Updated A woman claims a psychologist at an eating-disorder clinic hypnotized her while she was on psychotropic drugs, inducing false memories of being raped and belonging to a satanic cult.

She claims he did this recklessly, “based partly on her ability to pay for long-term continuous inpatient services,” and told her that that if she sued, “her perpetration of various criminal and horrific acts of abuse would be revealed”.

A South African teenage girl is in a coma after she and a friend were doused with petrol and set alight.

A police spokeswoman said there was speculation the attack was a satanic ritual, but they still needed to investigate this.

Australia: A psychologist who helped perform exorcisms on his patients and believed in “satanic abuse” has been banned from practising by the state’s health watchdog.

Mark Edward Tynan, of the western Sydney-based Christian group Servants of Jesus, was found to have blurred his spiritual beliefs and professional duties, placing clients in “grave risk of harm”.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that a Crown prosecutor was not acting maliciously when he prosecuted 12 members of a Saskatchewan family in the early 1990s after three foster children accused them of sexual abuse and bizarre satanic ritual abuse.

In 1993, criminal charges against all but one member of the Klassen family were stayed and the children later admitted they had made up the story.

After the trial of Louis Lamonica, Richard Ofshe said he could have offered the jury insight into the nature of cults to help them understand what was happening at Hosanna. He said he could have told them there is no such thing as satanic cults that abuse children.

If the initial statements of the children and suspects indicate the abuse occurred as part of a satanic cult — something that has never happened — then the truth of everything alleged in that statement is questionable, Ofshe said.

In Argentina the trial of Cesar Beguiristain has begun, the 20 year-old leader of an Afro-Brazilian, satanic cult accused of carrying out the ritual killing of a 12 year-old street boy.

In a decision which will have far reaching effects in clergy abuse cases and eerily issued just days before Halloween, the Sixth District Court of Appeals in Ohio has reinstated a 2005 lawsuit involving alleged satanic rituals against a Toledo priest who was convicted last year in the 1980 murder of a nun.

A Lucas County Common Pleas Court ruling throwing out the civil lawsuit of a woman who accused Gerald Robinson of torturing and raping her in a satanic ritual when she was a child will be appealed, an attorney in the case said yesterday.

The civil lawsuit filed against Gerald Robinson that accused him and others of repeatedly torturing and raping a young girl in ritual abuse ceremonies at a North Toledo church was dismissed yesterday.

Considered conduits of God by some, traditional spiritual healers claim to be able help return a loved one, cure impotency and infertility, help advance your career and even make you wealthy. One such spiritualist says he can cast away evil influences and bad luck, another will break voodoo and black magic curses and several others offer exorcisms. Concern has been growing about the impact on children of such ritual practices.

No further action is to be taken by the Crown Office following claims that a key witness in the Lewis child abuse scandal has admitted her allegations were false.

A Toledo woman who sued Gerald Robinson in April, 2005, accusing the Roman Catholic priest of torturing and raping her in satanic rituals when she was a child, has filed a motion claiming the statute of limitations did not start ticking until she knew her abuser’s identity.

The Catholic Church has accepted as substantially true allegations that a Melbourne priest took part in satanic rituals in which a number of people were murdered.

The victim of satanic ritual abuse by a Catholic priest has exclusively given his version of events to NEW.com.au's Gotcha blog, saying the church was aware of his allegations long before it agreed to pay him compensation.

The Catholic Church has accepted as substantially true allegations that a Melbourne priest took part in satanic rituals during which a number of murders occurred.