January 20, 1988: Carl, four, a Nottingham kid in care, confides in his foster mother. He describes being sexually abused by his uncles and aunts, and recalls his attackers wiping blood from him with a tissue. He also describes the circumstances of the attack. “You walk around bonfire saying witching, witching, witching, when they splash you with water, you stronger, can’t get burnt. Them witches, them have sheep, them kill sheep. Them put worms in our hair, them witches go magic, magic, magic.”
Similar accounts have been reported from other children taken into care in Nottingham, Rochdale, Kent, Manchester and the Orkney islands, of alleged abuse in the course of a magical ceremony labelled variously as Satanic ritual abuse or Satanic child abuse (SCA).
BACKGROUND TO A PANIC
The idea that organised groups of demonically-inspired child molesters are systematically abusing children and performing rituals either as an act of worship or simply to heighten their own sexual pleasure, seems outlandish. Yet – despite a total lack of evidence of ritual abuse – several factors helped convince social workers and sometimes police that the phenomenon was genuine.
The Cleveland scandal in 1987 involved 121 cases of sexual abuse of children diagnosed in a period of a few months. Although the enquiry by Lord Justice Butler-Sloss ended with the collapse of the prosecution case and the general discrediting of the pædiatricians involved, it brought the subject of widespread child abuse to public notice for the first time.
Cases of alleged ritual Satanic abuse from the United States – including the McMartin Pre-school trial and the story of Michelle, the ‘reformed Satanist’ saved by her psychiatrist – were publicised in the UK from 1988 thanks to contacts between social workers and the activities of at least three British fundamentalist Christian groups.
The threat of ritual abuse was raised in the House of Commons by ‘Rent-a-Quote’ Tory MP and child abuse campaigner Geoffrey Dickens in April and September 1988. After making unsubstantiated allegations about the prevalence of SCA, he said he would forward a dossier on the subject to the Home Office. Dickens alleged – seemingly prompted by contact with Christian groups – that up to 50 young children were being murdered or sacrificed by occult groups each year; that drugs were administered to victims who were then forced to conduct perverted sexual acts; and that tombs were being desecrated and corpses mutilated and dismembered. Pædophiles were turning to occult groups “to get their hands on children who are too terrified to talk,” he said. His proof? Letters from witches in every corner of the UK, warnings from librarians of increased demand for occult books, a boom in the distribution of videos featuring black magic themes, and an alleged increase in the number of shops selling witchcraft regalia.
Dickens’s crusade, which was fairly widely reported in the papers, seems to have been one of the spurs that influenced the wellknown radio and TV campaigner Roger Cook to compile a special on Satanism that aired on national television on 17 July 1989. Heavily criticised at the time for its melodramatic presentation and unconfirmed reports of
