My name is John Saunders. In 1992, I was accused of sexually abusing my sister as part of a satanic cult. This is my story. Copyright Able 2015 It was in January of 1992 when it all started. Eunice told us that she could feel these flashbacks. They were horrific, and they were very real. DOOR CREAKS Eunice then asked us, and asked me, had she been sexually abused when she was little? These memories just took her over, and she became obsessed with them. (SCREAMS) TRANQUIL MUSIC Well, I grew up in Te Aroha, that little place down in the Thames Valley, tucked underneath Mount Te Aroha. We had a very happy, normal upbringing, and we lived in a`a little street called Gilchrist St. We lived two houses from the Saunders. There were about 35 houses in Gilchrist St, and there were about 40 kids, so we had a, uh, very tight-knit young community, and, um, we really regarded Gilchrist St as our patch. I was good at school, and my sister Eunice was good at school too. We were both bright, and, um, I was dux of the Te Aroha Primary School, and then two years later, um, Eunice was as well. We used to call her Nuss. Eu-nuss. And she responded to that. She was very comfortable with that. You know, 'Hey, Nuss, how bout a game of hopscotch, or something like that?' But Nuss, it was always Nuss. SENTIMENTAL MUSIC John and Eunice are my cousins on my mother's side. Eunice was an extremely attractive woman, and fun, you know? She was six, seven years older than I am, so I, sort of` You know, she was quite glamorous, wore lipstick and earrings. I really loved Eunice. She was bright, sparky, full of go and she appealed to me greatly. Mm. I would've met Rosemary in 1961. Eunice was a bridesmaid at out wedding in Whangarei in July 1964. The first time we met, we hit it off very well, and talked till 5 in the morning. John's mother said to her father, 'Those girls are still talking in there!' And we formed a close and deep relationship right from the start. FOREBODING MUSIC Eunice, when her family were living in Wellington, and she was teaching at a primary school ` Eunice was ` and once a year in January, she'd come up. Eunice, um, wasn't well when she arrived, and she had warned us we were going to get a shock when we saw her, because she had fasted for the previous month. Rosemary and I met her at the` at the airport in Auckland, and we were just shocked at her appearance. She'd`She'd just gone completely overboard and almost starved herself to death. Gaunt. Absolutely gaunt. She'd lost over 2 stone, and she looked like an old woman. So we got her home, and, um, and Rosemary very quickly took her to our local doctor, and, um, he straightened her out and got her on a proper eating basis, and she was referred to the Pupuke Clinic at the mental health section of North Shore Hospital. Eunice came home from the visit to the counsellor. It soon transpired that Eunice was asked if she had ever been sexually abused, and Eunice said no, of course she hadn't. At first` Well, she asked me whether she had been sexually abused, and I said, 'What rubbish,' and pooh-poohed it completely. But then it grew, and more and more she started to say to us, well, it`it had happened. Within a week, she was getting flashbacks and saying she had been abused and it was her parents who were the abusers. She alleged that`that my father and my mother were both involved in the raping of Eunice by my father. Things fell apart quite quickly between us at that point, and it was then that the flashbacks became very serious. She began to experience them more and more often, and these things had happened. I was just,... uh, dumbfounded all the way through. (SCREAMS) 'It happened,' she kept saying. 'It happened.' She had also accused John of interfering with her when he was a teenager, that he had raped her. It was hard on all of us to hear something like that, but set in the context of the bizarre allegations that were being made, and were continuing to be made, that didn't surprise us. She's said that I was involved with the goings-on in Te Aroha. This is my husband, these were my in-laws, and this was my sister-in-law, Eunice, who had been, up till then, one of my closest friends. And then it was in September of 1992 that our daughter, Helen, who was living in Whangarei with her husband and`and, uh, three young children at the time, she was called into the local social welfare office and warned by them that her eldest son, Joshua, was in danger of being sexually molested by me. Well, I remember I was at home with the boys, and there was a knock at the door, and this woman opened the door, and this woman says, 'I'm from the Department of Social Welfare. 'We've had a, um, complaint that your children might be in danger of being interfered with 'by your father and your grandfather.' And then would I come down to Social Welfare and have an interview about it? It was just so totally over-the-top and bizarre that I didn't ever really worry about it ` perhaps naively, I realise now. INDICATOR CLICKS RHYTHMICALLY (GASPS) SILENCE (EXHALES SLOWLY) Mate, I'm so sorry. I thought there was time. You just pulled out. I don't have time to stop. It was a simple mistake. LOUD RUMBLING Please. (VOICE TREMBLES) I've got my boy in the back. I'm going too fast. I'm sorry. (SOBS) SEAT BELT CLICKS EERIE CREAKING HARSH WHOOSHING 1 It turned out that` that Eunice, I think, had gone into the Social Welfare in Auckland, and` making suggestions that` that our daughter Helen's children might well be in danger of being sexually abused by me. I was really panicked with the Social Welfare call, because it, sort of, had` I was concerned that people were starting to take her seriously. Well, Helen rang us and gave us the name of the policeman in Takapuna that the Social Welfare in Whangarei had given her. So I jumped on the phone and rang the policeman, and he confirmed to me that he had spoken to Eunice on a number of occasions, and Eunice had been in to see him. The police had taken Eunice seriously, because she was very articulate and well-presented, and` she was a very intelligent person. And they thought that she was` She spoke so well they believed her. When the authorities got involved, like Social Welfare and the police, I think it became a bit more real and a bit more scary that other people were starting to take it seriously. I thought, 'How far is this gonna go?' Cos I knew that people have been arrested and charged for historic sexual abuse on not much evidence. I was not coping with it well at all. John was coping with it better than I was, because he does in those sorts of situations. He's very sensible and down to earth. As he says` has said to me, 'I knew there was absolutely nothing in the accusations that Eunice was making about my parents,' and he knew there was nothing about him. SOMBRE MUSIC Rosemary, of course, doesn't ever know, and she doesn't know to this day, but I was there. I was there growing up in Te Aroha, so I know it didn't ever happen, but Rosemary wasn't. Rosemary wasn't. Yeah. Because I wasn't part of John's family, I didn't know for sure there was no truth in the allegations, even though I knew they were false. If you haven't been part of that family, you cannot know. Mum rang me up and asked me, just wanted to make 100% sure that nothing had ever happened in my childhood with my grandparents. And, yeah, I was quite abrupt with her about it, because, yeah, nothing had ever happened. I remember at a couple of times being overcome with panic, and I can't remember why, and saying to her, 'Are you sure you haven't been abused?' And... she just said, 'Oh, Mum! For goodness sake. I'm not having this conversation.' She hung up on me once. Yeah, I was quite abrupt with her about it. I told her that, yeah, it never happened, and I was quite` I was a bit angry that she'd asked, but I can understand now, looking back, why she asked me. A mother's instincts to protect her children are very very strong. If it had ever come to the crunch of whether it was John or the children, the children would have won out. But I wasn't prepared to throw John away for some wild ramblings by his sister, because that's what I consider they were. UNSETTLING MUSIC It destabilises you, accusations like this. And that's why I feel I made those phone calls to Helen ` because I was destabilised in my, um` all my happy family, or with my in-laws, the feelings I had` love and gratitude I had towards them, had been stirred up by all this. Sexual abuse, to me, is one of the` is probably the nastiest crime, and to be involved in accusations of it was horrific. Since the 1950s or 1960s, the family has been aware of` the fact is that Eunice has had mental problems. I arranged a meeting with Eunice's primary counsellor at the Pupuke Clinic at the North Shore Hospital to try and sort this big problem out and`and try to convince her that Eunice was disturbed and none of what she was saying had happened did happen. And I just` I could not get through to her. Uh, I came up` I use the expression 'a brick wall'. And I did arrange, a week or so later, I think, or some time later, I arranged a second meeting with another counsellor. Again, I use the expression 'brick wall' ` that's what I came up against. And as I say, sure, Eunice was their patient, and they had to do their best for Eunice, but I tried and tried to get through to them, and I argued about the lovely neighbours we had and the nice little town we grew up in and everyone would've known, but got nowhere. Eunice had been` Unknown to us till late in the piece, she had been talking to reporters. Well, it was in March 1993 that a little article appeared. It had a photograph of her and her little book of poems that she'd published, which was called, I think, Cry From The Heart, appeared in The Sunday Star. And then at one stage I was rung by a man from The Listener, who'd been approached by Eunice, pushing her sexual abuse case and wanting The Listener to publish an article about Eunice in The Listener. It's about her programme coming up. I have a feeling we heard about the documentary quite close to when it was screened. We had been warned she might be doing a programme. She did not let us know. Eunice did not let us know. Tonight on Inside NZ, we confront a subject that, to most of us, is beyond the realm of our imagination. You're about to have a glimpse into the mind of an extraordinary person. Under hypnosis, she says, she has retrieved memories of satanic ritual abuse inflicted on her as a child. It was a nightmare before it went to air. We had no idea how she was` Eunice was going to come across, or the things she was going to say. Now it's all out in the public arena, if that's the right expression, and Eunice is gonna make this programme and make these awful allegations. It's taken me a long time to accept the fact that my father was sexual with me at all, and then it took me` I've drawn it, though. I got it out of myself by my poems that I wrote and drawings that I did. Eunice's memories surfaced without warning, flooding her mind with pictures of her father having sex with her when she was a child. Her drawings are what she saw in her mind. At first, I thought my mother was just, sort of, sadistic to me, because I started to get these cruelty things too. I know she put a stick up my nose, and this was the start of the ritual. She accused her mother of ritual satanic abuse in the way that her mother was a cult priestess. She accused her father of selling her body in the local pub, um, and she believe that money had changed hands. And then she was... involved other people. Our well-loved Anglican minister at the St Mark's Anglican Church in Te Aroha was involved, and he`he` Eunice was absolutely convinced that she was raped by him. (SIGHS) It's the same church, without a doubt. There's the organ. There he is! <BLEEP>. That's`that's the rapist. That's the bloody rapist. The thing is, now he makes me feel sick. Sur...vi...vor. Exclamation mark. This, to us, was absolutely ridiculous. Her parents had always lived in small towns. All their married lives, John's father had been in the bank in small towns. There wasn't a whiff of any satanic ritual abuse in any of these places. But according to Eunice, it was rife, and she remembered it all. I can remember seeing that programme on television and being quite surprised. She recalled being naked in a pit of wetas and spiders, scenes of murder, cannibalism and multiple rape by men and women, including both parents. My word. You know, I know this. I know these people. I see this. I can't believe it. Eunice believes that her father ` now dead ` sexually molested her. But her mother was a cult priestess who tortured and killed babies as sacrifices to Satan and who forced Eunice to do the same. I was only young at the time when I knew those two, John and Eunice, and, uh, it didn't venture into my thoughts at all, and to hear that afterwards, I was quite surprised ` in fact, shocked. It was absolutely awful. It really was, because my mother couldn't defend herself, my father was dead. It was just awful. Terrible. I've talked to John about it as well. Um, I asked him quietly, 'You know, John, what is this` what's going on here? What is the story?' And, uh, he just` he` well, he told me that, 'Robin, it's something that's very difficult to understand. 'We don't know what's going on.' In one last desperate, if you like, one last attempt to try and talk sense into her, I went round to her little flat and tried to get in` to go in and talk, and convince her that she was disturbed and none of this happened. And Eunice wouldn't even let me inside. And she spoke to me through the open window of her little flat, and quite soon she just looked at me and said, 'It happened,' closed the window, and I just had to walk away. And I didn't see her` I haven't seen her since. It was terrible. UNSETTLING MUSIC All her allegations are total nonsense, and it's`it's monstrous that she's making these allegations against these very dear and very nice people. It's just absolutely awful, and they've gotta be defended, because none of it happened. None of it happened. I was there. None of it happened. It was hard for him not to be believed. It was the first time he'd come up against officialdom like that, I think, where you sensibly put your side of the story, and you're not believed. You expect to be believed. If you go to the police and you're innocent, you expect to be believed. I first met John and Rosemary in` it would have been 1994 when they first came to the COSA meetings. COSA was an organisation that I set up, called Casualties Of Sexual Allegations. It grew out of a need by people who'd contacted me in the early 1990s uh, with, uh, stories of being involved in false allegations of sexual abuse. John was just adamant that this was preposterous, that it wasn't his childhood, it didn't happen, couldn't have happened. Uh, Rosemary was, um, hurt and bewildered and really supportive of John and, um, sad at the loss of` you know, Eunice had been her friend. COSA was a huge relief to us. I went to support John, and he had such regard for Felicity and John, her husband, and the way the group was run. I felt the same. It was mutually comforting and, uh, good for us to be at these group meetings and support meetings. Everyone was in the same boat. They'd all been falsely and wrongly accused of things that never happened and they didn't ever do. That was an incredibly strange era. There was this wave of hysteria, really, and these really unbelievable allegations being promoted and happening. I think you have to look at the climate of suspicion that was engendered about sexual abuse and recovered memories over` around that time 20 years ago. It was prevalent. There was a book published in the States called The Courage To Heal, uh, that actually advocated, uh, that, uh, anyone who presented for counselling as an adult with any sort of psychological problem, uh, the likely cause was repressed childhood abuse, uh, and this became the bible of counselling. And that's when all this sexual abuse business started, because one of the`the counsellors at the Pupuke Centre at North Shore Hospital did one of two things. She either suggested to Eunice that she may have been sexually abused when she was younger` a little girl, or asked her, had she been sexually abused when she was little. The sort of techniques that they would use and that they were trained to use were things like guided imagery, going back to your childhood, um, relaxation-type things, and effectively they're forms of hypnosis. And what we know about hypnosis now is that it does actually help you, uh, increase your memories, and it helps you increase your memories of accurate memories, and it also helps you increase so-called memories of things that never happened. Now I'm going to count to three, and I want you to close your eyes. Eunice began very quickly to recover these memories. In fact, right at the start, Eunice's memories were all recovered ones. Counsellors who believed in it, uh, many many of their clients would come up with satanic ritual abuse allegations. Now, there was also a similar phenomena happening at the same time where, um, some counsellors believed that people's problems were actually due to being abducted by aliens. And most of their clients would come up with memories of being abducted by aliens. I think that sexual abuse had, um, really become the 'in' topic at that time, and it does need to be, but it was the false allegations coming along the real cases that disturbed Felicity and got her to set up the group, and just as well she did, because it was an enormous psychological help to us. Some of the people who were at the groups that we went to had been, um, formally charged by the police and had, um, had to appear in court, and some were actually put in jail. One of our group finished up in Mt Eden Jail, and Rosemary and I visited him in Mt Eden Jail. All from a false accusation ` just as false as the allegations that Eunice has been making. But in the end, he was` it was proved that he was falsely accused, and he was, um, let out of jail, and he got a`a substantial payment, I think, from the Justice Department for falsely being in prison. In NZ, there was this unique driver that really fuelled it, and that was the ACC. In the early '90s, you were able to get a lump sum payment of $10,000 for every traumatic event that you had experienced. It was not considered acceptable by the Sensitive Claims Office to, um, ask for evidence or to challenge, so, um, effectively, I think it was at least 98% of all claims were paid out. I don't know that we would have been able to get through without her`her group and the help that we got there, but we did learn at that group that that old saying, 'there's no smoke without fire' just simply is not true. I said to Felicity, 'If only I could talk to Eunice, I have a feeling I could make her see.' I'm just thinking my bedroom was the middle lot of windows. I think once Eunice had really developed these memories strongly, to the point where she was` you know, they were really formed and she was so convinced that this had been her childhood ` I mean, she even wrote a book of poems about it ` uh, that, um, this belief would have` is extremely likely to have been unshakeable. She said, 'You couldn't, Rosemary, because now it is entrenched.' She said something like this ` 'She sees it, believes it, feels it. It happened. You can't talk her round now. 'It's too late, really,' she indicated to me. And that was when I lost hope that I could ever talk to Eunice. HAUNTING MUSIC Friends have said my eyes` my eyes weren't right. There must have been a lot of pain in my heart, but... That a person can suppress all that stuff amazes me. Well, in the documentary, she was basically saying that Granny and Grandfather, Dad's parents, were part of a satanic cult and that they'd sacrificed babies and that she'd had multiple children that had been sacrificed. It was just bizarre. The question that I asked myself was, 'How come a family so close to where I was?' And I wasn't able to identify that this was possible, because it just didn't seem possible. It didn't seem possible. They just seemed like any other normal family. I've seen live children killed, and I've been made to push a knife down on a baby myself. I was resisting, but she pushed this knife, and, um` until`until it cut the baby's head off. (LAUGHS) Where did these babies come from that were being murdered and stabbed and eaten? It was just absolute nonsense. And where was the evidence, and whose babies were they? I mean, Eunice is suggesting ` more than suggesting, is convinced ` that she was raped by all these people and she produced babies. In a town like Te Aroha ` 2500, 3000 people ` you know, a thing of that magnitude, how could that possibly happen here and nobody know about it? They were two houses up from us, you know? If there were satanic rituals and whatever, there'd be people coming and going. There'd be odd things happening, you know? There'd be unusual situations where, 'Hang on a minute, that's... something wrong there.' There was nothing like that. Absolutely nothing. They were just like every other family on the street. Our daughter rang and said, 'Have you stopped laughing yet?' That was her` Those were her first` opening words, cos it was so bizarre, this crazy hypnotherapist fellow. Do you wanna do something about all this pain and hurt? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Say this ` 'Hello, evil force.' Say that. < Say it! < Say it! Hello, evil force. (TAPS EUNICE'S HEAD) Be the presence! (TAPS EUNICE'S HEAD) Be the presence! I can't be the` I can't be. < Yes, you can. Just do it, Eunice. This so-called hypnotherapist, um, is one of only six weeks' training. He's actually a plumber by trade, or he was, and, um, he was a plumber who put my sister's roof on in Wellington. And she said, 'Don't you remember, Megan? It was the guy who did our roof.' She said` I won't say what she said, but, um` (LAUGHS) It's a crock of whatnot. You're standing out in front now, and you're facing that demon. It's a few steps away in front of you, and it's bigger than your whole castle. Be the demon! No! (SCREAMS) Clearly, people who come for counselling are vulnerable and have problems, and some will be more susceptible to hypnotic techniques than others. For some people, they will not go down this path, because they can say, 'No, this didn't happen.' But others will actually engage in the technique, and that will become, uh, their reality. That may explain why these scenes did not come over as credible to me or to John or to anybody who watched that scene. I wasn't concerned about Dad after that ` like, Dad being arrested or charged or anything, cos that's what I was concerned with ` or that, you know, he wasn't gonna be able to see the grandchildren, because things had just, yeah. Obviously her accusations were so outlandish that no one was going to take her seriously. It's a great scar, isn't it? Yeah, it's a terrible scar to have. Mm. You've gotta feel for them. You've gotta feel for Eunice as well, you know, and Mr and Mrs Saunders who are now no longer with us. Um, it's a terrible thing. It's very sad. Very very sad. SOMBRE MUSIC Eunice had had problems when she was in her 20s. She began to suffer from depression, and, uh, my mother and father were very good to her, but she was` Um, at our wedding, she wasn't well at all. Yeah, there's Eunice there. I didn't know that at the time. She had great courage, Eunice. She was very depressed at the time, and she was determined to go through with the wedding, and we had no idea she was ill. And the next day she went into a private hospital for treatment. And I thought that was a very courageous and loving thing to do for her brother and for me. She was admitted more than once to Tokanui Hospital` um, Psychiatric Hospital. And it was a very difficult time for my mother and father, and my mother and father had to drive her to the hospital to get her admitted. That was quite frightening for everybody and for her. I felt very sad for her at that time. We, um, were living in Levin, my husband and I, and we had a business. We were leasing a motel. Eunice lived in Wellington. And one day I was doing what I do in the motel, and I looked up, and there was Eunice standing in front of me... in a nightie and sneakers. And she was not in a good state of mind. She'd travelled up by bus. I didn't quite know how to cope with it, to a certain extent, because it wasn't the Eunice I thought I knew. I can picture her now in my mind's eye, and I just think, 'Oh.' And I just think from then on it went horribly wrong. I don't know what happened to her. Well, I do. I do. She got the help of the wrong person. 1 It was such a long, ongoing thing that it took its toll on everybody. We had an unwell son at the time. We had the worry of that. We had our normal lives to get on with, and this, sort of, thing kept coming up. Eunice was going to Takapuna police a lot, and she was making complaints, and I think, from memory, it was weekly, or she was going there and trying to get them to investigate Dad. Eunice used to ring him up and say bizarre things, saying that the` maybe Halloween was coming up, or something like that, and saying` or the full moon was coming up, and that the police should be lurking around churches and watching out for crazy cult sexual activity being carried on. He said, 'We believed her at first, because she was so articulate and well-presented.' And then he intimated that they had come to the conclusion that she was disturbed. The policeman tried to arrange a conference with him and Eunice and the counsellor at the Pupuke Centre, to try and convince the counsellor that Eunice was disturbed and needed help. And at the last minute, the counsellor pulled out. She said she'd go along with it, and then she pulled out, citing patient confidentiality. So it didn't ever happen. Eventually, she was told that if she kept going, that she was harassing the police, and they would charge her. And I'm not sure what with, but basically to stop her from going to the police all the time. Eunice wrote me a letter saying that because of all these ghastly sexual things that had happened to her, she was moving on and changing direction, and so she was changing her name. And she also changed her birthday. That was the start of her new life as a survivor, or something like that. It was only a short letter, and that was that. I've been thinking quite hard about Eunice's visits to the psychologist. I don't know what went on when she saw that psychologist` counsellor, and I don't know the questions she were asked` was asked. But the fact that she had fasted for four weeks and was in a parlous physical state when she went to see the counsellor, it surprises me that they did not delve into any past history, because I think those things are relevant to the condition she was in. We had a particular case, uh, in COSA of a man accused, um, on the basis of recovered memories, and, uh, the case was actually run by Peter Williams, uh, QC, and, um` and the man was acquitted, um, and it was shown in court that these memories were unreliable and it was unsafe, uh, and I think, uh, that was quite early on. And after that there weren't, um, many cases taken, uh, that were on the basis of memories that were admitted to be completely recovered in therapy. The British Psychological Society, um, the Australian Psychological Society, and the equivalent one in the US came out with some very strong, uh, guidelines saying, 'Don't go looking for, um` for memories. 'The chances of having repressed a memory in this way and then recover it in therapy are highly unlikely.' And it became accepted that you don't actually, um, do recovered memory therapy the way they had been in the past. When I first met Eunice, I had an instant rapport with her. I felt she was like another sister, and she was. We became great friends in confidence. I loved her very much, and I lost a good friend. However, I don't feel the same about her now. She's the one who's lost out by this. She's the one who's ended up alone, without family support in her` I mean, she'd be in her 70s now, and, you know, she could have a really good relationship with Mum and Dad and Mum's family, but she doesn't. Yeah. And we don't know where she is or what she's doing, so it's quite sad for her. I have noticed that John's a wee bit reserved, um, but it hasn't affected our friendship` our relationship. Uh, he` it is hurting him, because while he probably feels comfortable with me, uh, feeling` with other people he hasn't seen or spoken to for a while, he'd probably feel, 'What do they know? What do they perceive?' And he'd wonder, 'How do they perceive me?' or, 'How do they perceive all of this, or the Saunders family?' And that must be difficult. But he loves Te Aroha. I know he does, and he's told me so, you know? 'Robin,' he says, 'you know, really, my home town, my roots are in Te Aroha.' I've still got my happy memories of`of what went on. We could talk about the happy times and the funny times that happened to us in Te Aroha, but I haven't got any other sibling I can talk to, and I can't talk to her. I know that none of what she's going on about ever happened, so, no, I've still got my happy memories. They're still there. But I can't share them with Eunice. CLOCK CHIMES For John, he is adamant he would have nothing more to do with Eunice unless she absolutely recanted the things he has` that she has said about his mother and father, because that did hurt him. I've lost my sister, and it's very sad. But I don't dwell on it. And I don't hate her. I just` That's`That's the way it is. That's the way it is. CHILDREN: Three! My name is John Saunders. In 1992, I was accused of sexually abusing my sister as part of a satanic cult. I am innocent. Captions by Philip McKibbin. Edited by Anne Langford. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015