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Satanic Ritual Abuse in Day Care: An Analysis of 12 American Cases

Between 1983 and 1991, over 100 day care centres across America were investigated for satanic ritual abuse of children. These bizarre cases were widely reported in Great Britain as well as other countries around the world, where American experts played a signi®cant role in disseminating material about the cases in workshops and seminars. Using news articles, investigative reports, interview transcripts, legal briefs and court transcripts, this paper analyses a sample of 12 of those cases. It examines the nature of the allegations, the victims, the perpetrators, the criminal trials and the outcome of the cases. The major ®nding of this analysis is that these day care cases actually contribute little to the debate about whether satanic ritual abuse is real or rumour, but they do set an agenda for the international child abuse professional community for research, practice and discussion. *c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Child Abuse Review 6: 84±93, 1997

No. of Figures: 1. No. of Tables: 2. No. of References: 15

KEY WORDS: satanic ritual abuse; day care centres

T he term `satanic ritual abuse' was coined in Americajust over a decade ago to describe what is believed to be the widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse of very young children in satanic ceremonies. The term gave a name to disturbing reports that were cropping up across the country. Children were describing abuse in rituals that included such horri®c practices as blood-drinking, cannibal- ism and human sacri®ces conducted by robed and hooded satanists who also happened to be their day care providers. The day care cases were widely reported in Great Britain

where, according to Jenkins (1992), they introduced profess- ionals to the idea of satanic ritual abuse. That idea certainly was given substance by American experts, who disseminated `indicator lists' to identify ritually abused children, as well as

CCC 0952±9136/97/020084±10$17.50 Accepted 17 December 1996 *c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

`Children were

describing abuse

in rituals'

Mary deYoung� Professor of Sociology Grand Valley State University Allendale, Michigan USA

�Correspondence to: Dr M. deYoung, Department of Sociology, 245 AuSable Hall, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI 49401, USA. Tel: 616-895-3428. Fax: 616-895-3735. E-mail: [email protected].

reams of material on satanic holidays, symbols and rituals, in workshops conducted across Great Britain. Some of these American experts also played signi®cant roles in the satanic ritual abuse cases that were later identi®ed there (LaFontaine, 1994). Although those cases were not usually set in day care facilities, nursery schools or among organized childminders like they were in America, the American in¯uence on the spread of the idea of satanic ritual abuse in Great Britain, as well as other countries around the world, cannot be denied (Barnett and Hill, 1993; deYoung, 1996; McGovern, 1994; Werkgroep Ritueel Misbruik, 1994). In whatever country they occur, and in whatever setting,

satanic ritual abuse cases create controversy. That contro- versy has deeply a€ected the international child abuse professional community as well, dividing it into `believers' at one extreme, `disbelievers' at the other and leaving many others somewhere in the middle, still confused and uncertain about the nature and meaning of these cases. Yet, regardless of the position any child abuse professional takes on this divisive issue, the fact remains that the American day care cases are the origin of the very idea of satanic ritual abuse. Despite the pivotal role they have played in the development and spread of this international controversy, however, little scholarly attention has ever been paid to them. The purpose of this article is to redress that oversight. It

analyses a sample of 12 of the more than 100 satanic ritual abuse day care cases that occurred in America and concludes with a discussion of the major ®nding of this analysisÐthat the American day care cases actually contribute little, if anything, to the ongoing debate about whether satanic ritual abuse is real or rumour, but they do set an agenda for research, productive discussion and good practice.

Sample of 12 Cases

For the purposes of this article, a day care case was included in the sample if it met all of the following criteria:

1. An investigation led to one or more arrests, followed by a verdict in a criminal trial, a guilty plea or a dismissal of charges during the trial;

2. Allegations of satanic ritual abuse, that is, of abuse carried out during ceremonies in the worship of Satan, were actively investigated and publicly reported, even if they were not introduced into trial;

3. There are sucient archival data in the form of local and national news articles, investigative reports, interview transcripts, legal briefs and court transcripts to assess the case.

`Satanic ritual

abuse cases create

controversy'

`The American

day care cases

set an agenda

for research,

productive

discussion and

good practice'

Satanic Ritual Abuse 85

*c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

Information that further identi®es the 12 cases in the sample is presented in Table 1.

Satanic Ritual Abuse Allegations

Each of the 12 day care centres in the sample became a target of investigation when a statement made by a young child gave rise to suspicions of sexual abuse, as opposed to satanic ritual abuse. These initiating statements varied in clarity, but none was a spontaneous and unambiguous disclosure that also identi®ed the perpetrator. These disclosing children ranged in age from 2 to 6 years, with a mean age of 3.6 years (SD 1.19). Seven were girls and ®ve were boys. In 11 of the cases, the initiating statement was made to a parent, in one to a therapist. The archival data reveal that eight of the 12 disclosing children did not repeat the allegation of sexual abuse upon being formally interviewed the ®rst time. Satanic ritual abuse elements did not emerge in any of the

cases until several weeks or even months after the sexual abuse investigation was launched and, in each case, only after the complaining child had named other children at the centre as victims of sexual abuse as well. There is often disagree- ment in the archival data as to whether these satanic ritual abuse elements were spontaneously disclosed by the children during their frequent interviews with investigators, thera- pists and even their own parents, or were elicited by direct questions that were probative for them. Once the satanic ritual abuse elements of each case

emerged, a great deal of investigative e€ort, therapeutic intervention and news media attention was focused on them. Therefore, the satanic ritual abuse features alleged in each case and their recurrence in subsequent cases can be tracked in the archival data. Figure 1 shows the frequency of the most often mentioned features in the sample of 12 cases.

`Eight of the 12

disclosing children

did not repeat the

allegation of

sexual abuse'

Table 1. Day care centre, year of investigation initiation, location and region of sample of 12 cases

Day care centre Year Location Region

McMartin 1983 Manhattan Beach, California Paci®c Coast Country Walk 1984 Miami, Florida South Atlantic Small World 1984 Niles, Michigan Midwest Fells Acres 1984 Malden, Massachusetts New England Georgian Hills 1984 Memphis, Tennessee East South Central Craig's Country 1985 Clarksville, Maryland East Atlantic Felix's 1985 Reno, Nevada Mountain East Valley 1985 El Paso, Texas Southwest Old Cutler 1989 Miami, Florida South Atlantic Little Rascals 1989 Edenton, North Carolina Southeast Faith Chapel 1989 San Diego, California Paci®c Coast Fran's 1991 Austin, Texas Southwest

86 deYoung

*c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

`Approximately

650 children were

identi®ed as

victims in the

12 day care cases'

Other reported features of satanic ritual abuse can only be referred to as original in that they are alleged in only a single case, often by a single child, and are not described in any of the published or unpublished literature. These include rape by a lobster, a space alien, a chainsaw, and in a secret city under the ocean; surgical removal and reattachment of eyeballs; being cooked in a microwave oven; and being murdered and brought back to life.

Victims

Approximately 650 children were identi®ed as victims in the 12 day care cases in the sample, over half of them in the McMartin case alone. Only a small percentage of these children were named as victims in the criminal indictments, however, as many were deemed too young, too traumatized or too unbelievable to give competent testimony in court. Of those children named in the indictments, only a small percentage went on to testify in the criminal trials. The McMartin case is illustrative of this steady diminution of child witnesses: 369 children were identi®ed by evaluating therapists as victims, 41 testi®ed before the grand jury that issued the criminal indictments against the day care pro- viders and 14 testi®ed in the trial (Fukurai, Butler and Krooth, 1994). To protect the children in these cases, the archival data do

not provide sucient demographic information, such as gender, race, family structure or socioeconomic status, to facilitate analysis of the victims. Because investigations focused on current and recent pupils at the centres in the

Figure 1. Frequency of most often reported features of satanic ritual abuse in the sample of 12 American day care cases.

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*c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

sample, however, it is reasonable to conclude that most of the children who were identi®ed as victims ranged in age from 2 to 6 years.

Perpetrators

In addition to their day care providers, the child victims in these 12 cases speci®cally named over 200 other adults as perpetrators of satanic ritual abuse. Some of those named worked at, or were aliated with the respective centre; others were local people, some of them prominent, and others still had no aliation with the centre or even with the city in which the case occurred. The criminal investigations elimin- ated many as suspects, but others were never seriously under suspicion because investigators judged it highly improbable, even impossible, that they had anything at all to do with the case. Included in that latter group were the ministers, police ocers, professional baseball players and ®lm stars named by the children in the various cases. The investigations concentrated, instead, on the day care

providers. In the 12 cases in the sample, a total of 28 people were criminally indicted and faced trial: 26 of them were teachers, aides or administrators; two had no aliation with the centre in question. Seventeen of the defendants were female and 11 were male. Two were African-American, four were Latino and the remaining 22 were white. They ranged in age at the time of arrest from 14 to 61 years, with a mean age of 35.6 years (SD 12.77). It should be noted that the 14-year-old defendant was still legally a minor when arrested, but was waived to adult court to stand trial.

Outcome of the 12 Cases

To date, 22 of the 28 defendants have been tried in criminal courts; 15 were found guilty, ®ve not guilty and two had all charges dropped during the actual trial when children retracted their allegations on the witness stand. Three of the remaining defendants pleaded guilty to lesser charges; and three more have not yet gone to trial. In slightly less than half of the criminal trials, some or all

of the child witnesses testi®ed via closed-circuit television. This quite recent courtroom procedure is not without controversy (Montoya, 1995), but its use in cases where the child witnesses would be so traumatized by open court testimony as to be rendered unable to communicate was upheld by the US Supreme Court in the case of Craig's

`Children who

were identi®ed as

victims ranged in

age from 2 to 6

years'

`In slightly less

than half of the

criminal trials

child witnesses

testi®ed via

closed-circuit

television'

88 deYoung

*c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

`The McMartin

trial was the

longest criminal

trial in the history

of America'

`Sentences

imposed for the

15 defendants

found guilty

tended to be

very long'

`12 of the 15 guilty

verdicts were

successfully

appealed'

Country Day Care. In a 5±4 decision, it ruled that `a state's interest in the physical and psychological well-being of child abuse victims may be suciently important to outweigh, at least in some cases, a defendant's right to face his or her accusers in court' (Maryland v. Craig, 1990). Under a hearsay exception, parents were allowed to testify

in each of these criminal trials about what their children had told them about abuse at the centre. They were also allowed to testify about the psychological and behavioural sequelae of the abuse their children experienced. Much of that testi- mony, as well as corroborating testimony by the therapists who evaluated and/or treated the children, took the form of comparing the children's symptoms to those recorded on the widely disseminated satanic ritual abuse `indicator lists'. Very little in the way of corroborative material evidence

was presented in any of the day care trials. Therefore, both prosecuting and defence attorneys were forced to rely heavily on expert witnesses, who variously testi®ed about the reliability of the medical evidence, the anticipated sequelae of satanic ritual abuse, the validity of the interviewing techniques that elicited the allegations and the psychological pro®le of the satanic day care provider. The criminal trials tended to be long in duration, ranging

from 2 to 560 court days, with a mean of 92.6 court days (SD 157.4). They were also expensive. The McMartin trial, which, at 560 court days, was the longest criminal trial in the history of America, was also the most expensive, at $13 million (Shaw, 1990); the Faith Chapel trial cost $2.3 million (Granberry, 1993), the Small World trial $250 000 (Lengel, 1985). Regardless of cost, juries inevitably were confronted with scores of witnesses, contradictory expert testimony, hundreds of exhibits and thousands of pages of transcripts. Jury deliberations in the day care trials ranged from 4 to 270 hours, with a mean duration of 32.5 hours (SD 67.30) before the verdicts were announced. Sentences imposed for the 15 defendants found guilty

tended to be very long; in one case, in fact, the longest ever imposed on a defendant in the history of the state. Because sentencing policies vary from one American state to another, it is not possible to reliably calculate an average sentence for the 15 day care providers who were found guilty. Table 2, however, displays the verdict and the sentence for each of the defendants in the 12 day care cases in the sample. As Table 2 also shows, 12 of the 15 guilty verdicts were

successfully appealed. The grounds for the appeals varied from one case to the other, but aside from procedural errors

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*c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

in the trial, the three most common grounds for successful appeal were the improper admission of lay testimony about the sequelae of abuse from the parents of the children; the violation of the defendant's constitutional right to confront his or her accuser due to the use of closed-circuit television, videotaped testimony or the segregation of the children in the courtroom; and the use of interview techniques that were ruled too leading and suggestive to ensure that the children's testimony was untainted.

Table 2. Disposition details for 28 defendants in the sample of 12 American day care cases

Day care centre (defendant's initials) Verdict Sentence

McMartin (RB) Not guilty ÐÐ (PB) Not guilty ÐÐ

Country Walk (FF) Guilty 6 life terms (IF) Pleaded guilty 10 years

Small World (RB) Guilty 50±75 years. Conviction overturned; pleaded guilty to lesser

o€ence in lieu of retrial, 5 years probation

Fells Acres (GA) Guilty 30±40 years (VA) Guilty 8±20 years. Conviction overturned, retrial ordered (CL) Guilty 8±20 years. Conviction overturned, retrial ordered

Georgian Hills (BS) Charges dropped in trial ÐÐ (JS) Not guilty ÐÐ (FB) Guilty 5±35 years. Conviction overturned, charges dropped

Craig's Country (SC) Guilty 10 years. Conviction overturned, charges dropped (JC) Charges dropped in trial ÐÐ

Felix's (MF) Guilty 3 life sentences. Conviction overturned, charges dropped (FO) Guilty Life. Conviction overturned, charges dropped

East Valley (MN) Guilty Life plus 311 years. Conviction overturned, retried,

not guilty verdict (GD) Guilty 20 years. Conviction overturned, charges dropped

Old Cutler (BF) Not guilty ÐÐ

Little Rascals (RK) Guilty 12 life sentences. Conviction overturned, new trial ordered (EK) Pleaded guilty 7 years suspended sentence (DW) Guilty Life. Conviction overturned, new trial ordered (WP) Pleaded guilty 10 years suspended sentence (RB) ÐÐ ÐÐ (SS) ÐÐ ÐÐ (DH) ÐÐ ÐÐ

Faith Chapel (DA) Not guilty ÐÐ

Fran's (FK) Guilty 48 years (DK) Guilty 48 years

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*c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

`The analysis

cannot answer

whether it was a

satanic conspiracy'

`The analysis of the

American satanic

ritual abuse day

care cases does not

resolve the debate'

Major Finding and Recommendations

The purpose of this article was to present and analyse data on a sample of 12 American day care cases. The major ®nding of this analysis is that the cases actually contribute little, if anything, to the ongoing debate within the international child abuse professional community about whether satanic ritual abuse is a terrible reality or a ruinous rumour. That ®nding is at least somewhat ironic, especially given

the pivotal role these cases have played in originating the very idea of satanic ritual abuse and disseminating it around the world, but it is grounded in the fact that the analysis cannot convincingly support one extreme position in the reality±rumour debate over the other. For example, the data on the wide array of satanic ritual abuse features reported by the children, their gradual and contradictory disclosures over time and the absence of evidence corroborating their allegations could be interpreted as support for the position that satanic ritual abuse is traumatizing in ways that more common types of child abuse are not, and that a satanic conspiracy eradicated all evidence of its very real crime. Those very same data, however, could also be interpreted as support for the position that the children's allegations had to be formed and shaped over time by professionals who assumed a rumour was real and then found it so frightening that they hurried these cases into court without waiting to accumulate corroborative evidence. The analysis simply cannot answer whether it was a

satanic conspiracy that targeted young children in day care centres or a cultural connivance, but it does show that the cost of trying to prove satanic ritual abuse real has been very high indeed. That cost is most easily measured in ®nancial terms. Both the criminal investigations and the trials of the day care providers in the 12 sample cases were extra- ordinarily expensive and, given the fact that most of the guilty verdicts have now been overturned, wastefully so. But another kind of cost can be inferred from, if not calculated in, the analysis: the stress experienced by the children and their families over the years these cases dragged on, the often irreparable schisms within the communities where they occurred, the damaged reputations of professionals involved in them, and the lingering fear that at least some of these children really may have experienced some more ordinary type of abuse that was overlooked in the attempt to prove satanic ritual abuse. If the analysis of the American satanic ritual abuse day care

cases does not resolve the debate that the cases themselves

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*c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

`The American

satanic ritual

abuse day care

cases reveal

much about the

challenges still

facing the

international child

abuse professional

community'

originated, then does the analysis bring anything of value to this controversy? It does make two contributions. First, it can be added to a small but signi®cant body of international professional opinion and literature that insists that the attempts to prove satanic ritual abuse real have functioned, however unintentionally, to detract attention from more common forms of child abuse and to obfuscate the investi- gation and substantiation of organized and systematic forms of child abuse within a variety of settings (Armstrong, 1994; Bottoms, Shaver and Goodman, 1996; Clapton, 1993).

Second, the analysis sets out an agenda for the international child abuse professional community for research, discussion and practice. It shows the necessity for the evaluation of the common practice of investigative or disclosure interviews with children, and for more research as to how the develop- mentally based suggestibility of young children in¯uences their responses to interviewers, as well as the nature of their disclosures. The analysis also shows the necessity for securing a strong link to the scienti®c method and to critical thinking so that the kinds of materials and information that will in¯uence practice can be thoroughly assessed. Finally, the analysis demonstrates the need for an ongoing and collegial discussion, not just about the controversial satanic ritual abuse cases, but about the relationship between the work of child abuse professionals around the world to the particular culture in which it is conducted and to the ideological forces unique to that culture. When all is said and done, the American satanic ritual

abuse day care cases may reveal little about the very controv- ersy they started, but much about the challenges still facing the international child abuse professional community.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Tammy Niven for her excellent assistance in the collection of data on the sample day care cases.

References

Armstrong, L. (1994). Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts.

Barnett, J. and Hill, M. (1993). When the devil came to Christ- church. Australian Religion Studies Review, 6, 25±30.

Bottoms, B.L., Shaver, P.R. and Goodman, G.S. (1996). An analysis of ritualistic and religion-related child abuse allegations. Law and Human Behavior, 20, 1±34.

92 deYoung

*c 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Child Abuse Review Vol. 6: 84±93 (1997)

Clapton, G. (1993). The Satanic Abuse Controversy. University of North London Press, London.

deYoung, M. (1996). Satanic ritual abuse: exploring the contro- versies. Paper presented at the 11th International Congress on Child Abuse and Neglect, Dublin.

Fukurai, H., Butler, E.W. and Krooth, R. (1994). Sociologists in action: the McMartin sexual abuse case, litigation, justice, and mass hysteria. American Sociologist, 25, 2±44.

Granberry, M. (1993). Case illustrates ¯aws in child abuse trials: Dale Akiki's acquittal was a stinging rebuke to the system that arrested and tried him. Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, A-3.

Jenkins, P. (1992). Intimate Enemies: Moral Panics in Contem- porary Great Britain. Aldine deGruyter, Hawthorne, New York.

LaFontaine, J.S. (1994). The Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Abuse. HMSO, London.

Lengel, A. (1985). A nightmare in Niles. Michigan: The Magazine of the Detroit News, May 19, 13±14‡.

Maryland v. Craig (1990). 497 US 836, 853±855. McGovern, C. (1994). The Martensville witch-hunt. Alberta

Report/Western Report, March 7, 48±52. Montoya, J. (1995). Lessons from Akiki and Michaels on shield-

ing child witnesses. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 1, 340±369.

Shaw, D. (1990). Reporter's early exclusives triggered a media frenzy. Los Angeles Times, Jan. 20, A-1.

Werkgroep Ritueel Misbruik (1994). Rapport van Werkgroep Ritueel Misbruik. Ministerie van Justitie, The Hague.

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