Cult & Ritual Abuse

Its History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery
in Contemporary America

James Randall Noblitt
and
Pamela Sue Perskin

Nearly everyone is familiar with the many charities that  Freemasons support (we've listed just a few here in case you only know about one or two though).  As a result, when encountered Neil Brick's claims that he was an "alleged victim" of Masonic ritual abuse, our first reaction (and that of ALL Masons) was incredulity. After all, we know these fellows in our lodges; we've likely visited their homes and we've probably met their children and often their parents as well. Has there ever been a Mason who has committed a crime? Yep - and it's inevitable that out of tens of millions of members over 300+ years something untoward would happen. (We've got a page with 'Our Black Sheep' that you might want to look at, in fact.) But to suggest that Freemasonry which spends over two million dollars A DAY on charity is institutionally involved with abuse is absurd on its face.

With this background, we went browsing to acquaint ourselves a bit more with the whole phenomena of cult/ritual abuse. Sure, we'd seen the movies showing gang members with unwary victims and there was the 'Symbionese Liberation Army' which captured Patty Hearst so many years ago. We also knew of military personnel who might have stumbled drunkenly into some sort of bizarre place during an overseas tour and had been exposed to local variations of witchcraft and other relics of the past. For a time, we followed the sensational trial of the Robin Hood Hills Murders: three young men accused of the Satanic killing of three others - and we wondered if they were really guilty. We'd heard whispers about Black Magic in Haiti and more: all of the boogey-men which seep into our consciousness over the years. We came across this book - and decided from the title it might be a primer that a lay person could find valuable and might shed some light on a very murky subject.

As we began reading, girding ourselves for exposure to some very disgusting things, we noted that one chapter of the book was on Wicca. Could it be that the authors thought that Wiccans were engaged in ritual killings? Of course not, we thought: it must be that they're often implicated in such things improperly. On to the introduction. Strange: the book is written in the first person though it has two authors. Odd - and one of them didn't seem to be a professional (no professional credentials mentioned). Skipping quickly to the back, we found that "James Randall Noblitt is a clinical psychologist in Dallas, Texas, where he is the Director for the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services" Is that it? Pretty short 'bona fides' for someone writing on such a complicated and heated topic. Ms. Perskin was noted as being the Executive Director of the 'International Council on Cultism and Ritual Trauma'. Hmmmm.... The warning bells were ringing in the distance - but we proceed ahead. (Here's a link to their organization on - you might have expected this - the Mind Control Forums website.)

The 'Acknowledgements' in a book are always interesting. We've been named in a couple and know others who have been as well. As a result, we tend to read those acknowledgements rather than skipping over them as most readers do. LOTS of names - but wait: Dale Griffis. That name sounded SO familiar. A quick check brought back more than we had known before. This was the Doctor who testified against the "West Memphis Three" of the Robin Hood Hills murders. He told the credulous public about the many bizarre parts of Satanic ritual abuse - but, interestingly enough, we now find that he's really not a doctor after all. You can read all about Mr. Griffis' lack of credibility here and also here.

So far, not a very auspicious start for this book! We decided to do a bit more checking based on this and guess what: Mr. Noblitt is not a member of the Dallas Psychological Association. Hmmmm.... And internet search engines are SO revealing: there was a listing for Mr. Noblitt as President of the International Council on Cultism and Ritual Trauma - the very same organization which Ms. Perskin serves as Executive Director. We wonder why that wouldn't have been mentioned in his bio. Things were becoming very murky before we even began. (Incidentally, the website for this organization was some time ago at www.iccrt.org but you can find some remnants of it in the internet archive.) We pressed on.

Chapter One was a chatty, first-person account of the author's clinical treatment of an Air Force member stationed in England. Nothing too spectacular until we got to the footnotes at the end of the chapter. WHAT? The word Freemasonry leaped off the page despite the small type. In speaking about the so-called Hell-Fire Club of England, Noblitt writes  "Howard (1989) argued that the Friars of Medmenham were associated with Freemasonry and other occult but not strictly Satanic groups." Howard? Sure enough: cited was Michael Howard whose bizarre interpretation of so-called secret societies was already addressed in a book review on this very site. Michael Howard - whose claim to fame is his self-proclamation of expertise in Anglo-Saxon runes. Just the person to be quoted for a book on a psychological problems....

Arriving at Chapter 5, we were totally aghast as the author began to speak in deferential terms, about "...efforts to educate the public about this {Possession, Ritual Abuse, and Dissociation} phenomenon was The Satan Seller (1972) by Mike Warnke." SURELY the authors must have been aware of the huge fraud of this book and its author. Could it have totally escaped their attention that Warnke's claims of being involved in Satanism were totally and thoroughly debunked?  Heck, even on his own website, Mr. Warnke only refers to his book as "Classic Book" with no further information except its price. (If you're unfamiliar with all this, you may want to read the story which exposed Mr. Warnke here and see an article titled "Washed Up, Sold Out, and Spreading Hysteria" by the Skeptical Inquirer magazine here. There's also some extensive additional material here. We think you'll agree that those who've built their understanding of the world based on Mr. Warnke are walking on some VERY soft sand.... Noblitt appears to have known about the lies though but dismisses this by writing in a footnote, "Naturally, Warnke and his published opinions have attracted criticism and controversy. (e.g. Alexander, 1990; Trott & Hertenstein, 1992)." Apparently Noblitt has no problems with the use of fraud to augment his theories - as will also be seen quite clearly later in this review. 

Oh, but wait: it gets better.... He states that according to Pike, Freemasonry was established by Jacques DeMolay and gives another nod to his hero, Mike Warnke (whose mention on page 138, curiously, is not shown in the index). He also notes that Masonic  critics accuse us of many evil things using, as his support, the discredited Stephen Knight, Jim Shaw, and Martin Short among others. 

We won't belabor this any longer: we consider this book and its authors to be total and complete fraud. What they consider "research" is merely a self-serving screed designed to enhance their so-called 'professional' status as treating "satanic ritual abuse". Surely there is a market for most anything, truth or not. We've also seen material from Noblitt attempting to discredit the FBI agent who wrote that there was no such thing as Satanic Ritual Abuse. Little wonder Mr. Noblitt would dislike THAT concept, eh?

This work combines deceit and lies of the first order. We fear that it will, again, play into the hands of those who seek to find answers in those they see as engaged in 'leading edge research'. What they will get in return is hocus-pocus stupidity - and HORRIBLE medical misinformation.

One final trip to the web - and on to our perennial favorite, Skeptical Inquirer. Want to read about how the foolishness of Noblitt and Perskin continues beyond their book? Take a peek at this article where you can find 'all the usual suspects' in conspiracy theory and Freemasonry-bashing including Gerald Ford's sex slave....