Satanic Scandal comes back to haunt Middleton

THIS last week's revelations by Northern Voices, Paul Waugh and Simon Danczuk have not just hit Rochdale, but the 1990's Satanic scandal in Middleton has come again to the surface in the claims of the culture of 'cover-up'.   The people of nearby Middleton have been reminded of the time police alighted on homes on the Langley estate in the 1990s to snatch children from their families who were falsely being accused of Satanic abuse.  In all 21 children were taken from poor working-class homes in the early 1990 by police and social workers.

Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk, now claims that there was a cover-up and newspapers like the Middleton Guardian had to fight a gagging order which led to a long legal fight that cost £120,000.  In the end the paper won, but it took until 2006, 16-years after the first lot of kids were taken away, before the Middleton Guardian could give an account of the dodgy 'interview techniques (that) led social workers to suspect parents were engaging their children in Satanic Abuse rituals'.  According to the Guardian:  'No evidence of Satanic abuse has been revealed and their harrowing ordeals led to some of them being kept in care for up to 10 years.' 

The identities of the children and the social workers were only brought out after a legal challenge kicked-off against an injunction which gagged the media after the case got going.  This case demonstrated the crazy nature of some aspect of the theory of social work.