1. Sexual abuse and torture.

2. Confinement in boxes, cages, coffins, etc, or burial (often with an opening or air-tube for oxygen).

3. Restraint; with ropes, chains, cuffs, etc.

4. Near-drowning.

5. Extremes of heat and cold, including submersion in ice water, and burning chemicals.

6. Skinning (only top layers of the skin are removed in victims intended to survive).

7. Spinning.

8. Blinding light.

9. Electric shock.

10. Forced ingestion of offensive body fluids and matter, such as blood, urine, feces, flesh, etc.

11. Hung in painful positions or upside down.

12. Hunger and thirst.

13. Sleep deprivation.

14 Compression with weights and devices.

15. Sensory deprivation.

16. Drugs to create illusion, confusion, and amnesia, often given by injection or intravenously.

17. Ingestion or intravenous toxic chemicals to create pain or illness, including chemotherapy agents.

18. Limbs pulled or dislocated.

19. Application of snakes, spiders, maggots, rats, and other animals to induce fear and disgust.

20. Near-death experiences; commonly asphyxiation by choking or drowning, with immediate resuscitation.

22. Forced to perform or witness abuse, torture and sacrifice of people and animals, usually with knives.

23. Forced participation in child pornography and prostitution.

24. Raped to become pregnant; the fetus is then aborted for ritual use, or the baby is taken for sacrifice or enslavement.

25. Spiritual abuse to cause victim to feel possessed, harassed, and controlled internally by spirits or demons.

26. Desecration of Judeo-Christian beliefs and forms of worship; Dedication to Satan or other deities.

27. Abuse and illusion to convince victims that God is evil, such as convincing a child that God has raped her.

28. Surgery to torture, experiment, or cause the perception of physical or spiritual bombs or implants.

29. Harm or threats of harm to family, friends, loved ones, pets, and other victims, to force compliance.

30. Use of illusion and virtual reality to confuse and create non-credible disclosure.

To illustrate, ritual abuse survivors may experience intense phobic reactions to spiders or maggots (item 19). They may fear water and baths (item 4). They often fear hypodermic needles (item 16). They become easily too cold, too hot (item 5), or thirsty (item 12). They may have aversive reactions to cameras (item 23). They may become upset upon seeing babies, dolls, or particular animals, or they may strongly identify with abused and abandoned animals and children (items 22 and 24). Sexual aversions are common (items 1, 23, and 24), as are vulnerability to repeated sexual victimization, sexual compulsions, and in some cases, paraphilias, such as sadism (Young, Sachs, Braun, & Watkins, 1991).

Food aversions and eating disorders are common. Ritual abuse survivors may not be able to eat food that is brown or red because these remind them of feces and blood. They are often repulsed by meat, are vegetarian, or fast excessively, or regurgitate food, derived from forced ingestion of body matter and fluids (item 10).