One form of child abuse that is rarely discussed is forced cannibalism and other forms of being forced to eat flesh. My experience with this was with my beloved dog, which I talked about here. That memory is one of my most traumatizing ones. It ties into my aversion to eating, or even smelling, seafood because I had eaten fish earlier that night and then vomited up the fish after being forced to eat the flesh of my dog. Seeing my dog slaughtered was bad enough – being forced to “eat” my dog was more than I could bear.
Some severely abused children were forced to eat human flesh. This is called “forced cannibalism.” I cannot even imagine the reaction of a child having to endure this level of trauma. Being forced to eat a dog’s flesh was bad enough!
I know that some people reading this blog entry will have a hard time wrapping their minds around this form of abuse. It is incredibly sadistic and extremely emotionally traumatizing. For these reasons, many people who have suffered from this form of child abuse are afraid to speak out. Many of those who suffered from forced cannibalism believe that they were the only ones and fear that nobody will believe them.
This blog is a safe place for those of you who suffered from forced cannibalism to be heard. I will believe you and support you. I know that this level of evil exists in the world.
If you suffered from forced cannibalism, you are not alone. You need not suffer in silence any longer. It is okay to talk about this. As with any other form of abuse, no abuse that you suffered could change the value of who you are. You are not responsible for eating flesh – that responsibility sits squarely on the shoulders of your abusers.
You are not alone.
Photo credit: Faith Allen
I can’t imagine having to eat my pet. I’m so sorry.
I watched a white kitten of mine be-headed. I can’t remember if I did it or if they did it.
My God. It’s as though there is some bottomless pit of evil depravity that some people tap into and cannot escape from and just make that pit deeper darker and wider.
I have a 4 year old and I know the horrific break that would happen inside him if he endured even the smallest of abuses I’ve read about here.
I honestly am perplexed and awed at how you’ve come through all of this. You are so amazing. I wish you’d write a book because i don’t think enough people are hearing what you have to say and there are so many who could use the validation and courage that you offer by being who you are and doing what you do.
Peace,
mia
Faith
Thanks for support and belief and you are right you do feel as if you are the only one and that is why you do not even think or tell about it
Take care
anon
There is also forced necrophilia. I find it helpful to have labels. I label some of the things I have experienced as horrification. It is certainly abuse and certainly trauma it just helps to separate it for me.
Some of the horrification was to make me compliant and in their eyes less then them. With some it seemed to be a wish that I joined in their sickness, a wish to groom me to be like them and therefore with them. Some seemed to want to watch or hear about the horrification.
As news is less and less distilled due to the internet it is clear that many who inflict trauma are not the lone sicko that is the stereotype. Whole rings of those that abused are being uncovered and being shown the light of day.
The Catholic priests were not abusing singularly it was a systematic allowing it to continue and the Catholic church is the tip of the iceberg in my opinion.
It seems that with both trauma and murder it is becoming less that males are the perpetrators than they get caught and exposed.
All and all I am finding what happened to me is less rare than most people including me imagine. That in itself is a horrible thought.
There is also false cannibalism, where a child is told that a plate of meat is human flesh, and forced to eat it, when in reality, it’s nothing more than beef or chicken. It’s just as traumatizing, because the child has no idea the abusers are lying about the food.
I was made to eat what I was told was infant human flesh, as well as kitten flesh. It might have been true about the kitten, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that they were lying about the other. As small a group as they were, I doubt they could get away with slaughtering babies on a regular basis.
But yeah, it was horrific and extremely traumatizing. The first time I read about infant cannibalism, long before I had remembered any details, my immediate reaction was to throw up. I’m still not comfortable thinking about it, but it’s important to recognize that these things do happen, and they have a permanent effect on the child involved.
Hi, Midge.
Thank you for raising this issue. I was forced to do things that I believed were one thing but were really another. You are correct — what matters is that the child BELIEVES that he or she is eating human flesh. Even if it is just chicken, the belief that it is human flesh is just as traumatizing to the child as if it was human flesh.
- Faith
Faith, if you need to delete this I will understand. I was forced to eat human flesh and i know it was real because i was also forced to watch the killing, more than once. also the flesh of animals. I won’t explain the grotesque horrific ceremonies or the significance of thing, don’t want to give them voice.
it will sound incomprehensible, but the group that had me also took pieces of my own flesh (as well as blood, which I understand was common), ate it, made me eat it. but it was worse when it was of another child.
i feel very awful writing this. And I wanted to couch it in intellectual terms, but that’s a way I disengage. So this the raw awful truth. I have been told again and again, I had no choice, but it haunts me still.
ruby
Hi, Ruby.
I hope that all of these responses are reassuring to you that you are not alone. That is why I chose to write about this topic. I don’t want you to believe that you are the only one who endured this trauma. It is much more common than anyone wants to believe. You were just as much a victim as they were.
Take care,
- Faith
I experienced both the fake and real horrification. I am guessing that there were different levels of depravity within the group and a kind of graduating to the next level.
All horrible.
The only verification I have was a tunnel was discovered from the funeral home in town to a house. This was after my memories came. The house had been burned I wonder about if someone torched it.
It seems these groups are good at keeping secrets. After the first animal killing I was made to bury the cat in a cemetery. I was 6. No that is not the first one that is the first one in that town. Anyway I went back and checked and the cat was gone. Had I brought anyone to show them I would have been labeled a lunatic. Small enough town the word would have gotten out. That I did not say anything was proof I would not tell.
There was much about things being all written down and that was held over my head. My spider sense feels that is not true. That nothing is written down as part of what they do. My logical sense tells me something would have been found if it was all written down.
I was involved in a fake exorcism. I was in a wet burlap bag with holes cut for my arms and head. I had already been through many days of horror and was exhausted. Without being graphic about how electricity was applied and I started howling and jerking around in time with the ceremony.
Fake deaths and being brought back to life were faked. Cutting off my hands and reapplying them was faked. I was 6. In what I find amazing I knew that was faked as they made the mistake of not keeping track of which hand was supposed to be where. I expected my hands to be on backwards. In mime if you go back to a fake object in a different place the audience knows.
I think it is important to realize it was not only that I was a child they had generations of experience and many things were well planned.
Ruby- I read Piers Paul Read’s book, Alive and it helped me a lot. I still grieve for those traumatized with me that died. I loved them in a very special way. We did what we could for each other in a horrible situation and I survived. I have a chance.
I wish it were all fake. But some was not.
It can be so crazy-making to try to know the difference or to “prove” one way or the other, where they were tricking us and when the pain and death and cannibalism was real. Am learning that, for me, healing comes faster (although “fast” is definitely relative) when I simply deal with what I remember as if none was fake. The trauma was real, the internal breaking was real. Am not trying to prove anything and haven’t made any accusations, so it hurts no one to deal with it as real. The parts of me bringing back the memories see it all as real. And as a child and young teen, it was my reality. Does that make any sense?
Am struggling with reality right now…sorry…I see I repeated the word “real” a lot, but it’s the only word that fits.
Thanks
ruby
Hi, Ruby.
Yes, I get this. I had to deal with each trauma as “real” because that is how the child me experienced it. After believing my own experience and integrating that part of myself, I could revisit the experience through adult eyes and recognize the situations that were fake.
I am now beginning to question whether what they fed me was the dog or fish. Maybe my aversion to fish is because they fed me fish, telling me that it was the dog.
Take care,
- Faith
Everyone… I am in awe of your strength, perseverance and love.
Ruby it sounds really wise to treat all of it as real, because as far as you knew it was, and the trauma it caused is real.
You guys are heroes one and all.
Much love,
mia
I found the whole thing about accuracy of my memories very hard. I found it was helpful to as best I could allow mistakes to not be perfect.
I feel it is only important to know that such horrification is done and is also sometimes faked. After that it is what happened to me and how I experienced it.
There was an escalation of most of the trauma I experienced as time when on.
Each part of us has to tell what we perceived to happen and how it effected us at that time. As we integrate there is a point where it is not as important anymore. It is in the past.
Thank you Faith for creating this place where such topics see the light of day.
This post was very important to me.
I figured out kinda why they cut my hair and fingernails. As much as I ever will,
They used it in some potion of theirs.
Me too, this was an powerful post for me. Affirming.
Thank you so very much.
Ruby
You are all brave warriors.
I’ve never read this blog before, I came here from a link on another blog. And was- floored.
I’m an ra survivor. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did involve me in forced cannibalism- both because I ah, saw the whole thing, from torture through death to them cutting up the body- but by now I’ve had enough recall to remember as an older child/young adult- seeing them do to young children the same things they’d done to me. The group that tortured me- had the resources and ability to do this stuff. The leader, who was- ‘grooming’ me for his position, I guess you’d say- he trafficed in children for prostitution, porn, other things. A lot of the non-infants came from that…
This is something that’s very hard for me to talk about. I mean, I do talk about it, but- it’s hard.
And- I know for the group that abused me- that it’s- it was about- traumatizing people, but also- it was because they *enjoyed* it. And- for “relegious” reasons, according to their own- beliefs. I feel like I want to start crying. Thank you.
to DarkSouls,
i hope you have time to look through the older posts here on faith’s blog. she has covered some night-mare issues and her writing has helped so many survivors.
you must be a very strong person to have escaped the group who held you. please be gentle on yourself and take time. you are worth it.
[...] am sorry to have posted such an intense blog entry like Ritual Abuse: Forced Cannibalism and Other Forms of Eating Flesh and then disappear, but I needed some rest. My job has kept me hopping for the last couple of [...]
And where do you get your information about all these forms of abuse you write about on this site?
Hi, Lagore.
Unfortunately, I experienced most of them. :0(
In the case of forced cannibalism, a reader asked me to write about this topic. As you can see from the responses, that reader was not the only one to suffer from this form of abuse.
Take care,
- Faith
Truth is so important, when one was silenced as a child. I remember when I was around 9 promising myself to someday write “the truth.” I have forgotten most of my childhood. I am responding to this subject because I had a dream about cannibalism.
-A cousin died, it wasn’t known how except another cousin, David, seemed guilty. Anyway, the body was cooked. It smelled terrible. Then it was eaten. I saw the flesh being eaten. I couldn’t eat any. I was so sad. I woke up scared.
My dreams tend to be a mix of symbols and leakages of memory, so I can’t say for sure that happened (But I did feel the emotions of what it might have been like).
I have a distinct memory of my father taking me somewhere. There were other people there but I don’t remember them.There was a redhaired man late 20′s early 30′s. I couldn’t have been more than 21/2-3 years old. The guy looked scared to death. . My dad said we were going to eat him. I was confused and upset. I put my hand on him and said “won’t that hurt?! the guy shook his head no. I was too young to decipher fear and the opposite reactions confused me. I was trying to comfort him but he said it was ok. i said ok then, because i believed what he said. I was given something to eat, not flesh, I don’t remember anything else. If my dad didn’t diddle me and psychologically torture me and his best friend hadn’t told me he was a satanist, I would think I dreamed it. I think whatever they gave me knocked me out, the guy was absolutely terrified. Either that or it was too horrible and can’t remember. I don’t want to. I always associated red hair and freckles with a sweet taste and had no idea why until that memory surfaced.
Like a lot of programmed children, I spoke in clear sentences at 15 months and have an almost photographic memory. Memory is important when you need it to avoid punishment. I hate this.
** cannibalism triggers **
There is only ONE PROVEN case of forced cannibalism in the entire literature/history of sadistic child abuse and that person is MUCH, MUCH sicker than you. She also ate cats, dogs, pets, etc, many more than one time. She actually has an alter that is a horrorific cannibal and is constantly watched by the FBI. Her father got her pregnant at 9 (the first of 7), gave her saline abortions, the girl gave birth and as a form of torture he made her eat her own babies. She later had a nervous breakdown, at 12, and her cannibal alter tortured, killed and ate BOTH of her parents.
And it has all been proven by the FBI. They found the 12 year old cannibal eating her father: after being left alone for months the neighbors became concerned and called DSS, and DSS workers found the cannibal alter eating her father (after she had consumed her mother.)