More on the links between police and SRA promoters

Yesterday we discussed why some UK police officers, who one would expect to be sceptical and evidence-directed by both inclination and training, have fallen into the trap of believing in the myth of Satanic ritual abuse.

We suggested that when police and other professionals who deal with child abuse attend professional training seminars given by highly educated mental health professionals who push the SRA/dissociative identity disorder narrative, they are likely to come away believing that these are legitimate constructs—and applying this information in their own careers.

Some of our readers might be familiar with former DCI Clive Driscoll, noted for his involvement in the conviction of two of the killers of Stephen Lawrence in 2012, 19 years after the young man was murdered by at least five youths at a south-east London bus stop. After more than 30 years of service with the Metropolitan Police, DCI Driscoll was “forced” into retirement before the remainder of Mr Lawrence’s killers could be apprehended, much to the chagrin of the victim’s family. DCI Driscoll had a sterling reputation as a straight-talking officer of impeccable integrity, and we’ve found nothing at all which would call this assessment into question.

However, he does seem to be among the police officers who’ve fully adopted the SRA myth as doctrine. And it seems that he was persuaded to do so by Valerie Sinason, along with Dr Joan Coleman of RAINS, both of whom we’ve discussed here in the past.

Seconded to Sinason

In 2006, Private Eye #1166 reported:

When the headless and limbless body of a young African boy was found in the river Thames in September 2001, proponents of a belief in satanic ritual abuse (see Eyes passim) claimed this gruesome discovery was the first forensic physical evidence that finally proved it existed. 

The believers have steadfastly refused to accept the Department of Health-commissioned report which concluded definitively in 1994 – after the debacles of  false allegations in Rochdale, the Orkneys and elsewhere across the UK – that satanic ritual abuse in this country was a myth.

Initially key advocates tried to persuade the Metropolitan police investigating the murder of Adam – the name they gave the unidentified victim – that it was a case of ritual abuse. They hoped the case would vindicate their claims and restore their credibility.

Early in the police investigation into the case of Adam, one of the most active believers in satanic abuse, Valerie Sinason (see Eye 1158), a Harley Street psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, offered her expertise to the police.

Sinason, who claims to have treated 300 survivors of”ritual abuse”, has long tried to persuade the police that satanic abuse was a reality. In February 2000 the Metropolitan Police seconded Acting Detective Chief  Inspector Clive Driscoll to investigate her claims to have interviewed 76 children and adult victims who, she said, had made allegations of satanic sexual abuse and murder.  Although no forensic evidence was found to substantiate her allegations.

It’s now believed that “Adam”, far from being a victim of a child-murdering cult, might have been killed by a person or persons who believed that the boy was possessed by a devil. As we know, this is the exact opposite of SRA—rather, hyper-religious evangelical Christians (or sometimes Muslims) may come to believe that a child has been possessed by evil spirits, and attempt to exorcise the demons through beatings, burning, and other forms of physical torture.

However, said the Eye,

At least some officers must have been persuaded that satanic ritual abuse existed because in October 2004 the force sent 30 officers from the child abuse investigation command on a one-day course to help them identify the satanic ritual abuse of children. This was organised by a barrister called Lee Moore, the founder and former president of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers (ACAL), who ran a consultancy service and training courses for professionals who work with “ritualistic crimes”.

The case of the baby-eating cannibal

We find further reference to DCI Driscoll’s connection with Dr Sinason in 2001, when Jeremy Laurance, health writer for The Independent, confessed, “I’ve been had”.

‘LET’S NOT beat about the bush. I’ve been had. A reporter in search of  a story has, not for the first time,fallen foul of an excess of enthusiasm, credulousness, and someone’s idea of a good joke.

Last week, a story by me appeared in The Independent, saying that police were trying to close down an internet site that carried pictures of a man eating a dismembered baby. There was a suggestion, which I reported, that this gave credence to claims of ritual or Satanic abuse, including human sacrifice, which have been the subject of fierce controversy for more than a decade.

It turns out, as several readers have brought to our attention with notable glee, that the pictures on the Californian website show, not human sacrifice, but a Chinese performance artist who has been shocking audiences in the Far East with his images of cannibalism. Distasteful as his pictures will seem to most people, they are not evidence of Satanic abuse.  So here I am eating humble pie. I apologise for misleading readers about the proper context of the pictures (which was unknown to me).

I was contacted a fortnight ago by Valerie Sinason, a child psychotherapist who has, almost single-handedly, kept alive the notion that some children in Britain have been the victims of ritual or Satanic abuse for more than a decade. She has, she says, 51 adult patients who are survivors of child abuse and who, during therapy, have disclosed details suggesting that the abuse had ritual elements.

I was well aware of Ms Sinason’s controversial background and have myself been a skeptic about Satanic abuse since the first allegations were made in the late 1980s. I visited Rochdale in 1990, one of the alleged centres of the practice along with Nottingham and Orkney, and concluded in a piece I wrote for the Sunday Correspondent that the most likely explanation for the strange goings-on could be found on the horror shelves of the local video store.

However, I decided to take Ms Sinason’s evidence at face value and check it. I accessed the website and there, sure enough, was a man apparently eating a dead baby. I spoke to the police officer she put me in touch with – Detective Inspector Clive Driscoll – and he gave me some bloodcurdling quotes about murder and human sacrifice and said a senior forensic pathologist who had examined the pictures considered the dismembered baby to be real.

Eight years later, DCI Driscoll contacted the S.A.F.F. to set the record straight on the mythical baby-eater:

“The article within the independent is not accurate. I most certainly was attached for 18 months to Ms Sinneson (sic) clinic as an advisor. This was part of the MPS strategy to make sure we listened to victims at all levels. The male featured eating the young child is a behavioural (sic) artist from China, he admitted the child was real and the reason he had posed as eating parts of the child was for artistic purpose. I must confess this art is lost on me. The advice I gave to the journalist was until I know how the child died It was a Crime Scene. The journalist later apologised to me. I accepted that apology.”

Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity, take 2

When Valerie Sinason published the second edition of her book Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity in late 2010, she devoted an entire chapter to none other than DCI Driscoll.

He describes Dr Joan Coleman, founder of RAINS, noting that she was “adamant the type of ceremony that had been described to police was a religious ceremony that she knew well and that had been reported to her many times by many adults who gave information of events that took place when they were children”. And he talks a bit more about his secondment to the Tavistock Clinic to work with Dr Sinason:

Keep in mind that this took place in 2000, six years after Jean La Fontaine had written her government-commissioned report, The Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Abuse, which roundly debunked the existence of Satanic ritual abuse in the UK. Clearly the news had not seeped down to the police yet.

And lest we think that ex-DCI Driscoll’s linkages with Dr Sinason are a thing of the past, it seems he has now joined her on the seminar circuit:And what right-thinking police officer looking for a few extra CPD credits would not be drawn to a talk featuring a well-respected senior officer such as DCI Driscoll?

We rest our case.