"A woman whose claims of Satanic child sex abuse helped put eight people in the dock had a history of making false allegations, which was known to police, Scotland on Sunday can reveal."

"Angela Stretton was the key police witness in the Lewis abuse case which collapsed this summer with charges against all the accused being dropped."

"An investigation by this newspaper has revealed that Stretton was convicted of making false allegations of child abuse in 1987, and that Scots police were aware of her track record of false claims before deciding to press charges."

"Last night, several of the accused - some of whom are suing for compensation - demanded to know why they were dragged through the courts by social workers and police on the evidence of a discredited witness....."

"Police documents seen by this newspaper show that Stretton told police that Satanic rituals were used in the abuse, and that adults were filmed having sex with children. The evidence included lurid claims of drinking blood, orgies, and slaughtering animals."

Scotland on Sunday reports that Stretton was fined 100 Pounds in 1987 after admitting in court that she make hoax calls to emergency services involving allegations of incest. ₃ The Northern Constabulary said that Stretton had also made claims that resulted in others being convicted of criminal offenses. ₄

Scanning the entire 162 page report, we found no references to topics which were to become the foundation of the police investigation. Words such as "satanic" "occult" "pagan" or "wicca" do not appear anywhere in the report's text. In an appendix, at page 148, we found one instance where a teacher that reported that one of the children said she knew "bad people" and described being "tied up by family friends." It is unknown whether this refers to some children's games, or whether it refers to abuse and molestation by adults. Also, on Page 102 of the report, there is a reference to one of the mothers describing "...abuse of her children and others as part of various rituals conducted by numbers of adults." There do not appear to be any other reference to ritual abuse elsewhere in the report. However, there are questions in the report whether her statement can be regarded as meaningful.

Appendix 5 contains an extensive bibliography which includes a 1984 article by R.C. Summit on "The child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome." That paper had been based on earlier research into interview techniques that should be used on children in cases of suspected sexual abuse. Subsequent studies showed that those same interview techniques had often led to false accusations. The syndrome has since been abandoned by child care workers, child psychologists, and police interviewers everywhere, except perhaps in Lewis Island and similar isolated communities. We were surprised to see the syndrome surface again in the 21^st century. ₆

We suspect that one or more social workers or police officers involved in the Lewis Island cases was a strong believer in Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). Further, she or he lumped religious Satanism, Paganism and Wicca together and assumed that all were perpetrators in SRA. Although the SRA hoax was widespread in the 1980s and early 1990s, it has long since been exposed as a hoax elsewhere in the world. Thus, in the Island of Lewis during 2003, a child protection case involving child sexual abuse had morphed into a search for Wiccans, Witches and Satanists who were guilty of ritual abuse.

Because of the discredited child interview techniques used on the children, all of the their disclosures are now suspect and probably cannot be used in a court case. The adults responsible for the sexual abuse of the children will probably never be tried for their crimes. Meanwhile,  for the foreseeable future, the community will probably continue suspect the falsely accused of committing ritual abuse.

^{Page Translator:}

This page translator works on Firefox,
Opera, Chrome, and Safari browsers only

After translating, click on the "show
original" button at the top of this
page to restore page to English.