In the final segment this morning, is an interview with Judy Steed, again as part of CBC's coverage for Making Up For Lost Time conference, a ritual abuse survivor workshop series put on by The Stone Angels in Thunder Bay and funded by the Ministry of Community and Social Services, Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, and Ministry for Women's Issues. Judy Steed is a reporter for The Toronto Star and has covered issues of child sexual abuse and ritual abuse.
Don Edwards CBC-CBQ:
We are joined by Judy Steed. Judy is with The Toronto Star and she is first on the podium at the conference. Judy, thanks for joining me on Northwest Noon. How do you know ritual abuse exists?
Judy Steed:
I encountered it very unsuspectingly when I was assigned to cover a trial in 1991 of a man named Billy Elliot who is from Prescott, Ontario. I didn't know that I was going to encounter my first ritual abuse trial, but lo and behold, the police had evidence that Billy Elliot had been in the habit of digging up bodies from the graveyard, pulling the heads off skeletons, and engaging in these kind of makeshift, basement rites where a bunch of adults would dress up in costumes, disguising their faces and they would sexually abuse children. This has all been documented. The adults all corroborated each other's stories and they were convicted, so that was my first glimpse into this kind of group sexual abuse of children, or ritual abuse.
Don Edwards:
Have you had your eyes opened since that first glimpse.
Judy Steed:
Yeah, and I have to say I understand why people don't want to believe that this stuff happens, because it is really frightening and horrific, but I think that if we think about even what we have seen on these Airborne Regiment tapes about the ways that these men behaved in groups, that this is a type of group behaviour - these initiation rites are on a spectrum that relates to this ritual abuse conference and the type of activity that we are talking about.
Don Edward:
Is there a certain profile on these types of individuals Judy?
Judy Steed:
From what I have seen so far, you are looking all across the so-called socioeconomic spectrum. In Prescott the people were "white trash", they were people who had been on welfare for generations and basically seemed to have nothing to do but sit around all day and abuse children. But since I wrote a piece in The Star last week saying that ritual abuse does exist and recounting some of my experiences within my research, I have received a letter from a woman minister in the Anglican Church whose father was the leader of a cult back in the 1960's. Naturally I was skeptical about this claim, so I went through and (this is part of a breaking story I am working on right now) looked through our research files, and sure enough in 1968 there were these banner headlines about Devil Cult Priest who had been running this cult out of St. Matthias Anglican Church in downtown Toronto and a young teenage girl had died in this cult. I am going to interview the daughter of this Anglican minister, but this just goes to show that here is another case from 1968 that was documented, there was a coroner's inquestion, there was all this kind of publicity into it, but we all forget. We don't know these things have happened in the past.
Don Edwards:
Eyewitnesses are critical in something like this. Did this daughter actually see her father involved in the cult?
Judy Steed:
Yes. It was a group and she grew up in it. As she said to me on the phone, she watched the evolution of her father into this cult fanatic.
Don Edwards:
People don't want to believe this goes on. How much testimony is there out there that ritual abuse actually exists?
Judy Steed:
From what I have seen, because we are talking about behaviour that is on the spectrum as we know - we can talk about the initiation rites that used to happen at fraternities - most of those have been banned now because young people were getting killed. I remember my father telling me about initiation rites at Queen's University in Kingston at his medical school back in the thirties, and the kind of grotesque tortures, and that a young man died then. So that is linked to the Airborne Regiment stuff, and to gang rapes which we also know have happened, and then there was a story last week in Cambridge, Ontario where a little two year old girl died in an exorcism cult where the mother and father and next door neighbour were involved in this so-called charismatic prayer cult where they were exorcising evil demons from this little baby, and she died. This is another example of cult activity that is right out there in plain view if you will.
Don Edwards:
Judy, when you get to the conference, what points are you going to try to establish with everybody then?
Judy Steed:
Because I am not an expert in any deep way, I am just a reporter, and I just cover stories, so I can only talk about what I know is real, and what really exists. I am going to talk about linking the obvious contemporary examples that we see around us, which I think are pieces of the puzzle about this aspect of human behaviour, of abusive human behaviour in groups, and how peer pressure in different kinds of groups can force people who are otherwise decent people to do things that are otherwise unspeakably horrible. I think it's an aspect of human behaviour that terrifies us. Look at what happened in Nazi Germany. There were otherwise decent German people, but because of peer pressure and because of the dominant ideology of the Nazis, these otherwise decent German people did hideous things to the Jews ... killing them in the concentration camps. As I try to grapple with it myself, and why we go into this state of this frenzy of denial - I think it is because this behaviour makes us sense how thin the veneer of civilization is, and I think it terrifies us about the potential for brutal anarchy and I am trying to understand in a compassionate way what causes the frenzy of denial.
Don Edwards:
You know that this conference is already under a lot of fire, for a number of reasons. How significant do you think the conference is?
Judy Steed:
I think it's extremely important, and I think it is amazing that it is happening in Thunder Bay, and perhaps it could only happen in a smaller centre. Thunder Bay has received an enormous amount of publicity across the continent now because you are hosting the first conference that I know of that is dealing up front with ritual abuse and with many other contraversial subjects, and the Masonic abuse aspect is also very interesting and I can understand again why many Masons would be very upset and feel that their reputation is being impugned. But I think this relates also to the Airborne Regiment and we have seen all these distinguished retired members of the Airborne Regiment saying that the Regiment should not have been disbanded, and it was a wonderful Regiment, and I am sure there were lots of good people in the Airborne Regiment, just as I am sure there are lots of good Masons who don't know what other Masons may be doing.
Don Edwards:
One last thought to you Judy. Why did you agree to come and talk to the people here?
Judy Steed:
Because I feel that as a journalist, our responsibility is to really seek the truth, and to shine the spotlight on aspects of society that we haven't looked at, and that's what I am paid to do, and I am in a fortunate position that I am able to do it without negative repercussions to myself, so I am happy to participate in seeking the truth about a very contraversial issue.
Don Edwards:
Thanks for joining us today.
Wayne Morris:
That was an interview with Judy Steed, author of "OUR LITTLE SECRET: Confronting Child Sexual Abuse in Canada", Random House Canada, Toronto, 1994. Next week we will be hearing an interview with Lynne Moss-Sharman, the coordinator of the Making Up For Lost Time conference and also the Canadian contact for ACHES-MC, the Advocacy Committee for Human Experimentation Survivors - Mind Control. Currently ACHES-MC is engaged in a campaign to call for US Presidential Hearings and a Canadian Commission of Inquiry into the mind control experimental abuses. Transcripts of this series are available at www.mk.net/~mcf You have been listening to The International Connection here on CKLN 88.1.