Book Reviews
The politics and experience of ritual abuse: beyond disbelief
Sarah Scott
ISBN: 978-0-3352041-9-9 2001 220 pages Open University Press
Mary Freer
Research and Education Unit on Gendered Violence, University of South Australia, SA
Reactions to accounts of ritual abuse seem to verge from outright dismissal to hysteria. This in itself makes Sara Scott's contribution to this field of enquiry even more compelling to read. Scott brings a calm voice to the discussion of ritual abuse. It is not a voice that seeks to prove the efficacy of the participants' narratives or to discredit the experience, but a voice that requires us to entertain alternative accounts of survivors' stories. The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse records the lived experience of 13 survivors of ritual abuse. Scott honours the stories by regarding her participants as 'persons of serious intent' rather than performing 'textual surgery' (p.6) on them as is done within a disbelief discourse. Given the historical panic and discrediting associated with accounts of ritual abuse this very act of honour is political.
Scott elucidates for the reader the multiple hierarchies that are at play each time choices are made to believe or not believe the truth of an account of abuse. Amid this relentless search for a 'truth' there are voices
…that rarely get heard amid the clamour, those who are much discussed but rarely speak, those child victims and adult survivors who are located at the point of origin of all child abuse discourse but whose contribution to identifying the problem and its solutions has been quickly overtaken by a new category of experts speaking on their behalf (p.5).
The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse relies on Finkelhor's definition of ritual abuse as one that refers to accounts of abuse that are carried out within a context that includes ritual, magic and supernatural symbols and is repeated over time to frighten or intimidate the victims. Clearly the narratives of the participants illustrate in graphic ways the experience of sustained ritualised abuse, that is at times, despite the sensitive handling of the narratives, quite disturbing to read.
Scott situates the experience of ritual abuse within a socio-political context that frames discussion of the issues of gender, power and subjugation. This context takes account of the discourses of child abuse and extends research thinking away from binary notions of true and false. The thorough exploration of the history of child abuse discourses and feminist theoretical contributions is rigorous and informative. The subject of women who abuse is not shied away from but explored through a feminist lens drawing on the work of Liz Kelly, Sue Scott and Jaqui Saradjian. This exploration takes account of the bind that feminist theorists feel caught in as they research women's violence.
Very little work to date has attempted to draw conclusions about the gendered differences between men and women of the experience of sexual abuse. Scott found that the men's narratives were not as rich or thick as the women's and she offers a possible explanation as to why this might be. Scott makes the point that …all children draw on the (gendered) discourses concerning sexuality and the family that are available to them, and out of a mixture of private experiences and public discourses begin to construct the narratives of self which guide, inform and justify their course in life (p.105). This gendered account of the discursive practice of re-telling our lives and creating our sense of the way things were within our families offers another entry point to this research area.
Finally Scott addresses the competing ways of understanding Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Scott points out that the link between MPD and ritual abuse has not contributed to a more productive understanding of either phenomena. Drawing on various authors such as Szasz, Foucault and G.H Mead, Scott elucidates the nature of psychiatric discourse, which seeks to describe and categorise human behaviour. This exploration of MPD is juxtaposed alongside a post-structuralist understanding of the ways that individuals become a product of the discourses that describe them.
Scott rounds off this argument with a personal account of the usefulness that a diagnosis of MPD/DID was for her foster daughter. Scott presents the reader with her own story that encapsulates the relief gained by discovering a framework for understanding behaviour that was terrifying and exhausting and challenges taken for granted dismissals of the value of a 'diagnosis'. In many ways The Politics of Ritual Abuse ends as it begins; with Scott placing her lived experience as a point of reference to make sense of her theoretical position. This is a brave and humane book that honours the dignity of the personal account.
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