A substantial minority of DID patients report sadistic, exploitive, and coercive abuse at the hands of organized groups.

Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision

It is hardly surprising that many survivors of ritual abuse develop DID in order to preserve their own sanity.

Survivors' accounts reveal activities which are not only criminal but deliberately and brutally sadistic almost beyond belief.

I have met survivors from different parts of the country who have reported being ritually abused, some on college campuses by administrators, some by priests, some in the context of druidic rituals, some in the context of Lillith rituals. The ideology has not always been satanic, but the ritual sadistic sexual behaviors are similar.

Many ritually abusive cults deliberately divide the personality system down the middle of the head, making sure that there is no communication between the two sides. “Left side" parts might be instructed to speak to no one other than the perpetrators.

I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things.

But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down.

And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story.