Dr Michael Salter - Professor of Criminology: This presentation will discuss emerging responses to organised abuse in Australia and overseas, identifying areas of strength as well as ongoing gaps and controversies. The internet has leant unprecedented visibility to child sexual exploitation, to the point where government and law enforcement agencies see the problem as primarily a technological one. However, most online abuse images and videos were created through face-to-face abuse, with survivors disclosing family-based and community networks of abusers who remain largely invisible in policy frameworks. The presentation will highlight positive developments, including increased recognition of the dissociative disorders and expanded government interest in sexual exploitation, and identify ongoing challenges, including ritual abuse and transgenerationally abusive families. Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter is a criminologist at the University of New South Wales, where he studies the criminological aspects of complex trauma, including the intersections of technology with abuse, violence and exploitation. He is the author of two books, 'Organised Sexual Abuse' (Routledge, 2013) and 'Crime, Justice and Social Media' (Routledge, 2017), and a range of papers on child abuse, gendered violence and technology. He conducts multi-method research with victims and survivors of child sexual exploitation, domestic violence and sexual assault and conducts multi-sectorial policy analysis with the aim of improving responses to survivors and preventing violence and abuse. He sits on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and he is an expert advisor to the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. He is an associate editor of Child Abuse Review and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation. Dr Michael Salter Scientia Associate Professor of Criminology, Postgraduate Coordinator, School of Social Sciences, 125 Morven Brown, UNSW SYDNEY NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA W: organisedabuse.com

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Introduction
Scientia Associate Professor of Criminology at the
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Advisory Committee, Canadian Centre for Child
Protection
Advisory Committee, Office of the eSafety Commissioner
Advisory Committee, White Ribbon Australia
Research Working Group, Australian Centre to Counter
Child Exploitation
Board of Directors, International Society for the Study of
Trauma and Dissociation
Associate Editor, Child Abuse Review
Editorial Board, Journal of Trauma and Dissociation
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Presentation data today
2007 – 2010 interview study of
21 adults disclosing organised
abuse in childhood (Salter, 2012).
2014 – 2015 interview study of
20 adult survivors and 20 mental
health professionals regarding
ongoing organised abuse in
adulthood (Salter, 2017).
2018 - 2020 interview study of
women with experiences of
complex trauma (n=41) as well
as relevant service providers and
practitioners (n=63) (Salter et al.
2020).
Joint work with the Canadian
Centre for Child Protection on
child sexual abuse material
(Salter and Richardson, 2021).
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Sarah’s story
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There were two of them, and they were just hanging around in the vacant block across the
road from my house. I didn’t even notice them at first. I got out of my car to go inside, and
they walked over as if they were just walking past. I didn’t really think twice about them.
Until things were already happening. I didn’t recognise them at any point. Well, I didn’t
really get to see their faces, because it all happened too suddenly. It was what they said,
oh and what they did, which was absolutely congruent with both the emails and past
experience. They mentioned that they were never going to be out of my life, and that things
would be much worse if I told anyone what had happened when I was younger.
Sarah
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One of the big things with me at hospital was that I didn’t want the doctors taking photos of
me, or touching me. And if I’d said, ‘Yes, you can examine me’– I think they would have
believed us more. But it was the fact that I wouldn’t let them … and any other proof [such
as the rope burn] that didn’t fit into the specific things that you look for in a sexual assault
was not seen as real.
I remember them looking for – because you are meant to look under the finger nails, you
are meant to look for defensive wounds – and of course I’ve got no blood under my finger
nails, because in that situation [organised abuse] I don’t defend myself. And things like
that. I remember them getting my hand, and going ‘Nah, there’s nothing under her nails’ as
though the only alternative is that I’m lying.
Sarah
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Organised abuse:
Prevalence and scenarios
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Organised abuse: Definition and prevalence
• Definition: Any case of sexual abuse in which 2+ adult perpetrators conspire
to sexually abuse 2+ children.
• Survivors report a spectrum of organised abuse from:
– localised, informal ‘clustering’ of offenders,
– coordinated offending with routine group incidents, and
– national and international criminal subcultures with sophisticated techniques for
controlling and trafficking children.
• How common is organised abuse?
– 2 - 3% of sexual abuse cases reported to police and child protection and 2% - 17% of
children and women in treatment for sexual abuse report organised abuse (old data)
(Salter and Richters, 2012),
– Between 10% and one-third of mental health professionals treating sexual abuse
survivors have encountered a case of organised and/or ritual abuse abuse (Salter
and Richters, 2012),
– Half of adult survivors of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) report organised abuse
(C3P, 2017).
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Organised abuse: Impacts
• 11% of women in treatment for a dissociative disorder describe abuse by
‘paedophile rings’ (Middleton and Butler, 1998).
• Middleton (2005, p. 41) describes a typical dissociative presentation as a:
– dissociative and traumatized individual besieged by self-denigrating internal voices,
who is affectively unstable, readily triggered, prone to suicidal ideation, who self-
soothes by cutting, burning or using drugs/alcohol, who loses time, who is prone to
derealization/depersonalization, and who struggles to have any clear boundaries or
sense of personal identity.
• Adults with undiagnosed or untreated Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID):
– Have high suicide rates several thousand times the national average (Kluft, 1995).
– Are at heightened risk of physical and sexual victimisation and may require mental
health care to bring ongoing abuse to an end.
• Community prevalence of DID estimated at 1% (Sar, 2011) with a recently meta-
analysis of college-aged students finding 3.7% meet the diagnostic criteria (Kate,
Hopwood, & Jamieson, 2020).
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Reinders AA, Veltman DJ. Dissociative identity disorder: out of the shadows at last?. The
British Journal of Psychiatry. 2020 Oct 7:1-2.
“The aetiology of DID has been debated for decades, questioning the validity of DID as
a diagnostic entity in the DSM. Given that neurobiological and other evidence supports
the trauma model for DID, it remains unclear why the aetiology of DID is still
controversial, because for most other major psychiatric disorders, such as psychosis,
the aetiology is also insufficiently known without such detrimental impact on diagnostic
detection, treatment and patient's quality of life. We therefore propose that, given the
available neurobiological evidence, it is time to move DID out of the shadows and to
consider it as a mainstream psychiatric disorder.”
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Why engage in organised abuse?
We are social beings: abusers seek like-minded peers
• Legitimation of deviant impulses and desires
• Sharing of abuse strategies and expertise
• ‘Edgework’: Thrill of participating in organised crime
Reduced risk
• Victimised children are unlikely to disclose or be believed
• Perpetrator group information security and internal rules
Maximum benefit
• Expanded access to children and/or child exploitation material
• Economic and other material gains, inc business opportunities
Sadistic and traumatic re-enactments
• Strong intergenerational pattern of organised abuse transmission in families
• Early sexualized attachment disruptions can become ‘malignant’
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FAMILY
INSTITUTIONS
ONLINE
COMMUNITY
Scenarios of organised abuse
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Familial organised abuse
• Parents are the most commonly identified perpetrators of organised abuse.
• The rarely detected ‘make them at home’ paternal offender OR
• The non-biological step/de facto abuser WITH
• Spectrum of maternal involvement (unaware, unprotective, complicit, active).
• Parents who engage in prolonged sexual abuse of children are almost inevitably
connected to other offenders, inc relatives.
• Diverse pattern of victimisation with common factors:
• Early initiation of abuse and prolonged duration (inc into adulthood)
• Comparatively low numbers of victims but high intensity of abuse
• Predominance of female victims
• Presence of female perpetrators
• Often sadistic, sometimes ritualistic
• Child develops dissociative disorder
• Common scenario in the manufacture of child sexual abuse material (Salter et al. 2021).
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I recall a lot of my childhood not making sense because what happened during the day
was very different to what happened at the night, or on weekends. What was happening
was the total opposite to what was being portrayed during the day, you know, the whole
Brady Bunch thing. Mum, Dad, kids, everything looks hunky dory. It was the total opposite
to that.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him as my father. I have a birth certificate, in that sense. But
I’m not sure that I ever put it in that context. I saw him connected to something outside the
family.
Isabelle
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What is ritual abuse?
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• Organised abuse structured in a ceremonial way, characterised by:
• occult and religious iconography
• usually facilitated by parents
• overlap with prolonged incest, stalking of victims into adulthood.
• Associated with the extremes of child maltreatment including bestiality, torture and
the ingestion of human waste (Salter, 2013).
• Such accounts were heavily contested in the ‘memory wars’ of the 1990s but
recent convictions suggest that ritual abuse is a patterned and recurring form of
organised abuse.
• Strong evidence that media reporting of ‘tentpole’ ritual abuse cases in the 1990s
was riddled with errors, and that foundational research used to discredit child
testimony is faulty (Kitzinger, 2004; Cheit, 2014; Nelson, 2016; Salter, 2017;
Pilgrim, 2018).
• There is a strong association between ritual abuse and the manufacture of child
exploitation material.
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Ritual abuse: Definition and history
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With victims, what can appear to be really dorky or harmless – as a child, these things,
they are connected to things that are absolutely terrifying. It might seem hammy,
pretending to be vampires and witches and things, but, as a kid, you’ve seen them go
through with it.
Lauren
Terrifying the child
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Dehumanising the victim
They also forced – they would force – they did it to me – your face onto the genitals of the
dog. And then they tried to make you eat the faeces of the dog. And when they killed the
chicken, they tried to get you – they would put it in a bowl, and they’d push your face
towards it – and they tried to make you drink it. Which I refused. And when they killed the
goat, they flesh was warn and they tried to make you eat it. It was horrible.
Kate
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Justifying abuse
I wonder whether the inverted Christian stuff is just … if you have an extreme Christian
background, and you want to have sex, and you are raised not to have a lot of empathy for
women and children – maybe that’s how you justify it to yourself, that’s how you form your
sexuality, that’s how you justify it to the kids. And then you come to believe it? I don’t know.
Sky
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Coercing ‘consent’
[In the abusive group] it was like everyone else – the majority of people – were ‘good’
[except me] – it was like a good and evil comic book thing. Yeah, it was like a comic book. I
was the evil that the rest of the world is trying to fight.
Alex
I was always told that I was training to be a high priestess. But I also know of other ritual
abuse survivors who say the same thing, so I’m never sure if that’s a line that is used
regularly, and it’s just a lie.
Lily
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Torture-based conditioning
The shock shed was made of corrugated iron. I just remember it being iron and really hot and
there was hay on the floor. But they had batteries, like, they would connect wires to some of the
machinery on the property that had batteries.
And they’d shock you. They would do this chant, chant, chant and then shock you. And chant,
chant, chant and shock you, but then I got asked to do it to other kids as well.
Then they had these bright lights, and we’d sit there for hours. And if we wanted to go to sleep
one of the … I don't know what to call him, the minders of whatever would … hit us with a crop or
something. We weren’t allowed to sleep.
And then they would turn all the lights off, and then we had to sleep. And then they would turn
the lights on again, and we had to wake up … You just wanted to obey the rules and do it right.
And if you could do it right ... But sometimes you just couldn't, you couldn't even open your eyes.
There were noises as well. You’d be just falling asleep and then this big noise would happen.
And you ended up doing it automatically … they would use those noises on the loudspeaker,
and you’d find yourself doing things without thinking.
Eloise
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Continuum of control techniques
0. Chaotic, disorganised abuse: Mass child abuse due to breakdown in social fabric.
1. Opportunistic/situational abuse: Abuse made possible due to lack of oversight.
2. Motivated and premeditated abuse: Grooming, inducement, threats, blackmail.
3. Coercive control and sexualisation: Victim ‘owned’ and controlled by perpetrator.
4. Disruption of recall and disclosure: Sedation, drugging, hypnosis.
5. Deliberate traumatisation: Orchestration of traumatic ordeals to prevent disclosure,
induce amnesia, reduce credibility, ‘create’ personality.
6. Induction and manipulation of dissociation: Use of electroshock, ritual and torture
with the intention of creating dissociative parts, systems and responses.
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Prolonged/intergenerational incest
• In a sample of 62 women with Dissociative Identity Disorder in Brisbane,
Middleton and Butler (1998) found that:
• 13% of this group reported the continuation of incestuous abuse beyond the time
of presentation ie as an adult.
• Middleton (2013) published a study of 10 such patients.
• 10 abused by their fathers and his ‘friends’ ie organised abuse.
• 8 had been abused by one/more grandparents.
• Abuse persisted over a median of 31 years.
• Average of 3,320 sexual assaults in the lifetime of the woman.
• Multiple mechanisms result in the entrapment of adults in prolonged incest and abuse:
• Attachment in sadism (Sachs, 2019)
• Dissociative obedience
• Inadequate policy frameworks and support
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Attachment in sadism
And then he burst out with, "You did so well and I'm so proud of you," and all this other
shit, and I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "But you did nothing wrong. Nothing's
wrong. Nothing's happened, it's okay." Right? And then he would start using that
monotone voice ... which I'd experienced before but really didn't understand it because
I’d already switched by the time ... before I could work it out. But, at that stage ... I
hadn't actually completely cut off from my reality, ... and he's sitting there talking to me
repetitively.
He's going, "You're my good girl. I wouldn't hurt you. You're my good girl. Good girl. I
won't hurt you." And then it went on to saying, "Your mum loves you too." "We love
you." But, it was over and over and it probably ... I mean, I can't give you an accurate
time frame ... but, you know, probably talking about a good 10,12 minutes ... Every now
and then during that monotone voice he would be giving me a cuddle. Which was
something that a lot of us desperately wanted, you know … but also frozen at the same
time ..."
Abigail
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Sachs, A. (2019) Attachment as a second language: Treating active Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Frontiers in the Psychotherapy of Trauma and Dissociation, 3(1):107–122
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Escaping prolonged incest and ritual abuse
We felt very isolated in tackling – separating from our parents and complex trauma. We were very – we
felt very alone. We felt like our current therapist didn’t quite understand the magnitude of what was
going on, so what we were leaving.
And we looked up services, just google-ing stuff … We felt like – we sort of felt like we had nowhere
really to turn to. We – yeah, there is a big gap …
It’s very hard I think for us leaving – separating from our parents. We’re not just separating from them
physically and emotionally. It’s also financially. It’s really hard. Basically, we’ve had to plan leaving for
the past five years and planning our finances, and still for those five years being abused.
So, on and off, and it’s hard. It’s not like we can utilise a phone – a telephone service that’s just custom
for people that have got ongoing abuse. I think – so, yeah, we’re really feeling that part of it is a gap –
people’s needs that need to be met and also just in therapy – sorry, in the professional world. I don’t
think a lot of therapists are quite – they don’t really know how to deal with the issues of ongoing abuse.
Laura
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Policy and practice
challenges
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Policy and practice gaps
• Organised abuse perpetrators are unlikely to be detected in the absence of
specialist, targeted frameworks.
• State response to child sexual exploitation is often fragmented and focuses
on some aspects (e.g. extrafamilial, tech) and neglects others (e.g. parental
offending).
• Siloes between victim support, child protection, public policy and strategic law
enforcement: Expertise from the frontline is not informing high-level decision
making.
• Specialist mental health care is crucial for the health and safety of this group
but often unavailable/unaffordable.
• Lack of safety planning for survivors and public policy acknowledgement of
the diversity of controlling and abusive relationships.
• How do we integrate complex trauma and dissociation into service models
and decisions?
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Key problems identified by professionals
You can’t see what
you can’t name
No shared
vocabulary for
extreme abuse
Lack of
accountability for
police and
prosecutorial
decision making
Responding to
profound
vulnerability in
adults
Understanding
“consent” in
extreme abuse
contexts
Navigating internal
and external
realities
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Maryanne: “Ongoing and severe organized abuse” and “sexual assault” is what I tend
to use, those sort of words [instead of ritual abuse].
Kelly: Mmm hmm. And sometimes you've even got to leave out the “organized” bit
depending on who you, you're doing the advocacy with. You've got to just go with the
“complex, severe complex childhood and current trauma”. “Historical and current
trauma”. Sometimes you've got to be really, really careful.
Maryanne: … And so, you water down, and water down, and water down your
language, but we have, we always recognize here that we have a stranger element of,
of, you know, or a darker element of what we have to deal with and what comes to the
fore in, in other services that are dealing with, you know, domestic violence. Yet it all
falls under the same framework.
In terms of, you know, most people are born into the families where this happens, it's
parents who are involved, and then it's a broader group that, you know. So, even
though there are cross-overs into, um, into what could legitimately be dealt within a
domestic violence service, they're not responding to it, or they're not hearing about it.
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Can’t see what you can’t name
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No shared vocabulary
I think there's that sense of literally no one in the community actually believes that this
happens. I don't even have a language around this necessarily. I don't know how to talk
about it with anyone, it's actually impossible. I don't know how I'm going to go and speak to
a police officer, who clearly doesn't get it. Who won't get it and coupled with that, there's the
very real risk of harm. The huge sense of danger that people have in going and disclosing.
These perpetrators are very good at using tactics of fear and danger and threats.
Sexual assault worker
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Lack of accountability
I've had clients before who have had children from child sexual abuse, so there's biological
evidence. [Prosecutors say] ‘“We're unlikely to secure a prosecution so we won't proceed”.
In terms of evidence hierarchies, what more could you have than a child who was born
before this person was 16 years of age?
Confessions and they won't [prosecute] … What I would say largely for survivors of
complex trauma, the system is hugely problematic. Even when there's individual workers
trying to do the best that they can, if the system is ... We have a bit of a broken system.
Trauma counsellor
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Profoundly vulnerable adults
There's some interesting stuff for me around the child protection, adult protection. We've
made some, and I guess you have to with a bureaucracy, some arbitrary decisions about,
like 18. I would say there's 17 year olds who are less vulnerable than some of the 25 year
olds who I work with.
At times I struggle with the, yes at 18 you're a adult, can vote and drink and all of these
sorts of things. I believe in the importance of children being protected, and I don't
necessarily want to be making mandatory reports about adults. We see incredibly
vulnerable 19 year olds who are experiencing complex victimization, and have their whole
lives, and are there because they're stuck there.
There's little that can be done until we say "Until you make a decision to do that." Which is
great because I believe in the importance of empowerment and people making those
decisions for themselves.
Sexual assault worker
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Consent in extreme abuse
I entertained the idea (of going to the police) with her and she freaked out. So, I'm left kind
of thinking, well I have a duty to this patient ...she keeps getting raped, but what am I, what
am I going to do? Oh, she got raped by someone that she's, you know, she's been part of
this cult for many, many years.
And, and often there's no sign of, not only is there no sign of resistance, but there's
compliance. There's "Yes, I will. I will go there. I will do what I'm told." Externally at least,
there's a compliant, consenting adult. No, not, she's not consenting at all. But in terms of a
third party, like a police officer who doesn't understand DID standing outside this situation
they may well see consent.
Psychiatrist
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Navigating internal and external realities
One of the added complexities in working with severely dissociative people is that, and
this has happened to me, is that when there's a report of an assault in the present. It's
my job to believe my client and I take that quite seriously. Someone's got to be on their
side.
... [A client] developed a kind of close relationship with a male support worker, like they
were friendly, and then she reported to me that he had done something inappropriate …
That's so awful that he was accused of that. Because of someone who's, you know, like
let's say it's possible that he's just a nice guy who likes to help people. It's also possible
that he's a creepy person who's chosen a job where he has access to vulnerable
people. I don't know what happened, but that puts me in a really ... Just a bit of a
philosophical turmoil. I know what my role is as the clinician but I'm really glad I don't
work for, you know, the police.
Psychiatrist
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• The proliferation of online child sexual abuse material has made the problem of
organized abuse undeniable, including sadistic abuse. A significant proportion of CSAM
survivors disclose parental perpetration and ritual abuse (C3P, 2017).
• Child sexual exploitation and trafficking are emerging as national and international
policy priorities.
• In 2018, the state-NGO working group “Protection of children against sexualized
violence and exploitation” based within the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs,
Senior Citizens, Women and Youth released the report “Sexualized Violence in
Organized Structures of Violence and in Ritual Structures of Violence”.
• The German government recently funded an academic study of ritual abuse survivors
and mental health practitioners, and has produced multiple publications (e.g. Schröder,
Nick, Richter-Appelt, & Briken, 2018, 2020) .
• Survivor and mental health consumer organisations for people living with dissociation
are emerging globally, seeking recognition of ritual and organised abuse within an
evidence-based framework.
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Emerging state, NGO and community recognition
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• C3P. (2017). Survivor's Survey Preliminary Report. C3p: Winnipeg.
• Kate, M.-A., Hopwood, T., & Jamieson, G. (2020). The prevalence of Dissociative Disorders and dissociative experiences in college
populations: a meta-analysis of 98 studies. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 21(1), 16-61.
• Kluft, R. (1995). Six completed suicides in dissociative identity disorder patients: Clinical observations. Dissociation, 8, 104–111.
• Middleton, W. (2005). Owning the past, claiming the present: Perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients. Australasian
Psychiatry, 13(1), 40–49.
• Middleton, W. (2013). Ongoing incestuous abuse during adulthood. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 14(3), 251-272.
• Middleton, W., & Butler, J. (1998). Dissociative identity disorder: An Australian series. Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Psychiatry, 2(6), 794–804.
• Reinders, A. A., & Veltman, D. J. (2020). Dissociative identity disorder: out of the shadows at last? The British Journal of Psychiatry,
1-2.
• Sachs, A. (2019). Attachment as a second language: Treating active dissociative identity disorder. Frontiers in the Psychotherapy of
Trauma and Dissociation, 3(1), 107 - 122.
• Salter, M. (2012). The role of ritual in the organised abuse of children. Child Abuse Review, 21(6), 440-451. doi:10.1002/car.2215
• Salter, M. (2013). Organised Sexual Abuse. London: Glasshouse/Routledge.
• Salter, M. (2017). Organized abuse in adulthood: survivor and professional perspectives. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 18(3),
441-453.
• Salter, M., Conroy, E., Dragiewicz, M., Burke, J., Ussher, J., Middleton, W., . . . Noack-Lundber, K. (2020). “A deep wound under my
heart”: Constructions of complex trauma and implications for women’s wellbeing and safety from violence. Sydney: ANROWS.
• Salter, M., & Richardson, L. (2021). The Trichan takedown: Lessons in the regulation and governance of child sexual abuse material.
Policy & Internet, forthcoming.
• Salter, M., & Richters, J. (2012). Organised abuse: A neglected category of sexual abuse with significant lifetime mental healthcare
sequelae. Journal of Mental Health, 21(5), 499-508.
• Salter, M., Wong, W. T., Breckenridge, J., Scott, S., Cooper, S., & Peleg, N. (2021). Production and distribution of child sexual abuse
material by parental figures. Canberra: AIC
• Sar, V. (2011). Epidemiology of dissociative disorders: An overview. Epidemiology Research International, 2011, 1-8.
• Schröder, J., Nick, S., Richter-Appelt, H., & Briken, P. (2018). Psychiatric Impact of Organized and Ritual Child Sexual Abuse: Cross-
Sectional Findings from Individuals Who Report Being Victimized. International journal of environmental research and public health,
15(11), 2417.
• Schröder, J., Nick, S., Richter-Appelt, H., & Briken, P. (2020). Demystifying ritual abuse - insights by self-identified victims and health
care professionals. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 1-16.
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