Hidden in Plain Sight: Lessons From International Case Studies of Child Sexual Abuse in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings

 

Hidden in Plain Sight: Lessons From International Case Studies of Child Sexual Abuse in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings                           

 

Woodlock D; Olejníková L; Salter M; Singh S; Young A; Whitten T; Rouse J; Griffiths P, 2026, 'Hidden in Plain Sight: Lessons From International Case Studies of Child Sexual Abuse in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings', Child Maltreatment, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10775595251414844 

Abstract

Child sexual abuse (CSA) in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings is sometimes perceived as rare or the subject of a “moral panic”. Recent high-profile cases challenge this characterisation, exposing systemic failures within contemporary childcare environments that enable the sexual abuse of very young children. This article examines six prosecuted CSA cases from high-income countries involving serial offending against children under the age of five to explore how such severe abuse can persist despite regulation and apparent safeguards, and contrary to persistent scholarly claims that child sex offenders do not target ECEC settings. Using gendered organisational theory, our analysis reveals how organisational cultures, gendered power dynamics, and failures in accountability contribute to the occurrence and concealment of abuse. By situating these cases within broader patriarchal structural contexts, the article offers a critical rethinking of institutional responsibility and proposes reforms to strengthen child protection in ECEC settings.

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings have long been associated with controversies over child sexual abuse (CSA). While high-profile allegations in the 1980s, such as the McMartin Preschool trial, led to widespread skepticism and claims of “mass hysteria” (Cheit, 2014; Jenkins, 1992), contemporary evidence challenges the view that such abuse is merely the product of moral panic.

Some scholars continue to frame concerns about CSA in ECEC as exaggerated (Munk et al., 2013). Others, such as Parkinson and Cashmore (2017), have argued that ECEC environments are relatively low risk for CSA as compared to those involving older children, claiming that child sex offenders are rarely interested in very young children and there is limited opportunity for abuse. Nonetheless, large-scale offending persists. Recently in Australia, over 1200 children were referred to health authorities after a childcare worker was charged with 70 sex offences (Brown & Higgins, 2025). This case, occurring alongside the prosecution of Australian childcare worker Ashley Griffith (Smee, 2024), exposes a recurring pattern of premeditated exploitation and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) production that mirrors earlier decades (Cheit, 2014), now facilitated by digital technologies.

This study presents a qualitative analysis of six prosecuted cases from high-income countries involving serial offending against children under the age of five. Collectively, these cases document the abuse of at least 245 children. The primary aim is to identify the institutional conditions that enable such abuse and undermine safeguarding mechanisms. Drawing on gendered organisational theory, our analysis seeks to understand how abuse is enabled, concealed, or disrupted by gendered organisational structures and patriarchal cultures (Acker, 1990). The article reviews existing research, outlines our gendered organisational framework, applies this lens to six international case studies, and proposes actionable recommendations for reform....

Case Study Analysis

This case study analysis draws on six contemporary, prosecuted cases of CSA in ECEC settings, spanning the period from 2009 to 2024. Each case was selected based on its alignment with the study’s inclusion criteria and capacity to reveal broader institutional patterns. By analysing these cases through the lens of gendered organisational theory, the study identifies recurring dynamics that allowed abuse to persist across varied settings. A detailed account of each case follows, highlighting the organisational conditions that facilitated harm....

Offender Networks and the Lone Offender Myth

These case studies challenge the prevailing view of CSA offenders as isolated individuals, revealing instead the existence of networks that facilitate the sharing of CSAM, the exchange of strategies, and mutual encouragement. The evidence in these cases demonstrates that offenders commonly operate within online communities, facilitated and camouflaged by encryption technologies, that normalise and reinforce abusive behaviour and share CSAM of children in their care. McCoole, for example, was a central figure in The Love Zone, a forum on Tor hidden services (the so-called “dark web”) dedicated to the exchange of CSAM, which also included Griffith (Staff Writers, 2023). McCoole later had his sentence reduced for assisting international investigations, including cases in Denmark (Opie, 2018). Once dismissed as the product of moral panic, claims about organised CSA offending have now been substantiated through forensic evidence (Salter, 2012). Indeed, organised offending has been a consistent theme in allegations and investigations of CSA in ECEC for over forty years (Cheit, 2014). However, the proposition that ECEC may be targeted by organised offender networks for the purpose of CSA has not been taken seriously in child protection frameworks and measures. This oversight can be understood through Acker’s (1990) concept of cultural symbols. The persistence of the “lone offender” myth serves a protective function for the institution; it allows ECEC providers to treat abuse as the result of a singular “bad apple” rather than interrogating how the gendered structure of the workforce might attract and shield organised abuse networks....

Internal Safeguarding Failures

In each case study, internal safeguarding mechanisms within the ECEC context failed to detect or respond adequately to CSA, and the abuse was discovered only after CSAM investigations or, in one instance, sexual assault of a child in public. As seen in the cases of Griffith, Doyle, George, McCoole, and Robert M., it was the discovery of CSAM that compelled institutions and authorities to take action. In the case of D.N. in Sweden, abuse only surfaced after a separate police investigation unrelated to institutional safeguards. Some institutions repeatedly dismissed or downplayed concerns raised by mothers and female staff, until external, undeniable evidence emerged. This systemic dismissal of female voices points to gendered workplace interactions (Acker, 1990), where the professional status of the male worker is privileged over the evidence provided by mothers and female colleagues. These patterns underscore how institutional responses often depend on proof rather than trust, suggesting that ECEC safeguarding systems may be structured to respond only when abuse becomes irrefutable, rather than working to prevent it.

Tolerance for Grooming Behaviour

Most of the offenders in the six cases were well-regarded by colleagues, trusted by families, and liked by the children in their care. Simply presenting as professional and caring often proved sufficient to gain the trust of colleagues, management, and parents, which often continued even after concerns were raised. In some instances, offenders socialised with management and parents, offered private babysitting, and were welcomed into families’ homes. For example, sentencing remarks in the case of Griffith noted that he was often cruel and mocking towards children during the abuse, as revealed in CSAM he produced (The King v Griffith, 2024). Despite this, he was invited to children’s birthday parties and formed close relationships with their families. The case studies corroborate previous research on how offenders often actively groom not only children, but also co-workers, parents, and the institution itself (Briggs, 2014)....

Poor Oversight and Cross-Institutional Tracking

The case studies demonstrated how weak regulatory structures, including a lack of oversight of staffing and hiring practices, enabled offenders to move between services without adequate scrutiny or shared information. In a context where child safety should be the central concern, these failures in information sharing and employment vetting reflect a lack of institutional accountability. Across the case studies, offenders gained access to ECEC roles through informal networks, as in the case of McCoole, or without standard hiring procedures, as was the case with George. In other cases, long professional experience led to misplaced trust. Even when concerns were formally raised, such as McCoole being deemed unsuitable to work with children, this did not prevent further employment with children. These vetting failures expose a dangerous organisational logic (Acker, 1990). By treating applicants as abstract, gender-neutral units of labour, the system failed to account for the specific risk profiles associated with the glass escalator phenomenon, where scrutiny was lowered to facilitate the rapid entry of men into the workforce.....

Conclusion

Our case analysis challenges prior claims that ECEC settings are a low risk for CSA or that concerns about child maltreatment in ECEC are a moral panic or otherwise exaggerated. It is perhaps timely to reflect on the legacy and consequences of such claims, which have received broad scholarly and media support in previous decades, given the cumulative evidence of serious and serial CSA offending in ECEC settings. Patterns across the case studies reveal the same institutional weaknesses: failure to act on concerns, over-reliance on external investigations, and a reluctance to question those in trusted roles. The development and evaluation of proactive safeguarding strategies tailored to the unique vulnerabilities of preverbal and very young children in ECEC environments, including the effectiveness of institutional grooming prevention, the promotion of institutional courage and workplace cultures of accountability and transparency, is needed.

This article has highlighted the paucity of research into the prevalence and characteristics of CSA in ECEC. There is a clear need for research into rates of suspected, reported and substantiated CSA cases in ECEC, the response of educators, institutions, regulators and the criminal justice system, and the impact of such abuse upon children and their families. Forensic studies of offenders targeting preverbal children would help to elucidate their specific motivations and strategies.... 

 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10775595251414844 

Journal of Trauma & Dissociation - The science and politics of false memories

 Journal of Trauma & Dissociation - The science and politics of false memories

 

Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2022)
The science and politics of false memories

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wjtd20/23/2

 

 

False Memories And The Science Of Credibility: Who Gets To Be Heard?: Journal of Trauma & Dissociation

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2022.2028219

 

The guest editors are Michael Salter and Ruth Blizard.

Editorial
False memories and the science of credibility: Who gets to be heard?
Michael Salter and Ruth Blizard

 

"Consistently, and persistently, theories of false memories have been aptly available for the exculpation of the wealthy and the powerful. This point is illustrated by a brief overview of some of the cases where prominent false memory researcher Professor Elizabeth Loftus has appeared: in the defense of a Bosnian-Croatian soldier for aiding and abetting the rape of a Muslim woman, to exculpate a senior aide to then-Vice President Dick Cheney for misleading investigators regarding the leak of the name of a CIA operative, to question the credibility of Professor Christine Blasey-Ford when she complained about an alleged sexual assault as a teenager by current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for the defense team of the convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein and for accused child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

Most recently, in Australia, allegations of false memories were revived when it emerged that a woman known only as “Kate” (who, sadly, died by suicide in 2019) claimed to have been sexually assaulted by the Australian politician Christian Porter (and, at the time of the allegation, Attorney General) when they were both teenagers (MItchell et al., 2021). Porter, like Kavanaugh, vigorously denied the allegation. There was no court case but instead a journalist speculated that Kate suffered from “recovered memories,” on the basis that she had apparently read Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score prior to her allegations becoming public knowledge (Hardaker, 2021). By this logic, merely reading a book that mentions child sexual abuse could be the trigger for a false allegation; never mind that Kate diarized the alleged assault while still a teenager, or that she had described the incident to friends decades prior to reading van der Kolk.

In a sign of how much has changed since the 1990s, the response to this argument was not agreement but outrage. This outrage was evident across social media but also from within journalism itself. The media outlet who ran the original piece quickly assigned another journalist to cover the story from a more sympathetic angle, while Australian media outlets ran multiple pieces rebutting the false memory proposition. One journalist wrote about his own diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder and its impact on his capacity to recall traumatic events and correctly label them as harmful (Morton, 2021).

Undoubtedly, the emergence of the false memory movement three decades ago had a negative effect on professional and social understandings of trauma and dissociation. However, it also provoked researchers, practitioners, survivors, and advocates to redouble their efforts to develop the evidence base for trauma therapy. Reinders and Veltman’s recent editorial in the British Journal of Psychiatry laid out the cumulative neurobiological evidence for the trauma model of DID. The diagnosis that the FMSF insisted, a quarter century ago, was a passing fad with no scientific foundation is now out of the shadows (Reinders & Veltman, 2021). Meanwhile, the forms of betrayal, abuse, and violation that false memory syndrome sought to explain away as mere confabulations are now recurrent features of media and policy commentary. Multiple criminal cases and public inquiries have substantiated the seriousness of child sexual abuse and exploitation, institutional tendencies toward denial and cover-up, and the inadequacies of the current policy response."

Commentary
The Power of False Memory Rhetoric
Lynn Crook

 

Articles
Hyping Hypnosis: The Myth that Made Capturing the Friedmans Persuasive
Ross Cheit

The Policy Alignment of the British False Memory Society and the British Psychological Society
Ashley Conway and David Pilgrim

The history and politics of 'false memories': The Australian Experience
Kate McMaugh and Warwick Middleton

Attachment and Memory Stability
Paula Thomson and S. Victoria Jacque

"The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried."
—Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Trauma and Memory - The Science and the Silenced

 

Trauma and Memory - The Science and the Silenced

 

Recently a new book was published about the False Memory Movement. Over the years, this movement has been extremely damaging for trauma, rape, child abuse and ritual abuse survivors and their helpers. This movement has used propaganda, bullying, harassment, disinformation and pseudoscientific research to bolster its claims. The False Memory Movement has been used to defend accused and convicted pedophiles, rapists and murderers.

Fortunately there have been many brave therapists, researchers and survivors that have spent years fighting the false memory movement’s pseudoscience, including inaccurate statements denying traumatic amnesia and denying the traumagenic origins of dissociative identity disorder.

This new book “Trauma and Memory - The Science and the Silence” is an excellent resource for those who continue the fight against false memory disinformation. The book consolidates older historic information from  Freud’s era and the 1980's and 1990's as well as newer research about more recent events.

We highly recommend this book. There is a hard copy and e-book available at the website below. “The abuse of science to silence the abused” by the false memory movement has been exposed once again. https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-and-Memory-The-Science-and-the-Silenced/Sinason-Conway/p/book/9781032044293

 

Trauma and Memory
The Science and the Silenced
https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-and-Memory-The-Science-and-the-Silenced/Sinason-Conway/p/book/9781032044293 

Trauma and Memory will assist mental health experts and professionals, as well as the interested public, in understanding the scientific issues around trauma memory, and how this differs from other areas of memory.

This book provides accounts of the damage caused to psychology and survivors internationally by false memory groups and ideas. It is unequivocally passionate about the truth of trauma memory and exposing the damaging disinformation that can seep into the field. Contributors to this book include leading professionals from the field of criminology, law, psychology and psychotherapy in the UK and USA, along with survivor-professionals who understand only too well the damage such disinformation can cause.

This book is a valuable resource for mental health professionals of all disciplines including those involved with relevant law and public health policy. It will also help survivors and survivor-professionals in gaining insight into the forces resisting disclosure.

Editors
Biography

Valerie Sinason, PhD, is a widely published Writer and Psychoanalyst. She has pioneered disability and trauma-informed therapy for over 30 years, is President of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, Founder and Patron of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and on the Board of the ISSTD.

Ashley Conway, PhD, AFBPsS, is a Counselling Psychologist. He has worked in a wide range of fields of trauma, ranging through severe critical incidents to long term abuse, and has published widely in these areas. He is currently the Chair of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, UK.

ISBN: 978-1-032-04432-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-04429-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19315-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003193159

 

Chapters include:
1 In conversation with Ross Cheit ASHLEY CONWAY
2 False memory syndrome movement: The origins and the promoters MARJORIE ORR
3 The rocky road to false memories: Stories the media missed LYNN CROOK
4 Re-examining the “Lost in the Mall”: study Were “false memories” created to promote a false defence? In conversation with Ruth Blizard VALERIE SINASON
5 Evaluating false memory research WINJA BUSS
6 The abuse of science to silence the abused ASHLEY CONWAY
7 False memory syndrome SUSIE ORBACH
8 Trauma, skin: memory, speech ANN SCOTT
9 Sigmund Freud's concept of repression: Historical and empirical perspectives BRETT KAHR
10 Terror in the consulting room – memory, trauma and dissociation PHIL MOLLON
11 How can we remember but be unable to recall? The complex functions of multi-modular memory MARY SUE MOORE
12 What if I should die? JENNIFER JOHNS
13 Finding a new narrative: Meaningful responses to “false memory” disinformation MICHAEL SALTER
14 “Do no harm”? KHADIJA ROUF AND DANNY TAGGART

 

Excerpts:

 

page 1

The FMS model provided an explanation for the beginning of the exposure of the scale of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) worldwide, and it enabled the awful truth to be displaced. The multitude of stories of abuse that were beginning to be made public could be explained away – they could be blamed on the therapists who were hearing their clients’ histories.
As long as truth struggles with power, there will be offshoots of such models of displacement and the history of denial goes far back. The FMS may have gone off-grid for now, but it is simply another move in the theories of denial of abuse, and more efforts to silence the truth will follow. The principles remain the same.

page 2
The account of Cassandra tragically fits Jennifer Freyd’s concept of DARVO (Freyd, 1997). DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. This is the common response of a person or an institution that will not accept responsibility and accountability for the violations they have caused.

page 19
Jennifer Freyd regarding her parents (FMSF founders):....The grandparents had an affair which culminated after 11 years in marriage, at which time Pamela and Peter Freyd also married aged 18 and 20. Professor Freyd recollected her father speaking openly of his own childhood homosexual liaison as an 11-year-old with a paedophile artist. She remembered being made to dance nude in front of him aged 9 with a friend; of being taught to kiss on the mouth “like an adult” for a school play aged 11 in front of the cast....he continually made sexual comments which were regarded as normal in the family....He drank heavily through her childhood and was hospitalised for alcoholism.

page 26 - 27
Another key figure in the FMS movement is New Zealand doctor, Felicity Goodyear-Smith. Her book First Do No Harm is subtitled “The Sexual Abuse Industry” (Goodyear-Smith, 1993)....The major theme in First Do No Harm is that sexual abuse is a cultural taboo. There is no intrinsic moral objection to adult–child sexual contact and no automatic damage caused by it. Underwager and Wakefield are quoted as the principal references.
Felicity Goodyear-Smith admits to a personal as well as professional involvement in the abuse field. Her husband and parents-in-law were imprisoned for sexual abuse offences, having been members of a New Zealand community, CentrePoint, which encouraged sexual intimacy amongst its members, including the children.
The author quotes studies that purport to show that adult–child sex can be harmless. Under a section on “Children’s Sexual Rights” she describes groups, such as the Paedophile Information Exchange, the Rene Guyon Society (“sex by eight, or it’s too late”), and the North American Man/Boy Love Association, as “holding radical beliefs regarding children’s sexual rights”.

page 31
Lynn Crook
Some have suggested the media’s failure to challenge the false memory scenario reflected a need to deny the scale of the sexual abuse of children. Perhaps their editors failed to encourage a critical analysis of the story because everyone else was covering it – so it must be true. Some reporters may have failed to question the story because they had been accused of molesting a child. Others may have been protecting someone.

page 33
The government’s witnesses included many of the individuals who had appeared in Frontline producer Ofra Bikel’s “The Search for Satan”. In court, their stories did not hold up as well as they had in Bikel’s interviews. Under cross-examination by Peterson’s attorney, Rusty Hardin, Shanley conceded on 8 October 1997 that she could not name any memories that were implanted. The Houston Chronicle headline on 8 October 1998 announced, “Former patient can’t attribute false memories to therapy” (Smith, 1999). On 1 March 1999 the government moved to dismiss the indictment. The national media did not cover the story.

 

page 36
Believing that one had been lost while shopping in childhood is not analogous to remembering sexual abuse. In fact, a large proportion of subjects can be convinced that they were lost in a mall as children, but none could be led to falsely believe they had been administered enemas (Pezdek, Finger & Hodge, 1997).

 

page 37
The first six subjects in the formal mall study failed to develop false memories (Coan, 1993), but those results were never published. In the second iteration of the formal mall study (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995), there is little explicit description of the methods of recruitment of subjects, experimental controls or training of investigators....Most importantly, no evidence is presented that any subjects formed full false memories. Nevertheless, the authors imply that, based on study results, they “are providing an ‘existence proof’ for the phenomenon of false memory formation” (pp. 723–4).

page 40
Rather, most false memory studies attempt to suggest to subjects that they experienced much more commonplace events, such as getting lost, spilling a bowl of punch, going for a balloon ride, or getting sick after eating eggs. It may be profitable to wonder whether many of the false memory researchers have been swept up in the FMSF campaign to exonerate parents who claim they have been falsely accused.

page 41
Other researchers and authors attempting to criticise false memory studies may have been intimidated. Between 1992 and 2017, nearly two dozen psychologists, psychiatrists, attorneys, authors, researchers, journalists, and abuse survivors have been subjected to ad hominem attacks by Loftus (Crook, personal communication, 2019). Those defamed include Ellen Bass, E. Sue Blume, Martha Dean, Laura Brown, Mary Harvey, Jim Coan’s mother, Judith Herman, David Calof, Kenneth Pope, David Corwin, Diana Russell, Lynn Crook, Lenore Walker, Laura Davis, Charles Whitfield, B. J. Levy, Neil Brick, Karen Olio, Bessel van der Kolk, Holly Ramona, Nicole Taus Kluemper and Gerald Koocher.

page 42
Many academics may be equally motivated to deny the existence of child abuse as was Freud. Those who gain considerable income from testifying in defence of accused perpetrators, as have Underwager, Gardner and Loftus, may have additional motivation for claiming that abuse accusations were fabricated.

page 44
Careful analysis of the research shows it is not easy to implant false memories of childhood abuse. False memories with autobiographical belief, recollective experiences and confidence in memory are rare to non-existent.

page 55
The false memory syndrome (FMS) advocates do not want evidence of false negatives – that we can experience something and then be persuaded that it did not happen, because that would not suit their narrative.
....There is no evidence that anyone has ever had a false belief implanted that they were sexually abused as a child.

page 59
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the most severe of all dissociative disorders, and its features include recurrent amnesia. Recent research (Reinders et al., 2019) has demonstrated that individuals with DID can be distinguished from healthy controls on the basis of abnormal brain morphology.
....“Every single scientific study of memory of childhood sexual abuse, whether prospective or retrospective, whether studying clinical samples or general population samples, finds that a certain percentage of sexually abused individuals forget, and later remember, their abuse” (Van der Kolk, 2014, note on p. 398 re. p. 190).

page 60
As McMaugh and Middleton (2020) state, “the ‘false memory’ movement enabled society to ignore a whole new generation of abused children”.

page 61
Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes & Conway, 2010) is an informative book written to describe how vested interests have manipulated the media, to mislead and confuse in areas of great importance to society, including smoking, acid rain and climate change....they create an institute, with scientific advisors who can use their credentials to present themselves as authorities. The advisors cherry-pick data to advance a position, present ideas as if they were facts and use their authority to try to discredit any science they do not like. They use the mass media, making simplified, dramatic statements to capture public attention and draw in journalists to give their minority views more credence than they deserve. They then use these press stories, quoting them as if they were facts. If there is an individual whose opinions are contradictory to the desired line, ad hominem attacks are an option.

page 88
Sigmund Freud also realised that repressions could be lifted as a result of psychoanalytical treatment. In his essay on “Trauer und Melancholie” (Freud, 1917a), better known in English as “Mourning and Melancholia” (Freud, 1917b), he observed that the clinical process of psychoanalysis will frequently activate memories, and, that after treatment has progressed satisfactorily, repressed and unconscious memories will eventually return to the fore of consciousness, no longer subject to the disguise of repression.

page 90
Nevertheless, Erdelyi’s data does most certainly substantiate Freud’s claim that repressed material can return to consciousness, simply as a result of talking....Astonishingly, 38% of the sample of 129 women did not report the abuse, which Williams and colleagues knew, on the basis of hospital records, had, in fact, occurred.

page 156
Survivor accounts, combined with scientific advances in the understanding of trauma, are creating enriched understandings of how abuse can injure the usual process of memory and psychological functioning. Time is yielding an opportunity to reshape public understandings of trauma and its aftermath. This could lead to the correcting of harmful narratives which have led to unethical treatment of survivors, through denial, victim-blaming, or “othering”.

Michael Salter

 

Michael Salter

Organised abuse has been reported by child victims, adult survivors and a range of professionals for over thirty years. However, organised abuse remains poorly understood.
This website has been developed by criminologist Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter who specialises in the study of organised abuse and complex trauma. The aim of the website is to disseminate reliable information about organised abuse to professionals, victims and survivors.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/

Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter
I am the Scientia Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of New South Wales, Australia. I specialise in the study of organised sexual abuse. In addition to my work on complex trauma, I have researched and published widely on violence against women and children.
I sit on the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. I am an Associate Editor of Child Abuse Review, the peer-reviewed journal of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and I sit on the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.
I act as a consultant and trainer to a range of non-government organisations and government departments at the state and national level. I am an expert advisor to the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/michael-salter

    Salter, M. and Hanson, E. (2021) “I need you all to understand how pervasive this issue is”: User efforts to regulate child sexual offending on social media. In Baily, J., Flynn, A. and Henry, N. The Emerald International Handbook of Technology-facilitated Violence and Abuse. Emerald Publishing.
  Salter, M. (2018) Child sexual abuse, in Rennison, C.M., Dekeseredy, W. S., Hall-Sanchez, A. (Eds), Routledge International Handbook of Violence Studies, London and New York: Routledge
  Salter, M. (2018) Finding a new narrative: Meaningful responses to ‘false memory’ disinformation, in Sinason, V. Memory in Dispute, Karnac: London.
Salter, M. (2018) Child sexual abuse. In Dekeseredy, W. and Dragiewicz, M. (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology, Routledge: London and New York.
 Salter, M. (2016) Organised child sexual abuse in the media. In Pontel, H. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Oxford University Press: Oxford and London.
 Salter, M. (2008) Out of the shadows: Re-envisioning the debate on ritual abuse. In: Perskin. P. and Noblitt. R. (eds) Ritual abuse in the twenty-first century: Psychological, forensic, social and political considerations. Robert D. Reed: Brandon, OR.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/resources/

Organised abuse and the politics of disbelief
Michael Salter
https://www.academia.edu/2042170/Organised_abuse_and_the_politics_of_disbelief

Out of the shadows: Re-envisioning the debate on ritual abuse
2008 Michael Salter
https://www.academia.edu/2046900/Out_of_the_shadows_Re_envisioning_the_debate_on_ritual_abuse

Ritual Abuse, Mind Control and Organised Abuse: Examining our History and Looking Forward
Michael Salter, PhD
I was a teenager when ritual abuse was first reported in Australia. A series of newspaper articles in the mid-1990s claimed that women were entering psychotherapy only to ‘recover’ memories of grotesque and improbable abuse.

The general thrust of coverage was that the movement against child abuse had gone too far, and that therapists and social workers were encouraging, and sometimes forcing, children and women to imagine abuse that had never happened. I was entirely unprepared when, only a few years after the publication of those articles, a friend began disclosing ritual abuse in the context of a paedophile ring. These disclosures occurred without facilitation or encouragement by a mental health professional, and they did not conform to mass media warnings about ‘false’ and ‘recovered’ memories. She had never ‘forgotten’ her abuse and she was reporting attacks in the present that left behind undeniable marks and injuries. Her disclosures set me on the path to a career as a criminologist specializing in the study of organized child sexual abuse. I now chair the Ritual Abuse, Mind Control and Organised Abuse Special Interest Group (RAMCOA) which is full of people just like me: people who unexpectedly encountered survivors of extreme abuse and have sought to understand and address their particular needs. The SIG includes an important cohort of therapists who are also survivors, driven by personal experience and professional commitment to provide care for others who share their history. Over the last few years, there’ve been moves afoot within the ISSTD to revisit and come to grips with the fractious legacies of the ‘memory wars’, including controversies over ritual abuse and mind control. I listened with great interest at the national ISSTD conference in Chicago this year as a number of ‘veterans’ of those wars shared their reflections on that time.
https://news.isst-d.org/ritual-abuse-mind-control-and-organized-abuse-examining-our-history-and-looking-forward/

Michael Salter, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Criminology and Scientia Fellow at the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales
https://violenceresearch.wvu.edu/executive-board/research-associates/michael-salter
Dr. Michael Salter is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Scientia Fellow at the School of Social Sciences at UNSW. Michael applies critical and feminist theory to the study of child sexual exploitation, gendered violence and complex trauma. He is leading two national studies: one on multi-sectorial constructions on complex trauma, and the second on the role of parents in the production of child exploitation material. Other current research projects include an analysis of perpetrator interventions in gendered violence and the role of technology in domestic violence. Michael sits on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and he is Associate Editor of Child Abuse Review.

Dr. Salter’s recent publications include:
Salter, M. (2020). Improved accountability: The role of perpetrator intervention systems.
Salter, M. (2020). “A deep wound under my heart”: Constructions of complex trauma and implications for women’s wellbeing and safety from violence.
Salter, M., Robinson, K., Ullman, J., Denson, N., Ovenden, G., Noonan, K., & Bansel, P. (2019). Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Men’s Attitudes and Understandings of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. DOI: 10.1177/0886260519898433.
McPhillips, K., Salter, M., Roberts-Pedersen, E., & Kezelman, C. (2019). Understanding trauma as a system of psycho-social harm: Contributions from the Australian royal commission into child sex abuse. Child abuse & neglect, 99. DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2019.104232.
Salter, M. (2019). The transitional space of public inquiries: The case of the Royal Commission into Institutional Forms of Child Sexual Abuse. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/0004865819886634.
Salter, M. (2019). Online Justice in the Circuit of Capital: #MeToo, Marketization and the Deformation of Sexual Ethics. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_20.
Dragiewicz, M., Harris, B., Woodlock, D., & Salter, M. (2019). Domestic violence and communication technology: Survivor experiences of intrusion, surveillance, and identity crime.

Michael Salter
UNSW Sydney | UNSW · School of Social Sciences
My research is focused on violence against women, child abuse, primary prevention and complex forms of victimisation, including organised abuse and technologically-facilitated abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Salter7

Organised Sexual Abuse
By Michael Salter
Copyright Year 2013 1st Edition
ISBN 9781138789159
Organised Sexual Abuse offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary investigation of this phenomenon. Since the early 1980s, social workers and mental health professionals around the globe have encountered clients reporting sexual abuse by organized groups or networks. These allegations have been amongst the most controversial in debates over child sexual abuse, raising many unanswered questions. Are reports of organized abuse factual or the product of moral panic and false memories? If these reports are true, what is the appropriate response? The fields of child protection and psychotherapy have been polarised over the issue. And, although cases of organized abuse continue to be uncovered, a reasoned and evidence-based analysis of the subject is long overdue.
Examining the existing evidence, and supplementing it with further qualitative research, in this book Michael Salter addresses: the relationship between sexual abuse and organized abuse; questions over the veracity of testimony; the gap between the policing response to sexual abuse and the realities of child sexual exploitation; the contexts in which sexually abusive groups develop and operate; the role of religion and ritual in subcultures of multi-perpetrator sexual abuse; as well as the experience of adults and children with histories of organized abuse in the criminal justice system and health system. Organized Sexual Abuse thus provides a definitive analysis that will be of immense value to those with professional and academic interests in this area.
https://www.routledge.com/Organised-Sexual-Abuse/Salter/p/book/9781138789159

“A deep wound under my heart”: Constructions of complex trauma and implications for women’s wellbeing and safety from violence May 2020 Michael Salter
Responses to women who have experienced complex trauma need to be sensitive, coordinated and consistent between services and agencies to ensure women’s wellbeing and safety from violence. However, the development of shared frameworks of practice for addressing complex trauma has been forestalled by a lack of professional consensus and understanding…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341667576_A_deep_wound_under_my_heart_Constructions_of_complex_trauma_and_implications_for_women’s_wellbeing_and_safety_from_violence

Organized Sexual Abuse. Dr. Michael Salter
Today on the podcast, Michael Salter.
Michael is an Associate Professor in Criminology at Western Sydney University, Australia and specializes in the study of organized sexual abuse.
In addition to his work on complex trauma, Michael Salter has researched and published widely on violence against women and children.
Michael sits on the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation and is an associate editor of Child Abuse Review, the peer-reviewed journal of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
https://www.thetraumatherapistproject.com/podcast/organized-sexual-abuse-dr-michael-salter/

Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives
October 2019
DOI: 10.4324/9781351213981-13
In book: The Abused and the Abuser (pp.199-211)
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338868934_Organized_abuse_in_adulthood_Survivor_and_professional_perspectives

Malignant trauma and the invisibility of ritual abuse
June 2019 DOI: 10.33212/att.v13n1.2019.16
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney
Abstract
This article draws on psychoanalytic theories of malignant trauma to explain the invisibility of ritual abuse. Ritual abuse refers to the misuse of rituals in the organised sexual abuse of children. Despite expanded recognition of the varieties of child maltreatment, ritual abuse remains largely invisible outside the trauma and dissociation field as a specific form of sexual exploitation. Presenting qualitative data from interview research with ritual abuse survivors and mental health specialists, this article argues that the trauma of ritual abuse and its invisibility are co-constitutive. The perpetration and denial of ritual abuse occur within a relational matrix of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders structured by the presymbolic dread of vulnerability and dependency. The simultaneity of perpetration and disavowal creates the conditions for the malignancy of ritual abuse, including the invisibility of victims and the intergenerational transmission of extreme abuse. The article examines how the provision of care to ritual abuse survivors can become contingent on its erasure, and reflects on the role of therapists and others in interrupting the metastases of malignant trauma and crafting cultural and moral frameworks to transform the dread at the core of ritual abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337804310_Malignant_trauma_and_the_invisibility_of_ritual_abuse

Cultures of Abuse: ‘Sex Grooming’, Organised Abuse and Race in Rochdale, UK
June 2015 International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy 4(2)
DOI: 10.5204/ijcjsd.v4i2.211
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney Selda Dagistanli Western Sydney University
Revelations of organised abuse by men of Asian heritage in the United Kingdom have become a recurrent feature of international media coverage of sexual abuse in recent years. This paper reflects on the similarities between the highly publicised ‘sex grooming’ prosecutions in Rochdale in 2012 and the allegations of organised abuse in Rochdale that emerged in 1990, when twenty children were taken into care after describing sadistic abuse by their parents and others. While these two cases differ in important aspects, this paper highlights the prominence of colonial ideologies of civilisation and barbarism in the investigation and media coverage of the two cases and the sublimation of the issue of child welfare. There are important cultural and normative antecedents to sexual violence but these have been misrepresented in debates over organised abuse as racial issues and attributed to ethnic minority communities. In contrast, the colonialist trope promulgating the fictional figure of the rational European has resulted in the denial of the cultural and normative dimensions of organised abuse in ethnic majority communities by attributing sexual violence to aberrant and sexually deviant individuals whose behaviours transgress the boundaries of accepted cultural norms. This paper emphasises how the implicit or explicit focus on race has served to obscure the power dynamics underlying both cases and the continuity of vulnerability that places children at risk of sexual and organised abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281229060_Cultures_of_Abuse_’Sex_Grooming’_Organised_Abuse_and_Race_in_Rochdale_UK

Reducing Shame, Promoting Dignity: A Model for the Primary Prevention of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Recommended citation: Salter, M. & Hall, H. (2021) Reducing Shame, Promoting Dignity: A Model for the Primary Prevention of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Trauma Violence Abuse, forthcoming.
The recent inclusion of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) into the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 11th revision is the culmination of over twenty five years of research and clinical practice. Since the early 1990s, it has been proposed that a complex variant of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be differentiated from classical PTSD by alterations in affect and behavioral regulation, interpersonal problems, dissociative symptoms, and somatizations (Herman, 1992). As clinical scholarship and research into CPTSD has developed, it has been linked to concepts of developmental and attachment trauma, recognizing the aetiological role of early onset abuse and neglect, and associated disruptions in the child-caregiver bond (Farina, Liotti, & Imperatori, 2019). Parallel scholarship into adverse childhood experiences links child-onset trauma to major social and public health challenges, including common mental and physical illnesses, entrenched poverty and criminality (Lambert, Meza, Martin, Fearey, & McLaughlin, 2017). In light of the evidence of the public health burden of CPSTD, Ford (2015) argues for population-level interventions to reduce the prevalence of CPTSD, otherwise “vulnerable individuals and entire populations are at risk for becoming trapped in intergenerational vicious cycles escalating danger, disadvantage, and dysregulation” (p 3).
https://www.academia.edu/44436007/Reducing_Shame_Promoting_Dignity_A_Model_for_the_Primary_Prevention_of_Complex_Post_Traumatic_Stress_Disorder

Perspective
Speaking out about child sexual abuse within the family
As France continues to grapple with how a top academic who allegedly sexually abused his stepson for years was able to act with impunity, we speak to Michael Salter, Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He says coercive sexual relationships with children were “the dark side of the sexual revolution” and that it’s vital to understand that sexual abuse of minors happens across all sectors of society. “Child sexual abuse is a public health crisis,” he tells us.
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/perspective/20210201-speaking-out-about-child-sexual-abuse-within-the-family

https://twitter.com/mike_salter
Michael Salter
@mike_salter
“Recovered memory therapy” does not refer to an actual therapy. It’s a pejorative term invented by “false memory” advocate Richard Ofshe in 1993. Nobody has ever trained in or practiced RMT because it doesn’t exist, except in the fevered imaginations of false memory advocates.

Organised Sexual Abuse - Michael Salter

 
Organised Sexual Abuse offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary investigation of this phenomenon. Since the early 1980s, social workers and mental health professionals around the globe have encountered clients reporting sexual abuse by organized groups or networks.  https://www.amazon.com/Organised-Sexual-Abuse-Michael-Salter/dp/0415689775

Ritual Abuse, Mind Control and Organised Abuse: Examining our History and Looking Forward
Michael Salter, PhD
....a friend began disclosing ritual abuse in the context of a paedophile ring. These disclosures occurred without facilitation or encouragement by a mental health professional, and they did not conform to mass media warnings about ‘false’ and ‘recovered’ memories. She had never ‘forgotten’ her abuse and she was reporting attacks in the present that left behind undeniable marks and injuries.
https://news.isst-d.org/ritual-abuse-mind-control-and-organized-abuse-examining-our-history-and-looking-forward/

 


Michael Salter
Ritual Abuse, Mind Control and Organised Abuse Research
https://ritualabuse.us/smart/michael-salter/

 

Michael Salter

Organised abuse has been reported by child victims, adult survivors and a range of professionals for over thirty years. However, organised abuse remains poorly understood.
This website has been developed by criminologist Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter who specialises in the study of organised abuse and complex trauma. The aim of the website is to disseminate reliable information about organised abuse to professionals, victims and survivors.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/

Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter
I am the Scientia Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of New South Wales, Australia. I specialise in the study of organised sexual abuse. In addition to my work on complex trauma, I have researched and published widely on violence against women and children.
I sit on the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. I am an Associate Editor of Child Abuse Review, the peer-reviewed journal of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and I sit on the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.
I act as a consultant and trainer to a range of non-government organisations and government departments at the state and national level. I am an expert advisor to the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/michael-salter

    Salter, M. and Hanson, E. (2021) “I need you all to understand how pervasive this issue is”: User efforts to regulate child sexual offending on social media. In Baily, J., Flynn, A. and Henry, N. The Emerald International Handbook of Technology-facilitated Violence and Abuse. Emerald Publishing.
  Salter, M. (2018) Child sexual abuse, in Rennison, C.M., Dekeseredy, W. S., Hall-Sanchez, A. (Eds), Routledge International Handbook of Violence Studies, London and New York: Routledge
  Salter, M. (2018) Finding a new narrative: Meaningful responses to ‘false memory’ disinformation, in Sinason, V. Memory in Dispute, Karnac: London.
Salter, M. (2018) Child sexual abuse. In Dekeseredy, W. and Dragiewicz, M. (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology, Routledge: London and New York.
 Salter, M. (2016) Organised child sexual abuse in the media. In Pontel, H. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Oxford University Press: Oxford and London.
 Salter, M. (2008) Out of the shadows: Re-envisioning the debate on ritual abuse. In: Perskin. P. and Noblitt. R. (eds) Ritual abuse in the twenty-first century: Psychological, forensic, social and political considerations. Robert D. Reed: Brandon, OR.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/resources/

Organised abuse and the politics of disbelief
Michael Salter
https://www.academia.edu/2042170/Organised_abuse_and_the_politics_of_disbelief

Out of the shadows: Re-envisioning the debate on ritual abuse
2008 Michael Salter
https://www.academia.edu/2046900/Out_of_the_shadows_Re_envisioning_the_debate_on_ritual_abuse

Ritual Abuse, Mind Control and Organised Abuse: Examining our History and Looking Forward
Michael Salter, PhD
I was a teenager when ritual abuse was first reported in Australia. A series of newspaper articles in the mid-1990s claimed that women were entering psychotherapy only to ‘recover’ memories of grotesque and improbable abuse.

The general thrust of coverage was that the movement against child abuse had gone too far, and that therapists and social workers were encouraging, and sometimes forcing, children and women to imagine abuse that had never happened. I was entirely unprepared when, only a few years after the publication of those articles, a friend began disclosing ritual abuse in the context of a paedophile ring. These disclosures occurred without facilitation or encouragement by a mental health professional, and they did not conform to mass media warnings about ‘false’ and ‘recovered’ memories. She had never ‘forgotten’ her abuse and she was reporting attacks in the present that left behind undeniable marks and injuries. Her disclosures set me on the path to a career as a criminologist specializing in the study of organized child sexual abuse. I now chair the Ritual Abuse, Mind Control and Organised Abuse Special Interest Group (RAMCOA) which is full of people just like me: people who unexpectedly encountered survivors of extreme abuse and have sought to understand and address their particular needs. The SIG includes an important cohort of therapists who are also survivors, driven by personal experience and professional commitment to provide care for others who share their history. Over the last few years, there’ve been moves afoot within the ISSTD to revisit and come to grips with the fractious legacies of the ‘memory wars’, including controversies over ritual abuse and mind control. I listened with great interest at the national ISSTD conference in Chicago this year as a number of ‘veterans’ of those wars shared their reflections on that time.
https://news.isst-d.org/ritual-abuse-mind-control-and-organized-abuse-examining-our-history-and-looking-forward/

Michael Salter, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Criminology and Scientia Fellow at the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales
https://violenceresearch.wvu.edu/executive-board/research-associates/michael-salter
Dr. Michael Salter is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Scientia Fellow at the School of Social Sciences at UNSW. Michael applies critical and feminist theory to the study of child sexual exploitation, gendered violence and complex trauma. He is leading two national studies: one on multi-sectorial constructions on complex trauma, and the second on the role of parents in the production of child exploitation material. Other current research projects include an analysis of perpetrator interventions in gendered violence and the role of technology in domestic violence. Michael sits on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and he is Associate Editor of Child Abuse Review.

     Dr. Salter’s recent publications include:

     Salter, M. (2020). Improved accountability: The role of perpetrator intervention systems.
     Salter, M. (2020). “A deep wound under my heart”: Constructions of complex trauma and implications for women’s wellbeing and safety from violence.
Salter, M., Robinson, K., Ullman, J., Denson, N., Ovenden, G., Noonan, K., & Bansel, P. (2019). Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Men’s Attitudes and Understandings of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. DOI: 10.1177/0886260519898433.
      McPhillips, K., Salter, M., Roberts-Pedersen, E., & Kezelman, C. (2019). Understanding trauma as a system of psycho-social harm: Contributions from the Australian royal commission into child sex abuse. Child abuse & neglect, 99. DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2019.104232.
     Salter, M. (2019). The transitional space of public inquiries: The case of the Royal Commission into Institutional Forms of Child Sexual Abuse. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/0004865819886634.
    Salter, M. (2019). Online Justice in the Circuit of Capital: #MeToo, Marketization and the Deformation of Sexual Ethics. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_20.
Dragiewicz, M., Harris, B., Woodlock, D., & Salter, M. (2019). Domestic violence and communication technology: Survivor experiences of intrusion, surveillance, and identity crime.

Michael Salter
UNSW Sydney | UNSW · School of Social Sciences
My research is focused on violence against women, child abuse, primary prevention and complex forms of victimisation, including organised abuse and technologically-facilitated abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Salter7

Organised Sexual Abuse
By Michael Salter
Copyright Year 2013 1st Edition
ISBN 9781138789159
Organised Sexual Abuse offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary investigation of this phenomenon. Since the early 1980s, social workers and mental health professionals around the globe have encountered clients reporting sexual abuse by organized groups or networks. These allegations have been amongst the most controversial in debates over child sexual abuse, raising many unanswered questions. Are reports of organized abuse factual or the product of moral panic and false memories? If these reports are true, what is the appropriate response? The fields of child protection and psychotherapy have been polarised over the issue. And, although cases of organized abuse continue to be uncovered, a reasoned and evidence-based analysis of the subject is long overdue.
Examining the existing evidence, and supplementing it with further qualitative research, in this book Michael Salter addresses: the relationship between sexual abuse and organized abuse; questions over the veracity of testimony; the gap between the policing response to sexual abuse and the realities of child sexual exploitation; the contexts in which sexually abusive groups develop and operate; the role of religion and ritual in subcultures of multi-perpetrator sexual abuse; as well as the experience of adults and children with histories of organized abuse in the criminal justice system and health system. Organized Sexual Abuse thus provides a definitive analysis that will be of immense value to those with professional and academic interests in this area.
https://www.routledge.com/Organised-Sexual-Abuse/Salter/p/book/9781138789159

“A deep wound under my heart”: Constructions of complex trauma and implications for women’s wellbeing and safety from violence May 2020 Michael Salter
Responses to women who have experienced complex trauma need to be sensitive, coordinated and consistent between services and agencies to ensure women’s wellbeing and safety from violence. However, the development of shared frameworks of practice for addressing complex trauma has been forestalled by a lack of professional consensus and understanding…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341667576_A_deep_wound_under_my_heart_Constructions_of_complex_trauma_and_implications_for_women’s_wellbeing_and_safety_from_violence

Organized Sexual Abuse. Dr. Michael Salter
Today on the podcast, Michael Salter.
Michael is an Associate Professor in Criminology at Western Sydney University, Australia and specializes in the study of organized sexual abuse.
In addition to his work on complex trauma, Michael Salter has researched and published widely on violence against women and children.
Michael sits on the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation and is an associate editor of Child Abuse Review, the peer-reviewed journal of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
https://www.thetraumatherapistproject.com/podcast/organized-sexual-abuse-dr-michael-salter/

Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives
October 2019
DOI: 10.4324/9781351213981-13
In book: The Abused and the Abuser (pp.199-211)
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338868934_Organized_abuse_in_adulthood_Survivor_and_professional_perspectives

Malignant trauma and the invisibility of ritual abuse
June 2019 DOI: 10.33212/att.v13n1.2019.16
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney
Abstract
This article draws on psychoanalytic theories of malignant trauma to explain the invisibility of ritual abuse. Ritual abuse refers to the misuse of rituals in the organised sexual abuse of children. Despite expanded recognition of the varieties of child maltreatment, ritual abuse remains largely invisible outside the trauma and dissociation field as a specific form of sexual exploitation. Presenting qualitative data from interview research with ritual abuse survivors and mental health specialists, this article argues that the trauma of ritual abuse and its invisibility are co-constitutive. The perpetration and denial of ritual abuse occur within a relational matrix of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders structured by the presymbolic dread of vulnerability and dependency. The simultaneity of perpetration and disavowal creates the conditions for the malignancy of ritual abuse, including the invisibility of victims and the intergenerational transmission of extreme abuse. The article examines how the provision of care to ritual abuse survivors can become contingent on its erasure, and reflects on the role of therapists and others in interrupting the metastases of malignant trauma and crafting cultural and moral frameworks to transform the dread at the core of ritual abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337804310_Malignant_trauma_and_the_invisibility_of_ritual_abuse

Cultures of Abuse: ‘Sex Grooming’, Organised Abuse and Race in Rochdale, UK
June 2015 International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy 4(2)
DOI: 10.5204/ijcjsd.v4i2.211
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney Selda Dagistanli Western Sydney University
Revelations of organised abuse by men of Asian heritage in the United Kingdom have become a recurrent feature of international media coverage of sexual abuse in recent years. This paper reflects on the similarities between the highly publicised ‘sex grooming’ prosecutions in Rochdale in 2012 and the allegations of organised abuse in Rochdale that emerged in 1990, when twenty children were taken into care after describing sadistic abuse by their parents and others. While these two cases differ in important aspects, this paper highlights the prominence of colonial ideologies of civilisation and barbarism in the investigation and media coverage of the two cases and the sublimation of the issue of child welfare. There are important cultural and normative antecedents to sexual violence but these have been misrepresented in debates over organised abuse as racial issues and attributed to ethnic minority communities. In contrast, the colonialist trope promulgating the fictional figure of the rational European has resulted in the denial of the cultural and normative dimensions of organised abuse in ethnic majority communities by attributing sexual violence to aberrant and sexually deviant individuals whose behaviours transgress the boundaries of accepted cultural norms. This paper emphasises how the implicit or explicit focus on race has served to obscure the power dynamics underlying both cases and the continuity of vulnerability that places children at risk of sexual and organised abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281229060_Cultures_of_Abuse_’Sex_Grooming’_Organised_Abuse_and_Race_in_Rochdale_UK

Reducing Shame, Promoting Dignity: A Model for the Primary Prevention of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Recommended citation: Salter, M. & Hall, H. (2021) Reducing Shame, Promoting Dignity: A Model for the Primary Prevention of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Trauma Violence Abuse, forthcoming.
The recent inclusion of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) into the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 11th revision is the culmination of over twenty five years of research and clinical practice. Since the early 1990s, it has been proposed that a complex variant of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be differentiated from classical PTSD by alterations in affect and behavioral regulation, interpersonal problems, dissociative symptoms, and somatizations (Herman, 1992). As clinical scholarship and research into CPTSD has developed, it has been linked to concepts of developmental and attachment trauma, recognizing the aetiological role of early onset abuse and neglect, and associated disruptions in the child-caregiver bond (Farina, Liotti, & Imperatori, 2019). Parallel scholarship into adverse childhood experiences links child-onset trauma to major social and public health challenges, including common mental and physical illnesses, entrenched poverty and criminality (Lambert, Meza, Martin, Fearey, & McLaughlin, 2017). In light of the evidence of the public health burden of CPSTD, Ford (2015) argues for population-level interventions to reduce the prevalence of CPTSD, otherwise “vulnerable individuals and entire populations are at risk for becoming trapped in intergenerational vicious cycles escalating danger, disadvantage, and dysregulation” (p 3).
https://www.academia.edu/44436007/Reducing_Shame_Promoting_Dignity_A_Model_for_the_Primary_Prevention_of_Complex_Post_Traumatic_Stress_Disorder

Perspective
Speaking out about child sexual abuse within the family
As France continues to grapple with how a top academic who allegedly sexually abused his stepson for years was able to act with impunity, we speak to Michael Salter, Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He says coercive sexual relationships with children were “the dark side of the sexual revolution” and that it’s vital to understand that sexual abuse of minors happens across all sectors of society. “Child sexual abuse is a public health crisis,” he tells us.
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/perspective/20210201-speaking-out-about-child-sexual-abuse-within-the-family

https://twitter.com/mike_salter
Michael Salter
@mike_salter
“Recovered memory therapy” does not refer to an actual therapy. It’s a pejorative term invented by “false memory” advocate Richard Ofshe in 1993. Nobody has ever trained in or practiced RMT because it doesn’t exist, except in the fevered imaginations of false memory advocates.

 

Michael Salter - Organized Abuse

 

Michael Salter

Organised abuse has been reported by child victims, adult survivors and a range of professionals for over thirty years. However, organised abuse remains poorly understood.
This website has been developed by criminologist Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter who specialises in the study of organised abuse and complex trauma. The aim of the website is to disseminate reliable information about organised abuse to professionals, victims and survivors.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/

Scientia Associate Professor Michael Salter
I am the Scientia Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of New South Wales, Australia. I specialise in the study of organised sexual abuse. In addition to my work on complex trauma, I have researched and published widely on violence against women and children.
I sit on the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. I am an Associate Editor of Child Abuse Review, the peer-reviewed journal of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and I sit on the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.
I act as a consultant and trainer to a range of non-government organisations and government departments at the state and national level. I am an expert advisor to the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/michael-salter

    Salter, M. and Hanson, E. (2021) “I need you all to understand how pervasive this issue is”: User efforts to regulate child sexual offending on social media. In Baily, J., Flynn, A. and Henry, N. The Emerald International Handbook of Technology-facilitated Violence and Abuse. Emerald Publishing.
  Salter, M. (2018) Child sexual abuse, in Rennison, C.M., Dekeseredy, W. S., Hall-Sanchez, A. (Eds), Routledge International Handbook of Violence Studies, London and New York: Routledge
  Salter, M. (2018) Finding a new narrative: Meaningful responses to ‘false memory’ disinformation, in Sinason, V. Memory in Dispute, Karnac: London.
Salter, M. (2018) Child sexual abuse. In Dekeseredy, W. and Dragiewicz, M. (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology, Routledge: London and New York.
 Salter, M. (2016) Organised child sexual abuse in the media. In Pontel, H. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Oxford University Press: Oxford and London.
 Salter, M. (2008) Out of the shadows: Re-envisioning the debate on ritual abuse. In: Perskin. P. and Noblitt. R. (eds) Ritual abuse in the twenty-first century: Psychological, forensic, social and political considerations. Robert D. Reed: Brandon, OR.
https://www.organisedabuse.com/resources/

Organised abuse and the politics of disbelief
Michael Salter
https://www.academia.edu/2042170/Organised_abuse_and_the_politics_of_disbelief

Out of the shadows: Re-envisioning the debate on ritual abuse
2008 Michael Salter
https://www.academia.edu/2046900/Out_of_the_shadows_Re_envisioning_the_debate_on_ritual_abuse

Ritual Abuse, Mind Control and Organised Abuse: Examining our History and Looking Forward
Michael Salter, PhD
I was a teenager when ritual abuse was first reported in Australia. A series of newspaper articles in the mid-1990s claimed that women were entering psychotherapy only to ‘recover’ memories of grotesque and improbable abuse.

The general thrust of coverage was that the movement against child abuse had gone too far, and that therapists and social workers were encouraging, and sometimes forcing, children and women to imagine abuse that had never happened. I was entirely unprepared when, only a few years after the publication of those articles, a friend began disclosing ritual abuse in the context of a paedophile ring. These disclosures occurred without facilitation or encouragement by a mental health professional, and they did not conform to mass media warnings about ‘false’ and ‘recovered’ memories. She had never ‘forgotten’ her abuse and she was reporting attacks in the present that left behind undeniable marks and injuries. Her disclosures set me on the path to a career as a criminologist specializing in the study of organized child sexual abuse. I now chair the Ritual Abuse, Mind Control and Organised Abuse Special Interest Group (RAMCOA) which is full of people just like me: people who unexpectedly encountered survivors of extreme abuse and have sought to understand and address their particular needs. The SIG includes an important cohort of therapists who are also survivors, driven by personal experience and professional commitment to provide care for others who share their history. Over the last few years, there’ve been moves afoot within the ISSTD to revisit and come to grips with the fractious legacies of the ‘memory wars’, including controversies over ritual abuse and mind control. I listened with great interest at the national ISSTD conference in Chicago this year as a number of ‘veterans’ of those wars shared their reflections on that time.
https://news.isst-d.org/ritual-abuse-mind-control-and-organized-abuse-examining-our-history-and-looking-forward/

Michael Salter, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Criminology and Scientia Fellow at the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales
https://violenceresearch.wvu.edu/executive-board/research-associates/michael-salter
Dr. Michael Salter is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Scientia Fellow at the School of Social Sciences at UNSW. Michael applies critical and feminist theory to the study of child sexual exploitation, gendered violence and complex trauma. He is leading two national studies: one on multi-sectorial constructions on complex trauma, and the second on the role of parents in the production of child exploitation material. Other current research projects include an analysis of perpetrator interventions in gendered violence and the role of technology in domestic violence. Michael sits on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and he is Associate Editor of Child Abuse Review.

Dr. Salter’s recent publications include:
Salter, M. (2020). Improved accountability: The role of perpetrator intervention systems.
Salter, M. (2020). “A deep wound under my heart”: Constructions of complex trauma and implications for women’s wellbeing and safety from violence.
Salter, M., Robinson, K., Ullman, J., Denson, N., Ovenden, G., Noonan, K., & Bansel, P. (2019). Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Men’s Attitudes and Understandings of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Assault. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. DOI: 10.1177/0886260519898433.
McPhillips, K., Salter, M., Roberts-Pedersen, E., & Kezelman, C. (2019). Understanding trauma as a system of psycho-social harm: Contributions from the Australian royal commission into child sex abuse. Child abuse & neglect, 99. DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2019.104232.
Salter, M. (2019). The transitional space of public inquiries: The case of the Royal Commission into Institutional Forms of Child Sexual Abuse. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/0004865819886634.
Salter, M. (2019). Online Justice in the Circuit of Capital: #MeToo, Marketization and the Deformation of Sexual Ethics. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_20.
Dragiewicz, M., Harris, B., Woodlock, D., & Salter, M. (2019). Domestic violence and communication technology: Survivor experiences of intrusion, surveillance, and identity crime.

Michael Salter
UNSW Sydney | UNSW · School of Social Sciences
My research is focused on violence against women, child abuse, primary prevention and complex forms of victimisation, including organised abuse and technologically-facilitated abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Salter7

Organised Sexual Abuse
By Michael Salter
Copyright Year 2013 1st Edition
ISBN 9781138789159
Organised Sexual Abuse offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary investigation of this phenomenon. Since the early 1980s, social workers and mental health professionals around the globe have encountered clients reporting sexual abuse by organized groups or networks. These allegations have been amongst the most controversial in debates over child sexual abuse, raising many unanswered questions. Are reports of organized abuse factual or the product of moral panic and false memories? If these reports are true, what is the appropriate response? The fields of child protection and psychotherapy have been polarised over the issue. And, although cases of organized abuse continue to be uncovered, a reasoned and evidence-based analysis of the subject is long overdue.
Examining the existing evidence, and supplementing it with further qualitative research, in this book Michael Salter addresses: the relationship between sexual abuse and organized abuse; questions over the veracity of testimony; the gap between the policing response to sexual abuse and the realities of child sexual exploitation; the contexts in which sexually abusive groups develop and operate; the role of religion and ritual in subcultures of multi-perpetrator sexual abuse; as well as the experience of adults and children with histories of organized abuse in the criminal justice system and health system. Organized Sexual Abuse thus provides a definitive analysis that will be of immense value to those with professional and academic interests in this area.
https://www.routledge.com/Organised-Sexual-Abuse/Salter/p/book/9781138789159

“A deep wound under my heart”: Constructions of complex trauma and implications for women’s wellbeing and safety from violence May 2020 Michael Salter
Responses to women who have experienced complex trauma need to be sensitive, coordinated and consistent between services and agencies to ensure women’s wellbeing and safety from violence. However, the development of shared frameworks of practice for addressing complex trauma has been forestalled by a lack of professional consensus and understanding…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341667576_A_deep_wound_under_my_heart_Constructions_of_complex_trauma_and_implications_for_women’s_wellbeing_and_safety_from_violence

Organized Sexual Abuse. Dr. Michael Salter
Today on the podcast, Michael Salter.
Michael is an Associate Professor in Criminology at Western Sydney University, Australia and specializes in the study of organized sexual abuse.
In addition to his work on complex trauma, Michael Salter has researched and published widely on violence against women and children.
Michael sits on the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation and is an associate editor of Child Abuse Review, the peer-reviewed journal of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
https://www.thetraumatherapistproject.com/podcast/organized-sexual-abuse-dr-michael-salter/

Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives
October 2019
DOI: 10.4324/9781351213981-13
In book: The Abused and the Abuser (pp.199-211)
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338868934_Organized_abuse_in_adulthood_Survivor_and_professional_perspectives

Malignant trauma and the invisibility of ritual abuse
June 2019 DOI: 10.33212/att.v13n1.2019.16
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney
Abstract
This article draws on psychoanalytic theories of malignant trauma to explain the invisibility of ritual abuse. Ritual abuse refers to the misuse of rituals in the organised sexual abuse of children. Despite expanded recognition of the varieties of child maltreatment, ritual abuse remains largely invisible outside the trauma and dissociation field as a specific form of sexual exploitation. Presenting qualitative data from interview research with ritual abuse survivors and mental health specialists, this article argues that the trauma of ritual abuse and its invisibility are co-constitutive. The perpetration and denial of ritual abuse occur within a relational matrix of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders structured by the presymbolic dread of vulnerability and dependency. The simultaneity of perpetration and disavowal creates the conditions for the malignancy of ritual abuse, including the invisibility of victims and the intergenerational transmission of extreme abuse. The article examines how the provision of care to ritual abuse survivors can become contingent on its erasure, and reflects on the role of therapists and others in interrupting the metastases of malignant trauma and crafting cultural and moral frameworks to transform the dread at the core of ritual abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337804310_Malignant_trauma_and_the_invisibility_of_ritual_abuse

Cultures of Abuse: ‘Sex Grooming’, Organised Abuse and Race in Rochdale, UK
June 2015 International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy 4(2)
DOI: 10.5204/ijcjsd.v4i2.211
Authors: Michael Salter UNSW Sydney Selda Dagistanli Western Sydney University
Revelations of organised abuse by men of Asian heritage in the United Kingdom have become a recurrent feature of international media coverage of sexual abuse in recent years. This paper reflects on the similarities between the highly publicised ‘sex grooming’ prosecutions in Rochdale in 2012 and the allegations of organised abuse in Rochdale that emerged in 1990, when twenty children were taken into care after describing sadistic abuse by their parents and others. While these two cases differ in important aspects, this paper highlights the prominence of colonial ideologies of civilisation and barbarism in the investigation and media coverage of the two cases and the sublimation of the issue of child welfare. There are important cultural and normative antecedents to sexual violence but these have been misrepresented in debates over organised abuse as racial issues and attributed to ethnic minority communities. In contrast, the colonialist trope promulgating the fictional figure of the rational European has resulted in the denial of the cultural and normative dimensions of organised abuse in ethnic majority communities by attributing sexual violence to aberrant and sexually deviant individuals whose behaviours transgress the boundaries of accepted cultural norms. This paper emphasises how the implicit or explicit focus on race has served to obscure the power dynamics underlying both cases and the continuity of vulnerability that places children at risk of sexual and organised abuse.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281229060_Cultures_of_Abuse_’Sex_Grooming’_Organised_Abuse_and_Race_in_Rochdale_UK

Reducing Shame, Promoting Dignity: A Model for the Primary Prevention of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Recommended citation: Salter, M. & Hall, H. (2021) Reducing Shame, Promoting Dignity: A Model for the Primary Prevention of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Trauma Violence Abuse, forthcoming.
The recent inclusion of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) into the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 11th revision is the culmination of over twenty five years of research and clinical practice. Since the early 1990s, it has been proposed that a complex variant of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be differentiated from classical PTSD by alterations in affect and behavioral regulation, interpersonal problems, dissociative symptoms, and somatizations (Herman, 1992). As clinical scholarship and research into CPTSD has developed, it has been linked to concepts of developmental and attachment trauma, recognizing the aetiological role of early onset abuse and neglect, and associated disruptions in the child-caregiver bond (Farina, Liotti, & Imperatori, 2019). Parallel scholarship into adverse childhood experiences links child-onset trauma to major social and public health challenges, including common mental and physical illnesses, entrenched poverty and criminality (Lambert, Meza, Martin, Fearey, & McLaughlin, 2017). In light of the evidence of the public health burden of CPSTD, Ford (2015) argues for population-level interventions to reduce the prevalence of CPTSD, otherwise “vulnerable individuals and entire populations are at risk for becoming trapped in intergenerational vicious cycles escalating danger, disadvantage, and dysregulation” (p 3).
https://www.academia.edu/44436007/Reducing_Shame_Promoting_Dignity_A_Model_for_the_Primary_Prevention_of_Complex_Post_Traumatic_Stress_Disorder

Perspective
Speaking out about child sexual abuse within the family
As France continues to grapple with how a top academic who allegedly sexually abused his stepson for years was able to act with impunity, we speak to Michael Salter, Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He says coercive sexual relationships with children were “the dark side of the sexual revolution” and that it’s vital to understand that sexual abuse of minors happens across all sectors of society. “Child sexual abuse is a public health crisis,” he tells us.
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/perspective/20210201-speaking-out-about-child-sexual-abuse-within-the-family

https://twitter.com/mike_salter
Michael Salter
@mike_salter
“Recovered memory therapy” does not refer to an actual therapy. It’s a pejorative term invented by “false memory” advocate Richard Ofshe in 1993. Nobody has ever trained in or practiced RMT because it doesn’t exist, except in the fevered imaginations of false memory advocates.