The purpose of this newsletter is to help stop secretive organizations and groups from abusing others and to help those who allege they have been abused by such organizations and groups. This newsletter is not a substitute for other ways of recovering from ritual abuse. Readers should use caution while reading this newsletter. If necessary, make sure other support systems are available during and after reading this newsletter.
Important:
The resources mentioned in this newsletter are for educational value only. Reading the books cited may or may not help your recovery process, so use caution when reading any book or contacting any resource mentioned in this newsletter. Some may have a religious or other agenda that may be separate from your own recovery process. Others may have valuable information on secretive organizations, but have triggers or be somewhat sympathetic to those organizations. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the views expressed in this newsletter constitute expressions of opinion, and readers are cautioned to form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions by consulting a variety of sources, including this newsletter. Resources listed, quoted and individual articles, etc. and their writers do not necessarily support all or any of the views mentioned in this newsletter. Also, the views, facts and opinions mentioned in this newsletter are solely the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily the opinions of this newsletter or its editor.
Copyright 2026 – All rights reserved. No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.
Information in this issue includes:
The 2026 Online Annual SMART Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Conference August 15 – 16, 2026
– Ritual Abuse as Mind Control – Wendy Hoffman
– Introduction to Neurofeedback for Trauma – Joshua Moore
– Recovery Pathways – Randy Noblitt
– A Survivor’s Spiritual Journey – Neil Brick
– Family-Based Human Trafficking, Ritual Abuse, and Coercive Mind Control – Iain Bryson
– The Survivorship Trafficking and Extreme Abuse Online Conference May 2026 Conference Presentations Available Online
Articles:
– Shining a light on Organised Ritual Abuse – The reality of organised ritual abuse – Elly Hanson
– Breaking the Silence Around Ritual Abuse – Israel
– From Ritual Sacrifice To Labour Abuse: How Rajkot Police Unravelled A 2018 Mystery – India
– Bail win for alleged leader of global satanic child abuse ring – Clare Sibthorpe and Perry Duffin – Australia
– This is what it’s really like to live with multiple personality disorder — and 24 alter egos By Eric Spitznagel Cameron West “First Person Plural”
– How Childhood Trauma Shapes Dissociative Identity Disorder Repeated early abuse and neglect can fragment a developing self. Fabiana Franco Ph.D. Trauma, Resilience, and Recovery
The 2026 Online Annual Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Conference August 15 – 16, 2026 If you are interested in attending our conference or getting on a mailing list, please write: smartnews@aol.comhttps://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
Speakers include:
Ritual Abuse as Mind Control – Wendy Hoffman
Rituals are common practice in satanic culture. This presentation explores how every moment of a ritual is used for mind control. Its purpose is to capture the minds of its victims and enforce its programs. Traumatic emotions are also an important part of mind control, and they will be discussed.
Wendy Hoffman has published four memoirs, three books of poetry and a co-authored book of essays. She does consultations for therapists working in the field of dissociative disorders and presentations on mind control internationally. https://ritualabuse.us/smart/wendy-hoffman/
Introduction to Neurofeedback for Trauma – Joshua Moore
This presentation will give survivors an introduction to neurofeedback, which is widely popularized by The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, and explain how it supports recovery from trauma. We will look at the history, early research, current applications, and future ventures. The talk will focus on survivor-friendly, practical information: what neurofeedback is, what a session is like, what it may help with, and what to consider when looking for a provider. The goal is to offer hope and a clear, grounded overview of neurofeedback as one possible tool in the recovery process.
Joshua Moore is a licensed mental health counselor and a board-certified neurofeedback provider with the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA). He is passionate about trauma work, has a personal history of recovery, and has worked in a variety of settings, including international human-trafficking advocacy and intervention, rehabilitation services, clinic work specializing in SRA and dissociative PTSD, and a full pursuit of “finding a better way” through the study of emerging clinical modalities for trauma recovery.
Recovery Pathways – Randy Noblitt
This presentation addresses the variety of opportunities for recovery, as well as obstacles and challenges. Many survivors of extreme abuse are currently in some form of recovery. Although incidents of severe abuse have occurred for much of human history, it is only recently that there has emerged a Survivors movement, and a general awareness that there are potential recovery pathways. These include community support and engagement, education, use of clinical and counseling methods, accessing economic resources, and modifying public policy.
Randy Noblitt is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Alliant University in Los Angeles and a licensed psychologist in Texas and New Mexico. https://ritualabuse.us/smart/randy-noblitt/
A Survivor’s Spiritual Journey – Neil Brick
Neil will discuss how he has worked through his survivor experiences and has grown as a person. He will talk about how his advocacy and service have helped him learn more about himself and others. He will discuss the different spiritual paths he has worked with to lead a happier and more mindful life.
Neil Brick is a survivor of ritualistic abuse. His work continues to educate the public about child abuse, trauma and ritualistic abuse crimes. His child abuse and ritualistic abuse newsletter S.M.A.R.T. https://ritualabuse.us has been published for over 30 years. http://neilbrick.com
Family-Based Human Trafficking, Ritual Abuse, and Coercive Mind Control: One Father’s Fight for His Daughter – Iain Bryson
Iain Bryson’s daughter was taken fifteen years ago by his first wife and her family after she told him that her family was a “cult” and that she would be taking their daughter back to them because of “mind control.” At the time, Iain had no understanding of ritual abuse or trauma-based mind control, and only after his daughter’s abduction did he begin to reconcile his wife’s warnings with signs he had previously been unable to see. After seeking help from local and international authorities and receiving little assistance despite his daughter being a U.S. citizen, Iain attempted to expose what had happened and ultimately became entangled in the Polish criminal justice system, where he was incarcerated for fifty months before his release in 2015.
In 2024, Iain Bryson published an evidence-based, documentary-style memoir about his daughter’s abduction and continues to advocate for his daughter and raise awareness about ritual abuse and survivors’ experiences. Iain Bryson holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Connecticut (2003).
Ritual Abuse as Mind Control – Wendy Hoffman
Rituals are common practice in satanic culture. This presentation explores how every moment of a ritual is used for mind control. Its purpose is to capture the minds of its victims and enforce its programs. Traumatic emotions are also an important part of mind control, and they will be discussed.
Wendy Hoffman has published four memoirs, two books of poetry and a co-authored book of essays. She does consultations for therapists working in the field of dissociative disorders and presentations on mind control internationally. https://ritualabuse.us/smart/wendy-hoffman/
Traces of Western Practices of Ritual Abuse in Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology and Other Texts – Lynn Brunet
Mary Daly (1928-2010), born in Schenectady, New York, was a philosopher and theologian and described herself as a radical lesbian feminist, intent on exposing the extent to which the patriarchy exploits women and working towards changing this. This paper will not get into the politics surrounding radical feminism, which is multi-faceted and extensive, but instead will examine one of her key texts, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978). In this text there are multiple references to the experience of spinning. She describes the book as “an invitation to the Wild Witch in all women who long to spin” (Daly 1978, xv).
This talk will explore Daly’s use of language throughout Gyn/Ecology to suggest that concealed/revealed in her writing may be traces of western practices of ritual abuse, practices that only began to come to public attention in the mid-1980s. It will suggest that the author’s search for the most extreme examples of ritual torture of women across cultures, coupled with the idiosyncratic metaphorical language of ecstatic spiral journeying used in Gyn/Ecology and other texts, may have been a means of expressing a deeply internalised and repressed experience of childhood ritual abuse. As the following discussion will outline, hidden cultic practices of a Druidic nature appear to have been exported to the United States alongside conservative religious practices amongst migrant groups such as the Irish, the culture that Mary Daly celebrates as her own heritage.
Lynn Brunet (PhD) is an Australian art historian whose research examines the coupling of trauma and ritual in modern and contemporary western art and literature. In particular, it traces the connection between Masonic and other fraternal initiation rites and complex trauma in the work of various artists and writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. https://independent.academia.edu/LynnBrunet1
Remembering Wholeness: Trauma-Informed Writing in Support of Voice, Safety, and Self-Trust – deJoly LaBrier
As both a survivor of extreme abuse and a Life and Writing Coach, her work is informed by lived experience as well as years of supporting women on their healing journeys. In this presentation, she shares how trauma-informed writing practices can support survivors in reclaiming voice, coherence, and a sense of inner authorship after experiences that fracture identity and distort self-perception.
Rather than asking survivors to revisit traumatic material, this approach honors personal boundaries and nervous system readiness. Writing becomes a relational practice—one that allows meaning to emerge slowly, safely, and on the survivor’s own terms. This work reflects a deep belief that survivors are not broken, but adaptive—and that wholeness is not something to be earned, but remembered. This presentation recognizes dissociation and multiplicity as adaptive survival responses and offers trauma-informed writing practices that support safety, voice, and self-trust without requiring integration or disclosure.
deJoly LaBrier is a Life and Writing Coach, public speaker, and survivor of extreme abuse whose work focuses on trauma-informed writing practices for women impacted by trafficking, ritual abuse, and complex trauma. Drawing from lived experience as well as years of coaching, facilitation, and public speaking, she supports survivors in reclaiming voice, agency, and a sense of wholeness after experiences that fracture identity and distort self-perception. https://dejoly.com/shop
Unraveling the Tangled Mind: Psychotherapy with Survivors of Mind Control– Faige Flakser, LCSW
This presentation offers a clinical roadmap for psychotherapy with survivors of Organized and Extreme Abuse (OEA), including cultic abuse, ritual abuse, trafficking, and other coercive systems. It describes how this work frequently presents with complex trauma and dissociation, with dissociative parts and self-states, often including DID. Participants will be oriented to the core psychological binds created by mind control: confrontation with profound human cruelty and the systematic destabilizing of reality-testing through confusion, coercion, and terror-based conditioning. The presentation highlights three predictable trust ruptures that shape treatment from the first contact: mistrust of helpers, including realistic fears that perpetrators may pose as helpers; mistrust within family systems where grooming and recruitment have often occurred; and mistrust of one’s own mind in the aftermath of sustained manipulation. These ruptures complicate the formation of a therapeutic alliance and require a paced, relational approach that honors the protective functions of doubt, vigilance, and withdrawal.
Faige Flakser, LCSW, is a trauma therapist, consultant, and educator with a clinical focus on trauma, dissociation, and DID, as well as Organized and Extreme Abuse (OEA), including mind control and coercive systems. She holds leadership roles within the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), where she is the former Chair of the OEA Special Interest Group and has presented at ISSTD conferences. She is Director of the Trauma Division at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP).
An Introduction to Neurofeedback for Trauma – Joshua Moore MA, LMHC, BCN
Neurofeedback is a non-invasive, evidence-based therapeutic modality that helps individuals to self-regulate brain activity through real-time biofeedback of brainwave patterns, often referred to as EEG entrainment. In the treatment of trauma, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), neurofeedback targets key neurophysiological features such as hyperarousal, emotional dysregulation, and altered brain connectivity resulting from traumatic experiences. By identifying specific neuro-markers associated with PTSD, practitioners can transform the often intangible nature of psychological trauma into visible representations on a computer screen or printout, facilitating targeted training to normalize brain function.
This approach serves as a promising adjunct to traditional trauma therapies, effectively reducing core PTSD symptoms—including intrusive thoughts, avoidance behaviors, and heightened arousal—without necessitating direct exposure to traumatic memories, which many clients find aversive. Recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses indicate moderate beneficial effects on PTSD symptoms, with neurofeedback demonstrating clinically meaningful improvements in symptom severity. Neurofeedback is also discussed for its potential utility in Bessel van der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps the Score, which highlights innovative, body-oriented interventions for trauma recovery (van der Kolk, 2014). In this lecture, key research and outcomes will be reviewed, alongside clinical principles and skills, emerging protocols, practical resources for locating practitioners, and training to become a certified neurofeedback practitioner.
Joshua Moore is a licensed mental health counselor who incorporates a variety of treatments, including talk therapy, EMDR, QEEG brain mapping, family systems work, and neurofeedback. Joshua is passionate about making evidence-based quality neurofeedback more available to the community. Joshua provides neurofeedback mentorship to several clinics and creates online workshops for beginners and advanced clinicians in the field of healthcare. Clinically, he works with difficult cases, including dissociative identity disorder, PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and complex or unclear diagnoses. Joshua holds a Master’s degree in Counseling from Multnomah University and a Bachelor’s degree in Theology, and he is board-certified in neurofeedback through the Biofeedback International Certification Alliance (BCIA).
Intergenerational Occult Families, and One Father’s Fight for His Abducted Daughter – Iain Bryson
Iain Bryson’s daughter was taken fifteen years ago by his first wife and her family after his first wife told him that her family is a “cult,” and that she would be taking their daughter back to them because of “mind control.” Iain had no idea what ritual abuse and trauma-based-mind-control were until his daughter was taken. He had to reconcile that fact with what his wife had warned and the signs that his mind had refused to see. Iain tried to get help from local authorities and international authorities. Despite the fact that his daughter is a United States citizen, the only advice given by the Embassy was to re-abduct his daughter given that Poland is out of the Embassy’s jurisdiction. Having to take matters into his own hands, Iain ended up in the Polish criminal justice system. He was incarcerated for fifty months in Poland because of his attempts to make the system aware on his daughter. Iain was released in 2015.
In 2024, Iain Bryson published an evidence-based, documentary style memoir of his daughter’s abduction. He continues to fight for his daughter, and for other survivors of the horrendous atrocity we know as ritual abuse.
Manipulation, Coercion & Mistakes in Extreme Child Sexual Abuse Investigations – Dr. Rainer Kurz
This presentation builds on findings of Prof Jane Ireland (2012) that 2/3 of psychological assessment reports trawled from UK Family Courts were found to be ’poor’ or ‘very poor’, and US Law Professor Joan Meier (2020) that in about half of child custody cases investigated the parent who raised concerns about Domestic Abuse and Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) lost custody. The underlying ‘Discourse of Disbelief’ of authority representatives is illustrated through three case studies.
Rainer Kurz is a Chartered Psychologist based in London. Since 1990 Rainer has worked in Research & Development roles for leading test publishers. His PhD dissertation was on enhancing the validity and utility of ability testing. Rainer developed 50+ psychometric tests and authored more than 100 publications. He was a Consultant Editor for Test Reviews at the Psychometric Testing Centre (PTC) of the BPS. He is a Patron of the International Society for Mental Health Advocacy and Action and was at the inaugural Delhi summit (January 2026) an Invited Speaker. Rainer has been investigating complex trauma assessment problems since 2012. He authored 40+ posters and presentations on trauma, dissociation and healing at international peer-reviewed conferences (most of which are available here https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rainer_Kurz2 Five 2025 ISPCAN papers are accessible through the Winter 2026 issue of the Survivorship Journal and at Survivorship conferences
Articles:
Shining a light on Organised Ritual Abuse – In this guest post, Dr Elly Hanson and Jon Brown shine a light on organised ritual abuse, why disbelief about this form of harm persists, and why that must change. Elly draws on recent research to set the scene, and Jon translates this into practice, policy, and strategy implications for professionals across all agencies. 27 May 2026 Guest posts describes graphic abuse
The reality of organised ritual abuse Elly Hanson
In 1986, three months after entering care, a three year old boy in Broxtowe, Nottingham-shire, started disclosing to his foster carers sexual abuse and degradation at the hands of his family members. This was the first in a set of extensive allegations made by him, his siblings and his cousins about a family organised around sadistic abuse led by their grandfather. They described being starved, injured and humiliated, and sexual abuse that involved multiple perpetrators subjecting them to ritualistic and extreme acts. They talked about being made to eat faeces, animals being ‘sacrificed’, and adults dressed as witches, the devil, clowns and monsters. The subsequent court case led to the conviction of ten adults for abuses relating to twelve children.
Some years later, journalist Beatrix Campbell interviewed one of the convicted mothers coming up to the end of her prison sentence. She described a similar childhood to that of her children, including parties where adults dressed up and ‘Dad was the devil’ – ‘when I was a child my parents talked about the devil all the time. They said I was “born for the devil”’. When she grew up and had her own children, ‘my Mum and Dad said, “they’re not children to be loved… they’re an ornament to be messed with”’. This intergenerational element was picked up by local MP Graham Allen when he commented at the time of the convictions that ‘child sex abuse can run on in families from generation to generation. We must now break this link of depravity that runs through generations for good.’
Sadly four decades on, we haven’t moved much closer to achieving this ambition, although I believe we are now at a time where there is a building momentum of awareness raising and change.
The Broxtowe case is one of at least 14 in the UK in which people have been convicted of child sexual abuse, and their use of ritualistic practices within it has been widely acknowledged by criminal and/or family courts. The most recent of these was the conviction of seven individuals in Glasgow in 2024. Yet survivor reports to helplines, therapists, researchers and other trusted individuals reveal that convictions are the very small tip of a large iceberg. Across twenty years or so of working in the field of sexual abuse and trauma, I have supported a number of ritual abuse survivors alongside many colleagues who have done the same. We are not alone; a survey of over 100 Clinical Psychologists in 2013 found that 38% had ‘dealt with one or more cases of satanic/ritual abuse’ and the majority judged most reports of this abuse credible.
Survivors’ disclosures reveal that this abuse often starts young, involves family members, and occurs against a backdrop of other child maltreatment (for example, neglect and physical abuse). It also often intersects with the production of child sexual abuse images and the sale of children to be raped (child sex trafficking). The ritual abuse tends to take place on specific occasions in which multiple perpetrators subject their victims to abuses enacted within ‘ceremonies’ and the like, and according to supernatural narratives (for example, abuse is denoted as a sacrifice, worship, ritual punishment etc). Such elements work to empower those abusing, whilst further silencing, shaming and terrorising the victims. Moral injury, a form of abuse in which victims are forced to act against their moral core (for example, through being made to choose between abuses to others) leaves many with a profound sense of complicity and guilt.
As is evident, such childhoods involve multiple experiences of extreme abuse, of which a single incident would be enough to floor a person. Survival depends in part upon various forms of dissociation (ways of psychologically distancing or shutting off from the abuse). Most survivors report living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, an adaptation to chronic childhood maltreatment in which the psyche develops different parts or ‘selves’ to cope with the contradictory demands of the abuse and its otherwise overwhelming nature. DID often means that adult parts of a person may be unaware for long periods that they are survivors of this abuse. And when they do become aware and reach out for help, many are faced with widespread disbelief – people turn away from what they saying, seeing it as too outlandish or extreme to be true.
The discourse of disbelief
A UK survey of 58 survivors of ritual abuse and 10 supporters found that most had experienced or witnessed poor practice from police, health and/or social services in response to disclosures of this abuse, with disbelief being cited as the most major problem. These service responses form part of a wider societal stance of disbelief – this developed and reached its peak in the 1980s and 90s but has exerted a long shadow ever since. Reports of ritual abuse are often met with a default scepticism and discounted as the product of moral panic, false memories and suggestive questioning. This narrative operates to rewrite history according to its wishful thinking, and Broxtowe is a clear case in point. In my report I detail how the case came to wrongly be retold as a cautionary tale of ‘satanic panic’ to the point that its entry on Wikipedia now concludes ‘that there was no evidence of the satanic ritual abuse claims.’
This default disbelief then works to perpetuate itself, working in lock-step with silencing. There is evidence of victims not mentioning ritual aspects of their abuse to avoid disbelief, police demanding more evidence before they investigate it, and prosecutors dropping these elements from cases when they get to court.
The damage that this discourse has caused is hard to overstate. Not only has it been a gift to those who perpetrate the abuse, providing cover for continued abuse, it is also a profound invalidation of survivors, working to amplify and entrench the invalidation at the heart of the abuse….
https://www.csacentre.org.uk/blog/shining-a-light-on-organised-ritual-abuse/
Breaking the Silence Around Ritual Abuse describes graphic abuse
People say they are psychotic, that they are delusional, that things like this cannot possibly happen in reality – and certainly not in Israel. But now, four therapists – three psychiatrists and a social worker – who repeatedly heard about this phenomenon from patients and also saw the physical proof on their bodies, are courageously declaring: Yes, ritual abuse exists in Israel – and it’s not an isolated phenomenon. Yes, there are women and men, most of them children, undergoing sadistic, violent rituals that usually include sexual abuse, with cult-like elements and serious psychological manipulation. Yes, abusers include rabbis and doctors and there are even allegations against a judge. And yes, we must first of all believe the victims and then do everything we can to end it – right now
Haim Rivlin May 15, 2026
Suddenly, the stories began trickling in. One after another, their patients – male and female alike – started to tell them about depths of human evil that are hard to fathom. And they – who thought that they had heard it all, who dealt with every kind of life-altering trauma – realized that something entirely different was happening here. That in Israel, too, a phenomenon known as ritual abuse exists – and that almost no one is talking about it.
Now, they say, they have collated testimonies from more than 50 victims and are ready to end the conspiracy of silence surrounding ritual abuse in Israel. Three female psychiatrists – Dr. Inbal Brenner, Dr. Sharon Levy and Dr. Daphna Armon – along with social worker Tanya Oren-Chipman, all four of whom hold very senior positions and who have many years of experience, have come together to issue a wake-up call: This is happening right here, it is far more widespread than you think – and it is taking a devastating toll….
What began as a trickle, however, soon became a steady stream of testimonies: men and women from all walks of life, without any previous connection between them, who came from different places and at different times – all of whom offered strikingly similar accounts of what they experienced. “We heard stories that included multiple attackers, stories about extreme cruelty and sadism, about the use of deliberate starvation to control and punish,” says Levy, who has personally met with dozens of patients, each of whom separately described to her the same horrific situation. “I said to myself, ‘Hang on, there’s something odd here.’ I searched through the literature and came across something known as ‘ritual abuse’ and I knew I had found the answer.”
None of them were previously familiar with the phenomenon of ritual abuse. They had not encountered it during their medical studies or their specialized training in treating complex trauma. Hearing such harrowing accounts in the therapy room pushed each of them, on her own, to look for answers – whether in the professional literature or by consulting colleagues abroad.
In December, Israel held its first-ever professional conference on ritual trauma, organized by the Israeli Society for Sexual Trauma Treatment and Prevention (ISST), which operates under the auspices of the Israeli Medical Association. All four of the interviewees for this article are members of ISST and it was Levy who presented the conference with the professional definition of ritual abuse: “Organized and repetitive abuse involving physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual violence, often carried out within the framework of structured rituals, at times utilizing religious and cultic symbols. Its purpose is total control over the victims and the deep indoctrination of patterns of submission within the victim.”
According to Oren-Chipman, one of the messages to emerge from the conference was that “we recognize that this issue exists and that we have to start addressing it on a professional level. It makes no sense that every professional therapist who encounters it will have to make their own way through the darkness, with all of these horrors. We have to say: This is unacceptable, it is inconceivable – but it exists and we have to recognize the phenomenon in order to start dealing with it.”….
This was also the stage that the subjects of this article, who belong to the very core of the Israeli medical and therapeutic establishment, realized that they could no longer remain in the sterile space of the clinic. They decided to exert the full professional gravitas by joining forces and saying something that Israeli society simply refused to hear: We have seen the wounds with our own two eyes. It’s not imagined; it’s real.
“The impact of this kind of narative on our patients is devastating,” says Inbal Brenner, chairperson of ISST and director of the Sexual Trauma Clinic at Lev Hasharon Mental Health Center. “We felt that we had to say something, because we saw our patients falling apart and becoming suicidal. The discourse was extremely blunt and very violent and we felt, as female professionals, that we had to say: We have seen with our own two eyes and we have heard these stories for years from men and women. We had to speak out and say: The phenomenon does exist. You can’t just say ‘You’re all crazy,’ because that essentially means abandoning our patients.”….
This blanket denial does not usually come from a place of malice or evil, they say. “Sometimes there’s ignorance, there’s a lack of understanding and there’s a very human inability to believe that such evil exists,” Brenner explains. “It’s hard to believe that there are sexual assaults that happen in such an organized way, that adults can hurt children in this way – and it’s easier for us to say that it’s nothing more than a fantasy, a troubled psychological state – and to say ‘She’s crazy’ or ‘She’s imagining it’.”
“After all, who wants to live in a society like that, in which there are such evil people and evil is institutionalized?” Armon adds. “It’s a lot easier to believe that evil only comes from beyond our borders, that it is different, foreign, that it has a different color or accent. Who wants to think that people with power in our country behave in this way? That entire communities do this? Who wants to believe that? You can’t sleep at night.”
In response to this wave of denial, doctors and therapists from a variety of fields – all of them members of ISST – last month published a position paper. “Ritual abuse and organized sexual abuse networks are an existing and recognized phenomenon worldwide, including in Israel, requiring urgent and profound institutional, therapeutic and legal attention,” it read….
The individual testimonies received by all four therapists are of course confidential, but Levy can describe in general terms what ritual abuse of this kind looks like. The abuse is always carried out by a group of adults, “with each of them having a specific role,” she says. “For example, there is someone running the ceremony, someone recording it and so on.” The children must be naked and the ceremony itself includes severe sexual abuse and life-endangering torture such as strangulation. “I have heard descriptions of drowning in the mikveh or at sea, or situations where a child was placed in a grave-like hole and covered in dirt or trapped inside a circle of fire.”
Another characteristic that keeps reappearing is that the perpetrators often use restraints or cages as part of the ritual abuse. In some cases, victims have told the therapists that they were taken to a room or pit with spiders or the carcasses of dead animals, “or a child was led to believe that this is what was happening,” Levy says. She adds that, according to her patients, their abusers lacked any emotion and were indifferent to the pain they were causing and their victims’ screams.
In many cases, ritual abuse took place within the family itself. “And then,” Levy says, “there are several family members involved, whether that be abusing the victim and participating in the ritual or by preparing the child for abuse or treating their wounds afterwards. In many cases, the children are handed over to other adults who will abuse them.”
In most cases, the rituals have cultic or religious overtones. In cases where there is no cultic-religious element, Levy says, the framing “can be that of a game, where the child is staged in various situations of abuse and photographed.”
According to the four therapists, even rituals which have cultic or mystic characteristics are not actually like that. Rather, they are a calculated mechanism designed to destroy the victim’s identity. “There was one victim who was very capable of describing exactly how they led her into the abusive situation,” says Oren-Chipman. “It was a description that I later heard from other places and other people – whereby the victim was ‘sacrificed’ by one of her relatives. It’s something that happens again and again. And the abuse itself, which is incredibly sadistic, is extremely harsh. Among the most violent I have ever heard of. Waiting nervously for the abuse, which could mean several children waiting together for their turn. And, of course, muttering verses, incantations and all kinds of religious conceptualizations.”….
However, the modern-day version of ritual abuse often includes, according to victims’ testimony, a video camera documenting everything that happens. The therapists believe that the reason for this is financial: the videos are sold on the darknet. “There are buyers for these things,” says Brenner. “And a lot of our patients live in fear because there is videotaped evidence of them being abused circulating God knows where online.”
The camera, therefore, is not just a tool to make money on the darknet; it is also the ultimate weapon for extortion and to ensure the victims’ silence for the rest of their lives. “There are all kinds of ways to extort someone,” says Armon. “They want to get married or start dating someone [and the abusers threaten] to expose them or ruin their reputation.”
“The ritual is their way of controlling. Using brainwashing, intimidation, profound psychological strategies,” Armon adds. “The abusers are intelligent, powerful people of means; it’s not some marginal phenomenon that happens by mistake or something private that happens behind closed doors.”….
According to Levy, some of her patients who suffered from organized abuse still carry the silent scars of what they endured in the medical files: “We see broken bones and we see a lot of urinary tract infections. When it comes to deliberate malnourishment, you see a lot of children who need infusions of iron. Why should a child need iron infusions without any medical reason?”
“On occasions, the abuse also included the denial of medical treatment,” says Brenner. “There are patients who told us that they were not allowed to see a doctor for years or that they only got medical treatment after they left the cult or the abusive environment.”
This “abusive environment,” as already mentioned, can often be the immediate family. The gateway to the world of organized abuse is often through a relative who traffics/pimps out the child victim. “It doesn’t have to be a parent. It can be an uncle or grandfather whom the parents trust who commits these abuses and who takes the child to a network of abusers,” Brenner adds.
Proximity and easy access to children explain why the victims are so young: “Usually around the age of three, four or five. And it continues for quite a long time,” Brenner says. “There are also cases of abuse of children of primary school age. Beyond that, it is apparently less common.”….
Suddenly, the stories began trickling in. One after another, their patients – male and female alike – started to tell them about depths of human evil that are hard to fathom. And they – who thought that they had heard it all, who dealt with every kind of life-altering trauma – realized that something entirely different was happening here. That in Israel, too, a phenomenon known as ritual abuse exists – and that almost no one is talking about it.
Now, they say, they have collated testimonies from more than 50 victims and are ready to end the conspiracy of silence surrounding ritual abuse in Israel. Three female psychiatrists – Dr. Inbal Brenner, Dr. Sharon Levy and Dr. Daphna Armon – along with social worker Tanya Oren-Chipman, all four of whom hold very senior positions and who have many years of experience, have come together to issue a wake-up call: This is happening right here, it is far more widespread than you think – and it is taking a devastating toll.
At first, they also found it hard to believe what they were hearing from their patients. “They told us stories that simply didn’t sound reasonable; they sometimes even sounded absurd,” says Oren-Chipman, who served for many years as director of the Ministry of Welfare’s Tamar Center for Sexual Trauma in Jerusalem. “They told us things that I found hard to deal with,” adds Dr. Levy, the deputy head of the Meuhedet HMO’s mental health services in the Jerusalem district.
What began as a trickle, however, soon became a steady stream of testimonies: men and women from all walks of life, without any previous connection between them, who came from different places and at different times – all of whom offered strikingly similar accounts of what they experienced. “We heard stories that included multiple attackers, stories about extreme cruelty and sadism, about the use of deliberate starvation to control and punish,” says Levy, who has personally met with dozens of patients, each of whom separately described to her the same horrific situation. “I said to myself, ‘Hang on, there’s something odd here.’ I searched through the literature and came across something known as ‘ritual abuse’ and I knew I had found the answer.”
None of them were previously familiar with the phenomenon of ritual abuse. They had not encountered it during their medical studies or their specialized training in treating complex trauma. Hearing such harrowing accounts in the therapy room pushed each of them, on her own, to look for answers – whether in the professional literature or by consulting colleagues abroad.
In December, Israel held its first-ever professional conference on ritual trauma, organized by the Israeli Society for Sexual Trauma Treatment and Prevention (ISST), which operates under the auspices of the Israeli Medical Association. All four of the interviewees for this article are members of ISST and it was Levy who presented the conference with the professional definition of ritual abuse: “Organized and repetitive abuse involving physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual violence, often carried out within the framework of structured rituals, at times utilizing religious and cultic symbols. Its purpose is total control over the victims and the deep indoctrination of patterns of submission within the victim.”
According to Oren-Chipman, one of the messages to emerge from the conference was that “we recognize that this issue exists and that we have to start addressing it on a professional level. It makes no sense that every professional therapist who encounters it will have to make their own way through the darkness, with all of these horrors. We have to say: This is unacceptable, it is inconceivable – but it exists and we have to recognize the phenomenon in order to start dealing with it.”
“It’s easier for to frame it as fantasy or a mental condition and say, ‘She’s crazy,’ or ‘She’s imagining things.’”
In March 2025, when the late Shoshana Strook – daughter of Minister of Settlements Orit Strook – published videos in which she claimed that she suffered ritual abuse – the public response fell between outright denial that the phenomenon even exists, factional division and political sniping. It is important to note that none of the four therapists interviewed in this article has any information that confirms or contradicts the allegations made by Shoshana Strook. In April 2025, a court rejected a request to lift the gag order placed on the case, ruling that “at this stage, reasonable doubt is extremely meager, if not less than that.” What set the alarm bells ringing for the four therapists, however, were the responses. “I am not familiar with Shoshana’s story, may she rest in peace,” says Oren-Chipman, “but when I saw the first video that she uploaded, I immediately turned to my husband and said, ‘Shit. Now they’ll say that it’s all political.’ I was really annoyed by that, because I knew that it would split everyone right back into the same old camps and entrenched positions we’re all familiar with, where it’s impossible to think outside the box. Long before [Shoshana Strook] posted that video, I had heard stories – not one, or two or even three – and it certainly was not political.”
Following Shoshana Strook’s tragic death on March 14 of this year, social media was awash with dismissive and violent rhetoric which, among other things, rejected victims’ testimony about the phenomenon as “delusional” and called the women who claimed to be victims of ritual abuse “crazy.” This was also the stage that the subjects of this article, who belong to the very core of the Israeli medical and therapeutic establishment, realized that they could no longer remain in the sterile space of the clinic. They decided to exert the full professional gravitas by joining forces and saying something that Israeli society simply refused to hear: We have seen the wounds with our own two eyes. It’s not imagined; it’s real.
“The impact of this kind of narrative on our patients is devastating,” says Inbal Brenner, chairperson of ISST and director of the Sexual Trauma Clinic at Lev Hasharon Mental Health Center. “We felt that we had to say something, because we saw our patients falling apart and becoming suicidal. The discourse was extremely blunt and very violent and we felt, as female professionals, that we had to say: We have seen with our own two eyes and we have heard these stories for years from men and women. We had to speak out and say: The phenomenon does exist. You can’t just say ‘You’re all crazy,’ because that essentially means abandoning our patients.”
Oren-Chipman adds: “The greatest fear of anyone who has been sexually abused is that they are crazy, that they imagined it, that they made it up or that they are exaggerating. When that encounters external denial, it becomes even more paralyzing, even more shocking and it raises feelings of guilt, loneliness and self-loathing. Every imaginable form of evil.”
This blanket denial does not usually come from a place of malice or evil, they say. “Sometimes there’s ignorance, there’s a lack of understanding and there’s a very human inability to believe that such evil exists,” Brenner explains. “It’s hard to believe that there are sexual assaults that happen in such an organized way, that adults can hurt children in this way – and it’s easier for us to say that it’s nothing more than a fantasy, a troubled psychological state – and to say ‘She’s crazy’ or ‘She’s imagining it’.”
“After all, who wants to live in a society like that, in which there are such evil people and evil is institutionalized?” Armon adds. “It’s a lot easier to believe that evil only comes from beyond our borders, that it is different, foreign, that it has a different color or accent. Who wants to think that people with power in our country behave in this way? That entire communities do this? Who wants to believe that? You can’t sleep at night.”
In response to this wave of denial, doctors and therapists from a variety of fields – all of them members of ISST – last month published a position paper. “Ritual abuse and organized sexual abuse networks are an existing and recognized phenomenon worldwide, including in Israel, requiring urgent and profound institutional, therapeutic and legal attention,” it read.
Armon, director of the Complex PTSD Department at the Be’er Yaakov Mental Health Center, explains why they decided to break their silence: “The hardest part is that the victims themselves don’t believe their own memories. The question of whether it happened or not is always relevant – but it’s even more so when it comes to ritual abuse of this kind.”
And then the doubt that the environment expresses merely exacerbates it?
“That’s why we published our statement. We don’t know what did or did not happen in the specific case of Shoshana Strook, but we cannot stand idly by when people are dismissing the phenomenon. This denial of the phenomenon harms every victim – and we 100 percent believe that people have been harmed in this way.”
The abused children are accused of being ‘impure’
The individual testimonies received by all four therapists are of course confidential, but Levy can describe in general terms what ritual abuse of this kind looks like. The abuse is always carried out by a group of adults, “with each of them having a specific role,” she says. “For example, there is someone running the ceremony, someone recording it and so on.” The children must be naked and the ceremony itself includes severe sexual abuse and life-endangering torture such as strangulation. “I have heard descriptions of drowning in the mikveh or at sea, or situations where a child was placed in a grave-like hole and covered in dirt or trapped inside a circle of fire.”
Another characteristic that keeps reappearing is that the perpetrators often use restraints or cages as part of the ritual abuse. In some cases, victims have told the therapists that they were taken to a room or pit with spiders or the carcasses of dead animals, “or a child was led to believe that this is what was happening,” Levy says. She adds that, according to her patients, their abusers lacked any emotion and were indifferent to the pain they were causing and their victims’ screams.
In many cases, ritual abuse took place within the family itself. “And then,” Levy says, “there are several family members involved, whether that be abusing the victim and participating in the ritual or by preparing the child for abuse or treating their wounds afterwards. In many cases, the children are handed over to other adults who will abuse them.”
In most cases, the rituals have cultic or religious overtones. In cases where there is no cultic-religious element, Levy says, the framing “can be that of a game, where the child is staged in various situations of abuse and photographed.”
According to the four therapists, even rituals which have cultic or mystic characteristics are not actually like that. Rather, they are a calculated mechanism designed to destroy the victim’s identity. “There was one victim who was very capable of describing exactly how they led her into the abusive situation,” says Oren-Chipman. “It was a description that I later heard from other places and other people – whereby the victim was ‘sacrificed’ by one of her relatives. It’s something that happens again and again. And the abuse itself, which is incredibly sadistic, is extremely harsh. Among the most violent I have ever heard of. Waiting nervously for the abuse, which could mean several children waiting together for their turn. And, of course, muttering verses, incantations and all kinds of religious conceptualizations.” Brenner adds that, according to testimony she has heard, the abusers also made use of religious artefacts: “It could be a shofar or a staff said to have powers. The abused children are accused of being ‘impure,’ so the ‘purpose’ of this specific ritual is to bring them to a higher level of spirituality, to some kind of purity and holiness.”
The use of religious or cultic symbols is designed to create an impossible conflict for the child. “It’s a cheap manipulation, but it’s a very powerful tool for creating psychological control over the victims,” Oren-Chipman explains. “They deliberately made them sin – stealing, violating the Shabbat, eating leaven during Passover, all kinds of things that sound petty to someone who is not religious, but ‘You sinned’ and ‘You should atone for your sins’ and now part of what you are going through is atonement and you are redeeming your soul and bringing about redemption through this thing. If they were abused in the name of God, and if God Himself wanted these things to happen to them, then it’s a lot harder to free themselves.”
Behind the cultic disguise and the pseudo-religious mumbling is a twisted internal logic that is as dangerous as it is ancient. Researcher Dr. Udi Frohman, who has studied the historic roots of the phenomenon, identifies the source of this warped ideology in movements like Sabbateanism and Frankism – movements which espouse the principle of “a commandment that comes by means of a transgression,” out of a belief that the abolition of old values requires the deliberate trampling of the most severe sexual prohibitions and a descent into impurity. The reports that Frohman cites from today’s victims sound as if they were taken from those same dark periods of history: “A circle surrounded by burning candles… The rabbi recites the blessing ‘Blessed is He who permits the forbidden’… They would repetitively recite Psalms… And they told me ‘You are special, you are chosen’.”
However, the modern-day version of ritual abuse often includes, according to victims’ testimony, a video camera documenting everything that happens. The therapists believe that the reason for this is financial: the videos are sold on the darknet. “There are buyers for these things,” says Brenner. “And a lot of our patients live in fear because there is videotaped evidence of them being abused circulating God knows where online.”
The camera, therefore, is not just a tool to make money on the darknet; it is also the ultimate weapon for extortion and to ensure the victims’ silence for the rest of their lives. “There are all kinds of ways to extort someone,” says Armon. “They want to get married or start dating someone [and the abusers threaten] to expose them or ruin their reputation.”
“The ritual is their way of controlling. Using brainwashing, intimidation, profound psychological strategies,” Armon adds. “The abusers are intelligent, powerful people of means; it’s not some marginal phenomenon that happens by mistake or something private that happens behind closed doors.”
We see broken bones and we see a lot of urinary tract infections.
Indeed, it is only natural for us to want to view the abusers as monsters, members of the society’s fringes or criminals who emerge from darkened alleys. But the reality, as depicted by victims’ testimonies, is rather different: “In quite a few of the cases we’ve come across,” Brenner reveals, “the perpetrators were high-status community members. They either held respected religious or spiritual authority, like a rabbi or a rebbetzin, or occupied other influential, prominent positions, such as a judge. It’s mind-boggling – the gap between the public persona and these stories. No one would believe such far-fetched stories about a judge, yes, a judge, or a teacher, or a school principal.”
“As a physician,” says Armon, “it’s important for me to point out that I have heard of doctors who have taken part in such things; who have deliberately harmed people. I have heard about births that took place in secret, all kinds of things that the medical team was involved in. I feel a responsibility to point this out. People are trying to turn ritual abuse into something political – which it is not. It exists everywhere that there is power and influence.”
According to Levy, some of her patients who suffered from organized abuse still carry the silent scars of what they endured in the medical files: “We see broken bones and we see a lot of urinary tract infections. When it comes to deliberate malnourishment, you see a lot of children who need infusions of iron. Why should a child need iron infusions without any medical reason?”
“On occasions, the abuse also included the denial of medical treatment,” says Brenner. “There are patients who told us that they were not allowed to see a doctor for years or that they only got medical treatment after they left the cult or the abusive environment.”
This “abusive environment,” as already mentioned, can often be the immediate family. The gateway to the world of organized abuse is often through a relative who traffics/pimps out the child victim. “It doesn’t have to be a parent. It can be an uncle or grandfather whom the parents trust who commits these abuses and who takes the child to a network of abusers,” Brenner adds.
Proximity and easy access to children explain why the victims are so young: “Usually around the age of three, four or five. And it continues for quite a long time,” Brenner says. “There are also cases of abuse of children of primary school age. Beyond that, it is apparently less common.”
Armon also wants to dispel the stigma around the victims’ families: “The victims can come from families that are considered upstanding; we’re not talking about children who have been picked up from the street because they come from the fringes of society.” The understanding that evil resides in the hearts of perfectly normative communities is perhaps the hardest to fathom. “The average citizen does not want to know that such things exist,” Armon admits. “The problem is that evil is good and good is evil – and that is also why it is impossible to believe them.”
They use drugs, electric shocks, hypnosis and lots of lies
Apart from sadistic abuse, part of the reason for ritual abuse is to force the victim into silence about what they have been subjected to. “The goal of the perpetrators of ritual abuse is simple,” Levy explains. “They want to keep on doing what they are doing, without their secret being exposed, and that’s where they invest all their efforts.” To this end, they do not stop at ordinary intimidation; they employ a practice known in professional circles as mind control. “The abusers deliberately create a state of dissociation,” Oren-Chipman explains. “They do not just rely on the fact that it is traumatic, causing the mind to forget, but also employ a variety of sadistic methods, such as using various types of drugs and mind-altering substances.”
“Many patients describe having all kinds of substances injected into them between their toes,” Levy confirms. “They use drugs, electric shocks, hypnosis and lots of lies, threats and brainwashing, repeating the messages again and again – all as part of the effort to induce a state of dissociation in the child.”
Armon says that the tactic is sadistic in a particular cold and calculating manner. “There are all kinds of techniques used, like flashing lights, mirrors or sleep deprivation. Certain words are used that become code words that trigger something. There are patients who will dissociate if I say a sentence a certain way, but if I express the meaning differently, they will stay with me in the conversation. There are those who know that these sentences are dangerous for them – sentences that leave them with no memory of what happened, no idea what they are doing or what is going on around them, and no ability to fight back.”
The therapists refer to this as psychological programming. “The word ‘programming’ might sound like it comes from some science-fiction movie or from the days of the Cold War,” Brenner says, “but since the victims are children of a very, very young age, there is something with repetition, with repeating a certain ritual, or an activity or spoken word that is repeated in a certain way. When it happens again and again, it’s a way of controlling the child.”
According to Brenner, these manipulations are accompanied by humiliating phrases repeated over the years, until they become ingrained in the victim’s inner consciousness, leading them to believe that they wanted what happened to them and that they are to blame. “On many occasions, the victims will tell themselves that they cooperated with their abusers because part of this programming forces her to lie in a certain position, for instance, while it happens over and over again,” Brenner adds. “When we look at this from the outside, it’s obvious that there is no and there can be no cooperation or consent here, but these manipulations make them feel as if they did these things of their own free will.” The result of this prolonged torture is total emotional collapse….
Oren-Chipman admits. “When I first encountered it, I also looked for psychological interpretations that would allow me to say ‘No, it can’t be true. The world surely isn’t so disturbed’.”
The clinical picture, however, presents a completely different reality from that of a mental health struggle. Levy explains the medical diagnoses: “With psychosis, we see fixed delusions that are completely unrelated to whether they talk about what happened or the bond between the patient and therapist, and there are no physical symptoms.” For victims of ritual abuse, in contrast, the body itself carries physical evidence of the horror: “Victims of ritual abuse have many physical symptoms, which sometimes manifest as if a part of them is silencing them. Every time they start to share something, they suddenly get nauseous and you can actually see them freeze. They also experience various pains linked to the abuse itself, which is something you just do not see with psychosis.”….
Armon adds: “You cannot fake what happens to the body, the physical response. The feelings and things that come up make no sense and cannot be put into words. But the disgust, the pain, the terror, the things you see inside the person’s body and eyes – you cannot fake that. And you feel it yourself too, as if it is passing into you. I have never felt anything like that with a psychotic patient.”….
In fact, the fragmented way in which these memories come to the surface is perhaps the best proof that they are genuine. “A traumatic memory is always fragmented, always partial,” Brenner explains. “Usually, a traumatic memory resurfaces in the form of physical feelings, flashbacks or panic attacks. In fact, if someone comes in and suddenly tells a story from beginning to end, detailing exactly what happened, that actually raises questions for us.”
However, this “physical truth,” which screams from within the therapy room and leaves the therapists with no room for doubt, collapses entirely in police investigation rooms. The inherent gap between how traumatic memories work – fragmented, partial and silent – and the strict demands of the law enforcement system explains how it is possible that not a single indictment has ever been filed in Israel for ritual abuse.
According to Armon, the famous case of Ka-Tzetnik’s (the author Yehiel De-Nur) dissociative collapse on the witness stand during the Eichmann trial illustrates this difficulty. “He was unable to answer the judges’ questions in the way that they demanded. So, our first demand is to establish a specialist unit for these cases. You also need investigators, prosecutors and judges who have expertise. And you need a court that specializes in ritual abuse.” ….
“I would say that, over the years, I have encountered at least 20 such cases – mainly women and a few men.”
Overseas, in contrast, more and more data has been collated over recent years. A report published in July 2025 in the United Kingdom by the two official organizations responsible for monitoring and treating sexual abuse – the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) – found that 2.5 percent of all calls to a dedicated helpline between 2006 and 2024 mentioned ritual abuse. The report found that, in the four years leading up to 2025, British welfare services and police received 211 reports of organized sexual abuse. At least 14 of these cases led to convictions.
A study surveying workers at a sexual assault support center in Melbourne, Australia found that 28 percent of them had supported one or more survivors of ritual abuse and, in the decade preceding the study, 153 such cases were documented in the city. In a survey conducted among 2,709 psychologists in the U.S., 13 percent reported that they had worked with one or more survivors of ritual sexual abuse. The British report emphasized that these figures are likely just the tip of the iceberg, due to immense barriers preventing victims from reporting, and that actual convictions do not represent the full scale of the phenomenon…. https://www.shomrim.news/eng/breaking-the-silence-around-ritual-abuse
From Ritual Sacrifice To Labour Abuse: How Rajkot Police Unravelled A 2018 Mystery
The breakthrough began to take shape during a massive anti-child labour crackdown conducted by the Rajkot police, which resulted in the rescue of numerous children from West Bengal. Reported by: Saurabh Vaktania India News Jun 05, 2026 describes graphic abuse
Rajkot: The Rajkot police have solved a horrific and deeply puzzling eight-year-old cold case involving the brutal murder of a child labourer. In 2018, the severed head of a young boy was discovered on the banks of the Aji River, sending shockwaves through the entire region. Initial police investigations leaned heavily toward the suspicion of a ritualistic human sacrifice, a theory that inadvertently led the case into a long, agonising dead end. However, recent breakthrough investigations have unmasked a far more terrifying reality, revealing that a young migrant child from West Bengal was savagely murdered by his employer, who then dismembered the body to erase evidence.
The breakthrough began to take shape during a massive anti-child labour crackdown conducted by the Rajkot police, which resulted in the rescue of numerous children from West Bengal.
While processing the repatriations, one desperate family pointed out that their son was not among the nineteen rescued children. They informed officials that a contractor had taken their young boy to Rajkot for work nearly eight years ago, and he had never been heard from since. Acting swiftly on this crucial missing-person link, investigators traced the contractor, Ajit Maula, alias Azmat Maula, who was already serving time in a Kolkata prison for an unrelated offence.
Under sustained interrogation, the contractor finally cracked and confessed to the heinous crime.
The investigation revealed that the contractor routinely subjected the young boy to extreme physical abuse simply because he could not keep up with the gruelling pace of the work. The relentless torture culminated in the child’s murder, after which the accused severed the body into multiple pieces, dumping the head by the Aji River to mask his tracks….
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/from-ritual-sacrifice-to-labour-abuse-how-rajkot-police-unravelled-a-2018-mystery-11593039
Bail win for alleged leader of global satanic child abuse ring – Clare Sibthorpe and Perry Duffin April 28, 2026
The accused leader of a global “satanic paedophile ring” that allegedly includes a swimming coach and former police officer has been released back into the community following months in custody on remand.
Landon Ashton Versace Germanotta-Mills, who describes himself online as an “investigative and forensic journalist” who railed against child abusers, was granted Supreme Court bail on Tuesday despite prosecutors expressing concerns about his release.
The 27-year-old is alleged to have played a leading role in an international satanic child sexual abuse ring that police described as “the most extreme we’ve seen”, with its details so “depraved” it has shocked court authorities.
Germanotta-Mills was arrested several months ago alongside ex-police officer David Turner and former Victorian swim coach Mark Andrew Sendecky, both 42.
Detective Superintendent Jayne Doherty, the head of the NSW Sex Crimes squad, said at the time that the material consisted of victims aged from babies to 12, was “among the most extreme we have seen” and that its “use of satanic iconography demonstrates the level of depravity”.
She said police were working with international law enforcement and had gathered evidence identifying 145 alleged overseas offenders.
Germanotta-Mills was charged a string of offences, including accessing, transmitting and possessing child abuse material and some relating to bestiality material…. Several more men were arrested in connection to the alleged child abuse ring and remain before the courts, including Turner, Sendecky, Benjamin Raymond Drysdale and Colin Milne.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/bail-win-for-alleged-leader-of-global-satanic-child-abuse-ring-amid-admissions-20260428-p5zrmg.html
This is what it’s really like to live with multiple personality disorder — and 24 alter egos By Eric Spitznagel Published May 30, 2026 describes dissociative episodes
Cameron West, who lives with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), revealed childhood sexual abuse by his grandmother.
Rikki, West’s wife, helped manage his breakdown and supported their family through his 24 alters. West’s 1999 book, “First Person Plural,” a bestseller, is reissued with a new e pilogue. Cameron West’s eyes go somewhere else for a moment.
He’s sitting beside his wife of 45 years, Rikki, in the middle of a conversation about a morning more than 30 years ago. She opened a closet door in their young son’s bedroom and found her husband crouched on the floor with a sketchpad and a red marker.
He wasn’t entirely Cameron West at that moment. He was Davy, a sweet, sad 4-year-old drawing pictures of what had been done to him as a child. The images were crude and explicit and terrible. West had no idea who Davy was, yet, or what the drawings meant.
“My mind was protecting me, from things I would not have been able to psychologically survive as a child,” West told The Post in an exclusive interview. “It turned out to involve my grandmother sexually abusing me.”
Little Davy was the first of West’s 24 alter personalities to emerge. He documented his experiences with his alters — the clinical term for each of the separate personalities living inside a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously called multiple personality disorder — with the 1999 book “First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple.”
A New York Times bestseller and one of the first first-person chronicles of DID, it sold over 1 million copies, earned West an “Oprah” show appearance and was optioned for a Disney/Robin Williams movie that was never made.
Now, the memoir has been reissued with a new epilogue bringing the story of West, now a grandfather in his 70s, and his family up to date….
Central to how the family managed was a concept West’s therapists helped him develop called co-consciousness, an internal awareness that allowed him to observe his alters when they were out rather than simply losing time entirely.
“He can see what they’re doing,” Rikki explained. “They’re aware of him. They have an inner communication.”
In 2001, the Wests went to Los Angeles to see a neurologist who recorded West’s brain wave patterns in real time as his alters switched.
“Each of your alters have different brainwave patterns from you and from each other,” West recalled the doctors telling him. “And child alters have the brainwave patterns of children that an adult no longer has.” When switching occurred between alters, the EEG looked like a seizure. Each personality produced a distinct and measurable signature.
Twenty-five years on, most of West’s alters have quieted or integrated, the result of years of intensive therapy, including inpatient treatment at a Dallas trauma center, and the slow internal work of building communication within the system…. https://nypost.com/2026/05/30/health/what-its-really-like-to-live-with-multiple-personality-disorder/
How Childhood Trauma Shapes Dissociative Identity Disorder Repeated early abuse and neglect can fragment a developing self. March 12, 2026 | Fabiana Franco Ph.D. Trauma, Resilience, and Recovery – Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Chronic childhood trauma can disrupt identity development through dissociation.
Repeated abuse and attachment wounds are central risk factors for dissociative identity disorder (DID).
The child’s mind may divide experience into separate self-states to survive.
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a trauma-related condition marked by the presence of two or more distinct identity states and significant gaps in memory that cannot be explained by ordinary forgetfulness (Şar et al., 2017; Loewenstein & Brand, 2023; Kissa et al., 2025).
These identity states, often called “parts,” may have different patterns of emotion, perception, memory, and behavior. For many individuals, these identity states developed in response to overwhelming, often hidden, early life trauma.
Why Chronic Childhood Trauma Matters
Research consistently shows very high rates of severe, repeated childhood abuse and neglect among individuals diagnosed with DID (Raison & Andrea, 2022; Tang, 2023; Şar et al., 2017). Compared with other psychiatric diagnoses, adults with DID report higher levels of emotional neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, often beginning early in life.
Chronic Trauma Is Not Single-Event Trauma
Chronic trauma differs from a single frightening event. It can include prolonged exposure to:
Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.
Emotional or physical neglect.
Chaotic or threatening caregiving environments.
Disorganized or frightening attachment relationships.
When young children, whose brains and sense of identity are in the early stages of formation, experience chronic trauma, the effects can be more pronounced than in adults or older children. Some studies suggest that trauma occurring before ages 6 to 9 may be particularly associated with later dissociative disorders (Raison & Andrea, 2022; Tanwar et al., 2025).
Dissociation as a Survival Strategy
When a child cannot physically escape danger, the mind may seek to create psychological distance. Dissociation allows a child to detach from overwhelming pain, fear, or betrayal. This response can be protective in the short term, but severely damaging in the long term. What is calming to the young child can emerge later in life as DID.
Over time, repeated dissociation may become structured. Different self-states may emerge to manage different functions:
One part handles school or daily life.
Another contains traumatic memories.
Another carries intense emotion, such as rage or shame.
Clinical and theoretical models describe this as the mind’s effort to compartmentalize unbearable experiences (Cudzik et al., 2019; Şar, 2017). This division can allow the child to function and even appear outwardly “fine.”
The long-term cost is fragmentation. Because these states do not fully integrate, the adult may experience discontinuity in memory, identity, and self-experience (Loewenstein & Brand, 2023)….
While childhood exposure to chronic trauma is not a guarantee that DID will develop later in life, it is a very strong predictor. The earlier the exposure, and the more intense the exposure to chronic interpersonal trauma, the greater the likelihood of developing DID. Abuse involving attachment figures appears to distinguish DID from other trauma-related conditions (Şar et al., 2017; Raison & Andrea, 2022). DID is best understood as a developmental adaptation to prolonged relational trauma during the years when identity is still consolidating….
Treatment and the Possibility of Healing
DID is often an extreme adaptation that enables survival despite chronic early trauma. Treatment helps transform that survival system into a life that feels more continuous, grounded, and whole.
DID often responds to treatment with phase-oriented trauma therapy. Treatment typically proceeds in stages:
Safety and stabilization.
Careful processing of traumatic memories.
Greater integration and cooperation among self-states.
Systematic reviews suggest that structured, trauma-informed treatment can reduce dissociation, self-harm, and instability while improving functioning (Griffiths et al., 2025).
For many individuals, therapy does not erase parts of the self. Instead, it strengthens communication, reduces internal conflict, and fosters a more cohesive and flexible sense of identity.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/trauma-resilience-and-recovery/202603/how-childhood-trauma-shapes-dissociative-identity
Please use caution while reading all of these papers.
Some of the information may be very heavy for survivors.
If in doubt, download the page and wait to read it
until you are with your therapist or a trusted support person.
