Satanic Child Abuse Suit May Lend Credibility to Future Cases

Is 76-year-old Ellen Roe a devil worshiper who tortured, terrorized and sexually abused her two daughters from earliest infancy, forcing them to take part in murderous satanic rites?

Or is the silver-haired Mission Viejo grandmother the victim of a new form of McCarthyism: a national cult scare whipped up by those who claim that widespread satanic child abuse has been going on in secret for generations?

Although Roe was never charged with criminal wrongdoing, she was accused of grotesque atrocities in a civil lawsuit filed by her daughters. But in the end, even an Orange County jury could not decide what had occurred.

Attorneys for both parties and the trial judge say the case may open the courtroom doors to others who claim to have rediscovered repressed memories of childhood abuse.

“It could well be the fountainhead of substantial litigation,” said Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert D. Monarch.

The daughters, now 48 and 35, were permitted to file suit using only their initials, and were referred to in court by their first names. Likewise, the mother was allowed to use the pseudonym “Ellen Roe.”

During a 13-day trial that ended earlier this month, the daughters and an 11-year-old granddaughter told stories of rape, incest, torture, druggings and child prostitution. They also testified that Roe, her late husband and other cult members forced them to kill their own babies, assist in at least seven other ritual murders and consume human body parts.

The defense argued that the women had been coached by “true believer” psychotherapists into “remembering” abuse that never took place.

Roe’s lawyer also argued that her daughters had produced no physical or material evidence to support their stories, save a second-hand medical report that indicated the 11-year-old had internal scarring consistent with sexual abuse.

Defense experts never examined the girl, nor did the defense seek an independent psychiatric diagnosis to evaluate the daughters’ claim that they had developed multiple personalities as a result of the trauma.

Jurors deliberated for two days before reaching a 10-2 verdict on April 12 in favor of the daughters and the granddaughter. However, while they found that Roe had been negligent, they did not believe that she had intentionally caused any harm, the jury majority said. And they declined to award the daughters any damages.

One of the dissenting jurors sobbed while the verdict was read and later said she was convinced that Roe was innocent.

A juror who voted with the majority--and said she wanted to award damages--said she had no doubt that the women had been physically and sexually abused. Asked whether she believed that they had been victims of a satanic cult, the juror said, “We’ll never know.”

“I think the key to this lies wherever the father is buried,” she said.

Attorneys on both sides called the split verdict “a compromise,” with the jury wishing to send a message of sympathy to the daughters but unwilling to conclude that their mother had been an agent of their ordeal.

Lawyers for both sides were still trying to make sense out of a verdict they called “inconsistent.”

The daughters’ attorney, R. Richard Farnell, said his clients have not yet decided whether to appeal the jury’s decision not to award monetary damages. Though he took the case on contingency--he won’t be paid unless damages are awarded--he said he has a stack of telephone messages from other people who say they, too, are victims of ritual abuse, and is considering taking other cases.

“We’re with ritual abuse now where we were with child abuse 25 years ago,” Farnell said. “People didn’t want to believe child abuse, they didn’t want to believe child molestation. . . . The next case will be easier than this case.”

Meanwhile, the daughters have received four or five offers to sell the book and film rights to their story, Farnell said.

Roe’s attorney, Tom M. Allen, said his client has received dozens of calls from supporters who feel that she was unjustly accused.

Allen said Roe has spent $65,000 to defend herself since the day in 1989 when her estranged daughters presented her with the lawsuit and a demand for $7 million.

Three weeks before trial, Allen said, the daughters said they would settle the case for “well in excess of $500,000.”

“The only advantage to (their mother) was that she wouldn’t have had to sit through 13 days of this gut-wrenching stuff,” Allen said. Roe refused the offer.

Despite the expense, the public exposure and a verdict that vindicated neither side, both Farnell and Allen anticipate similar court battles in the future. And the more media attention such cases receive, Farnell said, the less juries will be prone to disbelief.

“You have to break the ice,” he said. “The first time you hear something like this, you say, ‘That can’t be.’ The next time, you say, ‘Well, maybe.’ ”