Satanic Ritual Abuse - Definitions

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 U.S. day care agencies, led by David Finkelhor, put forth a threefold typology to describe "ritual abuse" — 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 favour of more nuanced terms such as multi-dimensional child sex rings, ritual/ritualistic abuse, organised 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.

Conclusions on the origins of allegations of cult-based abuse can include actual abuse by organized groups, pseudosatanism, distortions and false memories, mental illness resulting in false reporting, deliberate lying or hoaxes and in the cases of child testimonies, allegations may be artifacts of the questioning techniques used, and TV special broadcasts.