The Hale-Sinason Report

Sophie Goodchild's article in the Independent on Sunday betrays considerable naïvety. Not only has she restricted her interviews to Sinason's band of supporters but, more seriously, she has failed to read her newspaper's own archive on the subject. There she would have found many articles written by Rosie Waterhouse who took the trouble to investigate the early-1990s allegations of Satanic abuse and found them seriously wanting.

With the notable exception of The Independent (in earlier days) and the Mail on Sunday, the media has a pretty poor record in this area. This is particularly true of the television broadcasters. For the whole of the 1990s, Channel 4's Current Affairs department refused, bafflingly, to commission any programme which dared to challenge the veracity of the Satanic abuse myth.

Viewers certainly deserved much better than what was served up by the likes of Tim Tate, Bea Campbell and Andrew Boyd. For exclusive inside information on the making of a Satanic abuse programme, click here...

The La Fontaine Letter

This quote is from Professor La Fontaine's letter to Bruce Clark, Head of Policy at the Dept of Health. She is commenting on the DoH's decision for commissioning a report on a subject that she had thoroughly covered in 1993/94.

"1. The only valid reason for repeating a piece of work is that there is evidence that renders its conclusions suspect. There is no mention of such evidence and it seems unlikely that there was any because the proposed research by Valerie Sinason and Dr Hale did not propose to use comparable data. Moreover my report, The Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Abuse, (ISBN 0113217978 HMSO 1994) was extensively reviewed by the Research Department's peer review requirement. "Complaints" about conclusions are not evidence about the work, merely about the views of the complainers, and should not be considered in themselves as reasons for funding further research.

"2. Ms Sinason's research is presented as though it were funded by the DoH in the normal way. It was not. It was not funded by the Research Section of the DoH (a fact that you omit to mention), there was no peer review of the proposal and neither of the applicants had research experience. I was told by Dr Hale in the summer of 1998 that the research report to the DoH was nearly finished. Now you deny you have it but refrain from mentioning that this means it is nearly two years overdue. What has happened? Given that public money has been involved I think a better explanation than was offered is due."

Professor Jean La Fontaine, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, London School of Economics.

Prof La Fontaine provided this quote from her letter to the Sub-culture Alternatives Freedom Foundation (SAFF) whom we thank for copying it onto OffMSG. SAFF is a pro-occult group which has been gathering information about the Satanic abuse myth since 1989. Its web-site is at: www.saff.totalserve.co.uk

The Independent on Sunday

30 April 2000

SATANIC ABUSE NO MYTH, SAY EXPERTS

By Sophie Goodchild, Home Affairs Correspondent

A specially commissioned government report will this week conclude that satanic abuse does take place in Britain. It will say that its victims have suffered actual abuse and are not suffering from "false memory syndrome".

The report, ordered by the Department of Health, focuses on the experiences of 50 "survivors". Compiled by Dr John Hale [sic], director of the Portman Clinic in London, and psychotherapist Valerie Sinason, it will reopen the debate which started a decade ago with testimonies from children in Nottingham, Rochdale and Orkney.

Its findings contradict the claims of a report ordered by the Conservative government in 1994, which concluded that satanic abuse was a "myth". It follows the growing concern of child protection agencies, and the Government, over organised child abuse.

Last week, it emerged that police were investigating the alleged sexual and physical abuse of up to 4,000 children in care homes and council-run homes in Devon. Ms Sinason, who has treated 126 ritual abuse survivors, said yesterday that in many cases children were tortured by being held under water or made to believe they had witnessed the murder of infants as part of the satanic ritual.

"Some children are born for the purpose of abuse and are not registered on birth certificates," she added. "The abusers use trickery to convince children they have taken part in murder. This increases the power of the abuser."

The report will point to the difficulty of bringing prosecutions because of the problems of putting abused children into the witness box. There are currently at least five cases involving ritual abuse in the hands of lawyers. Lee Moore, a barrister who founded the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers, and was himself [sic] a victim of ritual abuse, said it was hard to persuade people to give evidence, particularly after the 1994 report claiming satanic abuse was a myth perpetuated by social workers.

The latest report was welcomed by Dr Joan Coleman, a Surrey psychiatrist who has spent 14 years treating victims. "A lot of children are born into satanic families who indulge in this ritual abuse," she said. "It's only now that child sexual abuse is being exposed that people are beginning to believe ritual abuse exists."

The report will be studied by John Hutton, the health department minister with responsibility for child protection. He is expected to order an investigation into its findings.

© 2000 The Independent on Sunday

Government to Bin £22,000 Abuse Report

(Continued from Main Page)

The award for the Hale-Sinason Study was made by the policy section of the DoH -- without the proposal being formally reviewed. The person who approved it has now left the Department. The commission was originally applauded by the diehard protagonists of so-called "satanic abuse" (the flat-earth faction of the child abuse industry) who, in 1996, forecast that it would result in a government U-turn on the issue.

In reality, the whole thing has backfired – not only have Sinason and Hale spectacularly failed to report any plausible evidence for satanic abuse, but investigations by a specially-seconded Metropolitan police officer, Inspector Clive Driscoll, based in Fulham, do not appear to have uncovered any proof either. Sinason has talked of fifty cases - based presumably on the unsubstantiable claims of her adult "survivor" clients going back years.

The waste of £22,000 of public funds on this doomed project is a serious embarrassment for the DoH. What makes the situation worse for the Department is that they were warned four years ago that the Portman Pair would never be able to deliver. More significantly, Professor Jean La Fontaine (author of the DoH’s 1994 report which thoroughly dismissed satanic abuse claims) criticised the Department for commissioning the second report. "We received complaints about your findings," declared the DoH. "Complaints are not evidence," the professor riposted in a letter to Bruce Clark, Head of the Department of Health Policy Section.

BBC Radio 4 gave Sinason a day’s worth of free publicity back in February - though again, no sign of the fabled report or any evidence to back up the authors’ findings. A sure sign that the study had gone pear-shaped came on 30 April 2000 when the Independent on Sunday ran an article headlined: "Satanic Abuse No Myth, Say Experts". Apart from falling into the trap of saying that the report would be published "this week", the article was based on an interview with Valery Sinason and was almost a word-for-word retread of the one she gave to Andrew Boyd of the New Christian Herald in 1996.

Four years of work, £22,000 of public money and nothing new to say?

For more on the media handling of the Satanic abuse story, see The Media and The Myth.

To read about the origins of "Satanic Ritual Abuse" in the UK, read the JET Report in the OffMSG Broxtowe Files.