The Snug

"Daddy?", "Yes, son?, "What does regret mean?", "Well a funny thing about regret is, its better to regret something you have done, then to regret something you haven't done....Oh and if you see your mother this weekend remember to tell her- SATAN, SATAN, SATAN." [Intro to Orbital’s Satan]

I was very critical the other day about TV and in particular the news channels that seem to have adopted the dumbing down bite sized soundbites that seem to afflict the modern era. However, now and again we are sometimes given insight in something that makes you incredulously shout at the TV or scratch your head in bewilderment at what you are seeing. No I'm not talking about Man City on Sky, but about the TV programme that BBC1 served up last night called When Satan Came to Town.

The programme was anchored by Fiona Bruce, forgive me for this but despite the subject matter I still expected a Deadringers-esque 'All this talking of Satan makes me feel all horny…etc.'

Anyway I digress What happened was back in 1990 Rochdale Social Services investigated claims of Satanic abuse against more than 20 children on an estate in Rochdale. The BBC allowed us an insight into the interviews that took place between the Social Workers and the children, which were unbelievable. The traumatised children (they were taken from their homes in dawn raids) were asked leading questions, were misquoted in court and ended up in care from 6 months to 10 years!

We had an interview with the leader of Rochdale Council, who spent a meeting with the Head of Social Services hearing about children having fingers cut off, babies being sacrificed and children being pinned to crosses. The leader of the Council turned to the police who were at the meeting and asked if they’d seen any 4-fingered children or hospitalised children with stigmata. The police replied that no they hadn't and the Head of Social Services admitted he had no physical evidence. Instead we had children's dreams of ghosts (they had been reading about them in school) turned into reality, with Social Workers claiming that the ghosts were code for the parents who were involved in the Satanic abuse.

Parents were not allowed to see the children incase they sent secret coded satanic messages. One parent asked the Social Worker what they had meant and was told, "Well if you scratch your head, it might mean shut up".

When it all ended up in court, nearly all the children were released, however, some were kept in care as it was felt that their parents were too poor to look after them, hence the poor lad who wasn’t allowed permanently home to his parent’s house for 10 years.

The Head of Rochdale Social Services resigned but in a reverse of the phrase "If you cut off the tail, the dog still bites", the two Social Workers involved in the case are still involved in Child Protection.

In wanting to check facts before I wrote this piece I happened upon a comment on the Manchesteronline website, where one Anonymous reader had entered the following comment:

"So what would people say if these cases were true? That social services were neglecting these children... thats what! Working in Child care myself, I understand the trauma this must have caused. But the truth is that it is better to be safe than sorry. The crux of the matter is that if we had another case like Climbe the uproar would have been even worse. Social services have a duty of care, and I firmly believe that the professionals in this case (although probably not all of them) were acting in the childrens' best interests. We are all trained in 'Every Child Matters' . Lets see what repurcussions this programme brings eh?"

I am so pleased that this reader felt that traumatising kids by taking off their parents with no real evidence, putting them in foster care for no good reason, and subjecting these children to physical examinations to find signs of abuse (they found nothing as there was no evidence). These kids are now teenagers but so affected by what happened, that one lad said he found it hard to communicate and start conversations, they talked about being violated with phrasing akin to those suffering sexual abuse/assaults and all because these Social Workers had been caught up in a mass hysteria of Satanism…Do we never learn anything from history, I felt as though I was watching a modern day Salem or an update of McCarthyism, and Blair talks about the Respect agenda, it goes both ways mate.

Edit by Harry: I should add that the two Social Workers named by this programme are called Jill France and Susan Hammersley. I think it's important that they are named now the BBC has won its ruling.