The Emerging Issue of Ritual Abuse-Torture: Foeticide
and Infanticide in the Private Sphere of Family and Guardian
Relationships
Jeanne Sarson, MEd, BScN, RN & Linda MacDonald, MEd, BN, RN ã 2007
Ritual Abuse-Torture (RAT)
Defined
Ritual abuse-torture refers to pedophilic parents, families, guardians, and like-minded adults who abuse, torture, and traffic their own and other children using organized violent group gatherings coded as ‘rituals and ceremonies’.[1]
During these violent gatherings,
rituals and ceremonies - acts of sadistic horrification are inflicted against
the humanity of the enslaved girl child because of her gender and her body’s
reproductive functionality. If the girl child is unable to ‘escape’ from the RAT
family/guardian/group she becomes an enslaved adult woman. Her gender and her
body’s reproductive capacity increase her vulnerability to the harms that will
be inflicted upon her. It is this continuum of the girl child’s and the woman’s
gendered reproductive victimization within the context of ritual abuse-torture
families/guardianships and like-minded others that we address in this paper. And
that we submit as additional information to the Working Group on the Girl Child,
NGO Committee on the Status of Women – Geneva Conference of NGOs with
Consultative Status with the United Nations (CONGO) for their report entitled A Girl’s Right to Life Female Foeticide and
Girl Infanticide.
A Canadian Historical
Perspective
Ritual abuse-torture was first
identified in
With the establishment of our website our knowledge became global, informed mostly by female youth and women who have contacted us to share their past and present painful RAT ordeals. Some are presently trying to ‘escape’. Women and youth report that siblings remain behind; others speak of nieces and nephews, cousins, or others which they say are likely being harmed. From these heartfelt testimonials it is clear that ritual abuse-torture victimization continues to occur and will not be prevented unless it first becomes acknowledged, named, and understood as an emerging human rights violation and a form of non-state actor torture that occurs in the private sphere.
The Violent Themes of Ritual Abuse-Torture
Victimization
Now into our fourteenth year of working with the reality of ritual abuse-torture victimization, common themes of brutality have emerged. Firstly, such families/groups are organized and have inter-connections locally, nationally, or transnationally with other RAT families/groups as well as having affiliations with other organized criminal groups. Testimonials and reports indicate RAT families/groups engage in various criminal activities such as drug and gun trafficking, or money laundering, and ‘outsider’ human trafficking. There is also ‘insider’ human trafficking within and between RAT families/groups. According to a Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC) report human traffickers are generally involved in these various forms of crime[4] thus giving support to the women’s testimonials that RAT families/groups also engage in a variety of criminal activities.
Acts of relational brutality inflicted by ritual abuse-torturers also includes many forms of terrorization, all forms of abuse, drugging, physical, sexualized, and mind-spirit torture, rampageous pedophilia, bestiality, pseudo-necrophilia and necrophilia, and acts of horrification. Much of this brutality is committed during violent family/guardian/group gatherings which victimized girls (and boys) and women call ‘rituals and ceremonies’. Woman who have survived ritual abuse-torture victimization report having endured acts of foeticide and infanticide committed against them when they were enslaved pubescent girls as well as when they were captive adult women.
Female youth and women report:
A. Forced impregnations, foeticide, and infanticide
B. Forced impregnations, foeticide,
infanticides, and disappearances as misogynistic ‘weapons’ used against the
gendered reproductive functionality of the victimized girl child or
woman
1. ‘Breeders’. In ritual abuse-torture families/groups some women inform us they were told they were ‘breeders’ - used for ‘breeding’ purposes for the RAT family/group. We suggest that forced impregnations, foeticides, and infanticides serve the perpetrators pedophilic, sado-necrophilic, and cannibalistic desires and pleasures as described in the previous section. Women and girls who were/are forced to endure this form of objectification suffer harm to their relationship with Self in addition to the reproductive violations.
2. Self-hatred connected to foeticide and infanticide: The horrification caused by foeticide and infanticide within the context of RAT victimization causes deep spiritual wounds which forces victimized girls and women into ‘condemned isolation’- of immobilization, isolation, and Self-blame (Jordon quoting Jean Baker Miller)[5]. Blaming themselves they believe the perpetrators who shout at them: “it’s all your fault!” and this results in massive emotional Self-hatred in the minds of girls and women chronically victimized. We cannot count the number of times we have listened to victimized women’s voices echo words such as, “I hate my vagina.” “It’s my vagina’s fault that I got sexed.” “If I didn’t have a vagina I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant.” Sentences that replay the distorted misogynistic beliefs they were forced to internalize and that frequently trigger Self-harming behaviors including conditioned suicide.
C. Reproductive harms, losses, and
grief
Attitudes of Misogyny and Misopais
Girls and women suffer, as gendered female persons with the potential to reproduce, when reproductive tortures such as foeticide and infanticide are forced onto them. Reproductive tortures come attached to attitudes and beliefs such as misogyny which underline violence and discrimination against women globally. Similarly we suggest there are historical socio-cultural and relational attitudes that underline all forms of violence and discrimination against the child person. We coined the word misopais[6] to address this reality. Mis meaning hatred and pais meaning children; hatred that is expressed against any specific group is accompanied by devaluation, objectification, dehumanization, animalization[7] and disregard for ‘the other’. Thus, just as misogynistic attitudes underline violence and discrimination against women globally we suggest misopaisic attitudes underline all forms of violence and discrimination against the child person. The girl child however suffers exponentially because of her gender thus her reproductive capacity. She experiences both misopaisic and misogynistic attitudes that contribute to the relational violence and discrimination she endures including the reproductive tortures of foeticide and infanticide inflicted by RAT families/groups.
Interventions
Constructive naming and understanding of emerging forms of violence such as ritual abuse-torture within families/guardian, and liked-minded groups are essential to meet the specific caring requirements of the girl or woman so victimized. This is where this paper starts – with naming and sharing our knowledge of ritual abuse-torture and its connection to the harms of foeticide and infanticide that the enslaved girl or woman has/are/and will continue to endure if left in the darkness of an unnamed form of relational violence. Torture by non-state actors in the private sphere, in this case, ritual abuse-torturers, needs the attention of civil society at all levels – protective, prosecutorial, preventive, educative, and at policy levels.
PERSONS AGAINST RITUAL
ABUSE-TORTURE
Jeanne Sarson,
RN, BScN, MEd & Linda MacDonald, RN, BN, MEd
E-mail:
flight@ns.sympatico.ca
Website: www.ritualabusetorture.org
Copyright ©
2007
ISBN #
[1] Sarson, J. & MacDonald, L. (2007). Ritual Abuse-Torture in Families.
In N. A. Jackson (Ed.), Encyclopedia of
Domestic Violence (pp. 603-611).
[2] Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women. (1993). Changing the Landscape: Ending Violence ~
Achieving Equality (pp. 45-47).
[3] Persons Against Ritual Abuse-Torture. (no date). Ritual abuse-torture global prevalence map [On-line]. Available: http://www.ritualabusetorture.org.
[4] Criminal Intelligence Service
[5] Jordon, J. V. (2000, April 28-29). Learning from the margin: New models of
strength. Paper presented at Learning from Women Conference offered by the
Department of Psychiatry at The Cambridge Hospital and The Stone Center at
[6] Sarson, J. & MacDonald, L. (2007, March 6). Fact
sheet: Misopaisic attitudes as a contributing factor in the discrimination and
violence against the girl child specifically in relation to ritual abuse-torture
victimization. Prepared for the parallel presentation, Human Trafficking and Non-State Actor
Torture of the Girl Child within the Context of Ritual Abuse-Torture, given
at the Fifty-First session of the Commission on the Status of Women, United
Nations Headquarters,
[7] We use this term because so many of the women who have endured ritual abuse-torture in their families/group express to us how they felt like an animal, were treated like an animal, and housed like an animal.