Trafficking-Ritual Abuse-Torture-Research Paper
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: February 26, 2006
attached.
RITUAL ABUSE-TORTURERS: THE
‘INVISIBLE’ ABUSERS, ‘NON-STATE ACTOR’ TORTURERS, AND HUMAN
TRAFFICKERS
Jeanne Sarson, MEd, BScN,
RN and
Linda MacDonald, MEd, BN,
RNã
White
Paper Prepared for the Following Panel
Presentation:
Human Trafficking in the
21st Century
Moderator: Ms. Salwa Kader,
President and founder US Federation for Middle East
Peace
Commission on the Status of Women, February 27-March 10,
2006
United
Nations Headquarters, NYC. NY. 10017
RITUAL ABUSE-TORTURERS: THE
‘INVISIBLE’ ABUSERS, ‘NON-STATE ACTOR’ TORTURERS, AND HUMAN
TRAFFICKERS
Jeanne Sarson, MEd, BScN, RN & Linda MacDonald, MEd,
BN, RNã
The
purposes of this paper are:
-
To promote, as briefly and caringly as possible, an
understanding of the lived reality of the specific group of oppressed,
marginalized, and ignored girl or boy infant, toddler, child, and youth who,
as adults, identify they were born into a ritual abuse-torture family/group,
or became victims when the guardians, entrusted with their care, were ritual
abuse-torturers. -
To promote the understanding that the girl child who
has grown and developed within a ritual abuse-torture family/group environment
can remain a captive, enslaved, and exploited woman. (We have no reported
information that the victimized boy child can become a captive, enslaved, and
exploited adult male.) - Then, to ask for your support as a NGO, other
organization, or an individual to endorse our efforts to have:
Ritual
abuse-torture recognized as an emerging human rights violation and
identified as a newly acknowledged
form of torture that is inflicted by “non-state actors” onto the girl and boy
infant, toddler, child, youth and the captive enslaved woman.
From NGO’s, Members of Parliament, or other organizations
we are asking for an official letter of support, with your letterhead, that we
can present to the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery in June, 2006.
We ask for your supportive presence as we proceed forwards towards the Human
Rights Commission. For your convenience we have included a suggested framework
for such a letter as Appendix A. We have enclosed a copy of a letter of
endorsement from our Member of Parliament, the Honorable Bill Casey, as Appendix
B.
For individuals, we are asking that you sign and invite
others to sign the petition included as Appendix C. Please mail it back to us.
Our address is at the bottom of the petition.
In-a-Nut-Shell Definition
This
paper specifically refers to ritual abuse-torturers who are parents, families,
guardians, and like-minded adults who abuse, torture, and traffic children using
organizing ritualisms. Captive girl children can and do remain captive enslaved,
abused, tortured, and exploited women. Their state of captivity is created and
enforced by the organized family/group violence that is inflicted upon
them.
Ritualisms: Organizational Framework
of Ritual Abuse-Torture Families/Groups
It
is common knowledge that perpetrators of ‘western style’ cultural misogynistic
relational family violence select the privacy of their home to initiate this
cycle of partner and family violence. Western style, meaning a secretive private
pattern of family violence in comparison to other forms of misogynistic
relational cultural family violence such as ‘honor’ killings, which are
generally openly public. Attacking a partner or child in the home, away from the
neighbors witnessing eyes, western style perpetrators manage to keep victimized
family members silenced, manipulating and controlling their lives with
intimidations or escalating forms of physical violence. At the same time, these
perpetrators constantly state, “Don’t tell because nobody will believe you”.
This statement ought to be viewed as an acknowledgement that perpetrators are
aware that the violent acts they inflict are unacceptable, illegal and criminal,
placing them at risk for incarcerating consequences if they are exposed. This
pattern holds true for perpetrators of ritual abuse-torture.
However, because ritual abuse-torture families/groups
engage in group violence they must organize and plan their violent family/group
actions more intentionally. So they use the organizing principles of ritualisms
to their advantage.
Organizing ritualisms—rituals—generally, within civil society,
function to:
-
Organize many
aspects of people’s lives and the cultures and societies they live
in. -
Influence
people’s beliefs, values, thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, and motivations
which shape their behaviors. -
Impact on a
person’s way of fitting into families or groups—work, play, church, and
friendship networks, for example. - Shape
positional power in relationships, for instance groups usually have a leader
and followers. Leaders exert positional power and are responsible for deciding
how they use or conversely abuse this power. The same holds true for family,
kinship, or guardian groupings. A child is dependant on their parent or
guardian who is entrusted with positional power within the adult/parent-child
relationship. Some adults, parents, or guardians misuse this relational
positional power to neglect, abuse, torture, or ritually abuse and torture
their child, or children.
As stated,
ritual abuse-torturers use the principles of group rituals to their advantage
when organizing their group violence. By organizing their family/group
gatherings this ensures security, reducing the risks of being caught,
facilitating the opportunity to
quench their desires to perpetrate acts of brutalization against the
captive, enslaved girl or boy child or woman victim.
And, how do
they do this?
-
Firstly, by using group rituals they influence and reinforce their groupthink,
create group cohesiveness and solidarity which instills a sense of like-minded
kinship and belongingness, which diffuses responsibility giving perpetrators
permission to act out their sadistic family/group behaviors of torture,
fulfilling their wanton expressions for violent power, pleasure, and
entertainment. -
Secondly,
organized group rituals provide a strong milieu in which to teach, train,
school, indoctrinate, condition, program, and role-model—normalize—to their
child victim that acts of pedophilic brutality are normal ‘loving’
adult/parent-child relationships within the family/group. -
Thirdly,
organized group rituals provide the opportunity to construct ‘special
occasions’ and to develop coded language to give ‘legitimacy’ to the violent
group gatherings which are frequently coded as ‘rituals and ceremonies’ or
‘party times’. -
Fourthly,
within the context of organized group rituals positional power in
relationships is established. Perpetrator-victim relationships are enforced
when an adult member, acting as leader, gathers with ‘an audience’ of
like-minded participants to inflict all forms of abuse and torture onto their
victim(s)—the captive infant, toddler, child, youth, or captive woman. The
victim is put in their place, so to speak. Asserting violent domination over
the ‘chosen’ victim within the context of such organized group gatherings is
made easier, overwhelming them not only with group numbers but with their
victimizing tools. Keeping a victimized person passive with forced drugging,
mixed with the tools of ritual drama—costumes, masks, chants, prolonged
silence or noise, bright lights or darkness creates disorientation and terror.
Domination and terror are further inflicted via the abuse of the power of the
parental/guardian position or adult role and size. By attaching themes of
omnipotent power to their roles—identifying them-Selves as a devil, satan, or
bishop, and legitimizing the violent gatherings as ‘rituals and ceremonies’,
and naming these gatherings as ‘a marriage to satan’ for example, forces the
victimized child to accept these ordeals as normal. No one tells the
victimized child that ‘satan’ means a man’s penis and marriage to satan is
about pedophilic oral rape and that the semen they swallow does not mean satan
is inside them forever. No one tells them that they are being victimized.
Combining the tools of ritual drama which are similar to mind-altering
sorority hazing rituals, the perpetrators further disorientate and overwhelm
the victimized captive child or woman victim by inflicting torture and
horrification pain. -
Fifthly,
initiating infants to young children into the group process using organized
family/group rituals provides the next generation of like-minded perpetrators
or victims—pedophilic or adult. By distorting the worldview of the victimized
child and adult this holds them in a state of on-going captivity. As well,
having a legacy of on-going perpetrators continues to build on the organized
crimes they commit by strengthening loose networks with like-minded others
locally, nationally, and transnationally.
Abuses and
Tortures: ‘Creative’ Brutalities of Ritual Abuse-Torture
Families/Groups
Abuses of many forms are intentionally inflicted onto
victims by ritual abuse-torturers. For the child born into or who is under the
guardianship of such perpetrators, or for the captive woman victim, abuses are a
day-to-day reality.
They can and do
endure all or most of the following forms of relational abuses. For example:
-
Verbal abuses endured means being repeatedly called
names, put-down, and bombarded with negative messages such as being told they
are ‘stupid, bad, and good for nothing’. Feeling non-existent happens when
they are given the ‘silent treatment’—not talked to and not acknowledged—which
delivers the message ‘you do not exist’. Directed at them with demeaning voice
tones all forms of verbally abusive messages can lead to emotional harm. -
Emotional abuses of habitual humiliations, shame,
rejection, and constant emotional messages of feeling unlovable, unwanted,
undeserving, disregarded, and useless—‘a pile of shit’. Surviving harmful
child ‘parenting’ practices meant having unreasonable demands made of them,
such as being forced as a preschooler, for extended periods of time, to clean
a bathtub with a tooth brush, being told they ‘didn’t do it good enough’, and
being hit or kicked for ‘failing’. -
Psychological abuses aimed at intentionally distorting their
beliefs, values, attitudes, actions, and worldview. For example, teaching
children that ‘outsiders—non-family/group members—will contaminate them’. This
keeps victimized persons under the perpetrators control, isolated, often
without friends, captive, and the ‘perfect victim’. -
Physical abuses involved being hit, punched, shoved,
kicked, or having their limbs twisted whenever the perpetrators feels like
striking out. -
Sexualized abuses endured means coping, often daily, with
sexualized touching, oral, vaginal, penal, or anal rape, forced viewing and/or
being involved in pornography, and exposed to sexualized acts of others. It
can also mean being attacked at any time night or day, and especially on
week-ends, holidays, and vacation times, which provide opportunities to keep
an injured child or woman isolated from outsiders until they recover. -
Financial abuses feed the perpetrators greed so a
victimized working youth’s money or a woman victim’s salary and credit or bank
cards are taken. -
Spiritual abuses are suffered as the victimized child or
woman is constantly told they are very bad persons which enforces and
conditions them to develop this core belief about them-Self. - Exposure to family violence is a constant state which causes intense
overwhelming duress and increases the risk for further victimization.
Torture, are acts of violence that go beyond
acts of abuse. Emotional abuse, for
example, becomes emotional torture when a girl’s father forces her to drown her
pet kitten to terrorize her that she too will be drowned if she ever tells on
him and the others in the group.[1] And verbal abuse
becomes verbal torture when a girl child or woman is tied down, raped with a gun
inserted into her vagina, then verbally degraded by being told she is ‘good for
nothing.’
The goal of
ritual abuse-torturers is to attempt to alter or destroy their victim’s
relationship with them-Self; this destructive and torturous process begins with
children, starting often in infancy. Consuming them—making them one with the
group—victimized women often speak of them-Self as feeling like ‘a robot’, an
‘it’, ‘a nothing’, or just ‘a head’ and belonging to ‘the family’.
Below is a brief list of the acts of torture that youth,
women (and men) have reported to us that they endured during their childhood.
For women who remained captive and enslaved they report these acts of torture
continued. They describe their torture ordeals as:
-
Physical tortures which included electric shocking,
whippings, being hung by a limb, prolonged beatings with fists, boots, whips,
belts, boards, and broom handles, for example. External skin burns and burns
to oral, vagina, and anal mucosa, cuts, caging, being forced and confined into
small enclosed dark spaces, denied nourishment or access to a bathroom, being
tied down for prolonged periods, kept awake all night and bombarded with
glaring lights, and forced to eat their vomitus are other
examples. -
Sexualized tortures involving forced nakedness, being forced
to watch them-Selves being raped and tortured in a mirror, enduring
family/group rape and bestiality, being vaginally raped with objects such as a
gun, having their skin and vagina cut with objects such as knives, forced to
smear others with body fluids or being smeared them-Selves, or forced to drink
and eat their perpetrator’s urine or excrement, being submerged under water
(waterboarding) or being choked unconscious and rendered lifeless then being
raped to satisfy perpetrator’s sado-necrophilism, and being trafficked or
exploited into pedophilic or adult pornography including ‘snuff’ films, and
into the ‘sex’ trade. - Mind-spirit
tortures including forced indoctrination, conditioning, and programming
that distorted their worldview by forcing them to believe they belonged—were
owned—were the property of the family/group. Normalization of rampageous
pedophilic and torture ‘touch’. Using family/group rituals with omnipotent
themes perpetrators programmed the victim to believe they have evil within
thus could never escape—there was no way out. Forced to witness or harm other
children or animals, forced to engage in sexualized acts with other children
while being laughed at and humiliated, exposed to acts of necrophilic
horrification with ‘snuff’ pornography, for example, combined with the
mind-altering tactics of drugging, hypnosis, torture pain, electric shocking,
or human experimentation, distorting reality and overwhelming their
capacities, forcing the victimized child or woman into out-of-body,
disconnection and dissociation responses which fragmented their relationship
to/with Self.
Comprehending
the torturous processes that are inflicted onto children during their childhood,
within the context of abuse-torture families/groups environment, explains how a
captive girl child becomes a captive enslaved woman. It is important to
understand that, depending on the family/group dynamics, being finger or object
raped can be the first ‘bonding experience’ of an infant, an ordeal that
instantly propels the girl child into a state of overwhelming duress, of being
objectified—a sexualized object—an ‘it’. Within some families/groups this
sexualized objectification has been reported to start later, at age two, three,
or four. In order to survive, the girl or boy child will be forced and will
attempt to adapt, to internalize the abuse, torture, and horror as normal, will
try to ‘forget’, and even try to make their parent(s)/guardian happy by trying
to co-operate with them thinking this will help.
If they are not
identified as a child at risk and rescued, if, as youths, they are unable to
escape, they can and do become the next generation of captive adult victims,
perpetrators, or both. A best practice intervention demands civil society opens
a place at the table of humanity, where persons who have survived ritual
abuse-torture are free to speak, to be heard, listened to, believed, and cared
about so they can contribute to the safety of the specific population of
children who are presently suffering or who will in the future suffer harm.
Presently, we are being contacted by young women who report on-going harm as
they struggle to exit ritual abuse-torture families/groups. They state they are
either not believed when they try to tell and they cannot find appropriate
support, care, and protection.
The
Torturers: ‘State’ and ‘Non-State Actors’
Who are ‘state actor’ torturers and who are ‘non-state
actor’ torturers?[2]
1.
‘State actor’ torturers refers to persons who are in the military,
who are police, state employees, or detention services personnel for example,
and whose behaviors, actions, or policies are supported by the state.
2.
‘Non-state actor’ torturers are persons, groups, institutions, or
organizations acting outside of the state, whose behaviors, actions, or policies
impair and violate the human rights of others. For instance, spousal torturers, human traffickers, ritual
abuse-torturers—fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, guardians, or other
like-minded adults who are most often identified by their roles, such as clergy,
teachers, social workers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, politicians, for example.
Do acts of torture
differ from one torturer to another? From the torture literature and from
knowledge gained when we listen to persons who survived the Nazi death camps, or
who survived being held a prisoner of war, or to a woman who reported being held
prisoner in a windowless room by her husband for over four years while being
tortured and exploited, and by the many who survived ritual abuse-torture,
torture is torture—being tortured is being tortured!
They all speak of starvation pain that gnawed at their
insides; for the prisoner of war it was ongoing for the number of years he was
prisoner; for the victimized child within ritual abuse-torture families/groups
the with-holding of food was episodic or on-going, depending on the desires of
the perpetrator. We read in Buchenwald that holocaust prisoners were handcuffed
to heating pipes then beaten and hung by their limbs.[3]
We heard the same horror from the captive tortured, and exploited woman whose
husband handcuffed her to an iron radiator daily; from those who survived ritual
abuse-torture they too speak of being hung by their limbs. Whether some
torturers use unique repetitive techniques or relish in the free-flowing acts of
creative brutality, there is little that separates the absolute expression of
power and brutality in acts of one torturer from another except who they
are—state or non-state actors. Acts of torture result in consequences that
were/are intentionally meant to be destructive to the humanness of the chosen
victim[4]
irrespective of who the torturers are. For a reality insight we provide the
following two comparatively similar ordeals—torture by ‘state actors’; torture
by ‘non-state’ actors.
Sister Ortiz:
Tortured
by State Actors: The Army’s
Counterinsurgency Force
Burned nearly 100 times with cigarettes; terrified;
gang-raped; dogs used; horror; blood; suspended over a pit of the bodies of
persons who had been murdered and persons who were still dying; a knife forced
into her hands and held there by her torturers as they plunged it into another
woman and this horror videotaped for blackmailing purposes; hearing the
torturer’s “if you tell no one will believe you,” statement; their laughter;
humiliation—these are some of the over-whelming ordeals Sister Diana Ortiz
reports were inflicted unto her during her 24-hour state of captivity by the
Guatemalan army’s counterinsurgency force, on November 2, 1989.Escaping Sister
Diana Ortiz fled back to the United States.[5]
Sara:
Tortured by Non-State Actors’: Ritual
Abuse-Torturers
Burned with cigarettes, candles, hot light bulbs for more
times than can be recorded; terrified; family/group and individually raped;
suspended by her limbs; bestiality; horror; blood; forced involvement in real
and/or sham murder rituals; a knife forced into her hands and held there by her
torturers as they plunged it into another human being; horrified; horrors
videotaped as trophies for future pleasures, for commercial trade on the
pornography market, and for emotional blackmailing purposes; hearing the
torturer’s statement “if you live to tell no one will believe you,”; their
laughter; humiliation—these are just a few of the over-whelming ordeals Sara
describes enduring during her 35-years of enslaved captivity and ritual
abuse-torture by ‘the family’. A co-culture of trans-generational kin and/or
non-kin whose like-minded needs and desires for ritual abuse-torture (RAT) can
be inter-connected regionally, nationally, internationally, and transnationally
with other like-minded families/groups. She has no where to
flee.[6]
Amnesty
International, making reference to the draft Articles on State Responsibility and its
commentary set out by the International Law Commission, Report of the ILC (1996)
stated that ‘under international law the state has clear responsibilities for
human rights abuses committed by non-state actors.’ [7] The Committee Against Torture, which deals with
‘state actor’ torture, considers trafficking in women to be a specific form of
torture as part of a gender-sensitive interpretation of the Convention, Article 1, which states:
‘any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is
intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as …’[8] We suggest, the
captive girl or boy child or woman who suffers tortures committed by
perpetrators of ritual abuse-torture—‘non-state actors’—ought to have the same
consideration and protection of their human rights under international law and
by the Committee Against Torture. As well, perpetrators need to be held fully
accountable for the severity of the crime of torture they commit whether
perpetrated by ‘state’ or ‘non-state actor’ torturers—whether committed by a
soldier or by a father, mother, family, nurse, teacher, or group, for
example.
Human
Trafficking: Activities of Ritual Abuse-Torture
Families/Groups
There is a need
to look at human trafficking differently when considering it occurs within the
context of ritual abuse-torture families/groups. The common perspective is that
the victimized child or woman is trafficked to perpetrators outside of their
home and often transported to another town or country. Maintaining such a
perspective is blinding to civil society. It fails to see, to identify, the
human trafficking that originates within ritual abuse-torture family/group. For
example, when the perpetrators are mothers, fathers, other family members,
friends, neighbors, and other like-minded persons who organize and gather
together as a group in their homes and take—transport—their girl or boy child or
woman victim into the basement to be the victim of their torture pleasures this
must be considered a form of human trafficking.
Five different modes of
trafficking: From our
perspective, human trafficking connected to ritual abuse-torture families/groups
involves at least five different modes of trafficking which we have identified
as:
-
Transporting
and trafficking that occurs within the homes of the family/group members, for
example, carrying or physically forcing the girl or boy child or adult woman
victim into the basement torture room. -
Transportation
and trafficking to other family/group sites such as warehouses, private
offices, barns, studios, institutions, cabins, cottages, RV’s, and to the
out-of-doors. -
Transportation
and trafficking to other ritual abuse-torture family/groups locally,
regionally, nationally, or transnationally. -
Transportation
and trafficking to the “outsiders” as shown and described in the following
drawing entitled, ‘Being Rented
Out’, and - Transportation
and trafficking or forcing, for example, a young victimized youth to work on
the street because her or his body has developed to the stage where they are
no longer marketable to pedophiles.
Being Rented Out: This drawing by Sara (not her real name)
gives insight into how ritual abuse-torturers conducted their sexualized
exploitation business—their marketing of Sara—their transporting and trafficking
of Sara, as a child victim, to outsiders. She explains, 
My father owned
a store and he and my mother would dress me up and sit me on the counter of
their store and rent me out to the ladies and the men who came to rent me. I can still hear my father saying to
them, ‘Bring her back when you’re done’.
Sara’s ordeal
tells how she was marketed—dressed up—and transported—taken to the family store
which was attached to their house—and trafficked by being forced to sit on the
store counter—rented—to the pedophilic women and men by her father and
mother—the traffickers. She was a ‘reusable resource’ for the pedophilic
practicing ritual abuse-torture family into which she speaks of being born.
Tracking the ritual abuse-torturers
trafficking patterns: We do
not know of other sources of information that have tried to track the ritual
abuse-torturer’s patterns of trafficking so, since April 2003, we have been
attempting to do this by creating a global map of the prevalence of ritual
abuse-torture trafficking on our website (www.ritualabusetorture.org).
Persons who visit our website and who are of the opinion they have endured
ritual abuse-torture (RAT) have the opportunity to mark an icon on this map
indicating the original site where their victimization first began. They can
also submit their comments. To date, approximately 332 persons have marked their
icons on the map and most have also submitted additional personal information.
Seven lists, present on our website, each holding names or icons, have been
developed from the information obtained from the on-going prevalence map. Since
the prevalence map can only hold 100 icons, the oldest icons are removed and
placed on a list, thus the seven lists.
Below is a copy
of the trafficking pattern that emerged when tabulating the information provided
by the 123 persons, who placed them-Selves on our map between April 23, 2003 and
May 1, 2004. A consistent pattern of ritual abuse-torture victimization provided
by these 123 persons is visible on the following map. (SEE FULL REPORT
ATTACHED).
Source:
Sarson, J. & MacDonald, L. (2004). Global map of the prevalence of ritual
abuse-torture trafficking from 23 April 2003 – May 1, 2004. Guestmap.[9]
The following
bar graph image (SEE FULL PAPER ATTACHED), representative of the 123
persons who placed them-Selves on our map, shows 108 (87.8%) indicated
the destination countries they were trafficked to. Fifteen (12.2 %) respondents
did not supply this information. Destination countries listed included:
Antarctica, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany,
Holland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Paradise Islands, Bahamas,
United Kingdom, United States, and Wales.
Based on our review of the names given by the 123
persons, 97 are female and eight are male. We do not know the gender of 16
persons and two icons were from supportive carers.
Additional information about trafficking and destination
countries has come from information written on the evaluations of a presentation
we gave in 2004 that included discussion of human trafficking as it occurs
within the context of ritual abuse-torture families/groups. Some participants
voluntarily wrote the names of destination countries on their evaluations.
Destination countries included Austria, Belgium, Germany, England, Switzerland,
and the west coast of the United States. This information and the information
that is being continuously entrusted to us indicates: (1) that ritual
abuse-torture families/groups exist in many countries, (2) that there are
transnational links, (3) that ritual abuse-torture families/groups have to be
exposed if the global reality of all forms of human trafficking is to be
squelched—eventually, and (4) if countries are not educated about the realities
of ritual abuse-torture they will not be aware of the full extent of the horrors
the perpetrators commit when they move ‘off-shore’.
Ritual
Abuse-Torturers: Traffickers of Pornography
Ritual
abuse-torturers use cameras, lights, drugs, weapons, and objectify animals,
babies, toddlers, girls, boys, youth, and captive enslaved women are the ‘tools’
to make pedophilic and adult pornography. Forced into the making and the viewing
of pedophilic and adult pornography is a violent theme of victimization we hear
spoken of repetitively by persons so victimized. Homemade pornography is one
source of the pornography seized by police[10] with ninety percent of child pornography recovered by
the Sex Crimes Unit of the Toronto Police made in the United Kingdom, the United
States, Canada, first-world countries, and is inter-familial.[11] These facts lend support to the information about the
horrendous exploitation and trafficking ordeals victimized persons are sharing
with us.
Women tell us
that, as children, they witnessed babies being victimized and that they
themselves were also such young victims, another reality supported by the
pornographic material police are recovering. Newspapers report police have
seized material of ‘a baby so young that it still [had] its umbilical crust
attached … [of] infants covered with ejaculate’ and toddlers being orally
raped.[12] Pictures seized have also included infants wearing
diapers
Categories: Releases
