ChatGPT driving rise in reports of ‘satanic’ organised ritual abuse, UK experts say | ChatGPT
Experts in the UK said ChatGPT had led to a rise in reports of organized ritual abuse as survivors of “satanic” sexual violence used the AI tool for therapy.
Organized ritual abuse and “witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse” (WSPRA) of children is under-reported in the UK, police say. There is no modern charge specifically covering this, but such crimes are typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect, sometimes involving ritual elements inspired by satanism, fascism or esoteric religious beliefs, to control victims.
Perpetrators include abusive families and networks, human traffickers, online gangs and pedophile rings.
Since 1982 there have been 14 criminal cases in the UK in which ritual practices in sexual abuse have been acknowledged. But 2025 research Clinical psychologist Dr. Elly Hanson found that opinions reflect the “tip of the iceberg.”
Experts are now organizing training for police forces, led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which has established an expert working group.
Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the National Association of People Abused in Childhood (Napac), said there had been a “steady increase” in reports of ritual abuse over the past 18 months, with an increasing number of people being directed to report it by AI.
Shaw said: “In the last six months to a year people Napac support line ‘I was referred to you by ChatGPT,’ it says. People are using AI and ChatGPT as a form of therapy and discovery. There are mixed feelings about this, but if this is a path to support it must be a good thing.
“Normally on days with significant supernatural or religious overtones we see spikes in searches – but it’s not a spike – it’s a steady increase. Information about crime and where to get support is on the rise… Satanism comes up quite a bit.”
The NPCC, Napac and Hydrant policing programme, which supports forces across the country on child protection, requested a review from Hanson last year and launched a WSPRA briefing for professionals this month.
Last year, members of a pedophile gang posing as witches and wizards in Scotland were jailed for sexual crimes.
Of 36,700 calls to NAPAC over nine years, 1,310 mentioned organized ritual abuse, Shaw said. He said the crime could be “intergenerational in nature” and that although the perpetrators were mostly men, survivors named their “grandmothers and aunts” as the perpetrators.
Richard Fewkes, director of the Hydrant Program, said ritual elements sound “fantastic” and contribute to the justice gap.
He added: “We need to improve the whole system of dealing with this – it’s out there, it’s there and it’s not actually reported (to the police) … we’ve known that for many years.”
Hanson said the victims grew up under “regimes of oppression” but the truth was “lost” between “rhetoric of disbelief” on the one hand and “conspiracy fictions” on the other.
He added: “We don’t see this abuse happening in certain cultures rather than others. It’s something we see happening in white Britons, often in privileged families. It doesn’t fit any stereotype of where it might happen.”
