The Hard Facts about Satanic Ritual Abuse
Children do not always tell the truth.
The sixth claim, that children (or childlike MPD manifestations) don't lie about abuse gained popularity during the early 1980s as part of the child protection movement. This belief is heavily promoted by many of the most vocal child protection advocates, even though some, such as UCLA psychiatrist Roland Summit, admit that there are no controlled studies to validate this.[29]
In addition, one of the major problems with accurately discerning SRA stories is that psychological models used to understand the dynamics of regular child abuse are superimposed on alleged SRA victims without demonstrating that such a transference is valid. Another Summit maxim, the "child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome," asserts that children who have been abused characteristically are reluctant to disclose and often recant their stories. Summit and other therapists even use the accommodation syndrome to determine whether or not a child has been abused. This may have limited validity in an incest situation in an intact family, where revelation of a child's victimization may cause the removal of the perpetrator from the family and recriminations from other family members. However, as Coleman notes, it is worse than useless "in cases in which the perpetrator is a non-supported outsider or a non-custodial parent accused by the custodial parent."[30] No one wants to minimize the pain, trauma, and terror that child victims of any kind suffer, but to impose an abuse syndrome indiscriminately on children who have not been abused victimizes them rather than protects them.
It is considered more incredible that someone would "make up" or "lie" about unbelievable ritual abuse than that such abuse actually occurred. Some true believer therapists have developed variations of this idea, such as psychiatrist Bennet Braun's "rule of five": if he hears the same kind of abuse story from five different clients who have no known common association, he accepts the story as authentic.[31] Such a fallacy of credulity, however, ignores both the complexity of possible reasons one could believe and/or tell a story that is not true and also the reality that some SRA stories have been shown to be false.
Clients who unknowingly told false stories have been reported. Causes are often broadly described as directive therapy.[32] Often the controversial practice of hypnotism is used, sometimes with clearly false results.[33] Several experts, including one of the nation's leading specialists in MPD, psychiatrist George Ganaway,[34] and leading hypnosis expert, psychologist Nicholas Spanos,[35] have linked high suggestibility (of which hypnotizability is an indicator) to MPD and alleged adult survivor SRA stories.
Sometimes inadvertent hypnosis or self-hypnosis can have tragic consequences, such as the Paul Ingram case, in which a parent accused of SRA by an adult daughter succumbed to intensive interrogation, pastoral pressure, and subtle hypnotic cues; and then through self-induced hypnosis "remembered" the SRA so he could confess and plead guilty in criminal court![36] Memory idiosyncracies can play a crucial part in false stories, too, as noted by leading memory expert psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and others.[37]
Some false stories are produced with the cooperation of the client, including cases of factitious, simulated, or malingering dissociative disorders.[38] One of the most interesting cases of factitious disorder is chronicled by Philip M. Coons in his "Factitious Disorder (Munchausen Type) Involving Allegations of Ritual Satanic Abuse."[39] In this case, the client made a mini-career out of traveling cross-country, supported by different SRA support groups and admitted to in-patient facilities where she remained until her ruse was discovered and she moved on.