"::::: Freud's patient (Emma Eckstein) recalled being genitally mutilated by the cult and forced to eat the flesh they cut from her - these injuries were confirmed for Freud by a medical exam. This is not an easy case for the ritual abuse denialists to dismiss, so they simply ignore it.  

 ::::: I'm not American and and the contoversies over Stratford did not play out in Europe and Australia with the same scope that they received in America. In Australia, fundamentalist Christianity is not a significant force in the media or in politics, and 'explaining' Australian ritual abuse cases through Stratford stretches credibility.  

 ::::: The notion that Stratford's narrative is a cultural contagion that 'magically' spread overseas and 'magically' infected hundreds of therapists to 'magically' implant memories in their patients who then 'magically' developed symptoms of severe psychological distress is ridiculous. There is no evidence base for such an incredible causal chain. 

 ::::: Moreover, as someone who has been involved in assisting ritual abuse survivors, I've had my house broken into, blood and cow organs smeared through my bedroom, and occult symbols painted on my walls. I've been confronted by perpetrators and I've had death threats. I've seen what somebody looks like after they've been ritually abused and tortured - including occult sigils burnt into the torso with a red-hot poker.  

 ::::: It seems to me that the issue of SRA has gotten lost in the American culture wars. The survivor narratives suited the agenda of Christian fundamentalists, who hijacked the issue and used it to their own end. This has elicited an oppositional response from 'skeptics' who now can't see SRA in it's own light, outside these ideological debates.  

 ::::: And American isolationism does the debate no favours. The consensus on McMartin and other American day-care abuse cases might be different if you considered that, in England and Australia, paedophile rings have been exposed operating their own preschools and daycare centres, and the child victims involved spontaneously and consistently disclosed SRA material.  

 ::::: For the skeptics - you blame social workers and therapists for magically 'implanting' false memories of ritual abuse? Then consider this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/child/story/0,7369,1587726,00.html) where social workers are being blamed for *not* removing ritually abused children from their parents - precisely because the social workers were afraid they would be blamed for ""inventing"" the children's ritual abuse by people such as yourself. 

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