Study of childhood ritual abuse in the UK

Results were:

	There were 967 cases alleging organized abuse and 86 cases of alleged ritual abuse during 1988 to 1991 incl. in England
	From this data, 8% of all sex abuse allegations involved ritual abuse.
	Cases occurred in small concentrations: of the 86 ritual abuse cases, 21 were in Nottinghamshire, 12 in London, 14 in the South East and 12 in the North West.
	Most cases involved "very poor people". Most were unemployed; only 3 had middle class occupations.
	Human sacrifice was alleged in 35 cases; none could be proved.
	The use of ceremonial robes was alleged in 28 cases, and corroborating in two.
	Interviews with children were poorly done; frequent, direct and aggressive questions were asked. (This technique has now been shown to implant "memories" in the minds of young children of abuse that never happened.)
	No evidence exists for Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) in England.
	3 cases involving child molesters were found in which the perpetrators pretended to be Satanists in order to better control their child victims.
	Unfounded rumors of SRA had been spread on the basis of dubious information.
	Some Evangelical Christians, psychologists, childcare workers, and health-care professionals were held responsible for the myth.
	The SRA myth deflected care and concern away from the real plight of many abused children.

Some quotations from Prof. La Fontaine were:

	"I think the Evangelicals created the climate in which people could believe this sort of thing was happening."
	"People began thinking that perhaps it was something they hadn't seen because they hadn't looked and though they had better start looking. That argument is mistaken because we are not talking about a different kind of abuse. It is the same old sexual abuse."
	"In these cases, the children were worryingly disturbed. It was easy to make a mistake by assuming that, because the children were so damaged, what had happened to them must have been so much worse than normal sexual abuse".
	"The fact is that the small children didn't actually say these things [allegation of SRA]. They said bits and pieces that were picked up by the adults."
	"You can never say that something doesn't exist. All I can say is that there is no evidence in the cases I have examined."
	"What is defended as 'what children say' may be nothing of the sort"

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