“Was this a ritual murder?”

This “Question of the Day” popped up on my television screen as I watched Court TV’s coverage of the “Priest Accused of Nun’s Murder” trial in Toledo, Ohio on April 27th.

I turned to my computer and shot off an email. “Yes. It has the markings of a ritual murder.” Below my signature, I wrote, “I am a retired psychologist who spent a career working with ritual abuse survivors and wrote a novel about ritual abuse and murder in a small town in the Bible Belt.”

A producer telephoned me the next day. “Our anchors, Lisa Bloom and Vinnie Politan, want to know if they can do a live phone interview with you. They’d like you to tell our viewers how survivors get over ritual abuse . . . and give your impressions of the case.”

For seven minutes on May Day, I spoke for survivors to two million viewers about the reality of ritual abuse.

There was no time to tell two million viewers how I have sat with shattered souls as they recover from ritual abuse or how I have often observed the resiliency of a victim’s human spirit. I’m reminded of a successful professional woman, now a grandmother, who at two years old was laid bare on an altar and dedicated to Satan; at eleven, strapped on a gurney while a burgeoning life was ripped from her not-quite-grownup body. How did she even survive childhood?

Understandably, Bloom and Politan were more interested in what I had to say about the satanic ritual aspects of the case. But I did make the point that satanic cults are not the only venue where ritual abuse occurs.

“The same evils reportedly carried out in the name of Satan” I said, “are also ‘perpetrated in perverted Christianity cults, witchcraft, neo-Nazism, KKKism and other destructive ’isms.’”

In summing up the interview, Bloom stated: “Well, it [Satanism] is, as you say, another destructive ’ism.’”

Although there is controversy over the reality of ritual abuse, each element of the ritual pattern has been documented. It’s just that when we combine all the elements of ritual abuse into one scenario, we get overloaded with horror. (1) sadistic sexual abuse by multiple perpetrators, (2) international organizations of pedophiles/ pornographers/traffickers, (3) desecration of religious institutions, (4) electroshock, (5) mind control, (6) bestiality, (7) sensory deprivation, (8) forced drugging, (9) human and animal mutilations/sacrifices . . . even cannibalism.

Among the deluge of emails I received after the interview, the most poignant response came from a 58-year-old woman.

“I was in the fourth grade when my priest scarred me for life. He was naked except for a vestment over his head and prayed in Latin as he sodomized me in the sacristy of my church in Toledo, Ohio.”

She continued, “I am quite certain there are many more silent victims of satanic ritual abuse in Toledo who have not come forward. The heinous nature of these crimes is such that perpetrators escape justice, as no one wants to believe that anyone, let alone a priest, could be capable of such atrocities. This poor nun may have stumbled upon something for which she was silenced, perhaps as a warning to other victims to ‘keep their mouths shut.’”

Sister Margaret Ann Pahl was brutally murdered in 1980 on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter in the Christian faith; on Holy Saturday, the day that satanic calendars refer to as a holiday requiring a human sacrifice. As tragic as the nun’s apparently sacrificial murder was, perhaps her death was not entirely in vain.

The image of a “Bride of Christ” lying posed, partially naked on that cold sacristy floor with an inverted crossed stabbed over her heart has effectively silenced those who say that there is no proof for the existence of ritual abuse.