Forensic criminologist Bill Thompson sees many points of similarities to an earlier case that he worked on in the Orkneys. He attributes the Lewis hoax to obsolete and unreliable methods of interrogating young children.
bullet He is reported as saying: ''I can say without fear of contradiction that they used the same methods and same techniques [in the Lewis case] as they used on Orkney. The methodology is invariably the same....Whatever we think about rape and the failure to convict rapists, the idea of accusing somebody without thorough investigation has to be seriously questioned.''
bullet During another interview he is reported as saying: "This is not the first case since the Orkney scandal [when similar accusations of satanic child abuse were made and later dropped] in which the allegations were constructed on the basis of interview techniques that have long been discredited and fly in the face of all the rules that are supposed to define how children and adults are questioned."
bullet Referring to disclosure therapy that was used on the accusing children in this case by the National Children's Home and the social service, he said: ''What has to be asked is whether the guidelines for the interview techniques have been broken?" He suggests that this case is a duplicate of a ritual abuse scare in Orkney which turned out to be a hoax. He said: ''It will be the same methodology. It always is. What it boils down to is a social worker or police officer starts asking leading questions and this then sets off a whole series of speculations.'' 7
bullet He said that the accusations against the adults, which involved animal sacrifices, snuff
movies, devil worship and child rape, were ''classic textbook Satanic allegations which have been disproved everywhere.'' 8
bullet He suggested that the police release recordings of the interviews made with the children. He suggests that this is the only way to determine whether the investigators had asked leading questions. Only the release of this information is liable to clear the names of those falsely accused. He said: ''People want to kill them. They will suffer stigma forever. They need a chance to clear their names. Let's suppose it can be proved that the children have been sexually abused, how does that prove the existence of a satanic cult?....Social workers and police have one-track minds in these cases. They were convinced this case was true and were blind to evidence to the contrary. The belief system that led to Orkney is alive and well in Lewis more than 10 years later....[Police and social workers] should have asked themselves if they were leading the children and this should have prompted a review.'' 8