Emanuel Foundation

Listen instead of looking away

A contribution by Claudia Fischer

Skepticism is my profession. Questioning, using common sense, in everything that is told to me. Doubting, asking questions, and researching at least two sources for information before I pass it on and publish it. That's what I learned as a journalist. And then I met victims of ritual violence.

The reports of these victims are so extreme and outside our sheltered reality that common sense can hardly grasp it. Is it possible that such cruel things happen in the basements and behind the facades of our neighbors' houses? Can there be human minds that think up such torture methods and are not afraid to put them into practice? Can the perpetrators remain undetected for decades? Without one of them snitching, betraying the others or accidentally letting something slip at some point? For generations? Can people (mostly children!) even survive the extreme violence that is reported? Many skeptical questions that automatically arise when you read or hear the reports.

The reports and the skepticism have been with me since 2002. My imagination is constantly pushed to its limits. I keep asking myself the above questions. And I keep coming to the same answer: Yes, all of that could be true. At least, despite intensive case research on several affected people, I have not been able to prove the opposite to a single one.

Let's take Anna (all names have been changed): She said that she had to murder someone in a certain year. According to my research in city and municipal archives, the person she is talking about actually disappears from the publicly accessible address directories at that time. The police later stated that there was no official death certificate, only a doctor's letter and a grave. So Anna's story remains unrefuted.

Let's take Beatrix: "It was a full moon night in June, the next morning we had English in the first lesson and two days later we had holidays..." These statements are understandable in the dusty class books from the 1970s in the basement of her school. And trauma research confirms that the smallest details, even from the peripheral events of a traumatic situation, are remembered exactly even years later, while "normal" events such as the order of school lessons would normally naturally fade away.

Or take Wewelsburg near Paderborn: The district administration, as the owner of the castle, assures us several times that a sophisticated security system records every opening and closing of all windows and doors. No one could sneak into the castle unnoticed, which is often mentioned in the reports of those affected. We agree to a television report on the locking system and are allowed to show every detail. Magnetic locks on windows and doors, long pressure flags that register all movements, everything very convincing! Until, at the end of the long day of filming, we accidentally discover that the castle's key cult rooms are not connected to the alarm system. "Why would they be? They're empty, no one can steal anything," the interviewee explains to me, full of conviction that there is no problem. I am stunned. Sometimes you can't think as absurd as reality really is!

These are just a few examples from countless hours of research. Of course, this doesn't prove the crimes, but it does underline the credibility of the reports. I find again and again that they withstand my skepticism wherever I can verify them. Or things cannot be verified or conclusively clarified. The deeper I delve, the more it becomes clear that crucial questions almost always remain unanswered.

This is probably why the police and investigative authorities are very skeptical about reports of ritual violence. When I called the North Rhine-Westphalia State Criminal Police Office in 2004 to ask how many crimes there were with a satanic background, the press office said: "None." "That can't be true," I replied, "at least we had the Ruda couple, who murdered an acquaintance in Witten/North Rhine-Westphalia in 2001 and claimed they were only following Satan's orders." - "Oh, you mean that, they weren't Satanists, they were just nuts," said the man from the State Criminal Police Office. That's just how it is - Satanism is not recorded statistically by the police. Not taken seriously. And that's why it doesn't exist? At least not in the public consciousness and not in the minds of investigators. Skepticism is also appropriate when it comes to these blind spots.

There is always hope among experts: “Once we have one proven case, one convicted criminal in this type of violent crime, then everyone will be believed, then everything will be fine.” But haven’t we already had this evidence, these perpetrators, these verdicts?

Yes, actually: The Dutroux case proves that it is possible to bring children into the hands of perpetrators and be convicted as a single perpetrator without the other people involved even being known by name. And that it is possible that in the course of a trial that attracts worldwide attention, dozens of witnesses and participants gradually have accidents or die mysteriously, so that existing leads are lost. The cellar dungeons of Josef Fritzl and Wolfgang Priklopil, who kidnapped Natascha Kampusch, as well as the three women discovered in Cleveland in spring 2013 who were held captive for years in a house in the middle of a neighborhood, prove that no one has to know when the most horrific injustice is happening next door. And that people can put their fantasies of power into action before our very eyes. Snuff videos in which people are tortured to death and images of tortured and abused children, which are traded worldwide and analyzed by the police in their thousands, prove that these crimes exist and that there are people who pay a lot of money to satisfy their hunger for them. Every discovery of such images on the computers of priests, police officers, politicians, youth welfare workers, etc. proves that no professional group and no social class is immune to consumers and accomplices of these torture images.

How much more evidence do we need before we can at least admit that this can happen?

So, to be fair, we should also direct our doubts to the other side: How credible and understandable is a categorical defensive attitude? Are there more arguments than "That can't all be true!"? As long as people prefer to look away instead of at least listening carefully, the perpetrators are protected and the victims are alone.

Claudia Fischer works as a freelance journalist and media educator in Bielefeld. Since 2001, she has been researching and reporting on ritual abuse, extreme sadistic violence and its consequences, mainly on behalf of the WDR studio in Bielefeld with contributions on radio, television and the Internet. Since 2016, she has also been involved with the information portal Ritual Violence.

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