But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth — given the passage of time — recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from...

The people who support and defend those accused of child sexual abuse indiscriminately, those who join organizations dedicated to defending people who are accused of child sexual abuse with no screening whatsoever to keep out...

I just can’t seem to do anything right.”At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open...

But she was weak… weak somehow. It was as if she was sending out radio signals which only he could receive. You could point to certain things–how much she smoked (but he had almost cured...

We must know something about malevolence, about how to recognize it, and about how not to make excuses for it. We must know that we cannot expect fair play.That is, perhaps, most crucial of all....

IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that you won’t notice where the...

Another reason abusers don’t want to give up the ‘power’ is that they don’t want to give up the power.

Because the problem of ritual abuse and mind control has not gone away – the survivors are still there – many more therapists have learnt about it. Survivors have spoken out and written their stories,...

THE MYTHS ABOUT ABUSERS1. He was abused as a child.2. His previous partner hurt him.3. He abuses those he loves the most.4. He holds in his feelings too much.5. He has an aggressive personality.6. He...

One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old...

The first generation of therapists doing this work were told by their clients that the one massive cult was everywhere, knew everything, had access to state-of-the-art technology, and was willing to kill both clients and...

Social anxiety results from being around people who are resolutely opposed to who you are.

(Talking about the movement to deny the prevalence and effects of adult sexual exploitation of children)So what does this movement consist of? Who are the movers and shakers? Well molesters are in it, of course....

I saw the bruises, the burns, the cuts— I knew which ones had been done to you by someone you thought you could trust. Someone you thought loved you. I knew which ones you gave...

The woman who left abusive husbands in the 60’s and 70’s improved the institution of marriage because men now know that women can leave their husbands and the women or men who stay in abusive...

Another preoccupation fed into this dynamic relationship between discovery and denial: does sexual abuse actually matter? Should it, in fact, be allowed? After all, it was only in the 19070s that the Paedophile Information Exchange...

In cases of organized and multi-perpetrator abuse when the abuse occurs in the context of rituals and ceremonies, some elements of the experience may have been staged specifically with the intention of encouraging the disbelief...

(To the haters) You are not extinguishing the bright lights of mankind, you’re simply burying yourself in an unmarked grave.

In this book we paint an unprecedented portrait of Britain’s first ‘false memory’ retraction and show that, like other ‘false memory’ cases which appeared in the public domain, memory itself was always a false trail...

I am saying that very clearly. In some cases, evidence was not put in the court. In other cases, agreements were made between lawyers not to put the case to the court at all, particularly...

It is really exhausting to live in a dictatorship of ‘Me’, which is basically a tyranny of others.

The survivor movements were also challenging the notion of a dysfunctional family as the cause and culture of abuse, rather than being one of the many places where abuse nested. This notion, which in the...

When we began researching the film on behalf of Channel 4, which had commissioned and paid for it, the response from individual child protection workers inside and outside Cleveland was universally positive. Everyone we met...

It is worth — given the passage of time — recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from many different and largely unrelated families had been taken into the care of Cleveland County...

Many professionals have to sign gagging clauses or face the sack if they speak out. The social worker and therapist was familiar with the scare that revelation brings to the survivor. […]We are in this...

Violators cannot live with the truth: survivors cannot live without it. There are those who still, once again, are poised to invalidate and deny us. If we don’t assert our truth, it may again be...

It is often said that Vietnam was the first television war. By the same token, Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the...

The discovery that detonated Cleveland is one of Britain’s great contributions to awareness of child abuse. In 1986 and 1987 the Leeds paediatricians Dr Jane Wynne and Dr Christopher Hobbs reported in the Lancet that...

To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty...

…Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media…Given that most of the hearings took place out of sight of the press, the...

and those who are well meaning assume others are too, and keep arguing logically, keep producing more studies, keep expecting an academic debate, all the time assuming that the issue at hand is the truth...

Both incest and the Holocaust have been subject to furious denial by perpetrators and other individuals and by highly organised groups such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the Committee for Historical Review. Incest...