David Shurter - Rabbit Hole: A Satanic Ritual Abuse Survivor’s Story

2012, David Shurter. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Any similarities to other intellectual works are either coincidental or have been properly cited when the source is known. Trademarks of products, services, and organizations mentioned herein belong to their respective owners and are not affiliated with Consider it Creative LLC. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. This book is not intended as a source for medical expertise. If you need medical attention, please seek a professional. For information, address the publisher at Consider it Creative LLC.

ISBN13: 978-0-9848937-1-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011944437

Consider it Creative LLC

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Council Bluffs, IA 51502

DavidShurter.com

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Brands and trademarks mentioned in the text of this book are property of their respective owners.

Photographs are from the private collection of David Shurter.

[Authors Note: I have changed the name of my last living sister and masked the names of a few other people who are denoted here by first name only. All other names and places are accurate.]

[Editors Note: The editorial team decided, with the approval of the author, to add clarification of some of the people and events the author discusses in telling his story. These are denoted in separate sidebars within the text. We felt this background was important for readers who were not present during the time these events unfolded. These in-text explanations were added solely by the editors and are expressed through the actual newspaper headlines of the day, from scholarly studies on satanic ritual abuse, and from other authoritative sources, unless otherwise noted.]

Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

To Krutz and Macen, two of my brothers who are no longer with us on this side, but both of whom had an amazing impact on my life and outlook. Two of my dearest friends, I miss your laughter, and I am honored that you guys considered me a friend!

JAMES RANDALL NOBLITT, PHD

S ome of us are skeptics. We tend to disbelieve many things we see and hear. I was such a person about ritual abuse. Until I discovered otherwise in my psychological therapy practice.

During the course of therapy, one of my patients told me narratives about having been abused in satanic rituals during her childhood. My wife and co-author, Pam Perskin Noblitt, and I wrote about this patient in our book, Cult and Ritual Abuse: Its History, Anthropology and Recent Discovery in Contemporary America, published by Praeger. With the passage of time I heard similar ritual abuse narratives from well over three hundred individuals. I am no longer a skeptic.

The psychological community now recognizes the diagnoses we are seeing in abused patients. At the same time, new organizations and individuals have come forward to reinterpret the recent upsurge in child abuse allegations as being so called false memories. Not all these memories are false. Many of them are real, and they are substantiated with other facts.

The weight of evidence indicates that childhood sexual abuse is underreported, not overstated. Nevertheless, this backlash continues to attract media coverage sometimes adversely affecting public policy and the outcomes of court hearings. Consequently abuse survivors are often not believed and then further betrayed by the society that failed to protect them in the first place.

In this kind of environment survivors of child abuse may be vulnerable to further abuse and exploitation because of the wide net of disbelief that has been cast. Therapists are cautious about accepting abuse survivors for treatment or in carefully considering child abuse as a possible explanation for their problems. This is sometimes true even though addressing abuse is essential to effectively treat these survivors.

Unfortunately, therapists sometimes fear that if their clients make claims that they were abused in childhood that the therapist may be blamed for these revelations. There have been numerous claims alleging the therapists implanted such memories of abuse. Civil lawsuits and complaints to licensing boards have been initiated even when the therapist did nothing wrong. Mental health professionals are often aware that they expose themselves to peril when they responsibly address child abuse histories.

The subject of ritual abuse further complicates the already complex and frequently misunderstood subject of child abuse. Some skeptical authors have claimed that there have never been any convictions for ritualistic crimes, or that the FBI has never found any evidence of ritual abuse, or that allegations of ritual abuse have only appeared in the U.S. These statements are incorrect, but nevertheless are frequently repeated by those who either have not investigated the subject carefully, or have not reported the facts accurately. We have written about these misstatements in our book, Cult and Ritual Abuse.

So what is ritual abuse? The short answer is abuse in a ritual, but it is really more than that. Ritual abuse consists of systematic, painful, terrifying, and humiliating acts that are typically initiated with young childrenprimarily before the age of two. These abuses are so profoundly disturbing that the child experiences psychological states of shock that include a sense of disconnection from the traumatic events.

As particular abusive rituals are methodically repeated, the child learns to undergo increasingly deeper states of dissociation of consciousness, or trancelike states. In other words, the trauma survivor is typically trained to become another person. This is how dissociation of identity is learned. Memories are pushed further away and deeper in the mindonly to emerge much later in life.

Over time many survivors of extreme abuse end up with an inner world that might include such things as buildings, caves, or forests and groups of disconnected parts that may be perceived as inner people of all ages and of both genders, including also spirits, angels, demons, gods, animals, robots, and mythological charactersmany of whom have specific assigned jobs to protect or save the abused survivor. This kind of trauma-based learning is sometimes called programming.

David Shurter takes you down his own personal rabbit hole and shares his survivor story in this book. He does not elaborate on all the unspeakable details of his abuse experiences. Instead, he focuses on his own interpersonal experiences in the context of Omaha subcultures that so far have been suspected but unknown and hidden from view. He addresses the abuses of power that are often associated with the abuse of vulnerable people like David himself. I will not summarize his story for you; for that you will have to read it yourself.

James Randall Noblitt, PhD

Alliant International University

Alhambra, California

December 2011

M y parents, before I was even a gleam in their eyes, became involved with some very warped individuals who worshiped the Devil and enacted horrible rites in a practicing satanic coven. Associated with some rich and well-connected members of Omahas elite, the events that occurred are far from fantasy, and if the true story and the surprising participants were ever revealed, a dark cloud of suspicion would shroud Omaha, Nebraska, ensnaring a political system in its webin an undercover conspiracy that extends to the White House.