Ritual abuse needs taking seriously

Social workers dealing with survivors of ritual abuse need to
take their accounts seriously and look at the whole picture and not
just small incidents, a leading expert on ritual abuse told
delegates.

Dr Sara Scott, an author of a new book on ritual abuse, added
that if people wanted to take survivors’ accounts seriously there
were implications for professionals’ practice.

She explained that the idea that ritual abuse did not exist
could only hold if there was another explanation, like false memory
syndrome.

She added: “My experience of talking to survivors was that [the
abuse] was not snapshots of bizarre incidents, it was happening
everyday of their lives.”