I did have a horrendous childhood. I was exploited and trafficked in my own front yard, not far from my childhood swing set. It was a group of men. This happened throughout my childhood and continued into my teenage years. I remember being brought to hotel rooms as a teenager — taken by adults who should have protected me instead. I understand that may be difficult for some people to hear, but it is the truth of what I lived through.
My definition of ritual abuse begins with my earliest memories. My first recollection is of being harmed in ways no child should ever experience. And one thing I hold onto — she died when she was eleven and I was nine. What I remember about that time, and what I would also consider a form of ritual abuse, was when I was placed inside the coffin alongside her body. I knew, deep in my bones, and one reason I know this memory is real is because if I were simply inventing a story about a child being placed in a coffin, I would never imagine that the child would feel comforted by being near the deceased. I would never write it that way. My parents led a complete double life. They attended church three times a week. I was well-dressed at school. I had no conscious access to the memories of my abuse except while it was actively occurring — which meant I could not report it to anyone, because when it was happening, I was surrounded by those causing the harm, and at all other times, I had no awareness of it. Not even as a young child.
Some survivors with recovered memories recall their trauma up to a certain age. For me, it was different. The memories existed only while the abuse was taking place. Otherwise, I was completely unaware. That unusual form of dissociation actually allowed me to function — to get good grades, to go to school, to appear normal. I didn’t carry the weight of it consciously during my days. I know my sister died of illness because I saw her in the hospital. My parents did not take her life. I am certain of that. What happened after she passed, I believe, followed the usual steps — the body was collected from the hospital. But what occurred in the early hours of the morning after her passing represents one of the hardest memories I have ever had to reclaim. For a long time, I could not understand how anyone could have manipulated a child into doing what I was made to do — even to someone already gone.
But when I finally recovered that memory, the explanation was actually quite simple. And that simplicity revealed so much about the methods used to control me throughout my life. I don’t know whether the funeral home owner was involved, but I do believe at least one employee was. I tried to investigate. I found out who owned the funeral home and attempted to speak with him, though the receptionist said she would pass along my message and nothing came of it. He has since retired. I’ve done enough research to understand that the death certificate identifies who was present when the funeral was conducted — but that person may be entirely different from whoever handled the body beforehand. It was a closed-casket funeral.
After that experience, the abuse within my home became, in some ways, more frequent. My sister and I had shared a room. Both forms of what we endured were deeply traumatic, though in different ways. One of the things I was required to do, something that is documented as common in ritual abuse cases, was to kneel and express submission to a dark symbolic figure. I did not want to do it. But I did. And I remember the moment I recovered that memory — I remember a sense of divine reassurance washing over me. A quiet, certain voice telling me: “You did nothing wrong, Mary. You were a child. You did nothing wrong.” And I know that to be true. As an adult, if I found myself in a situation where a child’s safety was at risk, I would do absolutely anything to protect that child. What I did as a frightened little girl under threat is not something I carry shame for.
One thing that is commonly documented among ritual abuse survivors is the use of coffins as psychological instruments of terror against children. And I want to say clearly — we know this happens because there are so many survivors like me. But when we begin to speak out, we are made to look unstable, irrational, or delusional. And so most people remain silent. I know survivors who have confided in me through private messages and social media who have never told another soul. One was a minister. She said she didn’t believe her congregation could handle it. She has spoken publicly about surviving incest and child trafficking, but she has not yet come forward about the ritual abuse she endured.
There were others who knew what was happening. There were people at my childhood church — other leaders, including my father — who were aware. My parents were highly respected within that community. Not every member of that church was involved in harming children, but my parents were not alone in their behavior. That’s what made it so easy to conceal.
I don’t know how many funeral home employees were complicit, but I know of at least one. And I’ve since heard from other ritual abuse survivors about disturbing things that happened inside funeral homes. Not long ago, I recovered a fuller memory of what occurred after the incident involving my sister. Among those memories was something that seemed deliberately designed to interfere with my relationship with religious ceremony — a corrupted version of something sacred, using elements commonly associated with certain church traditions, not my own childhood church. I believe it was an intentional effort to make me feel unable to belong to any faith community. But it didn’t work. I still find communion to be a beautiful Christian ceremony. My views on faith have grown and become more expansive over the years, but I deeply treasure that ritual. No one else, to my knowledge, has come forward to say what I know about what was done to my sister’s body. I do have siblings. They inherited my parents’ estate — a multimillion-dollar estate. I was disinherited.
I have no desire to have my sister exhumed. She is still my sister. I would not want that, and I do not believe I would be legally able to pursue it even if I wished to, since a sibling of mine serves as executor of the estate. But I’ve also thought carefully about the level of deception involved. What happened at the church — what I believe involved my sister — was soft tissue damage. Nothing that could be detected from exhuming remains. And what I was told happened at the funeral home, if true, was a level of desecration I won’t describe in full detail here. But I also hold onto the awareness that trauma and manipulation can distort our certainty about what we witnessed. If my husband were suddenly gone today, and someone placed me in a state of shock and grief and told me certain things, I believe they could deceive even me. I’m 67 years old, and I think they could still trick me. That’s the nature of the trauma they inflict. Ritual abuse survivors often describe situations where abusers used substitutes — an animal presented as something else, for instance — to amplify psychological terror.
There is another incident I want to share, because it also carries the hallmarks of what I would call a ritual. I do not know with certainty that my parents worshipped any particular dark entity. They never stated that. They called themselves Christians. They went to church three times a week. But what they did on one occasion was bring me to a hillside setting and have me stand and watch while something was carried out on what resembled an altar. They were at the top of the hill. I was at the bottom. What I remember most clearly is that my feet hurt. I was wearing saddle oxfords — stiff leather shoes, the kind children wore in that era. I remember trying to shift my weight, standing on the edges of my shoes, trying to relieve the pressure, because I had been standing still for so long. How long exactly? I have no way of knowing. I was four or five years old. It could have been fifteen minutes. To a small child, that can feel endless. What they relied on most was trickery. And when survivors come forward and describe these experiences, they are not believed. Of course they’re not — that’s the entire purpose of the deception. It’s designed to sound unbelievable.
I have also worked through memories of being afraid of law enforcement — an irrational fear rooted in what was done to me. I don’t believe I was ever harmed by a police officer specifically, but the fear was deeply embedded. I’m better now. Though I’ll admit that even today, I feel a reflexive nervousness when I see a patrol car, even when I know I’ve done nothing wrong.
The memory that weighs most heavily on me is the one involving my sister. But I’ll say this — if I shared some of my other memories with you, you might be surprised to find they weren’t the ones that broke me most deeply. The moment that most threatened my will to live was not the physical harm itself. It was the look on my mother’s face — completely empty of feeling — as if I were nothing. She had just handed me off for money, right there on our porch, in plain view. I remembered seeing her receive payment from each of those men. What followed left me badly hurt. I remember one of the men saying something to my father. And then my mother’s eyes met mine with complete indifference. That is what made me want to leave this world.
But in that moment, I looked up. And I saw something — felt something — that I choose to believe was God. Some would call it a near-death experience. It may well have been; I was seriously injured. Others might say it was simply light through clouds. But I felt an undeniable connection to something beyond myself, and that connection has carried me through decades of healing.
My mother eventually brought me inside, bathed me, put me to bed with clean sheets. And in the strange contradiction of a child’s heart, I thought things might be better. That incident involved every dimension of harm — emotional, physical, the trafficking of my innocence — and I was six years old.
I will never know the full scope of what happened to me in ritualistic settings. I will never know how many times. Mercifully, I do not have access to all my memories, and I have no desire to retrieve everything. What I believe is that memories come to me as I am ready for them — when they will serve my healing, or when they might help someone else in theirs.
Recovering memories is not easy. It is emotionally exhausting. I underwent hypnosis, though nothing like what you’d see performed on a stage. The psychologist who worked with me simply guided me into a deeply relaxed state. I didn’t even feel hypnotized; I knew I could stop at any moment. My ex-husband attended my first session because we both wanted to ensure the therapist wasn’t planting suggestions — and she was not. She asked no leading questions whatsoever. I have the recordings to prove it. I brought a tape recorder to subsequent sessions to document her process and have since transcribed those tapes in full.
There is more awareness now about ritual abuse — in part because agencies are increasingly offering services to child trafficking survivors, and a significant percentage of those survivors are also disclosing histories of ritualized harm. I myself didn’t know I was a trafficking survivor for many years. I knew my father had taken exploitative images of me, but because he was my father, I didn’t recognize that as trafficking. I only came to understand the full picture after I had already filmed my documentary — “Am I Crazy? My Journey to Determine If My Memories Are True” — and was seeking a fiscal sponsor. Someone suggested an organization focused on trafficking, and I said, “But I’m not a survivor of trafficking.” I was wrong. And I’ve met so many others in the same position — people who were exploited by family members or intimate partners and never identified it as what it truly was.
Now that the field is recognizing this overlap, the work has become more meaningful. I’ve been asked to conduct training sessions for agencies whose clients are increasingly disclosing ritual abuse alongside trafficking histories. One organization asked whether they should include questions about ritual abuse on their initial intake forms. My advice was no — because survivors won’t disclose it right away. They need to first feel safe, believed, and supported. The ritual abuse disclosure comes later, after trust has been built.
I am committed to being a voice for survivors who cannot yet speak for themselves. I published my memoir in November: My Life Now: Essays by a Child Trafficking Survivor. I am proud of it. I worked on it for years. The longest essay addresses healing — because that is what people ask me about most. I once suffered from fibromyalgia. I was largely disabled by chronic pain for a period of my life. I am healthy now. And I wrote out, in careful and specific detail, the many things that helped bring me to this place. Because if my healing is possible, it is possible for others too.