a particular rendez-vous at night. He recognized adults there, respected professionals, people from his local community and from schools and church groups. The activities of this group included satanic rituals and ritual murder.
As a teenager he was directed to go to particular places in London. Z86 gives details of the activities carried out there: he says that he had to wear a uniform, and he names his own ‘clients’, VIPs and other public figures.
Z86 has severe mental health problems, being diagnosed as having depression, anxiety, PTSD, and dissociative personality disorder. Since he became an adult he has received effective therapeutic help. With the support of his therapist he gave a police video interview in 2011, after which his father was arrested. Although the police wished to pursue this, the CPS decided no charges could be brought.
He then decided to try to hide his identity, changing his name and moving to another part of the country. He has received death threats and attempts to harm him, and believes that several of his friends and associates have been attacked or murdered by their former abusers. Z86 now lives abroad. Since moving to a safer situation, he has been able to talk about the organized aspects of his abuse to his therapist and to a police officer he trusts.
One wonders how the Press Association journalist managed to write a story about the report without noticing a bombshell that ought to shatter our understanding of the workings of British society. Or did he or she decide that this story is so extravagant that it would be best passed over?
The account given above is so vague as to be impossible to prove or disprove, but even with the best will in the world it is impossible to comply with the popular mantra that we must always “believe the victim”. How many “VIP” adults were part of this conspiracy? How many soldiers knew about it? Where are all the other victims? How did the whole thing escape any media or police interest? Was everyone at the “defence establishment” in on it? If not, why did no one else suspect? Why were Z86’s friends killed, yet he has only been threatened? And so on. These are serious difficulties.
The most significant detail in the above, it seems to me, is the involvement of a therapist – we know that some therapists are heavily invested in the idea of Satanic conspiracies, and there has been at least one tragedy caused by a therapist persuading a client to believe that she had been raped by politicians (with a claw hammer) and subjected to Satanic Ritual Abuse by her family. This was the case of Carol Felstead, and the specific details that she was induced to believe were demonstrably untrue. Carol died in 2005, but if she were alive today and still in the tormenting grip of her delusions, I have no doubt that she would be producing testimony similar to that of Z86 (as well as that of “Nick” [UPDATE: as of 2019 revealed to be Carl Beech]). That must give pause for thought.
Some critical comment about the “Tribunal” and its report is available on the SAFF website. The SAFF author, John Freedom, notes that Collins is director of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers (ACAL), which was founded by one Lee Moore,* who herself claims to be an SRA survivor and who organised seminars on the subject for the London Met. Another advisor to the UKCSAPT is Heather Bacon, “a child-protection academic who was peripherally involved in the Cleveland Scandal”, and Freedom judges that the Tribunal is “an extension of RAINS”, the Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support group.
Freedom also draws attention to an item by Ellen Lacter in the UKCSAPT report’s list of references, describing her as someone who “believes in demon infestation of the body and exorcism. She is a close aquaintence of recovered memory practitioners.” I previously wrote about Lacter, a San Diego-based psychologist, on this blog here – she considers her “mentor” to be one Steve Oglevie, who was at the centre of a 1989 incident in Idaho in which the discovery of a dead baby led to a Satanic panic. In 2008, Lacter contributed to a book called Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder, which also had a chapter by Joan Coleman, the founder of RAINS. Lacter hailed the book’s publication as a sign that “the tide is beginning to turn” after years of sceptical dismissal of SRA. Looks like she was right about that, at least.
*Corrected: I originally misread the source and incorrectly stated that Moore was herself an advisor to the Tribunal
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