Hundreds of cases of group ritual abuse against children are going unreported every year in the UK, a leading researcher has revealed.
Victims have been contacting support services to describe abuse at the hands of paedophile rings who use claims of witchcraft and possession to cower them into submission.
In a twisted inversion of reality, acts of rape, sexual abuse or torture are then characterised as ‘cleansing’ rituals to rid the victim of a demon or evil spirit – with perpetrators sometimes wearing costumes or masks.
While so-called ‘organised ritual abuse’ is described as a ‘rare but real phenomenon’ in Britain, police are concerned that it is heavily underreported and rarely appears in official data.
Dr Elly Hanson, a clinical psychologist and researcher, said victims often do not report ritual abuse to police because they feared their claims would appear too fantastical to be believed.
Others have become ‘disassociated’, a process that sees abuse victims adopt a different identity as a way of separating themselves from the reality of what has happened to them, or simply feel too traumatised to ‘give a coherent narrative’.
‘There are so many hurdles facing victims that nearly all of them end up falling out of the system,’ Dr Hanson told a media briefing held today by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).
An analysis of police data by the NPCC found that just seven ritual abuse cases were investigated in 2024 out of 4,450 instances of child abuse, marking just 0.2 per cent of all investigations.
However, the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) found that out of a sample of 36,700 calls to their helpline between July 2016 and January 2025, 1,311 (3.57 per cent) mentioned ritual abuse.
Dr Hanson said organised ritual abuse typically involves family members and starts when children are young.
Perpetrators frequently do not believe the supernatural belief systems they are espousing and simply use them as a means too gain control over their victims, the psychologist explained.
This form of abuse regularly involves torture or extreme acts of violence and may end in murder or animal sacrifice.
While beliefs about witchcraft and spirit possession are often linked to ethnic groups, such as those with links to sub-Saharan Africa, many offenders have British backgrounds.
According to Dr Hanson, ‘cultural sensitivities’ are one factor holding back police and social services, but she believes the issue works both ways.
‘You’ve potentially got a desire to be culturally sensitive with certain cultural communities, then you’ve got the other direction where someone who is British and not from a particular community they are not seen as someone who might be suffering ritual abuse,’ she said.
One recent case saw a seven-strong child sex ring in Glasgow prey on children as young as 13 in a drug den nicknamed the ‘Beastie House’.
The trial heard how the group performed ‘spells’ on the children and convinced them they had been metamorphosed into various animals.
Richard Fewkes, the director of the NPCC’s Hydrant programme targeting child sexual abuse, said the case was an example of paedophiles using claims of witchcraft as a means of control.
‘Those individuals did not necessarily believe in witchcraft, but they used the ritual of it to control the children,’ he said.
Hellbound and Down 