Shards of glass and dark rituals (English transcript)

Marinke, survivor:
Sometimes I just feel the need to express my confusion, my helplessness or my fears through drawing. But just as often they are dream images, or happy memories or something that stems completely from my imagination and I then put on paper.
Sanne (reporter):
And what do you draw?
Marinke:
Mostly portraits. Most of them are very realistic.
Sanne:
Is drawing an outlet for you?
Marinke:
Yes, very much so. I do have to say that for a long time, for years, I kept it almost completely hidden. And that has very much to do with an awful experience I had as a child. Where it was literally forbidden to express emotions and also to draw them. Looking back, I think this could be related to people being afraid I would put things on paper that would reveal something that shouldn’t be revealed.

NARRATOR [SANNE TERLINGEN]
This is Marinke. She’s in her early thirties. One of over two hundred people who filled out our questionnaire on organized sexual abuse.

Marinke:
I did hesitate for a long time. And at first, I thought: I’m not doing this, because everyone will know and stuff, but then I could do it anonymously. Well in the end here I am, with my voice on the radio but yeah, it took a while.

NARRATOR [ST]
A year and a half, to be precise. That’s how long we’ve been working on this investigation.

Marinke:
I already struggled to put into words, even to type it into a computer, what happened to me. That in itself was difficult. And then to, well to someone that you don’t really know, so you, the both of you…

NARRATOR [ST]
Our questionnaire generated all kinds of stories. Twins Beatrix and Stefanie reached out, because they wanted to find the child pornography recordings that featured them. We received stories of sexual abuse at sports clubs and boarding schools, on grooming and cults. But reports of a very different nature quickly started to surface. Stories about unimaginable torture practices and rituals.

Respondent questionnaire [re-enacted]:
Sacrifice, being buried alive, being hung from a cross, also upside-down, also getting spun around, drinking blood, getting into a state of trance, weird chanting, glorifying a person.

Respondent questionnaire [re-enacted]:
Chanting, charms, rotating, hanging upside down from an upside-down cross during sex […] whips, blood, faeces […] Bondage. In chests […] At times being in one room for an entire day, with one song playing, the same song for hours and hours. Costumes, masks, robes.

NARRATOR [ST]
We received over a hundred of these stories. Marinke wrote:

Excerpt from Marinke’s questionnaire [re-enacted]:
Satanic rituals that frighten me so much, I’m almost too scared to share them here. Sacrificing children and babies. There was a special sacrificial stone. Hanging upside-down from a cross, then getting raped. Brainwashing.

NARRATOR [ST]
When these types of responses first started pouring in, we had no idea what to do with them. We found out there is an official definition: Ritual Abuse. In the nineties, health care workers sounded the alarm bells, and a lot of media attention ensued.

NARRATOR [HUUB JASPERS]
The justice department even established a special working group on Ritual Abuse. The investigation, led by Attorney General Hulsenbek, took six months. Their findings have been widely cited ever since: they did not find evidence supporting the existence of Ritual Abuse.

NARRATOR [ST]
But the report also clearly states that there hadn’t been sufficient time to conduct in-depth investigations of any cases. Due to the ‘gravity of the issue’ the working group recommended the creation of a specialist group, that would continue examining any possible developments, within literature on the topic, but especially in practice.

NARRATOR [HJ]
This specialist group was never established. But shortly after the report a book came out, which to this day influences the debate: ‘Recovered memories and other misconceptions’, by professors in legal psychology Crombag and Merkelbach.

NARRATOR [ST]
It poses that therapists would hypnotize people, which led to them to be convinced that they were abused during their childhood and to wrongfully accuse their parents of ritual abuse. Supposedly, this practice was used by therapists specialising in multiple personality disorder in particular.

NARRATOR [HJ]
The dominance of these beliefs is clear from the moment we start our investigation. We get emails filled with warnings. Our editor-in-chief even receives an email from professor of law & psychology Peter van Koppen.

Harry Lensink, editor-in-chief Argos:
Van Koppen warned me. I’ll read what he wrote me:
‘Within the scientific society the widely held consensus is that therapy related to trauma imposes upon clients, usually women, a made-up, non-existent past as well as brand-new issues. An important part of those new problems is made up of the battle field that’s created within families. That’s because an important part of many of those therapies is to file a police report against the alleged perpetrator. A renewed interest in repressed memories can as such be very harmful to public health’. 

NARRATOR [ST]
In 1999, instead of a specialist group, a special team was formed within the police force: the National Team of Experts on Extraordinary Cases of Sexual Abuse, the LEBZ. It is prescribed by law that any police reports containing ‘Ritual Characteristics’ should be referred to them in the early stages of an investigation.

NARRATOR [HJ]
We have been in touch with the LEBZ for over a year. We told them we received over a hundred reports of Ritual Abuse. We were invited for introduction over coffee once, but they were too busy to see us at any other time after that. They decided not to grant us an interview, so we’ll play a small part from a documentary, in which their coordinator defines Ritual Abuse:

Excerpt documentary, Nicole Nierop (coordinator LEBZ):
Bizarre forms of sexual abuse, combined with all kinds of macabre aspects such as inflicting bodily harm. Often paired with: sacrificing animals, drinking blood, killing babies, burying infant corpses in the woods. It can also be related to more occult affairs, such as seances, also in the woods, or men in robes.

Marinke:
They’re words that I can’t even bring myself to say. Pff. No.
Sanne:
Is it okay for me to read out what you wrote down in the questionnaire?Marinke:
Hmm. Yes, that’s okay.

NARRATOR [ST]
Marinke wrote down that she would be taken away in a car. From a very young age. She was often under the influence of drugs, so that she wouldn’t know where she was brought to. There were men and women who would at times wear black and purple robes. Family members, teachers, lawyers, and ‘even people working within the Dutch government, although no one will probably believe that’, she wrote.

She also writes that obedience was enforced in many different ways. With the ‘water test or baptism’ for example. ‘Continually getting dunked under water until you almost suffocate. Repeatedly having the same things yelled at you when coming up for air’.

Marinke:
They usually do it in the name of Satan. Which was very confusing to me for a long time, as I was raised with God and religion.

NARRATOR [ST]
When asked how long the abuse went on for, she fills in: ‘2019. I’m still not completely safe.’

If Marinke where to report her story to the police, her case would need be passed on to the LEBZ. In the documentary the coordinator tells:

Excerpt documentary, Nicole Nierop (coordinator LEBZ):
The most horrid sexual acts are committed, it’s not a matter of believing that. We know a lot of awful things are happening. But when you speak of Ritual Abuse, we also do know that no evidence of its existence has ever been found, while that would be expected when looking at the extensive nature of the acts and the magnitude of the network.

NARRATOR [ST]
The expert team’s objective is not ‘to investigate Ritual Abuse’. Rather, the police website states, LEBZ’s main objective is to identify false accusations of sexual abuse, and to protect wrongfully accused people from prosecution. It also states that ‘nor in The Netherlands, nor anywhere else in the world any evidence of ritual abuse has ever been found’.

NARRATOR [HJ]
Long story short: ever since the LEBZ was established, not a single report of Ritual Abuse has led to a criminal case.

NARRATOR [ST]
At first, we were tempted to put all these statements aside. Too shocking. Too controversial. But at the same time, we kept asking ourselves: how come there are so many, if this doesn’t exist? Did all respondents share the same therapist? Or did they attend the same group therapy? That is not the case.

We analysed the 140 questionnaires in which ritual characteristics were mentioned. That’s how we discovered even more wrong assumptions. For example, there were no signs of hypnosis. And over forty people mention abuse that took place within the past ten years. That group includes people who shared stories of a network they’re still a part of to this day.

NARRATOR [HJ]
Those aren’t exactly ‘recovered memories’ from a long-forgotten past.

The assumption that all victims file police reports is also incorrect. Only a handful of respondents claims to have done so. And that would usually be against one or two persons, not an entire network.

NARRATOR [ST]
One assumption is correct: over three quarters of the respondents have been diagnosed with DID - dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. This includes Marinke.

Marinke:
What I notice is that I lose pieces, I don’t have memories of certain things happening. Imagine, I see a drawing, and I’m just completely sure – I didn’t draw that. And it’s just lying there, a drawing that’s finished, or semi-finished.

I do remember being confronted with the DID diagnose and... that I refused to believe it for at least a year. I just didn’t want it.

Christel Kraaij, clinical psychologist:
When I look at the clients I treat, and also the literature on the topic, this is a consequence of severe childhood trauma.

NARRATOR [ST]
Christel Kraaij is a clinical psychologist working for GGZ Centraal (Dutch mental health care facilities). She is one of the experts that helped us out with drawing up our questionnaire. She has been treating clients with DID for over ten years. Around fifteen of them speak of Ritual Abuse.

Christel Kraaij:
I treat people that have gotten out of the network completely, I treat people that are still being pressured by the network but can stay safe. So people who receive emails and texts but no longer respond to them. And I do also treat people who are still actively approached by the network and who are abused and mistreated.

NARRATOR [ST]
The horrific acts they speak of show distinctive similarities:

Christel Kraaij:
The holidays are of course a similarity, whether it be Easter or Pentecost or Christmas or Ascension Day, but also all kinds of days that don’t stem from Christianity but are things like a Full Moon, the change of seasons. That those are the days on which the most horrific things take place.

NARRATOR [ST]
This is something we also see in the responses to our questionnaire:

Respondent questionnaire [re-enacted]:
There was chanting and often a lot of candles. At times there’d be an altar someone would get tied to. On each corner of the table would be a candle. Christian holidays were often re-enacted, but to mock them, crucifixions for example […] A type of cleansing ritual: every time I got to go home shards of glass were inserted into my vagina […] They did fertility rituals, girls had to get pregnant. They made sacrifices.

NARRATOR [ST]
And there’s something else victims of Ritual Abuse have in common:

Christel Kraaij:
It’s what I call ‘mind control’. People who have experienced Ritual Abuse show a lot more signs of…brainwashing you could say.

They would sometimes refer to them as ‘programs’, that can switch on and display very typical behaviour that isn’t really visible in people who have DID but did not suffer Ritual Abuse. What they say about that is that there is a type of training, more like conditioning, that when someone says A, they have to do B.

NARRATOR [ST]
Our respondents speak of trainings in which waterboarding, electroshocks, flashing lights, spinning around, repeating songs or confinement is used.

Respondent questionnaire [re-enacted]:
Programming that we have includes: ‘come-back-programs’ (return to the group on specific days), suicide programs, auto mutilation programs, and programs aimed at generating confusion if I say something about the group that I’m not allowed to share.

NARRATOR [ST]
These programs switch on when someone says: ‘you can trust me’, for example, in order to keep a victim from talking. Or when a specific image is combined with a specific word, that means that someone has to come over right away. If not, punishment will follow.  

Christel Kraaij:
It’s as if someone pushes a button that makes a person act without having any control over it. At that point I see a client who reacts in a sort of monotone manner, a bit like a soldier you could say. And who really thinks, in my view, looking at it, that they’re not there with me anymore, having a normal conversation, but that they have landed in some sort of drill-like situation.

NARRATOR [HJ]
When we first heard this, we also thought to ourselves: well, this is getting too bizarre. But over the past year we’ve witnessed all kinds of things happening during our meetings: people who suddenly tried to walk away. Who tried to cut themselves after naming a perpetrator. But more on our investigation later, first we return to clinical psychologist Christel Kraaij.

Sanne Terlingen (reporter):
To the outside world your patients are very normal people with very normal jobs.
Christel Kraaij:
Very normal people with very normal jobs.
Sanne:
Who visit you once a week.
Christel Kraaij:
Yes.
Sanne:
And still, you take those stories seriously to the point where you tell us: ‘well I’d like to see them investigated for once…’
Christel Kraaij:
Yes, because I’m in a position that doesn’t allow for me to focus on truth finding. Which can get frustrating at times, especially when there’s a dominant view within society that these things don’t exist. And that view also leads to suffering by my clients.

NARRATOR [ST]
As has probably become clear by now, we decided to take up the gauntlet. We start by looking for the common denominator in these stories. Almost every single one of the 140 people who filled out our questionnaire state that they were introduced to the network by a family member, usually their father or mother. All of them were drugged. Almost every one of them was forced into prostitution. Child pornography was produced, as well as torture porn.

NARRATOR [HJ]
We’re talking dozens of overlapping testimonies. Over a hundred people mention abuse on specific holidays. Two thirds mention men and women in robes - black, purple, red or white.

NARRATOR [ST]
We also go through piles and piles of research reports on Ritual Abuse. ‘Such overlap doesn’t mean anything’, a critical report written up for the British government states. People can easily find details about satanic rituals and men in robes on the internet.

But we find a detail that we can investigate further: several women state that the perpetrators insert glass into their vaginas. The thought behind it is that they would have to return to the network in order to get it removed. But some women did end up getting their injuries treated in hospital.

NARRATOR [HJ]
We phone gynaecologists and care workers. These conversations are confidential. We have to promise that we won’t name any names. Four gynaecologists confirm that they have encountered such things, where they had to remove glass from a vagina. One gynaecologist states that she removed glass from the bodies of two women. These are severely traumatised victims of sexual abuse. With one of them the gynaecologist questioned whether she might have inserted the glass herself. But with the other one, a young girl, she was convinced that someone else did it to her. But still, that does not prove there’s a network behind these crimes.

NARRATOR [ST]
We continue our search. On a large map we place stickers on locations that have been named. Fifteen stickers on the Hague. But what does that say? The Hague is a large city. A lot of stickers on the Veluwe. And abroad, in Belgium and Germany.

NARRATOR [HJ]
We get in touch with around a hundred respondents. We meet in person with over twenty of them. We always go to these interviews together. Also as way to avoid the risk of posing suggestive questions.

NARRATOR [ST]
And we don’t only speak to victims, but also to people they are close to: foster parents, therapists, colleagues, family-in-law…

During our conversations with Marinke one of her good friends is there with her.

Marinke’s friend:
We love to go shopping together. And just having nice chats, and yeah, Marinke is always in the mood for joking around.
Sanne Terlingen (reporter):
And do you notice anything about Marinke, that she has experienced certain things?
Friend:
Well, when we’re just chatting, you don’t notice anything, no, she’s just a great, creative, spontaneous girl. She has depth, she’s just great to talk to.

NARRATOR [ST]
Another reason for her friend to join our conversations is that answering some of our questions can be very intense to Marinke. At times it looks like she’s fainting.

Friend:
It looks like she passes out. I don’t know what happens exactly, but then it just gets so intense, she just can’t handle it anymore and yeah, then she passes out, that’s what I call it.
Sanne:
But aren’t we demanding too much of Marinke then, by asking her to participate?
Friend:
She’s very motivated to do this, because she wants people to accept DID, that she’ll be accepted for who she is.

NARRATOR [ST]
We also talk to Marinke’s mother-in-law. She has known Marinke for five years. She remembers the time Marinke visited them on a certain holiday. One of those holidays the other respondents of our questionnaire also named.

Mother-in-law:
I remember very clearly, it was a quarter to nine and she was playing the piano and had her phone up on the piano and then, all of a sudden an image appeared on her phone, a picture of a V with flames going through it, and at that point she just changed at once. Marinke was gone and in her place a sort of robotic alter appeared, saying: I must leave, I must leave. And a while later a message followed, something like ‘it’s starting to take very long now’. And yes, it just went on for a while actually. Like, ‘you have to come now, or else: rest in peace’, these kinds of threats.
Sanne: Can you fake an alter?
Mother-in-law: I’d imagine that if you’re an amazing actor you could fake it, yes. But to continue to do that, year in, year out, and to fake awful recollections and horrible nightmares in the middle of the night, that seems a bit farfetched. And to continue doing that for five years.

NARRATOR [ST]
It’s far from the only incident they’ve been through with Marinke. Often, when Marinke received such a phone call, or when it was a special holiday, she’d disappear.

Mother-in-law:
She’ll just disappear. No one knows where she goes. And then she’ll suddenly come back, in an awful state.
Sanne Terlingen (reporter):
And have you ever noticed any injuries on her body?
Mother-in-law:
I did take her to our doctor a few times because she was bleeding down there, severely.
Sanne:
And that would be after she’d disappeared?
Mother-in-law:
Yes, it would be after. And once they inserted a pocket knife down below, I saw her pulling it out.

NARRATOR [ST]
Sometimes the summoning is done by letter.

Mother-in-law:
Entire stories, often in Latin, and in English, are written in those letters, they contain codes. Of course, I’ve thought to myself: yes, but do they really? Does this actually exist? Because those letters often mention rituals, and Satanism. Of course, I’ve said to myself: but couldn’t she be writing those letters herself?

NARRATOR [ST]
That changes when Marinke even receives a letter while staying at the closed ward in Emergis, a mental health facility.

Mother-in-law:
Every single possession she had at Emergis, I had personally brought her. She was there, in a little room, without access to computers, printers or anything. She just couldn’t have done this herself.

NARRATOR [ST]
That night, they receive a phone call from the facility: they can’t find Marinke.

Mother-in-law:
It’s just puzzling how she managed to get out of that closed ward. Because there’s actually a very high fence there.
Sanne:
There wasn’t like a little step or anything in front of that fence?
Mother-in-law:
No, because the fence was meant to keep people inside.

BREAK

NARRATOR [ST]
You’re listening to Argos, the investigative journalism show by VPRO and Human on NPO Radio 1. Over the past year we’ve received over a hundred and forty statements concerning Ritual Abuse. One of the girls who shared her story with us is Marinke. Her parents-in-law kept a large dossier in which they record everything that happened to her. It contains pictures of the window through which Marinke escaped from the closed mental health facility. It was smashed in, from the outside. It also includes photos of a sawed through brake line, belonging to a car. Pictures of injuries on Marinke’s body, and a letter from Marinke’s family.

Mother-in-law:
This is a letter to Marinke, but sent to our house, by registered mail and everything. So apparently it was very important to them that we’d receive it. And the letter contained a very long, detailed report of a large part of Marinke’s life, it was kind of a strange letter really.
Sanne Terlingen (reporter):
And what kind of picture does this letter paint of Marinke?
Mother-in-law:
That she continually comes up with inconsistent, vague stories of abuse, which she tends to take back afterwards. That she has a history of psychiatric illness and that her stories turn out to be false. And they also repeatedly say that if she takes back those stories, she’d be welcomed back into her family. I just thought that was such an odd sentence. Come on, this is your child. I’m sorry but...
Sanne:
And after reading that letter, did you doubt Marinke’s story?
Mother-in-law:
Well it was more like a confirmation to me.
Sanne:
Did you ever consider taking this dossier to the police?
Mother-in-law:
It makes very little difference. We can’t do much. My husband has phoned them and was redirected to some special police department. But I’m bad at remembering abbreviations. It’s a special department for complicated sexual crimes. But the victim has to file the report, otherwise you won’t get anywhere…

Bas Kremer, therapist and board member at the Knowledge Centre for Organized Transgenerational Abuse:
I think every single police report on ritual abuse has been dismissed. That they just automatically get sent to the LEBZ, and with that, discarded.

NARRATOR [ST]
Bas Kremer works as a therapist and is member of the board at the Knowledge Centre for Organized Transgenerational Abuse.

Bas Kremer:
When people ask for advice, we will currently advise them to not file a police report. It has been sealed off, you could say. And I’ve also heard from colleagues who were very disillusioned because a case would get dismissed immediately.

NARRATOR [ST]
The Knowledge Centre is made up of a group of health care specialists who deal with clients that have come forward with stories on Ritual Abuse. They’ve been active for 25 years. They also conducted research, for which they interviewed just under thirty health care workers. They discovered very clear overlaps between their clients’ testimonies.

Bas Kremer:
There are a few very clear similarities. Certain very specific recurring locations, also certain names of perpetrators that would have also been mentioned by other victims. And we also saw a lot of overlap in the mind control that was imposed on them.

NARRATOR [ST]
The health care officials sounded the alarm bells. They themselves experienced things that severely frightened them.

Bas Kremer:
When our therapy session finished, they’d go out and there was literally a dying pigeon lying there in the house, in the hallway, right in front of the door of the practice.
Sanne:
It couldn’t have flown in through the window or something?
Bas Kremer:
No, someone brought it in. It was very scary. It was a bleeding, dying pigeon, which had been stabbed.

NARRATOR [ST]
The LEBZ’s reaction was a counter-article with a scathing conclusion.

Article LEBZ, narrated:
These people can be seen as part of the group of health care officials who are - solely based on what clients tell them - convinced of the existence of ritual abuse; despite all the police investigations, reports, empirical studies and nuances on ‘therapeutic truth’. […] To let a person continue to be convinced or to convince them of having a history of either sexual or ritual abuse, that’s what we consider truly traumatic.

Bas Kremer:
I’ve met these people, and I think they take their task at hand - and that is to protect people from being falsely accused - very seriously and that they execute it very well. But that in doing so, they throw out the baby with the bath water.

NARRATOR [ST]
Kremer and his colleagues struggle with the disbelief they encounter time and time again.

Bas Kremer:
I didn’t realize beforehand, when choosing this career path, that I would end up here. I do see this as organized abuse of little children that takes place here, in the Netherlands, and of which I’m afraid it does actually exist. And then I’m like: well, this is my profession. And I do encounter this. So here I am, telling my story in front of a microphone.
Sanne:
Does it frighten you, sitting here in front of this microphone?
Bas Kremer:
Yes. Part of me…yes, I does frighten me, because I think to myself: dear God, this is organized crime we’re talking about and there is no acknowledgement, there’s no policy in place, no outside support. So yes, in that way I am scared.
Sanne:
Is that what you’re afraid of? Or it is fear of being considered a lunatic?
Bas Kremer:
Sure, I’m also afraid of that. And it will most likely happen and I do understand it: this is too bizarre to be believed. Sometimes I hear myself saying things and I think: this is unimaginable.

NARRATOR [ST]
According to the Knowledge Centre, the abuse is passed on from generation to generation.

Bas Kremer:
We are also talking about abuse that starts at a young age, baby age, toddler age. And it’s almost inevitable that the parents would play a part there, or can safeguard it to the group.

Children, I’m almost afraid to say, but they’re trained, I think, to continue to function normally while being abused. That also entails that children can endure abuse from age zero, can continue smiling, even though they are being hurt severely. Remaining silent and never saying a word, in order to make it possible to let them get abused by strangers without anyone finding out.

NARRATOR [ST]
The reality is not nearly as mysterious as the term ‘ritual abuse’ might lead you to think. Victims don’t call it ritual abuse, but speak of ‘them’ or ‘the network’. ‘They’ are also engaged in drug and arms trafficking. Take a van to the port and pick up a bag of cocaine. Switch number plates. Make a quick stop at a holiday park or a rest stop in order to exchange the bag for two teenage girls. Switch number plates again and take the girls to a party, where they’re made to ‘wait’ in a cage or caravan until the party starts. On other days there are smaller, private parties at someone’s residence.

NARRATOR [HJ]
An errand boy describes how he would drive young women to a rest spot at the Veluwe, where they were forced to ‘work’ for the group. Other girls had to do the same in large hotels or sex clubs.

NARRATOR [ST]
Some victims speak of the ‘cult’. Mostly to make clear how brainwashed they are and how difficult it is to break loose.

Bas Kremer:
The number one characteristic of a cult is how they manage to isolate people. It can be very difficult to cut ties when you’re an adult, but we’re talking about networks that you’re born into here. So, this is what you’ve known your entire life…

Part of the tactic to make people stay is making them complicit. Forcing them to hurt or abuse other children. While telling them: ‘you see, this is what you want, you are just as evil. And when other people see this, and we do have images, you’ll just go to prison’.

NARRATOR [ST]
It has to be addressed, say the one hundred and forty respondents speaking of Ritual Abuse in our questionnaire. Four out of five respondents were forced to inflict pain upon other children. This makes for the deepest traumas. It is impossible to find the right words to describe it.

The same goes for pregnancies. 78 percent states that they got pregnant through the abuse. The majority more than once. They’d get tortured to the point of losing their baby, they say. But they also speak of ‘nobodies’. Children that were born into and kept within the network, and never got officially registered. Some of them are dragged from place to place. Others live with families that are active within the network. Their mothers are only allowed to see them if their sexual performance is up to par. If they continue to come back. These nobodies undergo the most severe forms of abuse.

NARRATOR [HJ]
These are all stories that the people working for the Knowledge Centre are told too, board member Bas Kremer says. We ask him whether he’s also heard about the involvement of highly ranked officials in the abuse or its coverup:

Bas Kremer:
Yes, that is something that I often hear. I also think it’s something they’re told again and again, within these networks, the children too. Like they’re in charge of everyone and control the entire world.

NARRATOR [ST]
And the insertion of glass into vaginas, is that something he’s heard of?

Bas Kremer:
I’ve heard of it several times, and I have also witnessed it with a client of mine. That was during a very intense period, when she tried to cut ties with the network. And where they’d try to reel her back in, just to make her stay. That was a period of time in which there was a lot of violence.

NARRATOR [ST]
We don’t just talk to survivors, but also to over twenty health care workers. Most of them mention how they were suddenly confronted with clients who shared stories of Ritual Abuse. How shocked they were. How they would prefer to immediately send these clients to an expert, but that the waiting lists for trauma centres are enormous. They also talk about how they’re almost afraid to speak of these things, out of fear for being labelled a bad therapist. They talk of trying to find supervision, but how difficult that is to find. 

NARRATOR [HJ]
We start consulting experts abroad. We notice that in other countries a lot more effort has been put into professionally investigating Ritual Abuse. In Germany, for example. We make a call to university clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf. [Sound of phone ringing]

Susanne Nick, scientific researcher:
[In German]: Mein Name is Susanne Nick.

NARRATOR [ST]
Last year, Susanne Nick conducted scientific research on the experiences of therapists who work with victims of Ritual Sexual abuse in Germany. 174 psychologists, psychiatrists and other professionals participated. The vast majority of them are highly educated, certified practitioners. Over three quarters of them experience working with clients who share stories of Ritual Abuse as being a large burden.

Susanne Nick:
[In German]: Rituelle Gewalt ist extreme Gewalt…Die Konfrontation damit und die Begleitung von den Betroffenen hat deutlich psychische Auswirkungen auch auf Fachpersonen.

NARRATOR [ST]
What becomes most clear is how these practitioners feel like they are on their own in this. They feel overburdened, isolated and misunderstood. Some of them have dealt with burnouts. One in five reported having been threatened or even attacked. A number of these people filed a police report regarding these threats.

NARRATOR [HJ]
We also make a phone call to Australia, where we speak to a criminologist who has conducted research on Ritual Abuse.

Michael Salter, Associate Professor University of New South Wales:
[In English]: I’m Associate Professor Michael Salter. I’m a criminologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia.                                                                  

NARRATOR [HJ]
Salter specializes in organized crime networks. He has conducted in-depth interviews with over fifty survivors of organized sexual abuse. The police often ask his advice. He explains that you shouldn’t think of it as there being one massive child abuse network. It’s like drug trafficking, there’s isn’t one single massive drug trafficking network.

Michael Salter:
[In English] It’s best to think of it almost as a subculture, in the same way that drug trafficking is a subculture.    

NARRATOR [HJ]
Stating that no proof of ritual abuse has ever been found anywhere in the world is complete nonsense, he says.

Michael Salter:
[In English] I have seen crime scenes where animal blood had been splashed all over the walls, where offenders had drawn strange occults symbols on the wall.                     

NARRATOR [HJ]
Occult symbols and blood on the walls. He saw those same symbols branded into victims’ bodies.

Michael Salter:
[In English] There is nothing incredible about these allegations.

NARRATOR [ST]
It’s hard to believe that these awful things are really happening, and at the same time it’s also difficult to believe that we refuse to accept their existence, says German journalist Claudia Fischer. She is the founder and coordinator of the Info Portal for Ritual Abuse. Together with her colleagues she documents court cases with elements of ritual abuse from all over the world.

Claudia Fischer, journalist:
[In German]: Wir wissen, dass Menschen verschwinden können, dass Menschen gefangen gehalten werden, ohne das Nachbarn das merken. Natascha Kampusch in Österreich ist so ein Beispiel… 

NARRATOR [ST]
We know that people disappear or are kept against their will without their neighbours noticing it, Fischer says. Think of Natascha Kampusch, of Mark Dutroux and the family in Ruinerwold. She also refers to Satanic murders in Germany. People have been convicted of those crimes. So how come, when a person comes forward and speaks of these things, our first response is that this cannot be true?

NARRATOR [HJ]
In cases of Ritual Abuse, it’s essential that police and therapists start cooperating and exchanging knowledge. As says Franziska Schubiger, chief of one of the investigations departments within the Zurich police force.

Franziska Schubiger, chief detective Zurich police force:
[In German] Ich halte es für notwendig, dass man sich interdisziplinär vernetzt damit wir uns mit den Therapeuten austauschen können…         

NARRATOR [HJ]
Schubiger previously worked as a detective, both at the sexual crime unit and the organized crime unit. She conducted research on how people working within the police force perform during hearings with severely traumatised survivors of sexual abuse and, more specifically, survivors of ritual violence. It’s not the therapists’ task to engage in truth finding, she says, but their expertise can be of assistance in truth finding. The police can learn a lot from trauma therapists with regard to taking statements from victims, especially those dealing with DID. They are often not capable of sharing what exactly happened to them.

Franziska Schubiger
[In German] Die Opfer dissozieren, also eben die können gar nicht über das was passiert ist, sprechen.                               

NARRATOR [ST]
More and more, our investigation has started to take shape. Marinke wrote down a number of names of people she points out as perpetrators. They are the names of fairly well-known people. Six out of eight names had been mentioned by others who participated in our research. Would she be able to recognize the unknown offenders named by other participants? What is the best way for us to ask her?

Marinke:
And a few of them I can clearly see before me because I have seen them so many times. But with quite a lot of them I can only name names, and I’m not even sure if those are their real names.

NARRATOR [ST]
We decide to try something new. We print out a paper with the faces of over a hundred different people: random faces, people whose names are mentioned on conspiracy websites, and unknown people other participants have brought up. Their family member for example, or a doctor who was involved, a number of suspects from Lisa’s story, which we shared a year and a half ago…

What happens next surprises us. Marinke points out several of these unknown people: they are a part of it, she says. It isn’t a wild guess. She knows their names, and personal details like their hometowns, their children’s names, what sports they like. But also: a morbid sexual preference. A certain type of weapon someone supposedly owned. Information that can’t be found online. But which had been mentioned by other victims we spoke to. Over forty perpetrators were described by several different victims.

The same happens when we try to find locations:

Marinke:
Hmmm, locations, that’s a difficult question for me because I don’t like to talk about it but… one location that would come back more often was some kind of big warehouse.

NARRATOR [ST]
A warehouse in the Bollenstreek (Also known as ‘Flower Strip’, area between Leiden and Haarlem known for its tulip fields). Marinke had pointed it out at the start of our investigation. One of the girls whose story overlaps with that of Marinke, points out the exact same location in her questionnaire. We get in touch with her again and ask her: what is out there? She points out the exact same warehouse Marinke did. This is used for storage, she says. And they produce child pornography there.

NARRATOR [HJ]
In order to protect the identities of the participants who pointed out the warehouse we won’t share the exact number of people; but there were several. They say that this was the location where child and animal pornography would be produced.

NARRATOR [ST]
Our map is covered in stickers at this stage: over eight stickers on a Belgian castle, which was also pointed out by Marinke. Several stickers on a residence, in a specific street in a mid-sized city. And on a building in the Veluwe. We end up locating over ten spots that were named by several of our participants.

And then we receive an anonymous email: ‘Beware, they know about your investigation. They’re going to get rid of evidence - just like they did with Dutroux’.

That same day the warehouse in the Bollenstreek burns down. We phone the fire department. The damage is so severe that a cause of fire cannot be determined.

NARRATOR [HJ]
We contact Johannes Rörig in Berlin.

Johannes Rörig, National Commissioner against Child Abuse Germany:
[In German] Ich bin von dem Bundeskabinet berufener Missbrauchsbeauftragter der Bundesregierung.

NARRATOR [HJ]
He has been appointed as National Commissioner against Child Abuse by the German government. Rörig set up an investigations committee that hears and questions victims of sexual abuse, so far over 1600 of them. Over 60 of those victims reported acts of Ritual Abuse.

Johannes Rörig [re-enacted]:
At first, ritual abuse was a very uncomfortable topic to me. But having personally met people who have been through this during their childhood, I no longer feel the need to hold back. It’s very important to me - also in my position as representative of the German government - to say: I believe these victims. I’m convinced organized sexual abuse exists.

Johannes Rörig:
[In German] Mir war es auch ganz wichtig ganz klar, auch als Vertreter der Bundesregierung zu sagen: ich glaube den Betroffenen, dass es rituelle, organisierte, sexuelle Gewalt gibt.           

NARRATOR [HJ]
Rörig has in-depth conversations with these victims. He is convinced they underwent horrific sexual abuse, but does not agree with using the word ‘victim’. ‘When you realize how these children manage to finish their education and to pick up their lives again… those are enormous energies and strong personalities’.

Johannes Rörig:
[In German] Das sind enorme Energien und das sind starker Persönlichkeiten. Und die wollen nicht als Opfer benannt werden.    

NARRATOR [HJ]
We also get in touch with the man who led the Working Group Ritual Abuse twenty-six years ago: Joost Hulsenbek, attorney general at the time.

He doesn’t want to have his voice heard on the radio, but we’re allowed to cite him. He states:

Joost Hulsenbek, former attorney general [re-enacted]:
At the time, the working group declared that cases could stem from traumatic events during childhood, or that these stories could have been formed through therapy. One thing is for sure: the people who share these stories have suffered greatly and need to be helped. It seems important to me to pay attention to that and it would be good if the government were to start a new investigation. It wouldn’t be unnecessary, after twenty-six years.

NARRATOR [ST]
And then something happens to Marinke…

Marinke’s friend:
Yeah, this past winter she was supposed to go visit friends for a day. I always get a bit nervous because ever since I’ve known her bad things happen in-between visiting her friends.

NARRATOR [ST]
Marinke’s friend even checked whether she had arranged everything correctly:

Friend:
So, she had someone driving her there and picking her up, but she still disappeared between two meetings with friends. For quite a few hours.

NARRATOR [ST]
She was sitting in a bar with a friend when a person who introduced herself as a friend from school picked her up. She said goodbye and went with her.

Friend:
Then she was late meeting her one friend, and the person who gave her a ride didn’t know exactly what was going on and her husband was panicking.

NARRATOR [ST]
Marinke kept track of where she was on her phone. A location at an industrial park in the province of Utrecht. When we ask other participants if they know ‘network locations’ in that city, they point out the exact same spot Marinke did. They also describe the same specific details about the interior.

Friend:
She couldn’t pee, that was the first thing she said. That was it. She couldn’t pee. So I said: ‘well if that’s the case we have to phone the doctor because you can’t go on like this’. So we went to the hospital. And, well…then it became clear that something quite different was going on. That she couldn’t pee because she was so cramped up, because she had glass in her uterus. Yes, it’s just so bizarre, you don’t want to believe it really.

NARRATOR [ST]
At twelve thirty AM it’s finally Marinke’s turn. Her friend messages us from the hospital: ‘they just drew blood. I asked for a drug test but it’s too late for that’. They’re assigned a gynaecologist through the Sexual Assault Center.

Friend:
And then Marinke said that there was really glass inside her, that it did happen. Well, of course it had to get out. But that was so immensely stressful for Marinke it became impossible. So, she had to go under. But because she was so terrified, I was allowed to stay with her. So yeah, I went through all of it, so to speak. I have seen the glass as well. Yes, that’s something you don’t ever want to experience. Especially not with someone you know so well.
Sanne Terlingen, reporter:
And what did you see, a shard of glass coming out?
Friend:
The gynaecologist took out little shards of glass from her uterus with a pair of thongs, I’d say maybe an entire broken wine glass. At one point the gynaecologist did say something like: ‘it’s unbelievable how deep inside her it got’.

Fragment from video taken in hospital:
[Machine beeping]. Legs up a bit. There’s glass here.

NARRATOR [ST]
The sounds you hear were recorded inside the hospital. The friend took a video of the glass being taken out, to show us on record that this really happened to Marinke. The gynaecologists are shocked as well.

Fragment from video taken in hospital:
[Sound of glass ringing] She has been through so much pain already. It’s just unbelievable how much a person can go through.  

Friend:
They questioned me too, like: why don’t you take this to the police? Because this is just plain bizarre, someone did this to her, and something has to be done about it.
Sanne:
So, why didn’t you?
Friend:
Marinke doesn’t want it, because she has had bad experiences with it. And this was just so deeply traumatic, she could hardly talk about it, so the last thing she wanted was to repeat it in front of the police.
Sanne:
Was this the first time you had glass in your vagina?
Marinke:
No, it wasn’t the first time. And it’s wasn’t always glass, there would be other things as well.
Sanne:
Do you know why they do this?
Marinke:
To scare you and make you dependent on them. You can’t continue walking around with that, so you have to do something about it… and the previous times this happened to me I went back, in part because of this, in order for them to take it out.
Sanne:
Because why would you prefer to let them take it out, rather than going to the hospital?
Marinke:
‘Prefer’ is not really the right word here, I think. When I go to hospital, or get it taken out by anyone else, I’d have to tell them how it got there. And…it was just too much of a threat to me. But also…to visit a doctor who I don’t know, who doesn’t understand a thing about it, just seemed way scarier to me than going back to them, where I knew what to expect. Yes, it sounds stupid now. But well, that is how it went.

NARRATOR [ST]
Marinke was allowed to take the container with glass from the hospital. We send it to a company for independent forensic examination per registered mail. Marinke talks about her previous attempt of filing a police report, some three years ago.

Marinke:
My experience with starting to file a police report, at the special victims’ unit, was that it’s pretty much impossible to file a report on this, because you have to tell everything, for hours and hours, all alone, every single detail. And to me that’s impossible because I panic or worse.

And when I wouldn’t explain it clearly enough, they would continue to question me on that and…what the people doing the interrogation kept saying to me was: ‘well, you’re doing this for you, not for us, so let’s just continue’, things like that.

And I do understand that there needs to be a story, but it also has to be doable. And I can imagine that that’s just too hard, also for the other victims.

NARRATOR [ST]
She has always been told that something awful would happen to her, or others, if she were to talk, Marinke says. And because she disassociates it’s very difficult for her to tell her story chronologically and in an ordered manner.

Sanne:
Did you file a report against everyone who did something to you?

Marinke:
No, no. That police report focussed on one specific case. But to file a report against this fairly large group of people, some of whom I very clearly know who they are, but others I’m not quite as sure about,  that makes it even more complicated and even scarier, because you know that even if you manage to get one person convicted, at the same time you know that there’d be ten, twenty, I don’t know, others who can get back at you for it, get revenge or whatever.

NARRATOR [ST]
We receive a message from the forensic company: they examined three shards. They have male DNA on them, the examiners determine. The amount that was found correlates to a man having touched the glass or shards.

Friend:
It’s just incredibly painful to me to know that so many things were done to your friend, but you can’t take it to the police and get justice done. That the perpetrators cannot be convicted or anything. Because everyone thinks this does not exist.

MUSIC

Eric Arends, presenter Argos:
Well, I think that this is going to be on my mind for the remainder of this day. You listened to a report by Sanne Terlingen and Huub Jaspers. Editor-in-chief Harry Lensink, sound engineer Alfred Koster.

We can imagine that your head is spinning after listening to this report. That’s why we’ll publish all the expert interviews on our website in the upcoming weeks. Visit www.vpro.nl/argos . Here you’ll also find an extensive reaction by the LEBZ. As we heard in the report the LEBZ decided not to grant us an interview. They did provide us with a written answer to our questions.

The LEBZ confirms that no case that they have examined has ever led to a court case, but at the same time states that they don’t subscribe to the view that the LEBZ would not take accounts of Ritual Abuse seriously. The expert centre writes, and I cite: ‘the LEBZ investigates all the police reports that are passed on to us, including those containing aspects of ritual abuse. We do have to point out that within police investigations, which as such includes the work LEBZ does, truth finding, facts and evidence are key. Our focus is on investigating the objective truth’. End of citation. The extensive reaction provided by the LEBZ can also be found on our website.