4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
David Aaronovitch of The Times traces the powerful intellectual influences behind what he sees as one of the most important cultural shifts of the past 40 years: from a society in which accusations of sexual abuse were wrongly ignored to one in which the falsely accused were crushed by a system where the mantra was "victims must be believed".
In the first of two programmes, Aaronovitch will examine the role played by unproven psychoanalytic theories which, from the 1980s, spread from the world of therapists in Canada and the USA to social work, medicine and then to law enforcement in Britain.
From the NSPCC to academia it was believed that children were being sexually abused in group Satanic rituals, which involved murder and animal sacrifice. The programme will explore how these bizarre ideas took hold, how they were related to mistaken psychotherapeutic practices, and how they resonate still.
The programme will look at the influences of four books which played a key role in influencing the intellectual and cultural climate. These are Sybil, Michelle Remembers, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and The Courage to Heal.
Producer: Hannah Barnes
Contributors: Rosie Waterhouse - Investigative Journalist; Head of MA in investigative journalism at City University
Debbie Nathan - Investigative Journalist and Author
Tim Tate - Television Producer and Director
Sue Hampson - Former counsellor, and now Director of Safe to Say Trauma Informed Training and Consultancy
Roma Hart - Former Multiple Personality Disorder patient, who has retracted claims she was abused in childhood.
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0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading analysis. In the first of a new series David Aronovich examines |
0:05.2 | allegations of child sexual abuse and traces the intellectual influences behind |
0:10.7 | society's shift from wrongful denial to excessive credulity. |
0:16.0 | If you'd walked 15 or 20 yards from my front door a few Sundays ago, |
0:20.0 | this is what you would have heard. |
0:22.0 | What about the babies that have been murdered? |
0:25.0 | Stop killing babies. |
0:27.6 | These were demonstrators apparently convinced that the local church and the primary school |
0:31.6 | that adjoins it had been the scene of organized |
0:34.2 | satanic ritual abuse of children. |
0:37.0 | Video recordings of a brother and sister at the school which made a series of |
0:41.0 | lurid allegations had been widely circulated on the internet. |
0:45.5 | There were supposedly secret passages used by parents, teachers and clergy to venues where babies |
0:50.9 | would be sacrificed. The members of the cult ate baby meat prepared at McDonald's |
0:56.0 | and more shoes made of baby skin. The case was the subject of a Radio 4 documentary a few weeks ago |
1:02.3 | and listeners heard that it was all nonsense. |
1:04.7 | It had all been made up. |
1:06.6 | Despite this, campaigners who circulated the names, phone numbers and email addresses of |
1:11.6 | alleged cult members repeated the mantra. |
1:15.5 | We believe the children. |
1:17.1 | Satanist. |
1:18.1 | He's a Satanist, yeah. Child killer. |
... |
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