Like the December one before it, the Christmas issue of Fortean Times has an article from the era - the late Eighties and early Nineties - when the concept of 'Satanic Ritual abuse' flourished.
Its author, Bob Rickard, is most interested in the way this modern form of witch hunting took on the ideology of the medieval form of the pastime. But I am more interested by the way a humane modern view risked turning supposed child victims into suspects.
Rickard writes:
Where Lady Butler-Sloss's 1988 inquiry into child abuse recommended that a child's allegations "should always be taken seriously", it seemed reasonable that this meant deserving a 'proper' investigation. However, some social workers and childcare professionals sought to interpret the injunction as to believe a child's account literally and as wholly factual.
If a child's account of events had such high status, it was inevitable that it would be the supposed child victims who were grilled rather than the supposed abusers.
It felt as though what was being sought from them was not so much a witness statement as a confession. There was an anxiety or an insistence that the child should 'disclose' abuse, as it was termed, and everything from browbeating to bribery, according to Rickard's account, was used to obtain it.
I am reminded of the importance of a suspect's confession in Softly, Softly: Taskforce and the varied ways that Chief Superintendent Barlow would set about achieving it.
But. even more, I am reminded of the ending of Henry James's ghost story The Turn of the Screw. where the boy Miles has to name Peter Quint even at the cost of his own life. Whether anything untoward had really happened or it was all in the mind of the governess who narrates the story is debated to this day.
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