Ralph Underwager

Biography

He was born on 28 July 1929. He earned a Master of Divinity from Concordia Seminary of St. Louis in 1951 and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1955. He was a pastor of Lutheran Churches in Iowa and Minnesota. He became the director of the Institute for Psychological Therapies in Northfield, Minnesota in 1974. He died on 29 November 2003.

Founder of VOCAL

Underwager first appeared in court as a defense witness for two of the accused in the 1984 Jordan, Minnesota case, one of the earliest attempts to prosecute alleged organized child sexual abuse in the United States. On the stand, Underwager argued that the children’s testimony of abuse was the result of brainwashing by social workers using Communist thought-reform techniques. The accused couple were acquitted, and they joined with Underwager to form VOCAL, a lobby group for people who had been accused of child abuse by social services.

Within a year of its establishment, VOCAL claimed 3000 members in 100 chapters across America. VOCAL members picketed hospitals, courts and social service departments who they characterized as staffed by “Gestapo-like” “fanatics”, “quacks and zealots” who remove children solely based on “rumours.” Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, VOCAL made several attempts to have legislation passed that would limit the powers of child protection services. Nationally, VOCAL campaigned to lift the burden of proof in child protection cases to a criminal standard. In Florida, VOCAL lobbied to restrict mandatory reporting requirements. VOCAL criticized child abuse prevention programs, claiming that they create sexually aware children who might misinterpret innocent touch from an adult.

Career as a defense witness

Underwager was a prolific defense expert for people accused of child sexual abuse. By the late 1980s, he had appeared in court on behalf of defendants in child sexual abuse cases more than 200 times in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain. In court and in the media, Underwager claimed that 60% of women sexually abused in childhood reported that the experience was good for them, he characterized child protection investigations as nothing less than an "assault on the family as an institution" and he alleged that 75% of mothers alleging sexual abuse in custody proceedings suffered from a "severe personality disorder" that prompted them to manufacture false allegations. He claimed that forensic interviews with children inevitably lead the child to confabulate an account of satanic ritual abuse because the "fantasy world of children is filled with mayhem, murder, cannibalism, blood and gore." He claimed that all forensic interviews with children provoked this sadistic sexual fantasy life, creating "psychotic" and sexualized children who were "ruined for life."

Psychologist Anna Salter argued that Underwager and Wakefield's claims as outlined above demonstrated "systematic misrepresentations" of reputable research, and often that Underwager and Wakefield made claims contrary to their sources. Underwager later filed several unsuccessful suits against Salter who claims that it was in retaliation for her criticism of Underwager's courtroom testimony and for claiming he lied in order to help child molesters evade punishment. Salter also claimed Underwager engaged in other threatening actions.

Interview controversy

Underwager was forced to resign from the advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and end his career as an expert witness because of an article that appeared in "Moving Forward: A Newsjournal for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Their Supporters" a series of excerpts from an interview he and Hollida Wakefield—his wife and also an FMFS advisory board member—had given to a non-referred, pro-pedophilia pseudo-academic publication, Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia. In the Paidika interview Underwager was asked "Is choosing paedophilia for you a responsible choice for the individual?", Underwager responded,

Underwager and his wife's comments were in the context of their view that the best prevention programs for sex-abuse of children were those that focused on stopping the actions of abusers. Underwager later claimed that "radical feminists who have self-styled themselves as sex-abuse experts" had taken the interview out of context and misrepresented his answers, reiterating previous statements that he believed "sexual contact between an adult and a child is [n]ever acceptable nor can it ever be positive." Underwager and Wakefield had specifically stated that sexual contact between adults and children is always harmful in their 1994 book Return of the Furies.