Ritual Abuse Quotes

“Betrayal is too kind a word to describe a situation in which a father says he loves his daughter but claims he must teach her about the horrors of the world in order to make her a stronger person; a situation in which he watches or participates in rituals that make her feel like she is going to die. She experiences pain that is so intense that she cannot think; her head spins so fast she can't remember who she is or how she got there.

All she knows is pain. All she feels is desperation. She tries to cry out for help, but soon learns that no one will listen. No matter how loud she cries, she can't stop or change what is happening. No matter what she does, the pain will not stop. Her father orders her to be tortured and tells her it is for her own good. He tells her that she needs the discipline, or that she has asked for it by her misbehavior. Betrayal is too simple a word to describe the overwhelming pain, the overwhelming loneliness and isolation this child experiences.

As if the abuse during the rituals were not enough, this child experiences similar abuse at home on a daily basis. When she tries to talk about her pain, she is told that she must be crazy. "Nothing bad has happened to you;' her family tells her Each day she begins to feel more and more like she doesn't know what is real. She stops trusting her own feelings because no one else acknowledges them or hears her agony. Soon the pain becomes too great. She learns not to feel at all. This strong, lonely, desperate child learns to give up the senses that make all people feel alive. She begins to feel dead.
She wishes she were dead. For her there is no way out. She soon learns there is no hope.

As she grows older she gets stronger. She learns to do what she is told with the utmost compliance. She forgets everything she has ever wanted. The pain still lurks, but it's easier to pretend it's not there than to acknowledge the horrors she has buried in the deepest parts of her mind. Her relationships are overwhelmed by the power of her emotions. She reaches out for help, but never seems to find what she is looking for The pain gets worse. The loneliness sets in. When the feelings return, she is overcome with panic, pain, and desperation.

She is convinced she is going to die. Yet, when she looks around her she sees nothing that should make her feel so bad. Deep inside she knows something is very, very wrong, but she doesn't remember anything. She thinks, "Maybe I am crazy.”
― Margaret Smith, Ritual Abuse: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to Help

“Violators cannot live with the truth: survivors cannot live without it. There are those who still, once again, are poised to invalidate and deny us. If we don't assert our truth, it may again be relegated to fantasy. But the truth won't go away. It will keep surfacing until it is recognized. Truth will outlast any campaigns mounted against it, no matter how mighty, clever, or long. It is invincible. It's only a matter of which generation is willing to face it and, in so doing, protect future generations from ritual abuse.”
― Chrystine Oksana, Safe Passage to Healing: A Guide for Survivors of Ritual Abuse

“Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone.
So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach.
In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Punishments include such things as flashbacks, flooding of unbearable emotions, painful body memories, flooding of memories in which the survivor perpetrated against others, self-harm, and suicide attempts.”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“….Nothing was inevitable. She had not chosen this way. It was her fate. It had been decided since before time began. It had been decided before she began. Nothing could be done. There was no point in trying. It was way too late. The inevitability of nothing was totally supreme, overriding everything. No way out. No way through. She could only accept the unacceptable. She could only endure the unendurable. Nothing was wrong!

Nothing was wrong and the wrongness of this awesome nothing seeped from her. Some people, only a few, saw it. Some people, only a few felt it. Some people, only a few, recognised it and in recognising it for what it was, raged against it. Through the nothingness, these few reached out for her.

She could not reach back. Through the nothingness, these few fought for her. She could not fight back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few cared for her. She could not care back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few spoke out for her, shattering the frozen silence over and over again. She could not speak out for herself…. “

*I hope this may give some comfort to people who need it. There are good, caring people (whether outside or within yourself, if need be) and you do deserve to be cared for and supported as much as anyone else does."

From “Nothing”, one of the short stories in “Fight! Rabbit! Fight!”
― Laurie Matthew, Fight! Rabbit! Fight!

“Some people with DID present their narratives of sadistic abuse in a quite matter-of-fact way, without perceptible affect. This may sometimes be done as a way of protecting themselves, and the listener, from the emotional impact of their experience. We have found that people describing trauma in a flat way, without feeling, are usually those who have been more chronically abused, while those with affect still have a sense of self that can observe the tragedy of betrayal and have feelings about it. In some cases, this deadpan presentation can also be the result of cult training and brainwashing. Unfortunately, when a patient describes a traumatic experience without showing any apparent emotion, it can make the listener doubt whether the patient is telling the truth.
(page 119, Chapter 9, Some clinical implications of believing or not believing the patient)”
― Graeme Galton, Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“There is a slave trade still in this country—yes, the real and horrific sex and human trafficking trade run by organised criminal gangs, which is appalling and must be stopped. But there's the hidden slavery too of children exploited and used within their own families, within organised and ritual abuse.”
― Carolyn Spring, Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“Most organised abuser groups call each particular training a “programme”, as if you were a computer. Many specific trained behaviours have “on” and “off” triggers or switches. Some personality systems are set up with an inner world full of wires or strings that connect switches to their effects. These can facilitate a series of actions by a series of insiders. For example, one part watches the person function in the outside world, and presses a button if he or she sees the person disobeying instructions. The button is connected to an internal wire, which rings a bell in the ear of another part. This part then engages in his or her trained behaviour, opening a door to release the pain of a rape, or cutting the person's arm in a certain pattern, or pushing out a child part. So the watcher has no idea of who the other part is or what she or he does. These events can be quite complicated.”
― Alison Miller, Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse

“Lies that cause survivors to deny or recent abuse memories and experiences

⸱ The alters who are designated to live in the "real world,” going to school or college and holding jobs while interacting with others in adulthood, are trained, usually at home by parents, to disbelieve any memories that might come up.

⸱͏ Children are taught to believe that they got the idea that they were abused from something they read or saw on television or from someone else’s experience or from a therapist. (This is a basic argument of those who attempt to discredit these experiences in the public eye and among professionals.)

⸱ Children are also taught that if they experience flashbacks of awful abuses, those must be dreams or imagination or signs that they are crazy. Nothing bad really happened to them”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“Patrice had long since buried the particulars of events so painful that they caused her to resolve only to see good. With such a stance, such as dissociative split, she could walk with evil and believe it did not exist. She was Joe's perfect mate.”
― Judith Spencer, Satan's High Priest

“The only real, true, permanent way to destroy your mind control is to work through the memories. It's unfortunate because it's unpleasant. It hurts to work through your memories; they have pain. Memories are not just made up of ideas, and thoughts and storylines, they are also made up of physical pain and emotional pain and sadness and distress and despair and all of those things are part of memories.”
― Alison Miller

“Lies to induce suicide

• Children are told that it is honorable to die for the cause of the abusers (common with “soldiers” or religious alters).

• Children are told that since the group knows what survivors have said and done, traitors must kill themselves quickly before the group finds them and kills them slowly and painfully. (Note the theme of double binds.)

• Children are told that their lives will always be so unbearable that it is better to die

• Certain alters are told that if they kill the body when it is traitorous, they will be rewarded in the afterlife. (This is similar to the belief of extreme Islamic suicide bombers.)

• Demon or alien or ghost alters are told that they can kill the body without themselves dying, or that their special powers will bring them back to life

• One of the ways that organized abusive groups guarantee secrecy is to train alters to commit”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“Inescapable shock research continues to the present day. Although I am not a PETA person, I think it bears mentioning (again) that other species do not deliberately inflict uncontrollable, inescapable pain. Only humans do this — in the psych lab, in abusive families, in prisons, and in the extreme sadism of sexual psychopaths. Deliberate cruelty and the instrumental use of others is the sole province of homo sapiens.”
― Paul F. Dell

“In an article offering a law enforcement perspective on allegations of ritual abuse, Lanning (1992, A law-enforcement perspective on allegations of ritual abuse) fails to give a precise definition of the term. Although he is quoted as having conducted a seven-year study FBI study that gives evidence that ritual abuse does not exist, when Noblitt and Perskin (2000, Cult and ritual abuse) requested a copy of his study from the FBI, “the bureau responded in writing that no such study existed.” (p. 179).”
― David A. Sakheim, Susan E. Devine

“When there is abuse by itself it's scary enough. When there is abuse within a religious setting it is so terrifying to people... nobody can bear it when it's linked to religion, but when it's linked to religion that is not mainstream it seems to frighten people more. As if yes, abuse exists, Satanism exists, but you can't have Satanist abuse.”
― Valerie Sinason

“Survivors' accounts reveal activities which are not only criminal but deliberately and brutally sadistic almost beyond belief.”
― Susan C. Van Benschoten

“Ritual abuse may or may not have satanic overtones.”
― Susan C. Van Benschoten

“I have met survivors from different parts of the country who have reported being ritually abused, some on college campuses by administrators, some by priests, some in the context of druidic rituals, some in the context of Lillith rituals. The ideology has not always been satanic, but the ritual sadistic sexual behaviors are similar.”
― Robert B. Rockwell

“When one of my early teachers, for instance, recognized that many ritually abused clients were still being abused while in treatment, she insisted that they could not be treated on an outpatient basis, but should be hospitalized and kept from their families. She was targeted with a series of court cases involving false accusations that she had allegedly abused clients in hospital. The experience was devastating to her.
And she was not alone. Many others faced persistent attempts to discredit their professional expertise, or legal assaults that robbed them of time, energy, and even the courage to continue to treat clients, write, or teach. Therapy professionals in both direct services and policy making, members of the criminal and civil justice systems, and the general public were systematically indoctrinated via the media. Many now share the view that people who disclose ritual abuse or mind control content suffer from "false memories” induced by "over-zealous therapists," and that dissociative disorders are iatrogenic (or else they do not exist at all).”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“It is hardly surprising that many survivors of ritual abuse develop DID in order to preserve their own sanity.”
― Joan Coleman, Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder

“People don't make decisions within these sorts of groups. They try to avoid more torture. Then they are tortured into thinking they made a decision of their own free will.”
― Wendy Hoffman, White Witch in a Black Robe: A True Story About Criminal Mind Control

“I leave the message that you can break away from the inheritance of murder, rape, evil, the greed of violence. That you have a choice, that the enemy is not insurmountable. That there is anyway some protective help in life.”
― Wendy Hoffman, White Witch in a Black Robe: A True Story About Criminal Mind Control

“Unlike many self-styled experts in the field of occult ritual abuse Sinason is no religious crusader. She emphasises in her introduction that "the number of children and adults tortured in the name of mainstream religious orthodoxy historically outweighs onslaught by Satanists" (p3).”
― Gavin Ivey

“I have stated elsewhere (Sinason 1994) that the number of children and adults tortured in the name of mainstream religious and racial orthodoxy outweighs any others.
Wiccans, witches, warlocks, pagans and Satanists who are not abusive and practice a legally accepted belief system are increasingly concerned at the way criminal groups closely related to the drug and pornographic industries abuse their rituals.”
― Valerie sinason , Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder

“In order to establish the narrative that innocent men have been the victims of an epidemic of false allegations, “moral panic” advocates have misrepresented child protection interventions and legal cases in significant ways (R. Cheit, 2014; Kitzinger, 2004; Michael Salter, 2016). This has included championing the cause of convicted sex offenders despite overwhelming evidence of guilt (R. Cheit, 2014; R. E. Cheit, 2001; Olio & Cornell, 1998).”
― Michael Salter, The History of Surrealist Painting

“Polyfragmented Dissociative Identity Disorder
A form of DID that often involves over one hundred DID personality states and is likely to be the result of cult abuse or some other form of extreme sadistic abuse that extends over a long period and often involves multiple perpetrators.”
― Deborah Bray Haddock, The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook

“Severity and the ritual nature of abuse has a significant causative relationship with polyfragmentation in A.D.D. and/or in M.P.D. Ritual, satanic abuse is usually administered by parents and other family cult members, and incest is of necessity involved. Incestuous abuse is not necessarily related to the most severe, polyfragmented forms of MPD; however, ritual abuse, with or without incest, is the most common underlying cause of polyfragmentation for MPD or dissociative disorders NOS.”
― Bennett G. Braun, Incest-Related Syndromes of Adult Psychopathology

“Ritual, satanic abuse is usually administered by parents and other family cult members, and incest is of necessity involved. Incestuous abuse is not necessarily related to the most severe, polyfragmented forms of MPD; however, ritual abuse, with or without incest, is the most common underlying cause of polyfragmentation for MPD or dissociative disorders NOS.”
― Bennett G. Braun, Incest-Related Syndromes of Adult Psychopathology

“Experience indicates that the more severe and/or ritualistic the abuse suffered as a child, the more fragmented is the adult patient's personality and thinking. Victims of satanic abuse are likely to exhibit polyfragmented atypical dissociative disorder (ADD) (dissociative disorder NOS) or polyfragmented MPD. Some victims of incest may not exhibit any exaggerated or special dissociative psychopathology.”
― Bennett G. Braun, Incest-Related Syndromes of Adult Psychopathology

“From mind control to programming

Foa and Kozak (1986) note that pathological fear structures, including unrealistic elements that may become associated with states of absorption and heightened arousal often attendant with extreme stress, are extremely resistant to modification. Hence, the power of all statements made during and immediately after abusive episodes while the victim is in an altered state will be enhanced by the absence of an operative critical consciousness (Conway, 1994), and by the indelible connection with intolerable terror or dread.
Psychologically sophisticated abusers who have mastered the methods of mind control know how to induce psychobiological state changes, how to elaborate and encapsulate them, how to provide the cues to trigger them, how to tap into and alter the victim's motivational and belief systems, and how to layer amnesias within a personality. In this way a polyfragmented dissociative individual can appear to lead the life of a normal hardworking citizen, yet can function undetected (by himself or by others) as a mind-controlled operative and remain available for service to individual perpetrators or groups.”
― Harvey L. Schwartz, The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep: A Relational Approach to Internalized Perpetration for Complex Trauma Survivors