Becki Percy follows a well-worn path

Yesterday’s post about false SRA claimant Becki Percy attracted a lot of very interesting comments and sparked a great deal of discussion.

One thing which struck us very forcefully was that while Becki managed to incorporate certain well-known tropes which have been used by other adult SRA claimants since the early 1980s, she also managed to keep her descriptions just vague enough for her audience to fill in the details themselves.

For example, in one of her early videos, she begins several times to tell her Tale of Unspeakable Horrors, but then trails off into “you could just imagine” or “it’s really hard to remember”:

At one point I was staying with [Xxx]’s friend Charlie, who was involved with the trafficking….He had a room that was black walls and red lights, with two doors across from each other. I would be locked in for half an hour or so, and I would hear children crying or men…well, you could just imagine.

When they opened the door, the room had a black floor and a red circle on the floor, and it had lights, er, candles around the circle. I’m not going into detail because it’s really hard to remember, but I know now that it was Satanic. I’m not going into detail, but I’ve done a lot of research into Satanism, I mean, Catherine told me it was Satanic, everything they did to me was…so I know that they were Satanists, it’s just really hard to remember.

So really, all we have is a room with two doors, black walls and floor, and a red circle, with lights or candles, and the sound of children crying.

Becki knows her audience: all she needs to give them is the setting, and they will make up the rest of the gruesome details on their own. It’s a neat trick.

As commenter Liz Lowery pointed out, in the following video at about 22:55, Becki admits that she researched the topic of SRA, but then realises that this might be a tactical error:

I did my own research into it, and as I was looking into Satanism…I mean, I still haven’t looked into it fully, but as I was looking into it I realised that the things that was described was the things that I experienced.

‘A Ritual Fabrication’

For some time, Becki seemed to have the #Pizza/pedogate crowd eating from her hand. Lately, however, some have begun to wonder out loud whether they’d allowed themselves to be played, and have begun demanding answers, which she seems unable or unwilling to provide.

As we’ve watched this play out, we’re reminded in some respects of the sad case of Caroline Marchant.

Caroline’s story was detailed in a 1990 investigative article titled “A Ritual Fabrication”, by David Hebditch and Nick Anning, two of the three journalists responsible for releasing the Broxtowe JET report online.

We highly recommend the article, which shows how a young woman desperate for attention created a house of cards based on false allegations of Satanic ritual abuse. Eventually, the pressure of maintaining the lies, in the absence of even the slightest evidence, became too much for her. But the broad outlines of her story bear a great deal in common with Becki’s story, though they are separated by more than a quarter century.

In the broadest of brush-strokes, Caroline Marchant claimed to have been initiated into a Satanic cult at the age of 13. Like Becki, she claimed to have been made pregnant, though instead of the foetus being miscarried due to a beating, Caroline’s first foetus was used in a Satanic ritual, while her second pregnancy was carried to term, and the baby given to Satanists to rear as their own.

Both Caroline and Becki claim to have been involved in slaughtering new-born babies, though Becki excuses her role in the alleged murder of her baby sister Lily, saying she tried to feed and nurture her, before digging holes in which to bury her dismembered body.

Caroline and Becki both claim to have been ritually abused by the Satanists for several years, and both were miraculously “saved” by conversion to born-again Christianity. But this wasn’t the end of things, oh, no! Becki and Caroline both claim to have been relentlessly pursued by their former Satanic abusers following their respective come-to-Jesus moments, and allegedly believe that when they were caught they would be murdered for betraying them.

The similarities between Caroline and Becki go further than their claims of SRA: both young women were placed in care, and following this seem to have drifted from home to home; both seemed to crave the attention and love of father or mother figures; and both told fantastical stories which ultimately did not bear up under scrutiny.

The difference—so far—is that eventually Caroline realised that her web of lies had become a burden she could no longer bear. However, giving up her stories would have meant being cast out from the Christian community in which she had found some form of refuge.

In the end, trapped by her own lies, she took her life.

Becki’s dilemma is different: for her, the lies have paved the way from Hull to “new families” in California, and now Texas. They’ve given her an opportunity to beg for money from strangers, many of whom have given willingly to the waif-like “survivor”.

However, the net is closing in, as her precarious immigration status, soon up for appeal, depends upon her ability to convince the 9th Circuit Court (similar to our Court of Appeal) of the veracity of her claims.

‘Satan’s Underground’

In the article ‘A Ritual Fabrication’, David Hebditch and Nick Anning point out that Caroline’s allegations did not spring from her own fervid imaginings.

Caroline’s satanic past may have been a figment of her imagination, but the question remains: where did she get the idea?

The details of the story – ritual sacrifice, breeding foetuses, prostitution, sexual abuse, pornography – echo an American book called Satan’s Underground, which has been accepted by anti-occult campaigners as a definitive account of long-term satanic abuse.

First published in 1987, it has sold 100,000 copies. Its author,Lauren Stratford, regularly appears on US television and radio shows and at seminars as a credible “adult survivor”. Until recently, her book was sold in Britain by the Reachout Trust.

Satan’s Underground has, however, been utterly discredited. Late last year, a small Christian magazine in the US called Cornerstone published an extensively researched article in which three co-authors concluded that the book was a fake.

“The hard evidence we have uncovered,” they wrote, “and which we present here, speaks for itself. The story of Satan’s Underground is not true. And the same exploited children it may have been designed to help have been cheated of the truth.” Most so-called “adult survivor” books like Satan’s Underground owe something to an earlier book called Michelle Remembers, sold by Reachout and also subsequently discredited. But even Michelle Remembers, published in 1980, was not the first of the genre.

And one of Caroline’s friends, who never believed her Satanic allegations, said that Caroline had begun to claim involvement in Satanism after reading a book called From Witchcraft to Christ in 1986.

From Witchcraft to Christ was written by Doreen Irvine in 1972. It has gone through 18 UK editions and is readily available throughout the country in the Church of England’s SPCK bookshops. Like other adult-survivor books, this 188-page paper-back includes no dates, names or places which might be used to verify the author’s claims of involvement in the occult. …

In 1987, shortly before she wrote her unfinished “life story”, Caroline had met the author of From Witchcraft to Christ. She spent some time being counselled at the Zion Christian Temple at Yate, near Bristol. One of her tutors was Doreen Irvine.

We don’t know the inspiration behind Becki Percy’s allegations. It’s certainly easier today to find lurid descriptions of SRA online, as false victimhood has become something of a tradition amongst the conspiracy-minded.

And some of Becki’s stories have a distinctly derivative ring to them: her claim to have been chased through the woods, attempting to evade rape by Satanists, who would steal pieces of her clothing until she was completely naked, is almost iconic amongst adult SRA /MK Ultra claimants these days. We’ve heard the same story from Angela Power-Disney, Fiona Barnett, and Cathy O’Brien. It seems to be de rigeur amongst a certain set—you’re nobody until you’ve been chased naked through a forest. Apparently.

Of course, Becki adds the unusual touch of “dead children hanging from trees”, which raises more questions: where did the children come from? Why hang them from the trees, other than for gruesome effect? What did the alleged Satanists do with them afterward? Is there a warehouse somewhere, where dead children are stored to be brought out for such festivities? Why has no one else ever reported seeing this? Surely a forest full of dead children must have attracted someone’s attention? And why have these children never been reported missing? Or their remains found?

Aside from this Hammer Horror touch, though, Becki’s stories are remarkably vague and unimaginative, drawing as they do from tales which appear to have been passed down to would-be SRA LARPers since the bad old days of the 1980s Satanic panic.

Both Becki Percy and Caroline Marchant can be said to have used the mythology of SRA to their own advantage, though Becki has turned her stories into monetisable commodities, whereas Caroline used them to gain bed, board, and companionship. And just like Caroline before her, Becki is due to come crashing down, probably some time soon.

We only hope that her landing will be less final than that of her predecessor.