ALISON MILLER AND
HEATHER DAVEDIUK GINGRICH
Someone recently told me (Alison) that I needed a break from “studying evil.” That phrase, studying evil, stuck with me, and as I thought about it, I realized that it is indeed what I have been doing. The people I have treated for the past 25 years, survivors of mind control (MC) and ritual abuse (RA) whom I study, learn from, write about, and hopefully help heal, have, since childhood, been traumatized by highly organized evil.
While we only need to look at news headlines to be reminded of the presence of evil in this world, and we are aware that we are all sinners, many of us are unaware of the depths of evil in which some human beings engage. It may even be easier to remain relatively oblivious to these horrible realities that can potentially threaten our sense of safety in the world. This may be part of the reason that there has been ongoing controversy about the very existence of ritual abuse and mind control (deMause, 1994). However, despite the emotional difficulty of the material, it is important to address because many Christian counselors knowingly or unknowingly have clients who have been victims of RA or MC or both. This chapter will be a challenging read.
The terms ritual abuse and mind control, while intricately related, are not synonymous, yet unfortunately there has not been consensus about exactly how they differ. Some writers (e.g., Noblitt & Noblitt, 2014) use RA as a generic term and reserve MC for abuse by medical experts and government agencies. Others (e.g., Lacter, 2011; Miller, 2012) use MC as the generic term and reserve RA for mind control by religious groups. In any case, the goal of both is to take control of a victim’s mind and behavior so that the person will engage in activities that would ordinarily run counter to the positive aspects of human nature. The way the terms are used is less important than an understanding of the actual practices and their effect on the victims.
Lacter, in her extensive website (End Ritual Abuse, http://endritualabuse.org/), describes the activities of persons or groups engaging in these practices:
Extreme, sadistic, repetitious, physical abuse/torture, often to near-death
Exploitation of the mind’s capacity to dissociate trauma, to manipulate behavior, to create amnesia, and to prevent disclosure
Mind-control and brainwashing techniques for the purpose of indoctrination and control
Drugs to induce immobility, pain, confusion, hallucinations, unconscious states, depersonalization, and derealization
Systematic abuse and rituals to coerce and indoctrinate victims into the abusers’ beliefs and worldview
Force, threats, and manipulation to coerce victims to harm others
Sexual abuse of children and adults including rape, prostitution, pornography, snuff films, and bestiality
Trafficking and slavery of children and adults
Abuse beginning in infancy and childhood, with the goal of lifelong control
Deprivation of basic needs and human contact, including confinement and isolation
Human and animal sacrifice to appease and empower humans and their deities
Nonconsenting medical and psychological experimentation to increase the ability to control a victim’s mind and behavior
Attempts to control or dominate the “soul,” “spirit,” or their equivalents crossculturally
For millennia, and probably for all recorded history, occult religious groups have abused children in the names of their deities (Noblitt & Noblitt, 2008, 2014). For example, the Old Testament contains references to malevolent magical practices (e.g., Ezek 13) and sacrifice of children (e.g., Abraham and Isaac in Gen 22:1-13 and Heb 11:17; Jephthah and his daughter in Judg 11:29-40; the people of Judah in Jer 7:31).
More recent historical records (Lifton, 1986/2000) describe Nazi doctors who experimented in heinous ways on both children and adults in the World War II concentration camps, places where there were no ethical guidelines for research on human beings. What is not generally known is that these same Nazi doctors, along with experts of other nationalities eager to learn from them, continued their experiments after the war. The results of such appalling research served to guide international political and criminal groups who wanted to learn how to train children to participate in illegal activities their entire lives without their conscious knowledge of this participation.
Hoffman’s memoirs (2014, 2016) of her personal experience of over 70 years demonstrate some of the early connections between the Nazi doctors, US and international political groups, secret societies (in her case the Illuminati and a hidden group within the Freemasons), magical religions that connected worship with sexual violence, and traditional organized crime involving child prostitution and pornography, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. She remembers her grandfather, a top-level Illuminati programmer of human minds, and his assistant swapping methods with the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, and American and international politicians taking advantage of both these sources of mind control knowledge. She shows how, when she was still a child and an adolescent, her primary owners (i.e., her family) sold her services for prostitution and breeding to organized criminal groups that traded in child sexual victims and babies for various kinds of misuse.
In chapter eleven, I (Heather) contrasted the developmental processes that occur in children raised in a healthy environment with those who have suffered from chronic, relational trauma in early childhood. In healthy development the dissociated self-states that are present at birth become increasingly integrated through attuned parenting from a primary attachment figure. In cases of child abuse, such as incest or physical and emotional abuse by a parent, the normal process of integration is thwarted, the child is more likely to develop an insecure attachment style, and the ability to dissociate that exists for all young children is more likely to be used as a psychological defense mechanism to deal with the trauma. The fragmentation of the child’s self and identity that accompanies such abuses thus tends to be a spontaneous occurrence to which the perpetrator may be oblivious.1
This is quite different from the intentional use of dissociation by mind-controlling perpetrator groups. Such groups, whether religious, political, or merely criminal, use their knowledge of dissociation to create highly organized, structured personality systems in their victims. Just as dissociative identity disorder (DID) is highly associated with abuse in early childhood (Carlson, Tuppett, & Sroufe, 2009) as well as the development of an insecure attachment style (Gingrich, 2013), such groups realize that for mind control to be effective it has to begin in infancy and involve life-threatening torture on top of a base of insecure or no attachment.
According to the self-reports of our clients and those of other therapists treating victims of RA/MC,2 there appear to be commonalities with respect to how various perpetrator groups operate. Most mind-controlled clients begin life with an insecure or disorganized attachment, deliberately induced by the abuser group. Then they are trained from birth, or (if their abuse occurred only outside the home) from a very young age (three years old or younger), through drugs, torture, and life-threatening trauma to become many “people” (i.e., to develop DID). Movies, music, stories, pictures, and virtual-reality technology are all used to distort these children’s perceptions of reality when they are so young that they cannot distinguish fantasy or story from objective truth.
The perpetrator’s goal is to split off internal parts or alternate personalities who will remain children, and train these internal children to believe what the abusers tell them and to do jobs assigned by the abusers. The abusers then carefully store these child parts in designated internal locations in an imaginary structure or inner world, thereby imprisoning them in their traumatic situations at the original ages. These alternate personalities do not spontaneously appear in the “real” world, where they would mature, but emerge only when called out through preassigned signals by the abuser group in order to perform assigned tasks.3 Those alters who are designated to commit evil acts such as ritual murder, assassination, torture, and other crimes are taught to perform their tasks without emotions; the emotions are stored elsewhere in the internal system. Strong barricades or walls, reinforced by torture, are constructed in the victims’ internal worlds to prevent communication between various parts, in particular to separate the trained alters from the “front people” who handle everyday life. No one part, therefore, knows the entire narrative of any situation, which makes it unlikely that there will be any internal interference to prevent the victim from accomplishing the task desired by the perpetrator group.
Each victim’s personality system is typically set up as a hierarchy or a set of interrelated hierarchies. Those in charge, usually adolescent alters, give orders to those under their command. Under them are punishers or enforcers (also called persecutor alters in the DID literature) who administer punishments to disobedient alters (see the section “How the Abuser Group Protects Its Secrets” below). Survivors of these abuses usually have hundreds of alters, most of them mere fragments of personality. The front person (sometimes called the “host personality”) is designed to be unaware of the internal parts and their activities. People outside the perpetrator group, such as therapists and child protection workers, are often unaware of the dissociative disorder and usually see only the front person.
Chapters two and four of Alison’s (Miller, 2014) book for survivors contain checklists for persons who think they may be survivors of these abuses. Here are some of the most common items about which you might ask a client or listen for in his or her story:
Having immediate, strong, unstoppable reactions to certain sights, sounds, or touches, and feeling that certain behaviors must be performed in response to these
Having a strong impulse to return home to family or childhood places, even if they are far away, especially after making disclosures about abuse
Suddenly falling into a strong suicidal depression without knowing why
Feeling as if the head has a division between the right and left sides
Flashbacks that involve technology, such as virtual reality or an electrified chair or helmet
Memories that appear to be impossible, such as alien abductions
Making drawings characterized by ritual-like features (e.g., lots of red and black, knives, fire, cages, robes, body parts, blood)
Preoccupation with or needing to avoid newscasts, magazine articles, or conversations about MC or RA
Psychiatric symptoms that worsen around the client’s own birthday, family members’ birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, May Day, and early September
Cutting patterns, shapes, or letters on the client’s own body
Intrusive thoughts or impulses regarding violent sex, sex with children, or sex with animals
Odd, ritualistic songs or chants running through the client’s head, sometimes with a sexual, bizarre, or “you’d better not tell” theme
Hearing voices giving the order not to talk or to be quiet
Symptoms such as bodily pain, nausea, a severe headache, paranoid thoughts and fear, or flashbacks of violent events after talking about possible abuse memories
Spontaneous spasms as if receiving an electric shock
Feeling that there is something foreign inside the body that can do harm to the client or others or can signal the client’s location or thoughts to abusers
Worrying that he or she will harm or murder someone or has done so
Feeling that his or her energy will poison others
Dreams that seem to describe MC or RA experiences
Fears, phobias, and nightmares associated with the following:
■ religion and church |
■ cameras and being photographed |
■ Christmas and Easter |
■ specific colors or shapes |
■ going to the doctor or the dentist |
■ ropes, being tied up, being hung |
■ bodily fluids and excretions |
■ confined spaces, basements, crawl spaces, pits |
■ injections and needles |
■ death and burial |
■ weapons |
■ red meat or certain other foods |
■ birthdays and weddings |
■ harm being done to loved ones or pets |
■ police, jails, and cages |
|
■ baths and drowning |
|
■ insects, snakes, spiders, and rats |
No single one of these items means that your client has a history of mind control or ritual abuse. Some of the fears (like needles, insects, or the dentist) are common, so it is important to look for ordinary ways to account for them in the client’s life history. Look at the entire pattern of answers. If many of the items fit, especially the uncommon ones, you might suspect RA and MC.
All child abusers tell their victims not to tell anyone else what they have experienced. The words they say to children range from “It’s our little secret” to “You don’t want me to go to prison, do you?” to “I’ll kill your mother if you talk to anyone about this.” However, the training used by mind controllers is much more systematic and relies on the dissociative personality system for its effectiveness. Organized abuser groups, including those associated with government agencies and the military, place the highest priority on their abuse of children not being discovered. Therefore, they train the inner parts of their victims’ complex personality systems to be loyal, silent, and obedient by creating very elaborate security mechanisms within each survivor’s system. This ensures that the perpetrator group and handlers are notified and can take action if any alter begins to remember and/or disclose the abuse.
Warning and punishment programming. Certain alters are trained to administer warnings and punishments if the person is disobeying the abusers, in particular telling anything about the abuse memories. Warnings may come via frightening voices who sound like the abusers, saying such things as “Don’t talk” or “Shut up,” or via sudden unexpected pain.
If the person does not heed a warning, more severe punishments kick in, carried out by terrified child and adolescent alters who are doing their assigned jobs of punishing in the belief that any punishment given by the actual abusers, whom they believe know everything, will be worse. A common punishment is using parts of traumatic memories to retraumatize through flooding the system with feelings of despair, recalling the pain of a rape, or hallucinating the presence of the perpetrators in the therapy room. There are alters trained to cut the body’s arms, sometimes with cult symbols, or to attempt suicide; the dangerously suicidal ones believe that they do not belong to the body and will not die with it. Since mental health workers are aware of self-injury as common in adolescence and as part of borderline behavior, they do not suspect ritual abuse when it occurs.
Certain alters are trained to physically return to the group so that the perpetrators can regain control of the person through use of additional torture; they will attempt this if the perpetrators’ “Don’t talk” rule is disobeyed. A phone call home may also activate these alters. If the individual does not return, he or she may well exhibit serious psychiatric symptoms that appear to require hospitalization. Unfortunately, admission is not a guarantee that perpetrators will not have access to the survivor while he or she is hospitalized. Like sexual offenders, members of perpetrator groups gravitate to professions where victims are available.
Access programming and the Big Lie. All the childhood training relies on what I (Alison) call the Big Lie. The powerful adult abusers emphasize to their child (and later adult) victims that they know everything their victims do or say and, in some cases, even everything they think. Trickery is used when the victims are children to make them believe this lie. There are many versions of the Big Lie—for example, “The invisible all-seeing Eye always sees you,” “Satan (or God) is always watching you and will let us know about you,” “Your stuffed animals (or the crows, or microchips we put in your body) report on you to us,” “We have magical abilities to know what you do, say, and think.” Young children do not understand the concept of deception and so believe such lies, as do child alters even after the person has reached adulthood. This is a basic strategy in mind control.
The abuser group often does know if the survivor has remembered or disclosed forbidden material. It is easy for the survivor to be observed by group-loyal family members when he or she is a child. When the survivor has grown up and moved away, information is gleaned through young reporter alters who, believing the Big Lie, have the job of contacting a designated group member if there has been disloyalty, having been taught that they had better tell the group or else the all-knowing group will punish them severely.
The reporter alters are not put under the authority of the internal leaders and may see themselves as spies, telling the abusers to whom they are loyal about the activities of the “traitor” parts of the person. The existence of reporter alters is hidden from the front (everyday) person and from those alters in charge of the personality system. The individual feels a strong urge to “phone home,” contacts his or her designated family or group member, switches into a reporter alter, gives the information, and then switches back. Neither the everyday person nor the alters who are in charge of the personality system have any idea that reporting has occurred.
When a reporter alter discloses disloyalty, the group immediately goes into action to close down memories and elicit terror about the consequences of remembering and telling. Alters are trained to “come when called,” that is, to respond to access triggers such as beeps over the phone or hand signals from across the street, so that perpetrator group members can abduct them and torture them into submission. At other times a mere phone call from a member of the perpetrator group, who may threaten torture or trigger programming that activates internal punisher alters, will suffice to control the client’s behavior. This can severely undermine the counseling process.
Punishment of children, and later of adult survivors, for disobedience or disloyalty is swift and cruel. Beatings, imprisonment, torture, gang rape, electroshock—abuser groups do not hesitate to hurt children severely in order to get across their instructions to never disobey. There are also “object lessons” in which someone purported to be a traitor is killed painfully—for example, by being skinned alive—while other children watch. The usual consequence threatened for disobedience or disloyalty is death to the victim or his or her loved ones. Young alters of survivors remember these extreme punishments and are terrified of their recurrence. There is specific programming to make victims afraid of therapists, physicians, clergy, and law enforcement officers, all of whom abuse the children while in their professional roles. Sometimes it is just a group member in uniform; other times it is an actual physician, priest, pastor, therapist, or police officer who belongs to the group.
The goal of treatment is ultimately the same as it is for other complex trauma survivors, including those with DID (see chaps. 10 and 11 in this volume). As discussed in chapter eleven, the standard of care for treatment of complex trauma is a three-phased approach. Safety is developed and symptoms stabilized (phase 1), the trauma is processed (phase 2), and the gains are consolidated, furthering greater integration of self and identity (phase 3). However, there are additional complicating factors in the treatment of survivors of RA/MC (see also Gingrich, 2013).
Phase 1: Safety and stabilization. The development of a sense of safety and stabilization of symptoms can take a long time, often many years, for survivors whose trauma has come at the hands of other people, whether or not via organized abuse. However, when RA/MC survivors are currently being accessed by a perpetrator group so that the client is continuing to be traumatized, they may eventually feel safe within the therapeutic relationship, but they are not actually safe in broader life.
Phase 1 with these survivors needs to focus, first and foremost, on actual physical safety. It is imperative that the counselor not press the client to disclose traumatic memories early in therapy, because any disclosure that is made may trigger reporter parts of the client to contact the perpetrator group, who will then take action to close the security leak. (This is discussed in detail below.)
Most survivors come from families in which all relatives were involved in the abuser group. Therefore, the therapist needs to gently inquire about where the client’s family is and how much contact he or she has with various family members. Determining whether the client is likely to be currently safe is your first priority.
Another reason not to push for memory work in the early stages is that disclosures will set off programming designed to destabilize a client who initially appeared stable. Begin, then, by getting to know the front person and whichever members of the personality system present themselves to you. Those who put them forward will be watching you to see whether or not you are going to switch into an abuser personality and hurt them. It takes a long time to build trust with someone who has been so massively betrayed; there is no substitute for time and consistency.
Working with the personality system. As mentioned, survivors of RA/MC have many persecutor alters. Some give threats or warnings; others administer punishments. It is very important not to fight with the persecutor alters and not to encourage the other alters to engage in a “war” with them. If there is already an internal war, aim for peace rather than taking sides with “good” alters against “bad” ones. The persecutors are simply child and adolescent parts doing the jobs they were assigned by the abusers, in fear that if they do not do those jobs, something even worse will happen. It is important to befriend these alters; you will be the first kind person they have ever met. Whatever you do, do not try to oust or imprison the persecutor parts—you will need them as your allies. They have been told by the abuser group that no one outside the group will ever accept them. Prove the abusers wrong.
Earlier we discussed how the personality systems of RA/MC survivors are set up as one or more hierarchies. You as a therapist, along with the client’s safe and supportive friends or spiritual community, need to pursue a strategy of establishing rapport with the dominant alter personalities (that is, those in charge of the internal hierarchies) and showing them how they have been deceived. With such help, these internal leaders can help the other parts work through their traumatic memories and achieve personal freedom. As you get to know the parts who present themselves first, notice whether or not they are hearing voices warning them not to talk or threatening them. If so, ask to talk with the voices. Express curiosity about why they are saying these things and whether it is a job they were assigned. Ask what will happen if they do not do their jobs. You can gradually work your way up the hierarchy as each alter is replaced by the one who threatens and tries to control that alter. Treat every alter with respect and curiosity. Try to get them to talk with one another in order to improve internal communication. Working with the system in this way is an important part of therapy. It is wisest not to approach the traumatic memories until those inside parts whom the abusers put in charge are cooperating with you (see Miller, 2014, chap. 14).
Phase 2: Trauma processing. Eventually your client will be ready to work with the traumatic memories, if those alters in charge of the system are cooperative and there is some degree of external safety. In order to reconstitute a traumatic memory for healing purposes, all of those parts of the person involved in that memory need to come together. This is possible in many but not all mind-controlled personality systems. If the person was mind-controlled throughout childhood, there are often parts who have been trained to locate all the other parts who are involved in a particular memory. Mind controllers want the personality systems they control to be well organized so that they can call up specific alter personalities to perform their tasks. Fortunately for therapists, it is possible to access and learn this internal organization to help clients work through their memories.
In our experience, when the important parts of a survivor client, including not just the front person but also the designated leaders of the internal personality system, are determined to recover and trust you as their therapist, you can trust those internal leaders to bring forward the different sections of the system and the most important memories (usually the ones that created the “programs”) for healing in the right order.
I (Alison) prefer to work through a traumatic memory in one or more two-hour sessions. I ask the personality-system leaders to gather all the alters involved in that memory, including the ones who hold physical or emotional feelings as well as those who have the story line. I have these leaders look for alters, usually young children, who were assigned the job of hiding part of the memories to prevent the programming from being resolved and tell these children to add their parts to the memories. Then I have the client deliberately dissociate the bodily and emotional feelings into a sealed container, and all alters involved watch the “video” of the memory, with sight and sound only. After they have all seen and heard what happened, they add in the feelings gradually until all feelings have been put together with the memory, which is then put into a labeled container to prevent flashbacks or “leaking” of feelings into everyday life. I then spend some time discussing the meaning of this memory with system leaders and those involved in the event. The front people do not have to be present if the memory did not involve them. Front people have a very important job, to handle everyday life, and knowing memories prematurely can destabilize them.
Phase 3: Consolidation and resolution. For the most part, Phase 3 goals will be similar for RA/MC clients as they are for other clients with DID (see chap. 11). The biggest difference is that RA/MC clients will need to continue to be vigilant with respect to potential attempts of perpetrator groups to re-access them. There is likely to be ongoing memory work for some time, even after the bulk of the trauma processing has been completed, because these clients have had many more traumatic experiences than most abuse survivors. They may have very few skills in creating and maintaining relationships because they have not been permitted to build friendships outside the perpetrator group. Therefore, they may need considerable coaching in this area.
The spiritual abuse in these groups is deliberate and heinous. The Satanic and Luciferian groups in particular have the objective of destroying the soul, and they stop at nothing to achieve this. They are aware that God does not intervene directly to rescue abused children, and they take advantage of this fact to convince their victims that they are better off with Satan, since God has rejected them. Some of the specifics as to how this is done are outlined below. We need to warn you that the graphic details may be upsetting.
Desecration of sacraments, Scripture, and religious holidays. Satanic cults utilize Christian symbols and intentionally desecrate them during their rituals. Survivors report being forced to participate in black masses where they first watch a person being killed with a knife (or are forced to kill the person themselves) and then participate in ritualized cannibalism (i.e., literally drink the person’s blood and eat his or her flesh). Given such an experience, it is understandable that participating in a Christian communion service could serve as a trauma trigger for an RA survivor with alters who hold such horrific memories (whether or not actual human sacrifice occurred or whether alters have been deceived into thinking that it occurred).
One survivor reported being forced to repeat the Lord’s Prayer over and over again while simultaneously hurting someone or, conversely, hearing the perpetrator group chant the Lord’s Prayer as the survivor is ritually gang-raped. Many variations on this theme have occurred and are reported in the literature. Counselors may unwittingly retraumatize such clients if they naively suggest that the survivor meditate on passages of Scripture that the counselors intend to bring peace and comfort when they may in fact have the reverse effect. Words have often been distorted by the perpetrator groups: peace means war, light means darkness, God means Satan, and so forth. So if you see your client wince or shudder when you use certain words, be alert that these words may have a very different meaning for the client’s hidden parts.
The major Christian holidays are also holy days for Satanist groups (in addition to many other occult holidays). These are times when all survivors have programming to attend the rituals, and if they do not attend, they will experience symptoms such as nightmares, flashbacks, feelings of terror, suicide attempts, inability to sleep or eat, compulsions to return to the perpetrator group, and so on. I (Heather) have come to dread the season of Lent because so many of my RA/MC clients have decompensated as a result of programming that is conducted in connection to the church calendar. The symptoms mentioned above are exponentially exacerbated during these time periods. The additional stress these crisis situations create for counselors also can increase the chance of vicarious traumatization. I know that I have to consciously force myself to focus on the miracle of Christ’s resurrection at Easter time rather than wonder how many children are being hurt or killed during Holy Week.
Simulation of God, Satan, heaven, and hell. Ritually abusive groups want to make sure that the children they abuse do not turn to the true God, so they engage in deceptions in order to make these children believe that God has rejected them. They simulate hell with fires and a man in a Satan suit coming out of the fire, while telling the children that this is where they will go when they die because of the bad things they have done. A child being tortured is told to pray to God for help, and no help arrives; then the child is told to pray to Satan, and a man in a Satan suit arrives and stops the torture. A man dressed up similar to artists’ conceptions of God or Jesus rapes the children or spits on them and says they are so evil that he rejects them. The child is made to harm a man tied to a cross or to stab a baby who is supposedly the baby Jesus. Some cult leaders say they are God. “Forgiveness” may be conferred through rape by a priest of the group.
Even speaking about God or Jesus with survivors who have been exposed to these kinds of tricks may bring up memories of these events to their hidden inner alters. If you say, “Jesus loves you,” it may translate to the child alters as “Jesus is going to rape you.” So it is very important to be careful about what you say and to ask how alters are interpreting your words. God’s love is best communicated through the therapist’s own loving acceptance of all parts of the person, especially those alters who believe themselves to be evil. It may help to point out that if they were truly evil, they would not feel guilt.
Forced perpetration. In our experience, every survivor who grows up as part of such a group is forced to perpetrate abuse on others in some way. With an adult man’s hand over his or her hand, a little child is made to stab or sexually abuse an animal or a vulnerable human being. Afterward the child is told that he or she is evil, and only the group and its deity can now accept him or her. Although the front person of the survivor is usually not aware of these experiences, the resulting shame can maintain the survivor’s isolation from the rest of humanity and continued connection to the group. As the child gets older, pressure is put on him or her to perform the abuse without the assistance of an adult hand. This is done through forced “lesser of two evils” choices: “Kill this dog or we will kill your baby brother,” or “Hurt this person or we will hurt them much more than you are able to.” Again, the child or adult is shamed for having committed this evil act. It is important for therapists to understand that most survivors who come for therapy did not choose to do evil but chose only to perform the least evil alternative. Even killing can be an act of mercy toward an animal or person who would have died more painfully.
Satanic and Luciferian groups frequently pair each child with a “disposable” child, usually one whose existence is not known in the outside world. After the children form a friendship bond, perhaps the only bond the child has ever had, the chosen child’s hand is used to kill the “disposable” child, and the living child is told that anyone he or she loves will die, so it is best not to love anyone. The group members tell such children that the acts that they have committed are so evil that no one but the group will ever accept them.
Unfortunately, this can sometimes be true. Some therapists as well as some potential friends of survivors find their reality so difficult to bear that they cannot listen to it. Survivors are acutely attuned to what a listener can take, and will not disclose to those who cannot handle it. It is important for survivors to know, however, that there are genuine people who will be their friends or their therapists, see them as human beings who have endured extreme suffering, and extend respect and compassion to them.
Individuals vary widely when it comes to beliefs about how active a role evil spirits play in the current era. However, even for a clinician who is skeptical with respect to believing in evil entities, it is quite unsettling when one seems to be talking to a demon whose voice is dramatically changed from the client’s, who states that his or her name is Beelzebub (or Lucifer, Legion, Leviathan, etc.), and who is threatening harm to the counselee, the counselor, or both! Even more perplexing is that I (Heather) believe that I have talked to actual demons in sessions, but I have also felt as though I was talking to a demon when, in reality, I was interacting with a persecutor alter. What complicates matters considerably is that perpetrator groups use deception with respect to the demonic in addition to the deceptive trickery we have already discussed.
Alters as human spirits or evil spirits. Just as they did in past centuries, the Satanic and Luciferian groups operating nowadays engage in rituals to invite demons or evil spirits to enter their victims. However, their leaders are now aware that the trauma experienced by children who are subjected to such rituals actually causes a dissociative split that results in the creation of a new alter. Little children under conditions of threat and torture often say what they are told to say, that is, that they are inviting in a demon. They may also be shown a “mirror” with a picture of a demon on it (one of the cults’ favorite tricks). Therefore, when they split and produce a new alter that is told it is a demon, even though it is not, the alter believes itself to be one and is then trained how to act like one, sometimes by a “big demon,” an adult in a costume.
Some practitioners (e.g., Steve Oglevie, a self-styled Christian “deprogrammer” who gives seminars for therapists) believe that discarnate “human spirits,” in addition to demonic spirits, can take residence in victims of RA. However, there are alternate explanations for what can appear to be a human spirit. For example, the first case of a “human spirit” that I (Alison) met initially presented as a demon, although it was actually an alter of a devout Christian young man. I asked for its name, and it said “Trevor.” That was a strange name for a demon, so I asked why it had that name. It said it was the spirit of the man’s dead grandfather, whose name was Trevor. I asked how old it was, and in a young child’s voice it said “three.” I asked what it was wearing, and it said “brown shorts and a gray T-shirt.” This alter was split off when the boy was abused in his grandfather’s death ritual at age three.
It is common for a leader of a perpetrator group to split off (i.e., create) an alter in the victim (often through rape) and instruct it to be an internal copy of him or someone else. It is important that therapists recognize that alters created in this fashion are really alters, often internal system leaders, just as Trevor was actually an alter rather than either a demon or the human spirit of his dead grandfather. Such alters can be immensely helpful in the healing process once they are correctly identified.
Alters named “Satan.” I (Heather) have a video recording of a former female client who has given me permission to use it for educational purposes. At one point in the recording, a guttural, male-sounding voice announces that he is Satan. He comes across as extremely threatening, controlling, and powerful, so the tendency is to believe that he is, in fact, Satan or at the least an evil spirit. Certainly the majority of my students seem convinced that what they are seeing is demonic as they fearfully view the recording.
In actuality “Satan” turned out to be a dissociated part of self that was created in order to hold the memories of a specific cult ritual. In essence “Satan” saved the counselee’s life. Once “Satan” realized that there was no current danger, he acknowledged he wasn’t the same as that “other” Satan, changed his name to Stephen, and then, upon realizing that the body of the client was female, changed it to Stephanie! Alison, too, has met many “Satans” and supposed demons that, in her experience, have all turned out to be parts of the person split off by a combination of drugs and abuse as well as training.
Distinguishing demons from alters. If one assumes a supernaturalistic explanation for the demonic (i.e., that demons can be real spiritual entities) rather than the naturalistic explanation offered by many mental health professionals (i.e., that demons are not actual spiritual entities but are always manifestations of psychological symptoms), the question becomes, how can counselors tell the difference between an actual demon and an alter?
Some Christians working in the field (e.g., Friesen, 1991; Hawkins, 2009) have written that you can tell a true demon from an alter by how it behaves—for example, demons are more ferociously and more strenuously opposed to God (Hawkins, 2009), or they take animal form rather than human form (Friesen, 1997). In our experience, however, alters have sometimes had very good training in how to act like evil spirits, and other alters have been trained to “be” animals by being caged with animals and forced to behave like those animals (e.g., beg for food). It is easy to feel that we are discerning spiritual reality when we are actually being deceived by alters acting on their training, or we are reacting out of our own countertransference (e.g., anxiety, fear) reactions.
I (Alison), like Heather, have had to think about this question thoroughly over my many years of work with ritual abuse survivors. My present understanding is as follows: The demonic is to be identified by the deliberate performance of what is actually evil in that it does harm to others, rather than by the trappings and popular portrayals of Satanism. As Jesus says, “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Mt 7:16). Demons are forces of evil that affect human beings through temptation to act in ways that violate other persons or animals. In other words, the demonic takes control of us when we yield to what is commonly known as “sin”—envy, cruelty, sexual perversion, and lust for power, control, material possessions, or status. This can happen to anyone regardless of whether they are exposed to Satanism.
The same temptations occur within churches, nonprofit groups, government bureaucracies, and ordinary families. One ritually abused client of mine worked through a memory of a near-death experience she had in childhood, in which an angelic being took her through a “life review” of all her actions. She discovered that behaviors of hers that she had been told were extremely evil were actually not, often because she had chosen the lesser of two evils. Other things she had not thought significant were indeed judged to be evil because they involved cruelty or pettiness—in other words, sin. Although we cannot take such a subjective experience as evidence of truth, we likely can agree that it is the motivation to do harm that constitutes evil rather than the external appearance. Little children, for example, do not yet understand the morality of motivation and believe that breaking ten plates by accident is worse than breaking one deliberately.
Hoffman’s memoirs (2014, 2016) illustrate the importance of a deeper understanding of the nature of evil. As an Illuminati “queen,” she was chosen to assume a high position in the international cult network. For this position, she was supposed to be possessed by myriads of demons, which were simulated through deceptions such as we have previously discussed. But to Hoffman’s mind, the real evil was not in these supposed demons; it was in the temptation to power and cruelty. Throughout her life Hoffman was invited to accept and enjoy the power her position would give her if she would only become a “conscious” perpetrator and identify with the goals of the perpetrator group. Choosing to kill with her own hands was particularly important to the group, and because she steadfastly refused to do so, she was eventually discarded by the group. The boy she grew up with, who was designated to be the “king” to her “queen,” yielded to the temptation of power and was given significant authority within the group.
Deliverance prayer. While Scripture does talk about the gift of “discernment of spirits” (1 Cor 12:10 NRSV), our own countertransference reactions of fear in response to what we are observing in our RA/MC clients can significantly interfere with our ability to accurately discern what is going on, even if we believe that we have been given this spiritual gift. In fact, the potential harm to survivors with DID that can result from an alter being mistaken as an evil spirit is so great that both Alison and I would strongly discourage therapists from participating in deliverance prayer or exorcisms or encouraging their clients to seek after them elsewhere.
I (Heather) had an RA/MC client tell me that the deliverance prayer that he had undergone was more traumatizing to him than the ritualistic torture he had endured, despite the care and “saneness” with which the prayer had been done. When the prayer group was commanding the “evil presences” to go “in Jesus’ name,” what the group did not realize is that they were actually observing terrified alters who interpreted the group as wanting to annihilate them. The resulting trauma can lead to the splitting off of additional dissociated parts (i.e., the creation of new alters). The client referred to above split off an alter who presented as the integrated, demon-free individual that the prayer warriors expected to see after a successful deliverance session. Unfortunately, when this alter could not continue to maintain the façade because other alters were not willing to stay hidden, the survivor moved to a different city as a way to keep the church group from discovering the truth. To my knowledge, those involved in the deliverance prayer never did find out what had actually taken place.
One of the other possible ramifications of attempted deliverance prayer/exorcisms is that they inadvertently confirm for survivors the lies that perpetrator groups have attempted to instill throughout their lives, that is, that they are evil and that they will be rejected by everyone except for the perpetrator group. Ironically, although the goal of deliverance teams would generally be seen as increased freedom for the survivor, when alters are mistaken for demons it can send desperate survivors back to the perpetrator groups and thereby into greater bondage.
In cases where the client insists on undergoing deliverance prayer despite the clinician’s warnings as to its possible detrimental effects, I would highly recommend that all involved parties be aware of the results of the study by Bull, Ellason, and Ross (1998), who examined the experiences of individuals with DID who had undergone exorcism-like rituals. The key factors found to be necessary for a positive experience were the following: permission of the individual, noncoercion, active participation by the individual, understanding of DID dynamics by the exorcist, implementation of the exorcism within the ongoing context of psychotherapy, compatibility of the procedure with the individual’s spiritual beliefs, incorporation of the individual’s belief system, and instruction so that the individual can use the exorcism procedure independently (p. 191). We cannot, however, overemphasize the potential dangers involved, particularly with RA/MC survivors.
An expanded definition of spiritual warfare. I (Heather) have found it very freeing to expand my definition of spiritual warfare beyond explicit power encounters, such as those seen in exorcisms. Some authors (e.g., Bufford, 1988; Powlison, 1995) have suggested that it is more important to engage in personal, spiritual disciplines such as Bible study, prayer, confession of sin, fleeing temptation, and making ongoing righteous choices. These fit with the biblical concept of putting on the “armor of God” (Eph 6:10-17).
I find Kraft’s (1993) writings particularly pertinent in this regard. He states that “the most important aspect of a deliverance ministry is never the casting out of the demons. The aim is healing. But the healing isn’t complete until the deep level hurts that disrupt a person’s relationship with God, self, and others are worked through under the power of the Holy Spirit” (p. 140). While Kraft does not explicitly mention therapy here, I think that this view has relevance to Christian counseling; as we help survivors to process their trauma, and as they go on to make increasingly good decisions, the power of satanic forces to influence them is greatly diminished.
Smith (2013), the developer of Theophostic Prayer Ministry (now called Transformation Prayer Ministry; www.transformationprayer.org), does not see any need to address a demon directly. Rather, he believes that “the reason for the demon’s presence is rooted in that person’s belief system. The person’s emotion that is stirred becomes the bridge back to those beliefs. After following the emotion, identifying the beliefs and receiving Christ’s perspective, the demons have no purpose, reason, or right to stay” (p. 75).
While we do not think that Smith’s ministry protocol takes into account the complexity inherent in work with RA/MC survivors, the treatment approaches we have been advocating are consistent with Smith’s focus on uncovering the lies that perpetrator groups have often instilled.
If Kraft (1993) and Smith (2013) are correct in their assertions, it is potentially good news for psychotherapists who work with RA/MC clients in that it can take some of the pressure off with respect to determining whether or not clients are being directly influenced by evil spirits.
RA/MC survivors inevitably struggle with questions related to meaning (“Why was I subjected to these horrors?”; “How can I find purpose for my suffering?”), evil (“How could anyone do such horrendous things to a child?”; “How could I have hurt/killed something/someone else unless I were evil?”), and survival (“Why am I alive when others died?”), along with other difficult questions that are ultimately spiritual in nature. We and other therapists treating survivors have found ourselves asking the same questions as our clients. Some recent Christian books on the topic of pain and suffering with respect to abuse survivors (e.g., Langberg, 2015; Peterman & Schmutzer, 2016), as well as chapter two in this volume, can be helpful in sorting through a theology of suffering for ourselves as Christian therapists. However, a theological solution offered to clients will often be perceived as spiritual abuse to RA/MC survivors who need to emotionally process through their sense of abandonment by God. Fortunately, it is not necessary for us to have all the answers to these profound questions in order to help survivors. It is our demonstration of God’s love in action that makes the difference, not the “answers” we offer to the profound and unanswerable questions.
Recognizing and dealing with implied spiritual issues. Benner (1988, 1998) suggests that questions related to existential concerns are ultimately spiritual in nature, whether or not an individual recognizes them as such. We encourage Christian counselors to stay attuned to the underlying spiritual nature of such questions while at the same time treading carefully when they arise. It is important to give permission for the RA/MC survivor to explore these issues without the counselor offering an “answer” that springs from his or her own religious tradition. Survivors have experienced severe mind control in which their beliefs have been forcibly manipulated into passive agreement with the perpetrators’ teachings. It would be only too easy to take advantage of this to indoctrinate clients rather than setting them free from mind control so that they can truly explore the difficult questions.
Avoiding religious language can help place a moral or ethical issue outside a particular doctrinal framework. For example, using the terms light versus darkness will be more appropriate than the terms God versus Satan for someone who does not identify with a specifically Christian framework. Chapter twenty in Alison’s book for survivors (Miller, 2014) addresses many such issues using secular rather than religious language.
Where was God? The question of why God allowed this suffering is addressed in most of the chapters of this volume but is focused on specifically in chapter two, with significant attention to the topic also in chapter fourteen. While the question of God and suffering comes up with most trauma survivors, it will invariably come up with RA/MC clients because of the extensiveness of the trauma and the intentionality behind the torture they have experienced. As mentioned earlier, in abuser groups that are religious in nature, perpetrators often dress up like depictions of religious figures and then rape or torture the child. Those abused by Satanic cults, for example, frequently report that Jesus raped them as part of a ritual. For these survivors the question is not only “Why did God not protect me?” but also “What did I do that was so bad that Jesus raped/tortured me?” Obviously this will have ramifications for such a survivor’s relationship with God.
Guilt and forgiveness. RA/MC victims are deliberately loaded with guilt and shame by their perpetrator groups. As noted, victims of Satanic cults are made to commit evil acts when given “lesser of two evils” choices, and then are told they are condemned to hell as a result. They may have spent time in a place they were told was hell, where they were tortured by someone dressed as Satan and/or someone impersonating God. They have been programmed to be flooded with memories of atrocities they supposedly committed if they begin to remember what happened.
Any therapist, Christian or not, must address the issues of guilt and forgiveness. It is important not to minimize a survivor client’s guilt. Even if a murder was simulated and the person was not actually responsible for it, the guilt is very real. Survivors, especially their child parts, frequently feel guilty for acts for which they were not actually responsible, and it is important to explain why they were not responsible for those acts. It is our acceptance of survivors, including what they have done, that will make real to them the reality of the kind of genuine love that comes from God. We must also not push survivors to forgive or even to have contact with family members who have abused them in the context of perpetrator groups. Such persons are likely to have remained involved with the group and will abuse again if given an opportunity. Premature forgiveness both violates the survivor’s integrity by minimizing their wounding and exposes them to present-day danger. See Sells and Hervey (2011) and Tracy (2005) for a helpful discussion on working with sexual abuse survivors around the issue of forgiveness. While these authors do not write specifically about RA/MC survivors, what they say is applicable.
We have taken on a virtually impossible task by attempting to discuss the complicated treatment of survivors of RA/MC within the confines of a book chapter. While we realize that this chapter may have raised as many questions as it has answered, we trust that it has at least increased awareness of RA/MC as a subspecialty of complex trauma work and given you some resources for further information on the topic. Survivors badly need therapists with the courage and faith to tackle this most challenging of specialty areas. Although no one feels like an expert in this area, we can only gain expertise by taking on the challenge of working with such counselees.
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