Mother Accused of Satanism Says Daughters Seek Inheritance : Trial: The Mission Viejo woman testifies that her children have convinced themselves that their accusations of incest and forced participation in cult activities are true.

A 76-year-old Mission Viejo woman accused by her two daughters of subjecting them to sexual abuse during satanic cult rituals told a jury Thursday that she believes that they are suing her and telling lies to speed up their inheritance from her.

“Obviously they want my money and they don’t want to wait until I die,” the woman said in her second day of testimony at a civil trial stemming from her daughters’ lawsuit against her.

But the woman also testified that she believes her daughters have somehow convinced themselves that their outlandish accusations are true.

“I think they have had their minds altered in some way, and they believe the things they say happened.”

The daughters, 48 and 35, claim that their mother and their father, who died four years ago, raised them in a satanic cult lifestyle in which they were forced to commit incest with both parents, participate in ritual murders and be subjected to physical and sexual abuse by other cult members. Supporting their contention is the testimony of the woman’s 11-year-old granddaughter, who has testified that her grandmother forced her to drink human blood in a satanic ritual and sexually abused her.

The Mission Viejo woman, who listened to the testimony of the granddaughter and her two daughters, said Thursday all of it was “shocking.”

“None of it is true,” she said.

The daughters formally accused their mother three years ago after one of them underwent psychotherapy for marital problems. She said it had brought out repressed memories of her traumatic childhood.

Their mother, a retired nurse, completed testimony Thursday after a brief cross-examination by her daughters’ attorney, R. Richard Farnell.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs did not ask her a single question related to satanic cults or specific instances involving satanic-related abuses with her late husband and their daughters.

Farnell explained later that “she would only deny it” if asked such questions. He said he found the woman’s contention that her daughters were raised in a normal, happy family environment “totally incredible.”

Questioned by her own attorney, Thomas M. Allen, the woman repeatedly told jurors in two days of testimony that she knew nothing about any satanic cult and that she and her husband had never sexually abused their daughters or their granddaughter.

“We were a loving, close family for 45 years,” she said. “These things did not happen.”

The family had lived in the San Gabriel Valley, where the daughters claim the bizarre incidents occurred, before moving to Tustin.

The mother testified that she was so shocked when her daughters presented her with a letter detailing a list of abuses they had suffered that she crumpled it up and threw it into a trash compactor before she even finished reading it.

“I was too shocked the read the whole thing,” she said. “It was a bunch of bull.”

She said she agreed to see a therapist after that because her daughters threatened to have her removed from her home if she didn’t. But she stopped seeing the therapist because she was not accomplishing anything.

Her attorney, Allen, said later that he could not disclose at this point how much his client’s net worth is. But he did say his client had a right to believe that her daughters were motivated by money.

He was also pleased with the quality of her testimony, he said.

“She is in a classic Catch-22 situation,” Allen said. “If he (the plaintiffs’ lawyer) asks her if she did these things, and she denies it, he can say, ‘See, they always deny it.’ They have not provided one scintilla of evidence that any of these things happened.”

The two daughters, who sat next to each other at the counsel table holding hands while their mother testified, refused later to comment on their mother’s claim that they were after her money.

In his cross-examination, Farnell said the woman had already left them everything in her will and that her daughters knew it. But the Mission Viejo woman told jurors that her children apparently didn’t want to wait that long to collect.

The woman said she was a Christian who believed in the Bible and Jesus Christ.

“Are you telling us that there was no trauma to provoke (these accusations) in all those years?” Farnell asked.

“That’s absolutely correct,” she answered.

The court has permitted the woman to use a pseudonym and has allowed the daughters to go unnamed in the case.

The daughters’ lawyer, Farnell, later called it “absurd” that his clients were motivated by money. Farnell said he will leave it up to jurors to decide how much the daughters should be awarded in damages.

The case is expected to go to the jury next Wednesday or Thursday. Superior Court Judge Robert D. Monarch ordered the jurors to return on Monday.