Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt

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Summary: Terrific Expose of a Moral Panic that Ruined Lives
Review: This book was a real eye opener for me. It documents the trumped up charges against daycare workers,"sex rings" of parents and grandparents -- accused of the most elaborate and unlikely--even impossible-- crimes against children. None of the charges came spontaneously from children, who in fact insisted nothing had happened. Rather, children were subjected to highly coercive and manipulative interviews by true-believer therapists, repeated over weeks and weeks. the therapists fed the kids the stories they wanted to hear -- and eventually got what they wanted. What was presented as physical evidence of abuse --microscopic bumps and skin tags on genitals --have turned out to be as common in nonabused kids and abused ones. Over a hundred people went to jail, and around a dozen are still there --even though the justice system has tacitly admitted the flaws in the original prosecutions. After all, no one has brought a daycare ritual-abuse case in a decade. What I particularly like about this book is that--unlike some of the other books debunking ritual abuse, repressed memory and the like-- it's written from a feminist perspective. Nathan argues that what women and children need to be safe from abuse is more equality within the family, and more equality for women socially and economically. For her the tragic turn in feminism was the turn toward psychologizing incest and sex abuse and presenting therapy as the remedy, instead of social change. This perspective sets her apart from the dominant strain in the movement against intrusive child advocacy, the "parents' rights" movement, which tends to see children as family propoerty with no rights of their own, and tends to be extremely conservative politically. A wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: one-side of the story
Review: This is an interesting interpretation of the events that surrounded the revealing of ritual abuse claims in daycare settings. However well-intentioned the book may be though, it is only an interpretation and it discounts other evidence that illustrates that ritual abuse is indeed a real phenomena. There are also many other books on the topic (such as Cults that Kill; and Ritual Abuse by Margaret Smith) that tell the other side of the story. As hard as it is to believe, some religious cults can and do at times abuse children as part of their rituals. I know because it happened to me.