(Return to Meandering Misfit – Links)

A definition of ritual abuse is well-worded in Wikipedia, namely, “cult-based ritualism in which the abuse had a spiritual or social [power] goal for the perpetrators [and] pseudo-ritualism in which the goal was sexual gratification and the rituals were used to frighten or intimidate victims.” 

Ritual abuse is a polarized controversy, with both the skeptics and the believers propagating information in support of their position – similar to the heated debates between staunch atheists and God-believers. Personally, I know the core of what happened to me, and it was reinforced continually until my late 30s.  I can vouch only for myself and as a witness to the behaviors and healing episodes of the embedded mind control within a few other adults.  

INTRA-FAMILIAL SETUP: 

As a child (mid-1950s) and young adult within a U.S. family of Russian immigrants, I loved my hardworking, caretaking maternal grandma and step-grandpa. However, I felt revulsion toward my paternal grandparents (who died within a few years of arrival). I felt disconnected and puzzled toward my divorced father who visited me infrequently. Towards my mother, I experienced a vast mixed plethora of deep and conflicting emotions through adulthood that included revulsion, confusion, rebellion; coupled with repressed fear, hate, terror, and anger. 

I was born into an intra-familial ritual abuse “cult,” and a few key adults were the perpetrators.  They were my mother and aunt, a friend of my maternal grandma, and my paternal grandparents. In my American husband’s family (I married at 19), the perpetrators included his paternal grandmother, his older brother’s wife, and later his younger brother’s maternal grandmother.  

Twin births occurred in the family of both my husband and that of his younger brother’s wife, but their few twin siblings were not legally-identified family members.  They were among the anonymous “underground” children of false-identities, raised, educated and housed under the auspices of the perpetrators and their vast network of collaborators and associates in different homes and communities.  That underground group included my husband’s identical twin brother, an avid perpetrator. 

ADULT LIFE: 

When married, we left the hometown to join his older brother and get away from my domineering mother. We followed the older brother and wife in subsequent moves to other states. For years my husband’s twin floated in and out of our residences, either escorting me and his brother (my “legal” husband) to the middle-night rituals or attending other ordinary life functions with me. For years I had glimmers of recognition of their subtle, sometimes pronounced physical differences. However, I was reinforced to not notice and to definitely, as usual, block any percolating conscious awarenesses of seeming impossibilities. 

During my adult married life, my husband’s twin and his older brother’s wife were the prime perpetrators that reinforced the brain-washing and control-by-trauma engendered in our childhoods. So in my extended intra-family “cult,” there were a handful of primary perpetrators assisted by consciously-aware collaborators in control of a varied and sometimes large group of consciously-unaware participants and victims. 

A consciously-unaware adult recipient of early childhood ritual abuse and subsequent continual reinforcement by intra-familial perpetrators is easily manipulated. That person can be activated into a trance-like submissive state of unaware compliance by any simple, common gesture – a “trigger” –programmed into their subconscious, i.e., a “stranger” on the street striding straight towards them with a big toothy smile, specific common hand gestures, the sound of a vacuum cleaner or leaf blower at home, the whooshing rhythm of windshield wipers, a specific rhythmic clacking of sticks by a group in the next-door neighbor’s secluded backyard middle of the night, etc. The list goes on and on.  The trigger-response principle is similar to what was utilized in the Pavlov’s dog experiments. Below follows examples of how this mind control is established in children as a foundation for future adult mind control. 

Regarding subsequent link: Child Mind Control 

Disclaimer: This contains two sample stories that illustrate the trickery and terror of child mind-control techniques perpetrated on young formative minds. Even though they are “cleaned-up” versions of the events, it is disturbing.  To honor your sensitivity, there is the option to bypass it. Please consider that option. If not, be assured, however, that such examples are revealed this one time solely to underscore validity as well as provide slight insights into the complexity and methodology of childhood ritual abuse.  

Remember: This occurred in the past. The trauma is not now. The whole point is HOPE. For if adult survivors like me can heal, so can anyone else with lesser or greater childhood traumas of abuse, neglect and addiction. 

* * * Fast forward to NOW * * *

BREACH INTO REALITY

During my latter 30s, a few in my extended family moved into my residence for support, mutual protection, and withdrawal from the cult. Our lives soon cascaded into a horror vortex of recollections. What began as trickles of unexplainable bizarre incidents of lost-time and interactions with “strangers” and “unfamiliar” sites, etc., engorged into a debilitating deluge of realizations and details. We kept each other awake through nights to stop us from opening doors or windows to the stalking perpetrators and collaborators in response to their triggers of window/door taps and uncommon owl hoots outside.  With fresh ladder-leg indentations and footprints in the soft ground under our windows as proof, we called the police a few times for extra patrols against “burglary” attempts, but after a night or two of absence, the cult members reengaged their stalking vigil.

We generated stacks and stacks of vivid and violent artwork and clay statuary, journaled agonizing details, accepted the realities of what was done to us and what we participated in, wept, raged, beat punching bags and pillows, did isolated hikes and runs, bicycled, engaged in various healing modalities with lay healers and psychologists. We were treated for symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) and dissociative identity disorder (DID). Once past the initial desperate healing of anticipatory helplessness in response to many varied triggers while living in each other’s back pockets, so to speak, our individual annoyances and incompatibilities began to assert and we went our separate ways.

Sadly, such an intense and non-ordinary preliminary healing process proved too much for some, like a when a scab loosens up and fresh bleeding is activated. My husband was among that ilk and chose to stop mid-stream in his fragile state, stuff everything back in, and remain full-bore in the security and denial within the LEs. Our LE extensive network included unaware participants locally, albeit well-meaning and loving in ordinary consciousness, coupled with a few aware collaborators.

On the other hand, fiercely impelled to continue the journey to its end, I sought a fresh and uncontaminated environment, and subsequently let go the LE network — in essence, tossing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.  Nonetheless, it felt safer and more genuine to live life among ordinary “new” strangers, untouched by any of those goings-on.

So in late 1995, I found myself continuing the psychology sessions; bankrupt with a foreclosed home, still stalked (albeit impotently), tossing and turning through sleepless nightmare-filled nights while working an 8-to-5 entry-level job in a small high tech company. Providentially, that company turned out to contain an interesting group of quirky and “ordinary” engineer- and family-men types, not touched by my ordeal. I also found a safe and fresh second-story room in a newly-built home within a gated community to rent from a young professional man I didn’t know. The new homeowner worked a long commute away and I hardly ever saw him – perfect.

THE BEGINNING

Set up for the next stages of healing, life was still precarious and scary — and I was looking up at the small bright light at the end of the tunnel.

Tragedy can either destroy you or make your better. It’s a choice.

 Return to Meandering Misfit – Links