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> Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt

text Satan's Silence

Satan's Silence reader ´ Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt read Ë Communities throughout the United States were convulsed in the 1980’s and early 1990’s by accusations often without a shred of serious evidence that respectable men and women in their mids—manyCommunities throughout the United States were convulsed in the 1980’s and early 1990’s by accusations often without a shred of serio In lieu of a traditional review I'm just going to share an email I sent to a friend who asked Mike are you okay? Actually here is literally what she wrote Hi Mike—As you may know I can’t deal easily with Facebook but I do want to know what inspired that last posting with the weird sentences about ritual abuse Huh? What context what book what point of view? Just like that all the visible full sentences could do was make me extremely angry PLiz explainor ampify The passage she's referencing in her email is this from Satan's Silence Ritual abuse thus helped women disengage from unsatisfactory marriages without feeling guilty about being bad wives or mothers When I shared it on Facebook I commented Like what if Munchausen by Proxy but empowering?So I found myself DEEPLY interested in the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and have read three books about itSatan's Silence Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch HuntRemembering SatanWe Believe the Children The Story of a Moral PanicThe first and third books really tried to get at an understanding of what would cause parents to believe wilder and wilder stories proffered by their children in cases of alleged sexual abuse One reason that was cited the kids were pressured into providing evidence that they knew wasn't true but they knew would make the adult asking the uestions happyBut why were adults so eager to accept that there was a seemingly limitless ring of Satanic cultists abusing children? That's where there still isn't a lot of very satisfying answers Both books point to women being empowered to enter the workforce again and how this destabilized the patriarchal concept of what a family should look like This would have caused a lot of moral anxiety Is it good for women to not be home with the children? and then these cases of day cares abusing children would have fit into this anxiety very well It's akin I think to the Invasion Literature that sweeps through England towards the end of the 19th century English writers imagining an England where England herself is colonized and ruined by outsiders because England had done so much to destabilize much of the world around herAnother point the book mentioned and this is directly related to the uotation I shared is that mothers than fatherswere the likely family member to go to therapy sessions and police uestionings with their children Some of this is because women were likely to be home during the day than men were so they had the free time But especially in Satan's Silence this argument is suggested mothers in families where ritual abuse had been alleged found themselves in a uniue position of power caretaker advocate after the fact protector It gives an eldritch horrifying shape to the day but a shape nonetheless And in a society where divorce was only starting to be the norm it provided a no fault avenue of release for women looking to get out of their marriage That comes out mercenary in my description than I think is fair It's not that women were manufacturing claims; but it might explain why they fought so hard for those claims in the face of either impossible or contradictory evidenceOne of the problems I found as a reader of these three books I ended with Satan's Silence is that it can start to seem like all the writers are suggesting that no children are ever sexually molested or abused And I don't think that's ever the intention of these books; but they spend so much time developing systems that undermine the very idea of child sexual abuseSomewhere in between these books and the claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse is the truth I think

ebook õ Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt å Debbie Nathan

Iracies to rape and terrorize children In this powerful book Debbie Nathan and Mike Snedeker examine the forces fueling this blind panic Note The Kindle version of this book has some terrible OCR maybe track down a hard copyFor a solid decade everyone knew that shocking numbers of children were being subjected to the most horrific sexual and physical abuse at the hands of parents teachers or caretakers who were satan worshipping cultists Children testified to horrors one could scarcely imagine medical professionals found tell tale signs of abuse written into their bodies those accused confessed and were sent to prison for life But the scope of the problem kept growing More and children came forward and it seemed that Baphomet and Moloch were behind every cornerUntil it was shown that literally none of this happened That although psychologists were acting in good faith and thought they were recovering memories hidden by trauma the children were all too eager to say what authority figures wanted to hear because they only received good feedback for confessing abuse not for telling the truth That the inconsistency of their testimony was excused because obviously their trauma left them in a broken mental state and couldn't possibly be an indication that their testimony was false or coerced That what medical professionals diagnosed as clear signs of abuse came from a shockingly unscientific and unsupported list of tests partially drawn from a pseudoscientific 19th century researcher who wanted a simple test to identify sodomites for prosecution That the accused confessed based on tried and true psychological pressure that police used for generations to extract confessions when the physical evidence wasn't uite there or in these cases where the physical evidence didn't exist at all And through it all where a culture of horror at the spectacle of child ritual abuse set up a chilling effect where skeptics couldn't speak outEven though the abuse didn't actually exist this book is horrifying throughout and a good reminder of the limits of forensic evidence and the role that social pressure plays in shaping reality

Debbie Nathan å Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt book

Satan's Silence Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch HuntUs evidence that respectable men and women in their mids many of them trusted preschool teachers secretly gathered in far reaching consp Watched a bad doco about the Ritual Abuse scare of the 90s which dissolved down into the individual neurosis and dysfunction of a particular family This book was a good antidote in that respect though I don't necessarily agree with all the conclusions