When we penetrate the smokescreen of controversies regarding false accusations, ‘recovered memories’, ‘recanters’, references to ‘satanic ritual abuse’ and the incorporation of elements of cultural myths into some accounts, we are left with the reality that in the vast majority of cases it is not the over-reporting or exaggeration of trauma that is the principal problem. Rather it is society’s unwillingness to know, the perpetrators’ strongly motivated efforts to hide their criminal acts, and the relative ease they are often afforded by societal institutions and practices in doing so. - The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Viewpoint)

When one of my early teachers, for instance, recognized that many ritually abused clients were still being abused while in treatment, she insisted that they could not be treated on an outpatient basis, but should be hospitalized and kept from their families. She was targeted with a series of court cases involving false accusations that she had allegedly abused clients in hospital. The experience was devastating to her.
And she was not alone. Many others faced persistent attempts to discredit their professional expertise, or legal assaults that robbed them of time, energy, and even the courage to continue to treat clients, write, or teach. Therapy professionals in both direct services and policy making, members of the criminal and civil justice systems, and the general public were systematically indoctrinated via the media. Many now share the view that people who disclose ritual abuse or mind control content suffer from "false memories” induced by "over-zealous therapists," and that dissociative disorders are iatrogenic (or else they do not exist at all).

The media-contamination hypothesis usually focuses on the book Michelle Remembers (Smith and Pazder, 1980) and the movie Rosemary's Baby;. These images were in the popular culture for centuries before survivor memories started to surface in therapy; therefore, the media-contamination hypothesis fails to account for the time lag and cannot provide a full account of the phenomenona.

Besides stage magic props and settings, ritually abusing groups use technology, such as that described by Katz and Fotheringham. Military/political groups have the most sophisticated technologies, and much training or programming is now done with virtual reality equipment. Movies and holograms are used to deceive a child into believing in things that are unreal.

When a client says to you “I don't know if it's real; how can it be real?” remember that there are several options, not just two: (1) It happened just as s/he remembers; (2) it did not happen at all; (3) something happened, but due to technology and/or trickery it was not what s/he thinks it was; (4) the thought that the memory must be unreal is itself a program, as described in Chapter Twelve, “Maybe I made it up."
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Misinformation and disinformation about ritual abuse and mind control trauma and psychotherapy to treat such trauma appear in both paper and electronic media, but are particularly abundant on the Internet on websites of individuals and organizations, bookseller reviews, blogs, newsletters, online encyclopedias, social networking sites, and e-group listservs.

In an article offering a law enforcement perspective on allegations of ritual abuse, Lanning (1992, A law-enforcement perspective on allegations of ritual abuse) fails to give a precise definition of the term. Although he is quoted as having conducted a seven-year study FBI study that gives evidence that ritual abuse does not exist, when Noblitt and Perskin (2000, Cult and ritual abuse) requested a copy of his study from the FBI, “the bureau responded in writing that no such study existed.” (p. 179).