Safe to Hope

Season 6: Episode 7 - Carya's Story Part 2

• Ann Maree Goudzwaard

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In one of the most difficult episodes of the season, Carya shares how ritual abuse and satanic worship were not only part of her story—but were carried out under the cover of Christian institutions. With clarity and courage, she invites listeners to reckon with the reality that evil can flourish where it should be most opposed. Her story confronts us with questions about spiritual deception, trauma, and the sacred call to protect the vulnerable. This episode bears witness to truth many would prefer to ignore.

Self-Care and Informational resources in Transcript.

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We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well, guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HelpHer. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

The podcast is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis, or treatment.


Self-Care Resources

Informational Resources


Ann Maree
Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment and share some information regarding this 2025 season. This particular season of the Safe to Hope podcast is extremely difficult to hear. Carya's story is for a mature audience only. We also want to warn those who might be significantly triggered by the difficult topics. The story includes discussions regarding childhood sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, satanic cultish, and ritualistic abuse. We advise listeners or readers of the transcripts to apply an abundance of caution and discretion, as you hear from our storyteller. Throughout this season, we'll occasionally insert breaks between segments of Carya’s story to give listeners a chance to come up for air, and at a few other times, we'll offer our audience the opportunity to skip over difficult subject matter. 

This introduction will precede all story episodes, reminding our listeners of the potential for hearing disturbing things. For more information about how to even process these stories, please listen in to Episode Four and Episode Six on the Safe to Hope podcast. I've asked Carya to describe the details she thinks will be helpful, so that the audience will understand the terror she endured. While this story is hard for us to listen to, living it must have been unbelievably hard and horrific, we bear witness as we listen. Yes, the things Carya shares are disturbing, and for those of us who have never heard of ritualistic abuse, they may even be confusing. 

One of our goals throughout this series is to help the audience with understanding, specifically knowing good from evil, but also having compassion, empathy and an ability to minister to those in need. While this type of abuse is less common than others, there are two good reasons for us to listen to a story like this. 

  • First, it is a reality that we need to be prepared to understand and respond to. 
  • Second, even if we never encounter a situation like Carya’s, her experience teaches us, in a concentrated way, about dynamics that are at work whenever people commit harm against others. 

Let's now listen again to Carya's story.

Carya
Last time, I talked about my experience of being sex trafficked by my family, focusing especially on my own family, my neighbors and clients. As a part of that, I mentioned the fact that in addition to selling me to strangers, my dad also made me available to a network of family and friends without receiving financial compensation. That's the part of the story I'm going to start telling today. 

There's a critical part of all this that I've referred to but not addressed yet, which is the role that religious figures and institutions played in my abuse. I said before that my family went to church for the first 12 or so years of my life, and that my mom was the main impetus behind that. I believe there was something in her that yearned for the goodness of God, whereas my dad didn't have that yearning. But he didn't simply put up with church to make my mom happy. He had his own reasons for wanting a connection to particular churches. There was something he got out of it too. Technically, my dad was a religious hypocrite, meaning that he pretended to believe something that he really did not. But he was not merely a hypocrite, someone who went to church on Sunday but then didn't follow it up with his actions or take it seriously. Rather, he was a religious deceiver. He used church and Christianity for his purposes. Technically, my dad is sexually aroused by children, which means he is a pedophile. But again, he is not merely a pedophile. What turns him on is turning things upside down. Making things the opposite of the way they're supposed to be. There isn't much more upside down than incest, trafficking, sadism, and highly deviant sexual abuse of children, especially your own children. And the more upside down it was, the more pleasure he derived from it. But even that explanation could make it sound like my father's problem was that he had what psychologists might call disordered sexual desires. Of course, his desires certainly were disordered, to put it mildly, and that was certainly a huge problem. But for my father and other men who were key figures in my abuse, it wasn't just that perversion and sadism stoked their sexual libidos. In fact, as much as they liked it, the sex itself wasn't even the main point. For them, the real point was religious. They did what they did as a horrendously twisted form of worship. They turned things upside down, not because they happen to get aroused by flouting social norms, but because they loved what God hates and they hated what God loves. 

Now theologically speaking, that statement applies to all of us to some degree. In our flesh, we love things that God doesn't want us to love, like our own reputations or wealth or comfort, and we fail to hate things such as injustice or our own sin in the way that God would have us hate them. But that's not what I'm talking about here. My father and other significant people in my story loved and hated what they did deliberately, explicitly and self consciously. They loved the things that God hates because God hates them, and they hated the things that God loves because God loves them. 

For generations, both my parents' families had been deeply embedded in a cult-like satanic network. My grandparents raised their kids, my parents to take up particular roles in that system. Just as my parents raised my brother and me for certain roles in that system, the child didn't even have to be willing to be able to fill a role. In fact, some roles are meant for the unwilling, but only some. My family joined with others who shared allegiance to the satanic system in order to destroy beauty, goodness, hope, identity, trust, faith, and more wherever they could. When they raped me, they often told me in appallingly clear terms why they were doing it. I wasn't exaggerating when I said last time that these people exalted vileness among themselves and they sought out ways to do evil.

Ann Maree
I think a question some might be asking here is whether or not people are actually that evil. It might even be easier to believe what you just said earlier, that your dad had a disordered sexual desire. Can people be that particularly cruel and evil toward one another, toward those to whom they've given life? Actually, the Bible frequently chronicles such stories. Lot offered / trafficked his daughters to the sexually disordered townspeople in Sodom. Israelite princes murdered their own siblings. Queen Athaliah killed almost all of her offspring so that she alone could rule. In fact, numerous instances of cannibalism of the Israelite’s own children and parents are recorded in God's Holy Word. Consider Psalm 106:35 through 38 where it says they— that being the Israelites mingled with the nations and adopted their ways. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, so that the land became polluted with blood. But while we debate the possibility that this kind of evil still exists, I think we also need to ask ourselves, are we unwilling to see it, to even look at it, and why? Given that we don't generally have the same desires as a sadistic and satanic abuser, it's important to have conversations with those like Carya who know the impact intimately. This gives us insight into the horror, yes, but also teaches us how to better understand and help. Scripture does not shy away from directing attention on Satan, his evil ways and his impact. I think of the concubine who was raped all night and then cut into pieces and sent to the tribes of Israel. Both Carya and I, as would most of you, have a hard time hearing messages from that story, but Hebrews, chapter 5, verse 14, tells us we need to train ourselves to be able to distinguish good— God and His ways from evil Satan and his ways. 2 Corinthians 2 assumes we will be well aware of Satan's schemes, and at times, we may need to learn from very dark circumstances. Having said that, this next section in Carya’s story has extremely disturbing elements, we again advise our listeners and readers to have caution, as she describes some types of satanic, cultish and ritualistic abuse she experienced. If you'd prefer not to hear these details, you can skip past this short section to timestamp 15:27.

Carya
At the most basic level, my dad enjoyed turning things upside down in churches. He looked for opportunities to do things hidden in plain sight, and a church building or a church service was a particularly tantalizing location to do so. In my earliest years, when my family went to church, we would all traipse into the sanctuary on Sunday morning, I and my Sunday best and file into the pews. At some point during the service, my dad would lift me onto his lap and put his hand between my legs. His movements concealed by the folds of my skirt. He'd carefully and very discreetly sexually assault me and sometimes even rape me as I sat on his lap right there in the pew in the middle of the sermon. He had trained me to be silent and utterly unreactive whenever he or anyone else did something like that in public. But still, I wonder now, could anyone tell? Did my mom know? Did anyone in the pews see his movements or see the look on my face or on his face, and wonder if something was wrong. There were also other men who raped me in that church. Did they ever look over and realize what was happening? If so, did they enjoy what they saw, or did no one but Dad and I ever know what was happening in that pew? What about the pastor as he stood in the pulpit preaching. Could he see the expressions on our faces and understand what they meant? He knew that my father raped me for he was a man like my father and raped me too. But did he know that at that very moment my father was raping me? While he was preaching, did he ever think about what would happen after church, when my parents brought me up to his office. Sometimes during the children's sermon, he would touch my arm or look me in the eye or say something coded to remind me that I'd be spending time with him. Later, I'd walk holding one of my parents' hands back up the aisle to our pew, knowing that soon I'd be back on dad's lap. And not long after that in the pastor's office. I don't know specifically how that pastor and my dad found each other, or even who found whom. It is enough to know that the reason we attended that particular church was because my dad and the pastor were cut from the same cloth. I spent many hours in that pastor's office, lying naked on his study table or cowering with my hands tied while he fondled himself or finished whatever setup he had in mind. 

With his office full of Bibles, hymnals, crosses and other liturgical items, the pastor had easy access to things he could use in upside down ways. He pretended to bless me before starting, or he laid an open Bible on my chest and read from it when he started to penetrate me. He even told me that God wanted him to do what he was doing, that God was glad about it. Sometimes I was alone in the office with him, and sometimes others were there. Occasionally, even when it was just me and the pastor in his office, my dad would come in just to watch. I remember one time that I was particularly aware of my father's presence. He stood off to the side, pleasuring himself noisily while the pastor raped me, seeing and hearing my father's reactions to this felt even worse, in some ways, than when he actively joined in with the pastor. That evening once the pastor was done, I pulled my clothes back on and went over to my father so that we could go home, but he stood there, unmoving for a moment. I lifted my eyes from the floor and saw the bulge in his pants, in spite of his recent orgasm, which told me his need was not spent by watching. It never really was. But I knew this meant that he might not even wait until we got home. Sure enough, as soon as we got in the car, he told me to undress again.

Ann Maree  15:27
Carya, what you are telling us is beyond words of response. Even sharing how sorry I am or how bad the audience likely feels as well, seems so trite. What happened to you is unconscionable. What was done in the places where God supposedly dwells, although I have to ask, did he by the men God theoretically ordained? And again, I have to ask, or did he? That should have never, ever have been. Your words are horrifying. They're chilling. When you said you lifted your eyes from the floor— following your humiliation and violation, only to see there was more to come. Tells us much about the impact of sadistic abuse— getting pleasure and sexual gratification from causing others pain and humiliation, and it was regularly performed on you. 

Hearing your story makes me wonder about your father and your other abusers. What about them, particularly your father? Do you know what in their background or their upbringing or their training? Did you come to understand about them and that helped inform you of their practices, especially those involving you?

Carya
Yeah, the main thing I know is that the perpetrators who were most significant in my life didn't spontaneously take up their abusive behaviors as adults. But I don't really know anything about my dad's childhood. No one ever told me. I know that no one in his family was safe for me, and I know that he was brought up to be like his own father, but I don't know what specifically that looked like. Was he broken by abuse before being drawn into the role of a perpetrator? Or was he privileged from birth, taught how to do these things, but never made to endure them himself, either as possible. My brother was taught from an early age to be a perpetrator, but I also saw him on the receiving end at times. But my brother is also very different from my father, and was raised for a different role. 

I do know that my mom's childhood was similar to mine, and that her marriage to my dad was planned by her parents. That helps me make sense of how she could be so thoroughly controlled by him, up to participating in my abuse at his behest, even if she didn't really want to. Even though I don't know the exact process by which my father became the man I knew, I lived with what he became his insatiable thirst for his own gratification, his unrelenting pursuit of my pain and anguish and humiliation, his utter delight and evil and his insistent involvement of other abusers in my exploitation formed the boundaries within which my life was lived for decades. That kind of evil is almost incomprehensible, but when we start to see that defiance of God and satanic allegiance, we're at the heart of it, it makes more sense. 

I started off by saying that I need to address the role that religious figures and institutions played in my story, and by saying that there was something that my dad got out of going to church, even though he didn't believe anything that was espoused there. It may sound like I got distracted from those points and have gone off on a tangent, but I haven't. This is all getting there. Sometimes satanic worship and church have everything to do with each other. The very first time we encounter the devil in the Bible, he is attacking God. When the serpent approaches Eve in the garden, she is not his primary target, and neither is Adam. Usually we focus on Adam and Eve in this story, and for good reason, but it's easy to miss the serpent's tactic and what it reveals about him. The serpent does not try to get the woman to worship him— which might surprise us if we expect that the devil's driving motive is to receive the things that worship implies, such as honor and praise and admiration and devotion. No, what drives the serpent is his hatred of God, and he hopes to strike a blow against God himself. He wants to break Adam and Eve's relationship with God because he knows that that will break God's heart. Satan hates God. He hates him, but he knows that he can't win a direct confrontation with him. So he strikes at God by striking at the people whom God has made and loves. The serpent lies to Eve about God, hoping to get her to doubt her Creator's love for her. And it works. Eve fears that God is withholding something good from her and Adam, and as a result, they both reach out to grasp it for themselves. The relationship breaks, and it will require God's sacrifice of his own Son to mend. We learn a lot about the serpent from this story. In it, God spoke the world into existence, then he spoke humans into being, then he spoke his instruction and protection to them. Then the serpent came along and asked, “Did God really say..?” suggesting that the words God spoke, the essence of his being, could not be trusted. Satan wants to take all the things that God made and called good and twist them into things that are the opposite of the way God intended. Can you imagine anything that would please the serpent more than using the church itself— the bride of Christ, whom Christ died to save— as a cover to hide his destructive work. Imagine then, just for a moment, where some of the people who serve the devil, people who love what he loves and hates what he hates, are most likely to show up. This is why religious figures are such an important part of my story. The people who were most significant in my abuse were all, quote, ‘church people.’ This is why my dad wanted to go to church, even though he didn't believe any of it. Churches were places where he could find other men like himself, and where he could gain access to other children besides me, the satanic commitments of my family meant that they could think of no better home for their activities than church.

Ann Maree
Yeah, and I just want to repeat what Carya just said. She said the people who were most significant in her abuse were all church people. And something that might get glossed over as we discuss what happened is also another statement she made. She said churches were places where her dad could find other men like himself, and where he could gain access to other children besides her. We'll discuss with one of our expert contributors what the fishers are in a church culture that attracts men like Carya's dad, places where he could gain access to children. And we've said it before, and I'm sure it's going to come up again, but you Carya, you are not a single victim of these kinds of abuse in the context of the church. The church needs to shine the light of truth and goodness and expose this wickedness. Our hope for this season is that we will do just that.

Carya
I'd also like to point out that Satan and those who serve him have been doing this kind of thing for 1000s of years, since the very beginning. It's an old playbook in Ezekiel, chapter 8, God showed the prophet that it was happening in the temple in Jerusalem. It's important to remember that this was during the time when many Israelites had been captured and exiled by the Babylonians, which God said was a punishment of their faithlessness to him, their God. A proper response to this catastrophe, especially from Israel's leaders, would have been repentance, renewed commitment to the Lord and cries for mercy. Instead, Ezekiel saw Israel's elders praying to idols in the temple. He saw women participating in the rites of a fertility cult at the entrance of the house of the Lord. Finally, he saw men, very likely priests, worshiping the sun as they stood in the sacred place near the altar in the temple. God tells Ezekiel that these things are abominations. In this passage, the supposed leaders of God's people do two things that I want to highlight. They consciously and deliberately worship idols and false gods, and they consciously and deliberately do it in the temple, which was the particular place where God dwelled. They weren't just misguided or confused or making a mistake. They're doing it on purpose that may have happened long ago, but the serpent hasn't changed, and humanity hasn't changed. Whatever drove those men and women to do those things in a sacred space in deliberate defiance of God is still active in the world. It shouldn't surprise us that Satan wanted those sorts of abominations to be done in the temple. In fact, I suspect that it may not surprise us, not when we're looking at Old Testament stories of things that happened 1000s of years ago. But why then are we surprised that Satan and those who seek to serve him still want evil to be done where God's people gather? When my dad lifted me onto his lap in the middle of a church service, he showed that he was like his father the devil by deliberately violating God's temple, my body, the temple of the Holy Spirit, in the middle of a place and in a service both ostensibly dedicated to God.

Ann Maree 
Carya, you and I talked a lot about whether to name this part of your story, whether to talk about satanic worship. It's definitely not a topic we hear very often from the pulpit or in our small life groups, or even in whichever contemporary Christian living book makes it to the top of the charts for religious literature. In lay counseling, and even in Christian counseling, there is no training for caring for people who have endured some of the abuses you are describing. And of all the quote, unquote, professions for caregiving in the church, we should be those most versed in how to care for the victims of ritualistic abuse and cultish satanic worship.

Carya
Yeah, this is something I do not talk about. As you know, Ann Maree, I originally planned on not going here at all in my storytelling, because it's hard to explain, and it might sound like the debunked Satanic Panic from the 1980s and 90s. Additionally, I was concerned that sharing this part of the story might make people just tune out. Unless they happen to work with this kind of abuse or know someone who has experienced it, they might question what relevance this story could have for them. After all, most abusers don't do what they do because they're worshiping Satan. Most Christians don't even encounter people who knowingly worship Satan. People might listen to this as a curiosity, but how could a story like mine help them in the situations they face? 

There are several things that it might help to remember when we think about all this. First is that after sin entered the world, God said that all people would be either offspring of the woman, meaning children of God, or offspring of the serpent, which is the devil, and that there would be enmity between them. It's in Genesis chapter 3. Another is that Jesus told some people who were ostensibly part of God's chosen people, that their real father was the devil, that they were like him, and that they wanted to carry out his desires— John 8:44. Finally, Jesus came into the world to destroy the works of the devil as it says in 1 John, chapter 3. The devil wants only to steal, kill and destroy. He loves abuse in every form, and works in and through it, whether or not the abuser is thinking about him, all sexual violence is satanic. Satan delights in it all. My dad and others in my life may have served Satan on purpose, but all that means is that my story allows a clearer view into what is happening whenever people harm others. It goes back to what I said before about how it's hard for modern Western Christians to recognize how evil evil can be. We think evil looks like our political opponents or annoying neighbors, or more seriously, we think it looks like deranged criminals or cruel dictators in other countries or people from other eras in history. Some of those things are expressions of real evil, but there are other expressions that happen right under our noses in our own neighborhoods. The Bible calls Satan the evil one, and because he hates God, he hates us, he is our enemy. Revelation says that he has come down to earth in great wrath to fight against us. But we live in an age when many of us, even many Christians, don't take the idea of evil or an evil one, very seriously. The concept of real spiritual beings that hate us and hate God and that actually exist and are at work in the world offends our post enlightenment, scientific Western sensibilities. 

I also think we have a lot of pop culture pictures in our minds about things that are satanic, and those pictures are either so bizarre or so ridiculous or inclined to dismiss the whole idea. CS Lewis makes a similar point in The Screwtape Letters by having Screwtape, a senior demon, counsel a younger demon about how to keep people from taking seriously the demon's existence. Screwtape says, “I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping your patient in the dark. The fact that devils are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights and persuade him that, since he cannot believe in that— it is an old textbook method of confusing them— he therefore cannot believe in you.” If you had ever come over to our house when I was growing up, you wouldn't have seen anything that looked satanic, no altars or goats heads or blood red candles or black cloths draped over everything or whatever we think satanic looks like. My parents wore normal clothes, decorated their home with normal art, and had normal books on their normal shelves in their very normal looking home. If evil looked obvious or screamed out its existence, it would be a lot harder for it to do its work.

Ann Maree
Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned the Satanic Panic in the 80s and 90s. Those were the years my kids were in preschool, so I paid close attention in light of what happened, though, it's important to remember a couple things. One, in the American legal system, ritualism is not a crime. As well, and because of the freedoms afforded to Americans in the US Constitution, cults— including satanic cults, are entirely legal. Some of the expressions of ritualistic and cultish practices are crimes, of course, but that's not because they were committed by a cult. If a cult murders someone, the murder is illegal, but the cult's religious beliefs and practices that may have inspired that murder are not. 

So this leads to the second thing to remember, our court system does not adjudicate satanic beliefs or practices. In one of the very visible cases involving alleged satanic abuse, the jurors were only tasked with either convicting or exonerating those accused of a crime of childhood sexual abuse. The jury did not find enough evidence to convict. But this does not mean that they determined that there was no abuse or that there was no satanic worship. As Jim Wilder writes, quote, “all we can conclude from the verdict is that we are not sure who did it.” But I think in the minds of my generation and those who are older, the existence of satanic worship itself was entirely debunked. It was not. To understand people who worship Satan and inflict sadistic harms, as you have been and continue to describe, we recognize that they are persons void of any feelings for anyone but themselves. They lack any care regarding another person's feelings, and they have a callous disregard for people in general. From their perspective, people are merely objects to be used for gratification. This is not to say sadistic abusers are oblivious to other people's feelings, particularly those they abuse, otherwise, it wouldn't matter what type of object they chose to attack. No, they know precisely how the victim feels. Their harm is deliberate, calculated, organized and vengeful, specifically designed to satisfy the self, to empower the self and to dominate self over others. So we might not have words for how to think about satanic abuse, but self seeking is one concept we do have categories for in Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices Puritan Thomas Brooks warns that the enemy's quote, “first device to destroy the great and honorable of the Earth is by working them to make it their business, to seek themselves— to seek how to elevate themselves, to raise themselves, to enrich themselves, to secure themselves by drawing them wholly to mind themselves and only to mind themselves. And in all things, to mind themselves and always to mind themselves.” Self seeking like the deluge overthrows the whole world. Those who desire to destroy God's beauty, goodness, hope, image bearers, identity, trust and faith know this, which makes satanic worship a corruption of worship as God intends. 

Self-Care Break with Julia
Hi, Friends, let's take a moment and pause together. We're walking through heavy material, and this is just a gentle reminder that we don't have to push through. It's okay to stop and it's okay to push pause and come back later or not, if you choose. Remember you are human and you have limitations, and that's okay. You don't have to carry everything at once. You can honor another story and honor how you carry and hold things too. 

Take a moment and briefly check in with yourself. What's going on inside your body? How are you feeling? Where are you holding tension? Are your shoulders tight? Relax any muscles that feel tense. Is your breathing shallow, or are your thoughts racing? Take a deep breath in and slowly exhale. Rinse and repeat. As you're regulating your body, I want to remind you of spiritual truths that we can hold on to as we move forward. 

Christ's kingdom is at work to push back the darkness every square inch, bit by bit, his word reminds us that he our King, will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. When things are not okay, that means he isn't done. He works to execute justice. He reigns. He hears the cries of his people, and he promises to respond. 

Take one more deep breath and exhale. We're here with you, and we'll keep going together.

Ann Maree
Carya, can you explain the uniqueness of this a bit further, and then perhaps the implications for you?

Carya
I'm far from an expert on satanic worship, and I don't want to try to speak definitively about all the different forms it might take, because I simply don't know. But here's how I understand my own experience. Jesus said that true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. We worship God because he is good and beautiful and glorious and worthy. We worship God because of who he is and because we love him. True worship of the one true God is an end in itself. Satanic worship, false worship, is a means to an end. My family did not love Satan. They loved power, control and domination, the things that Satan loves. They hated humility, self-sacrifice and peace, things Satan hates, turning things upside down from the way God meant them to be was itself, the act of worship. They didn't sing demonic songs or pray demonic prayers or read demonic scriptures the way a Christian might have their daily devotions, their awful violations were their devotions. They served and worshiped Satan by being like him. My dad's satanic commitments and worship infused everything he ever did to me and everything he ever organized others to do to me. Throughout my life, he went out of his way to find others with similar allegiances who were embedded in religious contexts. We'd like to believe this is a rarity— that it would be hard to find that churches would be the least hospitable places for those who hate God and seek to defy him. But if you hate God, there is no better target than the church, and if you want to destroy the church, one way to do it is from within, living among your prey and picking them off at your leisure, disguised in their clothing. My dad had no trouble finding the kind of people he was looking for.

When we moved across the country, and my parents prioritized finding a church in our new city, as I said last time, that's what my dad was looking for, a church with wolves in sheep's clothing. He found one, and we became members, and stayed for about eight years. My mom sang in the choir, and eventually my dad became a deacon. But about two years after my mom died, we stopped going. I can't remember dad talking with us about it, but my soccer schedule, with its Sunday games created a logistical conflict, yet once my schedule changed again, Dad never showed any interest in returning. I now know that's because he found other ways to get what he wanted from churches without having to waste his time at the Sunday services that he despised. From that point on, although it may have looked like my dad had checked out of church and was just letting me do whatever I wanted, as far as my spiritual life was concerned, the truth was that he was still actively involved. He was pulling the strings. When I started going on my own to a different church in high school, my dad worked his network to find a few people there who he could connect me to, giving them permission or really instructions to access me sexually on Sunday mornings or Wednesday evenings, if they could do it safely. 

Even though my dad was no longer violating me during a church service himself, he made sure that church would be an unsafe place for me. For me, being at church meant being constantly faced with the awful dissonance of listening to people who had molested me talk about Jesus. I can just imagine Screwtape’s advice and remember that for Screwtape, the enemy is God. “It is well enough, I suppose he might say to a younger demon, if you can lead your patient to engage in sexual acts with children to please himself, but far more delicious to our father below is when you can get him to lust for the crushing of the child's soul more than he lusts to fulfill his own sexual desires. Is there anything more sublime than a child being raped in the heart of the enemy's house while being told that this is exactly what the enemy wants?” It makes perfect sense, doesn't it, but my dad and my family did more than abuse me in churches and find churches that sheltered others like themselves who could violate me too. From their perspective, even better than my dad raping me in the pew during the service, or the pastor raping me in his office after were organized sessions of abuse— rituals performed in churches or elsewhere by groups of people in conscious imitation of their father, the devil.

Ann Maree
That was such a key statement, and I want to repeat again what you just said. You said, we quote, “worship God because of who he is and because we love him. True worship of the one true God is an end in itself. Satanic worship, false worship, is a means to an end.” This is such an important distinction because of the implications for other types of abuses We've recently been witnessing more frequently. I'm thinking particularly of domestic abuse. When you said satanic worship is a means to an end, what came to my mind is what Jeremy Pierre and Greg Wilson write when they wrote in, When Home Hurts, they say, me over you. But anyway, picking up where you're heading next Carya, there is a similar element to Christian worship as well, that ritualistic abuse is organized around. Can you help us understand ritualistic abuse?

Carya
Yeah, I'll leave it to the experts to formally define. And I'm so glad that you'll be able to talk to some experts, but although it may sound complex, it's actually really simple. Any ritual, whether good or bad, is a deliberate, planned activity designed to symbolize, express and reinforce beliefs. Christian rituals like baptism or the Lord's Supper, symbolize and express important truths and help believers to remember them and take them in more fully. Graduation ceremonies are rituals that symbolize academic achievement and transitions in life and that try to impress on graduates the importance of their next steps. Weddings, funerals, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, singing the national anthem, praying before a meal, even birthday parties are all to varying degrees, practices that either are themselves rituals or that have rituals embedded in them. We all participate in rituals regularly. Rituals both good and bad, follow a script. They're not random or ad hoc. There are specific things that are done and said in rituals in a specific order. If it's a ritual that's repeated regularly, like communion, then some of those things are done and said in the same way every time. This doesn't mean that every single element of a larger ceremony in which rituals play a part are always exactly the same. For example, even Christian wedding ceremonies contain many diverse elements, but there are always vows and rings are exchanged and someone officiates, and once the necessary parts of the ritual are complete, the man and woman are wedded to one another and presented as a married couple. Even simple rituals have scripts. You know you're at a birthday party because there's a song and a cake and candles. Because rituals follow a script, it means they are planned ahead of time. Part of the plan might include spontaneity. A wedding might include an open mic during the ceremony for attendees to speak blessings over the bride and groom. But the people leading the ceremony know they're going to do that and when and for how long— those leading rituals of any kind don't simply show up and then say, well, gosh, guys, here we are. Anyone got a plan? What do you think we should do? Finally, rituals, good and bad, almost always involve more than one person, and usually they involve a bunch of people. Sometimes most of the people are there as witnesses, as with a wedding. Other times, most of the people are there as participants, as with communion. Often there's a blending of the two roles. But if the purpose of any ritual is to symbolize, express and reinforce beliefs, this is best done in the context of relating to other people. A so-called ritual that you do entirely alone is more like a habit or a practice or a discipline. So organized ritual abuse is simply that— a planned event in which a group of people come together to use sex and other forms of abuse to symbolize, express and reinforce certain beliefs or values, both for themselves and for their victims. 

Not all ritual abuse is religious in nature. Abusive rituals can symbolize, express and reinforce beliefs that are not based on religion. Just think about how a gang could create abusive rituals to keep members loyal or a pimp could create rituals to keep his prostitutes under his control. But in my case, most of the ritual abuse I experienced was religious in nature. So then the question is, what belief systems did my dad and other men who controlled me symbolize, express and reinforce in their rituals? Given everything I've already talked about, you can probably guess they turned what God called good upside down. They loved what was evil and hated what was good. They sought power, control, dominance and ownership. They taught me that I was worthless, a slave and subject to their every whim. They sought to demonstrate that God couldn't help me, or didn't want to help me, or even that what he really wanted was to hurt me.

Ann Maree
Oh my gosh, they shaped your identity. Wilder, again, writes that quote, “When parents cause a child to associate certain messages with fear, these messages will replay themselves loudly whenever the child feels fear.” And and fear for you, Carya was a constant companion, and so the degrading and dehumanizing messages were as well. Heather Gingrich writes in her new book, Shattered No More that organized perpetrator groups make Satan's work easier. No matter the type of ritualistic abuse and victims may like you, have been tortured in multiple ways— rape, incest, trafficked. This darkness is the devil's domain, and where this evil runs rampant, Satan stakes his claim. Who wouldn't question a god of goodness when their world is full of Satan's manipulation, control and sadistic practices. 

One thing that might be helpful before we talk about being defiled in churches is something you, Carya shared in episode two, you talked about Jesus as your Captain, and how at times he will enter into some of the most evil spaces for the sake of his beloved. Scripture tells us God will never leave us. Never forsake us. There is no evil that repels him from our care. No place to evil where God won't go to rescue his people. Psalm 139 says that even the darkness will not be dark to God. We, all, you and I, as well as the audience, need to remember that as we hear this part of your story.

Carya
That's such a good reminder when I wrote about that in Jesus is My Captain- when I told Jesus, fine, you go to places where sexual torture is like this, but leave me out of it. These are exactly the kinds of things I was talking about. And when I came later to understand that Jesus is indeed my captain, going with me into those very places. Again, the things I'm about to share are exactly the kinds of places that I was talking about. I think it's important to help listeners understand a little bit more about what ritual abuse in the service of Satan really means. And I know this will be hard to hear. But these are the places that Jesus wants to go to rescue the captives and shine his light in the dark. Here's one of those places

Ann Maree
Which leads me to, once again, prepare our listeners in the audience for some very sadistic practices told in the next portion of this story. Again, if you'd prefer not to hear these details, you can skip past this section to timestamp 1:00.

Carya
At my first church, the one where I spent so much time in the pastor's office as a little girl, I also spent a lot of time in the sanctuary at night with the pastor and my dad and other men often tied down on the altar or standing naked, staring fearfully at what they had laid on it. For all the years that I was trapped in this network, the sanctuaries of churches I attended were also places where rituals were held at night. This is shocking, but it shouldn't be surprising. Think again about the logic of Satan. He is a mocker, one who loves to twist the things of God for his own ends. In Revelation’s apocalyptic account John is shown the final war that Satan wages against the Church of God. Satan raises up a beast in deliberate mockery of Christ, like Jesus, the beast appeared to have been slain and resurrected, which caused the whole world to marvel at it and follow it. Jesus is the name at which one day every knee will bow, but before that, this beast will be worshiped by all who dwell on earth, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life— Revelation 13:8.. If Satan is willing to mock the crucified and resurrected Christ, why would he shrink away from mocking true worship in a Christian sanctuary and on a Christian altar? What sacrifice would please him more than the crushed heart, mind, body and spirit of a child? In a ritual like this, I lay tied wide open and terrified on an altar while one man read from the Bible or recited pieces of liturgy, while the others took their turns with me, timing certain acts to coincide exactly with particular things that were read. Sometimes they made me recite things instead, perhaps a prayer of thanksgiving at each new penetration, or a prayer of petition asking by name for the one who would rape me next. 

During these sessions, they told me contradictory things and performed contradictory things. They told me that this was what God wanted, that it pleased him, that this was how I could serve him. They told me that if Jesus was there, he would rape me too. Other times, they told me that they were stronger than Jesus, that Satan was stronger than God, and that the reason God didn't respond to my pleas and screams was because he was too weak to help me. They mocked Christian rituals by performing wedding ceremonies with Satan as the groom and I as the bride, or by conducting upside down baptisms, communions and blessings. Many rituals like these were brutally explicit in the way they twisted Christian practices and symbolism. 

Other rituals focused on deliberately doing things the opposite of the way God intended. God made every person in his own image, which means that every person is worthy of dignity, honor and care. God designed sex to be a spiritual and physical union between one man and one woman in a life-long covenant of marriage that pictures the relationship of Christ and the church. Jesus commanded his followers to cherish, nurture and protect children. But I was subjected to many rituals that symbolized expressed and reinforced beliefs in direct opposition to these things. My abusers used the Bible as a sort of reverse textbook, whatever it says not to do, they made a point to do. They knew the Scriptures well. As God's image bearers, we are different from all other creatures and uniquely stamped with his likeness, but my dad and other men often treated me like an animal. 

In one ritual that I endured more than once over the years, my dad put me down on my hands and knees, buckled a collar around my neck, clipped a leash to it, then led me crawling toward one of the other people in the room. One by one, I was required to service each person there in whatever way they wanted. If my dad was pleased with my service, I might get a pat on the head and told I was a good girl. Periodically, he'd give me a break, leading me over to a bowl of water on the floor that I could lap out of like a dog. This stuff was not subtle. As I got older and my body got bigger, there was more they could do with me, more that my body could take. They played with me, toying with my pain and humiliation and forcing my body to respond in whatever ways they wanted to anything and everything they did. Instead of just treating me like an animal or making me act like an animal, men made me read the passages of scripture that condemn bestiality, while they brought in animals that then became my rapists. Scriptures outlining God's design for sex were regularly featured at the beginning of rituals that went on to perform the very things that God forbids. Watching me during these horrific episodes always excited my tormentors, which meant that their rape would soon follow. Their ability to make my body respond sexually to these awful things was and still is one of the very worst parts of all of this, even more than the bestiality or other sexual perversions themselves. It was also an incredibly powerful way to reinforce in me the belief that I deserved these things. That was one of the beliefs that they sought to symbolize, express and reinforce. They wanted me to think that it was correct and proper, that I not be cherished, nurtured or protected, that what God says about children didn't apply to me. They told me this often, and in one ritual early in my life, they went out of their way to implant that belief deep in my being. 

During the summer when I was five, my parents and I drove out into the country one day, our destination was someone's property out in the middle of nowhere, and when we got there, other cars already filled the drive. As evening started to fall, my dad took me out into the field where everyone was, and tied me spread eagle to stakes pounded into the ground after the men who encircled me each took their turn, they got down to their real business. The ritual took the rest of the night, ending with my father back inside me as the black sky started to pale with the false hope of dawn. The hours between were filled with overwhelming pain and fear, lots of blood and a torrent of brutal, crushing words. What they told me all night long was that I wasn't a little girl and had never really been one. Instead, I was a thing— a thing created just for rape. To prove it, my dad staged an elaborate performance suggesting that he had ripped out my insides, including my heart, then shoved a grotesque object in where my heart belonged. You see little girls, children whom God loves, have hearts but things don't. That's why he had to do this ritual to take out the heart I shouldn't have had in the first place and replace it with something inhuman as befit my identity and purpose. 

 

This may sound incredibly clumsy, like a B-grade movie. Obviously, my dad couldn't remove my heart and replace it was something else, but in my short five years, I'd gone through lots of crazy things, as clumsy as it may sound, it worked. I believed what my dad told me, what he and those other men symbolized, expressed and reinforced in me that night— that I wasn't human, that I existed only to be used by them, and that Satan had all rights to me. Jesus may love the little children, all the children of the world, but I learned that night that I wasn't really a child, whatever I might look like on the outside.

 

Ann Maree
I truly cannot believe that you survived not just the assaults on your precious body, but the all out war on your young mind. What comes to my mind is a version of the statement Jesus made in Matthew 25 verse 40— unto the least of these. What you do to them, you also do to me. As you mentioned, Carya, you are an image bearer. The crimes committed against you violated that image— God's image. But I also hope that there is some level of comfort for you, for the listener too, in hearing Lamentations 3 at the end of 36 “The Lord does not approve of these things.” And then Galatians 6:7 “Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” There is a price that will be required for what was done to you.

Carya
Yes, there is some comfort in that. And it has to be said that if my dad, or any of these other men should truly repent and turn to Christ as their Lord and throw themselves on his mercy, then that price will have been paid by Jesus on the cross. That's how astounding God's redemption is. And if, as I frankly, expect, my dad doesn't repent, then he'll pay that price himself. But it is incredibly helpful to know that God is angry about what all these men did to me, and that he will pour out his wrath in punishment for them. It may not come on Earth, but there will be justice. 

These things that make God angry, this satanic worship and ritual abuse are unbelievably awful, and as we both have been saying throughout this episode, hard to hear. So I'd like to say something again about why I think it's important to hear. As I already mentioned, I originally planned to not share about this stuff, and it's been really hard to do so. But there are two things I hope listeners will take away from it. The first is that the kinds of things I endured are not as rare as we want to think. Suffering of this magnitude is nowhere near as scarce as we wish. I am not a one off a unique kind of victim or a strange specimen to be ogled like some museum curio. My story is not a one in a million kind of story. There are probably people you've run across with a background not terribly dissimilar to mine. There may even be people you know with a story like mine, and even if they never share it, or even if you never know it. I hope that being aware that stories like this exist will increase our capacity to see and attend compassionately to deep brokenness. 

Second, even if you never encounter someone with a life like mine, my story is profoundly relevant for the kind of evil you do encounter in this fallen world. When an abuser corners a child and molests her then tells her that it was her fault that he had to do it because she's a dirty little girl, he's displaying the same kind of evil I experienced. He's using his actions and his words to express his beliefs about himself and her, and he's trying to reinforce them in her. He wants her to believe she's dirty, not worthy of love or care or protection. Same thing when a husband demands that his wife satisfy him sexually however he wants, because he's the head of the household and it's her duty to submit to him. When parents tell their children that they'll never measure up to their siblings, or that they're stupid or bad, they're teaching their children who and what they think they really are, just like my dad tried to teach me who and what he thought I really was. Bullies demean classmates in front of others. Teachers humiliate students for poor performance. Church members shame each other for not having their act together. Coworkers and bosses stroke their own egos or seek advancement at the expense of their colleagues. People post lies and accusations on social media in order to gain followers or power or glory, often by tearing others down. We misuse / abuse other people all the time, and every single one of those people are made in God's image. They are made to be used rightly with great care and gentleness. These examples of misuse may not be as extreme, as distilled, as was my misuse in satanic organized ritual abuse. But they're still evil. There's still things that make Satan very, very happy. I don't mean to minimize what I went through and what I know others have gone through. I want listeners to be equipped to handle stories like mine, to be able to walk the long road with people like me. But I also want listeners to take away from my story just how serious evil is in the forms we might be more accustomed to seeing it in. Really the kind of evil that happens in organized rituals is just a particularly concentrated form, different in degree, but not in kind, from the way evil works everywhere.

Ann Maree
And I can 100% attest to that. In her book Predators, author Anna Salter interviewed random sadistic murderers, and abusers, and what she found was that predators, which basically means someone who preys on or feeds on or derives something from others. In the church context, we call them wolves, but predators tend to keep records of their exploits. One sadist recording his particular handiwork wrote a quote recipe for a relationship, and it included ideas such as, get satisfaction early, isolate her contact with others, don't let her make any decisions. Make her dependent, don't let her have any power, and never trust her completely. We often hear similar ideas when we're talking about domestic abuse, right? And we've also heard those same things in your story, too. 

But let's now talk about where this story is heading. I know you've expressed a lot of concern for our audience and not wanting to cause them any harm, while also trying to find a balance for providing specific information. So speak a little bit about that desire as well.

Carya
Next time I'm planning to talk about the men who became my handlers after I left home. Each of them were much like my dad, and each of them were significant figures in their churches and other Christian institutions. I think it's important to shine a light on how the kind of organized abuse I endured can take place not only within churches, but actually led by church leaders. 

Soon, I'll also get more deeply into a question that I imagine many are asking even more now than after the last episode, which is, how on earth did all this stay hidden? 

But for now, I'd like to end on a note of hope. I don't want to do this just to try to wrap a pretty bow on all this and pretend it's okay. I hate it when Christians do that. But I've walked you through some dark valleys today, and it's important to remember that those valleys aren't the end of the story. The ultimate end of the story is the utter, devastating defeat of Satan and all works of darkness. It's a permanent end to grief and sorrow and pain and sin. It's being with Jesus face to face, unashamed and unafraid. It's peace and rest, and finally, everything everywhere exactly as it should be for all eternity. And even now, when the world still groans and God's people are still waiting for that ultimate end, God is working out his better story for me. I'm free of my father now, free of my handlers, free of the satanic network that held me for so long. I have a meaningful job, doing work I love. I'm in a good church, one that is safe, one where I'm able to serve, one where I've gone over to the pastor's house to have dinner with his family and not been afraid. These are extraordinary gifts. I said last time that I'm not all fixed up and that I still suffer from all this every day. That's true, but it is also true that God is good and that he's been good to me. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has neither understood nor overcome it.

Ann Maree
That is so important, Carya, and that truth is sustaining. I'm glad you are both encouraging us that, yes, things are better now, but also reminding us, no, this is not fixed. You are not fixed. These circumstances have been, are now and will always be difficult burdens to bear. 

Once again, I'd like to end this episode with a note to our audience, but before I do, I want to remind you that in this episode and in this series, I have been a listener too. I've heard the same story you have as the audience, and in fact, I've heard even more of the story in our workshops as Carya and I sift through so many details and so much evil. So my words here today are as a fellow sufferer, if you will, alongside you one who would have preferred to remain oblivious to the horrific events we are now bearing witness to. 

With that in mind, I want to suggest a couple things. First, please take time, after hearing Carrie's story today, to look for something beautiful. Think about the note of hope she left us with. The most beautiful wonder we will ever discover is our heavenly Father. So maybe take some time and look for him. The whole earth is full of his glory. 

Second, lift your words of horror and lament, as you have just borne witness to him. Diane Langberg In her book written to counselors In Our Lives First suggests that perhaps we've been placed in these spaces of hearing things no one should have ever experienced, so that we can pray. Pray for Carya— pray for her healing. Pray for others who are currently in bondage to those who devote their lives to the evil one. Pray for evil men and women's souls and pray for all things to be made new. 

Next time on the safe to hope podcast, I'll be engaging Dr Jim Wilder on the topic of, how does this happen in the church? Dr Wilder is an author and speaker specializing in the life model and neuropsychology. Dr Wilder refers to himself as a neuro theologian. He's also not as known for his expertise and work helping the church help those who have been victimized by communities whose lives revolve around Satan. His work is a non sensational approach, and it helps encourage finding positive answers to some of the most difficult questions surrounding this type of evil. 

[closing]

Safe to Hope is a production of HelpHer. Our Executive Producer is Ann Maree Goudzwaard. Safe to Hope is written and mixed by Ann Maree and edited by Ann Maree and Helen Weigt. Music in this season is ‘Cinematic Slow Sad Piano | Soundtrack’ by OpenMusicList, licensed via Pixabay. We hope you enjoyed this episode in the Safe To Hope podcast series.