Ritual Abuse: Canada's Most Infamous Trial on Child Abuse
by Kevin Marron
McClelland-Bantam, Inc., Toronto, Canada, 1989
252 pages, paperbound, $4.95 Canadian
...These horror stories represent no "sociological phenomenon. " Marron had just spent 100 pages documenting the most alarming evidence imaginable proving that the entire "scene" which involved this family was organized on a massive scale. For example, the "man from 11" was described by the girls as someone who filmed similar scenes involving them inside the studios of Channel 11 TV, late at night.
Marron also cites similar court cases in the area indicating the involvement of a network of biker gangs throughout southern Ontario. Some of the children's stories point to a sophisticated operation worked out to avoid suspicion in the area, explaining why Canada has few incidences of missing children: Kidnappings are organized across the border in the United States, and the children transported into Canada for the rituals and the filming.
But all of this gruesome material is presented in a manner very strangely detached from Marron's analysis of the legal or political options for dealing with the situation. In fact, there are many references in the book to the idea that a successful criminal prosecution in this kind of case would be one that sticks only to the sex abuse charges, and didn't discredit the witnesses involved by testimony about "unbelievable" satanic ritual murders or cannibalism.
This book makes one wonder anew: how many court trials, and how many exposes in the media, dealing with these kind of cases serve the purpose of "damage control"?
Exposes on the horrors of drug abuse in the 1960s and 1970s were often accompanied with the advice that one should resign oneself to the problem, leaving the reader helpless.
Are we to see some future expose that proposes the legalization of pederasty in order to keep it out of the hands of criminals? (more...)
Satanism: When is an expose just 'damage control'?
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