Introduction
A very large review of surveys regarding the prevalence of trauma (of any sort) worldwide found the following:
A review of World Mental Health surveys in 24 countries (n = 68,894) found that 70% of respondents experienced lifetime traumas, with exposure averaging 3.2 traumas per capita. (source)
As for the prevalence of trauma-based mind control (MC) and ritual abuse (RA) in particular, it’s not possible to know, of course, since the topic is shrouded in secrecy and victims face unfathomable barriers to report the crimes they’ve experienced.
It is impossible to say [how many people have been victimized by mind control], because many are totally unaware that they have been programmed and are being used. There is no central registry of survivors who remember, and the powers that be seem to have much more interest in hushing up the situation than in doing sound research. The testimony of fifty-two adult survivors of CIA mind control experimentation on children is on record through the Presidential Advisory Committee on Radiation Experiments. An estimate of two million individuals in the U.S.A. was made in 1997 by a therapist who has been working with mind control victims for over fifteen years. People who say they are mind-control survivors can be found on every continent… It is starting to appear that survivors are clustered more densely in certain parts of a country than others and some locations appear to be centers for mind control activity (e.g. near military bases and research centers).
– Survivorship
There’s enough evidence to know that these are not outlier experiences of a few unfortunate individuals. The evidence indicates that this trauma is experienced by — at minimum — tens of thousands of children and adults. The following reports by professionals and survivors contribute to answering the question of RA prevalence.
Evidence of RA Existence
A national survey of therapists who work with clients with dissociative disorders found that 88 percent of the 1,185 respondents indicated belief in ritual abuse, involving mind control and programming.
– Randy Noblitt
There have been innumerable reports, journal articles and criminal convictions for Ritual Abuse crimes against children and adults. Resources summarizing the evidence include:
- Empirical and Forensic Evidence of Ritual Abuse (by James Randall Noblitt, reprinted on End Ritual Abuse)
- Ritual Abuse Proof Page (S.M.A.R.T)
- Evidence List (Survivorship)
- Publications on Ritual Abuse and Mind Control in 2008 (End Ritual Abuse)
- Ritual Abuse Evidence (Child Abuse Wiki )
Law Enforcement’s Refusal to Accept Evidence
Kenneth Lanning of the FBI… for years has maintained that no substantive evidence exists for the reality of ritual abuse. (For decades the FBI also told the American public that the Mafia did not exist.)… Why do accounts like the ones given by the 37 ritually abused adults in the Young et al. (1991) study and the 14 ritually abused families in the Kelly (1992) study of group sexual assaults… not constitute eyewitness accounts to so-called experts like Lanning? I am personally aware of scores of adult survivors with memories of ritual crimes (contrary to the position of many skeptics, most of these memories were retrieved without hypnosis or chemical assistance; many were in fact retrieved outside of therapy) who have made concerted attempts to bring these crimes to the attention of law enforcement. The vast majority of these survivor accounts have been met with absolute indifference and inaction on the part of local law enforcement agencies, as well as the FBI… Not only do skeptics such as Lanning choose to ignore eyewitness/victim accounts of ritual criminal activity, they apparently also choose to overlook the significant number of cases of ritual abuse in which perpetrators have confessed to their crimes. In the Bottoms et al. (1991; 1993) study of 2,292 cases of ritual abuse, perpetrators in 30% of the child cases confessed to abusing one or more children.
– Catherine Gould, The Journal of Psychohistory
“False Memory Syndrome” & Why Research “Ground to a Halt”
Much of the research and reporting you’ll find below are from the 1980s and early 1990s. A reasonable question is why there were a number of professionals beginning to report widely on this topic, and then the research and reporting, all at once, “ground to a halt.”
“No Taboo Against Incest, Just a Taboo Against Talking About It”
Someone once said that there is no taboo against incest, just a taboo against talking about it. That was certainly what we saw… regarding ritual abuse and mind control. Anyone attempting to recognize this still new and alien occurrence was blacklisted. The conspiracy of silence about child abuse had now become a conspiracy of censorship, even within the profession charged with its treatment. As a result, the truth about ritual abuse could no longer find a forum. Research and education ground to a halt. Yet, somehow, in this oppressive climate, without support from any professional organizations or literature, many therapists quietly continued to do their jobs.
– E. Sue Blume LCSW
The Ideology Spawned by a Corrupt Organization: The False Memory Syndrome Foundation
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSFOnline.org), a now defunct non-profit organization founded in 1992, was born out of a need to cover up and discredit adults who were coming forward and reporting instances of childhood sexual abuse that they had experienced when they were younger. An analysis of the FMSF’s Scientific Advisory Board intersects with so many other fascinating areas of research, including the CIA’s MK-Ultra program and some of the most infamous sex-crime/murder cases of the last 35-years, including the Ghislaine Maxwell trial…
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation has gone away in terms of a public facing entity, however, it is clear that the ideology and pseudoscience that it spawned is still used by criminals and abusers to absolve themselves of guilt. Of course human memory can be unreliable. Of course memories have a tendency to fade over time. However, we cannot assume that all claims of sexual assault and abuse are products of therapeutic malpractice or people recalling their past incorrectly.
– Scott Armstrong, Dec 7, 2022
In response to the professional reporting of RA the “memory wars” arose. These were not a reasonable debate to ensure any inept or unethical therapists were called out. This was an organized, well-funded attack on every single mental health professional who spoke out on trauma-based victimization. Any therapist who dared speak out about what their clients were reporting was, at minimum, censored or blacklisted while other persistent professionals were assailed with devastating blows to their credibility, were threatened, and were publicly assaulted through the courts and media. (Alison Miller)
Suddenly, the work became dangerous, not only for clients but for therapists as well. A well-funded, highly organized opposition appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, in the early 1990s. Its goal was to discredit the existence of ritual abuse, and one of its tactics was to actively undermine any effort to discover what had been done to these clients.
– Alison Miller
Professionals were effectively suppressed and research could no longer be safely conducted. As a result, in the 1990s, information-sharing and research stopped being made public. Within this oppressive climate, research has been difficult to obtain, of course. But some have persevered, and the following information summarizes the reports and data that we’ve been able to track down. If you know of more, please write us.
See Also
- Response to the Canadian Psychiatric Association Position on False Memory Syndrome
- The Truth about False Memory Syndrome by James G. Griesen
- The Memory War: Jennifer Freyd accused her father of sexual abuse. Her parents’ attempt to discredit her created a defense for countless sex offenders.
Insights from Professionals on Prevalence
One of the key sources of research on ritual abuse that professionals refer to is the article, “Ritual Abuse: A Review of Research” by Kathleen Coulborn Faller (1994). Faller referred to the following research.
- In a 1993 survey of 2,709 members of the American Psychological Association, 30 percent of the professionals had seen cases of ritual or religion-related abuse.
- The 2,709 responding professionals reported 2,292 cases of ritual abuse.
- Of those psychologists who have seen cases of ritual abuse, 93 percent believed that the reported harm took place and 93 percent believed that the alleged ritualism occurred.
- “This is a remarkable finding. Mental health professionals are known to be divergent in their thinking and frequently do not agree with one another regarding questions of the diagnosis and etiology of psychiatric problems… this level of concurrence in a large national sample of psychologists…would be impressive…the similar research of Nancy Perry (1992) which further supports (the previous findings)… Perry also conducted a national survey of therapists who work with clients with dissociative disorders and she found that 88 percent of the 1,185 respondents indicated belief in ritual abuse, involving mind control and programming.” (source)
Survivor Research
Organization Reports (1992)
Dr. Catherine Gould reported the following regarding survivors reaching out for support.
For the year 1992, these organizations reported the following number of calls about ritual abuse. Assuming that some of the reports came from victims’ supporters and that some victims called multiple times, the data still suggests a minimum of tens of thousands of survivors in 1992 alone.
- Childhelp USA — 1,741
- Monarch Resources of Los Angeles — approximately 5,000
- Real Active Survivors — nearly 3,600
- Justus Unlimited of Colorado — nearly 7,000
- Looking Up of Maine — approximately 6,000
South African High School Students (2001)
- This research, based on self-reports among 559 high schools students in three high schools in South Africa, was conducted in 2001 and is published in PubMed here.
- Self-reported prevalence rates were 71% psychologically abused, 27% physically abused, 35% emotionally abused and 10% ritualistically abused.
The Extreme Abuse Surveys (2007)
In 2007, a series of three online surveys which have come to be called the Extreme Abuse Surveys (Rutz, Overkamp, Karriker, Becker) were conducted (provided in both English and German language versions). The three surveys together received more than 2,000 responses from 40 countries. Of the 1,471 respondents who reported experiencing extreme child abuse, the majority had endured ritual abuse and/or mind control.
Extreme Abuse Survey #1
- The first survey relied on anonymous self-reporting and was distributed in such a way as to encourage survivors of extreme abuse to respond.
- Thus, the purpose was not to determine, for example, the percentage of the population who has experienced extreme abuse. As with the numbers reported from survivor help lines, its explicit purpose was to give voice to victims (and to explore commonalities among survivors — an extremely helpful insight for therapists).
- While this methodology has associated research weaknesses, it provides valuable insights obtainable no other way, and provides a small offset to the imbalanced situation of both an oppressive climate for professionals (as described above) and for survivors (whose tyranny of silence is enforced by unimaginable horrors, explained below).
[We] are conducting this survey privately to give RA / MC survivors an opportunity to anonymously break the silence imposed by their perpetrators. We also hope to make others more aware of the existence of RA / MC, the aftereffects of extreme child abuse, and the resiliency of the human spirit. Your voice will not be silenced or altered by anyone who has tried to discredit your experiences.
– Carol Rutz, Announcement Letter to “Fellow Survivors of Extreme Abuse and Their Advocates”
- The first survey had 2,337 viewers and 1,471 respondents (answering at least one question). Results include how many respondents answered each of the many questions along with the number who responded yes, no, don’t know or n/a. For example:
- “My perpetrator(s) deliberately created/programmed dissociative states of mind (such as alters, personalities, ego-states) in me.” Of the 1,012 respondents, 640 answered affirmatively.
- “I was taken out of school to another location for mind control programming, then returned to my school classroom.” There were 988 replies, of which 203 said yes.
- “I have experienced self-destruct programming installed in the event I began to remember the programming.” Of the 997 respondents, 565 replied yes.
Extreme Abuse Survey #2 and #3
See more: Extreme Abuse Survey Results
Qualitative Reports from RA Therapists
This qualitative report doesn’t relate to prevalence per se but nonetheless points to the fact that there are therapists who specialize in RA. These professionals report that a significant percentage of their client base is RA survivors.
A survivor who goes by the pseudonym Svali has provided extensive and detailed testimony in a book and web postings that were published in the early 2000’s. (See here.) Svali sent a questionnaire to a small sampling of therapists who work with ritual abuse (RA):
I have used pseudonyms to protect the identities of these individuals and the clients that they work with. But these are very real people, who often work long hours, at times under threat from outside people, to help survivors break free. I cannot imagine a group of people that I admire more, next to the survivors themselves. The therapists who answered live both in the United States, and several countries around the world.
– Svali, Therapists Speak Out on Ritual Abuse link
The sampling is extremely small (n=5), thus the purpose is to obtain qualitative, not quantitative data. So although Svali asked a quantitative question, this is not to obtain a statistically significant data point, but rather to get a sense for the professional’s work. (Each of the responses is associated with a name, further highlighting the qualitative nature of such exploratory research.)
When asked what percentage of the therapist’s practice was RA clients, she received the following responses:
- One therapist had a few clients whom she suspected may have suffered RA but no such memories were disclosed.
- One therapist who considers RA a “subspecialty” reported that 10% of her clients were RA victims.
- Another reported that 70% of her clients were RA victims, and related that in her group practice, one partner’s practice is 100% RA survivors.
- Another reported RA victims making up 20% (and up to 1/3 at times) of her clients.
- Another reported 30%.
Again, this does not suggest that these numbers relate to the percentage of RA clients among the broader population of therapists. Rather, it points out that while it is not common knowledge, there are therapists who specialize in RA and can share more information when it is safe to do so. Places where professional research exchange is occurring includes:
- International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD)
- Ritual Abuse, Ritual Crime and Healing (RA Info): Information and Resources for Survivors, Therapists and Others
- S.M.A.R.T. (Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today)
- Survivorship: For survivors of ritual abuse, mind control and torture and pro-survivors
- Survivorship Conference
Sources & Resources
See here for a list of sources and resources for the entire Trauma-Based Victimization section.
