A common belief among people who have recovered repressed memories during hypnotism and other suggestive forms of therapy is that they were abused by leading citizens in the community: judges, police chief, mayor, clergy, lawyers, etc. It was thus inevitable that senior officials in the Mormon church would be accused by some SRA survivors. In 1991, Elder Glenn Pace, a member of the presiding bishopric of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the time, wrote a letter to other leaders of the LDS church. He said that he knew of 60 SRA survivors, and estimated that there were up to 800 in Utah. He wrote that the conspiracy included "members of bishoprics, LDS [Mormon] bishops ... and members of the Tabernacle Choir." Also in 1991, a University of Utah Medical Center psychologist said that there were 366 SRA victims being treated by therapists in Utah.
From mid-1993 to mid-1995, over 125 allegations of occult and ritual criminal activity were received by the Attorney General's office. About 40 involved ritual, ceremonial killings. But in every case, no evidence could be obtained to justify an investigation. There were no dates, times, names or places.
After so many SRA allegations surfaced in the state, the 1991 Utah legislature authorized a budget of $250,000 to fund a thorough inquiry by the Attorney General's Office. Investigators Mike King and Matt Jacobson worked full time for 2 years and 6 months. They canvassed law-enforcement agencies, social-work offices and church leaders. They scanned 225 SRA cases and thoroughly studied 125 of them. They talked to hundreds of victims who claimed that they had been programmed by "cults", tortured, raped, and viewed infants being ritually killed. King said "I really feel for these people and I would like to help them, but we just couldn't find the evidence." The team was unable "to substantiate with physical evidence the [SRA] incidents reported". They said that the allegations against church leaders were absurd.
King said that some survivors "said they were at a ritual in the mountains
the night before; we spent all day tracking around the hills and couldn't
find anything. Then they said, `I must have been given a drug or
brainwashed to cloud my mind.'"
The investigators uncovered incidents in which police officers had decided that cases were unfounded and closed them. The officers were accused of being members of the "cult"; some received threats or intimidating letters, presumably from angry survivors. The report Ritual Abuse in the State of Utah was scheduled to be issued in 1995-MAY.
One possible ritual abuse case was uncovered, but could not be prosecuted because of the statute of limitations. It happened over 25 years ago. Both parents confessed to serious sexual and physical abuse of their children. "Rachel Hopkins" (a pseudonym) came forward to describe her abuse which probably relates to this case. She recovered memories of horrendous abuse, and of being threatened with death if she ever told anyone.
She said that both of her parents signed confessions that they had abused her during Satanic rituals. She also has a child photograph of herself which shows bruises. Her siblings have corroborated the events. She said "the truth is they (Satanists) do wear black robes, they do abuse children, they do kill animals...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...I was sexually abused in every way you can conceive. I was tortured and had the bottoms of my feet cut. I was made to believe I was killing a baby, and they forced me to kill dogs and cats...I was bathed in a tub of blood and forced to look at myself in a mirror. I was tied up and hung upside down and spun. I was suffocated and electrocuted to the point of being bowed and paralyzed. Sometimes they forced me and my siblings to hurt one another. They would tell me, `now you're one of us. If you tell anybody, they won't believe you and they'll put you in a mental hospital.' And they threatened to torture me until I was dead." She believes that she was given more intense abuse than her siblings because of the blond hair and blue eyes.