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Many tales "recovered" in consultation with a therapist have been combined with truly bizarre tales of satanic ritual abuse and wild conspiracy theories. A standard implicit assumption is that these cults have existed for years, if not generations, committing horrible strings of felonies without ever getting caught or leaving behind even a shred of evidence.

Children are inducted into the cult of the parents through grizzly ceremonies where babies are sacrificed and consumed by crazed members. Women and children are ritually raped by fathers and other male authority figures repeatedly over the span of decades.

Cory Hammond is one researcher who displays the full depth of irrational depravity to which satanic ritual abuse beliefs have sunk. According to him, the satanic cults were created by satanic Nazi scientists smuggled into this country at the end of World War II. They proceeded with their mind-control experiments at first with the help of the CIA and then later with the NSA, the Mafia and international business leaders.

All of this impressive satanic support presumably explains the galling lack of empirical evidence in support of the claims of satanic ritual abuse. Although police departments across the nation have aggressively pursued countless accusations of ritual abuse and satanic cults, questioning thousands of people and excavating for bones around the country, nothing has turned up to substantiate the therapy-induced charges.

Sadly, too many people actually buy such accounts. According to a Redbook survey in 1994, some 70 percent of those asked believe that abusive satanic cults actually exist. Another 32 percent rationalize that the lack of evidence is due to a cover up by authorities who don't want to admit that the cults exist.

Believing that even a few of the amazing stories are true requires accepting the contention that there are massive secret cults operating throughout North America which can kill with impunity, and further that no individuals have ever betrayed any of their secrets to police or reporters. If these satanic cults existed, there should be tens of thousands of bodies of mutilated babies buried throughout the country, all of which have mysteriously remained unnoticed.

This is hard for anyone with a mildly skeptical mind, but not for those within the repressed memory movement. According to one 12-step pamphlet, a person should look for a therapist who believers and that any therapist who questions the stories "is not a good therapist." This ideology that therapists should not be deterred either by evidence or plausibility is normal in these circles. Some regard it as a position which supports the patients' needs, but it also manages to free them from any constraints of reality and accountability.

Satanic Culture

The cultural component of stories of satanic ritual abuse becomes clear when one notices how many such accounts arise out of Christian fundamentalist circles. The flourishing of Christian fundamentalism through the 1970s and 1980s also produced an increased fear of Satan in American culture, not just among Christians. The presence of pornography and secularism in America seemed to be proof enough that Satan was at work behind the scenes, so the idea of a powerful conspiracy of cults devoted to worshipping and obeying Satan wasn't hard to swallow.

One of the most famous cases of satanic ritual abuse was the horribly unjust conviction and imprisonment of Paul Ingram for ritually abusing his daughters over the course of many years. The girls had become convinced during a church retreat (they had recently converted to Pentacostalism) that their father had been sexually and physically abusing them with a satanic cult and turned him in. At first he denied it, but repeated and leading questioning eventually produced detailed confessions, on the basis of which he was ultimately convicted.

The fact that he could be brought to confess to things which never happened and which his daughters themselves denied didn't seem to make any difference. Today, Ingram denies that any of the abuse happened or that he was a member of any satanic cult. He recognizes that the memories were induced and continues to hope that he will eventually be freed and exonerated.