ISSB of California

The severe abuse described in Hell Minus One, by Anne A Johnson Davis, is horrific and will be too graphic for some people to read. However, for survivors of extreme, systematic child abuse, this book may be a godsend, and, for everyone else, this book is informative and fascinating. The author describes her healing and recovery from the abuse with clarity and grace. And, unlike many other memoirs of ritual abuse survivors, this book is very well written and easy to understand.

When Anne was three and a half, her mother decided to stop protecting her from her husband, Anne's step-father, and even began to participate in the bizarre satanic cult to which her husband's relatives belonged. She apparently agreed to offer Anne as a sacrifice to be used by the cult however they wished. The cult chose to torture, terrorize, and torment Anne as a sacrificial object, and threaten her life if she told anyone -- or even remembered.   They also sodomized, orally raped her, and impaled her with a wire, which caused severe, unusual scarring of her cervix which required cryosurgury as an adult.  The torture, terrorizing, and threatening rendered Anne unable to recall any of the abuse during her day to day regular existence.

Anne's mother drugged Anne with large amounts of cough syrup in preparation each time before Anne was abused. Afterwards, she would tell lies about it, tell Anne she'd had a terrible nightmare, and keep her home from school "sick" until it was determined that Anne could not recall what happened and was "leveled out."

When Anne was 12, her family moved to another town, where the rest of them lived in a large trailer, but had Anne sleep in a small house close by. Anne was happy to be farther away from her parents, but one would think that the separated sleeping area probably made her even more vulnerable to the cult members. Fortunately, at age 17, after having been used in nine satanic rituals as a sacrificial object, Anne ran away to L.A., where she was, ironically, much safer than she had been at home.

Anne A Johnson Davis was lucky enough to have been loved unconditionally by her mother for the first three years of her life. She also had wonderful Sunday school teachers and school teachers. These factors may have given her a spiritual edge that kept her more stable and functional than many other ritual abuse survivors. Anne's descriptions of the ritual abuse and mind control methods she endured make it easy to understand why so many other ritual abuse survivors end up as drug addicts, or with severe dissociative disorders.

In Hell Minus One, Anne describes how, as an adult, when she was alone at home, she allowed herself to process and recover her ritual abuse memories. Survivors of severe abuse generally don?t want to believe their own memories of betrayal by their own parents, because the emotional pain of the betrayal is almost impossible to live with. Suicide, drug addiction, and insanity are often easier choices than remembering the pain.

Childhood traumatic memories are stored in the brain in fragments and flashes instead of in the usual short-term or long-term memory pathways.  Fragments and flashbacks of early childhood severe abuse can make someone literally feel crazy, and so, survivors often need a therapist to help them sort out the fragments and stay grounded during the process of re-living the memories.  Fortunately, Anne had a good therapist who did not make suggestions or guide her memories, but only helped her pick up the pieces and sort through them, so it seems indisputable that her memories are genuine.  Furthermore, Anne's parents wrote confessions which substantiated all of her allegations and even provided extra details that Anne couldn't have known.  Her half-siblings also wrote letters that corroborated her story.

The FMSF (False Memory Syndrome Foundation) Newsletter review of Hell Minus One asks why the author didn't pursue a criminal suit against her parents, and their review even questions the existence of Satanic Ritual Abuse.  Anne's parents did settle with her out of court to pay for some of her therapy expenses.  Yes, Anne does have a huge amount of corroborating evidence, and might have been able to see them convicted and imprisoned.  But Anne explains very clearly that church officials and law enforcement officials had already taken steps to protect other children from her parents.  If Anne had focused on revenge and criminal charges, then she wouldn't have had the time to focus on her own spiritual and emotional health, and on reconnecting with her birth father and his family, which she so lovingly describes in her book.

Hell Minus One is a must read for all survivors of extreme, systematic child abuse, and is a must read for anyone who has ever doubted the reality of the existence of abusive satanic cults.  It is also a story that demonstrates the power we have within and around us to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds.