LATEST NEWS ON SATAN HUNTER SCENE

Would you believe it! Lauren Stratford, the author of the highly influential SATAN'S UNDERGROUND, well-known as the 'bible' for Satanic Ritual Abuse Therapists, went underground herself some years ago when Cornerstone Magazine revealed that her book was a complete lie from end to end. Everything in it, including the terrible renditions of torture by her Satanic parents and their subsequent death, was complete fiction and they were still around to say so!  In the general climate of denial and counter-claim over the controversy about Satanic Ritual Abuse, the therapists and social workers who based much of their 'knowledge' about what Satanic Abusers did on Stratford's supposed personal account of extensive familial satanic abuse, insisted that this expose was yet another confusion strategy by Satanists to undermine the response of society and continued regardless. That's what they often say to discount SAFF exposes and literature. Stratford's book is still on their required reading-lists and they have continued to recommend her book to 'believers' or outsiders who want to 'know the truth about Satanic Abuse first hand'.   However, investigators have recently re-discovered Stratford, hiding behind another pseudonym and pretending to be a Jewish Child survivor of the Nazi Holocaust! She had wormed her way into a Jewish survivors' group with horrific stories of her supposed experiences as a child-inmate of the extermination camps!  She had become a celebrity in their circuit with tales which closely resembled those she foisted upon the child scare industry. When investigators identified her, she agreed to speak to them later and then escaped by doing a bunk!  The prejudiced people who are persisting with accusations of Satanic Abuse using her claimed experiences will no doubt say that this is yet another lie by Satanists, but this time Stratford was caught on camera giving a lecture at the Jewish Groups HQ.  No doubt she will turn up in a year or so claiming to having been abducted by Aliens.... This story could run and run.  The next time that a Satan Hunter tells you that they have 'first-hand' accounts from people who have suffered at the hands of satanic groups ; say the magic words 'Lauren Stratford is a Compulsive Liar' and everything should be well.

The British public thought claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse were dead and buried after the Social Workers and Academics promoting the idea were cowed into silence following the Government's 1994 definitive report on the issue. However nothing could be further from the truth. The front-runners who had been discredited had been swept into relative obscurity, but the rear-guard action by the hard-core academics and therapists who had always worked hard behind the scenes to promote the idea in a virtual secret society called RAINS (The Ritual Abuse Information Network) went on unseen. Ever since then these people were to be found scouring every little nook and cranny for cases which could be re-interpreted as 'Ritual Abuse' - they had certainly not given up their crusade . A couple of years ago Valerie Sinason and other members of this lobby, persuaded the Department of Health to fund new research. Almost before the ink on the DoH's grant cheque was dry the Satanic Abuse campaigners crept out of the wood work and swung into action, Andrew Boyd, the Christian fundamentalist agitator who produced the Bogus Devil Video and embarrassed Michael Grade and Channel 4 (see elsewhere on this site) immediately began the hype again in the Christian Fundamentalist Newspaper he edits. 'SATANIC ABUSE EXISTS' - was the headline in massive type on the front page, clearly indicating that though the academics may talk of 'ritual abuse' there is no pretence about the 'Satanic' prefix as far as the sectarians are concerned. This report was going to be another example of the catch-as-can used before. We we were not surprised then when the Daily Express quoted Sinason as saying that her research concluded that satanists were breeding babies for slaughter. This isn't new research, it's the same-old same-old as witnessed by the fact that Boyd's newspapers' proclamation that Satanic Ritual Abuse was proven occurred even before the research had commenced! On February 9th 2000 news of the impending publication of Sinason's research became a carefully arranged PR teaser exercise remarkably similar to the one which the Satan Hunters used to float their scare in the first-wave in 1988. See sections elsewhere on this site about Childwatch's 'dossier on Satanic Ritual Abuse' . This first 'evidence' was to be presented to the Home Secretary; or at least that's what Core and Dickens claimed in the very many sensational articles covering their allegations at the time. However it was never ever published and the then Home Secretary confirmed he had not seen a copy of it. This latest research by Sinason is undoubtedly more substantial but covers the same manic ground. Particularly in relation to what was termed in the original scare 'baby breeders'. There are satanic groups in Britain cultivating babies to be used for ritual sacrifice - they said - but the only evidence was one case in which an imbalanced victim-imposter made these allegations. The case was hyped in the now laughably discredited Cook Report; The Devil's wor k (see other sections of this web-site for background) and like every one of the other 20 claimed cases Cook highlighted, fell flat on its face in the course of time. The S.A.F.F. documented and undermined all these cases years ago and was instrumental in stopping a witch-hunt which, as history testifies, focussed on ordinary working class families, not Satanists. Now, it would seem, the satan-hunters have dredged up more cases for us to undermine. What a CROCK! All these ridiculous claims haves been rehearsed before and EVERY one of them has failed. That was the conclusion which the governments' La Fontaine report came to in 1994 , yet there are still obsessive satan hunters in social work who appear to be trying to emotionally blackmail the British public with this scare. How many times have we to hear this rubbish doled out from the imbalanced minds of victims of fringe therapists, or twisted out of the mouths of young children by vicious questioning from the Commissars of British Social Work? Are we going to allow these troublemakers to do it again? Wake up! Wake up! THIS time these wicked people have NO excuse to escape the repercussions of their actions. The SAFF demands that the government gives an ultimatum to these obsessives; they should be demoted, stripped of qualifications, if any, and made legally responsible for the harm they cause. At the very least they should be REFUSED futher taxpayers money to pursue this gravy train. Few members of the public realise that the tickets for attendance at the now infamous Satan Seminars and special conferences was paid for out of the coffers of local authorities. The Satan Hunters never pay their own way, they just squeeze the money out of local health authorities or social work departments. YOU pay for their jaunts as a tax/ratepayer! Unless the DoH makes this perfectly clear the Satan Hunters in social work WILL continue their anti-social activities (see Satan's Underground fiasco below for the CLASSIC example of how gullible many of these therapists are). Sinason's new report was presented as though it had been specifically commissioned by the government as a counterpart report to the definitive La Fontaine report of 1994. That's just the type of misunderstanding which satan hunters allow to develop. In fact the DoH had simply grant-aided the research. The DoH is continually grant-aiding various schemes and experiments and research into matters which concern its remit but this time they appear to have somewhat overstepped the mark by giving the Satan Hunters over twenty two thousand pounds sterling to research this foolishness. 22,000!. Remember this when the carping social workers excuse their next blunder by complaining about not having enough money to spare for child-care. They've got it, they just don't use it properly (see The Black Museum of Priestly Abuse elsewhere in this website). The 1994 La Fontaine report was the DEFINITIVE report, requested by the government to find out the truth about Satanic Ritual Abuse and unreservedly adopted by them when published. In comparison this new report by Sinason et al is an upstart made by the very same clique who were involved in pushing these ideas the last time round. They have maintained a nasty campaign of criticism against Prof. La Fontaine in order to undermine her work, which was completed diligently and perfectly, simply because they did not agree with what the facts were . This research appears to us therefore to add nothing to what went before. It is essentially a re-run of the same scare, with new victim-imposters. The British media have fallen for it already with a special series of articles for Radio 4 (BBC). There is always some new kid on the block who is too dim to know what went on before! As the S.A.F.F. prophecied in 1994, La Fontaines' definitive report was not the end of the matter, for until these people are removed, punished, prosecuted or otherwise made to pay personally for their anti-social obsession innocent children and young families in the U.K. will not be safe. We remind the British public that, despite a public inquiry into the Orkney case and a government report, the caucus of people who helped prommote this scare were never taken to task professionally or prosecuted for their actions. They were simply allowed to continue their activitites out of the lime-light whilst the 84 children and their families who were mentally tortured and institutionally abused during that period have had to cope with the long-term consequences with little or no help from anyone. The last scare cost the taxpayers of this country over twenty million pounds and the rigmarole of the Clyde public enquiry which is now, a decade later, being ignored. Just like the Cleveland Inquiry was ignored before that. Now some fool in the Department of Health thinks he/she can get away with encouraging the Satan Hunters again, but the SAFF will make sure that they do not have ignorance as their excuse this time. Ends: