To enable the encoding of semantics with the data, technologies such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) are used. These technologies are used to formally represent metadata. For example, ontology can describe concepts, relationships between entities, and categories of things. These embedded semantics offer significant advantages such as reasoning over data and operating with heterogeneous data sources. These standards promote common data formats and exchange protocols on
the Web, fundamentally the RDF. According to the W3C, "The Semantic Web
provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused
across application, enterprise, and community boundaries." The Semantic Web is therefore regarded as an integrator across different content and information applications and systems.
History
The term was coined by Tim Berners-Lee for a web of data (or data web) that can be processed by machines—that is, one in which much of the meaning is machine-readable. While its critics have questioned its feasibility, proponents argue that applications in library and information science, industry, biology and human sciences research have already proven the validity of the original concept.
The idea of adding semantics to the Web predates the term itself.
Berners-Lee discussed the need for semantics in the Web at the first International World Wide Web Conference in 1994. In 1998, he published a design document titled "Semantic Web Road map",
outlining the architecture for a web of machine-processable data. The first patent for the creation of a semantic web was filed by Amit Sheth et al. on 30 October 2001.
Berners-Lee originally expressed his vision of the Semantic Web in 1999 as follows:
I have a dream for the Web [in
which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web –
the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A
"Semantic Web", which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when
it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily
lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The "intelligent agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
The 2001 Scientific American article by Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila described an expected evolution of the existing Web to a Semantic Web. In 2006, Berners-Lee and colleagues stated that: "This simple idea…remains largely unrealized". In 2013, more than four million Web domains (out of roughly 250 million total) contained Semantic Web markup.
Example
In the following example, the text "Paul Schuster was born in
Dresden" on a website will be annotated, connecting a person with their
place of birth. The following HTML fragment shows how a small graph is being described, in RDFa-syntax using a schema.org vocabulary and a Wikidata ID:
<divvocab="https://schema.org/"typeof="Person"><spanproperty="name">Paul Schuster</span> was born in
<spanproperty="birthPlace"typeof="Place"href="https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1731"><spanproperty="name">Dresden</span>.
</span></div>
Graph resulting from the RDFa example
The example defines the following five triples (shown in Turtle syntax). Each triple represents one edge in the resulting graph: the first element of the triple (the subject) is the name of the node where the edge starts, the second element (the predicate) the type of the edge, and the last and third element (the object) either the name of the node where the edge ends or a literal value (e.g. a text, a number, etc.).
Graph resulting from the RDFa example, enriched with further data from the Web
One of the advantages of using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) is that they can be dereferenced using the HTTP protocol. According to the so-called Linked Open Data
principles, such a dereferenced URI should result in a document that
offers further data about the given URI. In this example, all URIs, both
for edges and nodes (e.g. http://schema.org/Person, http://schema.org/birthPlace, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1731)
can be dereferenced and will result in further RDF graphs, describing
the URI, e.g. that Dresden is a city in Germany, or that a person, in
the sense of that URI, can be fictional.
The second graph shows the previous example, but now enriched
with a few of the triples from the documents that result from
dereferencing https://schema.org/Person (green edge) and https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1731 (blue edges).
Additionally to the edges given in the involved documents explicitly, edges can be automatically inferred: the triple
from the document at https://schema.org/Person (green edge in the figure) allow to infer the following triple, given OWL semantics (red dashed line in the second Figure):
The concept of the semantic network model was formed in the early 1960s by researchers such as the cognitive scientistAllan M. Collins, linguistRoss Quillian and psychologistElizabeth F. Loftus
as a form to represent semantically structured knowledge. When applied
in the context of the modern internet, it extends the network of hyperlinked human-readable web pages by inserting machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other. This enables automated agents to access the Web more intelligently and perform more tasks on behalf of users. The term "Semantic Web" was coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium ("W3C"),
which oversees the development of proposed Semantic Web standards. He
defines the Semantic Web as "a web of data that can be processed
directly and indirectly by machines".
Many of the technologies proposed by the W3C already existed
before they were positioned under the W3C umbrella. These are used in
various contexts, particularly those dealing with information that
encompasses a limited and defined domain, and where sharing data is a
common necessity, such as scientific research or data exchange among
businesses. In addition, other technologies with similar goals have
emerged, such as microformats.
Limitations of HTML
Many files on a typical computer can be loosely divided into either
human-readable documents, or machine-readable data. Examples of
human-readable document files are mail messages, reports, and brochures.
Examples of machine-readable data files are calendars, address books,
playlists, and spreadsheets, which are presented to a user using an
application program that lets the files be viewed, searched, and
combined.
Currently, the World Wide Web is based mainly on documents written in Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML), a markup convention that is used for coding a body of text
interspersed with multimedia objects such as images and interactive
forms. Metadata tags provide a method by which computers can categorize
the content of web pages. In the examples below, the field names
"keywords", "description" and "author" are assigned values such as
"computing", and "cheap widgets for sale" and "John Doe".
<metaname="keywords"content="computing, computer studies, computer"/><metaname="description"content="Cheap widgets for sale"/><metaname="author"content="John Doe"/>
Because of this metadata tagging and categorization, other computer
systems that want to access and share this data can easily identify the
relevant values.
With HTML and a tool to render it (perhaps web browser software, perhaps another user agent),
one can create and present a page that lists items for sale. The HTML
of this catalog page can make simple, document-level assertions such as
"this document's title is 'Widget Superstore'",
but there is no capability within the HTML itself to assert
unambiguously that, for example, item number X586172 is an Acme Gizmo
with a retail price of €199, or that it is a consumer product. Rather,
HTML can only say that the span of text "X586172" is something that
should be positioned near "Acme Gizmo" and "€199", etc. There is no way
to say "this is a catalog" or even to establish that "Acme Gizmo" is a
kind of title or that "€199" is a price. There is also no way to express
that these pieces of information are bound together in describing a
discrete item, distinct from other items perhaps listed on the page.
Semantic HTML
refers to the traditional HTML practice of markup following intention,
rather than specifying layout details directly. For example, the use of <em> denoting "emphasis" rather than <i>, which specifies italics. Layout details are left up to the browser, in combination with Cascading Style Sheets. But this practice falls short of specifying the semantics of objects such as items for sale or prices.
Microformats extend HTML syntax to create machine-readable semantic markup about objects including people, organizations, events and products. Similar initiatives include RDFa, Microdata and Schema.org.
Semantic Web solutions
The Semantic Web takes the solution further. It involves publishing in languages specifically designed for data: Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Extensible Markup Language (XML).
HTML describes documents and the links between them. RDF, OWL, and XML,
by contrast, can describe arbitrary things such as people, meetings, or
airplane parts.
These technologies are combined in order to provide descriptions
that supplement or replace the content of Web documents. Thus, content
may manifest itself as descriptive data stored in Web-accessible databases, or as markup within documents (particularly, in Extensible HTML (XHTML)
interspersed with XML, or, more often, purely in XML, with layout or
rendering cues stored separately). The machine-readable descriptions
enable content managers to add meaning to the content, i.e., to describe
the structure of the knowledge we have about that content. In this way,
a machine can process knowledge itself, instead of text, using
processes similar to human deductive reasoning and inference, thereby obtaining more meaningful results and helping computers to perform automated information gathering and research.
An example of a tag that would be used in a non-semantic web page:
<item>blog</item>
Encoding similar information in a semantic web page might look like this:
Tim Berners-Lee calls the resulting network of Linked Data the Giant Global Graph, in contrast to the HTML-based World Wide Web. Berners-Lee posits that if the past was document sharing, the future is data sharing.
His answer to the question of "how" provides three points of
instruction. One, a URL should point to the data. Two, anyone accessing
the URL should get data back. Three, relationships in the data should
point to additional URLs with data.
Tags and identifiers
Tags, including hierarchical categories and tags that are collaboratively added and maintained (e.g. with folksonomies) can be considered part of, of potential use to or a step towards the semantic Web vision.
Unique identifiers, including hierarchical categories and collaboratively added ones, analysis tools and metadata, including tags, can be used to create forms of semantic webs – webs that are to a certain degree semantic. In particular, such has been used for structuring scientific research i.a. by research topics and scientific fields by the projects OpenAlex,[22][23][24]Wikidata and Scholia which are under development and provide APIs, Web-pages, feeds and graphs for various semantic queries.
Web 3.0
Tim Berners-Lee has described the Semantic Web as a component of Web 3.0.
People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you've got an overlay of scalable vector graphics – everything rippling and folding and looking misty – on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you'll have access to an unbelievable data resource …
— Tim Berners-Lee, 2006
"Semantic Web" is sometimes used as a synonym for "Web 3.0", though the definition of each term varies.
Beyond Web 3.0
The next generation of the Web is often termed Web 4.0, but its
definition is not clear. According to some sources, it is a Web that
involves artificial intelligence, the internet of things, pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing and the Web of Things among other concepts. According to the European Union, Web 4.0 is "the expected fourth
generation of the World Wide Web. Using advanced artificial and ambient
intelligence, the internet of things, trusted blockchain transactions,
virtual worlds and XR capabilities, digital and real objects and
environments are fully integrated and communicate with each other,
enabling truly intuitive, immersive experiences, seamlessly blending the
physical and digital worlds".
Challenges
Some of the challenges for the Semantic Web include vastness, vagueness, uncertainty, inconsistency, and deceit. Automated reasoning systems will have to deal with all of these issues in order to deliver on the promise of the Semantic Web.
Vastness: The World Wide Web contains many billions of pages. The SNOMED CTmedical terminologyontology alone contains 370,000 class
names, and existing technology has not yet been able to eliminate all
semantically duplicated terms. Any automated reasoning system will have
to deal with truly huge inputs.
Vagueness: These are imprecise concepts like "young" or "tall". This
arises from the vagueness of user queries, of concepts represented by
content providers, of matching query terms to provider terms and of
trying to combine different knowledge bases with overlapping but subtly different concepts. Fuzzy logic is the most common technique for dealing with vagueness.
Uncertainty: These are precise concepts with uncertain values. For
example, a patient might present a set of symptoms that correspond to a
number of different distinct diagnoses each with a different
probability. Probabilistic reasoning techniques are generally employed to address uncertainty.
Inconsistency: These are logical contradictions that will inevitably
arise during the development of large ontologies, and when ontologies
from separate sources are combined. Deductive reasoning fails
catastrophically when faced with inconsistency, because "anything follows from a contradiction". Defeasible reasoning and paraconsistent reasoning are two techniques that can be employed to deal with inconsistency.
Deceit: This is when the producer of the information is intentionally misleading the consumer of the information. Cryptography
techniques are currently utilized to alleviate this threat. By
providing a means to determine the information's integrity, including
that which relates to the identity of the entity that produced or
published the information, however credibility issues still have to be addressed in cases of potential deceit.
This list of challenges is illustrative rather than exhaustive, and
it focuses on the challenges to the "unifying logic" and "proof" layers
of the Semantic Web. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Incubator Group
for Uncertainty Reasoning for the World Wide Web (URW3-XG) final report lumps these problems together under the single heading of "uncertainty". Many of the techniques mentioned here will require extensions to the
Web Ontology Language (OWL) for example to annotate conditional
probabilities. This is an area of active research.
Standards
Standardization for Semantic Web in the context of Web 3.0 is under the care of W3C.
Components
The term "Semantic Web" is often used more specifically to refer to the formats and technologies that enable it. The collection, structuring and recovery of linked data are enabled by technologies that provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain. These technologies are specified as W3C standards and include:
ActivityPub, a generic way for client and server to communicate with each other. This is used by the popular decentralized social network Mastodon.
The Semantic Web Stack
illustrates the architecture of the Semantic Web. The functions and
relationships of the components can be summarized as follows:
XML provides an elemental syntax for content structure within
documents, yet associates no semantics with the meaning of the content
contained within. XML is not at present a necessary component of
Semantic Web technologies in most cases, as alternative syntaxes exist,
such as Turtle. Turtle is a de facto standard, but has not been through a formal standardization process.
XML Schema is a language for providing and restricting the structure and content of elements contained within XML documents.
RDF is a simple language for expressing data models, which refer to objects ("web resources") and their relationships. An RDF-based model can be represented in a variety of syntaxes, e.g., RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, and RDFa. RDF is a fundamental standard of the Semantic Web.
RDF Schema extends RDF and is a vocabulary for describing properties
and classes of RDF-based resources, with semantics for
generalized-hierarchies of such properties and classes.
OWL adds more vocabulary for describing properties and classes:
among others, relations between classes (e.g. disjointness), cardinality
(e.g. "exactly one"), equality, richer typing of properties,
characteristics of properties (e.g. symmetry), and enumerated classes.
SPARQL is a protocol and query language for semantic web data sources.
RIF is the W3C Rule Interchange Format. It is an XML language for
expressing Web rules that computers can execute. RIF provides multiple
versions, called dialects. It includes a RIF Basic Logic Dialect
(RIF-BLD) and RIF Production Rules Dialect (RIF PRD).
Servers that expose existing data systems using the RDF and
SPARQL standards. Many converters to RDF exist from different
applications. Relational databases are an important source. The semantic web server attaches to the existing system without affecting its operation.
Documents "marked up" with semantic information (an extension of the HTML <meta>tags used in today's Web pages to supply information for Web search engines using web crawlers). This could be machine-understandable
information about the human-understandable content of the document
(such as the creator, title, description, etc.) or it could be purely
metadata representing a set of facts (such as resources and services
elsewhere on the site). Note that anything that can be identified with a Uniform Resource Identifier
(URI) can be described, so the semantic web can reason about animals,
people, places, ideas, etc. There are four semantic annotation formats
that can be used in HTML documents; Microformat, RDFa, Microdata and JSON-LD. Semantic markup is often generated automatically, rather than manually.
Arguments as distinct semantic units with specified relations and version control on Kialo
Common metadata vocabularies (ontologies)
and maps between vocabularies that allow document creators to know how
to mark up their documents so that agents can use the information in the
supplied metadata (so that Author in the sense of 'the Author of the page' will not be confused with Author in the sense of a book that is the subject of a book review).
Automated agents to perform tasks for users of the semantic web using this data.
Semantic translation.
An alternative or complementary approach are improvements to contextual
and semantic understanding of texts – these could be aided via Semantic
Web methods so that only increasingly small numbers of mistranslations
need to be corrected in manual or semi-automated post-editing.
Web-based services (often with agents of their own) to supply information specifically to agents, for example, a Trust service that an agent could ask if some online store has a history of poor service or spamming.
Semantic Web ideas are implemented in collaborative structured argument mapping
sites where their relations are organized semantically, arguments can
be mirrored (linked) to multiple places, reused (copied), rated, and changed as semantic distinct units. Ideas for such, or a more widely adopted "World Wide Argument Web", go back to at least 2007 and have been implemented to some degree in Argüman and Kialo. Further steps towards semantic web services may include enabling "Querying", argument search engines, and "summarizing the contentious and agreed-upon points of a discussion".
Such services could be useful to public search engines, or could be used for knowledge management within an organization. Business applications include:
Facilitating the integration of information from mixed sources
Identifying relevant information with respect to a given domain
Providing decision making support
In a corporation, there is a closed group of users and the management
is able to enforce company guidelines like the adoption of specific
ontologies and use of semantic annotation. Compared to the public Semantic Web there are lesser requirements on scalability
and the information circulating within a company can be more trusted in
general; privacy is less of an issue outside of handling of customer
data.
Skeptical reactions
Practical feasibility
Critics question the basic feasibility of a complete or even partial
fulfillment of the Semantic Web, pointing out both difficulties in
setting it up and a lack of general-purpose usefulness that prevents the
required effort from being invested. In a 2003 paper, Marshall and
Shipman point out the cognitive overhead inherent in formalizing
knowledge, compared to the authoring of traditional web hypertext:
While learning the basics of HTML
is relatively straightforward, learning a knowledge representation
language or tool requires the author to learn about the representation's
methods of abstraction and their effect on reasoning. For example,
understanding the class-instance relationship, or the
superclass-subclass relationship, is more than understanding that one
concept is a "type of" another concept. [...] These abstractions are
taught to computer scientists generally and knowledge engineers
specifically but do not match the similar natural language meaning of
being a "type of" something. Effective use of such a formal
representation requires the author to become a skilled knowledge
engineer in addition to any other skills required by the domain. [...]
Once one has learned a formal representation language, it is still often
much more effort to express ideas in that representation than in a less
formal representation [...]. Indeed, this is a form of programming
based on the declaration of semantic data and requires an understanding
of how reasoning algorithms will interpret the authored structures.
According to Marshall and Shipman, the tacit and changing nature of much knowledge adds to the knowledge engineering
problem, and limits the Semantic Web's applicability to specific
domains. A further issue that they point out are domain- or
organization-specific ways to express knowledge, which must be solved
through community agreement rather than only technical means. As it turns out, specialized communities and organizations for
intra-company projects have tended to adopt semantic web technologies
greater than peripheral and less-specialized communities. The practical constraints toward adoption have appeared less
challenging where domain and scope is more limited than that of the
general public and the World-Wide Web.
Finally, Marshall and Shipman see pragmatic problems in the idea of (Knowledge Navigator-style) intelligent agents working in the largely manually curated Semantic Web:
In situations in which user needs
are known and distributed information resources are well described, this
approach can be highly effective; in situations that are not foreseen
and that bring together an unanticipated array of information resources,
the Google approach is more robust. Furthermore, the Semantic Web
relies on inference chains that are more brittle; a missing element of
the chain results in a failure to perform the desired action, while the
human can supply missing pieces in a more Google-like approach. [...]
cost-benefit tradeoffs can work in favor of specially-created Semantic
Web metadata directed at weaving together sensible well-structured
domain-specific information resources; close attention to user/customer
needs will drive these federations if they are to be successful.
Cory Doctorow's critique ("metacrap") is from the perspective of human behavior and personal preferences. For
example, people may include spurious metadata into Web pages in an
attempt to mislead Semantic Web engines that naively assume the
metadata's veracity. This phenomenon was well known with metatags that
fooled the Altavista
ranking algorithm into elevating the ranking of certain Web pages: the
Google indexing engine specifically looks for such attempts at
manipulation. Peter Gärdenfors and Timo Honkela point out that logic-based semantic web technologies cover only a fraction of the relevant phenomena related to semantics.
Censorship and privacy
Enthusiasm about the semantic web could be tempered by concerns regarding censorship and privacy. For instance, text-analyzing
techniques can now be easily bypassed by using other words, metaphors
for instance, or by using images in place of words. An advanced
implementation of the semantic web would make it much easier for
governments to control the viewing and creation of online information,
as this information would be much easier for an automated
content-blocking machine to understand. In addition, the issue has also
been raised that, with the use of FOAF files and geolocation meta-data,
there would be very little anonymity associated with the authorship of
articles on things such as a personal blog. Some of these concerns were
addressed in the "Policy Aware Web" project and is an active research and development topic.
Doubling output formats
Another criticism of the semantic web is that it would be much more
time-consuming to create and publish content because there would need to
be two formats for one piece of data: one for human viewing and one for
machines. However, many web applications in development are addressing
this issue by creating a machine-readable format upon the publishing of
data or the request of a machine for such data. The development of
microformats has been one reaction to this kind of criticism. Another
argument in defense of the feasibility of semantic web is the likely
falling price of human intelligence tasks in digital labor markets, such
as Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
Specifications such as eRDF and RDFa allow arbitrary RDF data to be embedded in HTML pages. The GRDDL
(Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Language) mechanism
allows existing material (including microformats) to be automatically
interpreted as RDF, so publishers only need to use a single format, such
as HTML.
Research activities on corporate applications
The first research group explicitly focusing on the Corporate Semantic Web was the ACACIA team at INRIA-Sophia-Antipolis, founded in 2002. Results of their work include the RDF(S) based Corese search engine, and the application of semantic web technology in the realm of distributed artificial intelligence for knowledge management (e.g. ontologies and multi-agent systems for corporate semantic Web) and E-learning.
Since 2008, the Corporate Semantic Web research group, located at the Free University of Berlin, focuses on building blocks: Corporate Semantic Search, Corporate Semantic Collaboration, and Corporate Ontology Engineering.
Ontology engineering research includes the question of how to
involve non-expert users in creating ontologies and semantically
annotated content and for extracting explicit knowledge from the interaction of users within enterprises.
Future of applications
Tim O'Reilly,
who coined the term Web 2.0, proposed a long-term vision of the
Semantic Web as a web of data, where sophisticated applications are
navigating and manipulating it. The data web transforms the World Wide Web from a distributedfile system into a distributed database.
Academic surveys describe Web3 as combining smart contract
platforms, peer-to-peer networks, and cryptographic mechanisms, while
noting trade-offs involving scalability, interoperability, and
governance.
Critics have expressed concerns over the centralization of wealth to a small group of investors and individuals, or a loss of privacy due to more expansive data collection. Billionaires like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey have argued that web3 only serves as a buzzword or marketing term.
Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 refer to eras in the history of the World Wide Web
as it evolved through various technologies and formats. Web 1.0 refers
roughly to the period from 1991 to 2004, where most sites consisted of static pages, and the vast majority of users were consumers, not producers of content. Web 2.0 is based around the idea of "the web as platform" and centers on user-created content uploaded to forums, social media and networking services, blogs, and wikis, among other services. Web 2.0 is generally considered to have begun around 2004 and continues to the current day.
Terminology and concept
Web3 is distinct from Tim Berners-Lee's 1999 concept of a Semantic Web, which was also sometimes referred to as Web 3.0. While the Semantic Web envisioned a web of linked data, web3 in the
blockchain context refers to a decentralized internet built upon
distributed ledger technologies. Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood first popularized the use of the term Web 3.0 in a blockchain context in 2014. Wood used the term to refer to a "decentralized online ecosystem based on blockchain." "Web3" and "Web 3.0" have been used interchangeably by later writers, leading to confusion between the two concepts. In popular and industry usage, "Web 3.0" is sometimes used
interchangeably with "web3" to refer to blockchain-based proposals
rather than the Semantic Web.
The definition of the term has been described by Bloomberg
journalist Olga Kharif as "hazy", but it revolves around the idea of
decentralization and often incorporate blockchain technologies, such as
various cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Kharif has described web3 as an idea that "would build financial
assets, in the form of tokens, into the inner workings of almost
anything you do online". Web3 has been proposed as a possible response to the over-centralization of the web in a few Big Tech companies. Web3 could potentially improve data security, scalability, and privacy. According Kharif in December 2021, skeptics say the idea "is a long
way from proving its use beyond niche applications, many of them tools
aimed at crypto traders". DuPont et al (2024) describe web3 as an umbrella term for NFTs,
cryptocurrency, and blockchain which appeals to users who are "not
necessarily plugged into the cypher-punk or crypto-anarchist ideals of
Bitcoin". Rohn (2025) describes the term as synonymous with "blockchain economy".
In 2019, The Conversation
quoted legal scholars discussing concerns over the difficulty of
regulating a decentralized web, which they reported might make it more
difficult to prevent cybercrime, online harassment, hate speech, and the dissemination of child sexual abuse material. The concept of Web3 has also been described as a part of a cryptocurrency bubble, and as an extension of harmful and short-lived blockchain-based trends such as NFTs. The use of cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and blockchains in general also introduce potential harmful environmental effects. Others have expressed beliefs that web3 and the associated technologies are a pyramid scheme.
Ethics professor Kevin Werbach
said in 2021 that "many so-called 'Web 3.0' solutions are not as
decentralized as they seem, while others have yet to show they are
scalable, secure and accessible enough for the mass market", adding that
this "may change, but it's not a given that all these limitations will
be overcome".
In 2021, interest in the web3 concept began to increase. Particular interest spiked toward the end of 2021, largely due to
interest from cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investments from
high-profile technologists and companies. Executives from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz
traveled to Washington, DC, in October 2021 to lobby for the idea as a
potential solution to questions about regulation of the web, with which
policymakers have been grappling. The New York Times and Fortune reported in December 2021 that $27billion had been invested in blockchain projects due to interest in the Web3 concept.
In late 2021, Reddit, Discord, and other Web 2.0 companies experimented with incorporating web3 technologies into their platforms. On November 8, 2021, Discord CEO Jason Citron tweeted a screenshot
suggesting the platform might be integrating cryptocurrency wallets into
their platform. Two days later, and after heavy user backlash, Discord announced they had no plans to integrate such technologies and
that it was an internal-only concept that had been developed in a
company-wide hackathon.
In November 2021, James Grimmelmann of Cornell University referred to web3 as vaporware,
calling it "a promised future internet that fixes all the things people
don't like about the current internet, even when it's contradictory."
Grimmelmann also argued that moving the internet toward a
blockchain-focused infrastructure would centralize and cause more data collection compared to the current internet. In December 2021, software engineer Stephen Diehl described Web3 as a
"vapid marketing campaign that attempts to reframe the public's negative
associations of crypto assets into a false narrative about disruption
of legacy tech company hegemony." Liam Proven, writing for The Register,
concluded that web3 is "a myth, a fairy story. It's what parents tell
their kids about at night if they want them to grow up to become
economists". That same month, Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, dismissed web3 as a "venture capitalists' plaything". Dorsey opined that web3 will not democratize the internet, but it will shift power from players like Facebook to venture capital funds like Andreessen Horowitz. Also in December 2021, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed skepticism about web3 in a tweet, saying that web3 "seems more marketing buzzword than reality right now."
The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA), sometimes known as ritual abuse,
starting in North America in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts
of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic
originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient (and future wife), Michelle Smith, which used the now discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy
to make claims about Satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The
allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States,
involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. Some allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifice, pornography, and prostitution.
Nearly every aspect of the ritual abuse is controversial,
including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof
thereof, testimonies of alleged victims, and court cases and criminal
investigations involving the allegations. The panic affected lawyers,
therapists, and social workers who handled allegations of child sexual abuse.
Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups,
including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child
advocates, therapists, and clients in psychotherapy. The term satanic abuse was more common early on; this later became satanic ritual abuse and further secularized into simply ritual abuse. Over time, the accusations became more closely associated with dissociative identity disorder (then called multiple personality disorder) and anti-government conspiracy theories, such as QAnon.
Initial interest arose via the publicity campaign for Pazder's 1980 book Michelle Remembers, and it was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by coverage of the McMartin preschool trial.
Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors, and techniques to investigate or
uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular,
and religious conferences as well as through talk shows,
sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United
States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal
trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin
trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other
cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly research eventually resulted in the conclusion that the
phenomenon was a moral panic, which, as one researcher put it in 2017,
"involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping paedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers".
A 1994 article in the New York Times
stated that: "Of the more than 12,000 documented accusations
nationwide, investigating police were not able to substantiate any
allegations of organized cult abuse".
History
Origins
Among the explanations of why the panic occurred when it did, or "took the shape that it did", include
Three films that opened and ran near the beginning of the panic pertained to Satanism, namely Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976). According to scholar Joseph Laycock, patients hypnotized by therapists
to recover memories of SRA, often "seemed to be recalling scenes from
these films".
The reaction against the surge of new religious movements (NRMs) in the 1960s due to both the immigration reform allowing missionaries for Asian religions, as well as new religions, (including the Church of Satan), arising from the counterculture of the baby boomer generation. Sometimes called the "cult wars" or "cult scare".
The Tate–LaBianca murders committed by cult members in the Manson Family which consisted of "mostly lonely teenagers from broken homes".
Mike Warnke's bestselling 1972 memoir The Satan Seller,
in which he claimed to have led a group of 1,500 Satanists that engaged
in rape and human sacrifice before he converted to evangelical
Christianity. The book was praised by Moody Monthly and The Christian Century. Two decades later the book was debunked by an evangelical magazine, Cornerstone.
Early history
Blood libel accusations against Jews are considered historical precursors of the modern moral panic.
Allegations of horrific acts by outside groups, including cannibalism, child murder, torture, and incestuous orgies can place minorities in the role of the "Other", as well create a scapegoat for complex problems in times of social disruption. The SRA panic repeated many of the features of historical moral panics and conspiracy theories, such as the blood libel against Jews by Apion in the 30s CE, the wild rumors that led to the persecutions of early Christians in the Roman Empire, later allegations of Jewish rituals involving the cannibalism of Christian babies and desecration of the Eucharist, and the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries. Torture
and imprisonment were used by authority figures in order to coerce
confessions from alleged Satanists, confessions that were later used to
justify their executions. Records of these older allegations were linked by contemporary
proponents in an effort to demonstrate that contemporary Satanic cults
were part of an ancient conspiracy of evil, though ultimately no evidence of devil-worshiping cults existed in Europe at any time in its history.
A more immediate precedent to the context of Satanic ritual abuse in the United States was McCarthyism in the 1950s. The underpinnings for the contemporary moral panic were found in a rise
of five factors in the years leading up to the 1980s: the establishment
of fundamentalist Christianity and the founding and political activism of the religious organization which was named the Moral Majority; the rise of the anti-cult movement which accused abusive cults of kidnapping and brainwashing children and teens; the appearance of the Church of Satan and other explicitly Satanist groups which added a kernel of truth to the existence of Satanic cults; the development of the social work or child protection field, and its struggle to have child sexual abuse recognized as a social problem and a serious crime; and the popularization of post-traumatic stress disorder, repressed memory, and the corresponding survivor movement.
Michelle Remembers and the McMartin preschool trial
Michelle Remembers, written by Canadians Michelle Smith and her husband, psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, was published in 1980. Now discredited,
the book was written in the form of an autobiography, presenting the
first modern claim that child abuse was linked to Satanic rituals. According to the "memoir", at the age of five Michelle was tortured by
her mother for days in "elaborate satanic rituals". As the torture
reached a climax, a portal to hell opened and Satan himself appeared,
only to be driven away by the Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael.
Explanations for a lack of any evidence of abuse on Michelle's body
were that it had been miraculously removed by St. Mary. Not explained
was testimony from Michelle's father and two sisters, contradicting the
memoir, as well as a 1955/56 St. Margaret's School yearbook. The
yearbook includes a photo taken in November 1955 showing Michelle
attending school and appearing healthy, when according to Pazder's book
Michelle spent that month imprisoned in a basement.
Pazder was also responsible for coining the term ritual abuse. Michelle Remembers provided a model for numerous allegations of SRA that ensued later in the same decade. On the basis of the book's success, Pazder developed a high media
profile, gave lectures and training on SRA to law enforcement, and by
September 1990 had acted as a consultant on more than 1,000 SRA cases,
including the McMartin preschool trial. Prosecutors used Michelle Remembers as a guide when preparing cases against alleged Satanists. Michelle Remembers, along with other accounts portrayed as survivor stories, are suspected to have influenced later allegations of SRA, and the book has been suggested as a causal factor in the later epidemic of SRA allegations.
The early 1980s, during the implementation of mandatory reporting
laws, saw a large increase in child protection investigations in
America, Britain, and other developed countries, along with a heightened
public awareness of child abuse. The investigation of incest allegations in California was also changed, with cases led by social workers
who used leading and coercive interviewing techniques that had been
avoided by police investigators. Such changes in the prosecution of
cases of alleged incest resulted in an increase in confessions by
fathers in exchange for plea bargains. Shortly thereafter, some children in child protection cases began
making allegations of horrific physical and sexual abuse by caregivers
within organized rituals, claiming sexual abuse in Satanic rituals and
the use of Satanic symbols. These cases garnered the label satanic ritual abuse both in the media and among professionals.Childhood memories of similar abuse began to appear in the psychotherapy sessions of adults.
In 1983, charges were laid in the McMartin preschool trial,
a major case in California, which received attention throughout the
United States and contained allegations of satanic ritual abuse. The
case caused tremendous polarization in how to interpret the available
evidence. Shortly afterward, more than 100 preschools across the country became
the object of similar sensationalist allegations, which were eagerly and
uncritically reported by the press. Throughout the McMartin trial, media coverage of the defendants (Peggy
McMartin and Ray Buckey) was unrelentingly negative, focusing only on
statements by the prosecution. Michelle Smith and other alleged survivors met with parents involved in
the trial, and it is believed that they influenced testimony against
the accused.
Kee MacFarlane, a social worker employed by the Children's Institute International, developed a new way to interrogate children with anatomically correct dolls
and used them in an effort to assist disclosures of abuse with the
McMartin children. After asking the children to point to the places on
the dolls where they had allegedly been touched and asking leading questions, MacFarlane diagnosed sexual abuse in virtually all the McMartin children. She coerced disclosures by using lengthy interviews that rewarded
discussions of abuse and punished denials. The trial testimony that
resulted from such methods was often contradictory and vague on all
details except for the assertion that the abuse had occurred. Although the initial charges in the McMartin case featured allegations
of Satanic abuse and a vast conspiracy, these features were dropped
relatively early in the trial, and prosecution continued only for
non-ritual allegations of child abuse against only two defendants. After three years of testimony, McMartin and Buckey were acquitted
on 52 of 65 counts, and the jury was deadlocked on the remaining 13
charges against Buckey, with 11 of 13 jurors choosing not guilty. Buckey
was re-charged and two years later released without conviction.
Conspiracy theories
In 1984, MacFarlane warned a congressional committee that children were being forced to engage in scatological behavior and watch bizarre rituals in which animals were being slaughtered. Shortly after, the United States Congress doubled its budget for child-protection programs. Psychiatrist Roland Summit delivered conferences in the wake of the McMartin trial and depicted the phenomenon as a conspiracy that involved anyone skeptical of the phenomenon. By 1986, social worker Carol Darling argued to a grand jury that the conspiracy reached the government. Her husband Brad Darling gave conference presentations about a Satanic
conspiracy of great antiquity which he now believed was permeating
American communities.
In 1985, Patricia Pulling joined forces with psychiatrist Thomas Radecki, director of the National Coalition on Television Violence, to create B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons). Pulling and B.A.D.D. saw role-playing games generally and Dungeons & Dragons specifically as Satanic cult recruitment tools, inducing youth to suicide, murder, and Satanic ritual abuse. Other alleged recruitment tools included heavy metal music, educators, child care centers, and television. This information was shared at policing and public awareness seminars
on crime and the occult, sometimes by active police officers. None of these allegations held up in analysis or in court. In fact,
analysis of youth suicide over the period in question found that players
of role-playing games actually had a much lower rate of suicide than
the average.
Among the conspiracy theories alleged by the panic were that
thousands of people a year were being killed by a network of Satanists,
what one psychiatrist writing in a psychiatric journal called “a hidden
holocaust”.
Explanations for how Satanists covered up this slaughter included
their infiltrating media and law enforcement, as well as morticians and
crematorium operators to make sure
no bodies were ever found. Other versions claimed that there were no missing persons because
Satanists used certain women as breeders, providing Satanists with
thousands of babies for human sacrifices.
By the late 1980s, therapists or patients who believed someone had suffered from SRA could suggest solutions that included Christian psychotherapy, exorcism, and support groups whose members self-identified as "anti-Satanic warriors". Federal funding was increased for research on child abuse, with large
portions of the funding allocated for research on child sexual abuse.
Funding was also provided for conferences supporting the idea of SRA,
adding a veneer of respectability to the idea as well as offering an
opportunity for prosecutors to exchange advice on how to best secure
convictions—with tactics including destruction of notes, refusing to
tape interviews with children, and destroying or refusing to share
evidence with the defense. Had proof been found, SRA would have represented the first occasion
where an organized and secret criminal activity had been discovered by
mental health professionals. In 1987, Geraldo Rivera
produced a national television special on the alleged secret cults,
claiming "Estimates are that there are over one million Satanists in
[the United States and they are] linked in a highly organized, secretive
network." Tapings of this and similar talk show episodes were subsequently used by religious fundamentalists, psychotherapists, social workers and police to promote the idea that a conspiracy of Satanic cults existed and these cults were committing serious crimes.
In the 1990s, psychologist D. Corydon Hammond publicized a detailed theory of ritual abuse drawn from hypnotherapy sessions with his patients, alleging they were victims of a worldwide conspiracy of organized, secretive clandestine cells who used torture, mind control and ritual abuse to create alternate personalities
that could be "activated" with code words; the victims were allegedly
trained as assassins, prostitutes, drug traffickers, and child sex
workers (to create child pornography). Hammond claimed his patients had revealed the conspiracy was masterminded by a Jewish doctor in Nazi Germany, but who now worked for the Central Intelligence Agency
with a goal of worldwide domination by a Satanic cult. The cult was
allegedly composed of respectable, powerful members of society who used
the funds generated to further their agenda. Missing memories among the
victims and absence of evidence was cited as evidence of the power and
effectiveness of this cult in furthering its agenda. Hammond's claims
gained considerable attention, due in part to his prominence in the
field of hypnosis and psychotherapy.
Religious roots and secularization
Satanic ritual abuse brought together several groups normally
unlikely to associate, including psychotherapists, self-help groups,
religious fundamentalists and law enforcement. Initial accusations were made in the context of the rising political power of the conservative Christian right within the United States, and religious fundamentalists enthusiastically promoted rumors of SRA Psychotherapists who were actively Christian advocated for the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID); soon after, accounts similar to Michelle Remembers began to appear, with some therapists believing the alter egos of some patients were the result of demonic possession. Evangelical Protestantism
was instrumental in starting, spreading, and maintaining rumors through
sermons about the dangers of SRA, lectures by purported experts, and
prayer sessions, including showings of the 1987 Geraldo Rivera
television special. Secular proponents appeared, and child protection workers became significantly involved. Law enforcement trainers, many themselves strongly religious, became strong promoters of the claims and self-described experts on the
topic. Their involvement in child sexual abuse cases produced more
allegations of SRA, adding credibility to the phenomenon. As the explanations for SRA were distanced from evangelical
Christianity and associated with "survivor" groups, the motivations
ascribed to purported Satanists shifted from combating a religious
nemesis, to mind control and abuse as an end to itself. Clinicians, psychotherapists and social workers documented clients with alleged histories of SRA though the claims of therapists were unsubstantiated beyond the testimonies of their clients.
International spread
In 1987, a list of "indicators" was published by Catherine Gould, featuring a broad array of vague symptoms that were ultimately common,
non-specific and subjective, purported to be capable of diagnosing SRA
in most young children. By the late 1980s, allegations began to appear throughout the world
(including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the
Netherlands, and Scandinavia),
in part enabled by English as a common international language and in
the United Kingdom, assisted by Gould's list of indicators.
Belief in SRA spread rapidly through the ranks of mental health
professionals (despite an absence of evidence) through a variety of
continuing education seminars, during which attendees were urged to
believe in the reality of Satanic cults, their victims, and not to
question the extreme and bizarre memories uncovered. Support for these
claims was offered in the form of unconnected bits of information such
as pictures drawn by patients, heavy metal album covers, historical
folklore about devil worshippers, and pictures of mutilated animals.
During the seminars, patients provided testimonials of their experiences
and presenters stressed that recovering memories was important for
healing:
In 1986, the largest symposium on child abuse in history was
held in Australia, with addresses by vocal SRA advocates Kee MacFarlane,
Roland Summit, Astrid Heppenstall Heger, and David Finkelhor.
In 1987, writings on the phenomenon appeared in the United Kingdom
along with incidents featuring broadly similar accusations such as the Cleveland child abuse scandal; allegations of SRA in Nottingham resulted in the "British McMartin", advised in part by the British journalist Tim Tate's work on the subject. Along with the list of indicators, American conference speakers,
pamphlets, source materials, consultants, vocabulary regarding SRA and
allegedly funding were imported, which promoted the identification and
counseling of British SRA allegations. The Nottingham
investigation resulted in criminal charges of severe child abuse that
ultimately had nothing to do with Satanic rituals, and was criticized
for focusing on the irrelevant and non-existent Satanic aspects of the
allegations at the expense of the severe conventional abuse endured by
the children.
In 1989, San Francisco Police detective Sandi Gallant gave an interview with a newspaper in the United Kingdom. At the same time, several other therapists toured the country giving
talks on SRA, and shortly thereafter SRA cases were reported in Orkney, Rochdale, London, and Nottingham.
In 1992, charges were laid in the Martensville satanic sex scandal; charges were overturned in 1995 on the grounds of improper interviewing of the children.
A wave of SRA accusations appeared in New Zealand in 1991, and in Norway in 1992.
In the mid-nineties in Egypt, tabloids such as Rose Al Youssef
started publishing articles about an alleged subculture of Satan
worshipping and rituals spreading among the teens and youth of the
middle and upper-middle class and associating it with heavy metal music,
bands, symbolism, and graffiti. The original article published on 11
November 1996 was written by Abdallah Kamal, but soon other writers and
journalists, including Adel Hammuda and others. The public intrigue
eventually led to the security apparatus raiding the homes of some young
people in the music scene and their friends, confiscating posts and
tapes and CDs, forcing short hairstyles on them and subjecting them to
religious reformation sessions, before releasing them, but the scare continued to be stirred from time to time until the mid-2000s, and became books and talk shows.
In 1998, Jean LaFontaine produced a book indicating allegations of
SRA in the United Kingdom were sparked by investigations supervised by
social workers who had taken SRA seminars in the United States.
In 2021 and 2022, two consecutive reports by Swiss Television journalists Ilona Stämpfli and Robin Rehmann [de]
presented evidence that conspiracy theories closely related to the
Satanic panic were still held by various groups and individuals in
Switzerland, among them teachers, psychotherapists, high-ranking police
officers, and a senior physician of Clienia, the largest private psychiatric clinic group in Switzerland. As a reaction to the first documentary, two of the interviewed teachers
as well as the senior physician were let go by their employers.
Skepticism, rejection, and contemporary persistence
Rosie Waterhouse lecturing about Satanic Panics during the European Skeptics Congress 2015
Media coverage of SRA began to turn negative by 1987, and the "panic" ended between 1992 and 1995. The release of the HBOmade-for-TV movieIndictment: The McMartin Trial
in 1995 re-cast Ray Buckey as a victim of overzealous prosecution
rather than an abusive predator, and marked a watershed change in public
perceptions of satanic ritual abuse accusations. In 1995, Geraldo Rivera issued an apology for his 1987 television special which had focused on the alleged cults. In 1996 astrophysicist and astrobiologist Carl Sagan devoted an entire chapter of his final book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark to a critique of claims of recovered memories of alien abductions and satanic ritual abuse, citing material from the newsletter of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. By 2003, allegations of ritual abuse were met with great skepticism,
and belief in SRA was no longer considered mainstream in professional
circles; although the sexual abuse of children was and is a real and serious
problem, allegations of SRA were essentially false. Reasons for the
collapse of the phenomenon include the failure of criminal prosecutions
against alleged abusers, a growing number of scholars, officials and
reporters questioning the reality of the accusations, and a variety of
successful lawsuits against mental health professionals.
Some feminist
critics of the SRA diagnoses maintained that, in the course of
attempting to purge society of evil, the panic of the 1980s and 1990s
obscured actual child-abuse issues, a concern echoed by author Gary
Clapton. In England, the SRA panic diverted resources and attention away from
proven abuse cases; this resulted in a "hierarchy" of abuse in which SRA
was the most serious form, physical and sexual abuse being minimized
and/or marginalized, and "mere" physical abuse no longer worthy of
intervention. As criticism of SRA investigations increased, the focus by social
workers on SRA resulted in a large loss of credibility to the
profession. SRA, with its sensational narrative of many victims abused by many
victimizers, ended up robbing the far-more-common and proven issue of incest against children of much of its societal significance. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect devised the term religious abuse to describe exorcism, poisoning, and drowning of children in non-satanic religious settings in order to avoid confusion with SRA.
Some groups still believe there is credence to allegations of SRA and continue to discuss the topic. Publications by Cathy O'Brien claiming SRA was the result of government programs (specifically the Central Intelligence Agency's Project MKULTRA) to produce Manchurian candidate-style mind control in young children were picked up by conspiracy theorists, linking belief in SRA with claims of government conspiracies. In the 2007 book Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me), authors Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson cite an ongoing belief in the SRA phenomenon, despite a complete lack of evidence, as demonstration of confirmation bias in believers; it further points out that a lack of evidence is actually considered by believers in SRA as additional evidence, demonstrating "how clever and evil the cult leaders were: They were eating those babies, bones and all." A Salt Lake City therapist, Barbara Snow, was put on probation in 2008 for planting false memories of satanic abuse in patients. One notable client of hers was Teal Swan. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation
(ISSTD), a professional nonprofit organization, is known for its
advocacy of contemporary narratives surrounding alleged satanic
conspiracies. Historically, the organization has convened annual
conference presentations dedicated to the exploration and discussion of
these topics.
The far-right conspiracy theory movement known as QAnon, which originated on 4chan
in 2017, has adopted many of the tropes of SRA and Satanic Panic.
Instead of daycare centers being the center of abuse, however, liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking government officials are portrayed as a child-abusing cabal of Satanists.
Definitions
The term satanic ritual abuse is used to describe different behaviors, actions and allegations that lie between extremes of definitions. In 1988, a nationwide study of sexual abuse in US day care agencies,
led by David Finkelhor, divided "ritual abuse" allegations into three
categories—cult-based ritualism in which the abuse had a spiritual or
social goal for the perpetrators, pseudo-ritualism in which the goal was
sexual gratification and the rituals were used to frighten or
intimidate victims, and psychopathological ritualism in which the rituals were due to mental disorders. Subsequent investigators have expanded on these definitions and also pointed to a fourth alleged
type of Satanic ritual abuse, in which petty crimes with ambiguous
meaning (such as graffiti or vandalism) generally committed by teenagers were attributed to the actions of Satanic cults.
By the early 1990s, the phrase "Satanic ritual abuse" was
featured in media coverage of ritualistic abuse but its use decreased
among professionals in favor of more nuanced terms such as
multi-dimensional child sex rings, ritual/ritualistic abuse, organized abuse or sadistic abuse, some of which acknowledged the complexity of abuse cases with multiple
perpetrators and victims without projecting a religious framework onto
perpetrators. The latter in particular failed to substantively improve
on or replace "Satanic" abuse as it was never used to describe any
rituals except the Satanic ones that were the core of SRA allegations.
Abuse within the context of Christianity, Islam, or any other religions
failed to enter the SRA discourse.
Cult-based abuse
Allegation of cult-based abuse is the most extreme scenario of SRA. During the initial period of interest starting in the early 1980s the term was used to describe a network of Satan-worshipping, secretive intergenerational cults that were supposedly part of a highly organized conspiracy engaged in criminal behaviors such as forced prostitution, drug distribution and pornography. These cults were also thought to sexually abuse and torture children in order to coerce them into a lifetime of Devil worship. Other allegations included bizarre sexual acts such as necrophilia, forced ingestion of semen, blood and feces, cannibalism, orgies, liturgical parody such as pseudosacramental use of feces and urine; infanticide, sacrificial abortions to eat fetuses and human sacrifice; satanic police officers who covered up evidence of SRA crimes and desecration of Christian graves. No evidence of any of these claims has ever been found; the proof presented by those who alleged the reality of cult-based
abuse primarily consisted of the memories of adults recalling childhood
abuse, the testimony of young children and extremely controversial confessions. The idea of a murderous Satanic conspiracy created a controversy dividing the professional child abuse
community at the time, though no evidence has been found to support
allegations of a large number of children being killed or abused in
Satanic rituals.From a law enforcement perspective, an intergenerational conspiracy
dedicated to ritual sacrifice whose members remain completely silent,
make no mistakes and leave no physical evidence is unlikely; cases of what the media incorrectly perceived as actual cult sacrifices (such as the 1989 case of Adolfo Constanzo) have supported this idea.
Criminal and delusional satanism
A third variation of ritual abuse involves non-religious ritual abuse in which the rituals were delusional or obsessive. There are incidents of extreme sadistic crimes that are committed by
individuals, loosely organized families and possibly in some organized
cults, some of which may be connected to Satanism, though this is more
likely to be related to sex trafficking;
though SRA may happen in families, extended families and localized
groups, it is not believed to occur in large, organized groups.
Acting out
Investigators considered graffiti such as the pentagram
to be evidence of a Satanic cult. Ambiguous crimes in which actual or
erroneously believed symbols of Satanism appear have also been claimed
as part of the SRA phenomenon, though in most cases the crimes cannot be
linked to a specific belief system; minor crimes such as vandalism,
trespassing and graffiti were often found to be the actions of teenagers
who were acting out.
Polarization
There was never any consensus on what actually constituted Satanic ritual abuse. This lack of a single definition, as well as confusion between the meanings of the term ritual (religious versus psychological)
allowed a wide range of allegations and evidence to be claimed as a
demonstration of the reality of SRA allegations, irrespective of which
"definition" the evidence supported. Acrimonious disagreements between groups who supported SRA allegations
as authentic and those criticizing them as unsubstantiated resulted in
an extremely polarized discussion with little middle ground. The lack of credible evidence for the more extreme interpretations
often being seen as evidence of an effective conspiracy rather than an
indication that the allegations are unfounded. The religious beliefs or atheism
of the disputants have also resulted in different interpretations of
evidence, and as well as accusations of those who reject the claims
being "anti-child".Both believers and skeptics have developed networks to disseminate information on their respective positions. One of the central themes of the discussion among English child abuse
professionals was the assertion that people should simply "believe the
children", and that the testimony of children was sufficient proof,
which ignored the fact that in many cases the testimony of children was
interpreted by professionals rather than the children explicitly
disclosing allegations of abuse. In some cases this was simultaneously
presented with the idea that it did not matter if SRA actually existed,
that the empirical
truth of SRA was irrelevant, that the testimony of children was more
important than that of doctors, social workers and the criminal justice
system.
Evidence
The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted a study led by University of California psychologist Gail Goodman,
which found that among 12,000 accusations of ritual or religious-linked
abuse, there was no evidence for "a well-organized intergenerational
satanic cult, who sexually molested and tortured children", although
there was "convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or couples who say
they are involved with Satan or use the claim to intimidate victims". One such case Goodman studied involved "grandparents [who] had black
robes, candles, and Christ on an inverted crucifix—and the children had
chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease, in their throats", according
to the report by a district attorney.
The evidence for SRA was primarily in the form of testimonies
from children who made allegations of SRA, and adults who claim to
remember abuse during childhood, that may have been forgotten and recovered during therapy.
With both children and adults, no corroborating evidence has been
found for anything except pseudosatanism in which the satanic and
ritual aspects were secondary to and used as a cover for sexual abuse. Despite this lack of objective evidence, and aided by the competing
definitions of what SRA actually was, proponents claimed SRA was a real
phenomenon throughout the peak and during the decline of the moral
panic. Despite allegations appearing in the United States, Netherlands,
Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, no material evidence has been found
to corroborate allegations of organized cult-based abuse that practices
human sacrifice and cannibalism. Though trauma specialists frequently claimed the allegations made by
children and adults were the same, in reality the statements made by
adults were more elaborate, severe, and featured more bizarre abuse. In
95 percent of the adults' cases, the memories of the abuse were
recovered during psychotherapy.
For several years, a conviction list assembled by the Believe the Children
advocacy group was circulated as proof of the truth of satanic ritual
abuse allegations, though the organization itself no longer exists and
the list itself is "egregiously out of date".
Investigations
Two investigations were carried out to assess the evidence for SRA.
In the United Kingdom, a government report produced no evidence of SRA,
but several examples of false satanists faking rituals to frighten their
victims. In the United States, evidence was reported but was based on a
flawed method with an overly liberal definition of a substantiated
case.
United Kingdom
A British study published in 1996 found 62 cases of alleged ritual
abuse reported to researchers by police, social and welfare agencies
from the period of 1988 to 1991, representing a tiny proportion of
extremely high-profile cases compared to the total number investigated
by the agencies. Anthropologist Jean La Fontaine
spent several years researching ritual abuse cases in Britain at the
behest of the government, finding that all of the cases of alleged
satanic ritual abuse that could be substantiated were cases where the
perpetrators' goal was sexual gratification rather than religious worship. Producing several reports and the 1998 book Speak of the Devil,
after reviewing cases reported to police and children's protective
services throughout the country, LaFontaine concluded that the only
rituals she uncovered were those invented by child abusers to frighten
their victims or justify the sexual abuse. In addition, the sexual abuse
occurred outside of the rituals, indicating the goal of the abuser was
sexual gratification rather than ritualistic or religious. In cases
involving satanic abuse, the satanic allegations by younger children
were influenced by adults, and the concerns over the satanic aspects
were found to be compelling due to cultural attraction of the concept
but distracting from the actual harm caused to the abuse victims.
David Finkelhor
completed an investigation of child sexual abuse in daycares in the
United States and published a report in 1988. The report found 270 cases
of sexual abuse, of which 36 were classified as substantiated cases of
ritual abuse. Mary de Young
has pointed out that the report's definition of "substantiated" was
overly liberal as it required only that one agency had decided that
abuse had occurred, even if no action was taken, no arrests made, no
operating licenses suspended. In addition, multiple agencies may have
been involved in each case (including the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
local police, social services agencies and childhood protective
services in many cases), with wide differences in suspicion and
confirmation, often in disagreement with each other. Finkelhor, upon
receiving a "confirmation", would collect information from whoever was
willing or interested to provide it and did not independently
investigate the cases, resulting in frequent errors in his conclusions.
No data is provided beyond case studies and brief summaries. Three other cases considered corroborating by the public—the McMartin preschool trial, the Country Walk case and the murders in Matamoros, by Adolfo Constanzo—ultimately
failed to support the existence of SRA. The primary witness in the
Country Walk case repeatedly made, then withdrew accusations against her husband amid unusual and coercive inquiries by her lawyer and a psychologist. The Matamoros murders produced the bodies of 12 adults who were ritually sacrificed by a drug gang inspired by the film The Believers,
but did not involve children or sexual abuse. The McMartin case
resulted in no convictions and was ultimately based on accusations by
children with no proof beyond their coerced testimonies. A 1990/1991 survey of clinicians, which reviewed 386 allegations of
ritual and 191 allegations of religious abuse, described 10% and under
3% of those allegations, respectively, as unfounded following social
service investigation.
The Netherlands
Dutch investigative journalists from Argos (NPO Radio 1)
collected the experiences and stories of over two hundred victims of
organized sexual abuse. A hundred and forty victims told Argos about
ritual abuse. Six well-known people were mentioned as perpetrators by
multiple participants in the investigation, and over ten abuse
locations. A warehouse in the Bollenstreek was marked as a location for
'storage' and the production of child pornography. During the
investigation the Argos journalists received an anonymous email
stating the journalists had to 'beaware' because "they know about your
investigation", remarking "they're going to get rid of evidence – just
like they did with Dutroux".
The same day as the journalists received the e-mail, the warehouse in
the Bollenstreek burnt down. According to Argos, the damage had been
classified so severe by the fire department, that a cause of fire could
not be determined.
As a response to parliamentary questions following the Argos investigation, Dutch Minister of Justice and SecurityFerdinand Grapperhaus said on August 27, 2020, that there would be 'no independent investigation into Ritual Abuse' of children in The Netherlands. The Green Left, the Socialist Party and the Labour Party criticized Grapperhaus for his decision. On October 13, 2020, the Dutch House of Representatives
approved a motion in which the PvdA, GL and the SP requested that an
independent investigation be conducted into the nature and extent of
"organized sadistic abuse of children", bypassing Grapperhaus' original
refusal to investigate.
In a Skeptical Inquirer
article JD Sword discusses the outcomes of a subsequent commission
appointed by Grapperhaus and led by Jan Hendriks, professor of
criminology from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam
and associate professor Anne-Marie Slotboom. In December 2022 Hendriks
returned a report which found there is no evidence of organized abuse
with ritualistic features and “Overall, victims are the only primary
source reporting this type of abuse and no support for its existence is
found from other sources.”
Patients' allegations
The majority of adult testimonials were given by adults while they were undergoing psychotherapy, in most cases they were undergoing therapy which was designed to elicit memories of SRA. Therapists claimed that the pain which their patients felt, the
internal consistency of their stories and the similarities of the
allegations which were made by different patients all proved the
existence of SRA, but despite this, the disclosures of patients never
resulted in any corroboration; The allegations which were obtained from the alleged victims by mental
health practitioners all lacked verifiable evidence, they were entirely anecdotal and they all involved incidents which occurred years or decades earlier. The concern for therapists revolved around the pain of their clients,
which is for them more important than the truth of their patients'
statements. A sample of 29 patients in a medical clinic reporting SRA found no
corroboration of the claims in medical records or in discussion with
family members. and a survey of 2,709 American therapists found the majority of
allegations of SRA came from only sixteen therapists, suggesting that
the determining factor in a patient making allegations of SRA was the
therapist's predisposition. Further, the alleged similarities between patient accounts
(particularly between adults and children) turned out to be illusory
upon review, with adults describing far more elaborate, severe and
bizarre abuse than children. Bette Bottoms, who reviewed hundreds of
claims of adult and child abuse, described the ultimate evidence for the
abuse as "astonishingly weak and ambiguous" particularly given the
severity of the alleged abuse. Therapists however, were found to believe
patients more as the allegations became more bizarre and severe.
In cases in which patients made claims that were physically
impossible, or in cases in which the evidence which was found by police
is contradictory, the details which are reported will often change. If
patients pointed to a spot where a body was buried, but no body was
found and no earth was disturbed, therapists resort to special pleading,
saying that the patient was hypnotically programmed to direct
investigators to the wrong location, or the patient was fooled by the
cult into believing that a crime was not committed. If the alleged
bodies were cremated and police point out that ordinary fires are
inadequate to completely destroy a body, stories include special
industrial furnaces. The patients' allegations change, and they
creatively find "solutions" to objections.
Children's allegations
The second group to make allegations of SRA were young children.
During the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, the techniques used by
investigators to gather evidence from witnesses, particularly young
children, evolved to become very leading, coercive and suggestive,
pressuring young children to provide testimony and refusing to accept
denials while offering inducements that encouraged false disclosures. The interviewing techniques used were the factors believed to have led
to the construction of the bizarre disclosures of SRA by the children and changes to forensic and interviewing techniques since that time has resulted in a disappearance of the allegations. Analysis of the techniques used in two key cases (the McMartin Preschool and Wee Care Nursery School trials) concluded that the children were questioned in a highly suggestive manner. Compared with a set of interviews from Child Protective Services,
the interviews from the two trials were "significantly more likely to
(a) introduce new suggestive information into the interview, (b) provide
praise, promises, and positive reinforcement, (c) express disapproval,
disbelief, or disagreement with children, (d) exert conformity pressure,
and (e) invite children to pretend or speculate about supposed events".
Specific allegations from the cases included:
Seeing witches fly; travel in a hot air balloon; abuse and travel through tunnels; identifying actor Chuck Norris from a series of pictures as an abuser; orgies at car washes and airports, children being flushed down toilets
to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and
presented back to their unsuspecting parents (McMartin preschool trial, no forensic evidence was found to support these claims)
Being raped with knives (including a 12-inch blade), sticks, forks, and magic wands; assault by a clown in a magic room; being forced to drink urine; tied naked to a tree (Fells Acres day care sexual abuse trial; no forensic evidence was found to support these claims)
Ritual murder of babies; children taken out on boats and thrown overboard; trips in hot air balloons; babies were thrown against walls; children were penetrated with knives
and forks; the walls and floors of the center's music room were spread
with urine and feces (Little Rascals day care sexual abuse trial; no forensic evidence was found to support these claims)
The mentally disabled abuser with Noonan syndrome drank human blood in satanic rituals; abducted the children despite being unable to drive; forced the children to eat urine and feces; abducted the children to
secret rooms; committed violent sexual assaults and beatings; killed a giraffe, rabbit and elephant and drank their blood in front of the children. (Faith Chapel Church ritual abuse case; no forensic evidence was found to support these claims)
A variety of these allegations resulted in criminal convictions; in an analysis of these cases Mary de Young
found that many had had their convictions overturned. Of 22 daycare
employees and their sentences reviewed in 2007, three were still
incarcerated, eleven had charges dismissed or overturned, and eight were
released before serving their full sentences. Grounds included
technical dismissals, constitutional challenges and prosecutorial
misconduct.
Skepticism
As a moral panic
SRA and the so-called "Satanic Panic" have been called a moral panic and compared to the blood libel and witch-hunts of historical Europe, and McCarthyism in the United States during the 20th century. Stanley Cohen, who originated the term moral panic, called the episode "one of the purest cases of moral panic". The initial investigations of SRA were performed by anthropologists and
sociologists, who failed to find evidence of SRA actually occurring;
instead they concluded that SRA was a result of rumors and folk legends
that were spread by "media hype, Christian fundamentalism, mental
health and law enforcement professionals and child abuse advocates". Sociologists and journalists noted the vigorous nature with which some
evangelical activists and groups were using claims of SRA to further
their religious and political goals. Other commentators suggested that the entire phenomenon may be evidence of a moral panic over Satanism and child abuse. After skeptical inquiry, explanations for allegations of SRA have included an attempt by radical feminists to undermine the nuclear family, a backlash against working women, homophobic attacks on gay childcare workers, a universal need to believe in evil, fear of alternative spiritualities, "end of the millennium" anxieties, or a transient form of temporal lobe epilepsy.
In his book Satanic Panic, the 1994 Mencken Award winner for Best Book presented by the Free Press Association, Jeffery Victor wrote that, in the United States, the groups most likely
to believe rumors of SRA are rural, poorly educated, religiously conservative, blue-collar families with an unquestioning belief in American values
who feel significant anxieties over job loss, economic decline and
family disintegration. Victor considered rumors of SRA a symptom of a
moral crisis and a form of scapegoating for economic and social ills.
According to Mary de Young, the Satanic ritual abuse panic was fundamentally a morality tale in which evil persecutes innocence, and heroic rescuers drive evil away in a persecutor–victim–rescuer triangle.[173]
Origins of the rumors
Information about SRA claims spread through conferences presented to
religious groups, churches and professionals such as police forces and
therapists as well as parents. These conferences and presentations
served to organize agencies and foster communication between groups,
maintaining and spreading disproven or exaggerated stories as fact.[174][175][94]
Members of local police forces organized into loose networks focused on
cult crimes, some of whom billed themselves as "experts" and were paid
to speak at conferences throughout the United States. Religious
revivalists also took advantage of the rumors and preached about the
dangers of Satanism to youth and presented themselves at paid
engagements as secular experts.[176]
At the height of the panic, the highly emotional accusations and
circumstances of SRA allegations made it difficult to investigate the
claims, with the accused being assumed as guilty and skeptics becoming
co-accused during trials, and trials moving forward based solely on the
testimony of very young children without corroborating evidence.[114] No forensic
or corroborating evidence has ever been found for religiously based
cannibalistic or murderous SRA, despite extensive investigations.[38][142][177]
The concern and reaction expressed by various groups regarding the
seriousness or threat of SRA has been considered out-of-proportion to
the actual threat by satanically motivated crimes, and the rare crime
that exists that may be labeled "satanic" does not equate to the
existence of a conspiracy or network of religiously motivated child
abusers.[178][179]
Scholarly and law enforcement investigations
Jeffrey Victor reviewed 67 rumors about SRA in the United States and
Canada reported in newspapers or television and found no evidence
supporting the existence of murderous satanic cults.[180]
LaFontaine states that cases of alleged SRA investigated in the United
Kingdom were reviewed in detail and the majority were unsubstantiated;
three were found to involve sexual abuse of children in the context of
rituals, but none involved the Witches' Sabbath or devil worship that are characteristic of allegations of SRA.[181]
LaFontaine also states that no material evidence has been forthcoming
in allegations of SRA; no bones, bodies or blood, in either the United
States or Britain.
Kenneth Lanning, an FBI expert in the investigation of child sexual abuse,[182]
has stated that pseudo-Satanism may exist but there is "little or no
evidence for ... large-scale baby breeding, human sacrifice, and
organized satanic conspiracies":[61]
There are many possible alternative answers to the question of why
victims are alleging things that don't seem to be true. ... I believe
that there is a middle ground—a continuum of possible activity. Some of
what the victims allege may be true and accurate, some may be
misperceived or distorted, some may be screened or symbolic, and some
may be "contaminated" or false. The problem and challenge, especially
for law enforcement, is to determine which is which. This can only be
done through active investigation. I believe that the majority of
victims alleging "ritual" abuse are in fact victims of some form of
abuse or trauma.[61]
Lanning produced a monograph
in 1994 on SRA aimed at child protection authorities, which contained
his opinion that despite hundreds of investigations no corroboration of
SRA had been found. Following this report, several convictions based on
SRA allegations were overturned and the defendants released.[69]
Reported cases of SRA involve bizarre activities, some of which are impossible (like people flying),[148]
that makes the credibility of victims of child sexual abuse
questionable. In cases where SRA is alleged to occur, Lanning describes
common dynamics of the use of fear to control multiple young victims,
the presence of multiple perpetrators and strange or ritualized
behaviors, though allegations of crimes such as human sacrifice and
cannibalism do not seem to be true. Lanning also suggests several
reasons why adult victims may make allegations of SRA, including
"pathological distortion, traumatic memory, normal childhood fears and
fantasies, misperception, and confusion".[183]
Allegations of SRA have appeared throughout the world. In 1984, a large scale investigation and prosecution of ritual abuse in Jordan, Minnesota
drew national attention for poor investigative and prosecutorial
practices. A group of parents named Victims of Child Abuse Laws grew and
gained political power.[184]
The testimony of children in these cases may have led to their
collapse, as juries came to believe that the sources of the allegations
were the use of suggestive and manipulative interviewing techniques,
rather than actual events. Research since that time has supported these
concerns and without the use of these techniques it is unlikely the
cases would ever have reached trial.[21]
In one analysis of 36 court cases involving sexual abuse of
children within rituals, only one quarter resulted in convictions, all
of which had little to do with ritual sex abuse.[174] In a survey of more than 11,000 psychiatric and police workers throughout the US, conducted for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect,
researchers investigated approximately 12,000 accusations of ritual or
religious abuse between 1980 and 1990. The survey found no substantiated
reports of well-organized satanic rings of people who sexually abuse
children, but did find incidents in which the ritualistic aspects were
secondary to the abuse and were used to intimidate victims.[7] Victor reviewed 21 court cases alleging SRA between 1983 and 1987 in which no prosecutions were obtained for ritual abuse.[185]
During the early 1980s, some courts attempted ad hoc accommodations to address the anxieties of child witnesses in relation to testifying before defendants. Screens or CCTV
technology are a common feature of child sexual assault trials today;
children in the early 1980s were typically forced into direct visual
contact with the accused abuser while in court. SRA allegations in the
courts catalyzed a broad agenda of research into the nature of
children's testimony and the reliability of their oral evidence in
court. Ultimately in SRA cases, the coercive techniques used by
believing district attorneys, therapists and police officers were
critical in establishing, and often resolving, SRA cases. In courts,
when juries were able to see recordings or transcripts of interviews
with children, the alleged abusers were acquitted. The reaction by
successful prosecutors, spread throughout conventions and conferences on
SRA, was to destroy, or fail to take notes of the interviews in the
first place.[186]
One group of researchers concluded that children usually lack the
sufficient amount of "explicit knowledge" of satanic ritual abuse to
fabricate all of the details of an SRA claim on their own.[187]
However, the same researchers also concluded that children usually have
the sufficient amount of general knowledge of "violence and the occult"
to "serve as a starting point from which ritual claims could develop".[187]
In 2006, psychologist and attorney Christopher Barden drafted an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of California
signed by nearly 100 international experts in the field of human memory
emphasizing the lack of credible scientific support for repressed and
recovered memories.[188]
Dissociative identity disorder
SRA has been linked to dissociative identity disorder (DID, formerly known as multiple personality disorder or MPD),[31][189] with some DID patients also alleging cult abuse.[190][191] The first person to write a first-person narrative about SRA was Michelle Smith, co-author of Michelle Remembers; Smith was diagnosed with DID by her therapist and later husband Lawrence Pazder.[192] According to Pazder’s then wife, Pazder saw the television film based on the (later discredited) book Sybil about a woman with MPD, and said that he had a similar patient. This was the initial seed of the story that became Michelle Remembers. Psychiatrists involved with the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation
(ISSTD, then called the International Society for the Study of Multiple
Personality and Dissociation), especially associate editor Bennett G. Braun,
uncritically promoted the idea that actual groups of persons who
worshiped Satan were abusing and ritually sacrificing children and,
furthermore, that thousands of persons were recovering actual memories
of such abuse during therapy, openly discussing such claims in the organization's journal, Dissociation. In a 1989 editorial, Dissociation editor-in-chief Richard Kluft likened clinicians who did not speak of their patients with recovered memories of SRA to the "good Germans" during the Holocaust. One particularly controversial article found parallels between SRA
accounts and pre-Inquisition historical records of satanism, hence
claimed to find support for the existence of ancient and
intergenerational satanic cults. A review of these claims by sociologist Mary de Young in a 1994 Behavioral Sciences and the Law
article noted that the historical basis for these claims, and in
particular their continuity of cults, ceremonies and rituals was
questionable. However at an ISSTD conference in November 1990, psychiatrist and
researcher Frank Putnam, then chief of the Dissociative Disorders Unit
of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland,
led a plenary session panel that proved to be the first public
presentation of psychiatric, historical and law enforcement skepticism
concerning SRA claims. Other members of the panel included psychiatrist
George Ganaway, anthropologist Sherrill Mulhern, and psychologist Richard Noll. Putnam, a skeptic, was viewed by SRA advocates in attendance as using
fellow skeptics such as Noll and Mulhern as allies in a disinformation
campaign to split the SRA-believing community.
A survey of 12,000 cases of alleged ritual or religious abuse found that most were diagnosed with DID as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. The level of dissociation
in a sample of women alleging SRA was found to be higher than a
comparable sample of non-SRA peers, approaching the levels shown by
patients diagnosed with DID. A sample of patients diagnosed with DID and reporting childhood SRA
also present other symptoms including "dissociative states with satanic
overtones, severe post-traumatic stress disorder, survivor guilt,
bizarre self abuse, unusual fears, sexualization of sadistic impulses, indoctrinated beliefs, and substance abuse". Commenting on the study, Philip Coons stated that patients were held
together in a ward dedicated to dissociative disorders with ample
opportunity to socialize, and that the memories were recovered through
the use of hypnosis (which he considered questionable). No cases were referred to law enforcement for verification, nor was
verification attempted through family members. Coons also pointed out
that existing injuries could have been self-inflicted, that the
experiences reported were "strikingly similar" and that "many of the SRA
reports developed while patients were hospitalized". The reliability of memories of DID clients who alleged SRA in treatment
has been questioned and a point of contention in the popular media and
with clinicians; many of the allegations made are fundamentally
impossible and alleged survivors lack the physical scars that would
result were their allegations true.
Many women claiming to be SRA survivors have been diagnosed with
DID, and it is unclear if their claims of childhood abuse are accurate
or a manifestation of their diagnosis. Of a sample of 29 patients who presented with SRA, 22 were diagnosed
with dissociative disorders including DID. The authors noted that 58
percent of the SRA claims appeared in the years following the Geraldo
Rivera special on SRA and a further 34 percent following a workshop on
SRA presented in the area; in only two patients were the memories
elicited without the use of "questionable therapeutic practices for
memory retrieval". Claims of SRA by DID patients have been called "...often nothing more
than fantastic pseudomemories implanted or reinforced in psychotherapy" and SRA a cultural script of the perception of DID. Some believe that memories of SRA are solely iatrogenically implanted memories from suggestive therapeutic techniques,though this has been criticized by Daniel Brown, Alan Scheflin and
Corydon Hammond for what they argue as over-reaching the scientific data
that supports an iatrogenic theory. Others have criticized Hammond specifically for using therapeutic
techniques to gather information from clients that rely solely on
information fed by the therapist in a manner that highly suggests
iatrogenesis. Skeptics said that the increase in DID diagnosis in the 1980s and 1990s
and its association with memories of SRA is evidence of malpractice by
treating professionals.
Much of the body of literature on the treatment of ritually abused patients focuses on dissociative disorders.
False memories
One explanation for the SRA allegations is that they were based upon false memories caused by use of discredited suggestive techniques such as hypnosis and leading questions by therapists underestimating the suggestibility of their clients. The altered state of consciousness induced by hypnosis rendered patients an unusual ability to produce confabulations, often with the assistance of their therapists.
Paul R. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, discusses in his book Try to Remember
the developments that led to the creation of false memories in the SRA
moral panic and the formation of the FMSF as an effort to bring
contemporary scientific research and political action to the polarizing
struggle about false memories within the mental health disciplines.
According to McHugh, there is no coherent scientific basis for the core
belief of one side of the struggle, that sexual abuse can cause massive
systemic repression of memories that can only be accessed through
hypnosis, coercive interviews and other dubious techniques. The group of
psychiatrists who promoted these ideas, whom McHugh terms "Mannerist Freudians", consistently followed a deductive approach
to diagnosis in which the theory and causal explanation of symptoms was
assumed to be childhood sexual abuse leading to dissociation, followed
by a set of unproven and unreliable treatments with a strong confirmation bias that inevitably produced the allegations and causes that were assumed to be there.
The treatment approach involved isolation of the patient from
friends and family within psychiatric wards dedicated to the treatment
of dissociation, filled with other patients who were treated by the same
doctors with the same flawed methods and staff members who also
coherently and universally ascribed to the same set of beliefs. These
methods began in the 1980s and continued for several years until a
series of court cases and medical malpractice
lawsuits resulted in hospitals failing to support the approach. In
cases where the dissociative symptoms were ignored, the coercive
treatment approach ceased and the patients were removed from dedicated
wards, allegations of satanic rape and abuse normally ceased,
"recovered" memories were identified as fabrications and conventional
treatments for presenting symptoms were generally successful.
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