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🔗 Religion 🔗 Women's History 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Religion 🔗 Religion/New religious movements 🔗 Japan/Shinto

Oomoto (大本, Ōmoto, Great Source, or Great Origin), also known as Oomoto-kyo (大本教, Ōmoto-kyō), is a religion founded in 1892 by Deguchi Nao (1836–1918), often categorised as a new Japanese religion originated from Shinto. The spiritual leaders of the movement have predominantly been women; however, Deguchi Onisaburō (1871–1948) has been considered an important figure in Omoto as a seishi (spiritual teacher). Since 2001, the movement has been guided by its fifth leader, Kurenai Deguchi.

🔗 United States 🔗 Religion 🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Alternative Views 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Religion/New religious movements 🔗 United States/U.S. history 🔗 Crime and Criminal Biography 🔗 Religion/Left Hand Path

The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient (and future wife), Michelle Smith, which used the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping lurid claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which afterwards arose throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution.

Nearly every aspect of the ritual abuse is controversial, including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof thereof, testimonies of alleged victims, and court cases involving the allegations and criminal investigations. The panic affected lawyers, therapists, and social workers who handled allegations of child sexual abuse. Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups, including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child advocates, therapists, and clients in psychotherapy. The term satanic abuse was more common early on; this later became satanic ritual abuse and further secularized into simply ritual abuse. Over time, the accusations became more closely associated with dissociative identity disorder (then called multiple personality disorder) and anti-government conspiracy theories.

Initial interest arose via the publicity campaign for Pazder's 1980 book Michelle Remembers, and it was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by coverage of the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors, and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular, and religious conferences as well as through talk shows, sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, which, as one researcher put it in 2017, "involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping paedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers."

Of the more than 12,000 documented accusations nationwide, investigating police were not able to substantiate any allegations of organized cult abuse.

🔗 Human rights 🔗 Medicine 🔗 Religion 🔗 Death 🔗 China 🔗 Religion/New religious movements 🔗 Religion/Falun Gong

Reports of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other political prisoners in China have raised increasing concern within the international community. According to a report by former lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights campaigner David Matas and Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation researcher Ethan Gutmann, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, may be executed "on demand" in order to provide organs for transplant to recipients.

Reports on systematic organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners first emerged in 2006, though the practice is thought by some to have started six years earlier. Several researchers—most notably Matas, Kilgour and Gutmann—estimate that tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience have been killed to supply a lucrative trade in human organs and cadavers and that these abuses may be ongoing. These conclusions are based on a combination of statistical analysis; interviews with former prisoners, medical authorities and public security agents; and circumstantial evidence, such as the large number of Falun Gong practitioners detained extrajudicially in China and the profits to be made from selling organs.

The Chinese government long denied all accusations of organ harvesting. However, the failure of Chinese authorities to effectively address or refute the charges has drawn attention and public condemnation from some governments, international organizations and medical societies. The parliaments of Canada and the European Union, as well as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, have adopted resolutions condemning the forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. United Nations Special Rapporteurs have called on the Chinese government to account for the sources of organs used in transplant practices, and the World Medical Association, the American Society of Transplantation and the Transplantation Society have called for sanctions on Chinese medical authorities. Several countries have also taken or considered measures to deter their citizens from travelling to China for the purpose of obtaining organs. A documentary on organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, Human Harvest, received a 2014 Peabody Award recognizing excellence in broadcast journalism. China eventually admitted that it had engaged in systematic organ harvesting from death row prisoners, though it denies that such an organ harvesting program is ongoing.