About ritual abuse

I'm reposting some information that got lost awhile back about what spiritual abuse is about ....


Ritual abuse is the abuse of a child, weaker adult, or animal in a ritual setting or manner. In a broad sense, many of our overtly or covertly socially sanctioned actions can be seen as ritual abuse, such as military basic training, hazing, racism, spanking children, and partner-battering. Some abuse is private (Jeffrey Dahmer, for example), some public. Public ritual abuse may be either open or secret.

WHAT IDEOLOGIES ARE USED TO JUSTIFY RITUAL ABUSE?
Any ideology can be twisted or adapted to abusive ends. In the United States, Canada, and Europe, people have reported being ritually abused under the banner of satanism, Christianity, various pagan and pantheistic belief systems, white supremacy movements, nazism, Santeria, voodoo, etc. At the present time, satanism is either the most common ideology under which ritual abuse is practiced or it is receiving the most attention.

WHO PERPETRATES RITUAL ABUSE?
Ritual abuse is perpetrated by men and women from all walks of life and geographical areas, both rural and urban. The percent of the population that perpetrates or that is victimized is unknown.

Perpetrators have been classified as:

Family or Transgenerational: Adults, who were abused as children, in turn abuse and indoctrinate their own children. The tradition can go back for generations.

Extra-familiar: Adults abuse non-related children. Children can be accessed at day care, schools, church, or through social groups.

Ad hoc groups: Adults, who may or may not have had abusive childhoods, come together and form a new group with its own ideology and rituals. Teens are thought to comprise many such ad hoc groups.

WHAT KINDS OF ABUSE OCCUR?
Physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual abuse can all occur. Physical abuse can occur as beatings, electroshock, torture, confinement, or forced ingestion of drugs, blood, and feces. Emotional abuse involves trickery, deceit, and blaming the victim. Sadistic sex with children and non-consenting adults and forced perpetration of sexual abuse are forms that sexual abuse can take. Spiritual abuse can manifest as reversal of good and evil, a destruction-based morality, and the denial of freedom of thought.


For more information click this LINK

That's a good argument for being a Buddhist. Their philosophy does not have room for ritual abuse or indoctrination of children.

Personally I think it should be against the law to indoctrinate children into any religion. I also think the bible is not suitable for minors to read. All that sex and violence and pedophilia can ruin a child's mind.

I worked with a wonderful young adult not to long ago who was in need of housing. We advocates were able to help her locate housing, and were so happy for her but something just didn't feel right. At all. We were happy that housing was found which meant her chances of going back to her abuser was lessened, but something just was not right when we met her landlords.

To make a long story short, as an advocate I followed up with her weekly because I couldn't get that something was wrong out of my mind. i called the landlord and in not so many words i advised her that I found a better housing opportunity and would need to get "Susan" back to the shelter before it was lost.

The community landlord whom I met which I introduced the client to gave me the contact info for Susan, and when I called her she confirmed my fears and the fears of the other advocates.

She had to talk to me from the back of the house she was sharing with others, and advised me that she had been on a black out and couldn't contact her family or even have a key to the home. She stated that they did prayer rituals around her and spoke in tongues.

Advocates and I made space in the shelter program to bring her back in...immediately, and safety planned with her on how to get her out of the house without the landlord knowing what she was doing. We felt a personal responsibility to be sure she got safe. The only thing we could not do was drive her ourselves.

We got her out and got her back to us, and in all my years of working around abuse this was my first experience in ritual abuse. I have since had another situation with someone who was not from this country, and I now take this very seriously now that I have been presented with it.
If anyone could write about ritual abuse on my site I would to hear about it! *mod edit*

Dahlia wrote:Personally I think it should be against the law to indoctrinate children into any religion. I also think the bible is not suitable for minors to read. All that sex and violence and pedophilia can ruin a child's mind.

Agreed 100%!

There are too many conflicting messages and mistranslations in the bible and too many twisted interpretations of those...it's not to be trusted near innocent, impressionable young minds.

I honestly think that any religion can be used for RA or abuse in general. The Bible does have a lot of problematic verses that are easy to divorce from their context (ancient historical societies that were very patriarchal and classist) and broadly apply in order to confuse, scare, and hurt children. At the same time, I don't think there's any religion that's 100% safe from abusers infiltrating it. My abusers were into New Age, and I think a lot of westernized, watered-down versions of eastern religions end up getting mixed in with the "self-help" market, which means they draw in a lot of vulnerable people.

I really think that if an abuser is desperate enough to hurt people, they'll find ways to use literally anything. The example I heard of from Buddhism was abusers claiming that all of humanity has to reach enlightenment for mankind's journey to be complete and then being hard on children for not being enlightened enough and supposedly holding everyone else back. That's not how Buddhism wants people to act, but I also know there are Christians who find child abuse reprehensible. Actually, I have even met Satanists who are wholly against child abuse, so it's hard to predict which religious group you'll find the good people in.

That said, I think religions like Buddhism, Taoism, and maybe even Paganism are in some ways more approachable from a survivor standpoint because your practice depends on your openness to spiritual experiences and transcendence rather than on adherence to any particular rules that often end up misunderstood by the people preaching them anyway.

Thank you for bringing up ritual abuse - I grew up in polygamy and this was THE worst part among other not so fun parts lol I am looking to put some of these memories to rest or I will never stop treading water - any suggestions? I see a great psyhcologist every week but the support here would be so great.

I believe secular society is just as ritual as it's religious counterpart. Both are in need of a major overhaul if humanity is to survive the road ahead.

Very inserting topic. I have some stories I could tell, but think the OP sums up well just what an issue such abuse is.

As a victim of ritual abuse from both religious and secular ideologies ... Thanks for this thread.

Hey Guy's, I just wanted to share I poem I found (one I wrote a whiles back) that made me think of this thread.

poetry-corner/topic174963.html

I think it resonates well with this thread.