RITUAL ABUSE DOES EXIST, VICTIM SAYS

From the time she was 3 years old until she became a young adult, Rachel Hopkins was ritualistically tortured, raped, bathed in blood and threatened that she would be killed if she ever told anyone.

It's a story so bizarre and so terrifying that some people refuse to believe that it really happened. Hopkins (not her real name) was a victim of what is commonly called satanic ritual abuse - a phenomenon that many psychological experts say doesn't exist.Rather, they argue, memories of ritualistic abuse are fantasies or false memories planted by unscrupulous therapists. "I am sure there are cases where bogus therapists have suggested things. Of course, there are false memories," Hopkins said. "But that is not what happened to me."

Like most victims of satanic ritual abuse, Hopkins remembered the abuse many years later. But her case is significantly different from others.

She has the signed confessions of her parents - both of whom admitted abusing her during satanic rituals - that corroborate every memory she has of the abuse. The confessions offer much greater detail of events Rachel could not have known.

Hopkins' parents also confessed in detail to two investigators from the Utah attorney general's office and to leaders of the church they attended.

Hopkins was also able to recover a photograph of herself as a child that shows bruises inflicted during the ritual abuse. Her siblings have also corroborated the events surrounding the ritual abuse.

"The biggest weapon they (occultists) have is secrecy," she said. "By our society not acknowledging that it exists, we aid in that secrecy and we refuse to allow the healing to begin."

Tuesday, the Utah attorney general's office released the results of an investigation that reportedly downplays the existence of satanic ritual abuse. The report states there is not enough evidence to support prosecution of any individuals, said chief deputy Reed Richards.

Richards said the report doesn't rule out that satanic ritual abuse does exist, but it doesn't corroborate it, either.

Hopkins smiles wearily at that. She has met repeatedly with investigators Matt Jacobson and Mike King from the attorney general's office, who said her case was "absolutely, concrete evidence" of satanic ritual abuse. They even requested her permission to cite her case specifically in the report and asked her to talk to the media about her experience.

"The truth is they (occultists) do wear black robes, they do abuse children, they do kill animals," she said. "It exists, and to say otherwise is to deny the facts in front of them. Our society used to deny the existence of incest, too, because we didn't want to believe it."