By Seamus McGraw
(Conitnued)
In other cases, the alleged victims maintained, they were so deeply traumatized by the events that they suppressed the memories, and only discovered the abuse years later, usually in therapy for severe psychiatric ailments.
Critics say evidence does not support allegations of organized cults, some beg to differ
In one case, a Pennsylvania woman told Crime Library that through therapy she had recovered memories of being molested repeatedly by Catholic clerics at a seminary, and as a pre-pubescent girl was forced to marry and consummate that marriage to a hooded cleric in a perverse and sexually charged ritual. But the woman also insists that she had witnessed ritualistic abortions, and other equally heinous crimes. Authorities who spoke with the woman as they probed and successfully indicted other pedophile clerics in that same area, told Crime Library that they were never able to corroborate her story or find any physical evidence to support the allegations.
That, says Ken Lanning, a former FBI agent who until his retirement headed a special unit focusing on child molesters, is hardly surprising. While he says he has little doubt that the woman, and some of those with tales like hers, were in all likelihood victims of abuse, and perhaps grotesque abuse, Lanning contends that in his three decades with the agency, he never found any evidence to support claims of organized, ritualistic abuse anywhere in the United States.
"Certainly," says Lanning, who has earned a reputation as a skeptic, "there have been many cases in which sex abusers have dabbled in dark arts and practices, and in some cases employed a kind of personal ritual. But those were most often fetishistic or paraphillic practices, geared more toward heightening the suspect's lust than toward invoking some dark and esoteric evil deity, he says.
The very fact that in so many cases victims claim that they were assaulted in the most depraved ways by groups of priests rather than by individuals is cause for skepticism. "As an agent, I always used to say, the more the better, the more people involved, the better chance I have of turning one of them," Lanning said.
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