txstate.academia.edu
Joseph Laycock
Jan. 12, 2016
“There are strong similarities between the confessions taken from accused witches in early modern Europe, the testimony of Satanic ritual abuse taken by modern therapists, and accounts of alien abduction given under hypnosis.
“In each of these narratives, a subject describes horrible sexual transgressions performed on them at the hand of a mysterious other: the thorny penis of the Devil, the bizarre anal insertions of Satanists, and the mysterious probing of aliens.
“The motive behind these sexual acts is never revealed and the existence of the perpetrators is usually in doubt….”
– From “Carnal Knowledge: The Epistemology of Sexual Trauma in Witches’ Sabbaths, Satanic Ritual Abuse, and Alien Abduction Narratives” (abstract) by Joseph Laycock in Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural (2012)
Did prosecutors and therapists even attempt to ascribe any cause or context to the “bizarre anal insertions” common to the day-care allegations? Candles, Magic Markers, burning flower stems?
Did they think such shocking behavior had appeared full blown out of nowhere? On the list of known sexual perversions exactly which box – or boxes! – would they check?
