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228 Rochdale Ritual Abuse Case
HBO on March 13, 1997, and rebroadcast in August
of 1998. Incredibly, when Echols’s appeal was
rejected in 1999, the appeals judge was the original
judge who had presided at the first trial.
See also Satanic Ritual Abuse
For Further Reading:
Lacy, Liam. “Film Critic.” The Globe and Mail.
Toronto, Ontario. February 21, 1997, p. C3.
Free the West Memphis Three website:
http://www.wm3.org
The text of the decision of the Supreme Court of
Arkansas of December 23, 1996 can be found at:
http://www.state.ar.us/supremecourt/opinions/1
996a/961223sc/cr94–928.txt
Vannah, Tom. “Between the lines: Pure evil.” Valley
Advocate. Hartford, MA. March 23, 2000. At:
http://www.newmassmedia.com
Ebert, Roger. Review of “Paradise Lost.” At:
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/
Rochdale Ritual Abuse Case
The Rochdale, United Kingdom, Satanic ritual
abuse case began dramatically in 1990 when police
and social workers conducted dawn raids on area
homes and took twenty-one children into protective
custody. A similar set of raids in the Orkneys
in March of the following year took nine more
children away from their parents. In Ayrshire in
April, another ten more children were taken by
authorities “amid fantastic allegations of human
sacrifices and rituals held in a haunted castle,
graveyards, and a hot air balloon by parents
dressed as clowns!” (Howard 1992)
The raids were initiated on the basis of testimony
from other children being investigated for
possible abuse who had informed authorities
about infant sacrifice, grave robbing, sheep mutilations,
and the drugging and caging of children
they had allegedly witnessed. Authorities had
inferred that the adults were members of a Satanic
cult. Among other accusations,
it was alleged a hooded, masked and cloaked
figure known as “The Master,” who also
dressed as a Mutant Ninja Turtle, and who
was identified as the local vicar, had led
dances around a bonfire at a local quarry.
Police seized items associated with “black
magic” from the parents’ houses. These
included a book of erotic poetry, an Oriental
statue of a couple making love, a letter written
to the tooth fairy by one of the children, and a
Guy Fawkes mask! (Howard 1992)
The raids roughly coincided with a failed
parliamentary attempt to make it illegal for children
to attend pagan gatherings, Spiritualist
church services, new age events, or psychic fairs.
Following a typical pattern in such cases, none
of the children were found to show signs of sexual
abuse and no physical evidence was ever discovered.
In at least one case, one of the children
confessed to fabricating information at the
prompting of social workers. The Independent on
Sunday hypothesized that children’s reports of
dancing in a circle may have come from a Brownies
Halloween party that had been held at the Church
Hall. A member of Rochdale Council’s social services
committee asserted that the children had seen
horror movies and had confused fiction with
reality. He further stated that, “the children were
never involved in witchcraft or Satanism. It has all
been a ghastly mistake. The families in my judgement
were totally incapable of any of the things
which were alleged. No way were they followers of
a Satanic cult” (“Satan’s Case” 1990, 2).
Reporters for The Mail newspaper gave the
case of the “stolen children” extensive coverage.
For this reporting, the newspaper won the
Campaigning Journalists of the Year award for
1990. The newspaper also helped the families challenge
the case, and the children were eventually
returned to their parents. The last children to be
released came home in time for Christmas in 1996
after having been in state custody for over six
years. Tony Heaford, a Middleton councilor who
had worked on reuniting the families noted: “They
have been separated from their parents an incredibly
long time, despite the ruling in the original
case that Satanic abuse was a myth which did not
exist....I understand part of the reason for not
returning them was that the parents are in debt,
which is tantamount to penalization of the poor”
(Robinson, website).
The ultimate source of these cases was found to
be conferences led by what the newspaper termed
“fundamentalist Christian evangelists” from the