Police officers and therapists in several communities across North America say they are alarmed and puzzled by allegations of violent ritual child abuse that are strikingly similar to those heard at a Crown wardship hearing in Hamilton.

They fear that the similarities can be explained only by the existence of organized satanic cults, which involve children in sexual acts, degradation, bestiality, murder and the production of violent pornography.

But other experts are concerned that child-abuse specialists are precipitating a witch hunt as a result of their hysterical belief in children's fantasies.

Dr. Roland Summit, a psychiatrist at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Centre in Torrance, Calif., who is an internationally known expert in child sexual abuse, has collected data on more than 40 cases that have elements of mass coercion and ritual.

Some of them also involve allegations of cannibalism and murder of children, he said.

'These cases throw people into irrational kinds of prejudice. Some people believe it is true and that the world is going to be taken over by satanists. Others say, 'It's too spooky, and it can't happen in this country.' They are likely to abandon the children (and) dismiss the case," Dr. Summit said in an interview.

'We're all trying to figure out how to deal with this new element," said Larry Dunn, a sheriff's deputy in Port Angeles, Wash., who trains police in investigation techniques for ritual abuse cases.

He said law enforcement officers estimate that nearly 100 cases of ritual child abuse have come to light in the United States, but he said only a few have gone to trial.

Dan Clark, a police detective in San Bernardino, Calif., said the number of children who describe ritual abuse - and the consistency of their allegations - suggests that 'somewhere out there is such a group of people doing that sort of thing. . . .

'There are small indications it might be an organized movement," Detective Clark said. "We're trying to determine if that's valid. I feel that if groups exist, they're way ahead of the game."

Although children's stories about ritual abuse are seldom validated by physical evidence, therapists are finding some support in a proliferation of similar accounts from a different source - the memories of adults who say they suffered such abuse as children.

Dr. Lawrence Pazder, a Victoria psychiatrist who wrote a book about a patient's account of satanic ritual abuse that occurred about 25 years ago, said he has worked with eight such cases in Canada.

'It's uncanny how it's repeating itself," Dr. Pazder said.

He is convinced of the existence of satanic cults engaged in a process of physical and 'spiritual abuse" designed to 'turn around children's belief systems" through a specific type of brainwashing.

Dr. Bennett Braun, a psychiatrist specializing in multiple-personality disorders at Rush-Presbyterian-St.Luke's Medical Centre in Chicago, has conducted a survey of 250 therapists working in his field. Twenty-five per cent reported having patients who describe involvement in satanic activity during childhood.

'This is too much to be explained by mass hysteria," Dr. Braun said.

But that is exactly how Ralph Underwager, a Minneapolis psychologist, accounts for the phenomenon, which he compares with witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

'What we are trying to fight is stupidity on a massive scale," said Dr. Underwager, one of a handful of psychologists and psychiatrists who have allied themselves with Victims of Child Abuse Laws, a lobby group of people accused of child abuse, and who offer themselves as expert witnesses in court.

Dr. Underwager has been involved in 28 cases where there was a similar progression in development of allegations over time, 'a pattern beginning with an initial statement from young children that somebody touched them, progressing to allegations of fondling, to penetration, to oral-genital contact, to monsters and strange bizarre behavior, sometimes drug use, ritual behavior and murder of animals. It gets put together in allegations that children were murdered in cultic behavior."

He said such material is part of the fantasy world of children and surfaces when gullible adults, predisposed to believe in a satanic conspiracy theory, delve into the child's fantasies, producing more and more allegations that the adults reinforce with their beliefs.

'So you get police officers digging in backyards for bodies, looking for pornography, cultic objects. It has never been found. No empirical data for any of this material have ever been discovered," Dr. Underwager said.

But Dr. Summit argues that this theory fails to account for the recent series of unrelated allegations that have been reported across North America by therapists and police officers who have had no previous exposure to ritual abuse and no prior disposition to believing such stories.

Allegations of ritual abuse containing elements similar to evidence presented in the Hamilton case have resulted in criminal convictions in Florida, Michigan and Massachusetts.

But in Minnesota and southern California, a series of sensational cases have divided communities over the issue of whether to believe children's bizarre allegations, and have resulted in acquittals or in charges being dropped by authorities after their investigations were discredited.

'A lot of cases that go to trial lose, but that doesn't mean they are not valid," Mr. Dunn said, noting that the cases are difficult because children can often be misled by costumes or stories, or their perception distorted by drugs.

'(The cases) require more investigation, effort and time. You're dealing with a lot of information which doesn't bear out. But it doesn't mean that what the kid is telling you is not true," Mr. Dunn said.

"These kinds of groups are not going to leave remains. Nothing is left. Sometimes, you might find trace evidence."

The two girls in the Hamilton case described graveyard rituals involving cannibalism, mutilation and killing of children. They spoke about chickens being killed and the blood consumed. The girls said they were lowered into what appeared to have been an open grave, and made references to the number 666, a five-pointed star, an eye symbol, masks and frenzied dances.

Similar details have been reported in several U.S. cases and recur frequently in adult accounts of childhood involvement in satanic cults. Many specific aspects of the Hamilton accounts - including the drinking of urine, eating of feces, obsession with menstrual blood and use of a red or pink liquid, possibly a drug - are recurring themes in other reports.

'(The abuse) seems to be based on behavior modification of children, a typical brainwashing type of abuse. It takes away anything the children identify with or have faith in," Det. Clark said.

Another detail present in almost all of the allegations is that the sexual orgies and graveside rituals were filmed or photographed.

'I'm not Sherlock Holmes. I don't know what it means. But it's dismally consistent," Dr. Summit said.

Some of the more fantastic elements in the Hamilton children's story, such as the description of a man they called 'the Blob," were seen by police, and later by defence lawyers, as tending to discredit their story.

But Renee Fredrickson, a psychiatrist from St. Paul, Minn., who has been a consultant in such cases in the United States and Canada, believes that highly organized cults are involved and that they interweave an element of fantasy into the abuse 'in order to confuse people, to make them think children are talking about things that are not true."

Louise Edwards of Kamloops, B.C., a former police matron and now a nurse-therapist in private practice, said 10 separate patients have told her about killings, mutilation and cannibalism.

She said all of them say the acts were photographed, and also say they are afraid they will die if it is ever discovered that they have talked about the events. Ms Edwards said children have told her that the police would hurt them if they ever told.

'It is hard to tell if the police that were at cult activities were fake police or real ones," she said. "Often, they will describe the uniform that the police wore, and the stripe, etc., is inconsistent with the uniform worn in that particular city.

'We can't imagine that in our world people are so sadistic and can make children do that. I'd really like to believe this stuff doesn't happen at all," Ms Edwards said.

But Dr. Fredrickson said: 'I suspect it has gone on for centuries. The biggest difficulty is getting people to believe, (a) that this goes on, that people could actually do this to a child, and (b) that people who do this look like anyone else. We need to get the public to accept this."

When asked about the possible motivation behind ritual abuse, Det. Clark replied: 'There are people who do it to appease a deity of some sort. Some are really religious. There are other people who are just seeking power and sexual gratification.

'Behind the whole thing there may be a motive of people trying to change the thinking of youth. . . . It sounds pretty bizarre," he said.

'What's really frightening is when you talk to a 4-year-old girl and she starts talking about this stuff. How did she know these things?"

March 31, 1987