Beneath the visible tip of the iceberg of prostitution and exploitation lies an extreme form of sex slavery involving children and women, the scale of which is huge and beyond comprehension.
++ Warning, this text contains triggers ++
In Germany, there are numerous groups and networks involved in trafficking (young) children and brutally abusing them. Forced prostitution, child pornography, ritualistic abuse – all of these are closely interlinked. Organized ritual abuse (ORA) reveals a global market for the most modern form of slavery. Slaves in the 21st century, who can seemingly be commanded and controlled without will; yet in everyday life, they have no awareness of their own abuse. This is linked to the protective mechanism of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This protects children who are regularly exposed to the worst forms of violence from remembering it. Perpetrators exploit the knowledge of the dissociative identity structure and deliberately work with it.
Through our exit assistance program, we have personally met and supported many affected individuals over the past few years. Some have lived in our protection facility for extended periods. We have come to know them in everyday life and experienced firsthand: their entire actions and experiences are coherent and authentic. Many of the topics mentioned here are hard to bear and even harder to believe. We can believe them because we have met these people. Some were still in the early stages of their exit, some without therapy, some with therapy experience, and some have been out of the milieu for many years. They come from various regions of Germany and abroad, and they differ in age. What we report here are issues we have repeatedly encountered and experienced up close in our work. The knowledge shared here is not theoretical; it is knowledge that has developed practically in everyday life. The texts on the website were written in collaboration with affected individuals and supplemented with direct quotes.
What is organized violence? What is ritual abuse? What connects these two? There is no unified definition of these terms so far. However, the professional group “Sexualized Violence in Organized and Ritual Abuse Structures” at the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth issued expert recommendations to politics and society in 2018, which include a good definition of the violence structures:
In organized and ritual abuse structures, the systematic use of severe sexualized violence (in connection with physical and psychological violence) against children, adolescents, and adults is made possible through the collaboration of several perpetrators or perpetrator networks, and is often connected with commercial sexual exploitation (forced prostitution, child trafficking, child/violent pornography).
If an ideology is used to justify or legitimize the violence, it is referred to as a ritual abuse structure. In some structures, families are involved across generations. Early childhood bonding with perpetrators, the group, and the ideology occurs. Additionally, there is an imposed silence. Those attempting to exit are pressured, blackmailed, and persecuted. Organized and ritual abuse structures can involve comprehensive control and exploitation of people through mind control techniques. The planned repeated application of severe violence forces specific dissociation or a deliberate splitting of the child’s personality. The resulting personality fragments are trained and used for specific purposes. The goal of this systematic conditioning is an internal structure that can be controlled by the perpetrators at any time, and for which the child, and later the adult, has no conscious memory in everyday life.
We want to provide an insight into these parallel worlds and take a closer look at the topic of Organized Ritual Abuse and Dissociative Identity Disorder through the example of Mrs. P., to better explain and understand it.
From the outside, Ms P. appeared to have had a happy childhood in a completely normal family who were highly respected in their local area. She was always a good student and stood out for her athletic success. During puberty, she developed an eating disorder and depression, which she put down to high pressure to succeed. However, she was able to hide her symptoms well. From the outside, she looked like a normal, happy teenager. Neither Ms P. nor anyone else would have thought that she was a victim of organised ritual abuse and had been exploited and sold as a slave since childhood.
She left home to start her degree. She had been looking forward to this moment for a long time. During her first semester, however, she began battling with numerous mental and psychosomatic issues to the point that her family doctor recommended therapy.
The therapist was swamped with the many prevalent symptoms and the ever-worsening condition of Ms P, and so recommended an inpatient stay. There, she was able to observe Ms P’s mental blackouts, flashbacks and potential changes in personality for the first time. The therapist at the clinic initially diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and, after subsequent stays, also diagnosed her with dissociative identity disorder. For the first time, Ms P remembered being sexually abused by her uncle and later also abusive behaviour by her father and grandfather. During her flashbacks, she relived the worst moments of pain to her entire body: being shackled, locked in cages, blood, fire, symbols...These images and feelings were new to Ms P. She never thought that she had experienced such things. However, she felt that there must be more to her seemingly “normal” family than she thought.
Over a period of several years, memories of Ms P’s childhood kept flooding back to her. She realised that her parents belonged to two groups that meet up in secret at night. The group believes in its own superiority and celebrates satanic rituals. As a child, Ms P was regularly subjected to horrific abuse as part of these rituals. She was shackled, raped, forced to swallow excrement and made to abuse others. Along with other children, she was brainwashed to preserve these rituals. She had to learn to suppress her nausea and gag reflex, unconditionally obey and inflict pain on others.
Each time her therapist or other people around her were nice to Ms P or their relationship intensified, she felt a strong impulse to end this relationship. She would sometimes miss her therapy session as a result. When she arrived at our shelter, she often felt a strong internal pressure to contact her family and other perpetrators. Something within her felt that she had to let them know where she was, otherwise something bad would happen. She knew that she needed to participate in the rituals as
otherwise someone else would be severely punished for her non-attendance. She found it extremely difficult not to leave the shelter on ritual days. She felt an internal pressure to punish herself for missing the ritual.
It took several years before Ms P had recovered enough memories of her family structure to realise that the abuse wasn’t just a relict of her past, but was continuing to haunt her as an adult. She was still a member of the cult, taking part in rituals. She was still experiencing abuse. This realisation led her to go into hiding in a new location at our shelter. She broke off all contact with the people from her past. This was her external withdrawal. The internal withdrawal had already begun during the clinic stays and took many years. She was able to learn that there was a world outside of the group network and that she was entitled to dignity, freedom, and integrity over her body and mind.
In our blog, you will find further articles and current topics related to ritual abuse:
+49 (0) 40 – 3619 7115
kontakt@mission-freedom.de
Please submit enquiries to Gaby Wentland via email only:
gwentland@mission-freedom.de
© 2022 MISSION FREEDOM e.V.
