There are many reasons for ritual abuse survivors of all ages becoming or being involved in prostitution. Though society often judges people who are involved in prostitution harshly and considers them to be making an active choice in what they are doing, this is not always the case. In fact, it is rare for survivors of ritual abuse (and other forms of abuse) to have any choice at all in this matter. It is very naive to assume that people who are selling sex have choices. The subject is far more complex than to be simply about people making choices.
For example, many adults who work in prostitution have reported being sexually abused as children. This can lead to feelings of low self-esteem, a lack of ability to say no to others, a disregard for their own feelings and even the belief that they are only there to be used sexually by others. Some people even come to the conclusion that what was taken from them in the past can now be paid for and do not regard sex as anything other than a means to an end. In any case of child prostitution, the adult who pays for her or his services is always abusing the child. The child is not a prostitute and the actions of the child cannot be regarded as criminal. The child cannot be held responsible for the actions or inactions of adults and should always be provided with support and help rather than condemned by any system. In this case, the child is not a criminal, the involved adult is. ChoosingSome survivors ‘choose’ to sell sex as a way of getting the money or goods they need to survive. Choices are often very limited for some people, in particular for some survivors of ritual abuse. Sometimes, when a survivor escapes from the abuse, they have a great deal of difficulty at first in getting somewhere safe to stay, money and enough food to survive. This difficulty can be compounded by the fear the survivor has of being found by the group and taken back. This fear is a very realistic fear and can make a survivor feel quite desperate. A survivor in this state of desperation is easy prey for pimps and other such people. Similarly, some survivors in need of accommodation are often very grateful to men (or more rarely women) who pick them up on the street and offer them a roof over their head in return for sexual services. This can be the start of being used more widely in prostitution and can be a difficult situation to get out of. The pimp makes it very difficult for his ‘victim’ to ever be in the position of leaving. After all, the pimp can make a great deal of money out of selling a person for sexual purposes. Though sometimes the survivor can get welfare benefits, this takes time and also the knowledge of, and information about, any entitlement to benefits. Welfare benefits take time to apply for and time to process. Meanwhile, the person has to find a way to survive. Some survivors may be able to get paid work but again, this can take some time to organise. Some survivors have little choice but to sell the only thing they have, for a while. For some survivors, the fact that they are ‘choosing’ rather than being overtly abused means that they can feel slightly better about themselves and their circumstance. For those survivors who are attempting to change their identity and/or have never been registered at birth, there is a further difficulty in getting benefits or starting to work. Everyone needs to have identity papers and numbers these days for everything. Survivors fleeing from ritual abuse seldom have such identity papers with them. Some survivors or ritual abuse have no legal identity as they have never been registered anywhere. The time it takes to sort out getting proof of identity can be extremely distressing for survivors but without the right bits of paper and numbers, they can access very little in the way of benefits, healthcare, housing, education or anything else. Some survivors would never know where to even start with this. Prostitution is a quick and relatively easy way to survive when there are so few other choices. There are always lots of people, mostly men, who are prepared to pay for sex. Prostitution is however, a dangerous way to survive and few survivors would wish to continue surviving in this way. It is not a real choice at all for the survivors who go into it. Being TrappedSome survivors get into relationships with people who are seeking vulnerable people to abuse. They fall in love, believe that the person loves them in return and through a process of careful grooming at the hands of the abuser, end up trapped in a situation of being prostituted. The abuser is at first loving towards them but in time changes and begins to manipulate the survivor into doing whatever the abuser wants. Often the survivor becomes so desperate to please the abuser that they will do almost anything for them. Because the demands of the abuser over time become more and more extreme and the punishment for not giving in to the demands also becomes more extreme, the survivor becomes too afraid to protest. The survivor becomes trapped. Also, in the case of a survivor of ritual abuse, the level of confidence and self-esteem is often not high enough for the survivor to try and fight back against this kind of life. This, from the perspective of some survivors, may well be better than what was endured before. Some survivors would think it enough that they at least get some kind of love. Sometimes the abuser makes certain that getting the person hooked on drugs further traps the survivor. This may even be a forced addiction or what seems like a choice to the survivor to loose themselves in drugs for a while. Whether forced to take drugs or not, the end result can be the same with the survivor dependant on the abuser to supply the drug. Depending on the drug and the state of dependency, the survivor has little choice but to agree to carry out the wishes or demands of the pimp. Getting off the drugs while in this situation is almost impossible. Getting out of the situation while drug dependent is equally very difficult. Family Set UpSome abusers, within the family setting, introduce the survivor to prostitution while still quite young. As the survivor is already conditioned to accept being used for sexual purposes, they are much more accepting of their situation than other children might be. Most people are horrified to discover that this actually happens, but it is really only an extension of what some young people already experience at home. In some cases it begins with the abuser i.e. the family members, sharing the young person sexually with friends and other family and, over time, moving on to selling the young people for sex to a wider range of individuals. Some young survivors are forced to go out onto the street and seek punters who will pay for their sexual favours. Often these survivors cannot return home until they have raised a specified amount of cash to bring home. The family income is supplemented by the income from the survivor and the family begin to expect this more regularly. In some organised abuse situations involving groups of abusers, the young people are sometimes used to find other like-minded abusers who are then gradually drawn into the activities of the group. The young people are used to find adults who are open to sexual approaches from children. The young person can then take the adult into a situation where other adults can get photographic evidence or videos, which can then be used to blackmail them. This can be a useful source of income for groups and people can be blackmailed to carry out all sorts of tasks. Prostitution and escort agencies can be very big business for groups and often, women in particular are kept involved in this line of work for as long as men will pay them for sex. Unfortunately, the market for sex is very large and growing. Often survivors, who become, for whatever reason involved in prostitution, are a very short step away from becoming used in pornography also. Often the two run hand in hand and the survivor is actively used in both. Pornography is very big business and there is a huge hungry market out there, which is always seeking more and younger victims. The use of the Internet has greatly expanded this market and many young people are readily preyed upon by the lust and greed of adults. In all of this, it is important to remember that children, young people and forced adults are the innocent parties, no matter what they are forced to do or how willing they appear to be.
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CategoriesIt is incredibly hard for many people to accept or believe that ritual abuse happens because to do so would be tantamount to accepting the unacceptable and believing in the unbelievable. To believe that ritual abuse actually happens also means the complete destruction of a person’s world view which can result in inner con!ict as the mind struggles to make sense of a different and opposing reality to what the person believes goes on in the world.
In order to accept that ritual abuse may be going on, especially in your own community, you first have to be able to accept that people are capable of atrocious acts of depravity, rape, torture, sadism and even child murder. Many people shield themselves from the unacceptability of all this through denial of the possibility that anyone could ever be capable of doing such terrible things. To come to believe that seemingly normal people are capable of such atrocity can so alter a person’s worldview that they are often rendered helpless and deeply shocked. Often the mind simply cannot cope with such an upheaval in beliefs. The belief in a safe and ordered world in which people care for one another and the children in particular begins to fragment and many people take refuge in complete denial. Denial of the existence of ritual abuse is common and can be a way of protecting self from becoming completely overwhelmed by the unacceptable reality of such abuse happening. Even survivors and supporters take refuge in denial from time to time despite, or even because of, their own experiences. Denial is our minds first line of defence and is a completely normal human coping mechanism which all of us experience when we are faced with something that we just cannot come to terms with. It is very diffcult to get evidence about ritual abuse. Firstly, ritual abuse is not a recognised crime as such in many countries. The abuse that occurs within it is criminal but the addition of almost unbelievable rituals, makes the whole experience sound fantastic and thereby, almost untellable and unhearable. For certain, the easiest way to abuse a child and then get away with it is to dress up in robes, behave strangely, dance round a fire, chant and wear a weird mask. Then if the child tries to describe these events or tell, no one will be able to believe them. Even believing that a child has been abused or raped is hard enough for most people to take on but if the addition factors such as carrying out weird rituals are added to the equation, it becomes far too much for most people to take on and believe. Also, if there is no crime of ritual abuse to address, there can never be any real and sustained search for evidence. No one will ever take the time to look for evidence of a crime that does not exist. Criminals, unless they are of the extremely stupid variety, seldom leave the evidence of their crimes lying about waiting to be discovered by the police. Normally once a crime is committed and reported, the police begin to search for the evidence that will indicate who did it, how they did it and how the perpetrators can be caught and be brought to justice. With ritual abuse no one can report it as a crime in its own right and no one will look for any real evidence. Survivors are extremely well conditioned not to talk. This conditioning usually begins at a very early age and continues throughout the period of abuse. It is relatively easy for any adult to make a child believe anything that they say. Children have nothing to compare their beliefs and adult’s statement with and have little choice but to believe what they have been always been taught. They can therefore end up in the position of repeating things that everyone knows just cannot be true i.e. a statement such as, ‘Santa and his reindeer hurt my bum.’ Santa is a mythical figure therefore this simply cannot be true. Reindeer are not the usual kind of creatures to be found hanging about in Scotland, therefore this bit of the statement is very unlikely. Yet, the child may have been told that one of the persons hurting them was Santa and the things used to hurt the child may have been called reindeer by the abusers. How would the child know any differently? It is rare for a ritual abuse survivor to initiate contact with the police or any other statutory agency. Not only are they conditioned not to tell, but also adult survivors know that they will just not be believed if they try to tell it all. The real experience of survivors, which is the only thing they will have to go on, will be that any threats by group members are not idle threats when they come from the group. All of this makes it unlikely the will talk to the police. In childhood, survivors will have been told that to talk to outsiders will result in extremes of torture and ultimate death. They will have witnessed the fact that these threats can and will be carried out. Most child and adult survivors, when they can eventually talk, will recount having seen murders and mutilations carried out. Most survivors will talk about being punished in an extreme manner for trying to talk when young. It is for this reason than it is usually several years before survivors who have finally reached safety begin to talk. All survivors share the same reluctance to disclose and the more horrendous the experience, the more unwilling or unable they become to talk about it. All survivors fear the consequences of talking both in term of what the group will do to them for talking and because they justifiably fear the disbelief of the person they try to talk to and tell. Satanism and other abusive cult practises are not a new phenomenon as is often declared. It is not something that only appeared out of the blue in the 1990’s. For a start, survivors were talking to people like me in rape crisis centres long before the 1990’s. Any researcher into history, both recent and ancient, can uncover documented accounts of demonic worship, torture, child rape, child sacri#ce and ritualised abuse. Human nature is a constant over thousands of years and although modern people would prefer to believe that we are now so civilised that we are all beyond committing such acts of cruelty upon a child, this is simply not the case. Every newspaper daily carries details of adults raped as children, child murder and child torture. The Internet circulates thousands of images of extreme brutality towards children to people who enjoy and get sexual pleasure from seeing these images of children suffering. Those children used to make the hard- core pornography and snuff movies that are in circulation on the Internet, had to come from somewhere. Every generation will throw up individuals who will seek to have power and control over others and be prepared to fly in the face of law and cultural norms in order to pursue their own ends. Power hungry individuals who have broken through, or care nothing for, cultural prohibitions will do anything to satisfy their own needs at the expense of anyone. Such individuals will stop at nothing at all to satisfy their own gratification and quest for more power. Even in recent history there are many examples of people who are more than capable of unimaginable atrocities and also capable of swaying huge numbers of people to accept and embrace whatever philosophy, religion or belief they advocated. Possibly the best example of this was Hitler and the rise of Nazism. This is also a good example of elitism, getting rid of evidence, persuading people to collude and the range of things that people are actually capable when they follow a particular set of beliefs. Abusive groups can behave very much the same way as the Nazi regime albeit on a much smaller scale. Few people want to believe that ritual abuse is a reality for anyone living in this country, and probably all of us would rather it was either a very rare occurrence or did not exist at all. If we are ever to uncover the real truth about what goes on though, we must be ready and willing to believe and hear all available information from all di"erent perspectives, regardless of our own worldview and beliefs. We must also we willing to look for the evidence. The abusers are never going to tell us anything so we must stay open to listening to the survivors. The people who are most likely to believe that ritual abuse is practised in our society are still the people who have come into contact with survivors. Ritual abuse can be defined as organised sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals, with or without a belief system. It usually involves more than one person as abusers. Ritual abuse usually starts in early childhood and involves using patterns of learning and development to sustain the abuse and silence the abused.
Most sexual abuse of children is ritualised. Abusers use repetition, routine and ritual to force children into the patterns of behaviour they require, to instil fear and ensure silence, thus protecting themselves. Sexual abuse of a child is seldom a random act: it usually involves the abusers in thorough planning and preparation beforehand. Some abusers organise themselves in groups to abuse children and adults in a more formally ritualised way. Men and women in these groups can be abusers with both sexes involved in all aspects of the abuse. Some groups use complex rituals to terrify, silence and convince victims of the tremendous power of the abusers. Some abusers organise themselves round a religion or faith and the teaching and training of the children within this faith, often takes the form of severe and sustained torture and abuse. Ritualised child sexual abuse is about abuse of power, control and secrecy. Ten years ago many people found it difficult to believe that fathers actually raped their children, yet survivors of such abuses spoke out and eventually began to be listened to and believed. Ritual abuse survivors, when they try to speak out about their experiences, face denial and disbelief from society and often fear for their lives from the abusers. One of the most important things to understand about any survivor of any kind of abuse is that generalisation is not useful. People are individuals with individual responses. It is better to get to know individuals rather than swallowing the many myths that abound.
Myths and FactsSurvivors are all still involved with the group on some level. This is insulting to the many survivors who have escaped. Leaving any abusive situation is a process and not an single event. Some survivors may be involved and may still be being abused. Some survivors maintain some contact with the abusers for quite a long time. The same is true of survivors of domestic violence and child sexual abuse where there can be many difficulties to overcome in getting out. Continued involvement is no more the case in ritual abuse than any other form of abuse. There is no escape possible for survivors of ritual abuse. Though escape from this type of abuse can be very difficult, many survivors do get out. We have countless testimonies from survivors who have escaped and stayed free. All survivors of ritual abuse report back to the ‘family’ or group. As with any abuse, breaking away can be very difficult. This does not mean that they report back to anyone. Many survivors do break away completely and many keep contact to a minimum. Survivors of ritual abuse can never lead normal lives unless they have years of therapy. Survivors were speaking out and leading normal lives long before therapy was invented. Many survivors of ritual abuse do lead normal lives and do so without therapy. They hold responsible jobs, raise families and get on with their lives. Some survivors do get help from therapists but many are unable to yet can still find a way to heal and move on. Survivors of ritual abuse are so badly damaged that only professionals can help. Many people need professional help in their lives, not just survivors of ritual abuse. Some survivors help themselves. Some get help from friends. Some go to organisations, help each other or go to therapists. All survivors are not badly damaged, though some may be. Survivors can be involved and not be aware of it if they have multiple personalities. Any survivor’s awareness of ongoing abuse can be blocked out, forgotten, denied or minimised as a way of coping with a horrendous situation. People with multiple personalities can be just as aware of everything that is going on around them as anyone else. Due to the satanic element, only Christians should support survivors of ritual abuse. Survivors need to be able to choose for themselves the type of support they receive and from whom they receive it. The most important thing is that survivors have enough choices. Also, not all ritual abuse is satanic. Survivors of ritual abuse are all abusers. Ritual abuse survivors may have been forced to involve others in abusive acts but as free adults we all have choices. Survivors may sometimes believe themselves to be abusive because of a situation they were forced to be in, but that does not mean they are. Survivors of ritual abuse are no more likely to become abusers than anyone else. Survivors of ritual abuse are dangerous. To whom? Survivors survive dangerous situations and escape from these situations. They are no more likely to be a danger to someone else than any other person. Sometimes though, survivors are conditioned to believe this themselves and may avoid talking, or getting support in the belief of safeguarding others. This can be an effective tactic abusers often use to ensure the silence of survivors. All people who have multiple personalities are ritual abuse survivors. People who are not survivors of ritual abuse can develop multiplicity as a way of coping with any severe trauma. It is not helpful to make sweeping generalisations or assumptions about anyone. All survivors of ritual abuse have multiple personalities. This is not true. Some survivors of ritual abuse develop multiplicity as a natural way of coping with the abuse but others develop different coping mechanisms to survive. Most coping mechanisms are formed in childhood are children learn to cope in whatever way works best for them. This is an individual response to an unbearable situation. edit. Survivors instinctively use many different tactics to survive ritual abuse and the aftermath of such abuse when they get away from it. Many people think that when the abuse ends survivors will be okay and just be able to get on with their lives. Unfortunately this is not very often the case. There are many different factors involved in how survivors cope with the ending of abuse including how long they were involved, what position they were in. if any and what their individual experiences were. Survivors are individuals who have individual responses to what has happened in their lives. Not all survivors need treatment or help to deal with the effects of abuse, but many do. Sometimes the effects of being abused can be extremely debilitating for the survivor and it can take some people a long time to recover.
Survivors may experience extremes of flashbacks, panic attacks, paranoia, hearing voices, anxiety, sleep problems, eating problems, seizures, etc. All these things can be going on pretty well at the same time and the effects are debilitating in the extreme. Recovery from the effects of ritual abuse is possible and survivors are not always damaged for life, as some people seem to think. Some of the problems survivors may be left with for a while afterwards are as follows: Dissociation is a normal way of coping with a severe trauma. For some survivors, they learn to dissociate from a very young age and carry on dissociating long after they have left the abuse. Dissociation can be mild or severe and survivors can be aware of it or even completely unaware. For some, it serves a useful function and does not become problematic for the survivor but for others it causes huge problems. Some survivors become unable to live a normal life because of the dissociation they continue to experience. Self-injury can become a way of trying to cope with the difficulties of life. Contrary to what some people think, self-injury is not an attempt to die, it is an attempt to live. Self-injury can take many forms and survivors do it for many different reasons including letting out feelings, staying in control and feeling real. It is not a sign of mental illness in itself and is a normal human response to distress and trauma. Physical health problems can last a long time after a survivor has escaped from the abuse. Some injuries are permanent. Often survivors have difficulty approaching doctors with specific injuries or health problems particularly if it would be difficult to explain how the injuries or problems came about. On top of this, approaching doctors is often a common difficulty for survivors of this sort. Health problems may include sexual health problems, infections and chronic pain from old injuries, to name but a few. Mental health problems or illnesses of all kinds can develop as a result of the abuse. A variety of labels and diagnosis are given by doctors to describe the illness or problem and the common thread is that they usually have the word disorder as part of the title. Survivors can overcome these problems with help and understanding. Whether there ever is an actual illness or a disorder caused by the abuse or the person is having a normal reaction to extreme trauma is debatable. Survivors to help them cope with the aftermath of abuse may use drugs and/or alcohol. Sometimes, this can lead to an addiction problem for the survivor but at the time, it may work well for the survivor in helping them suppress the effects of trauma. Some survivors end up addicted to prescription drugs, which doctors with little awareness or knowledge have unwittingly provided. Returning to the abuse is a very common survival tactic that survivors use. Some get creative with it and deliberately put themselves in dangerous situations. As a tactic for survival, few people can understand this one but it makes sense if you realise that the survivor who has never known anything other than abuse knows how to cope with it but not the absence of abuse. Sometime they return simply to feel ‘normal’ again. Prostitution can be a survival tactic and also on occasions become a problem for some survivors. If the survivor has no resources to live independently and cannot, for whatever reason, claim social security or work for a living, prostitution can provide a relatively straightforward income. Some survivors also use prostitution as a means of self-injury from time to time. Many survivors of ritual abuse grow up with a faith that they still firmly believe in even after they have finally escaped from the group. Though this faith may be at odds and in many cases completely opposite to the prevailing faith of the culture they are living in, it is no less powerful to the survivor. In this country, although Christianity is currently the majority faith, it is by no means the only religion being believed in and practised by people. Generally speaking, Britain is tolerant of other faiths and the freedom to worship and belong to any faith or religion is part and parcel of the rights of any member of this society. The European Convention on Human Rights provides for the freedom to follow the religion of your choice.
Just as there can exist a deeply held belief in the existence of God and/or Christ, despite the absence of any concrete evidence as to their existence, so too there can be a deeply held belief in the existence of Satan and a variety of demons from Hell. Indeed some Christians and some other faiths do believe in the existence of an opposing deity. For many who experience and survive ritual abuse, the existence of Satan will have been ‘proven’ to them on many occasions. If someone is repeatedly hurting you and telling you that they are doing this in the name of Satan or some other deity, then this is your experience and there is little choice but to believe it. Most survivors will have seen and heard evidence of his existence. That this experience is presented through the constant use of hypnosis, use of mind-altering drugs and extremes of torture and mind control, does not in any way alter the experiences of the survivor. They, like everyone else, believe that what they have experienced at first hand is real. It certainly is real to them. Even when they can later work out some of the tricks used to make them see and hear things that were not there, they cannot deny the reality of their own senses. In the same way that some people can believe that they have seen or communicated directly with God, so too can survivors believe they have seen or communicated with Satan. This type of experience is subjective to the individual concerned and no one has the right to say that it cannot have happened. Survivors escaping from the group often carry their beliefs in the faith of the group with them. This does not mean that they necessarily agree with what the abusers do, most do not. Many do however, believe that the abuse inflicted on them was right and proper and was part of their destiny but can see that the abuse inflicted by the group on others, particularly the children was wrong. Many believe that if they talk, the group will know about it and punish them for it. Other beliefs may include such things as; they have no rights, their soul is owned by or ‘tied’ to the devil, they cannot enter a Christian church, they are evil or they will make the people around them turn bad. While many of these beliefs can be damaging to survivors, sometimes all they have left is their beliefs and it may be more damaging to try and deny the beliefs of survivors. In time, people can challenge their own beliefs and come to reject some of the more damaging beliefs for themselves. While there is no problem in accepting that people have the right to follow any faith they choose, Satanism is not commonly regarded as a popular or acceptable faith to follow in this country. The very word causes people to automatically think of abuse, abnormal practises and evil. For this reason, few would admit openly to practising it. Those few, who would admit it, will always claim that no children are involved in it and that no abuse ever takes place in the name of their faith. This may well be the case for some. Adult survivors of satanic abuse however talk of murder, torture, mutilation, sacrifice of animals and people, rape and a multitude of abuses carried out in the name of the group worshipping Satan. Many survivors grow up in the religious faith of their abusers and though they may escape from the abuse, may still hold onto the belief system. This makes it very difficult for them to come to terms with their abuse and extremely difficult for supporters who hold a different belief system to the survivor to understand. Satanism teaches that people should follow their own will rather than the will of a weak god or society in general. It teaches that personal gain, indulgence and personal gratification is right and that to be powerful is everything. Survival of the fittest and the right of the strongest to rule over those who are weaker is a key element. Satanists generally view mankind as just another animal but the most vicious animal of all. Though mankind can think and reason, this to some only means that we are clever animals. Written in the Satanic Bible amongst the nine satanic statements are: 1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence! 2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams! The first of the nine satanic sins is stated as ‘stupidity- the cardinal sin of Satanism’. Many Satanists would claim that mankind has been duped and controlled by a weak god designed by man, which prohibits everything that people are naturally designed to enjoy. They would claim that belief in a god is simply a way of controlling the masses and only stupid people would follow this path. They might also declare that as people have free will, they should naturally follow their own paths in life and think for themselves. The natural path of mankind, they would argue, is towards survival of the fittest and doing anything that is enjoyable and natural. With abusive groups they would argue that their power is part of the natural order and they have the right to do with others, who are less fit and powerful than them, as they please. Obviously, there are many who would disagree with them. Although people do have the right to follow and practise the religion of their choice, with rights should always come the responsibility to consider the rights of others. Followers of abusive satanic groups do have the right to believe in what they want to but they do not have the right to force their beliefs on other people or the right to deny rights to others. Survivors of ritual abuse do have the right to believe in whatever they wish as do their abusers, but no one ever has the right to abuse another person or living creature or deny any of the rights of others. |
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