A Survivor's Heart
It is so easy to write about other people's pain. I can
defend ritual abuse victims, prove Satanic crime is real.
I do it because I care. I do it because I must.
I do it because I've been there.
I fight for the victim's place of healing because it is
a place I have rarely found for myself.
You see, I'm a "recovered memory" ritual abuse survivor.
I spent ten agonizing, lonely years without therapy,
with little support, and few people to believe me, slowly
getting healed by God's loving Hand. It was a
devastating, painful time.
When I began doing training, I rarely shared my
story for two reasons: (1) I wanted our work to stand on
its own merits, and (2) I found people didn't want to
hear about it.
More recently, a third reason emerged: No one will
believe it. The False Memory folks, and their Christian
counterparts have so thoroughly covered the media that
we survivors are now considered a pitiful joke. "Where's
the proof?" "Give us the chronology!" Outside of body
scars and strong corroborative information, I can't
"prove" the hell I endured. And that's all the skeptics
care about. God knows how hard I've tried. I spent
several days in my hometown looking for any record at
all, school, hospital, anything on my friend Mark.
Frustration, anger and tears poured out as I realized
I would never find records of the friend I watched
brutally killed. The skeptics are not concerned how
hard we try to validate our experience. It hurts.
I had a good friend recently read a fictional account
of my friend and I, as well as the second part about
growing up, healing and fighting back the forces that
destroyed us. I asked my friend to be brutally honest,
and he was. One comment struck me hard: "Just throw
out part two. Don't let those kids grow up. Keep them
as kids. Nobody's going to care about the adults." He
had a valid point; it also defined exquisitely the agony
we adults face. Everybody's heart goes out to innocent,
injured children. But finding compassion for
once-innocent, now adult-children, fragmented,
addicted, frightened and abandoned is very, very hard.
People have a hard time caring about us as adults, even
though we're really children trapped in time.
My book has become a dilemma. If I leave off part
two, I'd leave behind one brutally butchered adolescent
and one completely destroyed child. What Christian
publisher wants to print such a grim account? Granted,
it is more realistic. There are precious few good endings
for children like we were and knew. Certainly Mark's
life had no happy ending. No future. No one to
remember him but me.
But I made it. I grew up, I found Christ. I was
truly a brand plucked from the fire. But growing up
and getting healed was a nightmare beyond description,
filled with failure and losses immeasurable. Such is the
cost of the chosen of Satan who betray and return to
Jesus. In the end was glorious freedom and victory.
In the end! I doesn't fit a neat "Christian success
story" category. Anyone brave enough to print that
story?
The truly sad part is, it is a miracle beyond
comprehension that we survived at all, yet we find
little rejoicing from others, only discomfort. Like
Vietnam vets, there's no hero's welcome, just denial of
war and a desire for us to forget it.
We ritual abuse survivors live in a netherworld. We are
not children, yet a child cries within us. We are
adults, but it's painfully hard for us to live in an
adult world. My partner's brother in law once said, "You
know, people think you're flaky." To which I could only
reply, "I imagine if you saw your best friend butchered
when you were 11, you might be a little flaky, too."
What most people take for granted - clear thinking,
organized activity, play and friendships are hard-won
victories, every one. We long for someone to walk with us
to healing, to weep with us. For a while, it was there for
us, to a degree.
Then came the backlash.
And again, we struggle alone.
I don't write this for sympathy, that's the last
thing any of us want or need. It's so you understand
why the orphaning of survivors by the backlash is so
hard. To have lived through indescribable hell and be
told it's "abuse excuse" to seek answers is a wound I
cannot describe.
I watched with horror the personal attack and
unprecedented pursuit of my dear friend, Lauren
Stratford, author of Satan's Underground. I first saw
her on Oprah. Everything in my spirit cried, "She's real!
I can see Jesus in her!"
Next thing I heard, Cornerstone Magazine had
released an extensive "expose" on Lauren. I read it and
wept, became nauseous, and got angry. The artwork
alone was as bloody and demonic as something from a
death metal porn magazine. (Mind you, it's a
"Christian" magazine) The article was unrelenting,
unkind, unChristlike and ugly. Several similar articles
followed.
My deepest concern was for Lauren. I didn't
understand all the issues; I didn't need to. I'm a
survivor. I know how the slander, disbelief and attack
hurt me when I was a target. She was my sister. I
wanted to be her friend. We got in contact, and
established a real and vital friendship. All I have
learned of Lauren since 1990 tells me she's one of the
most Godly, caring, brave people I've ever known. She has
stood virtually alone in the face of volumes of inhuman
attack few could withstand. She's been publicly called
a fraud. Why then, does she continue to pour her life
out to other survivors, without thanks, without
recognition, without renumeration? A tree is known by
its fruit, and her fruit speaks for itself.
The other fruit speaks for itself, too - ridicule,
smugness, decimation, cutting off survivors from the
church's help, equating us with alien abductee wackos.
That's a pretty clear fruit. I've learned a lot about
how all this was carried out - clandestine
"investigations", oaths of secrecy - and the more I
learn of the underhanded, deceptive ways it was
conducted, the more I see the clear and gnarled evil
hand of the accuser behind it all.
Oh, how I wish they'd take me on. I'm prepared; I have
no innocence about the "good intention" of these
people. But I imagine God won't let me take them on,
perhaps because I see in them every perpetrator who
ever told me "It's your fault" or "Nothing happened, you
made it up." Still, I wish. But for now perhaps it's
best to let them go, like the proverbial snake that eats
its tail and hopefully just devours itself. But the
robbery of Lauren, and all of us, has been done. Only
God can make that right.
I am passionate because I know this story. I've been
attacked by the press, investigated by police, robbed,
ridiculed, humiliated in public, slandered and defamed.
I've had friends disbelieve me, tolerate me, tell me to
ignore my past. I've held on to Jesus tightly, surviving
only because of a strong love of God's word and a few
caring friends. For ten years, the nightmares were
continuous, bloody and awful. Waking recall was so vivid
and traumatizing that I once bolted out of a
restaurant crying and screaming. There were night
memories of abuse so terrible that I writhed in physical
agony for hours. There were regressions into a
whimpering child I shared with no one. There was no
hypnosis. No "leading therapist." Just Jesus and his
comforting word. The pain I feel is the pain of all
survivors buried under the backlash - no one to help
shoulder the pain - no one to share the victories.
By God's grace, we'll all keep walking with Him. In all
likelihood, I will write no more in these newsletters on
this. I am weary of the silence. Yet I felt this once
I should write from my heart, not my head, because we
are not statistics. We are your children, your sons,
daughters, mothers and fathers. My anger is Paul's:
"Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and
I do not burn with anger?(2 Cor. 11:29) No one expected
nor deserved the wholesale rejection this backlash
brought. We're the "old guard", and as our time passes,
we will hand to you the multitude of McMartin children
and Countrywalk children and Little Rascal children
and a thousand others soon to be adults, and we will
plead with you: "Don't do to them what you did to us.
Help them. Love them. Believe them."
Until then, we will continue reaching out to survivors
and children to love them with Jesus because we must.
I must. The fragile, trusting arms around our neck of
an abused child that says, "You're safe. You believe me",
in a moment wipes out the pain of misunderstanding,
rejection and isolation. In a moment we know what it
was all for. It lets us know we are the arms of Jesus
to them.
It is our healing. It is our mandate. It is our call.
Gregory Reid