Imaginary Crimes

http://members.shaw.ca/imaginarycrimes/ Imagine if you were suddenly arrested and accused of being a child molester..... Imagine if little children, coached by therapists, got on the witness stand and said that you had done horrible things to them..... Imagine if nobody believed you when you cried out that you were innocent.... Imagine if you were separated from your family and sent to prison for life.... Some people don't have to imagine. It really happened to them. This website is dedicated to helping people who are still serving long prison sentences received during the "ritual abuse" panic of the late eighties and early nineties. During this time, scores of innocent people were accused by overzealous social workers and police of heinous crimes against children. In time, the hysteria subsided and most people were freed from prison (although many had spent years in prison and had been bankrupted by the process).  It was discovered that the young children had been virtually brainwashed by the leading questions and repeated interrogations of social workers, therapists and law enforcement officials.  Therefore, their wild testimony about animal sacrifice, devil worship, travelling in submarines, secret tunnels, and flying to secret locations where they were molested were fabrications, mostly without a shred of truth. But incredibly, some people still remain in prison, forgotten and powerless. "I didn't like to think about what that could do to the soul of a human being, to have to sit in a prison cell day after day for a crime you had not committed. And nothing to look forward to at the end of a day but the knowledge of hundreds more days like the one you just endured." -- Elizabeth Loftus, Psychologist

Yes, child abuse is real.  Yes, child abuse is horrible.   Yes, those who abuse children deserve to be brought to account. But no one should be sent to prison, for crimes without evidence.
Links
More information about the Ritual Abuse Panic The Religious Tolerance website has an excellent  overview of the ritual abuse trials, as well as details of individual cases. Possibly the first website to speak out against the ritual abuse trials, the Witchhunt Information Page. Another good source of information: the Satanic News Watch and Media Exchange This important document by (now retired) FBI Agent Kenneth Lanning explains that the FBI examined thousands of reported cases of ritual abuse and found no evidence that satanic sex rings were infiltrating America's daycares -- or anywhere else. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation seeks to educate the public about the dangers of so-called recovered memory in therapy.  Investigative journalist Debbie Nathan's website. March 2009 series by the Austin Chronicle Also see the Other Cases page See also Repressed Memory -- a psychiatric fad that hurt thousands of people. The Ritual Abuse Panic: A Timeline Wrongfully Convicted Looking for ways to help a wrongfully convicted loved one? Try Justice Denied Magazine Truth in Justice Innocence Projects Anti-Quackery Ritual abuse is debunked at this website, dedicated to exposing bad practises in therapy. Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health

Books, Movies & Videos about Ritual Abuse, Wrongful Accusations of Abuse and the Recovered Memory Controversy No CruelerTyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times by Dorothy Rabinowitz Satan's Silence by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker The Ritual Abuse Controversy: An Annotated Bibliography by Mary DeYoung. Ph.D. Satanic Panic: the Creation of a Contemporary Legend by Jeffery S. Victor Making Monsters by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters Has a Child Been Molested? by Dr. Lee Coleman and Patrick Clancy Victims of Memory by Mark Pendegrast Spectral Evidence: The Ramona Case by Moira Johnston Creating Hysteria by Joan Acocella Jeopardy in the Courtroom Drs. Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck Mean Justice Edward Humes Movie: Witch hunt (2008) Produced by Sean Penn About the Bakersfield, CA cases   Movie: "Capturing the Friedmans" Winner, First Prize, Best Documentary 2003 Sundance Film Festival Movie: "Indictment: the McMartin Trial" a 1995 HBO movie starring James Woods available on VHS Movie: "Just Ask My Children" a 2001 TV movie about the ordeal of the Kniffen family of Kern County California available on DVD Video: "20th Century with Mike Wallace: Child Sex Scandal: Modern Day Witch-Hunts" available through The History Channel