Perhaps no skeptic has done more to obfuscate the issue of ritual abuse than Kenneth Lanning of the FBI, who for years has maintained that no substantive evidence exists for the reality of ritual abuse (Lanning, 1991). (As investigative journalist Civia Tamarkin has noted, for decades the FBI also told the American public that the Mafia did not exist in the United States (1991)). “No bodies…No adult witnesses,” as Parenting magazine put it so succinctly, and so erroneously in their March 1994 article “The Satanism Scare” (Ruben, 1994). And why do accounts like the ones given by the 37 ritually abused adults in the Young et al. (1991) study, and the 14 ritually abused families in the Kelly (1992a) study, of group sexual assaults, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism and the like not constitute eyewitness accounts to so-called experts like Lanning?"from Denying Ritual Abuse of ChildrenThe Journal of Psychohistory 22 (3) 1995

This monograph by Special Agent Ken Lanning (1992) is merely a guide for those who may investigate this phenomenon, as the title indicates, and not a study. The author is a well known skeptic regarding cult and ritual abuse allegations and has consulted on a number of cases but to our knowledge has not personally investigated the majority of these cases, some of which have produced convictions. p179[refers to Lanning, K. V. (1992)Investigator's guide to allegations of "ritual" child abuse. Quantico, VA: National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.]