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Abuse (including sexual and other types)
About[]
Ritual abuse is an extreme, purposeful form of abuse that can cause systems, especially systems with dissociative identity disorder or other specified dissociative disorder, or systems that are polyfragmented. Other system types can have a past involving ritual abuse, but the previous system types are the most closely associated with the concept within the plural community.
According to survivorship.org[1], the definitions of ritual abuse are as such:
Broad definition:
Ritual abuse is the abuse of a child, weaker adult, or animal in a ritual setting or manner. In a broad sense, some of our overtly or covertly socially sanctioned actions can be seen as ritual abuse, such as military basic training, hazing, racism, spanking children, and partner-battering. Some abuse is private and some public. Public ritual abuse may be either open or secret.
Narrow definition:
The term ritual abuse is generally used to mean prolonged, extreme, sadistic abuse, especially of children, within a group setting. The group’s ideology is used to justify the abuse, and abuse is used to teach the group’s ideology. The activities are kept secret from society at large, as they violate norms and laws.
Due to the extreme nature of any kind of ritual abuse, this type of abuse can frequently cause systems, although no trauma is absolutely guaranteed to cause a system, especially if the survivor receives support from trustworthy adults and is removed from the traumatic environment. Ritual abuse-caused systems are most frequently individuals who went through this kind of abuse as a young child, and it was a major contributor to them developing a traumagenic system. The more narrow definition of ritual abuse is typically the definition used within the DID/OSDD-1 community.
- ↑ Frequently Asked Questions on survivorship.org