trigger warning: The following post contains details that may be upsetting for those with a history of ritual abuse.
via the Guardian:
Two members of a Cornish white witch coven have been convicted of carrying out ritualistic sex abuse on young girls. Peter Petrauske, 72, who claimed to be a high priest, and Jack Kemp, 69, donned robes and carried pagan artefacts when they attended ceremonies during which children were forced to strip and then abused. Police believe children as young as three may have been involved...Petrauske, who described himself as the high priest of a white witches' coven in St Ives, was convicted of one count of rape, one count of aiding and abetting an attempt to rape and one count of indecent assault.
Kemp was found guilty of indecent assault and indecency with a child...Alleged victims claimed that Kemp, an ex-soldier and tin miner, and Petrauske, a former member of the merchant navy, had taken part in rituals during which children as young as three were plied with alcohol, forced to strip in front of men wearing white robes and abused...Prosecutor Jason Beal said children's wrists were tied and some reported having hot wax poured over their bodies; one said a dagger had been drawn over her body...Beal said the duo "used the cloak of paganism" to commit the offences against children, arguing they were not pagans but child abusers.
One woman told how, at the age of five, she and other children attended a ritual at a stone circle with a fire in the centre. Petrauske and Kemp were among the men there, wearing "gown things" and necklaces, she said. In a video of her interview played in court, the woman described sitting down next to a sobbing boy. "I didn't understand what was going on and was scared," she said. "The chanting stuck in my head for weeks," she added. "I didn't understand what it was all about, I just thought they were weird. I was warned that if I was naughty they would hurt me, that they had special powers."
She said she was abused by Petrauske and Kemp. The woman, who cannot be named, also said she was raped by another man, a former parish councillor called Peter Solheim who was associated with witchcraft in Cornwall. Solheim's body was found by fishermen five miles off the Lizard Peninsula in 2004. He had been drugged and mutilated with a machete or an axe. The woman told the Truro jury that she was bound and raped by Solheim when she was nine on a bed fitted with chains and a black whip with "star things on the ends". more...
