The following is an excerpt of the May 1, 1989 Oprah Show. Vicki Polin confirms that she was “Rachel.” Yori Yanover sent me this first (5/10/05).

OPRAH: As a child, my next guest was used also in worshipping the devil, participated in human sacrifice rituals and cannibalism. She says her family has been involved in rituals for generations. She is currently in extensive therapy, suffers from multiple personality disorder, meaning she’s blocked out many of the terrifying and painful memories of her childhood. Meet “Rachel,” who is also in disguise to protect her identity. You come from generations of ritualistic abuse?

“RACHEL”, Was Used In Satan Worship Rituals: Yes, my family has an extensive family tree, and they keep track of who’s been involved and who hasn’t been involved, and it’s gone back to like 1700.

OPRAH: And so you were ritually abused.

“RACHEL”: Right. I was born into a family that believes in this.

OPRAH: Does everyone else think it’s a nice Jewish family? From the outside, you appear to be a nice Jewish girl?

“RACHEL”: Definitely.

OPRAH: And you all are worshipping the devil inside the home?

“RACHEL”: Right. There’s other Jewish families across the country. It’s not just my own family.

OPRAH: Really? And so who knows about it? Lots of people now.

“RACHEL”: Well, I talked to a police detective in the Chicago area, and several of my friends know, and I’ve spoke publicly before, and…

OPRAH: So when you were brought up in this kind of evilness, did you just think it was normal?

“RACHEL’: I blocked out a lot of the memories I had because of my multiple personality disorder, but, yes. I mean, it’s like if you grow up with something, you think it’s normal. I always thought something…

OPRAH: So what kinds of things? You don’t have to give us the gory details, but what kinds of things went on in the family?

“RACHEL”: Well, there would be rituals in which babies would be sacrificed, and you would have to, you know…

OPRAH: Whose babies?

“RACHEL”: There were people who bred babies in our family. No one would know about it. A lot of people were overweight, so you couldn’t tell if they were pregnant or not, or they would supposedly go away for awhile and then come back…

“RACHEL”: The other thing I want to point out not all Jewish people sacrifice babies. I mean, it’s not a very typical thing.

OPRAH: I think we kind of know that.

“RACHEL”: I just want to point that out.

OPRAH: This is the first time I heard of any Jewish people sacrificing babies, but anyway–so you witnessed the sacrifice.

“RACHEL”: Right. When I was very young, I was forced to participate in that– in which I had to sacrifice an infant.

OPRAH: And the purpose of sacrifice is to what? Is to bring you what? What are you sacrificing for?

“RACHEL”: For power…

OPRAH: Power. And so were you ever used? Were you ever used yourself?

“RACHEL”: I was molested. I was raped several times.

OPRAH: What’s your mother doing in all of this? What’s her role in all of this?

“RACHEL”: What is– I’m not exactly- -what her role is– I haven’t, you know, recovered all of my memories, but her family was extremely involved. You know, she brought me to it. Both of my parents brought me to it.

OPRAH: And where is she now?

“RACHEL”: She lives in the Chicago metropolitan area. She’s on the human relations commission of the town that she lives in, and she’s an upstanding citizen. Nobody would suspect her. Nobody would suspect anybody involved in it. There’s police officers involved in it. There’s, you know, doctors, lawyers, Indiana chiefs involved in it.

OPRAH: Are you kidding?

“RACHEL”: I mean, it’s not the person, you know, who looks scummy that’s involved in it. It’s someone who looks normal.…

OPRAH: Were you raised with a sense of right and wrong, “Rachel?”

“RACHEL: Yes. I mean, it’s like we, I had both. I mean, to the outside world, everything we did was proper and right, and then there were the nights that things changed, that things just got turned around. What was wrong was right, and what was right was wrong. That’s what helps to create some of theto develop MPD.

OPRAH: Multiple personality disorder.

“RACHEL”: Right, right.

OPRAH: I know a lot of people are shaking their heads here, and I’m sure that when you go back home, I mean, everyone’s going to try to make you look like you’re crazy.

“RACHEL”: Oh, definitely.

OPRAH: Absolutely.

“RACHEL”: They do that all the time.

OPRAH: It’s very difficult to believe, so how is it that you come to believe these people, Tina?

Ms. GROSSMAN: Well, I’ve treated over 40 survivors of ritual abuse. Adult patients with multiple personality disorder, and from many states in this country as well as Canada. What we’ve seen and heard and gone through in the abreactions which is the remembered experiences of that- we are hearing the identical same things from these adults. Okay. These are not children that are three years old, and you can, as an adult, perhaps rationalize that this is fantasy material. These adults are saying things. They have never met each other before. They are describing identical rituals, just the same as, since I’m Jewish, you could go to New York or California and describe a seder in one state or another and, as a Jew, you would recognize it. This is the belief system in evil and the power that evil gives you, and so it has these certain rituals, so they are very similar with all of the survivors.

OPRAH: See, but I am very surprised because the Jewish faith is the Jewish faith. and worshipping the devil is not a part of the Jewish faith. I mean, Jewish people do not worship the devil.

Ms. GROSSMAN: But before there was Christ and before there was a system of one God, there was Paganism- and it still exists in the world, and in many cultures, you still find the belief that there is strength and power in the actual consumption of human flesh or animals’ flesh.

OPRAH: Now in your family. did you all call it worshipping the devil, “Rachel?”

“RACHEL”: No.

OPRAH: Or did you…

“RACHEL”: I don’t know.

OPRAH: It was just evil. these things you did.

“RACHEL”: It was– right.

OPRAH: Right.

“RACHEL”: Well, I said it was evil, and they said it was good. There’s a book that I had just come across called [Lilith’s Cave: Jewish Tales of the Supernatural by Howard Schwartz, New York, Oxford University Press, 1988] which is a book of Jewish mysticism and supernatural, and there’s a lot in that book that relates to what I endured when I was a child.

OPRAH: I want to stop right here, though. because you know how people build prejudices. I want to make it very clear this is one Jewish person, so don’t go around now saying to people, you know, “Those Jewish people, they’re worshipping–‘. This is just one person. Okay.

“RACHEL”: Most Jewish people do not do what my family did.

OPRAH: Okay. Thank you very much.

“RACHEL”: I mean, I don’t know very many other Jewish people who would do what I did.

OPRAH: But you know how people hear one thing, and then go off and they say, “I heard on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ today that…”

To this day, Vicki stands behind what she said on Oprah (she intentionally twisted some minor details on Oprah to disguise herself and her family.) She now says she can only trace her family back to the 1800s.

If you Google “”ritual abuse” Oprah,” you will see how many anti-semitic websites used Vicki’s appearance as fodder to perpetuate the myth that Jews sacrifice children.

On May 11, 2005, I speak by phone to someone close to Vicki Polin’s family.

This source is someone Vicki likes and respects.

My source says: This is my opinion, but it is the opinion of her family. That the claims were unfounded. I think she was led to make those claims through the investigator she had worked with (Jerry Simendl) who wanted to prove a theory of suppressed memory syndrome. And her therapist Tina Grossman. They had a theory they wanted her to prove and they found her to be a susceptible person to suggestion.

A lot of us have questions we want to answer about our lives. They had a theory that repressed memory is a big thing. As most people of Jewish background would attest, most people who survived the Holocaust saw horrible atrocities too, but they don’t have these repressed memories in the same fashion.

Luke: Vicki claims she had five abortions as a result of being impregnated by her father.

Source: I’ve known Vicki since she was about ten years old. I can’t say that in those early years, I was a best friend of the family, but I’ve been around for a while. Neither I, nor her sisters, saw evidence for that. I don’t think that something like that would be hush-hush.

Luke: She claims her family is part of a cult that goes back to the 1700s of ritual abuse.

Source: Honestly, I think it is all bulls—. She makes accusations about her aunts and uncles as well. I’ve known them for as long as I’ve known her. I never had an inkling that anything like that could’ve been happening. It’s possible that it happened and I was oblivious but [members of Vicki’s family] were they completely oblivious? If they had any clue that something like that could’ve been happening, could they stand idly by? I don’t think so.

We saw the show. There was no mistaking who that person was. I got in the car and went down to talk with her. I said we need to have a cup of coffee. We had a cup of coffee. She completely denied being on the show. I said, I know it was you. I watched the show. She told me all these stories. I don’t understand where that came from. Has she ever given us any kind of proof or validation that it was true? Not one bit.

Luke: Was she a stable girl as a teenager?

Source: As stable as any other teenager.

A sexual predator is obviously a horrible person. A person who sacrifices baby is a whole other animal. She’s made claims in the past that go way beyond sexual predators. I don’t doubt that she believes this.

[Vicki is not a responsible person. A member of her family] said to her pointblank — ‘Give me some evidence. Give me some idea why you said all these things.’ To the best of my knowledge, Vicki never came forward to say this or that. She basically said, ‘This is what I believe. You’ve got to believe it or don’t believe it.’

Luke: Did Vicki confess that was her on the Oprah show?

Source: I don’t know if she ever said yes, but it was an accepted fact that it was.

After that, [her sister] was really pissed off at her. They couldn’t talk without ending up screaming at each other.

I questioned everything. Maybe they are all part of this cult and I was suckered in to provide whatever they need. I did meet with Vicki, Jerry and Tina to find out… In those meetings, they said, we have accounts of this and that. But nothing hard and concrete ever came out. I said, ‘Give me something that I can latch on to.’ Nothing was presented. That’s why I had to dismiss it as not true.

When I was a little kid, I would lie in my bed and stare at my closet door, which was open two-or-three inches. The more I’d stare at it, the more I was convinced that the door would open and the bogey man would come out. Those were the types of answers that I got too — that she feels this way or that way.

Feelings are one thing. They may be right or wrong. We have to go beyond just feelings.

If there was any validity to any of these things, the whole world should know about it. Back in 1989 and 1990, I did all the research I could do and I found that it wasn’t true.

If you talk to leaders of most of the major religions, few of them would condone some of the things she has said as a policy of religion. There are always going to be the goofballs here and there…

Vicki’s definitely a brilliant woman. She knows how to use the system. She knows how to do what she needs to do. She’s not just a flake. She knew how to turn some heads.

Over the past ten years, I’ve had little contact with Vicki. She doesn’t have much contact with [her family].

I told Vicki that if anything she told me was true, I’d divorce my wife and take my kids to the other side of the world. There is nothing more disgusting than that possibility. I pleaded with Vicki – help me save these kids. But she wouldn’t give me anything beyond what we had already heard. She would not elaborate. Just to say that these people are horrible. Did she ever contact me again to say that she was worried about the kids? Not one time.

Unfortunately, I had to keep a close eye for years. I never saw any evidence of that. To the contrary.

But she’s become a watchdog for the community, huh?

Maybe someone who made those claims, got her name out there, got her publicity, be it bad or good, made their place in life, has to live that story, and stay with that story to maintain her credibility. We all do things at an earlier age that we regret…

Luke: Vicki often says she’s on the edge of death with her [health] problems.

Source: She’s been dying for the last ten years. She’s been on the verge of one surgery or another. She’s been about to kick the bucket for a long time. Her claims are always followed up a couple of days later with a request for cash.

Luke: She complains that she needs money for surgery and her family won’t help her.

Source: When was the last time she had a paying job?

Luke: She’s been on disability for ten years?

Source: Forever. If you research Illinois’s public aid and her past record, she is no stranger to the system.

Luke: She knows how to work the system.

Source: She really knows how to work the system. That’s why in our eyes she lost credibility because she knows how to work the system.

On the day she went on Oprah, she got a lot of attention. Was it credible? I don’t know. I asked her specifically. I asked Tina, Jerry. Give me something. They were giving generalities. ‘We’ve done research and we know that these things do occur.’ Well, is it something she experienced or something she fabricated? ‘This is the way she feels.’